From One Generation to Another | Page 8

a very good way of getting out of the
engagement."
"You heard him tell that, with your own ears?"
"Yes; and he seemed to think it a good joke."
Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.
Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, "Did he say that
he--did not love her?"
"Yes, the cad!"
"He cannot have been a nice man," she said, with that evenness of
enunciation which betrays that the tongue is speaking without the direct
aid of the mind.
The young officer rose with a glance towards the clock.
"No," he said, "he was not. He did other things afterwards which made
it quite impossible for a man with any self-respect whatever to look
upon him as a friend."
"Did he," asked Mrs. Agar, "say anything about her personal
appearance? Was it that?"
The subaltern looked puzzled. It was as well for Mrs. Agar that he was
not a man of deep experience. Instead of being puzzled he might
suddenly have seen clear.
"No--no," he replied. "It was not that. It was merely a matter of
expediency, I believe."
But, womanlike, Mrs. Agar did not believe him. She sat while he made
his farewell speech over the whist-table, but as he went to the door she
rose and followed him slowly.

In the hall she watched the servant help him on with his coat--her
features twisted into a stereotype smile of polite leave-taking.
"By the way," she said, with a sickening little laugh, "what was the
man's name--your friend, whom you lost?"
"Michael--Seymour Michael."
"Ah! Good-night--good-night."
Then she turned and walked slowly upstairs.
We are apt to read indifferently of human ills, whether of the flesh or
the soul. We are apt to overlook the fact that what we read may apply
to us. Some of us even bear upon us the mark of hereditary disease and
refuse to believe in it. Then suddenly comes a day when a pain makes
itself felt--a dumb, little creeping pain, which may mean nothing. We
sit down and, so to speak, feel ourselves. Before long all doubt goes.
We have it. The world darkens, and behold we are in the ranks of those
upon whom we looked a little while back with a semi-indifferent pity.
It was thus with Mrs. Agar. As some play with nature, so had she
played with her own heart. She had heard of a consuming love which is
near akin to hatred. She had read of passion which is stronger than the
strongest worldliness. She had smilingly doubted the existence of the
broken heart pure and simple. And now she sat in her own room,
numbly, blindly feeling herself, like one to whom the first warning of
an internal deadly disease has been manifested. She was conscious of
something within herself which she could not get at, over which she
had no control.
With quivering lips she sat and wondered what she could do to hurt this
man. She did not only want to inflict bodily pain, but that other
gnawing pain of the heart which she herself was now feeling for the
first time. And through it all there ran the one thought that he must die.
It was strange that hate should first teach her that love is a living,
undeniable reality in the lives of all of us. She had never realised this
before. Her bringing-up, her surroundings, all her teaching had been

that money and a great house, and servants, and carriages were the
good things of this life, the things to be sought after.
She had been conscious of a vague admiration for Seymour Michael,
and that was the full extent of her knowledge of herself. This
admiration took the worldly form of a conviction that he was destined
one day to be a great man, and she had a strongly developed,
common-minded desire to be a great lady.
There are some things in this life which to a moderate intelligence are
quite unmistakable. Most of us, having left childhood behind, recognise
at once an earthquake, and death. Love is as unmistakable when it
really comes. And Anna Agar, having suddenly learnt to hate Seymour
Michael, knew that she had loved him with that one all-absorbing love
which comes but once to a woman.
She was not a deep-thinking or a subtle woman. Her actions were
usually based upon impulse, and her one all-absorbing desire now was
to see him, to speak to him face to face. In this indefinite longing there
was probably a vulgar love of vituperation--the taint of her low-born
ancestors.
She wanted to shout and shriek her hatred into the evil face of the man
who had tricked her. She wanted to frighten him, to threaten, to lash
him with her