Complete Story. Her Last Word.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVIII, Issue XXIV, 14 June 1902, Page 1192

Complete Story. Her Last Word.

By

MARTEN MAARTENS.

“Listen —you!” she said. They were in the room together, the drawing-room, over-heated, heavy with flowers and perfumes, the festive drawing-room, with the candles burning yellow beside the dying fire. Their daughter’s wedding was over, the last guests had departed—relations; the hour was four in the afternoon —a drizzly, foggy November afternoon. “What a day for a wedding!” he yawned. “Well, as long as Sissie’s happy! Women that marry are always happy, aren’t they?” “Oh, always!” she answered. He started at the tone of her voice, quite new to him, listened, looked. Then he came round behind her chair, a white haired, well groomed beau of some five-and-fifty, pleasant to look at, admirably dressed. “You, at any rate, are happy, darling,” he said, “have always been happy, haven’t you?” He caressed with light fingers the nape of her neck. “All we can wish for our daughters is that they should be as happy as you.” “They must take their chance,” she said, sadly. “So the last of them is gone. God grant she may love him!” “Of course, she will love him! All good wives love their husbands, don’t they? Fancy a daughter of yours not loving her husband!” Again he carressed the small curls about her neck. “Say you love me—quick!” He did not wait for her answer, but moved towards the door. “I am going to my club for an hour,” he said. It was then she arrested him. “Listen—you!” she said. She had risen and turned towards him—a matron verging on fifty, a handsome woman still. “Why, Alice, what on earth —•” “Hush!” she said. “Listen! Let me speak. At last.” For a moment they remained opposite each other, motionless 2 he astoished, she seeking for breath. “I have borne you two sons and three daughters,” she began. “The last of them left the house this day.” “An undoubted fact,” he said, laughing a little uneasily, because of that strangeness in her manner. “We have been very lucky about the daughters. Of course we have both done our best.” “Lucky!” she echoed. “Marriage is the one happiness for a woman! You have always thought that.” “Well, so it is, isn’t it? Do you know of a better?” "No. It is the supreme happiness. I mean it may be. But not the being

married, as ybu seem to think—anyhow.” “Sissie’s is a very decent match. Her husband seems a good enough sort of fellow, in his way. .1 fancy—” “What do you fancy?” “They will rub on well enough—like most people.” She swept round to the dying fire with a groan. “My daughters’ souls!” she said; “my daughters’ souls!” He eame back from the door. “You are over-tired,” he said, “and nervous. Have some black coffee and lie down a bit before dinner. Days like these are a great strain. You'll be all right after a rest. “If only I could he sure they loved their husbands!” she said, still staring into the fire. “I often think that Mary—Mary—” “You wrong her,” he put in quickly. “Don’t go suggesting things to Mary, for Heaven’s sake. She’s romantic, and there are no more romances in these days. Romance don’t pay. Her husband ain’t half a bad sort, if she only knew how to manage him. He’s got plenty of money, and if he likes to enjoy himself—” “Don't,” she said. "Mary is most like me. Well.” she laughed discordantly, “they must take their chance —like me. We can do almost everything for our children except ensure the happiness of their married life.” “If they are all as lucky as you,” he said, “we shall have no cause to complain. “You are fond of that word ‘lucky,’ ” she answered. “Have I been lucky?” “Oh, well, you know what I mean,” he said, bridling. “Don’t make a fellow ridiculous without reason. When I say ‘lucky’ I mean, of course, that things have turned out well. And—look here—Alice—l’ve never known you so strange as you are to-night—-admit that you might have got a worse husband than me.” “Yes,” she said, slowly. “Oh, yes, I might have got a far worse husband than you.” “That’s a good girl. Why, we’ve loved each other for nearly thirty years. Give me a kiss before I run away to the club.” “No!” she screamed. “Stop! I must, speak to-night. Before you leave the room. I want to say it all. Listen! Sit down! Listen! Let me speak!” He sat down in a maze, shook out a cuff. “Y on say I have loved you for nearly thirty years,” she spoke, standing before him. “I thank God in heaven

you say that. I have beeu a true Wife and honourable *o you—have I not? 1 have brought up the children; I have loved themand cared for them; they have had a happy home. You also have always had a happy home—say, have you not?" “My dear Alice, you have always been the best of wives, and I”—he smiled up at her. “ ‘I have always been the best of husbands’—were you going to sav that?” J “Well, no. That sounds idiotic for a man to saj- of himself. Still ” “I do not aver that you have been a bad husband to me; we have got on very well. I have done all I could; we have not been unsuccessful.” “Why! you speak as if you had never cared for me!” “No!”—her voice grew sadly solemn— “that would not be true. I cared for you a good deal—once. I really liked you, Reginald, when we first married. I honestly liked you and admired you, with ‘ an honest girl s liking for the man who has asked her to be his wife. I think I might well have got to love you in time.” “Alice! My God—Alice!” “Oh, don’t make yourself nervous! I have never loved any other man. I have met men I thought I might have loved had I been married to them, but quite possibly I would have proved mistaken.” “But I! Me! Do you mean to say you never loved me? What in heaven s name do you mean? And I, who ’° Ted you all my life long, She turned round upon him. “Have you ever loved me for anything but yourself?” she said. “I don’t understand what you mean. \ou can’t know yourself! You haven t any idea what you’re savino-! take some black coffee, and— ” I know what I am saying too well. For more than twenty years I have been waiting to say. I have tried to say it once or twice in a different way—very different—but I left off trying. I saw how completely useless it was. It could do no good. Onlv harm.’’ J “Then why say it now?” A great light came into her eyes. “Ah!” she said, “the last child has left the house to-day. They are all married now. Their happiness is in their own hands. I can do no more. We are alone in the house to-night.” “And that is why you seize the opportunity to say a lot of unpleasant things to me—-things you cannot possibly mean!” “Oh, no,” she answered vehemently, “it isn’t that. Don’t think it is that. I should never have been uselessly unkind to you. I never have been. But see here: the whole thing 1 is over now. It is over, don’t you understand? But how shall I ever make you understand? How shall I ever say .what I want to say?” She faltered, and caught at the back of a chair. “What is over?” he asked in a daze. “Everything is over —the strain, the life-long annoyance, the worry, the grievance. It is over. It can be over.It must be over. I leave the house tonight.” “You are mad!” he cried. “No, I am not mad. I want to tell you gently; but I want to tell you clearly, too. I haven’t cared for other people—at least, not too much. I think I might have loved you, I feel sure. But I have said that before. Reginald, remember our long 1 life together. I have always done what you liked; I have worn the things you wanted me to wear—always—exactly as you wanted me to wear them; I have known the people you wanted me to know, and had them to dinner, and asked them to stay with us. Oh, I know they were quite nice people; I am not denying that. If we have ever quarrelled it has been about the children—-only about the children—admit that.” “Yes,” he said sullenly. “You have always had your own way in everything all these eight-and-twenty years. At first, I—l tried to have my own way sometimes—in little matters—but—but ” She broke off impatiently. “I cannot stand scenes.” she went on, with a change of voice. “I am not that sort of woman. Perhaps it would have been, wiser—l cannot help my-

self. Things have gone very smoothly since." She waited. There was a moment’s listening silence, and the ticking of the clock. “You have never once asked," she said dully, her sad eyes again fixed on the embers, “never once asked what I should have liked.” “Why, you had everything you eould possibly want. And, besides, it is absurd to say that I never asked what yon wanted to do. Y'ou make me out a ridiculous Bluebeard!” He spoke hotly. “And everyone knows that, whatever my faults may be, I have always been one of the most good-natured of men. As a boy ” “Of course you have let me choose in trifles,” she interrupted, “matters of no importance—whether we should go to Yorkshire or the Highlands, and things of that kind, occasionally. No, you are not a bit like Bluebeard. But you have never once asked me what I really wanted to do. And—and” —her voice sank into the depths of sad memory—“you have never onee seen when I was tired.” He stared at her. “Please don’t let there be any recriminations. They are quite unnecessary, and so useless after 28 years! You see, I am going away tonight. You must not want to keep me. It. would be quite useless. Everything ’s useless now.” “But what—may I ask—do you intend to do?” “Oh, I shall not disgrace you, or myself, in any way. No, nor the children. We have each got our own money, haven’t we? I shall go and live very quietly in the country, not too far from London; for I must come up and see the children often. I shall not be in your way- And I shall now go sometimes and hear some good music—you never would go, as you know; or, if you went, you yawned, and showed me you hated it. And 1 shall give up society, the endless dinners and receptions and things I always hated. So you see I shall not be in your way.” “Any more?” he asked ironically, in his wrath and his despair. “Yes, I shall see more of my mother’s relatives, whom I used to be so fond of—the cousins I grew up with, whom you cut, because you said they were Papists.” “Well, so they are —and you such a good church-woman.” “For that very reason I do not. mind. I should not have minded either, had you been a religious man, if religion had been your motive in cutting them.” “I hate Papists,” he said moodily. “Yes,” she answered in the same gentle voice; “and so we cut Archie and his wife, and the rest- But now I shall see them again, if they will have me. And I shall go to some watering place for my rheumatism, to Aix-les-Bains, which Dr. Dennison said he thought would very likely cure me, if I don’t put it off again.” “I am sure I should have been quite willing to go to Aix-les-Bains,” he objected, “if you really had thought it would do you good. All these foreign watering 1 places are rot, I imagine. Give me the air of our English moors.” “Yes, and the shooting,” she said: a white, gleam of hatred flickered across her pale blue eyes. “I have done my duty,” she said, speaking steadily. “Before God, I have done my duty. He cannot expect me to do more- I have been a faithful wife to you all this time, the keeper of your home, I have often thought it out: the end would come. That- has helped me through. I have a right to what is left of my life. Why, I am still almost a young woman. T may live thirty years more.” She shuddered. “ My mother is still alive, and she is nearly eighty.” “Oh, well, look here, you must do as you please,” he said. But the ruse, if such it was, failed utterly. He thought it had succeeded, for she sank her face upon her hands, and he could see that she was crying. “Come,” he said soothingly, with the easy soothing which irritates. “You are nervous. You don’t know what you’ve been saying. Lie down

and have some strong ” He gently put his baud against her neck. She started up aa If he had stung her. She was away at a bound to the other end of the room. “Don’t touch me!” she cried. “Never, never—you will never touch me again! I loathe you! I detest you! Oh, my God, why do you make me say It? I wanted to go without saying it- Why don’t you let me go without saying it? I loathe the very touch of your hand, the very sound of your voice! I loathe you for treating me all these years like your servant, your spaniel, your plaything! Great Heavens! don’t let’s grow melodramatic!" she stopped, shook her head, and stood still. “Do not let us part in anger," she said, holding out. her hand. But he did not take it, lolling miserably against the wall. She slowly towards the door, and his eyes followed her. “Not a word of farewell?" he said inconsistently. She turned by the door. “Yes," she said softly. “God bless you. God forgive me if I am acting selfishly. I do not think so- It seems to me I am doing right. Y’ou will be quite as happy without me—happier; and we have all only one life. I cannot stay on thus, in these thoughts, these feelings, daily. It is wickedness. I am damning my own soul.” He stood looking at her. She turned again, very slowly, and went out at the door, and closed it behind her He, as the lock sank into the slot, took to pacing the room to and fro, up and down. He did so for some minutes, in the dullness of the sinking candles, the vague atmosphere!"

tog behind the curtains, the dying fire. Then he stood still, in the middle of the drawing room, and drew out his cigar case and lit a cigar.