Daisy's Aunt

"Miss Daisy also left yesterday. I suppose you have seen her?" he said.

"Yes, she spent the night here."

"Are you friends?"

"Yes."

Tom Lindfield sat down on the arm of the low chair opposite the writing-table.

"That's the cleverest thing I've ever heard," he said. "I think you owe me something, and I think you ought to tell me how you managed it. If she has forgiven you, perhaps I might."

"No. I can't tell you how I managed it," said Jeannie.

"You quite refuse?"

"Quite."

He paused a moment.

"I suppose she asked you a certain question," he said, "which I also want to ask you. Is it true you are engaged to that nice fellow – Braithwaite, I mean?"

"Quite true."

Still quite quietly he got up, took out a cigarette, and looked about for matches. He found some on the chimney-piece, lit his cigarette, and came back to her.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn't ask if I might smoke here? Thanks. Mrs. Halton, I don't know if you have ever fallen in love. I have, once."

His voice rose a little over this, as if with suppressed anger. Jeannie longed almost that he should get angry. This quietness was intolerable. And she tried to sting him into anger.

"I should have thought you had fallen in love more than once," she said.

This was no good.

"You would have been wrong, then," he said. "I should have thought so too till just lately. But I have just found out that I never loved before. I – I did everything else, but I did not love."

"You loved Daisy, do you mean?" she asked.

He flamed up for a moment.

"Ah, there is no good in saying that," he said, sharply. "What can be the use of it? I met the woman – there is only one – and she led me to believe that she cared for me. And when I told her that I loved her she said she had thought I was a gentleman and a friend."

Jeannie felt her heart melt within her.

"Yes, yes, I am sorry," she said.

"That is no good, I am afraid," said he. "You have got to tell me why you did it. We are man and woman, you and I. I cannot believe you did it out of sheer wantonness, from the desire to make me miserable, and, I am afraid, to some extent, to make Miss Daisy miserable. I don't see what you were to gain by it. Also you risked something since you were engaged all the time to Braithwaite. And the only thing I can think of is that for some reason you wished to get between Miss Daisy and myself. I suppose you thought I had been a bad lot – I daresay I had – and did not want me to marry her. But wasn't that an infernally cruel way of doing it?"

Jeannie said nothing, but after a long silence she looked at him.

"Have you finished?" she asked. "I have nothing to say to you, no explanation to give."

Once again, and more violently, his anger, his resentment at the cruelty of it, boiled over.

"No, I have not finished," he said. "I am here to tell you that you have done an infernally cruel thing, for I take it that it was to separate Miss Daisy and me that you did it. You have been completely successful, but – but for me it has been rather expensive. I gave you my heart, I tell you. And you stamped on it. I can't mend it."

Then that died out and his voice trembled.

"It's broken," he said – "just broken."

Jeannie put out her hands towards him in supplication.

"I am sorry," she said.

"I tell you that is no good," he said, and on the words his voice broke again. "Oh, Jeannie, is it final? Is it really true? For Heaven's sake tell me that you have been playing this jest, trick – what you like – on me, to test me, to see if I really loved you. You made me love you – you taught me what love meant. I have seen and judged the manner of my past life, and – and I laid it all down, and I laid myself down at your feet, so that you and love should re-make me."

Jeannie leant forward over the table, hiding her face in her hands.

"Oh, stop – for pity's sake stop," she said. "I have had a good deal to bear. I never guessed you would love me like that; I only meant you, at first, to be attracted by me, as you have been by other women. It is true that I was determined that you should not marry Daisy, and I knew that if you really got to love her nothing would stand in your way. I had to make it impossible for you to fall in love with her. It was to save you and her."

Jeannie felt she was losing her head; the sight of this man in his anger and his misery confused and bewildered her. She got up suddenly.

"I don't know what I am saying," she said.

"You said it was to save her and me," he said, quietly. "To save us from what?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know," she said. "I was talking nonsense."

"I am very sure you were not. And it is only just that I should know. By my love for you – for I can think of nothing more sacred to me than that – I bid you tell me. It is my right. Considering what you have done to me, it is no more than my right."

It had happened as Jeannie feared it might. She felt her throat go suddenly dry, and once she tried to speak without being able. Then she commanded her voice again.

"You were in Paris two years ago," she said. "There was a woman there who lived in the Rue Chalgrin. She called herself Madame Rougierre."

"Well?" said he.

"Daisy's sister," said Jeannie, with a sob.

She turned away from him as she spoke, and leant against the bookcase behind her table. It was a long time before he moved, and then, still with back turned, she heard him approach her, and he took her hand and kissed it.

"I love and I honour you," he said.

Jeannie gave one immense sigh.

"Oh, Tom," she said, "you are a man!"

"It is of your making, then," said he.