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Page 37
I hold out my hands and she comes and puts them aside and takes me by
the beard and turns up my face and scans it earnestly. She must have
been deceived a good deal. I let her do as she pleases, it is the wisest
way with women, and it is good to have her touch me in that way. She
seems satisfied. She stands leaning against the arm of the chair and
says--
'I must learn first to think of myself as a free woman again, it almost
seems wrong today to talk like this; can you understand that feeling?'
I nod assent.
'Next time I must be sure, and you must be sure,' she lays her fingers
on my mouth as I am about to protest, 'S-sh! You shall have a year to
think. If you repeat then what you have said today, I shall give you
your answer. You must not try to find me. I have money. If I am living,
I will come here to you. If I am dead, you will be told of it. In the
year between I shall look upon myself as belonging to you, and render an
account if you wish of every hour. You will not be influenced by me in
any way, and you will be able to reason it out calmly. If you think
better of it, don't come.'
I feel there would be no use trying to move her, I simply kiss her hands
and say:
'As you will, dear woman, I shall be here.'
We don't say any more; she sits down on a footstool with her head
against my knee, and I just smooth it. When the clocks strike ten
through the house, she rises and I stand up. I see that she has been
crying quietly, poor lonely little soul. I lift her off her feet and
kiss her, and stammer out my sorrow at losing her, and she is gone. Next
morning the little maid brought me an envelope from the lady, who left
by the first train. It held a little grey glove; that is why I carry it
always, and why I haunt the inn and never leave it for longer than a
week; why I sit and dream in the old chair that has a ghost of her
presence always; dream of the spring to come with the May-fly on the
wing, and the young summer when midges dance, and the trout are growing
fastidious; when she will come to me across the meadow grass, through
the silver haze, as she did before; come with her grey eyes shining to
exchange herself for her little grey glove.
THE WOMAN BEATER
By Israel Zangwill
(_The Grey Wig/Stories and Novelettes_, New York: The Macmillan Company,
1903)
I
She came 'to meet John Lefolle', but John Lefolle did not know he was
to meet Winifred Glamorys. He did not even know he was himself the
meeting-point of all the brilliant and beautiful persons, assembled in
the publisher's Saturday Salon, for although a youthful minor poet, he
was modest and lovable. Perhaps his Oxford tutorship was sobering. At
any rate his head remained unturned by his precocious fame, and to meet
these other young men and women--his reverend seniors on the slopes of
Parnassus--gave him more pleasure than the receipt of 'royalties'. Not
that his publisher afforded him much opportunity of contrasting the two
pleasures. The profits of the Muse went to provide this room of old
furniture and roses, this beautiful garden a-twinkle with Japanese
lanterns, like gorgeous fire-flowers blossoming under the white
crescent-moon of early June.
Winifred Glamorys was not literary herself. She was better than a
poetess, she was a poem. The publisher always threw in a few realities,
and some beautiful brainless creature would generally be found the
nucleus of a crowd, while Clio in spectacles languished in a corner.
Winifred Glamorys, however, was reputed to have a tongue that matched
her eye; paralleling with whimsies and epigrams its freakish fires and
witcheries, and, assuredly, flitting in her white gown through the dark
balmy garden, she seemed the very spirit of moonlight, the subtle
incarnation of night and roses.
When John Lefolle met her, Cecilia was with her, and the first
conversation was triangular. Cecilia fired most of the shots; she was
a bouncing, rattling beauty, chockful of confidence and high spirits,
except when asked to do the one thing she could do--sing! Then she
became--quite genuinely--a nervous, hesitant, pale little thing.
However, the suppliant hostess bore her off, and presently her rich
contralto notes passed through the garden, adding to its passion and
mystery, and through the open French windows, John could see her
standing against the wall near the piano, her head thrown back, her eyes
half-closed, her creamy throat swelling in the very abandonment of
artistic ecstasy.
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