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Lady of the Basement Flat

<h3>Chapter Thirteen.</h3> <h4>More Bitter than Death.</h4> Charmion came to my room in her white dressing-gown, with her long hair hanging plaited down her back. Remembering the icy hands I had held in mine, I had lit the gas fire, and she cowered gratefully over its warmth. “Kind of you, dear! Warmth is comforting. Well, Evelyn, so the time has come. I have waited, screwing up my courage; but the hour has been decided for us.” “Not unless you choose,” I cried hastily. “I would far rather never hear—” She checked me with a wan smile. “I do choose. When it is over, it will be a relief. I want you to know. You will understand better, and I shall not pain you so much, dear, kind Evelyn, by my harsh ways. So all this time you have believed that I was a happy widow?” The expression jarred. She saw the shrinking in my eyes, and smiled again, in the same wan, hopeless fashion. “Oh, I mean it. Death comes like a sword, but in the end it is merciful, for it brings peace. The one who is left suffers many pangs, but in time—in time, learns to be thankful for all that the beloved is spared. It is the living troubles which sear the heart. I have envied the widows who could look up and say, ‘It is well with him. We shall meet again.’ With me it has been all bitterness, all rebellion.” I sat silent, not daring to interrupt, and after a moment’s pause she began again, speaking in a still, level tone, with hardly any variety of expression. “I am an orphan like you, Evelyn. Both my parents died before I was fourteen, and I was sent over to America to live with a grandmother aunt. I was an heiress, unfortunately—you know my views about riches!—and by my father’s will I came into my money at eighteen. My aunt was a wise woman, and even to her intimate friends she never gave a hint of my fortune. She was a wealthy woman herself, and had no daughter, only one son, so it seemed natural that she should give me a good time, dress me prettily, and take me about. She had a horror of fortune-hunters, and wanted me to be loved for myself, and be as happily married as she had been before me. When I came out she brought me over to London for a season, and I was presented; but that was my one and only visit to England in fifteen years. I was glad to go back to New York, for my real friends were there. We had grown up together, and had the associations of years. In England I had only acquaintances. Well! So it went on, the happiest of lives, till I was twenty-four. Several men wanted to marry me, but I never met anyone whom it was possible to think of as a husband until—” “Your husband?” “Yes. We were away for the summer—a whole party of us—camping in the most delicious spot. I wish you could join an American camping party some time, Evelyn. It’s just the happiest, freest, most ideal of lives! He came down as the guest of some other people. The daughter was one of my own friends. I thought at first that she cared for him herself, but he never paid her any attention—not the slightest; rather avoided her indeed, even before—” “He cared for you. Did it begin—soon—Charmion?” “I cared for him the first moment we met. I was sitting at a long tea-table set out in the open, and my friend brought him up to a seat right opposite to mine. She said, ‘Charmion, this is Phil—Phil, this is Charmion!’ It was one of the rules of the camp that we called each other by our Christian names. The life was so informal that ‘Mr’ and ‘Miss’ seemed out of place. I looked up and met his eyes, and—it was different from anything I had felt before. “He came for a week, but he stayed on and on until it was nearly a month. I can’t talk about it, Evelyn. Such times can never last. Even at the best it is impossible that they can last. Perfect happiness is not for this world. It was all beautiful. The place where we camped was like another Garden of Eden; the weather was exquisite, such days, such mornings! Oh, Evelyn, such nights! The sky a dome of deepest blue, with the stars shining as you never saw them in this damp, misty atmosphere. And he and I—” Her voice broke. Her hand went up to her face to hide the quivering of her lips. It was a petrifying thing to see Charmion break down. I turned away my eyes, unable to bear it. There was silence in the room for several moments, then she began again. “Nothing was said in words. I didn’t want him to speak. I was perfectly happy, perfectly sure, and I dreaded the publicity of an engagement. Every one talking, questioning, teasing. It would have seemed profanation. Besides—if Marjorie had really cared as I suspected, it would have been painful for her. I wouldn’t let him speak until we got back to New York, and then, the very night I arrived, Aunt Mary was taken dangerously ill. She lingered a few weeks, but there was never any hope. Then she died and I was left alone, for her son, my cousin, lived in India. “All that time he—my husband—had been coming to see me every day. The doctor insisted that I should go out to be braced by the fresh air, so he took me long drives, long walks, and then sat by me indoors, comforting me, helping, advising. He was everything to me, Evelyn! Aunt Mary was dying, and she had been like a mother, but when he was with me I was satisfied; I was content. When she died, he urged an immediate marriage, and I was quite ready. She had left no money to me, but I told him I had some of my own. He kissed me, and”—again her hand went up to hide that quivering lip—“he said that did not concern him. He could keep his wife. What money I had I must keep for myself, to pay for ‘little extravagancies’. “I was thankful that he did not know, thankful that he did not care. I looked forward to telling him after we were married, and seeing his face of surprise. We had planned to live in an apartment until we had time to choose a house for ourselves. I laughed to think how much bigger and finer it would be than the little house of his dreams. He was not at all rich—did I tell you that? He had had a pretty hard struggle all his life, and had only quite a moderate income. I went to my lawyer and settled a fourth of my income on him for life. I knew if we lived in a bigger way there would be calls upon him which he would not otherwise have had. Calls for subscriptions, for charities, a dozen other claims. I hated to think that he should have to come to me for money, or that cheques should be drawn in my name. He asked me what I was going to give him as a wedding present, and I laughed, and said, ‘Nothing interesting. Only a little note!’ The settlement was to be my gift.” Silence again. I felt for her hand and held it tight? Tragedy was coming; I knew it. I waited, tense with suspense. “We were married very quietly. Only two or three people in the church. He called for me. It was unconventional, but I was nervous and weak, and he knew he could give me strength. We went up the aisle together, hand in hand. The man who was to give me away followed behind. Many people in America are married in their own homes, but I preferred a church. I’ve been sorry since. It has seemed a profanation. To stand before the altar in God’s house and take those solemn vows, while all the time—all the time—” She shuddered, and paused to regain self-possession. “Well, Evelyn—well! I had two weeks’ happiness, two weeks in my fool’s paradise, and then—the end came! He had gone over to New York for a day. Some important business had arisen and he was obliged to go. He said good-bye.” She paused again, struggling for composure. “It was good-bye—good-bye for ever. He did not know that, but he parted from me as—a husband might from the wife of his heart. It was impossible to doubt. I was as sure of him, Evelyn—as sure as that the sun is in the sky! “After he had gone a letter was handed to me. I did not know the writing, but inside—I could not understand it—was a letter in his own writing. Nothing else, just this one sheet, with one long passage underscored. I did not stop to think; the words leapt at me, my own name first of all; and after I had begun to read there was no stopping short. It was the second sheet of a letter, so I could not tell to whom it had been written; but evidently it was to a man to whom money was owing, and who had been pressing for a settlement. It was full of apologies for having failed to pay before; and then—then came the passage that had been underlined. Perhaps, he said, in a few months’ time things would look up. There was a girl. In a roundabout way, through an English acquaintance, he had heard that she had a pile of money, though the fact had been kept dark in America. There was no doubt about it, since his informant was a member of the legal firm who had wound up her father’s estate. By a stroke of good luck the girl was staying at a summer camp with some of his own friends. He had engineered an invitation, and was there at the moment of writing. “Think of it, Evelyn—at that very moment I was, perhaps, sitting innocently by his side. We used to scribble our letters together, sitting out in the woods, and break off every few minutes to laugh and chatter. Probably, after it was finished, we walked together to the nearest post, and as we went he looked at me—he looked. Oh!”—she winced in irrepressible misery—“is it possible—is it possible that any man could act so well? Can you wonder that I am hard and cold—that I have so little sympathy for outside troubles? I was once as loving and impetuous as you are yourself, but that shock turned me to stone. It killed my faith in human nature!” She was silent, struggling for composure, and I laid my hand on her knee, and sat silent, not daring to speak. What was there to say? I realised now how infinitely more bitter than death was the loss which Charmion had to bear. “Well,”—she roused herself to go on with her story—“you can imagine the rest. ‘The heiress was,’ he wrote, ‘quite a possible girl,’ and seemed ‘agreeably disposed’. There was evidently no previous entanglement, and the circumstances were propitious. It was his intention to go in and win. If it came off he would be in a position to pay up old scores and to start life afresh. It would be worth giving up his liberty, to end the everlasting worry of the last ten years. The letter ended with more promises and his signature. No loophole of doubt was left, you see. There could be no mistaking that signature. I had been married exactly two weeks, and had believed myself the happiest woman in the world. I now discovered that I had been tracked down by an adventurer, who had married me only because, unfortunately, it was impossible to get hold of my fortune without putting up with me at the same time.” “What did he say, how did he look, when you told him about your money and the settlement? Of course, you had told him by that time.” “Not much. Very little indeed. I thought at the time that he was overwhelmed, and a little sorry that the wealth was on my side. Looking back, I do him the justice to believe that he was ashamed! Even such a deliberate schemer might well feel a pang under the circumstances. I remember that he put his elbows on the table, and hid his face in his hands. He never alluded to the subject again, neither did I. There seemed plenty of time. I loved him all the more because he was not wildly elated. All my life I had been trained to dread fortune-hunters, to value sincerity above every other virtue.” “But during those two weeks after you were married, he still seemed to—care? You believed in him still?” “Absolutely! Utterly! I must be easily duped, Evelyn, for with all my heart I believed that that man loved me as deeply as I loved him. Every word—every look! Oh, he was a finished actor! It all seemed so real—so real—” “Charmion, after you had read that letter and understood all that it meant, what did you do?” “I went to my room, packed a bag with a few changes of clothing, collected all the money I had with me, quite a large sum in notes, and caught the afternoon train for New York. I had no idea where I was going. My one longing was to escape before he came back, but things were decided for me. The shock made me faint, and in the heat of the train I felt worse every hour. When we stopped at a half-way station I stepped out on to the platform in the same dull, dazed way, hardly realising what I was doing, and carried my bag out into the street. Half a mile away I saw a notice of rooms to let in the window of a small house, and I knocked and went in. “I stayed in that house for over six months, Evelyn. The woman was a saint—the kindliest, gentlest creature I have ever met. I told her that I was ill and in trouble, and wanted to rest, and she put me to bed and nursed me like a child. I was a long time in getting well. The very strings of my being seemed to have snapped. I lay torpid week after week, and the good soul took care of me and asked no questions. She was one of those rare spirits who pray to God to guide them day by day, and mean literally what they ask. God had sent me to her in my need—that was her firm belief—and what she did for me she did for Him. I had left no message behind—only that terrible letter sealed up, to be given to my husband on his return. I heard afterwards that he had searched for me far and wide, had even crossed over to England, thinking I must be here. When I was well enough I sent for my aunt’s lawyer and took him into my confidence. He let me know when my husband returned to America, and as soon as possible after that I came to England myself, under another name. I was no longer his wife in heart. Why should I keep a name which was given to me under false pretences? Five years have passed since then. It seems like a century, and—here I am!” “And all this time you have heard nothing? Nothing has happened?” “Yes. I have heard. He seems to have—felt it a good deal! It is always painful to be discovered, and for a man’s wife to leave him before the honeymoon is over is hurtful to his pride. He makes periodic efforts to find me, but my lawyers are loyal, and will give no clue.” “And the settlement? The money you made over to him? Does he draw that still?” She flushed and frowned. “No. It appears not. He tells the lawyers that he will never touch it. I suppose if he changed his manner of living it would be remarked, and people might guess something of the truth. His object is, of course, to throw all the blame on me.” The bitterness of her voice hurt me so that I ventured a timid protest. “Charmion, I am not taking his part. I think he was contemptible beyond words; but—isn’t it possible that he has regretted, that he has not taken the money because he was ashamed?” “Possible, of course; but I should say extremely improbable. However, I am no longer concerned in his motives. He gave up his liberty for a certain price, and the price is his. The money accumulates at the bank. Some day, no doubt, he will find it convenient to draw it.” I felt a movement of revolt, and cried quickly:— “There is one person I despise even more than the man himself, and that is the creature who kept that letter, and sent it to you too late to prevent the marriage! If it were to be done at all, why could it not have been done before?” Her lips curved. “Yes. It was very cruel. That was another disillusion, Evelyn. I have always been convinced that Marjorie was the sender. Probably the letter had been written to her brother, or to some near relation, and in some way had come into her possession. She behaved very strangely about our engagement. But I had been her friend—how she could find it in her heart! If there had been any possibility of doubt I would have gone straight to her, and demanded the truth, but—what was the use? The letter was there. I should only have brought more suffering upon myself. She wanted him for herself, and could not forgive me for taking him away; but if she had come to me at the beginning, when she saw how things might go, I should have gone away myself and left the coast clear. Even if it hurt myself, I should have been loyal to another woman who had cared first! Even now I have done my best for her. I offered, through my lawyers, to make no objection if he chose to free himself legally. It could be done in America, you know. I explained that it would make no difference to the settlement. That was made, and should remain unchanged!” I looked at her sharply, for the sneer in her voice hurt me more than the pain. “Charmion! Forgive me, dearest. You have been cruelly treated, but—don’t be vexed—aren’t you in the wrong, too, in feeling so bitter after all these years?” To my surprise she assented instantly. “Oh, yes; very wrong. More wrong than they, perhaps, for I have had so long to think; and what they did was done on an impulse. Don’t think I excuse myself, Evelyn. I don’t! I see quite well how hard and bitter I am, but—” “You can’t forgive?” She hesitated, her grey eyes gazing into space. “What exactly is forgiveness? If by lifting a little finger I could make him suffer as he has made me, nothing would induce me to do it. If by lifting a little finger I could bring him happiness and success, I think—no, I am sure that I would not hesitate. But to purge my heart of bitterness, that is beyond me! It’s always there, deep down, a hard, hard wall, hiding the light, shutting me out from man—and from God!” The last words came in a whisper. I knew the effort with which they were spoken, and sat silent, clinging to her hand. What could I say? I, with my easy, sunshiny life; how dared I dictate to her great grief. And yet I knew—I knew only in one way could peace come back. The remembrance of the Vicar’s first sermon came back to my heart like a breath of fresh air. “Forgetting the things that are behind!” I said softly. “Couldn’t you try that, Charmion? Forgetting, and—pressing forward! If forgiving seems beyond you for the moment, couldn’t you take the first step?” For the first time since she entered the room her face lightened into something like her own natural smile. “Ah, Evelyn, that’s like you! Thank you, dear, for the reminder. That was the text on our first Sunday here. There is one thing I would like you to know. You have helped me more than anything else. You attracted me because you possess to excess the very qualities which I have lost—trust, faith, overflowing kindliness and love. It has been a tonic to be with you. There have been times—working in the garden by your side, seeing all the live green things springing out of darkness—when I’ve been happy again, better than happy—at peace! But now—this upheaval—it has renewed it all. Evelyn, do you think she suspected? Do you think she will talk?” “I am sure she won’t. Absolutely sure. She had not a flickering doubt. The name is different, you see, and she is too much absorbed in herself and her own affairs to waste any thought upon us. In a few days they sail for India.” “Yes.” She drew a sigh of relief. “That’s good. I’m thankful. It would have been so hard to be uprooted again. But you can understand, Evelyn, that for a time—” She rose, stretched herself to her full height, and threw out her arms restlessly. “The roving fit is on me. I must be off into the wilds and fight it out by myself.” I had known it was coming—subconsciously had known it for weeks, but it was hard all the same. We had been so happy, and in six short months my roots seemed to have gone down surprisingly deep. I hated the idea of leaving “Pastimes,” but I reminded myself that it was only for a time—only for a time. “Of course” Charmion assured me heartily. “It is August now. We will make a rendezvous for Christmas. Perhaps I may turn up before that, like a bad penny, but you may depend on me for Christmas. You—you will go to your flat, Evelyn?” I nodded silently. The Pixie scheme had for the moment lost its charm, but I would not give in. “Silly one!” murmured Charmion fondly. “You dear goose! Well, good luck to you. May you make other people as happy as you have made me.” <hr /></div> <div class="bodytext"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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