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MRS. KEITH'S CRIME

 

 

CHAPTER XVIII

 

 

I ROUSE myself at last, and go back to the sitting-room. It still wants half an hour to dinner-time. There are fresh newspapers on the little table in the patio, and nobody will be reading them just now, so I go downstairs thinking to bring them away, to read comfortably here on the sofa.

            The patio is not deserted, as I expected to find it. Mr. Josephs and Mr. Vincent are sitting in the dim light, arguing as usual. They rise as I enter, and put a chair for me; but I shake my head. ‘ I am going back, and will not disturb you,’ I say.

            ‘ Delighted to see you, Mrs. Keith,’ Mr. Josephs says. ‘ Mr. Vincent and I often have an argument together about this time, and unless Mr. Bicknell is here, it is generally a pretty close one.’

            ‘ And how does Mr. Bicknell make a difference?’ I ask.

            ‘ Well, you see, Mr. Bicknell has not much opinion of people who think differently from himself,’ Mr. Josephs says drily.

            ‘ Oh, come, that is hardly fair,’ Mr. Vincent says. ‘ Bicknell is a party man, and, like all of them, he is a little warped, perhaps; his views have developed the obstinacy in his nature, as they do in most men. Like many of them, too, he often seems half afraid to look at things from any other point of view than his own, for fear, perhaps, of being tempted to cross over.’

            ‘ Then his firmness suggests weakness rather than strength?’ Mr. Josephs says.

            ‘ No, not at all,’ Mr. Vincent says staunchly. ‘ He is a very good fellow, and I won’t have him abused. He is apt to be a little one-sided, perhaps; but it is, after all, your one-sided men who have headed most big movements, and carried most big things in the world. He has his own way of doing things, but it generally turns out to be a very excellent way in the end; I have a great regard for him, and won’t listen to anything against him.’

            ‘ That’s right,’ Mr. Josephs answers; ‘ I like to hear you stand up for him, you are quite right;’ and he looks at Mr. Vincent with distinct admiration for the way in which he has defended Ralph. Then he tells me that in the course of the next few days he and his daughter are going off to Granada for a little visit, and that they mean to stay at Antiquera for a night on the way. At Antiquera, in old days, the Jews suffered terrible things, and Mr. Josephs, who is never slow to talk of his race and the persecutions it has suffered, seems to have a morbid craving to look on those places in which it has suffered most.

            ‘ I hear the houses are built very tall round the old square,’ he says. ‘ They were built tall on purpose, with many gaping windows, so that the Spaniards might enjoy the spectacle of their fellow-creatures being burnt for love of Heaven.’

            ‘ Ah, but you forget,’ Mr. Vincent answers, with a shade of the pleasant insolence that often distinguished him. ‘ They were obliged to take some serve measures. After the downfall of the Moors, the Jews got so much of the national wealth into their hands, that if some check had not been put on them they would have been masters of the entire country.’

            ‘ Burning was a nice little check, and heresy was merely the excuse, then, you think?’

            ‘ Well, well, things must be called by some name and for that reason often get wrong ones,’ Mr. Vincent answers. ‘ After all, too, Spain had had a very brilliant day under the Moors, and some reaction was bound to come.’

            ‘ Spain has had no day, Mr. Vincent; she has had nothing but one long night, broken by one brilliant dream and a few fitful visions.’

            ‘ Perhaps you are right,’ concedes Mr. Vincent, benevolently. ‘ But let us hope she is ridding herself of superstition now.’

            The Jew shook his head. ‘ Centuries have made so many things hereditary, it will take centuries more to root them up. I believe in nothing so firmly as in hereditary power.’

            ‘ Well, your race has proved that there is something in it. I suppose belief in it has had more to do with keeping you together than anything else.’

            ‘ It has had a great deal to do with it—that and our feeling of responsibility to the future. We know that while we keep to our traditions we are safe—experience has tested them; directly we depart from them there is danger. From our point of view, we are never free of responsibilities; all that we inherit we have to hand down unweakened as an inheritance to those who come after us.’

            ‘ How do you mean?’ I ask. ‘ Do you think the good man leaves his virtues, and the bad man his vices, to be carried on; or are you speaking outside those?’

            ‘ Certainly, along with all else that he has. We cannot cultivate a single new feeling or desire without knowing that we may be creating a like one for the next generation, or sowing the seed of a new instinct that may work through the whole future race. No individual, unless he lives on a desolate island where example is useless and union with his fellow-creatures again impossible, is free from obligations to his people, and even then he would owe its traditions respect.’

            ‘ Does not this idea weaken your feelings as an individual?’ Mr. Vincent inquires.

            ‘ No; it strengthens them, for with so great a responsibility the individual gains in importance.’

            ‘ Mr. Josephs, are you proud of being a Jew?’ I ask.

            ‘ Certainly I am.’

            ‘ That is like Mr. Cohen,’ I answer.

            ‘ Ah, he is a good fellow,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘ But for my sister we should have seen a good deal of him. My sister, like many other women, has some very absurd notions; but I mean to keep Nellie under my own eye in future.’

            ‘ I am so sorry you are going, Mr. Josephs,’ I say. ‘ I hope to have known your daughter better; she has been very kind to Molly and me, only we have not been well enough to be of any good to her. She plays beautifully; I have been listening to her for a long time this evening.’

            Mr. Josephs looks pleased. ‘ Thank you, Mrs. Keith,’ he says gratefully. ‘ I like to hear my little girl praised. But we are coming back here in a fortnight, and then I hope you will know her better. The Flying Dutchman is being repaired at Malaga; she won’t be ready for some time, and we shall come back here and wait for her. We like this place.’

            ‘ But your sister will be gone with the Bexleys.’

            ‘ Oh yes, that will be all right. We generally go apart after a meeting,’ he adds drily. ‘ We shall pick her up again, perhaps at Bordeaux, on our way home. She and Miss Martin will be safe enough, wherever they are. There are some advantages, though you have not discovered them, Mrs. Keith’—and he bows and smiles—‘ in not being young or pretty, and my sister has arrived at that fortunate age at which she may be left to her own devices with impunity.’

            ‘ It is fortunate that she is going with the Bexleys, though,’ I say; ‘ it will console her for your going to Granada.’

            ‘ Oh yes, it will quite console her,’ he answers.

            I think, as I carry off the newspaper to my room, that Mr. Josephs is hardly as grateful as he might be for his sister’s affection. I am sorry he and Helen are going away, for even if they come back they will not have long to stay, and I have been hoping that chance might help me to say a good word to the latter for the sardine. As yet it has not been possible, for she is so shy and retiring that it is not easy to become intimate with her quickly, and I have felt all along that I did not know her well enough to speak of what has been in my mind, and now it seems as if the chance had gone.

 

            After dinner Ralph comes in, but not to stay, as I had expected.

            ‘ I have brought you a book,’ he says, ‘ but I must be off again directly, for I have promised to have a game of billiards with Vincent and Bexley. May is coming up to see you. How is Molly?’

            ‘ She is better, thank you.’

            ‘ Have you heard that the Bexleys have asked that awful woman to go to the Pyrenees?’

            ‘ Yes.’

            ‘ It is quite amazing. Lady Bexley has been almost rude to her till lately, and pointedly turned a deaf ear to all her hints and flattery. Well, suddenly yesterday her manner changed, and to-day she invited her to travel with them. Oh, here is May; I will leave you to her tender mercies. Good-bye, Maggie; good-bye for the present, miss,’ he says to May, in the half-mocking, half-protecting manner he often assumes.

            ‘ Good-bye,’ she says, with a little impatient shake of her head. ‘ You are better, then?’ she asks, as she half follows him to the door.

            ‘ Better?’ he says loftily.

            ‘ Yes; better tempered,’ she says, pouting. ‘ You have been very disagreeable all day.’

            ‘ That is because you have deserved it.’

            She draws up as if to be haughty or disdainful, and with her head thrown back she says half humbly, half poutingly, but quite softly, so that I can only just catch the words, ‘ I am sorry.’

            He laughs in a pleasant, triumphant fashion. ‘ That’s right,’ he says, as he goes out of the door, and looks at her for a moment as a man looks only at a woman he loves and is proud of. When he has gone downstairs, she turns round and stands waiting for me to say something about him. There is an expression on her face again which says quite plainly that she wants to talk of him.

            ‘ Had you been quarreling?’ I ask.

            ‘ Oh yes,’ she says, with a laugh that meets a sigh and is stopped by it.

            Then we sit down and are silent for a while. It is a great thing to know any one so well that you can sit together without speaking, and can think and rest as well as in solitude, yet feel all the time the comfort of companionship. There is no test of sympathy greater than this. Presently I turn to her and take up the thread that has been dropped.

            ‘ My dear,’ I say, ‘ you two are very fond of each other.’

            She starts as if she had forgotten my presence, and answers almost in a whisper.

‘ I don’t know. Do you think he really cares for me? You have seen us so often together now, do you think he really cares—do you?’ she asks eagerly.

            ‘ I am sure he does,’ I answer, ‘ if looks mean anything; but surely you are engaged?’

            ‘ I hardly know. We were, and we squabbled; it was broken off, and it has been partly made up, and—oh, I don’t know how it is! We are always squabbling and making it up; and something I think he loves me with all his heart, and at others it seems as if he not only doesn’t care, but is deliberately trying to show me that he does not.’

            ‘ And then?’

            ‘ And then? Oh, we have been weeks and even months without meeting—or caring perhaps, I don’t know; but we always get back to each other. We can’t help it,’ she says, almost to herself, and in so low a voice that I can hardly hear her;— ‘ it is life.’

            ‘ I wonder how it will all end?’ I say.

            ‘ I don’t know, and am afraid to think. I just accept to-day and am happy in it; ‘ she answers, trying to laugh. I look down at her face, thinking how odd it is that she and I should both be living in the present, neither daring to look forward—I, with my dread and weariness, feeling sometimes as if I stood just at the end of the world, waiting for a gate to open to let me pass out; and she, standing in the sunshine, with the whole world before her, if she can but open the gate and pass in.

            ‘ Mercifully, the world is round,’ I say, ‘ so that we see but a little way ahead.’

            ‘ Oh, but it will all come right; I know that, really,’ she says gently, and looks up with eyes full of faith in the future.

            ‘ But how does he come to be traveling with you, and what does your father say to it all?’

            ‘ He has often traveled with us. My father likes him very much, and thinks it is wisest to let us manage our own affairs, and not to interfere until he is asked.’

            ‘ Have you know him very long?’

            ‘ What, Ralph? Oh yes; ever since I was sixteen, with gasps in between.’

            ‘ Why does your father like him?’ I ask, thinking of Mr. Vincent’s words to-night.

            She looks at me in surprise. ‘ There is so much to like in him,’ she answers. ‘ I don’t think it is possible to like any one in the world so much as it is possible to like Ralph, and yet—you will think this a strange thing to say—and yet I know that in some things he is selfish and uncertain; he is often unkind, and he is not sympathetic. Oh, but I ought not to say this to you, Mrs. Keith; only I seem to know you so well. I knew your face in some dim way directly I saw it.’

            ‘ Do you love him?’ I ask, getting up and putting my arm round her shoulder.

            ‘ I don’t know, honestly,’ she answers. ‘ I shall never care for any one else as I have cared for him, and do still at times. There are days when I should think it the happiest lot in the world to be his, and there are others when I simply could not and would not risk life with him—days when it seems as if I do not care for him at all. Do you know,’ she goes on suddenly, ‘ sometimes I think that I shall one day unexpectedly marry some one else, just in pique, or in a sort of self-defence, to save myself from a man who is certain at times to be unkind to me. Then I shall settle down to a life that will kill all that really lives in me, and Mr. Ralph may go and reflect that he can do better, or that “he who will not when he may,” etc., etc., whichever he pleases.’

            ‘ I wonder if you do really care for him,’ I say, speaking more to myself than to her.

            ‘ I don’t know,’ she answers, putting her face down and resting it in her hands;

‘ but I know this—that if he died I should break my heart. I can live without seeing him, without marrying him, I can exist even if he is angry with me; but if he died I should break my heart and die too.’ She stops for a moment. ‘ Ah, Mrs. Keith,’ she cries passionately, ‘ why did you wring all this from me? I have never spoken about it to any one else on earth; and you will never speak of it again, will you, never to any one?’

            ‘ No, I never will,’ I answer, with all my heart; but in spite of Mr. Vincent’s testimony to him downstairs, I wonder what it is she sees in him to care for so much; for it seems to me that he is playing fast and loose with her, and that he is made of the stuff of which very weak women’s heroes are made, the type of man who bullies women and thinks it manly, who mistakes a merely physical power in himself, as the woman he beguiles mistakes it, for power of a far higher and greater sort.

            ‘ Tell me what you like so much in him,’ I say gently. ‘ You say he is selfish and unkind sometimes. Why do you like him?’

            She lifts her face from her hands, and answers, with a light in her eyes and a proud smile on her sweet face—

            ‘ He is so manly and so truthful, and though he is often selfish in little things, yet in many great ones he is grandly unselfish, and I would trust his word, if he once gave it, before all the world’s; and he never depends on any one but himself, and if he once tries to do a thing he always does it. I don’t know what it is altogether, but I have always felt that I wanted something more in a man to like than most women get and are content with, and that only he of all the men I have seen has got it.’

            ‘ My dear child,’ I say; ‘ and yet you do not know if you love him?’

            ‘ Yes, I do,’ she whispers. ‘ I love him more than my life; and I think—and I know,’ she gasps, ‘ that he loves me, only he will not let even himself know it often, and sometimes it seems as if he deliberately throws my heart back at me;’ and she bursts into tears, and puts her arms round my neck.

 

 

 

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