Part 6

“Oh, I don’t know!” She looked up. “A woman knows what she can do. Don’t tell him that I love him.” She looked up again. “Just say something to him. Oh, it’s so terrible to be a woman; I can’t do anything. You won’t tell him exactly that I love him? That’s the thing that makes a man hate a woman, if you tell it him plainly.”

“If I speak to him I must speak openly. He is my friend. I cannot fence with him. I have never fenced with him in my own affairs.” She moved as though she were going away from the fireplace, then she turned and said: “Have you thought of what love is between a man and a woman when it means marriage? That long, long life together, day after day, stripped of all romance and distance, living face to face: seeing each other as a man sees his own soul? Do you realize that the end of marriage is to make the man and woman stronger than they were; and that if you cannot, when you are an old man and woman and sit by the fire, say, ‘Life has been a braver and a freer thing for us, because we passed it hand in hand, than if we had passed through it alone,’ it has failed? Do you care for him enough to live for him, not tomorrow, but when he is an old, faded man, and you an old, faded woman? Can you forgive him his sins and his weaknesses, when they hurt you most? If he were to lie a querulous invalid for twenty years, would you be able to fold him in your arms all that time, and comfort him, as a mother comforts her little child?” The woman drew her breath heavily.

“Oh, I love him absolutely! I would be glad to die, if only I could once know that he loved me better than anything in the world!”

The woman stood looking down at her. “Have you never thought of that other woman; whether she could not perhaps make his life as perfect as you?” she asked, slowly.

“Oh, no woman ever could be to him what I would be. I would live for him. He belongs to me.” She bent herself forward, not crying, but her shoulders moving. “It is such a terrible thing to be a woman, to be able to do nothing and say nothing!”

The woman put her hand on her shoulder; the younger woman looked up into her face; then the elder turned away and stood looking into the fire. There was such quiet, you could hear the clock tick above the writing-table.

The woman said: “There is one thing I can do for you. I do not know if it will be of any use--I will do it.” She turned away.

“Oh, you are so great and good, so beautiful, so different from other women, who are always thinking only of themselves! Thank you so much. I know I can trust you. I couldn’t have told my mother, or any one but you.”

“Now you must go; I have my work to finish.”

The younger woman put her arms round her. “Oh, you are so good and beautiful!”

The silk dress and the fur cloak rustled out of the room.

The woman who was left alone walked up and down, at last faster and faster, till the drops stood on her forehead. After a time she went up to the table; there was written illegibly in a man’s hand on a fragment of manuscript paper: “Can I come to see you this afternoon?” Near it was a closed and addressed envelope. She opened it. In it were written the words: “Yes, please, come.”

She tore it across and wrote the words: “No, I shall not be at liberty.”

She closed them in an envelope and addressed them. Then she rolled up the manuscript on the table and rang the bell. She gave it to the servant. “Tell the boy to give this to his master, and say the article ends rather abruptly; they must state it is to be continued; I will finish it tomorrow. As he passes No. 20 let him leave this note there.”

The servant went out. She walked up and down with her hands folded above her head.

*****

Two months after, the older woman stood before the fire. The door opened suddenly, and the younger woman came in.

“I had to come--I couldn’t wait. You have heard, he was married this morning? Oh, do you think it is true? Do help me!” She put out her hands.

“Sit down. Yes, it is quite true.”

“Oh, it is so terrible, and I didn’t know anything! Did you ever say anything to him?” She caught the woman’s hands.

“I never saw him again after the day you were here,--so I could not speak to him,--but I did what I could.” She stood looking passively into the fire.

“And they say she is quite a child, only eighteen. They say he only saw her three times before he proposed to her. Do you think it is true?”

“Yes, it is quite true.”

“He can’t love her. They say he’s only marrying her for her rank and her money.”

The woman turned quickly.

“What right have you to say that? No one but I know him. What need has he of any one’s rank or wealth? He is greater than them all! Older women may have failed him; he has needed to turn to her beautiful, fresh, young life to compensate him. She is a woman whom any man might have loved, so young and beautiful; her family are famed for their intellect. If he trains her, she may make him a better wife than any other woman would have done.”

“Oh, but I can’t bear it--I can’t bear it!” The younger woman sat down in the chair. “She will be his wife, and have his children.”

“Yes.” The elder woman moved quickly. “One wants to have the child, and lay its head on one’s breast and feed it.” She moved quickly. “It would not matter if another woman bore it, if one had it to take care of.” She moved restlessly.