Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” is an excellent maxim. Its only fault is its capacity of a too wide extension. If a saying clause had been added with reference to its non-application to one’s neighbour’s business, it would have been perfect. But, perhaps, after all, in its faultiness lies its excellence, for counsels of perfection are of no great use to mankind, which, in its ethical systems, loves disguised loopholes for original sin.
However little the inmates of the Pension Boccard may have observed the maxim itself, they obeyed its extension to a nicety. Not only because they were women. Sometimes communities of men have been known to gossip about each other’s affairs. It is but human to speculate upon events around us, and speculation, anticipating Paine’s fear, was rife at the Pension Boccard.
In the first place, the dramatic ending of poor Miss Bunter’s romance kept wits and tongues exercised for days. And secondly, certain facts had become common property which pointed to interesting relations between Mrs. Stapleton and Paine Chetwynd. The chief of these facts was the early morning interview. The summer waiter reported it to the cook, who informed Madame Boccard, who mentioned it in confidence to Madame Popea, who in her satirical way described it to Fraulein Klinkhardt. From the latter it passed to Frau Schultz, who barbed it carefully in accordance with her own spite against Katherine, and sent it round on its travels again. In this form it reached Felicia.
The girl found herself just in the humour of bitterness to accept it. After the heartless, systematic deception that had been practised on Miss Bunter for fifteen years, it seemed possible to credit humanity with anything. Not that she felt any resentment against Raine Chetwynd on her own score. She was bound to confess to herself, with tears of self-scorn, that he had never treated her with anything but the most brotherly frankness and courtesy. But in her dislike of Katherine, she certainly credited him with a commonplace amour, and thereby set him down lower in her estimation. Then her pride came, speciously to her rescue, but really, after the way of pride in women’s hearts, to embitter the struggle that was taking place within her. One bright, pure feeling, however, rose above the turmoil—an intense pity for the poor frail creature out of whom had been crushed the hope of life. To have stood by as witness and comforter during that agony of despair had been one of those lurid experiences that set in motion the springs of infinitely reaching sympathies.
When old Mr. Chetwynd proposed the trip to Lucerne she sprang at it eagerly. It would be a relief to leave the pension and its associations. For the whole of the day she busied herself feverishly with preparations. It was a keen disappointment when the old man fell ill and the trip had to be indefinitely postponed. She longed passionately for October, when she was to join her uncle and aunt in Bermuda. Meanwhile she copied out manuscript assiduously, nursed the old man as far as he would allow her, and devoted the rest of her time to whatever gaieties were afoot in the pension.
Katherine lived in a fool’s paradise after Raine had gone, for a couple of days. His kiss was on her lips, the pressure of his arms lingered round her, the vibrating words rang in her ear. If unbidden thoughts came, she put them aside with a passionately rebellious will. The long morning passed like a dream. The day and evening in an intoxicated sense of happiness. In the night she slept and waked, alternately, heedless of the hours. She had won his love. It had been given to her in full, overflowing measure. It flooded her presence with sunlight. She surrendered herself to the delicious joy that it was to feel, instead of to think.
On the evening of the second day, however, came Raine’s letter. She sat by her window, reading it with a beating heart. At times the words swam before her. Until then she had not realized the wholeness, the simple nobility of his love. To her it was more than a love-letter. It was the revelation of a strong, high soul that was given her, to companion and illuminate the rest of her days upon earth. She, who in her self-abasement before him, felt unworthy to kiss the hem of his raiment, saw herself revered, worshipped, filling a holy of holies in his heart. She was to be his wife.
She read the letter through twice. Then a great fear chilled her. Its premonitions had come that evening on the lake, just before the thunder broke, and through all her after-intoxication it had loomed threateningly. Only her will had staved it off. Now it held her in its grip.
His wife. The words stared her in the face, repeated over and over again with every surrounding of passion, tenderness, and devotion. She grew cold. A lump rose in her throat. She walked across the room, poured herself out a glass of water, and sat down again. The dream, the illusion, the joy, all was over. A great pain was in her eyes as she gazed sightlessly straight in front of her.
As she gazed, a temptation crept insidiously into her heart, relaxed and soothed for a moment her tense nerves. Why should she tell him that which she knew his fine nature would never ask? All her future to all eternity was his. What mattered the past?
Her eyes fell upon his letter on her lap, caught a few chance phrases. Then a shudder passed through her like a wave of self-contempt and revulsion, and, leaning forward, she buried her face in her hands and cried.
He was too noble to be deceived—to be entrapped as by a common adventuress. The thought scorched her. Silence would be metal too base to repay the pure gold of his love. A million times sooner speak and lose him than keep him with a lie. All that was pure and true and womanly in her revolted at the temptation.
For a long time she remained with bowed head, her thoughts whirling round the means whereby she was to deal the death-blow at her happiness. The moments passed quickly, and the shadows gathered as the afternoon began to melt into evening. A message from Mme. Boccard, asking her whether she was coming down to dinner, was the first thing that made her conscious of the flight of time. She sent down word that she was poorly. A plate of soup brought up to her would be all that she required. Then she fell back into her despairing thoughts. The cry wrung from the soul of Denise hummed in her ears until it became a meaningless burthen. Since that night in January when she had seen the play with Raine, she had morbidly applied that cry to herself—“Je suis de celles qrion aime, mais au’on n’epouse pas.”
A faint ray of hope shot across the darkness. He had told her his own story. To him it was a sacred memory. The girl that he had loved, the mother of his child, was in his eyes the purest of women. Would not that mitigate the judgment he would have to pass on her? She clung to the hope revealed, as she lost grip of herself. He would not despise her. He would still love her. She would be to him what that other had been. Her thoughts for a while grew hysterical.
The effort she was forced to make when the servant entered with her meal, and the physical strength given her by the warm soup, restored calm and order in her mind. She read Raine’s letter through once more. It inspired her with sad, despairing courage. She became for the time the Katherine she had been so long, hopeless, resigned, fatalistic. Before she crept broken and exhausted into bed, she had written him a long calm letter telling him all. She did not spare herself, hiding behind sophistries, neither did she blacken herself like a remorseful Magdalen. She wrote it with her heart’s blood, at the dictates of her highest self. Only once perhaps in a lifetime is the power given to human beings to lay thus bare their souls as they appear before the eyes of the high gods. It was a higher Katherine than she wot of, that had written that letter.
But in the morning, the human woman yearning dumbly for happiness beheld it, addressed, stamped, ready for post, and her heart was ice within her. She stood for a moment holding it in her hand, irresolute whether to break the seal and read it over again. Perhaps, she weakly thought, something in it might be better expressed. Her finger mechanically sought the flap corner of the envelope, and she tore it slowly. Then she went back to bed with the letter. Nothing could be altered. She would readdress it and despatch it that day.
Whilst dressing she paused at her reflection in the glass, with a feminine catch at the heart. She looked pale, old, faded, she thought; faint lines were around the corners of her eyes; her features seemed pinched. She shivered slightly—hurried foolishly over her hair, so that she could be spared the sight of her face as soon as possible.
“After all,” she said to herself, bitterly, “what does it matter? When that letter has gone, who in t............