“Millicent?” repeated Jocelyn—“Millicent what?”
“Millicent Chyne.”
Jocelyn folded the morocco case together and handed it back to him.
“She is very pretty,” she repeated slowly, as if her mind could only reproduce—it was incapable of creation.
Oscard looked puzzled. Having risen he did not sit down again, and presently he took his leave, feeling convinced that Jocelyn was about to faint.
When he was gone the girl sat wearily down.
“Millicent Chyne,” she whispered. “What is to be done?”
“Nothing,” she answered to herself after a while. “Nothing. It is not my business. I can do nothing.”
She sat there—alone, as she had been all her life—until the short tropical twilight fell over the forest. Quite suddenly she burst into tears.
“It is my business,” she sobbed. “It is no good pretending otherwise; but I can do nothing.”
XXII
The Second Consignment
Who has lost all hope has also lost all fear.
Among others, it was a strange thing that Jocelyn felt no surprise at meeting the name of Millicent Chyne on the lips of another man. Women understand these things better than we do. They understand each other, and they seem to have a practical way of accepting human nature as it is which we never learn to apply to our fellow-men. They never bluster as we do, nor expect impossibilities from the frail.
Another somewhat singular residue left, as it were, in Jocelyn’s mind when the storm of emotion had subsided was a certain indefinite tenderness for Millicent Chyne. She felt sure that Jack Meredith’s feeling for her was that feeling vaguely called the right one, and, as such, unalterable. To this knowledge the subtle sympathy for Millicent was perhaps attributable. But navigation with pen and thought among the shoals and depths of a woman’s heart is hazardous and uncertain.
Coupled with this—as only a woman could couple contradictions—was an unpardoning abhorrence for the deceit practised. But Jocelyn knew the world well enough to suspect that, if she were ever brought face to face with her meanness, Millicent would be able to bring about her own forgiveness. It is the knowledge of this lamentable fact that undermines the feminine sense of honour.
Lastly, there was a calm acceptance of the fact that Guy Oscard must and would inevitably go to the wall. There could be no comparison between the two men. Millicent Chyne could scarcely hesitate for a moment. That she herself must likewise suffer uncomplainingly, inevitably, seemed to be an equally natural consequence in Jocelyn Gordon’s mind.
She could not go to Jack Meredith and say:
“This woman is deceiving you, but I love you, and my love is a nobler, grander thing than hers. It is no passing fancy of a giddy, dazzled girl, but the deep strong passion of a woman almost in the middle of her life. It is a love so complete, so sufficing, that I know I could make you forget this girl. I could so envelop you with love, so watch over you and care for you, and tend you and understand you, that you must be happy. I feel that I could make you happier than any other woman in the world could make you.”
Jocelyn Gordon could not do this; and all the advanced females in the world, all the blue stockings and divided skirts, all the wild women and those who pant for burdens other than children, will never bring it to pass that women can say such things.
And precisely because she could not say this, Jocelyn felt hot and sick at the very thought that Jack Meredith should learn aught of Millicent Chyne from her. Her own inner motive in divulging what she had learnt from Guy Oscard could never for a moment be hidden behind a wish, however sincere, to act for the happiness of two honourable gentlemen.
Jocelyn had no one to consult—no one to whom she could turn, in the maddening difficulty of her position, for advice or sympathy. She had to work it out by herself, steering through the quicksands by that compass that knows no deviation—the compass of her own honour and maidenly reserve.
Just because she was so sure of her own love she felt that she could never betray the falseness of Millicent Chyne. She felt somehow that Millicent’s fall in Jack Meredith’s estimation would drag down with it the whole of her sex, and consequently herself. She did not dare to betray Millicent, because the honour of her sex must be held up by an exaggerated honour in herself. Thus her love for Jack Meredith tied her hands, while she stood idly by to see him wreck his own life by what could only be a miserable union.
With the clear sight of the onlooker, Jocelyn Gordon now saw that, by Jack Meredith’s own showing, Millicent was quite unworthy of him. But she also remembered words, silences, and hints which demonstrated with lamentable plainness the fact that he loved her. She was old enough and sufficiently experienced to avoid the futile speculation as to what had attracted this love. She knew that men marry women who in the estimation of onlooking relatives are unworthy of them, and live happily ever afterwards, without deeming it necessary to explain to those relatives how it comes about.
Now it happened that this woman—Jocelyn Gordon—was not one of those who gracefully betray themselves at the right moment and are immediately covered with a most becoming confusion. She was strong to hold to her purpose, to subdue herself, to keep silent. And this task she set herself, having thought it all carefully out in the little flower-scented verandah, so full of pathetic association. But it must be remembered that she in no wise seemed to see the pathos in her own life. She was unconscious of romance. It was all plain fact, and the plainest was her love for Jack Meredith.
Her daily life was in no perceptible way changed. Maurice Gordon saw no difference. She had never been an hilarious person. Now
