FullReads

“The summer came; and one Saturday in early June, Eilie, I, and Francis–I won’t tell you his other name–went riding. The night had been wet; there was no dust, and presently the sun came out–a glorious day! We rode a long way. About seven o’clock we started back-slowly, for it was still hot, and there was all the cool of night before us. It was nine o’clock when we came to Richmond Park. A grand place, Richmond Park; and in that half-light wonderful, the deer moving so softly, you might have thought they were spirits. We were silent too–great trees have that effect on me….

“Who can say when changes come? Like a shift of the wind, the old passes, the new is on you. I am telling you now of a change like that. Without a sign of warning, Eilie put her horse into a gallop. ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted. She looked back with a smile, then he dashed past me too. A hornet might have stung them both: they galloped over fallen trees, under low hanging branches, up hill and down. I had to watch that madness! My horse was not so fast. I rode like a demon; but fell far behind. I am not a man who takes things quietly. When I came up with them at last, I could not speak for rage. They were riding side by side, the reins on the horses’ necks, looking in each other’s faces. ‘You should take care,’ I said. ‘Care!’ she cried; ‘life is not all taking care!’ My anger left me. I dropped behind, as grooms ride behind their mistresses… Jealousy! No torture is so ceaseless or so black…. In those minutes a hundred things came up in me–a hundred memories, true, untrue, what do I know? My soul was poisoned. I tried to reason with myself. It was absurd to think such things! It was unmanly…. Even if it were true, one should try to be a gentleman! But I found myself laughing; yes, sir, laughing at that word.” He spoke faster, as if pouring his heart out not to a live listener, but to the night. “I could not sleep that night. To lie near her with those thoughts in my brain was impossible! I made an excuse, and sat up with some papers. The hardest thing in life is to see a thing coming and be able to do nothing to prevent it. What could I do? Have you noticed how people may become utter strangers without a word? It only needs a thought…. The very next day she said: ‘I want to go to Lucy’s.’ ‘Alone?’ ‘Yes.’ I had made up my mind by then that she must do just as she wished. Perhaps I acted wrongly; I do not know what one ought to do in such a case; but before she went I said to her: ‘Eilie, what is it?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she answered; and I kissed her–that was all…. A month passed; I wrote to her nearly every day, and I had short letters from her, telling me very little of herself. Dalton was a torture to me, for I could not tell him; he had a conviction that she was going to become a mother. ‘Ah, Brune!’ he said, ‘my poor wife was just like that.’ Life, sir, is a somewhat ironical affair…! He–I find it hard to speak his name–came to the school two or three times a week. I used to think I saw a change, a purpose growing up through his recklessness; there seemed a violence in him as if he chafed against my blade. I had a kind of joy in feeling I had the mastery, and could toss the iron out of his hand any minute like a straw. I was ashamed, and yet I gloried in it. Jealousy is a low thing, sir–a low, base thing! When he asked me where my wife was, I told him; I was too proud to hide it. Soon after that he came no more to the school.