William John Locke

“ The strong soul braces itself to stand the storm of great events; in the dull after-time it yields to the beseech-ings of the exhausted flesh. Day after day Irene read and thought and rested, scarcely desirous of other pursuits. Her outlook over men and things was narrowed within the horizon of an invalid or a prisoner. The waves of life beat unheeded against the fortress of her seclusion. Her servant Jane—who had begged to be taken into her service when the Sunnington establishment was broken up, on Gerard’s going abroad—the Cahusacs, and Hugh were the population of her universe. ”

“ Familiar as all these facts were to Irene, every fresh statement put them in a still more terrible light. They seemed to leave Hugh no single avenue for escape. He was hedged round by a pitiless fence of incontrovertible testimony. Once Hugh looked swiftly from the window to her and then back again. The glance appealed to her like that of a noble animal caught in a trap.
Yet he bore the ordeal bravely, twirling now and then a disdainful moustache. It was the man’s nature to carry his burdens defiantly. Minna’s appearance in the witness-box the day before had lashed him to a fury of pride. ”

“ He felt magnanimous towards Hugh; almost grateful to him for having given him this opportunity of re-starting his existence. He was young still, only five-and-thirty. A recent legacy had put him beyond the necessity of working at an irksome and unremunerative profession. He leaned over the parapet by Somerset House, and in the factories across the water saw the wide stretching veldt and the lumbering bullock-carts and all the joys of the longed-for hunter’s life. A lingering respectability no longer sought to disguise the fact; he was heartily glad to be freed from Irene. ”

“ On her mother’s death, she had gone out heartbroken to join him, but only to learn, on arrival at Bombay, that she was fatherless. And then, for the first time, men, Gerard and Hugh, had come into her life—and she saw them as gods walking. The years had mellowed into a strong, homogeneous character her inherited qualities—the mother’s delicate womanliness, the father’s daring and power of leadership—and busy contact with the world had developed the acuteness of her judgment; but the ideals of the girl survived, unprofaned by vulgar touch. ”

“ Simultaneously had come the conviction of Gerard’s acquiescence, his equal gladness to sacrifice his honour for his friend’s life. Had not Hugh once faced death for Gerard? Had not Gerard just said that he would give all he held most dear in the world to save him? It had been an exquisite moment of faith, during which the world had grown young again and radiant deeds were the commonplaces of life. ”

“ For a woman, heart-poisoned by the cup of life that she drank, with its seething ingredients of love, jealousy, bitterness, fear, despair, avarice, self-contempt, hate, weariness, remorse, sense of wrong received and dealt, the curse of race, the taint of wantonness, the flavours of nobler things, late added—curdling sourly in the draught—a woman so sickened to her death, is capable of many inconsistencies, and claims at least the grave pity of the merciful.
“Will you forgive me for saying those cruel words?” asked Irene, at last. ”

“ The secret of the marriage was safe. It had lain buried in the Brighton Registrar’s office through all the lurid publicity of the trial. Minna would keep it beyond the shadow of a doubt. Anna Cassaba was bound body and soul to Minna. And then the crime was for the adored one’s greater happiness. It would lift from her the crushing weight of social loneliness. It would flood her life with the passion of a man’s worship. The vision of the full harmonious days to come rose up before him. He laughed aloud. There are times when a man feels strong enough to defy Fate. ”

“ I have a foreboding that ill will come of it—for all of us.”
“What the dickens has it got to do with you and me?” said Gerard.
She sat silent for awhile, looking into the flaming abysses and fantastic crags of the fire. Then suddenly she turned, excited, clasped his knees and looked passionately into his face.
“We must move heaven and earth, Gerard. He is your second self. If he should—if anything should happen to him—he would be with us always, reproaching us with his dead eyes for not saving him. I owe him your life, my beloved—and mine—for without you I should die—Gerard, dear.” ”

“ I was living in a Fool’s Paradise. I see now that disillusion was bound to have come sooner or later. Instead of the glamour disappearing bit by bit through unhappy years, it has all been torn off at once. Gerard did not love me. He is quite a different being from the man I loved. I prefer realities to shams. I have arrived at the truth, and so I am content.”
“But he shall arrive at the truth, too,” cried Hugh, starting to his feet. “He shall lick the dust before you—for the deadly wrong he wants to inflict on you. ”

“ At the outset Minna had received Irene’s offer of friendship with unfeigned gladness. It was the opening to her of that charmed circle of Gentile society at whose bounds she had stood so long disconsolate. Indeed, if she had given to Irene a breath of the warmth of her southern nature, Irene would have taken her to her heart, championed her triumphantly through the ordeal of prejudice, and the girl’s own beauty would have done the rest. But to Minna she was indefinite discomfort. A recrudescence of Jewish pride gained strength from vague, instinctive feminine jealousies. And then came Hugh. ”

“ Here was one who had lost everything the world held dear, husband, home, good-repute, society, work, all through him, a once rejected lover, on whom she had bestowed her friendship for her husband’s sake, and a word of regret had never passed her lips—still less a word of reproach; her old loyal friendship had come bright through such a test as stains and fouls the fairest comradeship between man and woman. Did the earth elsewhere hold humanity so transcendent? The commoner needs of the bruised child of clay that might have suggested a solution, the man forgot in his adoration. ”

“ The image of Minna Hart never presented itself before her thoughts. For Irene had large ideas, and pictured the woman as one of commanding intelligence and brilliant personality. How else to account for the folly of so vigorous a manhood as Hugh’s? A noble man, a noble choice. Foolish—but sublimely so. She knew little of the ways of men, judged them according to her own ideals. For her life had been spent singularly apart from men. Her mother, a delicate woman, unable to bear the Indian climate, had brought her up in quiet seclusion. ”

“ Her revolt at social cruelties had been fired by the scant courtesy paid to the Jew financier’s daughter at a large political garden-party, and her impulsive scorn of convention led her to walk the next day to The Lindens and call upon the innocent pariah. It was like many other of Irene’s impetuous deeds of knight-errantry. Gerard had expostulated, veiling profound distaste under tones of pleasantry. Men who lent money at the God of Jacob alone knew how much per cent, were not welcome in a society belonging virtually, if not actually, to the race of borrowers. ”

“ She longed for the legal dissolution of the tie that still bound her to Gerard.
With a man’s burning sense of wrong inflicted on the beloved woman, Hugh could not appreciate the intense earnestness of her desire. To divorce her was a deadly insult which made the barbaric man’s fingers tingle to be at the throat of the insulter. Barbaric vanity, too, compelled his thoughts to the pitiable figure he would cut, if he stood by silent, and allowed this outrage to be committed. He shifted his attitude impatiently and tugged at his moustache. ”

“ He became a hero, worthy of the devotion of others. The heroic chord in her nature had been struck, and its inarticulate music had sung in her heart. She had murmured her emotion to Gerard, but before he could reply, the entrance of the judge and the rising of the court had broken the momentary spell. Her anxiety had returned with a sickening rush, and Hugh became once more, as all through the aching hours of yesterday, the dear friend exposed to public degradation and to deadly peril. ”

“ It was then that Minna snapped out her bear and monkey comparison. She was thoroughly weary, lay back exhausted and spiritless in a chair, and regarded Gerard’s apologist with an air of tired resignation. The room was hot and stale with the breaths of many people, and the refuse of many perfumes.
“Bear or not,” replied Mrs. Delamere, drawing some crumpled and greasy bank notes from the pocket of her black silk dress, and delicately folding them, “I like to meet an honest, healthy English gentleman again. And I pity the man. I always pity men whose wives go wrong.” ”

“ Her old solicitude and kindly intimacy. The upheaval had not altered her attitude towards him. Her steadfastness touched him deeply.
“You have a heart of gold, Irene,” he said.
But he disclaimed hunger or fatigue, and sat down in the saddle-bag chair opposite her, wondering at the peace of mind that these few moments of companionship could bring him, in defiance of the devastating emotions at work below the surface. She pushed up her veil and regarded him wistfully.
“You are looking much older. Your face has grown lined—and no wonder.” ”

“ But deep down in his soul were warning glimmerings of a truth to which he defiantly blinded his eyes—glimmerings that duskly revealed a love that might be the heart of life, rich, throbbing, vitalising, such as his feelings for Minna were not.
He drew her letter from his pocket and read it through again. His heart smote him sorely for not feeling more miserable. Instinctively he conjured up the hours of sweet intoxication and caught at their lingering glamour. ”

“ I have never seen any transcendental sacredness in marriage. You know that well enough. I regard it as the social sanction of a man and woman living together. I would not live with Gerard again for all the world. It would also be his last desire. This is a blessed chance of sundering our lives, legally, for ever. There are no children to be considered. What public dishonour the divorce court can bring upon a woman is mine already, I have nothing to lose, Hugh, and all to gain. ”

“ Her eyes bore no trace of tears, her attitude not a suggestion of grief. Ill and worn she looked; but from shock and strain and anxiety—not from sorrow. Had she no human feeling? And yet she was the same woman whose heart had throbbed with wild tumult against his; whose eyes had glowed with a burning passion in their slumberous depths; whose voice had melted into murmurings like the deep notes of the mating dove. Once he had compared her in his mind to a volcano. The aptness of the similitude occurred to him now. ”