The Letter of the Contract Part 7

"Oh, but I can, you know."

She looked about her for a refuge where they could talk, finding it in a rough shelter designed for the protection of nurses watching children playing on the sands. It was empty for the moment, except for a tiny, bare-legged girl of three or four crooning over a big doll. Edith led the way. "Come over here." They sat down on a bench hacked with initials and cleanly dirty with sand. The little girl at the other end of the bench rolled her big eyes toward them with indifference, continuing to croon to her doll:

"Dors, mon enfant; dors, dors; ta mere est allee au bal.... Dors, mon enfant, dors; ta mere est au theatre.... Tais-toi; tais-toi; ta mere dine au restaurant.... Dors, ma cherie, dors."

Edith plunged into her subject as soon as they were seated and turned toward each other. "Tell me. If you married a divorced woman, wouldn't your whole position in England be--be different?"

"I shouldn't care anything about that."

"That's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you if there wouldn't be ways in which it would be hard for you?"

The honesty in his eyes pierced her like a pain. "I shouldn't be thinking about that, you know. I should be thinking about you."

"Well, then, aren't there ways in which it would be hard for me?"

"Not any harder than it is now. It's pretty hard, isn't it?"

The tears sprang into her eyes, but she knew she must control herself.

"Yes; but it's in the way of the ills I know. The ills I know not of might be worse."

"Oh, well, they wouldn't be that, you know."

"What about your people?" She sprang the question on him suddenly.

"They'd be all right--in time."

The qualification was like a stab. She spoke proudly. "I'm afraid I couldn't wait for that."

"You wouldn't have to wait for anything. They'd jolly well have to put up with what I decided to do. I've got all the say, you know. I'm the head of the family."

"Yes, _you_ might look at it in that way; but you can easily see what it would be to me to enter a family where I wasn't wanted."

"That's a bit strong," he corrected. "They'd want you right enough, once they knew you. It would only be the--the fact of--the--"

She helped him out. "The divorce."

He nodded and finished. "That they'd jib at. Even then--"

"Oh, please don't think I'm blaming them. I should do exactly the same, in their case."

"They're really not half bad, you know," he tried to explain. "Mother's an awfully decent sort, and so is Di. Aggie's a bit cattish. But then she'll soon be married. Fellow named Jenkins, in the Guards. And then,"

he added, irrelevantly, "you're an American."

"Which is another disadvantage."

"No," he said, with emphasis. "The other way round when it comes to a--a--" He stumbled at the word, but faced it eventually: "When it comes to a divorce, you know."

She looked at him mistily. "No, I don't know. Aren't a divorced Englishwoman and a divorced American in very much the same position?"

He hastened to rea.s.sure her. "Oh, Lord, no. Not in England they wouldn't be. A divorced Englishwoman--well, she's in rather a hole, you know; whereas a divorced American woman--that's natural."

"I see," she responded, slowly. "It's not considered quite so bad."

"Oh, not half so bad. One expects an American woman to be divorced--or something."

She couldn't be annoyed with him because he was so honest and ingenuous.

She merely said, "So they'd think me the rule rather than the exception."

"They'd just think you were American, and let it go at that. Besides,"

he continued, earnestly, "when a woman's only been married in America--"

"She's been hardly married at all. Is that what they'd think in England?"

"Well, if they'd ever seen the chap around--But when they haven't, you know--"

"They can't believe in him."

"Oh, I don't say that. But--well, they wouldn't think anything about him."

She s.h.i.+fted her ground slightly. "But you'd think about him, wouldn't you?"

"Me? Why should _I_?"

"Because I'd married him before I'd married you--for one thing."

"Oh, but I shouldn't go into that, you know. That would be over and done with."

"Would it?"

"Well, wouldn't it?"

She mused silently, while the little girl with the bare legs continued to croon to her doll with a kind of chant:

"Dors, mon enfant, dors.... Ta mere ne reviendra plus ce soir.... Elle dine avec le beau monsieur que tu as vu.... Elle te dira bonne nuit demain.... Dors; sois sage--et dors"

"Even if it were over and done with," Edith said at last, "the fact would remain--supposing I married you--that your wife had had a life in which you possessed no share--a very living life, I a.s.sure you--and that her memories of that life were perhaps the most vital thing about her."

"Oh, but I say!" he protested. "That's the very reason I'm so fond of you. I can see all that already. I shouldn't interfere with it, you know. It's what makes the difference between you and other women. It's like the difference between--" He sought for a simile. "It's like the difference between a book that's been written and printed, and has something in it, and a silly blank book."

Her eyes filled with tears. "I wonder if you have the least idea of what you're saying?"

He sought for a more effective figure of speech. "If you were walking about your place, and found something wounded, you'd want to take it home and tend it, wouldn't you, till you'd put it to rights again? And the more you tended it the fonder of it you'd be. But you wouldn't stop to ask whether a boy had thrown a stone at it or whether it had been attacked by its mate. You'd let all that alone--and just tend it."

Her tears were coursing freely now beneath her veil. "Is that really the way you feel about me?"

He grew apologetic. "Oh, I don't mean any Good Samaritan business, don't you know? If I could look after you a bit you'd do the same by me. I'm thinking of that, too. Look here," he pursued, confidentially, but coloring; "I'll tell you something, if you won't think me an a.s.s. I could have married two or three girls--oh, more than that!--if I'd wanted to. But I could see what they were after. It wasn't me--not by a long shot. It was the place--Foljambe--it's really quite a decent place, you know--right in the s.h.i.+res--and the hunting. They'd have thought it awful luck to have to clear out of England every year, just when the hunting begins--and stick in this bally hole--or go to Egypt. But you wouldn't." As she said nothing for the minute, he insisted, "Would you, now?"

She shook her head musingly. "No, I shouldn't."