II.
_Wednesday Night, November 4th_.
Margot has gone to bed at last, and I am alone. This has been a horribleday--horrible; but I will not dwell upon it.
After the death of my grandmother, I went back to school again. ButWilloughby was gone, and he could not forgive me. He wrote to me once ortwice from New York, and then I ceased to hear from him. He died out ofmy life. His affection for me had evidently declined from the day whenhe took it into his head that I was only a money-grubber, like therest of the world, and that the Jew instinct had developed in me at anabnormally early age. I let him go. What did it matter? But I was alwaysglad that I had been cruel on the day my grandmother died. I neverrepented of what I did--never. If I had, I might be happier now.
I went back to school. I studied, played, got into mischief and out ofit again, like other boys; but in my life there seemed to be an eternalcoldness, that I alone, perhaps, was conscious of. My deed of cruelty,of brutal revenge on the thing that had never done me injury, hadseared my soul. I was not sorry, but t could not forget; and sometimesI thought--how ridiculous it looks written down!--that there was a powerhidden somewhere which could not forget either, and that a penalty mighthave to be paid. Because a creature is dumb, must its soul die when itdies? Is not the soul, perhaps--as _he_ said--a wanderer through manybodies?
But if I did not kill a soul, as I killed a body, the day my grandmotherdied, where is that soul now? That is what I want to arrive at, that iswhat I must arrive at, if I am to be happy.
I went back to school, and I passed to Oxford. I tasted the strange,unique life of a university, narrow, yet pulsating, where the youth,that is so green and springing, tries to arm itself for the battle withthe weapons forged by the dead and sharpened by the more elderly amongthe living. I did well there, and I passed on into the world. And thenat last I began to understand the value of my inheritance; for all thathad been my grandmother's was now mine. My people wished me to marry,but I had no desire to fetter myself. So I took the sponge in my strong,young hands, and tried to squeeze it dry. And I did not know that I wassad--I did not know it until, at the age of thirty-three, just seventeenyears after my grandmother died, I understood the sort of thinghappiness is. Of course, it was love that brought to me understanding.I need not explain that. I had often played on love; now love began toplay on me. I trembled at the harmonies his hands evoked.
I met a young girl, very young, just on the verge of life and ofwomanhood. She was seventeen when I first saw her, and she was valsingat a big ball in London--her first ball. She passed me in the crowdof dancers, and I noticed her. As she was a _debutante_ her dress wasnaturally snow-white. There was no touch of colour about it--not aflower, not a jewel. Her hair was the palest yellow I had almost everseen--the colour of an early primrose. Naturally fluffy, it nearlyconcealed the white riband that ran through it, and clustered intendrils and tiny natural curls upon her neck. Her skin was whiter thanivory--a clear, luminous white. Her eyes were very large and china-bluein colour.
This young girl dancing passed and repassed me, and my glance restedon her idly, even cynically. For she seemed so happy, and at that timehappiness won my languid wonder, if ingenuously exhibited. To be happyseemed almost to be mindless. But by degrees I found myself watchingthis girl, and more closely. Another dance began. She joined it withanother partner. But she seemed just as pleased with him as with herformer one. She would not let him pause to rest; she kept him dancingall the time, her youth and freshness spoken in that gentle compelling.I grew interested in her, even acutely so. She seemed to me like thespirit of youth dancing over the body of Time. I resolved to know her. Ifelt weary; I thought she might revive me. The dance drew to an end,and I approached my hostess, pointed the girl out, and asked for anintroduction. Her name was Margot Magendie, I found, and she was anheiress as well as a beauty.
I did not care. It was her humanity that drew me, nothing else.
But; strange to say, when the moment for the introduction arrived, and Istood face to face with Miss Magendie, I felt an extraordinary shrinkingfrom her. I have never been able to understand it, but my blood rancold, and my pulses almost ceased to beat. I would have avoided her; aninstinct within me seemed suddenly to cry out against her. But it wastoo late: the introduction was effected; her hand rested on my arm.
I was actually trembling. She did not appear to notice it. The bandplayed a valse, and the inexplicable horror that had seized me lostitself in the gay music. It never returned until lately.
I seldom enjoyed a valse more. Our steps suited so perfectly, and herobvious childish pleasure communicated itself to me. The spirit of youthin her knocked on my rather jaded heart, and I opened to it. That wasbeautiful and strange. I talked with her, and I felt myself younger,ingenuous rather than cynical, inclined even to a radiant, thoughfoolish, optimism. She was very natural, very imperfect in worldlyeducation, full of fragmentary but decisive views on life, quiteunabashed in giving them forth, quite inconsiderate in summoning myadherence to them.
And then, presently, as we sat in a dim corridor under a rosy hanginglamp, in saying something she looked, with her great blue eyes, rightinto my face. Some very faint recollection awoke and stirred in my mind.
"Surely," I said hesitatingly--"surely I have seen you before? It seemsto me that I remember your eyes."
As I spoke I was thinking hard, chasing the vagrant recollection thateluded me.
She smiled.
"You don't remember my face?"
"No, not at all."
"Nor I yours. If we had seen each other, surely we should recollect it."
Then she blushed, suddenly realizing that her words implied, perhaps,more than she had meant. I did not pay the obvious compliment. Thoseblue eyes and something in their expression moved me strangely; but Icould not tell why. When I said good-bye to her that night, I asked tobe allowed to call.
She assented.
That was the beginning of a very beautiful courtship, which gave acolour to life, a music to existence, a meaning to every slightestsensation.
And was it love that laid to sleep recollection, that sang a lullaby toawakening horror, and strewed poppies over it till it sighed itself intoslumber? Was it love that drowned my mind in deep and charmed waters,binding the strange powers that every mind possesses in flowery garlandsstronger than any fetters of iron? Was it love that, calling up dreams,alienated my thoughts from their search after reality?
I hardly know. I only know that I grew to love Margot, and only lookedfor love in her blue eyes, not for any deed of the past that might bemirrored there.
And I made her love me.
She gave her child's heart to my keeping with a perfect confidencethat only a perfect affection could engender. She did love me then. Nocircumstances of to-day can break that fact under their hammers. Shedid love me, and it is the knowledge that she did which gives so much offear to me now.
For great changes in the human mind are terrible. As we realize them werealize the limitless possibilities of sinister deeds that lie hidden inevery human being. A little child that loves a doll can become an old,crafty, secret murderer. How horrible!
And perhaps it is still more horrible to think that, while the humanenvelope remains totally unchanged, every word of the letter within maybecome altered, and a message of peace fade into a sentence of death.
Margot's face is the same face now as it was when I marriedher--scarcely older, certainly not less beautiful. Only the expressionof the eyes has changed.
For we were married. After a year of love-making, which never tiredeither of us, we elected to bind ourselves, to fuse the two into one.
We went abroad for the honeymoon, and, instead of shortening it to thefashionable fortnight, we travelled for nearly six months, and werehappy all the time.
Boredom never set in. Margot had a beautiful mind as well as a beautifulface. She softened me through my affection. The current of my life beganto set in a different direction. I turned the pages
of a book of pityand of death more beautiful than that of Pierre Loti. I could hear atlast the great cry for sympathy, which is the music of this strangesuffering world, and, listening to it, in my heart there rang an echo.The cruelty in my nature seemed to shrivel up. I was more gentle than Ihad been, more gentle than I had thought I could ever be.
At last, in the late spring, we started for home. We stayed for a weekin London, and then we travelled north. Margot had never seen herfuture home, had never even been in Cumberland before. She was fullof excitement and happiness, a veritable child in the ready and ardentexpression of her feelings. The station is several miles from the house,and is on the edge of the sea. When the train pulled up at the waysideplatform the day drew towards sunset, and the flat levels of the beachshone with a rich, liquid, amber light. In the distance the sea wastossing and tumbling, whipped into foam by a fresh wind. The Isle of Manlay far away, dark, mysterious, under a stack of bellying white clouds,just beginning to be tinged with the faintest rose.
Margot found the