Born in Exile (53 page)

'You have been trying to adapt yourself,' she said, 'to a world
for which you are by nature unfitted. Your place is in the new
order; by turning back to the old, you condemned yourself to a
wasted life. Since we have been in London, I have come to
understand better the great difference between modern intellectual
life and that which we lead in these far-away corners. You must go
out among your equals, go and take your part with men who are
working for the future.'

Peak rose with a gesture of passionate impatience.

'What is it to me, new world or old? My world is where
you
are. I have no life of my own; I think only of you, live
only by you.'

'If I could help you!' she replied, with emotion. 'What can I
do—but be your friend at a distance? Everything else has become
impossible.'

'Impossible for the present—for a long time to come. But is
there no hope for me?'

She pressed her hands together, and stood before him unable to
answer. 'Remember,' he continued, 'that you are almost as much
changed in my eyes as I in yours. I did not imagine that you had
moved so far towards freedom of mind. If my love for you was
profound and absorbing, think what it must now have become! Yours
has suffered by my disgrace, but is there no hope of its
reviving—if I live worthily—if I——?'

His voice failed.

'I have said that we can't be strangers,' Sidwell murmured
brokenly. 'Wherever you go, I must hear of you.'

'Everyone about you will detest my name. You will soon wish to
forget my existence.'

'If I know myself, never!—Oh, try to find your true work! You
have such abilities, powers so much greater than those of ordinary
men. You will always be the same to me, and if ever
circumstances'——

'You would have to give up so much, Sidwell. And there is little
chance of my ever being well-to-do; poverty will always stand
between us, if nothing else.'

'It must be so long before we can think of that.'

'But can I ever see you?—No, I won't ask that. Who knows? I may
have to go too far away. But I
may
write to you—after a
time?'

'I shall live in the hope of good news from you,' she replied,
trying to smile and to speak cheerfully. 'This will always be my
home. Nothing will be changed.'

'Then you don't think of me as irredeemably base?'

'If I thought you base,' Sidwell answered, in a low voice, 'I
should not now be speaking with you. It is because I feel and know
that you have erred only—that is what makes it impossible for me to
think of your fault as outweighing the good in your nature.'

'The good? I wonder how you understand that. What is there
good
in me? You don't mean mere intellect?'

He waited anxiously for what she would say. A necessity for
speaking out his inmost thoughts had arisen with the emotion,
scarcely to be called hope, excited by Sidwell's magnanimity. Now,
or never, he must stand before this woman as his very self, and be
convinced that she loved him for his own sake.

'No, I don't mean intellect,' she replied, with hesitation.

'What then? Tell me of one quality in me strong enough to
justify a woman's love.'

Sidwell dropped her eyes in confusion.

'I can't analyse your character—I only know'——

She became silent.

'To myself,' pursued Godwin, with the modulated, moving voice
which always expressed his genuine feeling, 'I seem anything but
lovable. I don't underrate my powers—rather the opposite, no doubt;
but what I always seem to lack is the gift of pleasing—moral grace.
My strongest emotions seem to be absorbed in revolt; for once that
I feel tenderly, I have a hundred fierce, resentful, tempestuous
moods. To be suave and smiling in common intercourse costs me an
effort. I have to act the part, and this habit makes me sceptical,
whenever I am really prompted to gentleness. I criticise myself
ceaselessly; expose without mercy all those characteristics which
another man would keep out of sight. Yes, and for this very reason,
just because I think myself unlovable—the gift of love means far
more to me than to other men. If you could conceive the passion of
gratitude which possessed me for hours after I left you the other
day! You cannot!'

Sidwell regarded him fixedly.

'In comparison with this sincerity, what becomes of the pretence
you blame in me? If you knew how paltry it seems—that accusation of
dishonesty! I believed the world round, and pretended to believe it
flat: that's what it amounts to! Are you, on such an account as
that, to consider worthless the devotion which has grown in me
month by month? You—I was persuaded—thought the world flat, and
couldn't think kindly of any man who held the other hypothesis.
Very well; why not concede the trifle, and so at least give myself
a chance? I did so—that was all.'

In vain her conscience strove to assert itself. She was under
the spell of a nature infinitely stronger than hers; she saw and
felt as Godwin did.

'You think, Sidwell, that I stand in need of forgiveness. Then
be great enough to forgive me, wholly—once and for all. Let your
love be strengthened by the trial it has passed through. That will
mean that my whole life is yours, directed by the ever-present
thought of your beauty, face and soul. Then there
will
be
good in me, thanks to you. I shall no longer live a life of
hypocrisy, of suppressed rage and scorn. I know how much I am
asking; perhaps it means that for my sake you give up everything
else that is dear to you'——

The thought checked him. He looked at her despondently.

'You can trust me,' Sidwell answered, moving nearer to him,
tears on her cheeks. 'I must hear from you, and I will write.'

'I can ask no more than that.'

He took her hands, held them for a moment, and turned away. At
the door he looked round. Sidwell's head was bowed, and, on her
raising it, he saw that she was blinded with tears.

So he went forth.

For several days after the scene in which Mr. Malkin
unconsciously played an important part, Marcella seemed to be ill.
She appeared at meals, but neither ate nor conversed. Christian had
never known her so sullen and nervously irritable; he did not
venture to utter Peak's name. Upon seclusion followed restless
activity. Marcella was rarely at home between breakfast and
dinner-time, and her brother learnt with satisfaction that she went
much among her acquaintances. Late one evening, when he had just
returned from he knew not where, Christian tried to put an end to
the unnatural constraint between them. After talking cheerfully for
a few minutes, he risked the question:

'Have you seen anything of the Warricombes?'

She replied with a cold negative.

'Nor heard anything?'

'No. Have you?'

'Nothing at all. I have seen Earwaker. Malkin had told him about
what happened here the other day.'

'Of course.'

'But he had no news.—Of Peak, I mean.'

Marcella smiled, as if the situation amused her; but she would
not discuss it. Christian began to hope that she was training
herself to a wholesome indifference.

A month of the new year went by, and Peak seemed to be
forgotten. Marcella had returned to her studious habits, was fenced
around with books, seldom left the house. Another month and the
brother and sister were living very much in the old way, seeing few
people, conversing only of intellectual things. But Christian
concealed an expectation which enabled him to pass hours of
retirement in the completest idleness. Since the death of her
husband, Mrs. Palmer had been living abroad. Before the end of
March, as he had been careful to discover, she would be back in
London, at the house in Sussex Square. By that time he might
venture, without indelicacy, to call upon her. And after the first
interview——

The day came, when, ill with agitation, he set forth to pay this
call. For two or three nights he had scarcely closed his eyes; he
looked ghastly. The weather was execrable, and on that very account
he made choice of this afternoon, hoping that he might find his
widowed Laura alone. Between ringing the bell and the opening of
the door, he could hardly support himself. He asked for Mrs. Palmer
in a gasping voice which caused the servant to look at him with
surprise.

The lady was at home. At the drawing-room door, before his name
could be announced, he caught the unwelcome sound of voices in
lively conversation. It seemed to him that a score of persons were
assembled. In reality there were six, three of them callers.

Mrs. Palmer met him with the friendliest welcome. A stranger
would have thought her pretty, but by no means impressive. She was
short, anything but meagre, fair-haired, brisk of movement, idly
vivacious in look and tone. The mourning she wore imposed no
restraint upon her humour, which at present was not far from
gay.

'Is it really Mr. Moxey?' she exclaimed. 'Why, I had all but
forgotten you, and positively it is your own fault! It must be a
year or more since you came to see me. No? Eight months?—But I have
been through so much trouble, you know.' She sighed mechanically.
'I thought of you one day at Bordighera, when we were looking at
some funny little sea-creatures—the kind of thing you used to know
all about. How is your sister?'

A chill struck upon his heart. Assuredly he had no wish to find
Constance sunk in the semblance of dolour; such hypocrisy would
have pained him. But her sprightliness was a shock. Though months
had passed since Mr. Palmer's decease, a decent gravity would more
have become her condition. He could reply only in broken phrases,
and it was a relief to him when the widow, as if tiring of his
awkwardness, turned her attention elsewhere.

He was at length able to survey the company. Two ladies in
mourning he faintly recognised, the one a sister of Mr. Palmer's,
comely but of dull aspect; the other a niece, whose laugh was too
frequent even had it been more musical, and who talked of athletic
sports with a young man evidently better fitted to excel in that
kind of thing than in any pursuit demanding intelligence. This
gentleman Christian had never met. The two other callers, a
grey-headed, military-looking person, and a lady, possibly his
wife, were equally strangers to him.

The drawing-room was much changed in appearance since
Christian's last visit. There was more display, a richer profusion
of ornaments not in the best taste. The old pictures had given
place to showily-framed daubs of the most popular school. On a
little table at his elbow, he remarked the photograph of a jockey
who was just then engrossing public affection. What did all this
mean? Formerly, he had attributed every graceful feature of the
room to Constance's choice. He had imagined that to her Mr. Palmer
was indebted for guidance on points of aesthetic propriety. Could
it be that——?

He caught a glance which she cast in his direction, and
instantly forgot the troublesome problem. How dull of him to
misunderstand her! Her sportiveness had a double significance. It
was the expression of a hope which would not be subdued, and at the
same time a means of disguising the tender interest with which she
regarded
him
. If she had been blithe before his appearance,
how could she suddenly change her demeanour as soon as he entered?
It would have challenged suspicion and remark. For the same reason
she affected to have all but forgotten him. Of course! how could he
have failed to see that? 'I thought of you one day at
Bordighera'—was not that the best possible way of making known to
him that he had never been out of her mind?

Sweet, noble, long-suffering Constance!

He took a place by her sister, and began to talk of he knew not
what, for all his attention was given to the sound of Constance's
voice.

'Yes,' she was saying to the man of military appearance, 'it's
very early to come back to London, but I did get so tired of those
foreign places.'

(In other words, of being far from her Christian—thus he
interpreted.)

'No, we didn't make a single pleasant acquaintance. A shockingly
tiresome lot of people wherever we went.'

(In comparison with the faithful lover, who waited, waited.)

'Foreigners are so stupid—don't you think so? Why should they
always expect you to speak
their
language?—Oh, of course I
speak French; but it is such a disagreeable language—don't you
think so?'

(Compared with the accents of English devotion, of course.)

'Do you go in for cycling, Mr. Moxey?' inquired Mrs. Palmer's
laughing niece, from a little distance.

'For cycling?' With a great effort he recovered himself and
grasped the meaning of the words. 'No, I—I'm sorry to say I don't.
Capital exercise!'

'Mr. Dwight has just been telling me such an awfully good story
about a friend of his. Do tell it again, Mr. Dwight! It'll make you
laugh no end, Mr. Moxey.'

The young man appealed to was ready enough to repeat his
anecdote, which had to do with a bold cyclist, who, after dining
more than well, rode his machine down a steep hill and escaped
destruction only by miracle. Christian laughed desperately, and
declared that he had never heard anything so good.

But the tension of his nerves was unendurable. Five minutes more
of anguish, and he sprang up like an automaton.

'Must you really go, Mr. Moxey?' said Constance, with a manner
which of course was intended to veil her emotion. 'Please don't be
another year before you let us see you again.'

Blessings on her tender heart! What more could she have said, in
the presence of all those people? He walked all the way to Notting
Hill through a pelting rain, his passion aglow.

Impossible to be silent longer concerning the brilliant future.
Arrived at home, he flung off hat and coat, and went straight to
the drawing-room, hoping to find Marcella alone. To his annoyance,
a stranger was sitting there in conversation, a very simply dressed
lady, who, as he entered, looked at him with a grave smile and
stood up. He thought he had never seen her before.