The Pest 32

The Pest 32

Marian left the party, her departure not meeting with any real protest,

and the next morning received a visit from Mrs. Harding, whose skin was

unwholesome to look at and her eyes blowzed and bloodshot.

 

“I suppose you’ll tell me it serves me right,” she said, “but my head’s

aching fit to split. I wouldn’t have come down, but I’ve run out of

brandy; don’t preach, dear, but just be good and give me a B. and S.”

 

For a week or so after the dinner with West, Marian’s life was very

quiet outwardly. Inwardly she lived tossed this way and that by a

turmoil of contrary desires. She realized with terror that she was

losing grip upon herself; that her physical emotions were daily growing

more and more imperious. When she had sundered herself from her old and

had plunged into this new life, she had fully counted on using her

bodily gifts to procure her the ends for which her soul thirsted. But

this life was different to what she had expected it to be, and now her

mental desires were rapidly growing weaker, and the lust of mere

pleasure and excitement was usurping their place.

 

Her visit to Maddison at Rottingdean and her friendship with West had

stayed for a while this degeneration, and now she had come to look upon

the latter as the one bulwark remaining between her and a life of

promiscuous debauchery.

 

The time, too, was approaching for her to go down to Rottingdean again,

and the thought of seeing Maddison was very distasteful. His letters

came regularly, full of love and devotion, telling how much he missed

her, how often he thought of her, how difficult he found it to stick to

his work, how dissatisfied he was with the result, and how he counted

the hours to the day when he should see her again. She wrote at less

length and less frequently than he did, and each time the effort was

more laborious to her. She was anxious that he should not discover her

discontent, still more that he should not obtain any inkling that he was

not as dear and as necessary to her as she was to him. Now and again

dread came to her when she thought of what might happen when she

dismissed him.

 

Her loneliness rendered all these thoughts the more distressing to her;

she was unable to escape from herself, and herself was the very worst

and most hurtful company that she could have.

 

Broken sleep, which quickly became night-long sleeplessness, was the

inevitable result.

 

One night she lay awake, restlessly shifting her position from time to

time; striving to rest her mind by fixing it upon matters of

indifference, but without success. Then of a sudden there swept down

upon her a terror that had often stricken her when a child, but from

which she had not suffered of recent years. What if this sleeplessness

should prove incurable and kill her? Or the beginning of a dangerous

illness? She turned cold and faint with the horror of the thought of

death. Not of the physical pain with which it might be accompanied, but

of the thing itself. She could not lie there any longer in the dark;

turning up the light brought no comfort, only rendering the idea of

death more real. She imagined herself lying there, a nurse in the room,

Maddison, perhaps, by her side. She knowing, they knowing, that Death

stood outside the door, his grisly knuckle sounding for the admission

that could not be denied. There was added an oppressive sense of being

alone; she refrained with difficulty from shrieking, just for the sake

of hearing some living response.

 

She recalled how once, soon after their marriage, her husband had

suffered from a long spell of sleeplessness, brought upon him by

over-work, and how she had told him again and again that if he would

only exert his will he could overcome his trouble. She remembered, too,

that the doctor had ordered him to set aside his teetotal scruples, and

drink each night before going to bed a glass of brandy and water, and

how much she had disliked the smell of the spirit.

 

She slipped out of bed, shivering, for the night was bitter cold, and

having wrapped herself in her dressing gown made her way to the dining

room. She poured out about a wineglassful of brandy into a tumbler,

added water, and drank it hastily. She shuddered as she put the glass

down, but the quick warmth of the liquor comforted her, running like

heat through her frame.

 

After a while she slept heavily, wakening late in the morning, parched

and unrefreshed. She was not hungry, but drank her tea eagerly, feeling

refreshed for a time.

 

The following night she placed the decanter of brandy and the water

carafe on the table by her bedside, and as soon as she became restless

had recourse to them. This time the spirit did not soothe but excited

her; wild, aimless thoughts chased one another rapidly, until it seemed

as if her brain would burst. She drank again, pouring out a larger

amount of the brandy than before; stupor, then restless slumber

resulting.

 

The thought of each approaching night came to be a terror by day. She

sat up late reading—reading until her eyes fell heavy with sleep. Then

to bed and to sleeplessness.

 

She saw no one; Geraldstein had dropped her; West did not come, and she

did not see anything of Mortimer. Mrs. Harding came in once or twice,

but her presence was an irritation.

 

Then came the appointed day for her going to Maddison, and, to her

surprise, it was with a sense almost of relief that she found herself in

the train, speeding away from London.

 

He met her at the station, and although he said little, she could not

but discern in his face the intense joy it was to him to see her again.

He looked tired and troubled; even the light of love that sprang into

his eyes as they rested on her did not dispel from them the curious look

that shows in them when a man is eagerly searching after that which he

cannot find. As it was raining they drove the whole way to the cottage,

not talking much as they went, he seemingly content to be quiet, holding

her hand tightly in his own.

 

Mrs. Witchout greeted Marian cordially.

 

“You don’t lookaswell, though, as when you went away,” she said

critically; “does she, Mr. Maddison? I do hear as rosy cheeks ain’t the

fashun in Lunnon. But, there, Lunnon fashuns ain’t the onlyonesworth

follering. Lunch is ready; Mr. Maddison says I ought to call it

luncheon, but I don’t see that it matters what you callthingso long as

peopleknows whatyermeans.”

 

“And how’s the work getting on?” Marian asked, as they went into the

studio.

 

“Lamely. Only hobbling. I’ve finished Mrs. West. What do _you_ think of

it?”

 

“What does she is more to the point?”

 

“No; what do you?”

 

Marian looked long at the portrait before she answered. It was evidently

very like the original, but there was something in the face that puzzled

her.

 

“You told me she was a doll!” she exclaimed.

 

“Yes, but I’ve discovered that dolls have hearts as well as sawdust in

them.”

 

“Oh!”

 

“Is that all you notice?”

 

“Ye-es, I think so,” she answered. “I like it.”

 

He laid his hands on her shoulders, and moved her so that the light fell

full upon her face; then scanned her features closely.

 

“I’m right,” he said, “right. Go and look in the glass there, then look

at the picture again, and see if _you_ don’t find something of yourself

reflected in what I meant to be a portrait of another woman.”

 

Marian looked closely again at the picture; it was true; as he said

there was a distinct semblance of herself, a fleeting likeness which it

was impossible to define, but unmistakable.

 

“You see, Marian, I’ve tried doing without you and I cannot; we must

never leave each other again—why should we? We love each other—you do

love me still, dear, don’t you?”

 

“Yes, George, of course I do.”

 

“Of course you do! That sounds so cold. It seems to me this way,” he

said, sitting down, drawing her on to his knee and resting his head

against her shoulder; “life’s so short, and there’s only one thing in it

worth having; your love’s just all to me. So why waste any of our time

by being apart? We can go away and live quite quietly somewhere, or live

here—it’s cheap enough; and if I only paint a picture a year we shall

be well off, even if they’re not my best,” he added, sighing and looking

at the portrait.

 

She did not answer him, but fondled his hair and pressed him close to

her, which she knew would speak to him more eloquently than any words

she could put together. Never before had she felt quite so helpless to

deal with this love of his, which had grown so much more intense than

she had counted upon its becoming. At any rate the time was not yet come

for her to show him anything of coldness, and her cool fingers ran

through his thick dark hair and he was comforted.

 

“I must put you into another picture; make myself immortal by painting

you always; you must be my Emma. What shall it be next? As a Bacchante?

Your eyes wild with excitement and your cheeks glowing like red roses?

Your lips just parted and your little teeth peeping out between? I

_could_ do it; by Jove, I will do it. We’ll begin to-morrow; we mustn’t

work to-day. That’s my mistake! I ought never to have tried to paint without you as my model.”