"One would think," remarked the Fürstin, "there was no gift of healing."
She waited for me to speak, and then irritated by my silence struck at me sharply with that wicked little tongue of hers.
"Do you think that Lady Mary Justin thinks of you—as you think of her? Do you think she hasn't settled down?"
I looked up at her quickly.
"She's just going to have a second child," the Fürstin flung out.
Yes, that did astonish me. I suppose my face showed it.
"That girl," said the Fürstin, "that clean girl would have sooner died—ten thousand deaths.... And she's never—never been anything to you."
I think that for an instant she had been frightened at her own words. She was now quite angry and short of breath. She had contrived a rapid indignation against Mary and myself.
"I didn't know Mary had had any child at all," I said.
"This makes two," said the Fürstin, and held up a brace of fingers, "with scarcely a year and a half between them. Not much more anyhow.... It was natural, I suppose. A natural female indecency. I don't blame her. When a woman gives in she ought to do it thoroughly. But I don't see that it leaves you much scope for philandering, Stephen, does it?... And there you are, and here is Rachel. And why don't you make a clean job of your life?..."
"I didn't understand."
"I wonder what you imagined."
I reflected. "I wonder what I did. I suppose I thought of Mary—just as I had left her—always."
I remained with my mind filled with confused images of Mary, memories, astonishment....
I perceived the Fürstin was talking.
"Maundering about," she was saying, "like a huntsman without a horse.... You've got work to do—blood in your veins. I'm not one of your ignorant women, Stephen. You ought to have a wife...."
"Rachel's too good," I said, at the end of a pause and perceiving I had to say something, "to be that sort of wife."
"No woman's too good for a man," said the Fürstin von Letzlingen with conviction. "It's what God made her for."
§ 4
My visit to Boppard was drawing to an end before I had a clear opportunity to have things out with Rachel. It was in a little garden, under the very shadow of that gracious cathedral at Worms, the sort of little garden to which one is admitted by ringing a bell and tipping a custodian. I think Worms is in many respects one of the most beautiful cathedrals I have ever seen, so perfectly proportioned, so delicately faded, so aloof, so free from pride or presumption, and it rises over this green and flowery peace, a towering, lithe, light brown, sunlit, easy thing, as unconsciously and irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in the evening glow under a press of canvas. We looked up at it for a time and then went on with the talk to which we had been coming slowly since the Fürstin had packed us off for it, while she went into the town with Berwick to buy toys for her gatekeeper's children. I had talked about myself, and the gradual replacement of my ambition to play a part in imperial politics by wider intentions. "You know," I asked abruptly, "why I left England?"
She thought through the briefest of pauses. "No," she decided at last.
"I made love," I said, "to Lady Mary Justin, and we were found out. We couldn't go away together——"
"Why not?" she interjected.
"It was impossible."
For some moments neither of us spoke. "Something," she said, and then, "Some vague report," and left these fragments to be her reply.
"We were old playmates; we were children together. We have—something—that draws us to each other. She—she made a mistake in marrying. We were both very young and the situation was difficult. And then afterwards we were thrown together.... But you see that has made a great difference to my life; it's turned me off the rails on which men of my sort usually run. I've had to look to these other things.... They've become more to me than to most people if only because of that...."
"You mean these ideas of yours—learning as much as you can about the world, and then doing what you can to help other people to a better understanding."
"Yes," I said.
"And that—will fill your life."
"It ought to."
"I suppose it ought. I suppose—you find—it does."
"Don't you think it ought to fill my life?"
"I wondered if it did."
"But why shouldn't it?"
"It's so—so cold."
My questioning silence made her attempt to explain.
"One wants life more beautiful than that," she said. "One wants—— There are things one needs, things nearer one."
We became aware of a jangling at the janitor's bell. Our opportunity for talk was slipping away. And we were both still undecided, both blunderingly nervous and insecure. We were hurried into clumsy phrases that afterwards we would have given much to recall.
"But how could life be more beautiful," I said, "than when it serves big human ends?"
Her brows were knit. She seemed to be listening for the sound of the unlocking gate.
"But," she said, and plunged, "one wants to be loved. Surely one needs that."
"You see, for me—that's gone."
"Why should it be gone?"
"It is. One doesn't begin again. I mean—myself. You—can. You've never begun. Not when you've loved—loved really." I forced that on her. I over emphasized. "It was real love, you know; the real thing.... I don't mean the mere imaginative love, blindfold love, but love that sees.... I want you to understand that. I loved—altogether...."
Across the lawn under its trim flowering-trees appeared Berwick loaded with little parcels, and manifestly eager to separate us, and the Fürstin as manifestly putting on the drag.
"There's a sort of love," I hurried, "that doesn't renew itself ever. Don't let yourself believe it does. Something else may come in its place, but that is different. It's youth,—a wonderful newness.... Look at that youngster. He can love you like that. I've watched him. He does. You know he does...."
"Yes," she said, as hurriedly; "but then, you see, I don't love him."
"You don't?"
"I can't."
"But he's such a fresh clean human being——"
"That's not all," said Rachel. "That's not all.... You don't understand."
The two drew near. "It is so hard to explain," she said. "Things that one hardly sees for oneself. Sometimes it seems one cannot help oneself. You can't choose. You are taken...." She seemed about to say something more, and stopped and bit her lip.
In another moment I was standing up, and the Fürstin was calling to us across ten feet of space. "Such amoosin' little toyshops. We've got a heap of things. Just look at him!"
He smiled over his load with anxious eyes upon our faces.
"Ten separate parcels," he said, appealing for Rachel's sympathy. "I'm doing my best not to complain."
And rather adroitly he contrived to let two of them slip, and captured Rachel to assist him.
He didn't relinquish her again.
§ 5
The Fürstin and I followed them along the broad, pleasant, tree-lined street towards the railway station.
"A boy of that age ought not to marry a girl of that age," said the Fürstin, breaking a silence.
I didn't answer.
"Well?" she said, domineering.
"My dear cousin," I said, "I know all that you have in your mind. I admit—I covet her. You can't make me more jealous than I am. She's clean and sweet—it is marvellous how the God of the rest of the world can have made a thing so brave and honest and wonderful. She's better than flowers. But I think I'm going away to-night, nevertheless."