Section 13

“Some day you shall see her,” he said.
When?”
“Very soon.”
Meanwhile her life proceeded with all outward
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regularity. She found it easy to deceive her friends because it occurred to neither that her frequent ab- sence was not due to the plausible reasons she gave. The lies which at first seemed intolerable now tripped glibly off her tongue. But though they were so natural, she was seized often with a panic of fear lest they should be discovered; and some- times, suffering agonies of remorse, she would lie in bed at night and think with utter shame of the way she was using Arthur. But things had gone too far now, and she must let them take their course. She scarcely knew why her feelings to- wards him had so completely changed. Oliver ~ Haddo had scarcely mentioned his name and yet had poisoned her mind. The comparison between the two was to Arthur’s disadvantage. She thought him a little dull now, and his common- place way of looking at life contrasted with Had- do’s fascinating boldness. She reproached Arthur. in her heart because he had never understood what was in her. He narrowed her mind. And gradu- ally she began to hate him because her debt of grati- tude was so great. It seemed unfair that he should have done so much for her. He forced her to marry him by his beneficence. Yet Margaret continued to discuss with him the arrangement of their house in Harley Street. It had been her wish to furnish the drawing-room in the style of Louis XV.; and together they made long excursions to buy chairs or old pieces of silk wherewith to cover them.

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Everything should be perfect in its kind. The date of their marriage was fixed, and all the details were settled. Arthur was ridiculously happy. Margaret made no sign. She did not think of the future, and she spoke of it only to ward off suspicion. She was inwardly convinced now that the marriage would never take place, but what was to prevent it she did not know. She watched Susie and Arthur
_ cunningly. But though she watched in order to
conceal her own secret, it was another’s that she discovered. Suddenly Margaret became aware that Susie was deeply in love with Arthur Burdon. The discovery was so astounding that at first it seemed absurd.
“You’ve never done that caricature of Arthur for me that you promised,” she said, suddenly.
“T’ve tried, but he doesn’t lend himself to it,” laughed Susie.
“With that long nose and the gaunt figure I should have thought you could make something screamingly funny.”
“ How oddly you talk of him! Somehow I can only see his beautiful, kind eyes and his tender mouth. I would as soon do a caricature of him as a parody on a poem I loved.”
Margaret took the portfolio in which Susie kept her sketches. She caught the look of alarm that crossed her friend’s face, but Susie had not the courage to prevent her from looking. She turned the drawings carelessly and presently came to a
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sheet upon which, in a more or less finished state, were half a dozen heads of Arthur. Pretending not to see it, she went on to the end. When she closed the portfolio Susie gave a sigh of relief.
“T wish you worked harder,” said Margaret, as she put the sketches down. “I wonder you don’t do a head of Arthur as you can’t do a carica- ture.”
“My dear, you mustn’t expect everyone to take such an overpowering interest in that young man as you do.”
The answer added a last certainty to Margaret’s suspicion. She told herself bitterly that Susie was no less a liar than she. Next day, when the other was out, Margaret looked through the portfolio once more, but the sketches of Arthur had disap- peared. She was seized on a sudden with furious anger because Susie dared to love the man who loved her. .
The web in which Oliver Haddo enmeshed her was woven with skilful intricacy. He took each part of her character separately and fortified with consummate art his influence over her. There was something satanic in his deliberation, yet in actual time it was almost incredible that he could have changed the old abhorrence with which she re- garded him into that hungry passion. Margaret could not now realise her life apart from his. At length he thought the time was ripe for the final step.
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“It may interest you to know that I’m leaving Paris on Thursday,” he said casually, one after- noon.
She started to her feet and stared at him with bewildered eyes.
“But what is to become of me?”
“You will marry the excellent Mr. Burdon.”
“You know I cannot live without you. How can you be so cruel?”
“Then the only alternative is that you should accompany me,”
Her blood ran cold, and her heart seemed pressed in an iron vice.
“What do you mean?”
“There is no need to be agitated. I am making you an eminently desirable offer of marriage.”’
She sank helplessly into her chair. Because she had refused to think of the future it had never struck her that the time must come when it would be necessary to leave Haddo or to throw in her lot with his definitely. She was seized with a com- plete revulsion. Margaret realised that, though an odious attraction bound her to the man, she loathed and feared him. The scales fell from her eyes. She remembered on a sudden Arthur’s great love and all that he had done for her sake. She utterly hated herself. Like a bird at its last gasp, beating frantically against the bars of a cage, Margaret made a desperate effort to regain her freedom. She
sprang up.
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“Let me go from here. I wish Vd never seen you. I don’t know what you've done with me.”
“Go by all means if you choose,” he answered.
He opened the door, so that she might see he used no compulsion, and stood lazily at the thresh- old with a hateful smile. There was something terrible in his excessive bulk. Rolls of fat descended from his chin and concealed his neck entirely. His cheeks were huge, and the lack of beard added to the hideous nakedness of his face. Margaret stopped as she passed him, horribly repelled yet horribly fascinated. She had an immense desire that he- should take her again in his arms and press her lips with that red voluptuous mouth. It was as though fiends of hell were taking revenge upon her loveliness by inspiring in her a passion for this monstrous creature. She trembled with the in- tensity of her desire. His eyes were hard and cruel.
“ Go,” he said.
She bent her head and fled from before him. To get home she passed through the gardens of the Luxembourg, but her legs failed her, and in ex- haustion she sank upon a bench. The day was sul- try. She tried to collect herself. Margaret knew well the part in which she sat, for in the enthusias- tic days that seemed so long gone by she was ac- customed to come there for the sake of an exquisite tree upon which her eyes now rested. It had all
se
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the slim delicacy of a Japanese print. The leaves were slender and fragile, half gold with autumn, half green, but so tenuous that the dark branches made a pattern of subtle beauty against the sky. The hand of a draughtsman could not have fashioned it with a more excellent skill. But now Margaret could take no pleasure in its grace. She felt a heartrending pang to think that henceforward the consummate things of art would have no mean- ing for her. She had seen Arthur the evening be- fore, and remembered with an agony of shame the lies to which she had been forced in order to ex- plain why she could not see him till late that day. He had proposed that they should go to Versailles, and was bitterly disappointed when she told him they could not, as usual on Sundays, spend the whole day together. He accepted her excuse that she had to visit a sick friend. It would not have been so intolerable if he had suspected her of de- ceit, and his reproaches would have hardened her heart. It was his entire confidence which was so difficult to bear.
“Oh, if I could only make a clean breast of it all,” she cried.
The bell of Saint Sulpice was ringing for ves- pers. Margaret walked slowly to the church and sat down in the seats reserved in the transept for the needy. She hoped that the good music she must hear there would rest her soul, and perhaps she might be able to pray. Of late she had not
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dared. There was a pleasant darkness in the place, and its large simplicity was very soothing. In her exhaustion she watched listlessly the people go to and fro. Behind her was a priest in the confes- sional. A little peasant girl, in a Breton coiffe, perhaps a maid-servant lately come from her native village to the great capital, passed in and knelt down. Margaret could hear her muttered words and at intervals the deep voice of the priest. In three minutes she tripped neatly away. She looked so fresh in her plain black dress, so healthy and innocent, that Margaret could not restrain a sob of envy. The child had so little to confess, a few puny errors which must excite a smile on the lips of the gentle priest, and her candid spirit was like snow. Margaret would have given anything to kneel down and whisper in those passionless ears all that she suffered, but the priest’s faith and hers were not the same. They spoke a different tongue, not of the lips only but of the soul, and he would not listen to the words of a heretic.
A long procession of seminarists came in from the college, which is under the shadow of that great church, two by two, in black cassocks and short white surplices. Many were tonsured already. Some were quite young. Margaret watched their faces, wondering if they were tormented by such agony as she. But they had a living faith to sus- tain them, and if some plainly were narrow and obtuse, they had at least a fixed rule which pre-
ea
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vented them from swerving into treacherous by- ways. One or two had a wan ascetic look, such as the saints may have had when the terror of life was known to them only in the imaginings of the cloister. The canons of the church followed in their more gorgeous vestments and finally the offi- ciating priests.
The music was beautiful. There was about it a staid sad dignity; and it seemed to Margaret fit thus to adore the God of the Church. But it did not move her. She could not understand the words that these priests chanted; their gestures, their movements to and fro, were strange to her. For her that stately service had no meaning. And with a great cry in her heart she said that God had forsaken her. She was alone in a strange land. Evil was all about her, and in those ceremonies she could find no comfort. What could she expect when the God of her fathers left her to her fate? So that she might not weep in front of all those people, Margaret with down-turned face, walked to the door. She felt now utterly lost. As she walked along the interminable street that led to her own house, she was shaken with sobs.
“God has forsaken me,” she repeated. “ God has forsaken me.”
Next day, her eyes red with weeping, she dragged herself to Haddo’s door. When he opened it she went in without a word. She sat down, and he watched her in silence,
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“T am willing to marry you whenever you choose,” she said, at last.
“‘T have made all the necessary arrangements.”
“You have spoken to me of your mother. Will you take me to her at once.”
The shadow of a smile crossed his lips.
“Tf you wish it.”
- Haddo told her that they could be married be- fore the Consul early enough on the Thursday morning to catch a train for England. She left everything in his hands.
“T’m desperately unhappy,” she said, dully.
Oliver laid his hands upon her shoulders and - looked into her eyes.
“Go home, and you will forget your tears. I command you to be happy.”
Then it seemed that the bitter struggle between the good and the evil in her was done, and the evil had conquered. She felt on a sudden curiously elated. It seemed no longer to matter that she de- ceived her faithful friends. She gave a bitter laugh, as she thought how easy it was to hoodwink them.
Wednesday happened to be Arthur’s birthday, and he asked her to dine with him alone.
“We'll do ourselves proud, and hang the ex- pense,” he said.
They had arranged to eat at a fashionable res- taurant on the other side of the river, and soon
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after seven he fetched her. Margaret was dressed with exceeding care. She stood in the middle of the room, waiting for Arthur’s arrival, and sur- veyed herself in the glass. Susie thought she had never been more beautiful.
“T think you’ve grown more pleasing to look upon than you ever were,” she said. “I don’t know what it is that has come over you of late, but there’s a depth in your eyes that is quite new. It gives you an odd mysteriousness which is very attractive.”
Knowing Susie’s love for Arthur, she wondered whether her friend was not heartbroken as she compared her own plainness with the radiant beauty that was before her. Arthur came in, and Mar- garet did not move. He stopped at the door to look at her. Their eyes met. His heart beat quickly, and yet he was seized with awe. His good fortune was too great to bear, when he thought that this priceless treasure was his. He could have knelt down and worshipped, as though a goddess of old Greece stood before him. And to him also her eyes had changed. They had acquired a burn- ing passion’ which disturbed and yet enchanted him. It seemed that the lovely girl was changed already into a lovely woman. An enigmatic smile came to her lips.
“ Are you pleased?” she asked.
Arthur came forward, and Margaret put her hands on his shoulders.
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“You have scent on,” he said.
He was surprised, for she had never used it be- fore. It was a faint, almost acrid perfume that he did not know. It reminded him vaguely of those odours which he remembered in his childhood in the East. It was remote and strange. It gave Margaret a new and troubling charm. There had ever been something cold in her statuesque beauty, but this touch somehow curiously emphasised her sex. Arthur’s lips twitched, and his gaunt face grew pale with passion. His emotion was so great that it was nearly pain. He was puzzled, for her eyes expressed things that he had never seen in them before.
“Why don’t you kiss me?” she said.
She did not see Susie, but knew that a quick look of anguish crossed her face. Margaret drew Arthur towards her. His hands began to tremble. He had never ventured to express the passion that consumed him, and when he kissed her it was with a restraint that was almost brotherly. Now their lips met. Forgetting that anyone else was in the room, he flung his arms around Margaret. She had never kissed him in that way before, and the rapture was intolerable. Her lips were like liv- ing fire. He could not take his own away. He forgot everything. All his strength, all his self- control, deserted him. It crossed his mind that at. this moment he would willingly die. But the delight of it was so great that he could scarcely
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withhold a cry of utter agony. At length Susie’s voice reminded him of the world.
“You'd far better go out to dinner instead of behaving like a pair of complete idiots.”
She tried to make her tone as flippant as the words, but her voice was cut by a pang of agony. With a little laugh Margaret withdrew from Arthur’s embrace and lightly looked at her friend. Susie’s brave smile died away as she caught this glance, for there was in it a malicious hatred that startled her. The pain she suffered made all her senses very alert, and she could not mistake the meaning of those scornful eyes. But it was so un- expected that she was terrified. What had she done? She was afraid, dreadfully afraid, that Margaret had divined her secret. Arthur stood as if his senses had left him, quivering still with the extremity of passion.
“ Susie says we must go,” smiled Margaret.
He could not speak. He could not regain the conventional manner of polite society. Very pale, like a man suddenly awaked from deep sleep, he went out at Margaret’s side. They walked along the passage. Though the door was closed behind them and they were out of earshot, Margaret seemed notwithstanding to hear Susie’s passionate sobbing. It gave her a horrible delight.
The tavern to which they went was on the Boulevard des Italiens, and at this date the most