Chapter XVIII

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Among the Breakers

My preoccupation with Peggy Finch’s affairs had to some extent submerged my own, but now that my little friend had triumphantly emerged from the house of Bondage, I returned to my labours with a new zest. In spite of the various interruptions, the Zodiac spoons had made steady progress, and it was but a few days after our momentous visit to Mr. Hawkesley’s rooms that, almost regretfully, I put the finishing touches to the Fishes spoon--the last of the set.

It had been a pleasant labour, and as I laid out the completed set, I was not dissatisfied. True, there had been difficulties; but difficulties are the salt of craftsmanship. Some of the signs, such as Aries, Taurus, Leo, Virgo and Capricornus, had been quite simple, the head of the Ram, the Bull, or other symbolic creature furnishing an obvious and appropriate knop for the spoon. But others, such as Gemini, Pisces, and especially Libra, had been less easy to manage. Indeed, the last had involved a slight evasion; for, since it seemed quite impossible to work a pair of scales into a presentable knop, I had relegated them to the shoulder of the bowl and formed the knop of a more or less appropriate head of Justice blindfolded. So all the difficulties had been met by a pleasant and interesting exercise of thought and ingenuity, and the work--my _magnum opus_, for the present--was finished. And it was rounded off by a very agreeable little addition; for Phyllis Barton, who had seen and greatly admired the set, had made a delightful little case to contain it--just a pair of walnut slabs hinged together, the lower slab having twelve shaped recesses to hold the spoons and the lid ornamented with shallow carvings of a winged hour-glass and the phases of the moon.

I made up the spoons into a parcel and the case into another, so that they should not be treated together in a single transaction; and having advised Mr. Campbell by a letter on the previous day, set forth one morning for Wardour Street. The silent willing which should have preceded my entry to the shop was inadvertently omitted, for as I crossed the street I observed Mr. Campbell exchanging blandishments with a large Persian cat of the “smoky” persuasion, and, as he saw me at the same moment, I had no choice but to enter straightway.

He received me with the most encouraging affability--indeed, he even condescended to shake hands--and was evidently pleased to see me. And his reception of my work was still more encouraging. There was none of the buyer’s proverbial disparagement. He was frankly enthusiastic. He held up each spoon separately at arm’s length, wagging his head from side to side; he inspected it through a watchmaker’s lens; he stroked it with a peculiarly flexible thumb, and finally laid it down with a grunt of satisfaction. Then came the question of terms; and when he offered twenty-four guineas for the set, I was quite glad that the silent willing had been omitted. For I should probably have willed eighteen.

Having settled the price of my own work, I produced the wooden case. Phyllis had priced it at half a guinea, which was ridiculous. I boldly demanded a guinea for it.

“That’s a long price,” said Mr. Campbell, pulling a face of proportionate length. But I watched his thumb travelling over the clean-cut carving, I saw him delicately fitting the spoons, one by one, into their little niches, and I knew that that guinea was as good as in Phillibar’s pocket.

“It _is_ a long price, Mrs. Otway,” he repeated, cocking his head on one side at the case. “But it’s a pretty bit of work; and it’s the right thing--that’s what I like about it. Tho thootable; it would be a sin to put those spoons into a velvet-lined case, as if they were common, stamped, trade-goods. Very well, Mrs. Otway, I’ll spring a guinea for the case; and I should like to see some more work from the same hand.”

This was highly satisfactory (though it was not without a pang of bereavement that I saw the little case closed and hidden from my sight for ever in a locked drawer); and when I had received the two cheques--I asked for a separate one for Phyllis--I tripped away down Wardour Street as buoyantly as if I had not a care in the world.

The association of ideas is a phenomenon that has received a good deal of attention. It was brought to my notice on this occasion when I found myself opposite St. Anne’s Church; for no sooner had my eye lighted on its quaint, warty spire than my thoughts turned to Mr. Davenant--or rather, I should say, to Jasper. Perhaps he was in my mind already; possibly in the subconscious, as Lilith would have said, and the church spire may have acted as an autoscope--it would not have had to be an exceptionally powerful one. At any rate, my thoughts turned to him and to the Magpies Club, and it was not unnatural that my steps should take a similar direction.

As I followed the well-remembered route, I reflected on the changes that a few short months had brought. In that brief space a new life had opened. The solitary, friendless orphan who had sought sanctuary in Miss Polton’s house, how changed was her condition! Happy in her work, in her home, in her friends; for had she not her Lilith, her Phyllis, her Peggy--and Jasper? And here a still, small voice asked softly but insistently a question that had of late intruded itself from time to time. Whither was I drifting? My friendship with Jasper was ripening apace. But ripening to what? There could be but one answer; and that answer only raised a further question. In normal circumstances the love of a man and a woman finds a permanent satisfaction in marriage. But where marriage is impossible love is a mere disaster; a voyage with nothing but rocks and breakers at the end.

So whispered the still, small voice into ears but half attentive; and as I neared the bottom of Essex Street it became inaudible, for approaching the club-house from the opposite direction was Jasper himself.

“Well!” he exclaimed, “this is a piece of luck! And yet I had hoped that you might be coming into town to-day. Is it business or pleasure?”

“It has been business, and now I hope it is going to be pleasure. I am taking the rest of the day off.”

“Now, what a very singular coincidence! I am actually taking the rest of the day off myself.”

“Your coincidences,” I remarked, “somehow remind me of the misadventures of the bread-and-butter fly; they always happen.”

“Quite so,” he agreed. “But then, you see, if they didn’t happen they wouldn’t be coincidences. Do we begin by fortifying ourselves with nourishment?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘begin,’ but I came here to get some lunch.”

“So did I--another coincidence, by the way. Shall we take our usual little table in the corner?”

We seated ourselves at the table, and as we waited for our lunch to be brought, I ventured on a few inquiries into Jasper’s professional affairs.

“You seem to take a good many days off,” I remarked.

“I do. There is, so to speak, a distinctly marked ‘off side’ to my practice.”

“And when you are away, what happens? Do you keep a clerk?”

Jasper grinned. “You over-estimate the magnitude of my practice. No; I have a simpler and more economical arrangement. I let my little front office to a law writer, at a peppercorn rent, subject to the condition that he shall interview my clients in my absence, furnish evasive answers to their questions, and supply ambiguous and confusing information.”

“But don’t the clients get rather dissatisfied?”

Again Jasper smiled. “That question,” said he, “involves an important philosophic principle. A famous philosopher has proved his own existence by the formula ‘_cogito, ergo sum_’--I think, therefore I am--implying that if he didn’t exist he couldn’t think. Now, that principle applies to my clients. Before they can be dissatisfied, they must exist. But they don’t exist. Therefore they are not dissatisfied. Q.E.D.”

“I don’t believe you care whether they exist or not--but that is the worst of having an independent income.”

“It is a misfortune, isn’t it? But I bear up under it surprisingly. Will you have some of this stuff? It is called a _pelion_. I heard the waitress describing it as a pea-lion, apparently misled by the analogy of the pea-cock and the pea-hen. Evidently she is no zoologist.”

At this moment Miss Tallboy-Smith entered the room and halted at our table to exchange greetings and remind me of my engagement.

“Tell Miss Finch not to forget,” said she. “It’s next Wednesday. I shall have my things back from here by then, and I understand that Mr. Hawkesley has secured the cases for a special exhibition of studio pottery. You must bring Miss Finch to that, too.”

Like Jasper’s proxy, I gave an evasive answer to this, for I knew that wild horses would not drag Peggy to an exhibition of her own work. But evidently Mr. Hawkesley had made no confidences so far.

“Have you ever seen the Diploma Gallery at the R.A.?” Jasper asked when Miss Tallboy-Smith had flitted away. “If you haven’t, we might look in there for an hour this afternoon.”

As I had never seen the diploma works, I fell in readily with the suggestion, and accordingly, when we had finished lunch, we strolled thither and spent a very pleasant hour examining and comparing the works of the different academicians, old and new. From Burlington House we drifted into the Green Park, and presently took possession of a couple of isolated and lonely-looking chairs. For some time we gossiped about the pictures at which we had been looking in the gallery; then our talk turned on to the affairs of my friend Peggy.

“Hawkesley seems to have appointed himself Miss Finch’s advertising agent,” Jasper remarked. “And he’ll do the job well. He is an energetic man, and he knows all the pottery connoisseurs. I met him yesterday, and had to listen to Blue Bird ware by the yard.”

“I like him for his enthusiasm,” said I.

“So do I,” agreed Jasper. “And it is quite a little romance. His admiration of the pottery is perfectly genuine, as we know; but there is something in what he calls ‘the personality of the artist.’ I think he is distinctly ‘taken’ with your pretty little friend. How does she like him?”

“I think she is decidedly prepossessed. At any rate, she is profoundly grateful to him for discovering her work, and especially for the interest that he took in the unknown worker.”

“There you are, then,” said Jasper. “There are the ingredients of a life-size romance. Fervid admiration on the one side, gratitude on the other, and good looks and good nature on both. We shall see what we shall see, Helen; and I, for one, shall look on with the green eyes of envy.”

“Why will you? Do you want Peggy Finch for yourself?”

“I want Hawkesley’s good fortune. If he loves this little maid and thinks she cares for him, he can ask her to marry him. That is what makes me envious.”

I made no reply; indeed, there was nothing to say; and already the sound of the breakers was in my ears.

“I suppose, Helen,” he said, after a long pause, “you realize that I love you very dearly?”

“I know that we are the best of friends, and very deeply attached to one another.”

“We are much more than friends, Helen,” said he; “at least, there is much more than friendship on my side. You are my all--all that matters to me in the world. You live in my thoughts every moment of my life. When we are apart I yearn for the sight of you--I reckon the hours that must pass before I shall see you again, and when we are together the happy minutes slip away like grains of golden sand. But I need not tell you this. You must have seen that I love you.”

“I have feared it, Jasper--and that I might presently lose the dearest friend that I have in the world.”

“That you will never do, Helen, dearest, if I have the happiness to be that friend. Why should you?”

“It seems that it has to be. Our friendship has been a sweet friendship to me--too sweet to last, as I feared; and if some might cavil at it, it was innocent and wronged no one. But if it has grown into--into what I had feared it might, then it has become impossible. More than friends we can never be, and yet we cannot remain friends.”

We were both silent for more than a minute, and both were very grave. Then Jasper asked, with a trace of hesitation:

“Helen, if we were as those other two are--if you were free--would you be willing to marry me?”

It was a difficult question to answer, in the circumstances, and yet I felt it would be an unpardonable meanness to dissemble.

“Yes,” I answered; “of course I should.”

“Then,” said he, “I don’t see why we can never be more than friends.”

“But, Jasper, how can we? I am a married woman.”

“I don’t admit that,” said he. “Your marriage is a fiction. You are really a spinster with a technical impediment to the conventional form of marriage. Your so-called husband is a stranger to whom you have no ties. You don’t like, or even respect him; and certainly you have no obligations of duty to him, seeing that he induced you by a mere fraudulent pretence to go through this form of marriage with him.”

“I am not thinking of Mr. Otway,” said I. “He is nothing to me. I owe him no duty or consideration, and I would not sacrifice a single hair of my head for him. But the fact remains that I am, legally, his wife; and while he lives I can contract no other marriage.”

“But is that quite true, Helen?” he objected.

“Certainly it is; unless you consider a bigamous marriage as an exception, which it is not.”

“Of course I do not. Bigamy is a futile and fraudulent attempt to secure the appearance of a legal sanction. No one but a fool entertains bigamy.”

“Then I don’t see the meaning of your objection.”

“What I mean,” said he, “is that a fictitious marriage does not exclude the possibility of a real marriage.”

“Still I do not quite follow you. What do you mean by a real marriage?”

“A real marriage is a permanent, life-long partnership between a man and a woman. Ordinarily, such a partnership receives the formal endorsement of the State for certain reasons of public policy. But it is the partnership which is the marriage. The legal endorsement is an extrinsic and inessential addition. Now, in your case the State has accepted and endorsed a marriage which does not exist--which is a pure fiction. The result is that if you contract a real marriage, the State will withhold its endorsement. That is all. It cannot hinder the marriage.”

“This is all very ingenious, Jasper,” said I, “and it does credit to your legal training. But it is mere sophistry. The position, as it would appear to a plain person of ordinary common sense, is that a woman who is legally married to one man and is living as the wife of another, is a married woman who is living with a man who is not her husband.”

“That is the conventional view, I admit,” said he. “But it is a mistaken view. It confuses the legal sanction--which is not essential--with the covenant of life-long union, which is the essence of marriage--which, in fact, _is_ the marriage.”

“But what is the bearing of this, Jasper?” I asked. “We seem to be discussing a rather abstract question of public morals. Has it any application to our own affairs?”

“Yes, it has. At least, I think so, though I feel a little nervous about saying just what I mean.”

“I don’t think you need be. At any rate, there had better be a clear understanding between us. Tell me exactly what you do mean.”

He considered awhile, apparently somewhat at a loss how to begin. At length, with evident embarrassment, he put his proposal before me.

“The position, Helen, is this: You and I have become deeply attached to one another; I may say--since you admit that you would be willing to marry me--that we love one another. It is no passing fancy, based on mere superficial attractions. We are both persons of character, and our love is founded on deep-seated sympathy. We have been friends for some years. We liked one another from the first, and as time has gone on we have liked one another better. Our friendship has grown. It has become more and more precious to both of us, and at last it has grown into love--on my side, into intense and passionate love. We are not likely to change. People of our type are not given to change. We love one another and we shall go on loving one another until the end.

“If our circumstances were normal, we should marry in the normal manner. That is to say, we should enter into a contract publicly with certain formalities which would confer a definite legal status and render our contract enforceable in a court of law. But our circumstances are not normal. We are willing to comply with the formalities, but we are not allowed to. We are not in the position of persons who, for their own purposes, lightly disregard the immemorial usages of society--who dispense with the formalities because they would avoid the responsibilities of formal marriage. We wish to enter into a lifelong partnership; we desire to undertake all responsibilities; we would welcome the formalities and the secure status. But the law refuses. There is a technical disability.

“We have, therefore, two alternatives. We may give up the marriage which we both desire, or we may marry and dispense with the formalities and the legal status. Supposing we give up the marriage. Just consider, Helen, what it is that we give up. It is the happiness of a whole life-time. The abiding joy of the sweetest, the most sympathetic companionship that is possible to a man and a woman. For though we are lovers, we are still friends, and friends we shall remain until death parts us. Our tastes, our interests, our sympathies make us prefer one another as companions to all other human beings. Of how many married couples can this be said? To us has been given that perfect comradeship that makes married life an enduring delight, a state of happiness without a cloud or a blemish. And this is what we give up if we let this disability, this technical impediment, hinder us from marrying.

“On the other hand, supposing we marry and dispense with the formalities, what do we give up? Virtually nothing. The legal security is of no value to us, for each of us is secure in the constancy of the other. If we enter into a covenant, we shall abide by it, not by compulsion, but because we shall never wish to break it. As to the legal status and the social recognition, is it conceivable that two sane persons should give up a life’s happiness for such trumpery? Surely it is not. No, Helen, let us boldly take our destiny into our own hands. Let us publicly denounce this sham marriage and cancel it for ever. I ask you, dearest, to give me the woman of my heart for my mate, my friend, my wife, for ever; to take me, unworthy as I am, for your husband, who will try, as long as he draws the breath of life, to make up to you by love and worship for what you have sacrificed to make him happy.”

As I listened to Jasper’s appeal--delivered with quiet but impressive earnestness--I think I was half disposed to yield. It was not only that I admired the skill with which he put his case and the virile, masterful way in which he trampled down the obstructing conventions; but deep down in my heart I felt that he was right--that his separation of the things that really mattered from those that were trivial and inessential was true and just. But there was this vital difference between us; that he was a man and I was a woman. Our estimates of the value of the conventions were not the same. Without the legal sanction I might be his wife in all that was real; but the world would call me his mistress.

“Jasper, dear,” I said, “it is impossible. I admit the truth of all that you have said, and I wish--Oh! Jasper, _how_ I wish, that I could accept the happiness that you offer me! You need not tell me that our companionship would be a delight for ever. I know it. But it cannot be. Even if I could accept it for myself, I could not accept it for you; I could not bear to think that, through me, you had been put outside the pale of decent society. For that is what it would mean. You--a gentleman of honour and reputation--would become a social outcast, a man who was living with another man’s wife; who, if he were admitted at all to the society of his own class, would have to be introduced with explanations and excuses.”

“I think you exaggerate the social consequences, Helen,” said he. “I propose that we should write to Otway and formally repudiate the marriage. Then, if we were boldly and openly to state our position and the exceptional circumstances that had driven us to it, I believe that we should receive sympathy rather than condemnation. I don’t believe we should lose a friend; certainly not one whose loss would afflict us. And Otway could take his remedy, if he cared to.”

“You mean he could divorce me,” I said, with something like a shudder.

“Yes. But I am afraid he wouldn’t.”

“I don’t think he would. But if he did, it would be an undefended suit, and the stigma of the Divorce Court would be on us for ever.”

“It would be unpleasant, I admit,” he replied. “But think of the compensations. Think of the joy of being together always, of having our own home, of going abroad and seeing the world together.”

“Don’t, Jasper!” I entreated. “It is too tantalizing. And even all this would not compensate me for the knowledge that I had dragged you from your honourable estate to a condition of social infamy.”

“You need not consider me,” he rejoined. “I have thought the matter out and am satisfied that I should gain infinitely more than I should lose; for I should have you, who are much more to me than all the rest of the world.”

“You haven’t thought of everything, Jasper,” said I. “You know of the folly I committed at the time of my father’s death--in withholding facts at the inquest, I mean--and you have excused it and treated it lightly. But others would view it differently. And now there is this blackmailer of whom I have told you. At any moment, a serious scandal may arise; and in that scandal you would be implicated.”

“It wouldn’t matter to me,” said he. “Nothing would matter to me if only I had you.”

“So you think now. But, Jasper, think of the years to come. Think how it might be in those years when the social ostracism, the loss of position and reputation, had grown more and more irksome, if we should regret what we had done, if we should blame ourselves--even, perhaps, secretly blame one another----”

“We should never do that, Helen. We should always be loyal. And there wouldn’t be any social ostracism. At any rate, I am quite clear as to my own position. I want you for my wife. To get you I would make any sacrifices and count them as nothing. But that is only my position. It isn’t necessarily yours--or rather, I should say your sacrifices would be greater than mine. A woman’s point of view is different from a man’s.”

“It is, Jasper. I realise fully how essentially reasonable your proposal is, and I am proud of, and grateful for, the love that has impelled you to make it. But to me the thing is impossible. That is the only answer I can give. What it costs me to give that answer--to refuse the happiness that you offer me, and that I crave for--I cannot tell you. But even if it breaks my heart to say ‘no,’ still, that must be my answer.”

For a long time neither of us spoke. As I glanced furtively at Jasper, the dejection, the profound sadness that was written on his face wrung my heart and filled me with self-accusation. Why had I not foreseen this? Why had I, who had nothing to give in return, allowed his friendship to grow up into love under my eyes? Had I not acted towards this my dearest friend with the basest selfishness?

Presently he turned to me, and, speaking in quiet, even tones, said:

“It would not be fair for me to make an appeal on my own behalf. I may not urge you to accept a relation which your feeling and judgment reject. But one thing I will ask. I have told you what I want; and you are to remember that I shall always want you. I will ask you to reflect upon what we have said to-day, and if perchance you should come to think differently, remember that I am still wanting you, that I am still asking you, and tell me if you can give me a different answer. Will you promise me this, Helen?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I promise you, Jasper.”

“Thank you, Helen. And meanwhile we remain friends as we have been?”

“We can never be again as we have been,” said I. “Friendship may turn to love, but love does not go back to friendship. That is as impossible as for the fruit to change back into blossom. No, dearest Jasper; this is the end of our friendship. When we part to-day it must be farewell.”

“Must it be, Helen? Must we part for ever? Could we not go back to the old ways and try to forget to-day?”

“I shall never forget to-day, nor will you. For our own peace of mind we must remain apart and try to avoid meeting one another. It is the only way, Jasper, hard as it will be.”

I think he agreed with me, for he made no further protest.

“If you say it must be, Helen, then I suppose it must,” he said, dejectedly. “But it is a hard saying. I don’t dare to think of what life will be without you.”

“Nor I, Jasper. I know that when I say ‘good-bye’ to you, the sun will go out of my life and that I can look for no other dawn.”

Again we fell silent for a while; and again I reproached myself for having let it come to this.

“Don’t you think, Helen,” he said at length, “that we might meet sometimes, say at fixed intervals--even long intervals, if it must be so--just that we might feel that we had not really lost one another completely?”

“But that is what I should wish to avoid. For we have lost one another. As to me, it has no significance. I have nothing to give and nothing to lose. I am shackled for life to Mr. Otway. But you have your life before you, and it would only be fair that I should leave you free.”

“Free!” he exclaimed. “I am not free and never shall be. Nor do I wish to be free. I am yours now and for ever. And so I would wish it to be. We may not be married in any outward form, but we are married in the most real sense. Our hearts are married. We belong to one another for ever while we live, and neither of us will ever wish to change. You know it is so, dearest, don’t you?”

What could I say? He had spoken my own thoughts, had expressed the wish that I had not dared to acknowledge. Weak and unjust it may have been, but the thought that in the dark days of our coming separation we should still be linked, if only by an invisible thread, came as something like a reprieve. It left just a faint spark of light to relieve the gloom of the all too sombre future. In the end we agreed to a monthly letter and a meeting once a year. And so, having fixed the terms of our sentence, we tried to put our troubles away and make the best of the few hours that remained before the dreaded farewell.

But despite our efforts to get back to our wonted cheerful companionship, the swiftly-passing hours were filled with sadness and heart-ache. Instinctively we went and looked at things and places that recalled the pleasant jaunts that were to be no more; but ever Black Care rode behind. It was like the journey of two lovers in a tumbril that rolled its relentless way towards the guillotine; for at the end of the day was the parting that would leave us desolate.

And at last the parting was upon us. At the corner of Cable Street we halted and faced one another. For a few moments we stood in the gathering gloom, hand clasped in hand. I dared not speak, for my heart was bursting. Hardly did I dare to look at the man whom I loved so passionately. And Jasper could but press my hand and murmur huskily a few broken words of love. And so we parted. With a last pressure of the hand I turned away and hurried along Cable Street. I did not dare to look back, though I knew that he was gazing after me; for the street swam before my eyes and I could barely hold back my sobs.

I did not go straight home. The tumult of emotion sent me hurrying forward--whither I have no recollection save that somewhere in Shadwell a pair of friendly policemen turned me back with the remark that it “was no place for the likes of me.” At length, when the first storm of grief had passed, and I felt myself under control, I made my way to Wellclose Square, and pleading the conventional headache, retired at once to my room.

And there, in quiet and seclusion, with tears that no longer need be restrained, with solemn rites of grief, I buried my newborn happiness--the happiness that had died almost in the moment of its birth.

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