acted for the best. You know that we have always had your interests at heart."
James did not speak, for his only answer would have been bitter. Throughout, they had been unwilling to let him live his own life, but desirous rather that he should live theirs. They loved him tyrannically, on the condition that he should conform to all their prejudices. Though full of affectionate kindness, they wished him always to dance to their piping--a marionette of which they pulled the strings.
"What would you have me do?"
"Keep your word, James," answered his father.
"I can't, I can't! I don't understand how you can wish me to marry Mary Clibborn when I don't love her. _That_ seems to me dishonourable."
"It would be nothing worse than a _mariage de convenance_," said Uncle William. "Many people marry in that sort of way, and are perfectly happy."
"I couldn't," said James. "That seems to me nothing better than prostitution. It is no worse for a street-walker to sell her body to any that care to buy."
"James, remember your mother is present."
"For God's sake, let us speak plainly. You must know what life is. One can do no good by shutting one's eyes to everything that doesn't square with a shoddy, false ideal. On one side I must break my word, on the other I must prostitute myself. There is no middle way. You live here surrounded by all sorts of impossible ways of looking at life. How can your outlook be sane when it is founded on a sham morality? You think the body is indecent and ugly, and that the flesh is shameful. Oh, you don't understand. I'm sick of this prudery which throws its own hideousness over all it sees. The soul and the body are one, indissoluble. Soul is body, and body is soul. Love is the God-like instinct of procreation. You think sexual attraction is something to be ignored, and in its place you put a bloodless sentimentality--the vulgar rhetoric of a penny novelette. If I marry a woman, it is that she may be the mother of children. Passion is the only reason for marriage; unless it exists, marriage is ugly and beastly. It's worse than beastly; the beasts of the field are clean. Don't you understand why I can't marry Mary Clibborn?"
"What you call love, James," said Colonel Parsons, "is what I call lust."
"I well believe it," replied James, bitterly.
"Love is something higher and purer."
"I know nothing purer than the body, nothing higher than the divine instincts of nature."
"But that sort of love doesn't last, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, gently. "In a very little while it is exhausted, and then you look for something different in your wife. You look for friendship and companionship, confidence, consolation in your sorrows, sympathy with your success. Beside all that, the sexual love sinks into nothing."
"It may be. The passion arises for the purposes of nature, and dies away when those purposes are fulfilled. It seems to me that the recollection of it must be the surest and tenderest tie between husband and wife; and there remains for them, then, the fruit of their love, the children whom it is their blessed duty to rear till they are of fit age to go into the world and continue the endless cycle."
There was a pause, while Major Forsyth racked his brain for some apposite remark; but the conversation had run out of his depth.
Colonel Parsons at last got up and put his hands on Jamie's shoulders.
"And can't you bring yourself to marry that poor girl, when you think of the terrible unhappiness she suffers?"
James shook his head.
"You were willing to sacrifice your life for a mere stranger, and cannot you sacrifice yourself for Mary, who has loved you long and tenderly, and unselfishly?"
"I would willingly risk my life if she were in danger. But you ask more."
Colonel Parsons was silent for a little, looking into his son's eyes. Then he spoke with trembling voice.
"I think you love me, James. I've always tried to be a good father to you; and God knows I've done all I could to make you happy. If I did wrong in letting you become engaged, I beg your pardon. No; let me go on." This he said in answer to Jamie's movement of affectionate protest. "I don't say it to reproach you, but your mother and I have denied ourselves in all we could so that you should be happy and comfortable. It's been a pleasure to us, for we love you with all our hearts. You know what happened to me when I left the army. I told you years ago of the awful disgrace I suffered. I could never have lived except for my trust in God and my trust in you. I looked to you to regain the honour which I had lost. Ah! you don't know how anxiously I watched you, and the joy with which I said to myself, 'There is a good and honourable man.' And now you want to stain that honour. Oh, James, James! I'm old, and I can't live long. If you love me, if you think you have cause for gratitude to me, do this one little thing I ask you! For my sake, my dear, keep your word to Mary Clibborn."
"You're asking me to do something immoral, father."
Then Colonel Parsons helplessly dropped his hands from Jamie's shoulders, and turned to the others, his eyes full of tears.
"I don't understand what he means!" he groaned.
He sank on a chair and hid his face.
XIV
Major Forsyth was not at all discouraged by the issue of his intervention.
"Now I see how the land lies," he said, "it's all plain sailing. Reconnoitre first, and then wire in."
He bravely attacked James next day, when they were smoking in the garden after breakfast. Uncle William smoked nothing but gold-tipped cigarettes, which excited his nephew's open scorn.
"I've been thinking about what you said yesterday, James," he began.
"For Heaven's sake, Uncle William, don't talk about it any more. I'm heartily sick of the whole thing. I've made up my mind, and I really shall not alter it for anything you may say."
Major Forsyth changed the conversation with what might have been described as a strategic movement to the rear. He said that Jamie's answer told him all he wished to know, and he was content now to leave the seeds which he had sown to spring up of their own accord.
"I'm perfectly satisfied," he told his sister, complacently. "You'll see that if it'll all come right now."
Meanwhile, Mary conducted herself admirably. She neither avoided James nor sought him, but when chance brought them together, was perfectly natural. Her affection had never been demonstrative, and now there was in her manner but little change. She talked frankly, as though nothing had passed between them, with no suspicion of reproach in her tone. She was, indeed, far more at ease than James. He could not hide the effort it was to make conversation, nor the nervous discomfort which in her presence he felt. He watched her furtively, asking himself whether she still suffered. But Mary's face betrayed few of her emotions; tanned by exposure to all weathers, her robust colour remained unaltered; and it was only in her eyes that James fancied he saw a difference. They had just that perplexed, sorrowful expression which a dog has, unjustly beaten. James, imaginative and conscience-stricken, tortured himself by reading in their brown softness all manner of dreadful anguish. He watched them, unlit by the smile which played upon the lips, looking at him against their will, with a pitiful longing. He exaggerated the pain he saw till it became an obsession, intolerable and ruthless; if Mary desired revenge, she need not have been dissatisfied. But that apparently was the last thing she thought of. He was grateful to hear of her anger with Mrs. Jackson, whose sympathy had expressed itself in round abuse of him. His mother repeated the words.
"I will never listen to a word against Captain Parsons, Mrs. Jackson. Whatever he did, he had a perfect right to do. He's incapable of acting otherwise than as an honourable gentleman."
But if Mary's conduct aroused the admiration of all that knew her, it rendered