The Literary Sense/The Second Best

by E. Nesbit

 

THE SECOND BEST

THE letter was brief and abrupt.

"I am in London. I have just come back from Jamaica. Will you come and see me? I can be in at any time you appoint."

There was no signature, but he knew the handwriting well enough. The letter came to him by the morning post, sandwiched between his tailor's bill and a catalogue of Rare and Choice Editions.

He read it twice. Then he got up from the breakfast-table, unlocked a drawer, and took out a packet of letters and a photograph.

"I ought to have burned them long ago," he said; "I'll burn them now." He did burn them but first he read them through, and as he read them he sighed, more than once. They were passionate, pretty letters,—the phrases simply turned, the endearments delicately chosen. They breathed of love and constancy and faith, a faith that should move mountains, a love that should shine like gold in the furnace of adversity, a constancy that death itself should be powerless to shake. And he sighed. No later love had come to draw with soft lips the poison from this old wound. She had married Benoliel, the West Indian Jew. It is a far cry from Jamaica to London, but some whispers had reached her jilted lover. The kindest of them said that Benoliel neglected his wife, the harshest, that he beat her.

He looked at the photograph. It was two years since he had seen the living woman. Yet still, when he shut his eyes, he could see the delicate tints, the coral, and rose, and pearl, and gold that went to the making up of her. He could always see these. And now he should see the reality. Would the two years have dulled that bright hair, withered at all that flower-face? For he never doubted that he must go to her.

He was a lawyer; perhaps she wanted that sort of help from him, wanted to know how to rid herself of the bitter bad bargain that she had made in marrying the Jew. Whatever he could do he would, of course, but—

He went out at once and sent a telegram to her.

"Four to-day."

And at four o'clock he found himself on the doorstep of a house in Eaton Square. He hated the wealthy look of the house, the footman who opened the door, and the thick carpets of the stairs up which he was led. He hated the soft luxury of the room in which he was left to wait for her. Everything spoke, decorously and without shouting, but with unmistakable distinctness, of money, Benoliel's money: money that had been able to buy all these beautiful things, and, as one of them, to buy her.

She came in quietly. Long simple folds of grey trailed after her: she wore no ornament of any kind. Her fingers were ringless, every one. He saw all this, but before he saw anything else he saw that the two years had taken nothing from her charm, had indeed but added a wistful patient look that made her seem more a child than when he had last seen her.

The meaningless contact of their hands was over, and still neither had spoken. She was looking at him questioningly. The silence appeared silly; there was, and there could be, no emotion to justify, to transfigure it. He spoke.

"How do you do?" he said.

She drew a deep breath, and lifted her eyebrows slightly.

"Won't you sit down?" she said; "you are looking just like you used to." She had the tiniest lisp; once it had used to charm him.

"You, too, are quite your old self," he said. Then there was a pause.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" she said.

"It was you who sent for me," said he.

"Yes."

"Why did you?"

"I wanted to see you." She opened her pretty child-eyes at him, and he noted, only to bitterly resent, the appeal in them. He remembered that old appealing look too well.

"No, Madam," he said inwardly, "not again! You can't whistle the dog to heel at your will and pleasure. I was a fool once, but I'm not fool enough to play the fool with Benoliel's wife."

Aloud he said, smiling—

"I suppose you did, or you would not have written. And now what can I do for you?"

She leaned forward to look at him.

"Then you really have forgotten? You didn't grieve for me long! You used to say you would never leave off loving me as long as you lived."

"My dear Mrs. Benoliel," he said, "if I ever said anything so thoughtless as that, I certainly have forgotten it."

"Very well," she said; "then go!"

This straight hitting embarrassed him mortally.

"But," he said, "I've not forgotten that you and I were once friends for a little while, and I do beg you to consider me as a friend. Let me help you. You must have some need of a friend's services, or you would not have sent for me. I assure you I am entirely at your commands. Come, tell me how I can help you—"

"You can't help me at all," she said hopelessly, "nobody can now."

"I've heard—I hope you'll forgive me for saying so—I've heard that your married life has been—hasn't been—"

"My married life has been hell," she said; "but I don't want to talk about that. I deserved it all."

"But, my dear lady, why not get a divorce or, at least, a separation? My services—anything I can do to advise or—"

She sprang from her chair and knelt beside him.

"Oh, how could you think that of me? How could you? He's dead—Benoliel's dead. I thought you'd understand that by my sending to you. Do you think I'd ever have seen you again as long as he was alive? I'm not a wicked woman, dear, I'm only a fool."

She had caught the hand that lay on the arm of his chair, her face was pressed on it, and on it he could feel her tears and her kisses.

"Don't," he said harshly, "don't." But he could not bring himself to draw his hand away otherwise than very gently, and after a decent pause. He stood up and held out his hand. She put hers in it, he raised her to her feet and put her back in her chair, and artfully entrenching himself behind a little table, sat down in a very stiff chair with a high seat and gilt legs.

She laughed. "Oh, don't trouble! You needn't barricade yourself like a besieged castle. Don't be afraid of me. You're really quite safe. I'm not so mad as you think. Only, you know, all this time I've never been able to get the idea out of my head—"

He was afraid to ask what idea.

"I always believed you meant it; that you always would love me, just as you said. I was wrong, that's all. Now go! Do go!"

He was afraid to go.

"No," he said, "let's talk quietly, and like the old friends we were before we—"

"Before we weren't. Well?"

He was now afraid to say anything.

"Look here," she said suddenly, "let me talk. There are some things I do really want to say, since you won't let it go without saying. One is that I know now you're not so much to blame as I thought, and I do forgive you. I mean it, really, not just pretending forgiveness; I forgive you altogether—"

"You—forgive me?"

"Yes, didn't you understand that that was what I meant? I didn't want to say 'I forgive you,' and I thought if I sent for you you'd understand."

"You seem to have thought your sending for me a more enlightening move than I found it."

"Yes—because you don't care now. If you had, you'd have understood."

"I really think I should like to understand."

"What?"

"Exactly what it is you're kind enough to forgive."

"Why—your never coming to see me. Benoliel told me before we'd been married a month that he had got my aunt to stop your letters and mine, so I don't blame you now as I did then. But you might have come when you found I didn't write."

"I did come. The house was shut up, and the caretaker could give no address."

"Did you really? And there was no address? I never thought of that."

"I don't suppose you did," he said savagely; "you never did think!"

"Oh, I was a fool! I was!"

"Yes."

"But I have been punished."

"Not you!" he said. "You got what you wanted—money, money, money—the only thing I couldn't give you. If it comes to that, why didn't you come and see me? I hadn't gone away and left no address."

"I never thought of it."

"No, of course not."

"And, besides, you wouldn't have been there—"

"I? I sat day after day waiting for a letter."

"I never thought of it," she said again.

And again he said: "No, of course you didn't; you wouldn't, you know—"

"Ah, don't! please don't! Oh, you don't know how sorry I've been—"

"But why did you marry him?"

"To spite you—to show you I didn't care—because I was in a rage—because I was a fool! You might as well tell me at once that you're in love with someone else."

"Must one always be in love, then?" he sneered.

"I thought men always were," she said simply.

"Please tell me."

"No, I'm not in love with anybody. I have had enough of that to last me for a year or two."

"Then—oh, won't you try to like me again? Nobody will ever love you so much as I do—you said I looked just the same—"

"Yes, but you aren't the same."

"Yes I am. I think really I'm better than I used to be," she said timidly.

"You're not the same," he went on, growing angrier to feel that he had allowed himself to grow angry with her. "You were a girl, and my sweetheart; now you're a widow—that man's widow! You're not the same. The past can't be undone so easily, I assure you."

"Oh," she cried, clenching her hands, "I know there must be something I could say that you would listen to—oh, I wish I could think what! I suppose as it is I'm saying things no other woman ever would have said—but I don't care! I won't be reserved and dignified, and leave everything to you, like girls in books. I lost too much by that before. I will say every single thing I can think of. I will! Dearest, you said you would always love me—you don't care for anyone else. I know you would love me again if you would only let yourself. Won't you forgive me?"

"I can't," he said briefly.

"Have you never done anything that needed to be forgiven? I would forgive you anything in the world! Didn't you care for other people before you knew me? And I'm not angry about it. And I never cared for him."

"That only makes it worse," he said.

She sprang to her feet. "It makes it worse for me! But if you loved me it ought to make it better for you. If you had loved me with your heart and mind you would be glad to think how little it was, after all, that I did give to that man."

"Sold—not gave—"

"Oh, don't spare me! But there's no need to tell you not to spare me. But I don't care what you say. You've loved other women. I've never loved anyone but you. And yet you can't forgive me!"

"It's not the same," he repeated dully.

"I am the same—only I'm more patient, I hope, and not so selfish. But your pride is hurt, and you think it's not quite the right thing to marry a rich man's widow. And you want to go home and feel how strong and heroic you've been, and be proud of yourself because you haven't let me make a fool of you."

It was so nearly true that he denied it instantly.

"I don't," he said. "I could have forgiven you anything, however wicked you'd been—but I can't forgive you for having been—"

"Been a fool? I can't forgive myself for that, either. My dear, my dear, you don't love anyone else; you don't hate me. Do you know that your eyes are quite changed from what they were when you came in? And your voice, and your face—everything. Think, dear, if I am not the same woman you loved, I'm still more like her than anyone else in the world. And you did love me—oh, don't hate me for anything I've said. Don't you see I'm fighting for my life? Look at me. I am just like your old sweetheart, only I love you more, and I can understand better now how not to make you unhappy. Ah, don't throw everything away without thinking. I am more like the woman you loved than anyone else can ever be. Oh, my God! my God! what shall I say to him? Oh, God help me!"

She had said enough. The one phrase "If I am not the same woman you loved, still I am more like her than anyone else in the world" had struck straight at his heart. It was true. What if this, the second best, were now the best life had to offer? If he threw this away, would any other woman be able to inspire him with any sentiment more like love than this passion of memory, regret, tenderness, pity—this desire to hold, protect, and comfort, with which, ever since her tears fell on his hand, he had been fighting in fierce resentment. He looked at the huddled grey figure. He must decide—now, at this moment—he must decide for two lives.

But before he had time to decide anything he found that he had taken her in his arms.

"My own, my dear," he was saying again and again, "I didn't mean it. It wasn't true. I love you better than anything. Let's forget it all. I don't care for anything now I have you again."

"Then why—"

"Oh, don't let's ask each other questions—let's begin all over again at two years ago. We'll forget all the rest—my dear—my own!"

Of course neither has ever forgotten it, but they always pretend to each other that they have.

Her defiance of the literary sense in him and in her was justified. His literary sense, or some deeper instinct, prompted him to refuse to use Benoliel's money—but her acquiescence in his decision reversed it. And they live very comfortably on the money to this day.

The odd thing is that they are extremely happy. Perhaps it is not, after all, such a bad thing to be quite sure, before marriage, that the second-best happiness is all you are likely to get in this world.