第7章

Was it Right?--Was it Wrong?

A woman sat at her desk in the corner of a room; behind her a fire burnt brightly.

Presently a servant came in and gave her a card.

"Say I am busy and can see no one now. I have to finish this article by two o'clock."

The servant came back. The caller said she would only keep her a moment: it was necessary she should see her.

The woman rose from her desk. "Tell the boy to wait. Ask the lady to come in."

A young woman in a silk dress, with a cloak reaching to her feet, entered.

She was tall and slight, with fair hair.

"I knew you would not mind. I wished to see you so!"

The woman offered her a seat by the fire. "May I loosen your cloak?--the room is warm."

"I wanted so to come and see you. You are the only person in the world who could help me! I know you are so large, and generous, and kind to other women!" She sat down. Tears stood in her large blue eyes: she was pulling off her little gloves unconsciously.

"You know Mr.--" (she mentioned the name of a well-known writer): "I know you meet him often in your work. I want you to do something for me!"

The woman on the hearth-rug looked down at her.

"I couldn't tell my father or my mother, or any one else; but I can tell you, though I know so little of you. You know, last summer he came and stayed with us a month. I saw a great deal of him. I don't know if he liked me; I know he liked my singing, and we rode together--I liked him more than any man I have ever seen. Oh, you know it isn't true that a woman can only like a man when he likes her; and I thought, perhaps, he liked me a little. Since we have been in town we have asked, but he has never come to see us. Perhaps people have been saying something to him about me. You know him, you are always meeting him, couldn't you say or do anything for me?" She looked up with her lips white and drawn. "I feel sometimes as if I were going mad! Oh, it is so terrible to be a woman!"

The woman looked down at her. "Now I hear he likes another woman. I don't know who she is, but they say she is so clever, and writes. Oh, it is so terrible, I can't bear it."

The woman leaned her elbow against the mantelpiece, and her face against her hand. She looked down into the fire. Then she turned and looked at the younger woman. "Yes," she said, "it is a very terrible thing to be a woman." She was silent. She said with some difficulty: "Are you sure you love him? Are you sure it is not only the feeling a young girl has for an older man who is celebrated, and of whom every one is talking?"

"I have been nearly mad. I haven't slept for weeks!" She knit her little hands together, till the jewelled rings almost cut into the fingers. "He is everything to me; there is nothing else in the world. You, who are so great, and strong, and clever, and who care only for your work, and for men as your friends, you cannot understand what it is when one person is everything to you, when there is nothing else in the world!"

"And what do you want me to do?"

"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."