“How cruel you can be.”
“Have I done anything to interfere with you? Have I said a word even to that young lad, when I might have said a word? Yes; to him I did say something; but I waited, and would not say it, while a word could hurt you. Shall I tell you what I told him? Just everything that has ever happened between you and me.”
“You did?”
“Yes;—because I saw that I could trust him. I told him because I wanted him to be quite sure that I had never loved him. But, Frank, I have put no spoke in your wheel. There has not been a moment since you told me of your love for this rich young lady in which I would not have helped you had help been in my power. Whomever I may have harmed, I have never harmed you.”
“Am I not as clear from blame towards you?”
“No, Frank. You have done me the terrible evil of ceasing to love me.”
“It was at your own bidding.”
“Certainly! but if I were to bid you to cut my throat, would you do it?”
“Was it not you who decided that we could not wait for each other?”
“And should it not have been for you to decide that you would wait?”
“You also would have married.”
“It almost angers me that you should not see the difference. A girl unless she marries becomes nothing, as I have become nothing now. A man does not want a pillar on which to lean. A man, when he has done as you had done with me, and made a girl’s heart all his own, even though his own heart had been flexible and plastic as yours is, should have been true to her, at least for a while. Did it never occur to you that you owed something to me?”
“I have always owed you very much.”
“There should have been some touch of chivalry if not of love to make you feel that a second passion should have been postponed for a year or two. You could wait without growing old. You might have allowed yourself a little space to dwell—I was going to say on the sweetness of your memories. But they were not sweet, Frank; they were not sweet to you.”
“These rebukes, Mabel, will rob them of their sweetness—for a time.”
“It is gone; all gone,” she said, shaking her head—“gone from me because I have been so easily deserted; gone from you because the change has been so easy to you. How long was it, Frank, after you had left me before you were basking happily in the smiles of Lady Mary Palliser?”
“It was not very long, as months go.”
“Say days, Frank.”
“I have to defend myself, and I will do so with truth. It was not very long—as months go; but why should it have been less long, whether for months or days? I had to cure myself of a wound.”
“To put a plaster on a scratch, Frank.”
“And the sooner a man can do that the more manly he is. Is it a sign of strength to wail under a sorrow that cannot be cured—or of truth to perpetuate the appearance of a woe?”
“Has it been an appearance with me?”
“I am speaking of myself now. I am driven to speak of myself by the bitterness of your words. It was you who decided.”
“You accepted my decision easily.”
“Because it was based not only on my unfitness for such a marriage, but on yours. When I saw that there would be perhaps some years of misery for you, of course I accepted your decision. The sweetness had been very sweet to me.”
“Oh Frank, was it ever sweet to you?”
“And the triumph of it had been very great. I had been assured of the love of her who among all the high ones of the world seemed to me to be the highest. Then came your decision. Do you really believe that I could abandon the sweetness, that I could be robbed of my triumph, that I could think I could never again be allowed to put my arm round your waist, never again to feel your cheek close to mine, that I should lose all that had seemed left to me among the gods, without feeling it?”
“Frank, Frank!” she said, rising to her feet, and stretching out her hands as though she were going to give him back all these joys.
“Of course I felt it. I did not then know what was before me.” When he said this she sank back immediately upon her seat. “I was wretched enough. I had lost a limb and could not walk; my eyes, and must always hereafter be blind; my fitness to be among men, and must always hereafter be secluded. It is so that a man is stricken down when some terrible trouble comes upon him. But it is given to him to retrick his beams.”
“You have retricked yours.”
“Yes;—and the strong man will show his strength by doing it quickly. Mabel, I sorrowed for myself greatly when that word was spoken, partly because I thought that your love could so easily be taken from me. And, since I have found that it has not been so, I have sorrowed for you also. But I do not blame myself, and—and I will not submit to have blame even from you.” She stared him in the face as he said this. “A man should never submit to blame.”
“But if he has deserved it?”
“Who is to be the judge? But why should we contest this? You do not really wish to trample on me!”
“No;—not that.”
“Nor to disgrace me; nor to make me feel myself disgraced in my own judgment?” Then there was a pause for some moments as though he had left her without another word to say. “Shall I go now?” he asked.
“Oh Frank!”
“I fear that my presence only makes you unhappy.”
“Then what will your absence do? When shall I see you again? But, no; I will not see
