'Ah, my dear, you are the noblest man I have ever known; I wish we women could be like men. But, oh, Jack, Jack, don't be quixotic! I can't give you up, my dear—that would never be for my good. Think how unhappy I have been all these years; think how Rudolph is starving my soul! I want to be free, Jack; I want to live my own life,—for at least a month or so—'
Patricia shivered here. 'But none of us is sure of living for a month. You've shown me a glimpse of what life might be; don't let me sink back into the old, humdrum existence from a foolish sense of honor! I tell you, I should go mad! I mean to have my fling while I can get it. And I mean to have it with you, Jack—just you! I don't fear poverty. You could write some more wonderful books. I could work, too, Jack dear. I—I could teach music—or take in washing—or something, anyway. Lots of women support themselves, you know. Oh, Jack, we would be so happy! Don't be honorable and brave and disagreeable, Jack dear!'
For a moment Charteris was silent. The nostrils of his beak-like nose widened a little, and a curious look came into his face. He discovered something in the sand that interested him.
'After all,' he demanded, slowly, 'is it necessary—to go away—to be happy?'
'I don't understand.' Her hand lifted from his arm; then quick remorse smote her, and it fluttered back, confidingly.
Charteris rose to his feet. 'It is, doubtless, a very spectacular and very stirring performance to cast your cap over the wind-mill in the face of the world; but, after all, is it not a bit foolish, Patricia? Lots of people manage these things—more quietly.'
'Oh, Jack!' Patricia's face turned red, then white, and stiffened in a sort of sick terror. She was a frightened Columbine in stone. 'I thought you cared for me—really, not—that way.'
Patricia rose and spoke with composure. 'I think I'll go back to the house, Mr. Charteris. It's a bit chilly here. You needn't bother to come.'
Then Mr. Charteris laughed—a choking, sobbing laugh. He raised his hands impotently toward heaven. 'And to think,' he cried, 'to think that a man may love a woman with his whole heart—with all that is best and noblest in him—and she understand him so little!'
'I do not think I have misunderstood you,' Patricia said, in a crisp voice. 'Your proposition was very explicit. I—am sorry. I thought I had found one thing in the world which I would regret to leave—'
'And you really believed that I could sully the great love I bear you by stooping to—that! You really believed that I would sacrifice to you my home life, my honor, my prospects—all that a man can give—without testing the quality of your love! You did not know that I spoke to try you—you actually did not know! Eh, but yours is a light nature, Patricia! I do not reproach you, for you are only as your narrow Philistine life has made you. Yet I had hoped better things of you, Patricia. But you, who pretend to care for me, have leaped at your first opportunity to pain me—and, if it be any comfort to you, I confess you have pained me beyond words.' And he sank down on the log, and buried his face in his hands.
She came to him—it was pitiable to see how she came to him, laughing and sobbing all in one breath—and knelt humbly by his side, and raised a grieved, shamed, penitent face to his.
'Forgive me!' she wailed; 'oh, forgive me!'
'You have pained me beyond words, Patricia,' he repeated. He was not angry—only sorrowful and very much hurt.
'Ah, Jack! dear Jack, forgive me!'
Mr. Charteris sighed. 'But, of course, I forgive you, Patricia,' he said. 'I cannot help it, though, that I am foolishly sensitive where you are concerned. And I had hoped you knew as much.'
She was happy now. 'Dear boy,' she murmured, 'don't you see it's just these constant proofs of the greatness and the wonderfulness of your love—Really, though, Jack, wasn't it too horrid of me to misunderstand you so? Are you quite sure you're forgiven me entirely—without any nasty little reservations?'
Mr. Charteris was quite sure. His face was still sad, but it was benevolent.
'Don't you see,' she went on, 'that it's just these things that make me care for you so much, and feel sure as eggs is eggs we will be happy? Ah, Jack, we will be so utterly happy that I am almost afraid to think of it!' Patricia wiped away the last tear, and laughed, and added, in a matter-of-fact fashion: 'There's a train at six-five in the morning; we can leave by that, before anyone is up.'
Charteris started. 'Your husband loves you,' he said, in gentle reproof. 'And quite candidly, you know, Rudolph is worth ten of me.'
'Bah, I tell you, that was a comedy for my benefit,' she protested, and began to laugh. Patricia was unutterably happy now, because she, and not John Charteris, had been in the wrong. 'Poor Rudolph!—he has such a smug horror of the divorce-court that he would even go so far as to pretend to be in love with his own wife in order to keep out of it. Really, Jack, both our better-halves are horribly commonplace and they will be much better off without us.'
'You forget that Rudolph has my word of honor,' said Mr. Charteris, in indignation.
And that instant, with one of his baffling changes of mood, he began to laugh. 'Really, though, Patricia, you are very pretty. You are April embodied in sweet flesh; your soul is just a wisp of April cloud, and your life an April day, half sun that only seems to warm, and half tempest that only plays at ferocity; but you are very pretty. That is why I am thinking, light-headedly, it would be a fine and past doubt an agreeable exploit to give up everything for such a woman, and am complacently comparing myself to Antony at Actium. I am thinking it would be an interesting episode in one's
Then presently, sighing, he was grave again. 'But, no! Rudolph has my word of honor,' Mr. Charteris repeated, and with unconcealed regret.
'Ah, does that matter?' she cried. 'Does anything matter, except that we love each other? I tell you I have given the best part of my life to that man, but I mean to make the most of what is left. He has had my youth, my love—there was a time, you know, when I actually fancied I cared for him—and he has only made me unhappy. I hate him, I loathe him, I detest him, I despise him! I never intend to speak to him again—oh, yes, I shall have to at supper, I suppose, but that doesn't count. And I tell you I mean to be happy in the only way that's possible. Everyone has a right to do that. A woman has an especial right to take her share of happiness in any way she can, because her hour of it is so short. Sometimes—sometimes the woman knows how short it is and it almost frightens her…. But at best, a woman can be really happy through love alone, Jack dear, and it's only when we are young and good to look at that men care for us; after that, there is nothing left but to take to either religion or hand- embroidery, so what does it matter, after all? Yes, they all grow tired after a while. Jack, I am only a vain and frivolous person of superlative charm, but I love you very much, my dear, and I solemnly swear to commit suicide the moment my first wrinkle arrives. You shall never grow tired of me, my dear.'
She laughed to think how true this was.
She hurried on: 'Jack, kneel down at once, and swear that you are perfectly sore with loving me, as that ridiculous person says in Dickens, and whose name I never could remember. Oh, I forgot—Dickens caricatures nature, doesn't he, and isn't read by really cultured people? You will have to educate me up to your level, Jack, and I warn you in advance you will not have time to do it. Yes, I am quite aware that I am talking nonsense, and am on the verge of hysterics, thank you, but I rather like it. It is because I am going to have you all to myself for whatever future there is, and the thought makes me quite drunk. Will you kindly ring for the patrol-wagon, Jack? Jack, are you quite sure you love me? Are you perfectly certain you never loved any one else half so much? No, don't answer me, for I intend to do all the talking for both of us for the future! I shall tyrannize over you frightfully, and you will like it. All I ask in return is that you will be a good boy—by which I mean a naughty boy—and do solemnly swear, promise and affirm that you will meet me at the side-door at half-past five in the morning, with a portmanteau and the intention of never going back to your wife. You swear it? Thank you so much! Now, I think I would like to cry for a few minutes, and, after that, we will go back to the house, before supper is over and my eyes are perfectly crimson.'
In fact, Mr. Charteris had consented. Patricia was irresistible as she pleaded and mocked and scolded and coaxed and laughed and cried, all in one bewildering breath. Her plan was simple; it was to slip out of Matocton at dawn, and walk to the near-by station. There they would take the train, and snap their fingers at convention. The scheme sounded preposterous in outline, but she demonstrated its practicability in performance. And Mr. Charteris consented.
