CHAPTER XXII
I answered Judith's letter. After the long silence it seemed, at
first, strange to write to her; but soon I found myself opening
my heart as I had never done before to man or woman. The fact
that, accident aside, we were never to meet again, drew the
spiritual elements in us nearer together, and the tone of her
letter loosened the bonds of my natural reserve. I told her of
my past year of life, of the locked memorial chamber upstairs, of
the madness through which I had passed, of my weary pursuit of
the Theory, and of my attitude towards her solution of the
problem. Having written the letter I felt comforted, knowing
that Judith would understand.
I finished it about six o'clock one afternoon, and shrinking from
giving it to Stenson to post, as it was the first private letter
I had written since my arrival in London, I took it myself to the
pillar-box. The fresh air reproached me for the unreasonable
indoor life I had been leading, and invited me to remain outside.
It was already dark. An early touch of frost in the November air
rendered it exhilarating. I walked along the decorous,
residential roads of St. John's Wood feeling less remote from my
kind, more in sympathy with the humdrum dramas in progress behind
the rows of lighted windows. Now and then a garden gate opened
and a man in evening dress, and a woman, a vague, dainty mass of
satin and frills and fur, emerged, stood for a moment in the
shaft of light cast by the open hall-door beyond, which framed
the white-capped and aproned parlour-maid, and entering a waiting
hansom, drove off into the darkness whither my speculative fancy
followed them. Now and then silhouettes appeared upon the
window-blinds, especially on the upper floors, for it was the
dressing hour and the cares of the day were being thrown aside
with the workaday garments. In one house, standing far back from
the road, the drawing-room curtains had not been drawn. As I
passed, I saw a man tossing up a delighted child in his arms, and
the mother standing by. _Ay de mi!_ A commonplace of ten
thousand homes, when the man returns from his toil. Yet it moved
me. To earn one's bread; to perpetuate one's species; to create
duties and responsibilities; to meet them like a brave man; to
put the new generation upon the right path; to look back upon it
all and say, "I have fulfilled my functions," and pass forth
quietly into the eternal laboratory--is not that Life in its
truth and its essence? And the reward? The commonplace. The
welcome of wife and children--and the tossing of a crowing babe
in one's arms. And I had missed it all, lived outside it all. I
had spoken blasphemously in my besotted ignorance of these sacred
common things, and verily I had my recompense in a desolate home
and a life of about as much use to humanity as that of St. Simeon
Stylites on top of his pillar.
So I walked along the streets on the track of the wisdom which
Judith had revealed to me, and I seemed to be on the point of
reaching it when I arrived at my own door.
"But what the deuce shall I do with it when I get it?" I said, as
I let myself in with my latch-key.
I had just put my stick in the stand and was taking off my
overcoat, when the door of the room next the diningroom opened,
and Antoinette rushed out upon me.
"Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur!" she cried, wringing her hands. "Oh,
Monsieur! How shall I tell you?"
The good soul broke into sobbing and weeping.
"What is the matter, Antoinette?" Z asked.
"Monsieur must not be angry. Monsieur is good like the Bon Dieu.
But it will give pain to Monsieur."
"But what is it?" I cried, mystified. "Have you spoiled the
dinner?"
I was a million miles from any anticipation of her answer.
_"Monsieur-she has come back!"_
I grew faint for a moment as from a blow over the heart.
Antoinette raised her great tear-stained face.
"Monsieur must not drive her away."
I pushed her gently aside and entered the little room which I had
furnished once as her boudoir.
On the couch sat Carlotta, white and pinched and poorly clad. At
first I was only conscious of her great brown eyes fixed upon me,
the dog-like appeal of our first meeting intensified to
heart-breaking piteousness. On seeing me she did not rise, but
cowered as if I would strike her. I looked at her, unable to
speak. Antoinette stood sobbing in the doorway.
"Well?" said I, at last.
"I have come home," said Carlotta.
"You have been away a long time," said I.
"Ye-es," said Carlotta.
"Why have you come?" I asked.
"I had no money," said Carlotta, with her expressive gesture of
upturned palms. "I had nothing but that." She pointed to a tiny
travelling bag. "Everything else was at the Mont de Piete--the
pawnshop--and they would not keep me any longer at the pension.
I owed them for three weeks, and then they lent me money to buy
my ticket to London. I said Seer Marcous would pay them back.
So I came home."
"But where--where is Pasquale?" I asked.
"He went five, six months ago. He gave me some money and said he
would send some more. But he did not send any. He went to South
Africa. He said there was a war and he wanted to fight, and he
said he was sick of me. Oh, he was very unkind," she cried with
the quiver of her baby lips. "I wish I had never seen him."
"Are you married?"
"No," said Carlotta.
"Damn him!" said I, between my teeth.
"He was going to marry me, but then he said it did not matter in
Paris. At first he was so nice, but after a little--oh, Seer
Marcous dear, he was so cruel."
There was a short silence. Antoinette wept by the door, uttering
little half-audible exclamations _"la pauvre petite, le cher
ange!"_
Carlotta regarded me wistfully. I saw a new look of suffering in
her eyes. For myself I felt numb with pain.
"What kind of a pension were you living in?" I asked, unutterable
horrors coming into my head.
"It was a French family, an old lady and two old daughters, and
one fat German professor. Pasquale put me there. It was very
respectable," she added, with a wan smile, "and so dull. Madame
Champet would scarcely let me go into the street by myself."
"Thank heaven you did not fall into worse hands," said I.
Carlotta unpinned her old straw hat, quite a different garment
from the dainty head-wear she delighted in a year before, and
threw it on the couch beside her. A tress of her glorious bronze
hair fell loose across her forehead, adding to the woebegone
expression of her face. She rose, and as she did so I seemed to
notice a curious change in her. She came to me with extended
hands.
"Seer Marcous--" she whispered.
I took her hands in mine.
"Oh, my dear," said I, "why did you leave me?"
"I was wicked. And I was a little fool," said Carlotta.
I sighed, released her, walked a bit apart. There was a blubber
from the egregious old woman in the threshold.
"Oh, Monsieur is not going to drive her away."
I turned upon her.
"Instead of standing there weeping like a fountain and doing
nothing, why aren't you getting Mademoiselle's room ready for
her?"
"Because Monsieur has the key," wailed Antoinette.
"That's true," said I.
Then I reflected on the futility of converting bedchambers into
mausoleums for the living. The room shut up for a year would not
be habitable. It would be damp and inch-deep in dust.
"Mademoiselle shall sleep in my room to-night," I said, "and
Stenson can make me up a bed and put what I want here. Go and
arrange it with him."
Antoinette departed. I turned to Carlotta.
"Are you very tired, my child?"
"Oh, yes--so tired."
"Why didn't you write, so that things could have been got ready
for you?"
"I don't know. I was too unhappy. Seer "Marcous--" she said
after a little pause and then stopped.
"Yes?"
"I am going to have a baby."
She said it in the old, childlike way, oblivious of difference of
sex; with her little foreign insistence on the final consonants.
I glanced hurriedly at her. The fact was obvious. She stood
with her hands helplessly outspread. The pathos of her would
have wrung the heart of a devil.
"Thank God, you've come home," said I, huskily.
She began to cry softly. I put my arm round her shoulders, and
comforted her. She sobbed out incoherent things. She wished she
had never seen Pasquale. I was good. She would stay with me
always. She would never run away again.
I took her upstairs, and opened the door of her room with the key
that I had carried for a year on my bunch, and turned on the
electric light.
"See what are still usable of your old things," said I, "and I
will send Antoinette up to you."
She looked around her, somewhat puzzled.
"Why should I sleep in your room when this one is ready for me--
my night dress--even the hot water?"
"My dear," said I, "that hot water was put for you a year ago.
It must be cold now."
"And my red slippers--and my dressing-gown!" she cried,
quaveringly.
Then sinking in a heap on the floor beside the dusty bed, she
burst into a passion of tears.
I stole away and sent Antoinette to minister to her.
A year before I had raved and ranted, deeming life intolerable
and cursing the high gods; I suffered then, it is true; but I
hope I may never again go through the suffering of that first
night of Carlotta's return. Even now I can close my eyes and
feel the icy grip on my heart.
She came down to dinner about an hour later, dressed in a pink
wrapper, one of the last things she had bought, which Antoinette
(as she explained to excuse her delay) had been airing before the
fire. She sat opposite me, in her old place, penitent, subdued,
yet not shy or ill at ease. Stenson waited on us, grave and
imperturbable as if we had put back the clock of time a
twelvemonth. The only covert reference he made to the event was
to murmur discreetly in my ear:
"I have brought up a bottle of the Pommery, Sir Marcus, in the
hope you would drink some."
I was touched, for the good fellow had no other way of showing
his solicitude.
Carlotta allowed him to fill her glass. She sipped the wine, and
declared that it did her good. She was no longer a teetotaller,
she explained. Once she drank too much, and the next day had a
headache.
"Why should one have a headache?"
"Nemesis," said I.
"What is Nemesis?"
I found myself answering her question in the old half-jesting
way. And in her old way she replied:
"I do not understand."
How vividly familiar it was, and yet how agonisingly strange!
"Where is Polyphemus?" she asked.
"Dead," said I.
"Oh-h! How did poor Polyphemus die?"
"He was smitten by Destiny at the end of the last act of a
farcical tragedy."
The ghost of a "_hou!_" came from Carlotta. She composed herself
immediately.
"I often used to think of Polyphemus and Seer Marcous and
Antoinette," she said, musingly. "And then I wished I was back.
I have been very wicked."
She put her elbows on the table, and framing her face with her
hands looked at me, and shook her head.
"Oh, you are good! Oh, you are good!"
"Go on with your dinner, my child," said I, "and wonder at the
genius of Antoinette who has managed to cook it and look after
you at the same time."
She obeyed meekly. I watched her eat. She was famished. I
learned that she had had nothing since the early morning coffee
and roll. In spite of pain, I was curiously flattered by her
return. I represented _something_ to her, after all--even though
the instinct of the prodigal cat had driven her hither. I am
sure it had never crossed her mind that my doors might be shut
against her. Her first words were, "I have come home." The
first thing she did when we went into the drawing-room after
dinner was to fondle my hand and lay it against her cheek and
say, with a deep sigh:
"I am so happy."
However shallow her butterfly nature was, these things came from
its depths. No man can help feeling pleased at a child's or an
animal's implicit trust in him. And the pleasure is of the
purest. He feels that unreasoning intuition has penetrated to
some latent germ of good in his nature, and for the moment he is
disarmed of evil. Carlotta, then, came blindly to what was best
in me. In her thoughts she sandwiched me between the cat and the
cook: well, in most sandwiches the mid-ingredient is the most
essential.
She curled herself up in the familiar sofa-corner, and as it was
a chilly night I sent for a wrap which I threw over her limbs.
"See, I have the dear red slippers," she remarked, arching her
instep.
"And I have my dear Carlotta," said I.
I drew my chair near her, and gradually I learned all the unhappy
story.
Pasquale had made love to her from the very first minute of their
acquaintance--even while I was hunting for the _L'Histoire
Comique de Francion_. He had met her many times unknown to me.
They had corresponded, her letters being addressed to a little
stationer's shop close by. She did not love him. Of that I have
an absolute conviction. But he was young, he was handsome, he
had the libertine's air and manner. She was docile. And she was
ever positively truthful. If I had questioned her she would have
confessed frankly. But I never questioned, as I never suspected.
I wondered sometimes at her readiness in quoting him. I noticed
odd coincidences; but I was too ineffectual to draw inferences
from phenomena. His appearance on the Paddington platform was
prearranged; his duchessa at Ealing a myth.
Apparently he had dallied with his fancy. The fruit was his any
day for the plucking. Perhaps a rudimentary sentiment of loyalty
towards me restrained him. Who can tell? The night of our
meeting with Hamdi brought the crisis. The Turk's threats had
alarmed both Carlotta and myself. It was necessary for him to
strike at once. He saw her the next day--would to heaven I had
remained at home!--told her I was marrying her to save her from
Hamdi. I loved the other woman. He would save her equally well
from Hamdi. The other woman met her soon after parting from
Pasquale and besought her to give me up. She did not know what
to do. Poor child, how should she have known? On the previous
evening I had told her she was to marry me. She was ready to
obey. She went to bed thinking that she was to marry me. In the
morning she went for her music lesson. Pasquale was waiting for
her. They walked for some distance down the road. He hailed a
cab and drove away with her.
"He said he loved me," said Carlotta, "and he kissed me, and he
told me I must go away with him to Paris and marry him. And I
felt all weak, like that--" she dropped her arms helplessly in an
expressive gesture, "and so what could I do?"
"Didn't you think, Carlotta, that I might be sorry--perhaps
unhappy?" I asked as gently as I could.
"He said you would be quite happy with the other woman."
"Did you believe him?"
"That's why I said I have been very wicked," Carlotta answered,
simply.
She went on with her story--an old, miserable, detestable,
execrable story. At first all went merrily. Then she fell ill
in Paris. It was her first acquaintance with the northern
winter. Her throat proved to be delicate and she was laid up
with bronchitis. To men of Pasquale's type, a woman ill is of no
more use than a spavined horse or a broken-down motor-car. More
than that, she becomes an infernal nuisance. It was in his
temperament to perform sporadic acts of fantastic chivalry. It
appealed to something romantic, theatrical, in his facile nature.
But to devote himself to a woman in sickness--that was different.
The fifteenth century Italian hated like the devil continued
association with pain. He would have thrown his boots to a
beggar, but he would have danced in his palace over the dungeons
where his brother rotted in obscurity.
So poor Carlotta was neglected, and began to eat the bread of
disillusion. When she got well, there was a faint recrudescence
of affection. Has not this story been written a million
miserable times? Why should I rend my heart again by retelling
it? Wild rages, jealousies, quarrels, tears--
"And then one day he said, 'You damned little fool, I am sick to
death of you,' and he went away, and I never saw him again. He
wrote and he sent his valet to put me in the pension."
"And yet, Carlotta," said I bitterly, "you would go back to him
if he sent for you?"
She sprang forward and gripped me by the arm--I was sitting quite
close to her--and her face wore the terror-stricken expression of
a child frightened with bogies.
"Go back? After what he has done to me? You would not send me
back? Seer Marcous, darling, you will keep me with you? I will
be good, good, good. But go back to Pasquale? Oh, no-o-o!"
She fell back in her sofa-corner, and fixed her great, deep
imploring eyes on me.
"My dear," said I, "you know this is your home as long as ever
you choose to stay in it--but--" and I stroked her hair gently--"
if he comes back when your child is born--his child--"
She drew herself up superbly.
"It is my child--my very, very own," cried Carlotta. "It is
mine, mine--and I shall not allow any one to touch it--" and then
her face softened--"except Seer Marcous."
