Meanwhile things with Basil and Jenny had gone from bad to worse. There had been no power in their reconciliation to pacify the Fates, and presently another violent quarrel proved that under no circumstances could they live without discord. Basil, training his tongue to silence whatever the provocation, maintained over himself the most careful restraint; but it was very irksome, and in his breast there arose gradually a blind and angry hatred for Jenny because she made him suffer such unspeakable torture. They had so fallen out of sympathy that he never realized how ardent her love for him still was, and that she tormented him only on this account. So passed the summer, for Basil, crippled with debts, felt bound to remain in chambers through the vacation on the chance of picking up a stray brief which no one else was on hand to take.

A profound depression settled upon him, and he brooded hopelessly over the future. What had it to offer but a continuance of this unceasing pain? He looked into the years dragging out their weary length, and it seemed to him impossible to live under such conditions. Only his passion for Hilda Murray supported him, for therein he seemed to find strength to face the world, and at the same time resignation. He had learnt to ask for little from the gods, and was content to love without hope of reward. He was immensely grateful for her friendship, and felt that she understood and sympathized with his distress. Mrs. Murray spent the summer abroad, but wrote often, and her letters made him happy for days. In his solitary walks he analyzed his feelings endlessly, telling himself that they were very pure; and just because he thought of her so much it seemed to him that he grew better and simpler. In October she returned, and two days later Basil called upon her, but was grievously disappointed to find Mr. Farley already on the scene. Basil detested the Vicar of All Souls, detecting in him a rival who lay under no such disadvantage as himself. Mr. Farley was still a handsome man, with the air and presence of a person of importance. His conversation smacked of the diner-out who could discuss urbanely all the topics used at the tables of the cultured. He was diverting and easy, knowing well the discreet thing to say; and about his manner towards Mrs. Murray was a subtle but significant flattery. Basil was hugely annoyed by the familiarity with which he used the woman whom himself could only treat quite formally. They appeared to have little understandings which made him furiously jealous. Hilda had busied herself in certain charitable concerns of the Vicar of All Souls, and with much laughter they discussed the various amusing things to which these had given rise.

Basil went home sullen and resentful, thinking through the whole evening of Hilda, whom he had left with Mr. Farley, and when he went to bed gained no repose. He heard the hours strike one after the other, and turned from side to side restlessly, striving to get a little sleep; his love now was uncontrollable, and he was mad with grief and pain. He tried not to think of Hilda, but each subject he forced upon his brain gave way to her image, and in hopeless woe he asked himself how he could bear with life. He tried to reason, saying that this height of passion could only be temporary, and in a very few months he would look upon the present madness with scorn; he tried to soothe his aching heart by turning his emotion to literary uses, and set himself to describe his agony in words, as though he were going to write it in a novel. But nothing served. When the clock struck five he was thankful that only three hours remained before he could reasonably get up. He thought to read, but had not the heart to do anything which should disturb the bitter-sweet of his contemplation. Next morning at breakfast Jenny noticed that his eyes were heavy with want of rest, his mouth drawn and haggard, and with jealous intuition guessed the cause. She sought to make him angry, and the opportunity coming, made some spiteful remark; but he was listless; he looked up wearily, too exhausted to reply. They ate breakfast in silence, and then with heavy heart he set out for his daily work.

So things continued through the autumn, and with November the winter set in cold, dark, and wet. Coming home in the evenings, Basil’s heart sank when he entered the street in which was his house; he felt sick with the sordid regularity of all those little dwellings exactly like one another. Miss Ley, perhaps ironically, had once remarked that life in a suburb must be quite idyllic; and Basil laughed savagely when he thought that only the milk-cart and the barrel-organ disturbed the romantic seclusion. He loathed his neighbours, with whom he knew Jenny discussed him, and shuddered with horror at their narrow lives, from which was excluded firmly all that made existence comely and urbane.

It was inevitable that quarrels should occur between the pair, notwithstanding Basil’s determination to avoid friction, and of late these on both sides were grown more bitter. On a certain occasion, taking up his letters, noticed that one had already been opened, and then somewhat clumsily fastened down; he glanced at Jenny, who was watching him, but she quickly dropped her eyes. Her suspicions had been aroused evidently because of the pink paper; Private was written above the address, and on the back was a golden initial. It was merely an offer from a money-lender to accommodate him with any sum between five pounds and five thousand, and he could not help a little laugh of scorn because Jenny, on steaming it open, had found nothing but an impudent circular: when she heard this she coloured furiously. She waited for him to speak, but he, only wondering why she had not the sense altogether to suppress that communication, said nothing. In a minute or two he gathered up his correspondence, and taking some paper, walked towards the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked abruptly, “Can’t you write in here?”

“Certainly, if it pleases you, but I have some rather bothering letters, and I want to be perfectly quiet.”

She flung aside the work on which she was engaged, and faced him angrily, stung to the quick by the indifference of his tone and manner.

“I suppose you have no objection to my talking to you when I want to say something? You seem to think only fit to see after the house and mend your clothes, after that I can go and sit in the kitchen with the servant.”

“D’you think it’s worth while making a scene? We seem to have said all this before so many times.”

“I want to have it out.”

“We’ve been having it out twice a week for the last six months,” he answered, bored to extinction, “and we’ve never got anywhere yet.”

“Am I your wife or not, Basil?”

“You have your marriage lines carefully locked up to prove it.” He looked at her reflectively, putting back the letters in his desk. “They say the first year of marriage is he worst; ours has been bad enough, in all conscience, hasn’t it?”

“I suppose you think it’s my fault?”

She spoke aggressively, with a sort of brutal sneer, but somehow it seemed no longer to affect him; he was able in a manner to look on this scene with a curious detachment, as though he were a spectator at a theatre watching players acting their parts.

“After all, I tried my best to make you happy.”

“Well, you haven’t succeeded very well. Did you think I was likely to be happy when you left me alone all day and half the night for the swell friends for whom I’m not good enough?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“You know very well that I scarcely ever see any of my old friends.”

“Except Mrs. Murray, eh?” she interrupted.

“I’ve seen Mrs. Murray a dozen times in the last year.”

“Oh, you needn’t tell me that; I know it. She’s a lady, isn’t she?”

Basil stared coolly at his wife; though asking himself why that name had occurred to her, it never dawned on him that she could suspect how violent was his passion. But he meant to ignore the charge.

“My work takes me away from you,” he said. “Think how bored you’d be if I were always here.”

“A precious lot of good your work does,” she cried scornfully. “You can’t earn enough money to keep us out of debt.”

“We are in debt, but we share that very respectable condition with half the nobility and gentry in the kingdom.”

“All the neighbours know that we’ve got bills with the tradesmen.”

Basil flushed and tightened his lips.

“I’m sorry that you shouldn’t have made so good a bargain as you expected when you married me,” he replied acidly.

“I wonder what you do succeed in. Your book was very successful, wasn’t it? You thought you were going to set the Thames on fire, and it fell flat, flat, flat!”

“That is a fate which has befallen better books than mine,” he answered, with a laugh.

“It deserved it.”

“I didn’t expect you to appreciate it. Unfortunately, it’s not given to all of us to write about wicked earls and beautiful duchesses.”

“The papers praised it, didn’t they?”

“The unanimity of their blame was the only thing that consoled me. I often wonder if the reviewer who abuses you realizes what pleasure he causes to the wife of your bosom.”

It was Basil’s apparent indifference to her taunts, his disdain and bitter sarcasm, that made Jenny lose all restraint. Often she could not see the point of his replies, but vaguely felt that he laughed at her; and then her passionate wrath knew no limits.

“Oh, I’ve learnt to know you so well since the baby died,” she said, clenching her hands. “You’ve got no cause to set yourself up on a pedestal. I know what you are now; I was such a fool as to think you a hero. You’re merely a failure. In everything you try you’re a miserable failure.”

He faced her steadily, but a look of complete despair came into his eyes, for she had voiced with sufficient emphasis the thought which for so many months had wormed its way into his soul, destroying all his energy; he saw the future like a man condemned to death, for whom the beauty of life is only bitterness.

“Perhaps you’re right, Jenny,” he replied’ “I dare say I’m only a rotten failure.”

He walked up and down the room, reflecting bitterly, and then stared out of the window at the even row of houses, somehow more sordid than ever in the dim light of gas-jets. He shuddered when he looked round this parlour, so common, so uninteresting; and like a sudden rush of water overwhelming, came the recollection of all the misery he had suffered within those four walls. Jenny had again taken up her sewing, and was hemming dusters; he sat down beside her.

“Look here, Jenny, I want to have a rather serious talk with you. I should like you to listen quietly for a few minutes, and I want to put away all passion and temper, so that we may discuss the matter quite reasonably. We don’t seem able to get on very well, and I see no chance of things going any better. You’re unhappy, and I’m afraid I’m not very happy, either; I don’t want to seem selfish, but I can’t do any work or anything while this sort of thing continues. And I feel that all these quarrels are so awfully degrading. Don’t you think it would be better for both of us if we lived apart for a bit? Perhaps later on we might try again.”

While he spoke Jenny had watched with startled eyes, but, though vaguely alarmed, did not till quite the end understand to what his words tended. Then she could scarcely answer.

“D’you mean to say you want to separate? And what’ll you do?”

“I should go abroad for awhile.”

“With Mrs. Murray?” she cried excitedly. “Is that it! You want to go away with her. You’re sick of me. You’ve had all you want out of me, and now I can go. The fine lady comes along, and you send me away like a housemaid. D’you think I can’t see that you’re in love with her? You’d sacrifice me without a thought to save her a moment’s unpleasantness. And because you love her you hate me.”

“How can you talk such nonsense! You’ve got no right to say things like that.”

“Haven’t I? I suppose I must shut my eyes and say nothing. You’re in love with her. D’you think I’ve not seen it in these months? That’s why you want to leave me.”

“It’s impossible for us to live together,” he answered desperately. “We shall never agree, and we shall never be happy. For God’s sake, let us separate and have done with it.”

Basil was standing up now, and Jenny went up to him, close, so that they stood face to face.

“Look here, Basil: will you swear that you’re not in love with that woman?”

“Certainly,” he answered scornfully.

“It’s a lie. . . . And she’s just as much in love with you as you are with her.”

“What d’you mean by that?” he cried, the blood running to his head and his heart beating painfully. He seized her wrists. “What d’you mean, Jenny?”

“D’you think I haven’t got eyes in my head? I saw it that day she came here. D’you suppose she came to see me? She despises me because I’m not a lady. She came here to please you; she was polite to me to please you; she asked me to go and see her to please you.”

“It’s absurd. Of course she came. She was an old friend of mine.”

“I know that sort of friend. D’you think I didn’t see the way she looked at you, and how she followed you with her eyes? She simply hung on every word you said. When you smiled she smiled; when you laughed she laughed. Oh, I should think she was in love with you; I know what love is, and I felt it. And when she looked at me, I knew she hated me because I’d robbed her of you.”

“Oh, what a dog’s life it is we lead!” he cried, unable to contain himself. “We’ve both been utterly wretched, and it can’t go on. I do my best to hold myself in, but sometimes I feel it’s impossible. I shall be led to saying things that we shall both regret. For Heaven’s sake, let us part.”

“No. I won’t consent.”

“We can’t go on having these awful quarrels. It was a horrible mistake that we ever married. You must see that as well as I. We’re utterly unsuited to one another, and the baby’s death removed the only necessity that held us together.”

“You talk as if we only remained together because it I was convenient.”

“Let me go, Jenny; I can’t stand it any more,” he cried passionately. “I feel as if I shall go mad.” He stretched out his hands, appealing. “I did my best for you a year ago. I gave you all I had to give; it was little enough, in all conscience. Now I ask you to give me back my freedom.”

She was perfectly distracted; it had never occurred to her for a moment that things would go so far.

“You only think of yourself!” she exclaimed. “What’s to become of me?”

“You’ll be much happier,” he answered eagerly, thinking she would yield. “It’s the best thing for both of us.”

“But I love you, Basil.”

“You!” He stared at her with dismay and consternation. “Why, you’ve tortured me for six mouths beyond all endurance. You’ve made all my days a burden to me. You’ve made my life a perfect hell.”

She stared at him, sheer panic in her eyes; each word was like a death-blow, and she gasped and shuddered. Like a hunted thing, she looked this way and that for means of escape, but nothing offered; and then, groping strangely, seeking to hide herself, she staggered to the door.

“Give me time to think it over,” she said hoarsely.


Next morning at breakfast Basil, with elaborate politeness, spoke of trivial things, but Jenny noticed that he kept his eyes averted, and it cut her to the quick because he used her as he might a chance acquaintance. It seemed then that even stony silence would have been more easy to endure. Rising from the table, he asked whether she had considered his proposal.

“No; I didn’t think you really meant it.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and did not answer. He made ready to go out, and she watched him with trembling heart, hoping with most sickening anguish that he would say one kind word to her before he left.

“You’re going very early this morning,” she remarked.

“I’ve got to devil a case at eleven, and I want to see someone before I go into court.”

“Who?”

He coloured and looked away.

“My solicitor.”

This time it was she who kept silence; but when he went out into the street she watched him from the window, carefully, so that he should not see her if he looked up. But he never turned back. He walked slowly with bowed shoulders, as though he were very tired; then she gave way to her bitter sorrow and wept uncontrollably. She did not know what to do, and more than ever before needed advice. On a sudden she made up her mind to see Frank Hurrell; for during the summer he had come fairly often to Barnes, and she had been always grateful for his sober kindness; him at least she could trust, and unlike the others, he would not scorn her because she was of mean birth. Part of her difficulties arose from the fact that of late she had grown quite out of sympathy with her own people, seeing things from a different standpoint, so that it impossible to appeal to their sympathy; she was a stranger to all the world, disaccustomed now to her own class, and still outside that into which she had married. Desperately she fancied that the very universe stood against her, and it appeared vaguely that she struggled like a drowning man against the overwhelming waters of humanity.

Jenny hurriedly dressed, and took the train to Waterloo. She did not know at what time Frank went out, and was terrified at the thought of missing him. But her training prevented her from taking a cab, and she got into a ’bus. It seemed to crawl along, and the minutes were hours; each stoppage drove her to such a pitch of nervous exasperation that she could scarcely sit still, and only persuaded herself with difficulty that, however slowly it went, the omnibus must go faster than she could walk. Arrived at length, Jenny to her great relief found that Frank was in, but he was so obviously surprised to see her that for a moment, disconcerted, she knew not how to explain her visit.

“May I speak to you for a few minutes? I won’t keep you long.”

“By all means. Where is Basil?”

He made her sit down, and tried to take from her the umbrella which she held firmly; but she refused to be parted from it, and sat on the edge of the chair, ill at ease, with the awkward formality of a person unused to drawing-rooms. To Frank, seeking to make her comfortable, she seemed like a housekeeper applying for a situation.

“Can I trust you?” she broke out abruptly, with an effort “I’m in awful trouble. You’re a good sort, and you’ve never looked down on me because I was a barmaid. Tell me I can trust you. There’s no one I can speak to, and I feel if I don’t speak I shall go off my head.”

“But, good heavens! what’s the matter?”

“Everything’s the matter. He wants to separate. He’s gone to his solicitor to-day. He’s going to turn me out in the street like a servant; and I shall kill myself—I tell you I’ll kill myself.” She wrung her hands, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. “Before you we’ve always kept up appearances, because he was ashamed to let you see how he regrets having married me.”

Frank knew well enough that for some months things had not gone very smoothly with the pair, but it had never occurred to him that they were come to such a pass. He did not know what to say nor how to reassure her.

“It’s nonsense. It can only be a little passing quarrel. After all, you must expect to have those.”

“No, it isn’t. I shouldn’t mind if I thought he loved me, but he doesn’t. He calls it a dog’s life, and he’s right.” She hesitated, but only for an instant. “Will you tell me the truth if I ask you something—on your honour?”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything between Basil and Mrs. Murray?”

“No, certainly not!” he cried emphatically. “How can such an idea have come to you!”

“You wouldn’t tell me if there was,” she answered distractedly; and now the words, which before had come so hardly, poured out in a disordered torrent. “You’re all against me because I’m not a lady. . . . Oh, I’m so unhappy! I tell you he’s in love with Mrs. Murray. The other day he was going to dine there, and you should have seen him! He was so restless he couldn’t sit still; he looked at his watch every minute. His eyes simply glittered with excitement, and I could almost hear his heart beating. He was there twice last week, and twice the week before.”

“How d’you know?”

“Because I followed him. If I’m not ladylike enough for him, I needn’t play the lady there. You’re shocked now, I suppose?”

“I wouldn’t presume to judge you,” he answered quietly.

“He never loved me,” she went on, feverish and overwrought. “He married me because he thought it was his duty. And then, when the baby died—he thought I’d entrapped him.”

“He didn’t say so.”

“No,” she shouted hysterically, “he never says anything; but I saw it in his eyes.” She clasped her hands passionately, rocking to and fro. “Oh, you don’t know what our life is. For days he never says a word except to answer my questions. And the silence simply drives me mad. I shouldn’t mind if he blackguarded me; I’d rather he hit me than simply look and look. I could see he was keeping himself in, and I knew it was getting towards the end.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Frank helplessly.

Even to himself the words sounded formal and insincere, and Jenny broke out vehemently.

“Oh, don’t you pity me, too. I’ve had a great deal too much pity; I don’t want it. Basil married me from pity. Oh, God, I wish he hadn’t! I can’t stand the unhappiness.”

“You know, Jenny, he’s a man of honour, and he’d never do anything that wasn’t straight.”

“Oh, I know he’s a man of honour,” she cried bitterly. “I wish he had a little less of it; one doesn’t want a lot at fine sentiments in married life—they don’t work.” She stood up and beat her breast. “Oh, why couldn’t I fall in love with a man of my own class? I should have been so much happier. I used to be so proud that Basil wasn’t a clerk or something in the City. He’s right—we shall never be happy. It isn’t a matter of yesterday, or to-day, or to-morrow. I can’t alter myself. He knew I wasn’t a lady when he married me. My father had to bring up five children on two-ten a week. You can’t expect a man to send his daughters to a boarding-school at Brighton on that, and have them finished in Paris. . . . He doesn’t say a word when I do something or say something a lady wouldn’t, but he purses up his lips and looks. Then I get so mad I do things just to aggravate him. Sometimes I try to be vulgar. One learns a good deal in a bar in the City, and I know so well the things that’ll make Basil curl up. I want to get a bit of revenge out of him sometimes, and I know exactly where he’s raw and where I can hurt him. You should see the way he looks when I don’t eat properly, or call a man a Johnny.”

“It opens up endless possibilities of domestic unhappiness,” answered Frank dryly.

“Oh, I know it isn’t fair to him, but I lose my head. I can’t always be refined. Sometimes I can’t help breaking out; I feel I must let myself go.”

Her cheeks were flaming, and she breathed rapidly. Never before had she disclosed her heart so completely to anyone, and Frank, watching her keenly, could not understand this curious mingling of love and hate.

“Why don’t you separate, then?” he asked.

“Because I love him.” Her voice, hard and metallic before, grew suddenly so tender that the change was extraordinary; the bitterness went out of her face. “Oh, you don’t know how I love him! I’d do anything to make him happy; I’d give my life if he wanted it. Oh, I can’t say it, but when I think of him my heart burns so that sometimes I can hardly breathe. I can never show him that he’s all in the world to me; I try to make him love me, and I only make him hate me. What can I do to show him? Ah, if he only knew, I’m sure he’d not regret that he married me. I feel—I feel as if my heart was full of music, and yet something prevents me from ever bringing it out.”

For awhile they sat in silence.

“What is it you wish me to do?” asked Frank at last.

“I want you to tell him I love him. I can’t; I always make a mess of it. Tell him he’s all in the world to me, and I will try to be a good wife to him. Ask him not to leave me, and say that I mean everything for the best.” She paused and dried her eyes. “And couldn’t you go to Mrs. Murray and tell her? Ask her to have mercy on me. Perhaps she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Ask her not to take him away from me.”

She seized his hands in appeal, and he had no power to resist.

“I’ll do my best. Don’t be too downhearted. I’m sure it’ll all come right and you’ll be very happy again.”

She tried to smile through her tears and to thank him, but her voice refused to help her, and she could only press his hands. With a sudden impulse she bent down and kissed them; then quickly, leaving him strangely moved, went out.