The Greater Inclination | Page 7

it had been a pure
delight to watch her; but she would talk, and her mind, he said, was "all
elbows." And yet, the next year, when her marriage was announced, he
went away alone, quite suddenly ... and it was just afterwards that he
published _Love's Viaticum_. Men are queer!
After my husband died--I am putting things crudely, you see--I had a
return of hope. It was because he loved me, I argued, that he had never
spoken; because he had always hoped some day to make me his wife;
because he wanted to spare me the "reproach." Rubbish! I knew well
enough, in my heart of hearts, that my one chance lay in the force of
habit. He had grown used to me; he was no longer young; he dreaded
new people and new ways; il avait pris son pli. Would it not be easier
to marry me?
I don't believe he ever thought of it. He wrote me what people call "a
beautiful letter;" he was kind; considerate, decently commiserating;
then, after a few weeks, he slipped into his old way of coming in every
afternoon, and our interminable talks began again just where they had

left off. I heard later that people thought I had shown "such good taste"
in not marrying him.
So we jogged on for five years longer. Perhaps they were the best years,
for I had given up hoping. Then he died.
After his death--this is curious--there came to me a kind of mirage of
love. All the books and articles written about him, all the reviews of the
"Life," were full of discreet allusions to Silvia. I became again the Mrs.
Anerton of the glorious days. Sentimental girls and dear lads like you
turned pink when somebody whispered, "that was Silvia you were
talking to." Idiots begged for my autograph--publishers urged me to
write my reminiscences of him--critics consulted me about the reading
of doubtful lines. And I knew that, to all these people, I was the woman
Vincent Rendle had loved.
After a while that fire went out too and I was left alone with my past.
Alone--quite alone; for he had never really been with me. The
intellectual union counted for nothing now. It had been soul to soul, but
never hand in hand, and there were no little things to remember him by.
Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I crawled into myself as into a
snow-hut. I hated my solitude and yet dreaded any one who disturbed it.
That phase, of course, passed like the others. I took up life again, and
began to read the papers and consider the cut of my gowns. But there
was one question that I could not be rid of, that haunted me night and
day. Why had he never loved me? Why had I been so much to him, and
no more? Was I so ugly, so essentially unlovable, that though a man
might cherish me as his mind's comrade, he could not care for me as a
woman? I can't tell you how that question tortured me. It became an
obsession.
My poor friend, do you begin to see? I had to find out what some other
man thought of me. Don't be too hard on me! Listen first--consider.
When I first met Vincent Rendle I was a young woman, who had
married early and led the quietest kind of life; I had had no
"experiences." From the hour of our first meeting to the day of his
death I never looked at any other man, and never noticed whether any

other man looked at me. When he died, five years ago, I knew the
extent of my powers no more than a baby. Was it too late to find out?
Should I never know _why?_
Forgive me--forgive me. You are so young; it will be an episode, a
mere "document," to you so soon! And, besides, it wasn't as deliberate,
as cold-blooded as these disjointed lines have made it appear. I didn't
plan it, like a woman in a book. Life is so much more complex than any
rendering of it can be. I liked you from the first--I was drawn to you
(you must have seen that)--I wanted you to like me; it was not a mere
psychological experiment. And yet in a sense it was that, too--I must be
honest. I had to have an answer to that question; it was a ghost that had
to be laid.
At first I was afraid--oh, so much afraid--that you cared for me only
because I was Silvia, that you loved me because you thought Rendle
had loved me. I began to think there was no escaping my destiny.
How happy I was when I discovered that you