By throwing out at him that violent ultimatum she had recklessly forced the issue. She had dragged them both to the edge of the precipice. He felt angry with her for it and yet he felt guilty too. Beneath both these emotions was a vivid sense of revolt against the accursed law of things that made such drastic dilemmas possible.
How lovely she looked at this moment with her fair hair bound up so chastely under that black ribbon, and her slight girlish frame, as yet but faintly indicative of the promise within her, so delicately fragile!
The silence between them prolonged itself remorselessly. Her sharp cry, ‘Never, never, see her again’ hovered in the air and became a menacing and disturbing entity. He could hear his own Waterbury watch ticking, ticking, ticking, where he had placed it on the dressing table. Damn the ticking of watches and the issuing of ultimatums by resolute young mouths!
For one moment Richard seemed to catch a glimpse of what women meant by love. For one moment he seemed to see that mysterious bond, the unbroken attachment of a man and woman, like a visible thread of light over a dark gulf. Then his masculine logic broke into this sudden vision; and he reasoned with himself that this fierce claim of hers for absolute loyalty was a wild demand of insane possessiveness that no human soul had a right to make upon another.
Yes — she had dragged them both to the edge of the precipice, to the very brink of the parting of the ways, by this fierce claim upon him.
He could see that thin film of white light, the link that bound them together, quivering and vibrating in the darkness.
Then a sort of crash came somewhere in his brain; and he had a cold terrible sensation of irrevocable choice, the kind of sensation out of which, it may well be, the human race has evoked the idea of perdition.
‘You have no right to ask that of me, Nelly,’ he said in a low husky voice. ‘It’s too much. It’s more than a man is allowed to promise. A certain freedom of movement must be left us. We cannot bind ourselves like that, whatever we’ve done, whatever we deserve.’
He was conscious that the colour left her cheeks and that the angry light faded from her eyes.
‘Ah!’ she murmured, drawing in her breath. ‘That’ll be the last time I shall ask it of you.’
She gave her chair a little jerk with her hands and turned away from him towards the mirror. Mechanically she picked up her hair brush and mechanically raised it to her hair. The gesture struck Richard to the heart as piteously pathetic; for he knew well that she had done all that was required to that silky head.
He made a half-movement towards her and then checked himself. What was the use in insulting the better spirit in both of them by an unworthy lapse into sentiment that anyhow must miss the mark? It would be like trying to make love to the dead.
He went back into the sitting room and changed into his night-things there, as he usually did. He sat for more than half an hour after that, silent and motionless in the armchair, wrapped in his dressing gown, too deep in thought even to smoke a cigarette.
Life seemed flowing past him in great irrevocable waves and he felt as though he were stranded upon a remote shore watching a ship gradually disappearing over the horizon. The ship of Nelly’s and Richard’s love!
When, after giving a slight knock, he entered their bedroom again and looked hurriedly towards the place where their two beds lay side by side, he saw at once that she had separated these by the introduction between them of a little table containing her favourite books and a photograph of her father, a thing that until that night had always remained on the further side of Nelly’s bed.
The electric light was not turned out but the girl lay far round on her side, only the outline of one white cheek and ear visible, for her hair was thrown round the top of her head now, and the bare nape of her neck looked touchingly childish as she hid her face from him in the pillow.
Richard went over to her side and bending down kissed the top of her head. But so softly did he do this, that whether or not she was aware of his doing it he did not know.
Then he went round to his own side of the divided beds and put out the light.
Chapter 17
‘You are cold, mon ami. What’s the matter with you? Are you tired of me already?’
Elise drew herself out of his perfunctory embrace and moved across to one of her deep wicker chairs, leaving him alone on the sofa.
He had thought in his simplicity that he could transform his relations with her at his arbitrary will and pleasure, ‘and nothing said’. He was destined to discover his mistake.
‘You are the same as you always were, my dear,’ she flung at him, settling herself among the cushions with a sort of crouching movement, like a beautiful lithe animal among jungle branches and leaves. ‘You were always afraid of committing yourself. And that’s what’s the matter with you now. You’re afraid of love. You hate love. You’re scared of losing something of your precious personality. As though one lost one’s personality that way!’
‘It isn’t that at all,’ protested Richard feebly. How could he tell her about his conversation with Nelly? Elise laughed, a bitter cruel little laugh.
‘Oh, of course you’ll lie. You always have lied to me. You lied to me when you left me like that in Paris. I know now why you did leave me. For precisely the same reason that you’re in your present mood — fear of committing yourself!’
Teased by her words and foolishly anxious to justify himself at any cost, he burst out then with the one thing he had particularly made up his mind not to say.
‘It isn’t that at all. It’s nothing to do with that! It’s only that I have sometimes a touch of remorse when I think of my wife.’
Elise laughed more maliciously than ever and her eyes gleamed. ‘No not a bit of it! All excuses! That’s just what you always do. You use masks and screens and blinds for everything. You are not in the remotest degree concerned about your wife. You’re just simply afraid of committing yourself to me! You’re afraid of love. You have a mean soul, the avaricious ingrowing soul of a peasant — and you’re afraid of losing something if you let yourself go. I don’t know what you’re afraid of losing. Your precious soul perhaps — if you believe in the soul; but I sometimes doubt if you really believe in anything.’
Richard jumped up from the sofa and rushed towards her.
For one flicker of a second she must have thought he was going to strike her; for she put up her hand as if to protect herself. The movement was accompanied by a quick change of colour in her eyes as if they had been the eyes of a wild animal seized with sudden alarm. Perhaps if Richard’s purpose had been to reduce her to submission, to softness, to amorous response, it would have been to his advantage to strike her. But he was very far from anything of the kind; all he did was to kneel at her feet and press her hand to his lips. She tore it away in a moment and her eyes flamed at him.
‘Never think you can play that game with me!’ she cried. And the look of dark fury which she gave him made him get up from his knees and walk back to his former place.
‘Did you actually suppose,’ she said, leaning forward, with her long white hands clutching the arms of her chair, ‘that I would let you pick me up and put me down at your pleasure like a paid courtesan? Did you think you could have me when you were annoyed with your wife and wanted to be revenged on her; and then drop me when you made it up again and were good little children? Did you think I’d submit to that kind of thing, Richard Storm?’