Part 17

What was that? The faint ringing of the door-bell, far away in the servants’ quarters but distinctly audible in this sleep-hushed house, persisted until it came to his full recognition. He looked up, puzzled, from the papers in the shaded light of his reading-lamp, glanced around the book-lined study where the fire-glow flickered redly in the absence of full illumination. Who could it be at this time of night? The far-away faint ringing continued, eloquent of an unrelaxed pressure upon the bell-push at the porch. He listened to it with exasperated annoyance, resentful of this interruption of his labours, trying to imagine an identity for this inconsiderately late visitor. Whoever it was, he himself would have to open the door. The servants were long ago asleep. They would not hear the bell. With a petulant exclamation, he rose from his desk, went out into the darkened hall.

Stimulated into haste in instinctive response to the determined urgency of the summons of that bell, its sound quite loud and definite out here, he fumbled hurriedly for the electric switch. Then, the lights full on, he went quickly to the door and opened it. A cold wind blew in upon him from the darkness into which he peered, seeing, at first, nothing. The ringing had ceased. A doubt of reality, a suspicion of hallucination, shot through him, was dispelled upon the instant. From the shadowed side of the porch a woman’s form moved into the broad beam of light. A curious, inexplicable, sudden consciousness of his own heart, vaguely not normal in its action, filled his breast as he stared out to her in a momentary suspense of recognition. Then she turned her face full upon him.

He started back, shocked to his inmost as though he had touched a live electric wire.

“Christine!” he gasped, in incredulous amazement. “Christine!--_You!_--_Come back?_”

The eyes in the woman’s drawn face opened upon him as from a tight-shut agony, searched what was to her his dark, featureless silhouette in the illumination from the hall. Her whole soul seemed to yearn out to him in doubt and in desperate appeal. He saw her lips move before she spoke.

“Will you let me in?” she asked, humbly. “Harry!” She breathed his name as though she dared not pronounce it.

He felt himself turn dizzy under this unexpected emotional shock. He stared at her dumbly, the scathing phrases of indignant repudiation, so often mentally rehearsed for such a moment, eluding him. Christine! He could not at once adjust himself to her reality, looked at her again to make unmistakably sure. Christine--come back.

“Harry!” she breathed again in timid humility.

He shuddered in a cold gust from the darkness as he stared at her. She was hatless, coatless, in that bitter wind. He saw her shiver as she half-ventured to stretch out a hand toward him.

A sudden impulse, as from a source superior to him--he thought it was pity--mastered the righteous indignation he had been trying to bring to utterance.

“Come in,” he said, thickly, and made way for her.

She entered. He shut the door behind her, turned to look at her as she stood in the full illumination of the hall. Once more her eyes had closed. Her lips were compressed as over an almost unendurable agony of the spirit. She swayed on her feet, arms limply by her sides, as though only stayed from falling by a supreme effort of the will. How old and haggard she looked!--the thought traversed him like a flash, linked itself to another--twenty-five years! What had happened to her in that twenty-five years? Little of good fortune, assuredly--with the professional eye that appraised a new witness in the box, he noted the poor, threadbare quality of her white dress, unadorned by any of the jewellery that had once been her delight.

The chilled blueness of her skin struck him as he scrutinized her. He touched her hand, automatically and impersonally, for confirmation of his impression.

“You’re frozen!” he said. His accent of ill-humour rang oddly familiar in his own ears. It was the old annoyance at yet another of the impulsive follies so typical of her. “What are you thinking of, to come out like this?” he added, sharply. “Here!” He flung open the study door. “There’s a fire here--sit down and warm yourself!” The tone of unsympathetic authority was--he remembered it--instinctively just the old tone he had so often used to her in that life now so remote as almost to seem a previous existence.

She opened her eyes again, the large emotional eyes that had not changed, looked at him, looked _into him_. Incredulity spread over her face.

“By your fire? Can you, Harry?--Can you, after everything--after all these years--can you still have me by your fire?”

Tears came up in those big eyes which looked so yearningly into his, and her mouth twisted itself into a pathetic little smile--the ghost of the smile that he had known in a younger face. He felt oddly uncomfortable.

“Come along!” He commanded her almost brutally, defending himself from any relaxation of hostility. “Come and warm yourself!” He lifted one of her hands and its chill struck to the centre of him. “Why have you no coat?--You must be mad!”

She smiled at him, and did not answer. He drew her into the warm study, pulled a chair close to the fire for her, pressed her down into it. Then he turned to switch on the full lights.

She stopped him with a gesture.

“Please, Harry!--Just like this--in the firelight.”

He obeyed and returned to her. Coldness seemed to emanate from her body as he came close. What sheer insanity! She must be chilled through and through, he thought.

He shrugged his shoulders to himself, disclaiming responsibility, and, for his own self-respect, played the host.

“Can I get you anything, Christine?” he asked, ungraciously. “Anything to eat or drink?”

She lifted her large eyes toward his face and shook her head slowly, without a word.

Baffled by her manner, he struck at what he thought to be the heart of the awkward situation.

“What do you want? What have you come for?” he demanded, harshly. “Money?”

She shook her head again and smiled.

“No, Harry. I want nothing, except just to be with you once again--for a little time.”

A long sigh, from the depths of her bosom, escaped her as she turned her head down again to the fire and stared dreamily into its red recesses.

“Just to be with you,” she repeated, softly, as to herself, “once more.”

He stood over her, not knowing what to say. Silence filled the room.

She looked up at him, timidly.

“You’re not pleased to see me, are you, Harry? You never wanted to see me again?”

He did not answer.

“Of course--how could you be?” she murmured to herself, gazing once more into the fire. “You never could forgive--never!”

He forced himself to a politeness he felt to be magnanimous.

“I don’t want to dwell on past injuries, Christine,” he said, coldly. “I should be pleased to know that what you did brought happiness.”

“Happiness!” she repeated, almost inaudibly, in ironic mockery, her gaze still fixed upon the fire.

Suddenly she looked round to him.

“Harry!” she said, impulsively. “Harry!” Her eyes went beyond him for a moment to the litter of papers on his desk, returned to him. “Harry! I know I am disturbing you”--the old pathetic smile came into her face--“but I want to ask you a favour--” she hesitated, as though her courage failed her--“the favour for which I came.”

He hardened himself for a refusal.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I want you to give up your work for just one hour--I want you to sit by the fireside and talk to me. Won’t you? Won’t you let me come first for just once--as--as I used to want to in the old days?” Her eyes, fine as ever, implored him in almost irresistible appeal. “I have dreamed of this for so long!” She went on as in a reverie, after a little pause, staring once more into the fire. “You never would, Harry--and perhaps--if you had----” She sighed. “You were so ambitious!”

He stood immobile, typically reluctant to break his habits. Those cases were important. He was coming to himself now, the effect of the first shock diminishing. Some of the old anger awoke in his heart as he looked down upon her. The old sense of disturbance returned. It was just like her to come and break up his night’s work. And now--after all that had happened! He resented her presumption, stigmatized it as sheer callousness.

She looked up, feeling his thoughts perhaps.

“Harry! Can’t you--for just this once? I don’t ask you to forgive.”

Her eyes held him, enfeebled his resistance.

“I’ve got nothing to tell you, Christine,” he said, gruffly. “Nothing. I didn’t ask you to come back, but since you have come--well, I will not shut you out in the cold. You can sit by the fire if you like.”

She smiled--the little ghost of her twenty-year-old smile upon that worn and middle-aged face. He clenched his teeth at it, at something in himself.

“Have you really nothing to say to me, Harry? Not a question to ask?”

He armed himself against the pathos of her appeal.

“No,” he said, curtly. “Nothing.”

She shut her eyes as though under a blow. Then, with a tacit admission of its justice, she smiled up at him again. Evidently, her courage was held at high tension.

“I know I don’t deserve it,” she said. “I don’t deserve to be sitting here again, after all these years. But, oh, Harry, you _could_ be generous--once, at those rare times when I could really touch the real you as I so often longed to do. Are you still hard, Harry?--still so hard?” She sighed, wearily, turned her head hopelessly once more to the fire.

He watched the play of its glow over her features, was struck by her bad colour. The coldly observant part of him noted the fact that she was, or had been, ill. Half-starved, too, added this detached professional self. Suffering, physical and mental, was stamped upon her face. He acquiesced in it, grimly. Her frivolous wickedness--he remembered the callously jaunty tone of the note she had left for him--had met just retribution. He wondered what had happened to the man.

She looked up again, answering, with a subtle perception, the question in his mind.

“He’s dead, Harry--dead years ago. Very dead. To me, he never really lived--not as you have lived, always, through every moment of my--” she paused--“my Hell.”

A sentiment of pity pricked him sharply. Poor little Christine!--she had certainly paid, and paid heavily. He repressed his commiseration, in alarm at himself. He must think--think sensibly. Did she intend to come back for good? He reacted violently against the idea. It was impossible. He would be a laughing-stock, the butt for the pointing fingers, the sly allusions, of his fellows in the Courts. His pride revolted. No, no--he must get her out again somehow, before the servants knew.

Once more she read his thought.

“No one shall know that I have come, Harry. It’s just for this one hour and then I’ll go again. But just for this one hour--Harry!” She stretched out her arms to him. “Be generous!”

He fenced stubbornly.

“What, exactly, do you want, Christine?”

She smiled at him, her face radiant.

“I want--I want just to pretend that it all never happened. I want, just once, to sit with you by the fireside as though I had been here all these years--as though you and I had learned to be the comrades I had dreamed we should be. I want to sit with you as we should have sat, both of us now growing old, looking back on all the beautiful things of our life together. Harry!” She lifted her arms to him again, yearning out to him. “Just once--just once to pretend--to be as we might have been--and then I can go away and really and truly die, satisfied. Be generous, Harry, be generous just this once if you never are again.”

An obscure feeling stirred in him, a sense of tears that threatened as he looked down into the eyes that swam with moisture.

“You nearly broke my life, Christine,” he said, with a hardly achieved attempt at harshness.

“I want to forget it,” she answered. “To believe--for just one hour--that I made your life, as I wanted to help make it. Oh, Harry, Harry, I love you--I have always loved you, wherever I have been and whatever I have done--and I want to believe, oh, for just such a little minute, that my love was not really in vain. I just had to come!”

He pressed his hand over his eyes, did not answer.

She pointed to the comrade chair by the fireside.

“Harry--Harry dear--sit down and talk to me as we ought to have been able to sit and talk--old married lovers with never a cloud between us.”

“Oh--don’t!” he said. “Don’t, Christine!” He burst out with a sudden anger. “Why have you come back? I--I wanted to forget, forget always.”

She reached for his hand, touched it with fingers that were still cold.

“And we are going to forget--going to forget it quite, for just a little hour, Harry, Harry darling!”

Her voice, on the old remembered note of fondness, touched him with a strange power. Something crumbled in him.

He sat down suddenly in the indicated chair, stared, he also, into the fire.

“It’s a bitter mockery, Christine!”

“No,” she answered. “It’s the real thing--for just once--the real thing.”

They sat in silence for long moments where the clock ticked loudly. She stretched her hand out to him.

“Harry! Hold my hand in yours--like you used to do--in the old days before you married me. It will help so much. Can you remember it?--the old touch that used to thrill?”

He obeyed without a word, took her little palm between his two large hands, pressed it close. Its death-like coldness struck him and, in defiance of it, he emphasized his contact. With a sudden tenderness that was awkwardly unpractised, he endeavoured to instil a little of his own warmth into it. As he did so, he felt as it were a sluice-gate open in him. A long-repressed sentimentality asserted itself, invaded his lonely soul like a flood. He looked at her. If only--his protective secondary personality, dominant for so many years, reacted jealously, perverted his regret--if only she could have understood him a little more!

It was she who spoke.

“I’m so proud of you, Harry--so proud of your success!”

He almost started--remembering how he had hoped that she would read his name in the newspapers, in a vindictive desire that she should regret what she had thrown away. He saw, suddenly, that it was only her opinion that had ever really mattered to him.

“My dear,” he said, feeling himself a tolerant old man who could afford to be kind from his altitude, “perhaps if I had never known you, I should never have worked so hard.”

She smiled at him as though there were no irony in his words, but only a beautiful truth.

“Harry--Harry darling!” she murmured. “I have helped--helped a little, haven’t I? My love has been what you said it would be--the vital force on which you could always draw? Do you remember that, the night we were engaged?”

This cool assumption of a dream, utterly opposed to the facts, startled him. He looked at her, and had not the heart to contradict. Suppose it had been so? Could he surrender himself to this make-believe which she was playing with an almost childish simplicity? It was suddenly very tempting to him.

“I remember, my dear--and I promised,” his voice broke a little while he hesitated on a self-reproach, “never--never to cut myself off from it--never to say the harsh word which you warned me would freeze your sensitive little soul.”

“And you never have, Harry,” she murmured, softly. “You’ve always remembered--always been gentle and kind and loving--all these long years of happiness together.”

His eyes felt sympathetically uncomfortable as he looked into hers, moist in the firelight.

“Twenty-seven years, dear,” he said, caressingly, consciously defiant of the jealous self that watched. He had taken the plunge. “Twenty-seven years last week since we married.”

She nodded her head in acquiescence.

“We’ve had our life-time, Harry dear--and we have not wasted it, have we? Every year has been full, full to the brim, with sympathy and love.” She sighed, gazing into the fire. “And that’s the only thing in life that matters--the only thing. Success without love would have been very barren to you, wouldn’t it, Harry?” Her eyes came round to him.

“Dead Sea fruit, my darling,” the illusion was almost perfect to him, the irony without bitterness, scarcely perceived, “dust and ashes at the core.” He smiled at her from a strangely sentimental self that was almost foreign to him and yet his own. “Christine, without you I should not really have lived.”

She answered him with a movement of the fingers now warm between the hands still holding them.

“Nor I, Harry, without you. You and I were each other’s Destiny.”

He, too, nodded his head solemnly.

“Yes, dear,” he agreed. “I believe that.”

“And, thank God, we have not thwarted it, Harry. We have enjoyed it to the full.”

He pressed her hand tightly for his only answer. Dream or reality, was it? He had almost lost the power to distinguish. He looked into her face, softly happy and somehow nobler and purer than he had ever known it, pressed her hand again in a vague necessity to substantiate the tangible actuality of her presence. It was really Christine sitting there, filling that usually empty chair, breathing with slight rise and fall of her bosom as she gazed into the fire. And if the other were a dream--the happy past that she called up in imagination--just an old man’s dream, why he would allow himself, that sentimental self in him that none but himself had ever seen, the happiness of the illusion to the full. There was none to ridicule him for a childish make-believe, unworthy of his dignity.

“Christine,” he said, gently, “are you happy?”

She smiled at him upon her sigh.

“Very happy, dear.”

Again there was a silence between them. Presently she looked up once more.

“It’s splendid the way Phil is getting on, isn’t it, dear?”

He glanced at her from his own dream, uncomprehending. She went on, as though discussing a subject thoroughly familiar.

“Do you remember we said we would call him Philip--our first boy--long before we had him? When we used to talk about him, in those first happy months of being together, it didn’t seem possible that it could ever be really true, did it, dear? And yet there he is--twenty-four years old! It’s difficult for me to think that I ever could have been his mother. When I look at him, so tall and big, it seems impossible that he could once have been my baby.”

He stared at her. What was she talking of? They had never had a child. Then it came to him----

“Yes, dear. He’s a fine chap.”

She smiled at him gratefully.

“I think we were right to let him marry, don’t you, dear? I know he’s very young--but it’s perhaps better than if he waited until he became set in his own habits and could no longer share the youthful high-spirits of his dear little wife--as you very nearly waited too long, didn’t you, dear? Another year or two of getting wrapped up in your own ambitions and you might have crushed all the young life out of me.” Her tone was dreamily sincere.

“Don’t, Christine!” he said, thickly. “I know a lot of it was my fault----”

“Shh!” she soothed him with a gesture of her disengaged hand. “We’re talking about Phil and his charming little wife. She’s just the sort of girl I would have chosen for him, Harry. Young, sensible, pretty, with eyes that look you straight in the face--and she loves him, Harry, like I loved you, with all her young soul.”

He made a little choking sound and pressed her hand--so warm and loving now!--with a convulsive tightness.

“And soon, Harry,” she went on, “we shall be grandparents, you and I--looking forward beyond the next generation to the one after--_living forward_. Life is very wonderful, isn’t it, dear, in its continuity? Our little lives cease, but something of us goes on and on, in generations that we can’t even imagine. Oh, it’s very wonderful!” She sighed. “To think we might have missed it all, if we had not loved!”

“Christine!” He could scarcely speak. “You’re torturing me!”

“Shh!” she said. “It’s all real--it’s all real _now_. Everything else was a bad dream from which we have waked together.”

“If only we could keep awake!” he said, pressing her hand in his as though he would never let it go.

She looked at him archly.

“You were always pessimistic, Harry, weren’t you? Do you remember how you used to say we should never have the little girl for whom we longed, just because we longed for her so much? And now there’s Jeanie! Jeanie who’ll be having her twenty-first birthday in a month or two! And you are proud of her, aren’t you, Harry? Of course you are! We are both proud of such a daughter, just the daughter we imagined.”

He closed his eyes.

“I remember--I remember how we used to talk of the daughter we were going to have. It seems very long ago, Christine, those first months of our life together.”

She smiled.

“And there she is, all our dreams of her coming true, asleep upstairs and very likely herself dreaming of the woman’s life that is opening before her. She’s very real to you, isn’t she, Harry?”

He forced himself to speech with an effort.

“Yes, dear. Go on.”

“She’s worth all the anxieties we had with her--the anxieties we never imagined. Do you remember, when she was a little golden-haired prattler, that awful time when she was ill? Do you remember how I nursed her, night and day--and how you would come tip-toeing to her tiny cot and look down upon it, praying with all your soul that she would not die? I think that was when you first began really to love her very much, Harry--when you thought you might lose her.” She nodded her head in dreamy reminiscence, staring into the fire. “I remember how proud I was when you gave up your work for a day or two because you felt you could not leave the house while she was in danger. It was such a miracle for you to do that--like Joshua stopping the sun--and all because of our tiny little Jeanie. It made me love you, oh, ever so much more, Harry!”

“Go on!” he said, closing his eyes again. “Go on!”

“And then how proud of her you were while she was at school! She always had your brains, Harry, didn’t she? Always she was at the top of her class. I remember”--she smiled--“I used to fear that she might grow too clever and wear spectacles. But there was just that bit of me--of the frivolous me--in her, wasn’t there, Harry? And so just like her mother she grew up to like pretty frocks and look as charming in them as I used to want to look for you to admire me.”

“Never so charming as you used to look, Christine, when you were twenty-one,” he said, his eyes lighting up with a genuine memory. “No one could look prettier than you did.”

Her warm fingers curled in his hard hands and her smile came up to him.

“Thank you, dear. It is nice of you not to forget.”

He breathed a long sigh.

“For every day of twenty-five years, Christine, I have seen you as you used to look then.” There was an emphasis in his subdued and deliberate enunciation that was eloquent of past agonies.

“It was the real Christine, Harry, that twenty-one-year-old Christine who was so proud to be your wife and knew herself to be so unworthy of you.”

“No, no!” he said, hoarsely. “Not unworthy--I didn’t understand then. If only I had understood--if I had not been so absorbed in the things I wanted to do----”