The Business of Life

"Will it spoil you if I tell you?"

"Have you spoiled me very much, Jacqueline?"

"Of course I have," she said hastily. "Listen, and I'll tell you what I thought of you when you first came in. I looked up, and of course I knew at a glance that you were nice; and I was very much impressed – "

"The deuce you were!" he laughed, unbelievingly.

"I was!"

"You didn't show it."

"Only an idiot of a girl would. But I was – very – greatly – impressed," she continued, with a delightfully pompous emphasis on every word, "very – greatly – impressed by the tall and fashionable and elegant and agreeably symmetrical Mr. Desboro, owner of the celebrated collection of arms and armour – "

"I knew it!"

"Knew what?"

"You never even took the trouble to look at me until you found out that the armour belonged to me – "

"That is what ought to have been true. But it wasn't."

"Did you actually – "

"Yes, I did. Not the very second I laid eyes on you – " she added, blushing slightly, "but – when you went away – and afterward – that evening when I was trying to read Grenville on Armour."

"You thought of me, Jacqueline?"

"Yes – and tried not to. But it was no use; I seemed to see you laughing at me under every helmet in Grenville's plates. It was rather odd, wasn't it, Jim? And to think – to think that now – "

Her smile grew vaguer; she dropped her head thoughtfully and rested one hand on the library table, where once her catalogue notes had been piled up – where once Elena's letter to her husband had fallen from Clydesdale's heavy hand.

Then, gradually into her remote gaze came something else, something Desboro had learned to dread; and she raised her head abruptly and gazed straight at him with steady, questioning eyes in which there was a hint of trouble of some kind – perhaps unbelief.

"I suppose you are going to your office," she said.

"After I have taken you to yours, dear."

"You will be at leisure before I am, won't you?"

"Unless you knock off work at four o'clock. Can you?"

"I can not. What will you do until five, Jim?"

"There will be nothing for me to do except wait for you."

"Where will you wait?"

He shrugged: "At the club, I suppose."

The car rolled up past the library windows.

"I suppose," she said carelessly, "that it would be too stupid for you to wait chez moi."

"In your office? No, indeed – "

"I meant in my apartment. You could smoke and read – but perhaps you wouldn't care to."

They went out into the hall, where her maid held her ulster for her and Farris put Desboro into his coat.

Then they entered the car which swung around the oval and glided away toward Silverwood station.

"To tell you the truth, dear," he said, "it would be rather slow for me to sit in an empty room until you were ready to join me."

"Of course. You'd find it more amusing at your club."

"I'd rather be with you at your office."

"Thank you. But some of my clients stipulate that no third person shall be present when their business is discussed."

"All right," he said, shortly.

The faint warmth of their morning's rapprochement seemed somehow to have turned colder, now that they were about to separate for the day. Both felt it; neither understood it. But the constraint which perhaps they thought too indefinite to analyse persisted. She did not fully understand it, except that, in the aftermath of the storm which had nigh devastated her young heart, her physical nearness to him seemed to help the tiny seed of faith which she had replanted in agony and tears the night before.

To see him, hear his voice, somehow aided her; and the charm of his personality for a while had reawakened and encouraged in her the courage to love him. The winning smile in his eyes had, for the time, laid the phantoms of doubt; memory had become less sensitive; the demon of distrust which she had fought off so gallantly lay somewhere inert and almost forgotten in the dim chamber of her mind.

But not dead – no; for somewhere in obscurity she had been conscious for an instant that her enemy was stirring.

Must this always be so? Was faith in this man really dead? Was it only the image of faith which her loyalty and courage had set up once more for an altar amid the ruins of her young heart?

And always, always, even when she seemed unaware, even when she had unconsciously deceived herself, her consciousness of the other woman remained alive, like a spark, whitened at moments by its own ashes, yet burning terribly when touched.

Slowly she began to understand that her supposed new belief in this man would endure only while he was within her sight; that the morning's warmth had slowly chilled as the hour of their separation approached; that her mind was becoming troubled and confused, and her heart uncertain and apprehensive.

And as she thought of the future – years and years of it – there seemed no rest for her, only endless effort and strife, only the external exercise of mental and spiritual courage to fight back the creeping shadow which must always threaten her – the shadow that Doubt casts, and which men call Fear.

"Shall we go to town in the car?" he said, looking at his watch. "We have time; the train won't be in for twenty minutes."

"If you like."

He picked up the speaking tube and gave his orders, then lay back again to watch the familiar landscape with worried eyes that saw other things than hills and trees and wintry fields and the meaningless abodes of men.

So this was what Fate had done to him —this! And every unconsidered act of his had been slyly, blandly, maliciously leading him into this valley of humiliation.

He had sometimes thought of marrying, never very definitely, except that, if love were to be the motive, he would have ample time, after that happened, to reform before his wedding day. Also, he had expected to remain in a laudable and permanent state of regeneration, marital treachery not happening to suit his fastidious taste.

That was what he had intended in the improbable event of marriage. And now, suddenly, from a clear sky, the bolt had found him; love, courtship, marriage, had followed with a rapidity he could scarcely realise; and had left him stranded on the shores of yesterday, discredited, distrusted, deeply, wretchedly in love; not only unable to meet on equal terms the young girl who had become his wife, but the involuntary executioner of her tender faith in him!

To this condition the laws of compensation consigned him. The man-made laws which made his complaisance possible could not help him now; the unwritten social law which acknowledges a double standard of purity for man and woman he must invoke in vain. Before the tribunal of her clear, sweet eyes, and before the chastity of her heart and mind, the ignoble beliefs, the lying precedents, the false standards must fall.