The Literary Sense. E. Nesbit
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you lied to me?"
"Not exactly. We weren't suited—since you didn't love me."
"I didn't love you?" he echoed again.
"And somehow I'd always wanted to do something really noble, and I never had the chance. So I thought if I set you free from a girl you didn't love, and bore the blame myself, it would be rather noble. And so I did it."
"And did the consciousness of your own nobility sustain you comfortably?" The sneer was well sneered.
"Well—not for long," she admitted. "You see, I began to doubt after a while whether it was really my nobleness after all. It began to seem like some part in a play that I'd learned and played—don't you know that sort of dreams where you seem to be reading a book and acting the story in the book at the same time? It was a little like that now and then, and I got rather tired of myself and my nobleness, and I wished I'd just told you, and had it all out with you, and both of us spoken the truth and parted friends. That was what I thought of doing at first. But then it wouldn't have been noble! And I really did want to be noble—just as some people want to paint pictures, or write poems, or climb Alps. Come, take me back to the ball-room. It's cold here in the Past."
But how could he let the curtain be rung down on a scene half finished, and so good a scene?
"Ah, no! tell me," he said, laying his hand on hers; "why did you think I didn't love you?"
"I knew it. Do you remember the last time you came to see me? We quarrelled—we were always quarrelling—but we always made it up. That day we made it up as usual, but you were still a little bit angry when you went away. And then I cried like a fool. And then you came back, and—you remember—"
"Go on," he said. He had bridged the ten years, and the scene was going splendidly. "Go on; you must go on."
"You came and knelt down by me," she said cheerfully. "It was as good as a play—you took me in your arms and told me you couldn't bear to leave me with the slightest cloud between us. You called me your heart's dearest, I remember—a phrase you'd never used before—and you said such heaps of pretty things to me! And at last, when you had to go, you swore we should never quarrel again—and that came true, didn't it?"
"Ah, but why?"
"Well, as you went out I saw you pick up your gloves off the table, and I knew—"
"Knew what?"
"Why, that it was the gloves you had come back for and not me—only when you saw me crying you were sorry for me, and determined to do your duty whatever it cost you. Don't! What's the matter?"
He had caught her wrists in his hands and was scowling angrily at her.
"Good God! was that all? I did come back for you. I never thought of the damned gloves. I don't remember them. If I did pick them up, it must have been mechanically and without noticing. And you ruined my life for that?"
He was genuinely angry; he was back in the past, where he had a right to be angry with her. Her eyes grew soft.
"Do you mean to say that I was wrong—that it was all my fault—that you did love me?"
"Love you?" he said roughly, throwing her hands from him; "of course I loved you—I shall always love you. I've never left off loving you. It was you who didn't love me. It was all your fault."
He leaned his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. He was breathing quickly. The scene had swept him along in its quickening flow. He shut his eyes, and tried to catch at something to steady himself—some rope by which he could pull himself to land again. Suddenly an arm was laid on his neck, a face laid against his face. Lips touched his hand, and her voice, incredibly softened and tuned to the key of their love's overture, spoke—
"Oh, forgive me, dear, forgive me! If you love me still—it's too good to be true—but if you do—ah, you do!—forgive me, and we can forget it all! Dear, forgive me! I love you so!"
He was quite still, quite silent.
"Can't you forgive me?" she began again. He suddenly stood up.
"I'm married," he said. He drew a long breath and went on hurriedly, standing before her, but not looking at her. "I can't ask you to forgive me—I shall never forgive myself."
"It doesn't matter," she said, and she laughed; "I—I wasn't serious. I saw you were trying to play the old comedy, and I thought I had better play up to you. If I'd known you were married—but it was only your glove, and we're such old acquaintances! There's another dance beginning. Please go—I've no doubt my partner will find me."
He bowed, gave her one glance, and went. Halfway down the stairs he turned and came back. She was still sitting as he had left her. The angry eyes she raised to him were full of tears. She looked as she had looked ten years before, when he had come back to her, and the cursed gloves had spoiled everything. He hated himself. Why had he played with fire and raised this ghost to vex her? It had been such pretty fire, and such a beautiful ghost. But she had been hurt—he had hurt her. She would blame herself now for that old past; as for the new past, so lately the present, it would not bear thinking of.
The scene must be rounded off somehow. He had let her wound her pride, her self-respect. He must heal them. The light touch would be best.
"Look here," he said, "I just wanted to tell you that I knew you weren't serious just now. As you say, it was nothing between two such old friends. And—and—" He sought about for some further consolation. Ill-inspired, with the touch of her lips still on his hand, he said, "And about the gloves. Don't blame yourself about that. It was not your fault. You were perfectly right. It was the gloves I came back for."
He left her then, and next day journeyed to Scotland to rejoin his wife, of whom he was, by habit, moderately fond. He still keeps the white glove she kissed, and at first reproached himself whenever he looked at it. But now he only sentimentalises over it now and then, if he happens to be a little under the weather. He feels that his foolish behaviour at that Sydenham dance was almost atoned for by the nobility with which he lied to spare her, the light, delicate touch with which he rounded off the scene.
He certainly did round it off. By a few short, easy words he accomplished three things. He destroyed an ideal of himself which she had cherished for years; he killed a pale bud of hope which she had loved to nurse—the hope that perhaps in that old past it had been she who was to blame, and not he, whom she loved; he trampled in the mud the living rose which would have bloomed her life long, the belief that he had loved, did love her—the living rose that would have had magic to quench the fire of shame kindled by that unasked kiss, a fire that frets for ever like hell-fire, burning, but not consuming, her self-respect.
He did, without doubt, round off the scene.
THE OBVIOUS
HE had the literary sense, but he had it as an inverted instinct. He had a keen perception of the dramatically fitting in art, but no counteracting vision of the fitting in life. Life and art, indeed, he found from his earliest years difficult to disentwine, and later, impossible to disentangle. And to disentangle and disentwine them became at last the point of honour to him.
He first knew that he loved her on the occasion of her "coming of age party." His people and hers lived in the same sombre London square: their Haslemere gardens were divided only by a sunk fence. He had known her all his life. Her coming of age succeeded but by a couple of days his return from three years of lazy philosophy—study in Germany—and the sight of her took his breath away. In the time-honoured cliché of the hurried novelist—too hurried to turn a new phrase for an idea as old as the new life of spring—he had left a child: he found a woman. She wore a soft satiny-white gown, that showed gleams of rose colour through its folds. There were pink hollyhock blossoms in