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A SORRY LOVE-AFFAIR

 

 

I.

 

            PRETTY? Oh yes, she was pretty enough, sweet and lovable-looking, with brown hair, soft eyes, a flush on her cheeks, a little pathetic look about the mouth, and a little pathetic look about the mouth, and a tiredness over the whole face that betrayed, to anyone who would stop to think what it meant, that life was not altogether a pleasant pastime to her. How should it be? She was seven-and-twenty, and for seven years had worked, day in and day out, to keep the four children her brother had left to do the best they could when he went off to Australia. There had been a crash, a worry of some sort, I never knew what; and it does not concern us here. When it came there were no other relations: May Henry, a girl of twenty, was the only being on earth who stood between her brother’s children and starvation. But he went off feeling assured that somehow they would be kept outside the workhouse. She was earning a good deal even then at wood-cutting, had constant work in the office of a cheap illustrated paper, and was considered invaluable. Four mouths besides her own to feed were a good many; but she took heart of grace, and went on as best she could. She lived in cheap lodgings, to which she gathered the four little children (babes they were almost), and hired a draggle-tail servant girl, all she could afford, to look after them. It was unfortunate for her, perhaps, that they were boys—four boys to bring up—it seemed too much to face at first; Johnny aged three, Frank not quite two, and the twins Alfred and Claud (their mother had died when they were born) aged six months. This was how they ranged when their father off to the other end of the world, and left them to the care of the tall slim girl who was their aunt. But she did her best, and a marvellous best it was, all things considered. Every morning at nine o’clock quite punctually, she started for her work in the Strand; she had no time to do anything for them before she went, beyond seeing that they were up and washed and had eaten a good breakfast. But when she came back in the evening there was a little leisure of a sort, so she mothered the children a bit then, mended their clothes, looked after the household affairs and arranged the next day dinner before she dragged herself to bed, and wondered if there would ever come a to-morrow with a change of programme.

            She worked well and prospered. In two or three years she had taken a horrid little house at North Kensington, and was as proud as if it had been a mansion. She was able to afford a grown-up servant then with a tall mob cap and a long white apron, and she hired a woman once a week to do the mending. She worked as hard as ever, harder, for though her income had increased, her responsibilities had increased also: but she was content enough on the whole. The children went to a cheap little school which kept them quiet and safe during the day-time, and though they learnt next to nothing there, what did it matter? They were pretty as they grew up, and that was a comfort to her soul, for all women love beauty, and May did especially. Johnny was a sturdy little fellow with a close-cropped head, and a love of story-books that had a soothing effect upon him. Frank was devoted to tadpoles, gold-fish, newts, frogs, worms, and anything else alive that could be bought with the stray penny or two his aunt now and then bestowed upon him. The twins, though they were seven and a half, looked babyish still, for their curls were not yet cut off. All mothers, and May stood in the relation of mother to these poor chicks, go through a terrible moment when a crop of golden curls is cut off, and the child who has looked like a picture is suddenly transformed into a matter-of-fact little boy. Poor May was looking forward to the moment with a pang, for she knew that within the next two months the twins must go to the barber’s. But things, taken altogether, went on evenly enough and everlastingly the same, month after month, year after year, till she was twenty-seven, and perhaps a little more.

            Then a lover turned up, and everything changed. He was good-looking, fascinating, and all the rest of it; rather above her in social station, though this never occurred to her, and he was too well-bred to show that he knew it, even if he did. She met him at a studio on Show Sunday, where she stayed the whole afternoon in order to see the people, and have tea. He was by way of being a fashionable person, was in good society, clever, could talk about art, literature, and politics; Shakespeare and the musical glasses, too, for all I know to the contrary. May was a striking woman—beautiful one, and there was something wholly unsophisticated about her, which was odd, considering her seven-and-twenty years. It added a charm to her that Maurice Power found difficult to resist. They talked a good deal that day in the studio. They met again by chance, and again not wholly by chance, at least on his side; then he found out that she walked home every evening at a certain time. So he gave up his afternoon teas, and his calls, and his club, and all his other dissipations, and managed to meet her, at first quite by accident, of course; until at last it became almost natural to walk home with her. It was odd how green the trees looked that Spring, how much blue there was in the grey English sky, and now short a distance it seemed from the Strand to North Kensington. They generally walked quickly through the streets, and lingered a little when they came to the park, and lagged more and more when they reached the road in which she lived. She always said good-bye to him on the pavement at the foot of the little, well-whitened flight of stone steps that led up to the street door. The street door was painted green, and had a brass knocker on it. She used to look at the knocker almost thankfully; it gave the house a certain air of distinction, she thought; it inspired her to make him a little formal bow after she had said good-bye.

            “Shall I never be allowed to enter?” he asked one day, and held her hand for half a minute. She hesitated, and the woman who does so is lost.

            “Yes—oh, yes, but not to-day,” she answered, “the children are probably busy with their lessons,” and she reflected that they had, still more probably, made the place unfit to be seen. “To-morrow,” she added, taking it as a matter of course that to-morrow he would also walk home with her, “you must come in and see them,” ans she thought quickly that the little table should be arranged in the morning before she went out, and the boys should be carefully instructed to have their hands and faces washed. So the next day he went to tea. The first time of many times that followed. No doubt the interior of that horrid little house, eight rooms and a bath-room, a tessellated hall, and a gas stove in the kitchen that always smelt, made him shudder, and disgusted him pretty considerably with poverty and middle-class life; but he didn’t show it. He looked perfectly happy as he sat in the poor little drawing-room, made up of cheap hangings, Japanese fans, and wicker chairs. He would have stayed hours and hours if he had dared to do so. I think the boys took his breath away the first time he saw them. They had sounded very well to talk of, but they were a handful to see. Four boys, one after the other entering the room, all of them born with a healthy capacity for mischief. They were very soon at home with him, and then they laughed freely, told him stories of other boys, and ran down stairs with a clatter clatter to the little breakfast room, on a level with the kitchen, which was their own particular retreat. But he soon forgot them; he even failed to hear the sound of their voices and romping, when he looked across at May, sitting on the wicker chair, presiding over her little cheap tea-table, with the stale bread and butter, and the very small cake, evidently bought at a neighbouring baker’s. She was as graceful and dignified as if she had been a duchess, and a young and beautiful one. It never seemed to enter her head that her home was not as good as a palace.

            “You ought to have some books,” he said once, as he looked round the room that had not a sign of literature in it.

            “I have so little time for reading,” she answered. “I am out all day, and there are things to do in the evening, and when there are not I sit and think.”

            He looked at her for a moment in silence. Then he asked:

            “What do you think about?” and she made some foolish answer that told him plainly enough.

            Of course the inevitable came—one day he kissed her.

            “My darling,” he said, “I wonder if you know that you are a beautiful woman?”

            “No,” she whispered, and turned away ashamed and afraid. She ought to have scouted him, to have rung the bell, and proved how virtuous she was, but she did not know this either.

            “I wonder,” he said in a low voice, “if you know that—that I love you.” She covered her face with her hands, and bent her head down. He kissed it, keenly alive to the gold in her brown hair, but keeping himself well in hand. “Do you my darling, my queen? speak, my dear one,” and his voice was very tender. Probably she never dreamt, poor soul, of the hundred thousand women who had listened to the like tones before in other men and been deceived by them. She nodded, for words were impossible. “I am not worth it,” he went on, “but sometimes I think that you love me.”

            “I do,” she whispered, “I do.”

            Such an easy conquest it was; perhaps that was one reason why he valued it so little. “There are the boys,” she said gently, thinking, of course, that he wanted to marry her, and that right soon. She would not have been surprised if he had pulled a special licence out of his pocket that very moment, but would have walked by his side calmly and blissfully to the nearest church, and thought it the way to Heaven. He did not speak for a moment, she did not see his face: the expression on it was a little rueful.

            “Well, my darling,” he said, “we’ll love the boys together now.”

            “But—but perhaps you would not like their being with—with us,” and she hung her head and blushed as if she had been eighteen instead of seven-and-twenty.

            “Are they always to be under you charge?”

            “I don’t know, I suppose so, unless Walter gets on. I earn plenty of money—more than they need. I should not like them to be a burden,” she faltered.

            “You sweet thing,” he said, and kissed her again, “I wouldn’t mind if you had a whole schoolful,” he laughed. “But we can’t be married just yet, you know. We are not in any hurry, are we, my darling?”

            “No,” she said, and looked up at him with a face full of happiness and trust. “Oh, I’m so happy,” she broke out, “I cannot believe that you love me, it makes the world too sweet a place to live in.” His hand was on her shoulder, she put her soft face down on it, then turned and shyly kissed his fingers. She had never had the sign of a lover before and didn’t know how to manage one, how much to give or withhold: she never dreamt that it was foolish to let him see without any ado the happiness that was in her heart.

            At first he was entirely fascinated by her love, by her joyfulness in being loved, by the sweet eyes that watched for him and the beautiful face that lighted  up at the mere sound of his voice. So he was a very fervent lover indeed for a little while, never failing to see her in the twenty-four hours, or to send her, besides, a scrap of a letter every morning that made her perfectly happy. He used to say that every cabman who plied between Queen’s Gate and North Kensington knew him by sight. It seemed as if he wanted to give up his whole life to her, for he accounted to her for every hour spent out of her presence. But this fever heat only lasted a little while: it is not very often that it lasts long. I am inclined to think that all the time at the back of his head he knew that it would soon wear itself out. She was happy beyond all words before the waning came: after all, it is a good thing to have some happiness to remember.

            He went to dine with her two or three times a week. They had nasty little dinners cooked by the servant of all-work, but he ate them—with an effort. He sent her some champagne and fruit and boxes of lovely cut flowers, and told her that he felt like the master of the house. She felt as if she were married already, and looked up at him dutifully, as a wife who is adored delights in doing.

            “You are the master,—the master of me and of my life,” she said. “Maurice, I wish sometimes that I could suffer terribly for you, or do some wild impossible thing, or pay my life and soul and heart out in some strange way just to show what you are to me. You don’t know, you don’t dream, how much I love and worship you,” she added, with a little short laugh. Oh, poor fool that she was to say it. “I would give the whole wide world to do you the least little good.”

            “I believe you would, my darling,” and he said it as if he meant it: perhaps he did. This was at dinner one night. The chicken with the smoky bread sauce had just gone out, the children had just come in to say good night, and were looking longingly at the little dish of fruit on the table.

            “Good night, Aunt May,” said Johnny and kissed her, “good night, Mr. Power.”

            “Good night, old chap, how is the puppy?”

            “He’s all right,” said one of the twins.

            “The frogs are very thin,” said Frank, the second boy.

            “Don’t get enough to eat, perhaps.”

            “They are always giving them lives flies,” May said, with a shudder, “it makes me think of the early Christians thrown to the beasts.”

            “By Jove, yes.”

            “Good night, my dear boys, my four brave sonnies,” then the four boys trooped off to bed. Mr. Power looked after them with an odd expression on his face.

            “Dear one, what will become of them by-and-by?” he inquired.

            “Oh, Maurice, they will love you very much, and hey are dear boys.”

            “Yes, my love;” he kissed her across the corner of the table, and asked, “Are you happy?” Perhaps he liked to think that she was enjoying his pinch-beck devotion while it lasted: which, of course, was truly kind of him.

            “More happy than words can say,” she whispered; “I believe I would do anything on earth for you.”

            “I believe you would,” he answered, “as I would do for you,” but he pushed aside the plate with underdone apple charlotte on it: he was not able to eat that for her. Those were the days when the twenty-four hours never passed without meeting. They went on for a couple of months; then he flagged a little. But they saw each other about three times a week all through the summer, and spent long evenings together. Sometimes he stayed till quite late at night talking by the open window, while the soft breeze blew the cheap art curtains to and fro; but she was too innocent to know anything about improprieties or the ways of the world and the talk of it.

            “I shall always love you, darling,” he said one evening, looking at her curiously; “I should never change towards you, even if I were to marry anyone else.” Her heart stood still. “My queen,” he exclaimed, seeing the troubled look on her face, “I shall never have any wife but you,” and he took her in his arms, and called her by a number of endearing names, of which he had a large  and varied knowledge. But there was just a little weariness about his love-making by this time. She felt it, but she thought it was the heat of the simmer, or the long walk to North Kensington, or—oh, anything except the truth. She never dreamt of suspecting him. That particular evening after he had gone she sat till the dawn by the open window, thinking over his words and looks, feeling a little uneasy, yet never once doubting that everything was right. She loved him more and more I think every day of her life, and gave herself up more and more completely to his influence. He meanwhile had walked home thinking things over from every point of view; “I got into it,” he said to himself, “and I must get out of it; but it will hurt her, oh, how it will hurt her,” and he made himself some pleasant misery as he thought of the pain in store for the woman who loved him.

 

 

II.

 

            “MY mother is coming to town,” he told her.

            “Yes?” But he said nothing about introducing her to his mother.

            “I shall not be able to come so often, my dear one, while she is here; you will understand, won’t you?”

            “Yes,” but this time there was a little wonderment on her face. She was very hard worked at the office. She had to get there every morning soon after nine, and stay till five; then there was the long walk home, or the omnibus or the train: all fatiguing enough. If Maurice were coming there was a little scurry to make the boys tidy, to arrange her own dress, to see to the table, and to help the servant prepare the food. Two or three times just when she was ready a telegram came with an excuse. She knew it to be an excuse, and her heart sank: then the dinner was put away untouched, and the lace round her throat was taken off, folded and put by, for she could not afford to waste the price of it on the desert air. Once he did not come for four or five days, and she felt as if she stood face to face with an everlasting night. She was almost hysterical when he did come, and wept on his shoulder.

            “My darling,” he said, “my wife.” He had called her the last sometimes lately: he had found it useful in soothing her when she was inclined to be exacting. To her it seemed like the marriage vow itself, and impossible to undo. “I have only stayed away to think of you quietly,” he told her. This was an ingenious, and, of course, strictly untrue way of putting it. The summer went on and a little dull anxiety crept into her heart, a little dread each time she expected him, lest instead there should arrive an excuse. Then there passed a fortnight in which he did not come at all. It was like a whole century. It seemed as if the sun had for ever vanished from the sky. She thought she must have offended him, or grown, suddenly ugly, or said something that made it impossible for him to love her any more. But he came at the end of a fortnight, and was just as demonstrative as ever, though he looked at her keenly. He saw plainly how pale she was. The beginning of the end was coming. She did not know it, but she felt it, and it was torture: for there awoke in her a capacity for pain and scorn of which she had never dreamt. The reason of her agony she did not know yet, but gradually and against her will a terrible truth was being borne in upon her. His visits grew fewer, his letters shorter, and hers grew more and more tender, as she poured her heart and soul out to him in her anguish and longing to prove that he was other than what he was. But anguish does not bring back a wanning lover, and tears and protestations are of little use when he knows that he has but to lift his finger to make a world of joy and smiles. He came one day, and seemed to have nerved himself to a task.

            “It would never do,” he told her. “My mother says that I ought to make a marriage that would help my career.”

            “Yes.”

            “You see, my darling, we couldn’t marry on our present income.”

            “Oh, but if I work?”

            He kissed her and sighed. He could not explain to her the hopelessness of expecting any greatness from him. Besides, let us do him justice; four boys are a good deal for a young man to take with his wife, even though that wife earns enough money to keep them, or the man himself a rich. If they had only been girls it might have been different. But I think he had some tenderness for her even then, or he would have left her altogether. He came back again and again, long after his delight in her love was over.

            “I think you ought to marry some good fellow with plenty of money,” he said.

            She turned round quickly, and there was a flash in the brown eyes which he had not expected.

            “What do you mean? Say all that you are thinking,” she exclaimed imperiously. He was silent for a moment; then he seemed to speak with an effort.

            “May.” He was almost breathless, as if he were about to make a dangerous experiment. “I think you have always loved me more than I did you.”

            A little cry came from her lips, but he seemed determined that she should realize the pain in store for her. “I am very fickle,” he said, “but I cannot help it.” Something tightened round her heart.

            “You have said everything in the world to me, called me by every name—”

            “Words are no security,” he replied, half sadly, as if he regretted his own incapability to mean what he had said, but could not help it. Then a great fear took hold of her.

            “Is there anyone else?”

            “Not yet,” he answered slowly.

            “You said I was your wife, you even called me that—did you not mean it? was it not true?”

            “It was true—then.”

            “If it is not true now—you may go—but you have nothing to give another woman except the vows you gave me—you can give her the husks of those.”

            He looked at her almost critically, as if he were admiring her. Her scorn took him by surprise. He liked her for it, almost loved her again, but he had thought things out and seen clearly that it would not do. He could not marry a woman who worked for her daily bread at wood-cutting, and had four children dependent on her. The children worried him horribly; they were so noisy, they shouted in the back garden, they ran up the cheaply-built staircase, making it echo with their thick boots; they gathered round him, asking him to help them with their lessons, to go through sums and verbs with them, which he had been willing enough to do in the first days of his infatuation; but now he wanted to get rid of them. He hated the cheapness and the tawdriness of the house, too, the make-shiftiness of poverty. He was tired of May’s unswerving love, he was too certain of it; she was too constant, too tender. Even her sudden flashes of scorn, and the bitter things that pain had lately taught her to say, had little effect upon him, for he knew that in a moment he could brighten her whole life again till she had no thought or words that were not dearest love and blind belief.

 

III.

 

 

            SHE had not seen him for months, two or three; I do not know how many. She had grown thin and cold and cynical. Ill, too, for a time, but there are no doctors in this world like work and necessity. She had to work, and did not dare to leave off, so she went on day after day fighting the battle of like with only one longing in all the world for herself—to lie down and die.

            “If I could only be alone,” she used to say to herself, “if I might only sit still for ever and brood over it. Sometimes I think my whole nature is changed, for I do not love the children as I did; I want to be without them—to be alone. I am not sure that I love even him any more; but I cannot bear the misery and agony of remembering, and scorn burns the life out of me.”

            One day a letter came from her brother Walter: he was doing well and wanted the children sent out to him. He enclosed money to buy them clothes and pay their passage, and suggested that she should bring them. Her heart stood still at this thought: she could not bear to put the sea between herself and the one romance of her life. But she made the children ready, bought their things on the long evenings of the dark November days, and packed them. She found some people who were going out to Melbourne early in December; they promised to look after the little ones. She lived her last days with them, feeling as if the world were coming to an end, and that soon she would have leisure to put all things straight and sit her don to die.

            She took a day’s leave from the office, and went to see the boys off from Plymouth. She cried bitterly as she kissed them, poor soul, for though she had worked and troubled for them so many years, she felt, as she looked at them for the last time, as if she had not loved them quite enough lately, and had not been very good to them.

            “You’ll take care of the ferret, Aunt May?” Johnny entreated.

            “I wish I hadn’t given away the frogs,” Frankly said ruefully.

            “It’s Aunt May we care about,” sobbed one of the twins.

            Then she pulled some chocolate out of her pocket, and distributed it among them. She had kept it in reserve for the sobs. She was the ship move, watch it a little way into the distance, and turned away—desolate and miserable. They had gone, they had gone—her four little sonnies, on whose account her lover had deserted her. Now she was alone in the world.

            Her train crawled into Paddington Station at ten o’clock that night. She felt as if she could not face the people who would be in an omnibus or train, and to walk back alone she had not strength or courage. As she stood for a moment, looking for a hansom, she found herself face to face with Maurice Power.

            “May! my dear one, my darling. What are you doing here?” The old words and manner. They made her heart leap.

            “I am looking for a cab,” she said, prosaically enough. “I am going home.”

            “Could you walk, if I took you?” Walk if he took her? She could have walked to the sun and moon, and from every star to star, and thought the distance short. “Could you, dear one?”

            “You mustn’t call me that, you mustn’t speak to me so.”

            The same helpless, tender voice, the same look of love and trust in her eyes. He saw that she was within his reach still, and all his desire vanished.

            “But you are dear to me,” he answered, “you always will be as long as I live. It was because of the children I broke with you, not because I didn’t love you.”

            “They have gone to Australia—I have been to see them off.”

            “Gone to Australia?” he echoed.

            “Yes,” and she waited.

            “Did their father send for them?”

            “Yes,” and she waited again.

            “Have they gone for good?”

            “Yes,” and she waited still.

            “If it had only come a year ago,” he said, as if to himself, “it is too late now. I am going to marry another woman.”

            “Going to marry another woman?”

            “Yes. You know I never deceived you, May,” he answered, with quite a meritorious air of truthfulness. They were walking through the still streets. The stucco house were on either side: above them a deep grey sky.

            “Why are you going to marry her?”

            “She loves me.”

            “And do you love her?”

            “Yes.”

            “Do you remember how you swore you had never loved anyone as you loved me,” she asked sadly, “and that you would love me all your life? You said you were mine altogether.”

            “So I was, my darling,” he answered, “and I shall always love you too.” He stooped as if to kiss her, but she drew away with a shudder.

            “Oh, you mustn’t,” he said, “you mustn’t touch me, I couldn’t bear it. You have kissed another woman: you would feel like a leper.”

           

 

IV.

 

 

            THE odd thing was that though after this she did not love him any more, or thought she did not, she felt as if she could not go on living in the world. It was terrible to imagine him loving another woman, saying the same words, going through the same experiences all over again, while she worked day after day, and sat alone through the evening remembering that she had loved him with a love he had not wanted. Perhaps he was glad that he had left her, congratulated himself on shaking her off, and thought he was well out of it. She wanted to die and forget everything. It is wonderful how often women long to die for the sake of men who are contemptible. “It would be easy enough, a little flash of a pistol or an overdose of chloral,” she thought. This was as she walked to the city one morning. All day long the idea possessed her. She would be no trouble to anyone; she would put all things straight; discharge the servant, pay up the rent and the little debts. It should be altogether a well-managed suicide. A paragraph in the paper, a coroner’s inquest, the everlasting forgetfulness. It was on her way home and quite dark as she imagined this. So many unacted tragedies take place in the dark. The London fog was thick and yellow. She held up her hands to the sky she could not see.

            “Oh God,” she cried, “help me—help me to die if it is better, or to live if it must be so.”She stopped for a moment before the little house in North Kensington from sheer lack of courage to mount the steps. Some one stood beside her; probably he had been walking up and down waiting for her to come through the darkness.

            “My darling,” how the voice went through her, “I want you to take me back.”

            “To take you back?” she was dazed: “you broke my heart,” she said, as if she were speaking of a dead woman.

            “Poor queen, poor queen,” he answered compassionately; “but you know I love you now?”

            “You told me you loved another woman.”

            “I know—I was a brute. Let us forget it all, and be happy, May—my darling.”

            “I can’t.” She spoke calmly enough, but there was a little terror in her voice. “Perhaps you deceived her just as you did me—I daresay,” she added wearily. “But my eyes are open now, and I see clearly. I couldn’t live my life with you.”

            “I should have married you but for the children.”

            “Poor children,” she answered gently; “perhaps unconsciously they were my little saviours. Oh, I long breath. “We might have children ourselves. It would be terrible to put men and women into the world who would perhaps deceive or change, as you have done.”

            “Take me back,” he said impatiently, with a passionate authority that made her set her teeth. It was hard to resist, for she was realizing that she loved him still; but perhaps the God she had prayed to gave her strength.

            “What would be the good?” she asked, speaking still more gently, but with a hopeless tone in her voice. “I could never trust you again. I should always be a little afraid. I forgive you and all that, but I can’t live my life with you now. It seems such arrogance to say it—but you are not good enough for me. I want something better, some one greater; you must go to the women who are satisfied with less than will make me content. I give you to them,” she added, with a little quick scorn. “It is all over. Good-bye,” and she turned away; but she looked back and said “Good-bye” again.

            He stood still for a moment, not knowing what to do. She went up the steps, fumbled for her latch-key, let herself in, and very gently shut the door. What happened then I do not know. Probably she threw herself down and sobbed, or hated herself for a fool, since she had not taken the man of her heart when the chance was given her. For, after all, he might be bumped, and battered, and worthless, but he was the man of her heart still.

            I saw her two years ago. She looked older and very dignified, a little wearied, too, but she was still a beautiful woman. I heard that she was going to marry a widower with four children. Probably she did not care much for the man, for she is the sort of woman who has but one romance in her life; but the children may have decided her. She knew that they would remind her of those four she had loved and worked for once, and then had almost forgotten for the sake of a man who had not been fit to tie their little shoe-strings.

 

 

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