He had told her that he would not see Nell again without first letting her know.So, when morning came, he simply wrote the words: "Don't come today!"--showed them to Sylvia, and sent them by a servant to Dromore's.
Hard to describe the bitterness with which he entered his studio that morning.In all this chaos, what of his work? Could he ever have peace of mind for it again? Those people last night had talked of 'inspiration of passion, of experience.' In pleading with her he had used the words himself.She--poor soul!--had but repeated them, trying to endure them, to believe them true.And were they true? Again no answer, or certainly none that he could give.To have had the waters broken up; to be plunged into emotion; to feel desperately, instead of stagnating--some day he might be grateful--who knew? Some day there might be fair country again beyond this desert, where he could work even better than before.But just now, as well expect creative work from a condemned man.It seemed to him that he was equally destroyed whether he gave Nell up, and with her, once for all, that roving, seeking instinct, which ought, forsooth, to have been satisfied, and was not; or whether he took Nell, knowing that in doing so he was torturing a woman dear to him! That was as far as he could see to-day.What he would come to see in time God only knew! But:
'Freedom of the Spirit!' That was a phrase of bitter irony indeed!
And, there, with his work all round him, like a man tied hand and foot, he was swept by such a feeling of exasperated rage as he had never known.Women! These women! Only let him be free of both, of all women, and the passions and pities they aroused, so that his brain and his hands might live and work again! They should not strangle, they should not destroy him!
Unfortunately, even in his rage, he knew that flight from them both could never help him.One way or the other the thing would have to be fought through.If it had been a straight fight even; a clear issue between passion and pity! But both he loved, and both he pitied.There was nothing straight and clear about it anywhere; it was all too deeply rooted in full human nature.And the appalling sense of rushing ceaselessly from barrier to barrier began really to affect his brain.
True, he had now and then a lucid interval of a few minutes, when the ingenious nature of his own torments struck him as supremely interesting and queer; but this was not precisely a relief, for it only meant, as in prolonged toothache, that his power of feeling had for a moment ceased.A very pretty little hell indeed!
All day he had the premonition, amounting to certainty, that Nell would take alarm at those three words he had sent her, and come in spite of them.And yet, what else could he have written? Nothing save what must have alarmed her more, or plunged him deeper.He had the feeling that she could follow his moods, that her eyes could see him everywhere, as a cat's eyes can see in darkness.
That feeling had been with him, more or less, ever since the last evening of October, the evening she came back from her summer--grown-up.How long ago? Only six days--was it possible? Ah, yes!
She knew when her spell was weakening, when the current wanted, as it were, renewing.And about six o'clock--dusk already--without the least surprise, with only a sort of empty quivering, he heard her knock.And just behind the closed door, as near as he could get to her, he stood, holding his breath.He had given his word to Sylvia--of his own accord had given it.Through the thin wood of the old door he could hear the faint shuffle of her feet on the pavement, moved a few inches this way and that, as though supplicating the inexorable silence.He seemed to see her head, bent a little forward listening.Three times she knocked, and each time Lennan writhed.It was so cruel! With that seeing-sense of hers she must know he was there; his very silence would be telling her--for his silence had its voice, its pitiful breathless sound.
Then, quite distinctly, he heard her sigh, and her footsteps move away; and covering his face with his hands he rushed to and fro in the studio, like a madman.
No sound of her any more! Gone! It was unbearable; and, seizing his hat, he ran out.Which way? At random he ran towards the Square.There she was, over by the railings; languidly, irresolutely moving towards home.