The Kiss of a Psychologist

by Algernon Blackwood

There is a peculiar sense of exasperation in being accused of something you have not done when yet the look of the thing is hopelessly against you. That to say, you have done it, only not in the way you stand accused of. A basis of hard fact is there, of course: you have been seen, heard, caught, but the rest is stupid misunderstanding, The stupider the more dangerous. Your heart knows its innocence, because in some way that a K.C. would ridicule or a police-sergeant igore, you⁠—your Self⁠—had no part in it. You were elsewhere at the time. But the spiritual alibi is unconvincing, and the more you explain the deeper you stand committed. The wisest course is to own up and ask forgiveness. For a fact is a fact, and subtle explanation proves you not merely a villain, but a clever, obstinate, unrepentant villain into the bargain.

At first Jim Hardy was uncertain whether his wife had actually seen or not. He wondered, at least, how much she had seen, she was so deadly quiet. He felt awkward, foolish, yet innocent nd wholly unashamed. She smiled brightly and continued to show the effusive joy of her homecoming. Yet, all the time, she had seen everything; only she kept the card with triumph up her sleeve, aware of the instinct to produce it later with overwhelming effect. Also, she was too proud and sweet and childish to admit at once, and the collapse of her happiness was too radical for her to realise it completely in that awful moment. She abhorred and despised jealousy, and was determined to feel none, above all not to betray that she felt it. Moreover, she held him in her power so utterly (alas!) that she could afford to wait: he was not the rock she had believed him to be, but common clay like other men. It was a devastating shock. But, contrariwise somehow, there was a fierce sweetness in the pain she felt, for their coming together again would be marvellous, the making-up scene delicious and adorable. “Later he’ll tell me of his own accord⁠—all, all, all and beg forgiveness. The wretch!” And so she remained strong, magnanimous and brave. She was very contained. But it was rather ghastly for them both. He advanced with the impetuous happiness of a boy to take her in his arms; and it was then, suddenly, that the assumed role of silent heroine deserted her in a flash, and her self-control all melted. Pain, anger and bitter disappointment flamed in her young cheeks. “James,” she said, freezingly, “I saw everything.” And she drew herself up into in accusing statue of unrelenting marble. “Mabel,” she added, glancing round, “has left the room. She is probably waiting for you in the hall.” The trembling in her voice was stupid, but she could not prevent it. The stone statue attitude she managed admirably. She moved no single inch to meet him. “You had better go to her at once. I interrupted you⁠—both.” She gulped the tears down, but the blood rushed to her head and burned her eyes.

For a moment he knew something of what Dreyfus felt upon his Devil’s Island. The fact that Mabel was a niece, and that he knew his wife was secretly jealous of her, tied his tongue. His foolish, impetuous mistake was obvious, but the pettiness of the truth dismayed him hopelessly. Then and there he could have strangled Mabel with a bootlace⁠—gladly. For Mabel was less to him than the maid who did his room, whom he had hardly seen, and whose name he did not even know. Mabel had popped into he flat to greet the returning Mrs. Hardy, whom she loved. Jim found her in the drawing-room, ran up with joy and excitement in his heart, crying: “Isn’t it splendid? Minnie will be back in half an hour! I’ve had a wire”⁠—and the stupid thing had somehow happened. Mabel herself, bursting with great news of her own, looked radiant with happiness and adorably pretty which made it worse. His heart, his thought, his body, none of him at all, in fact, was really in that boyish, impetuous embrace. He hugged her as he might have hugged a child, a dog, a kitten. His Self⁠—only he could never prove it⁠—was elsewhere: with his wife. He could have danced about the room, for his fortnight’s loneliness was over, and Minnie was coming back “in half an hour.” Instead, she came back that very minute, saw the embrace, heard the words (as she thought) “we’ve half an hour”⁠—and experienced the first shock of shattering disillusion her young life had ever known. Mabel discreetly⁠—neither of them actually saw her go⁠—had slipped out of the room until the explanations were safely over.

He stopped, unable to find words at first, but still holding his arms out wide. Mrs. Hardy gazed at him speechlessly, tears rising behind the ice that glittered in her eves. He saw them. He made a plunge to seize her bodily.

“You may keep your embraces for Mabel,” she said, icily “You know perfectly well, Jim⁠—”

That “Jim,” uttered inadvertently, was too much for her. Her voice failed her badly. She drew back from his arrested advance as though he were a leper, turning towards the window with a gulp of agony and anger. The traffic went by as if nothing had happened. She saw it with amazement. By rights all London should have looked different. The world was dark. The sun had set, yet London rolled on just the same as usual. The indifference, the cruelty of life appalled her.

He straightened himself and took a long, deep breath⁠—a very audible breath indeed. “Minnie,” he said, in a flat, dull voice, yet a shade of defiance in it somewhere, “1 admit it. 1 did kiss Mabel. But it was really you I kissed. I was simply mad with joy at your return. I couldn’t contain myself.”

She made a curious movement with her hand by the window, but she did not turn. He paused, trying wildly to interpret the gesture, to guess what its significance might be.

“Can’t you understand?” he continued, moving cautiously six inches nearer. Then, as she still said nothing and made no movement, he plunged recklessly among the sentences that filled his mind, the more confidently because he was telling the simple, though curious, truth. “It was pure excitement. I could have kissed anything in sight⁠—the cook, the postman, the boy who brought your telegram. My emotion had to find some outlet ask any psychologist, and he’ll tell you. That kiss was really an enormous compliment to you. It was simply a⁠—”

“James,” Mrs. Hardy stopped him coldly⁠—the cold horribly assumed to hide the fiery pain within⁠—“you kissed her on the lips. I saw it. And you expected me by a later train”⁠—here she turned slowly round⁠—“for I heard you say so. It was”⁠—she gulped dreadfully over the abominable word she hardly understood “an assignation.”

“Minnie!” he gasped, hopelessly. “But Minnie⁠—”

“And I, in my blind, big love, came home early on purpose to surprise you. I⁠—did⁠—surprise⁠—you!” They stared at each other in silence for ten seconds. “On the lips,” Mrs. Hardy repeated, in a lifeless voice.

“Because her beastly lips came first,” he cried, “and she stuck ’em up into my face. I wasn’t looking for them. I’d just as soon have kissed her knuckles or⁠—the coffeepot⁠—or the poker⁠—or any old thing that happened to be about⁠—”

He stopped dead as he saw the expression in her face. She simply did not believe him. There was sweetness, patience, forgiveness and⁠—contempt, but utter disbelief. It was awful. They had been married six months. This meant the destruction of two young, happy lives. His head began to spin. He was very much of a boy. “God bless you, sweetheart,” he cried, passionately, flinging out his arms towards her in despair, “I tell you before Heaven it was merely the boy in me that kissed her. It was my high spirits for you. I was so wild with joy⁠—for you. And, besides, she came in really to announce⁠—” And again he stuck, realising his grave predicament from the look in his wife’s gleaming eyes. She would simply never believe him again if he went on with these explanations, and yet he must go on because they were the truth. He understood that resigned expression in her suffering face, and his mind dashed headlong for another chance of safety. “And, do remember one thing, Minnie: Mabel is nothing but a niece⁠—”

“My niece,” was the frigid rejoinder, like a steel trap closing on his heart. “Mabel is no relation to you at all. And, what’s more, James, you know perfectly well that the wretched girl’s in love with you into the bargain. So there!” And she stamped her foot as she produced this final proof with an air of triumph that she hated. “The pair of you! Bah!” she added, amid signs ot general collapse. “And to think that I can’t go away for a week without⁠—without⁠—” The sentence died away among ominous sounds.

“Minnie,” he asked, gravely, sadly, finally, as it were, “have you no trust in me at all? Mabel came here, I tell you, to⁠—”

“Until now I had,” she interrupted, tears swimming in her eyes and her lips trembling “You can hardly expect me to doubt my own senses. And I don’t want to hear what Mabel came here for. It’s all the same to me. She came to see you, and you can never explain away that!”

That he sought to justify himself was utterly fatal in her eyes. He passed his hand wearily across his forehead, true anguish in his heart. He turned towards the door, thinking it best perhaps to leave her for a little to think it over. But his love prevented that. Besides, Mabel was in the hall. He scorned, too, the smallest prevarication. Unworldly-wise, not clever, boyish to the end, he stuck to the simple truth. He did not realise sufficiently that he was dealing with a jealous woman. Making no attempt this time to come nearer to her, he sank into a chair and heaved a long, big sigh.

“Minnie, sit down a moment and listen to me,” he said, solemnly, so solemnly, indeed, that she obeyed him. She also sighed the full confession was now to come, she thought, with a pang of deadly hopelessness.

“You’re no psychologist, bless your little precious heart,” he began, steadily, “or you would understand at once what it is I’m saying, and would just laugh and forgive. I can only tell you, darling, there’s nothing, nothing really to forgive at all. A man only acts⁠—a man is only guilty, where his consciousness acts. And his consciousness may be miles away from a given act at a given moment. In a moment’s anger against someone who has injured me I might seize the kitten and squeeze it till it died, and my real sin would be against my enemy, and not against the innocent kitten. I was an ass⁠—a hopeless, idiotic ass⁠—to let⁠—I mean, to kiss the girl⁠—”

“Sly, deceitful minx!”

“But, upon my soul, if it had been the charwoman, I’d have⁠—well, I’d have felt like hugging her just the same. My thoughts, my feelings, my consciousness, don’t you see, were all for you, and for you alone.” And he rose, half impulsively, to go across to her, perhaps to take her in his arms. He did not do so, however. There was still something in her face that stopped him. She was melting a little, but had not melted yet to the point where she could touch him. Her pride was still desperately wounded. Once that was healed, touch could bring the final cure, but not before. “It was an unconscious, a purely vicarious kiss,” he continued, firmly. “I tell you there was nothing in it. My arms were hungry for you and for you only. It’s the first time, Minnie, the very first time during the whole fortnight you’ve left me lonely that I’ve set eyes on the creature.”

Mrs. Hardy visibly softened. That was a provable statement. She loved his saying “creature.” “Then, what brought her here at all?” she asked, in a low voice, not raising her eyes from the ground. “How did she know I was coming back today? Who told her?”

“That’s just what I’ve been trying to make you listen to all this time,” he replied, with another sigh. “Mabel telephoned⁠—”

“Indeed!”

“⁠—to the cook. I was out I went to get stalls for tonight⁠—your favourite opera⁠—and to order lilies of the valley round the corner⁠—your favourite flower. I was simply intoxicated into this extravagance by the idea of your return. I came back, full of happiness, and found Mabel in the room. I fairly bubbled over. My consciousness was no more in that kiss than⁠—than in the drunken man who embraces a policeman in the street.” He fumbled in his grammar, snatching at the first available simile. Also, in his confidence, sure of his own innocence, he made the mistake of overstatement.

“But the drunken man does like the policeman⁠—at the moment,” said his wife, coldly, betraying pathetically her desire to believe and understand.

“Well, then,” he answered, desperately but very calmly, “no more than in a child who excitedly hugs a dog because it’s been allowed to sit up half an hour longer than usual.”

“The child does love the dog. It wouldn’t hug the poker, would it?”

“It would,” he said, with decision, “if there was nothing else handy about. It’d hug a poker or a cushion or anything that was close enough.” He felt obliged to stick to his simile. They stared hard into each other’s eyes for nearly half a minute. “Minnie,” he went on, with the gravity of ultimate truth in voice and eyes and manner, “this one thing you shall and must believe of me: that, since we married, I have neither kissed nor wanted to kiss a single living thing but you. And that’s the truth.”

He pause to note the effect of this. Surely an intuitive woman, he felt, must recognise truth when she hears it. A sign of wavering in her severe and uncompromising expression encouraged him. The look of injury passed a little. “And, as I said before,” he continued, with authority, “if you were a psychologist, darling, just the least little bit of a psychologist⁠—”

“But what I don’t understand, Jim,” she interrupted him, with a sudden return of distrust and agony in her face again, “is why Mabel came to the flat at all. Why did she come at all? Can you tell me that?”

“I’ve been trying to forever so long, but you wouldn’t let me,” he cried. “Mabel came in to announce her engagement to Frank. They’re to be married in six weeks. She was wild with joy and excitement, simply bubbling over, and she came in to tell you⁠—”

“And to kiss anything in sight⁠—anything that was close enough to reach, I suppose⁠—”

How much longer the explanation might have lasted it is impossible to say, for sentences and words are bound to flow until the emotion producing them has subsided. Jim Hardy, however, could really think of nothing more to say. He simply got up and went over to her. She, too, got up. She tried to leave the room. She would gladly have spun out the scene a little longer⁠—though not much longer. But she never reached the door. She made no real resistance, and as he felt her sink into his arms it seemed to him he was ready to confess anything in the world if she wanted it.

“God bless you for one thing,” he said, softly.

“And that is?” she asked, looking up into his face above her.

“That you didn’t say you were sorry you ever married me,” he laughed.

“You see, Jim, I’m no psychologist,” she whispered, “but just a woman who loves. But next time I go away I’ll fill your room with pokers and cushions and little dogs, unless you’d rather have a policeman or a kitten!”

“Better not go away at all,” he smiled, as they went out into the hall and saw the opera tickets and the flowers on the table. “It’s cheaper, as well as safer.”