The Woman I Loved.. (A Story)

After her own happy marriage, my sister Sally's one concern was to see me enjoying a happy married life, shared with a woman of depth and understanding. At one of her parties she said to me, "Now I am going to introduce you to one of them. She is different from the ones you know." My objection was of no use, for it came too late...

— "Robert, this is Rosamund Lennox." She paused a little, then went on: "Mrs. Rosamund Lennox."

It was not Sally's disregard of my wishes that astonished me — it was not her habit to waste my time on her married acquaintances — so much as Rosamund herself. She was beautiful; beautiful and distinguished.

"I am glad to meet you, Mr. Linden. I have just finished reading your latest book, and I admired it. When Sally told me you were coming, I asked her to introduce me to you." And she smiled a smile that did not erase the sadness from her eyes.

— I hope this does not annoy you.

— On the contrary! You flatter me! It is rare for an author to meet his reader. I wish I could have you to myself, in some quiet corner, and we could go through the book chapter by chapter.

— Now you are mocking me.

— I swear to you I am not mocking you, and I shall prove it. Come — Sally will not mind.

At that moment I remembered that she was a wife, and that her husband might reasonably be somewhere among the laughing crowd.

— I hope so. Let us find Sally and say good-bye to her. And she smiled into my eyes; but I found in them no attempt at allurement, and I wondered.

When we had settled ourselves, I heard one of the women say: "Rosamund Lennox, the famous model." I repeated the words in her hearing, and she laughed.

— In my profession, sounds and pictures have keen ears and eyes.

The sight of her black head thrown back, her white neck, and the ring of her laughter will stay with me until memory itself dies.

Now you know who I am. Let us go back to your book. My book was about a ballet dancer, so we talked of the ballet — and suddenly she stood up, saying:

— And now I must go, Mr. Linden.

— "Robert," I interrupted her.

— I told the woman watching over my little girl that I would be home at nine.

— I will take you home, I said, wondering at the eagerness I felt. She was not only a wife but a mother too:

— Thank you, Robert!

* * *

She sat in the taxi quiet and remote, and I sat in my corner watching her face by the light of the lamps in the street. In her eyes were bewildered tears that would not fall.

— Here we are. Do come in, and I will bring you some coffee. She got out, and I followed her after paying the driver his fare. We had scarcely climbed the few steps when a door opened and a lady in a dark dress appeared. Rosamund asked her:

— Did Amanda tire you?

— Not one sound out of the lamb. She is asleep. Good evening — until tomorrow.

When the door closed behind her I turned to Rosamund. She was no longer weeping, but her black eyes shone in her wan face, and the depths of the silent sorrow in her shook me.

We went into the drawing room, and she seated me by the fireplace, excusing herself for a moment while she made the coffee.

The room was sumptuous and elegant — like her, and with the very same composure. But something was missing. I mean that small disorder which a man creates.

When she came back, the question was: — Tell me, Rosamund, what happened to your husband?

Quite deliberately she set her coffee cup on the table and answered:

— I killed him!

Here my heart missed a beat, then began pounding again — violently.

— I do not believe you!

When she did not answer I repeated: I do not believe you. She turned her face away from me and spoke, staring into the fire. Then I felt that something of that composure was melting. She was a woman of courage and pride, bearing the failure of another.

— Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I did not kill him — but inside me is the clamor of a criminal!

She was silent a moment, then went on:

He ended his life himself. I found him dead by his own hand. Amanda was three weeks old. I asked her quietly:

Why do you believe you killed him?

She answered slowly: "Because I married him. Because I burdened him with the responsibility of a wife and then a child, when he needed his freedom as we need air. Because I was young, greedy for life, and did not see what I was doing to him."

She rested a little, then continued: I must atone for what I feel to be my sin. Do you understand, Robert? Because of me a life was lost, and now I must go on alone, depending on no one. I cannot bring back the life that has gone... but I can make certain that I shall never wound anyone in the same way.

— Rosamund, you are being hasty. It is not for you to pass judgment on yourself. You are worshipping the dead — is there not your duty to the living? Think of your daughter.

— Amanda is all my hopes. For her sake I live.

— Do you not see the error of that, Rosamund? Do you not believe that one day she will grow up to discover that you live for her sake, and that she will hate you for the chain you have bound her with?.. Suppose a man loved you and you returned his love. What would you do then? Would you drive him too to atone? Have you the right to sacrifice him as well? That is what I mean when I call you cruel and hasty. You are hasty in your punishment of yourself.

— I was right to talk to you: I have not a single relative in the world, and I have told this to no one but the coroner.

— And why did you choose me?

— Because you are like him. He was gentle and tender, and he was a writer too. I believed he would be great some day... but he knew the limits of his gifts better than I did. The difference between you: you are strong, and he was weak. How often he tried to make me understand his weakness; but I was stupid — I believed that all he needed was encouragement, and I kept pushing him... Ah, if only I had understood him...

— And did you love him?

— I was eighteen years old when I met him, and before a year was out we were married — but I do not believe I knew then what love was.

— And now — do you know?
She hesitated, then said: No.
For the first time that evening, I felt she was lying.

I am not by nature an impulsive man, though the results of my impulses have often turned out well. An idea came to me at that moment; I did not turn it over in my mind even once before I said:

— Rosamund, every year I rent a summer house on the shore, where I can be alone and write. What would you say to coming there with Amanda this summer? I shall invite Sally and her husband, so that you will not feel lonely.

And here a slow smile crept over her face and lit it after its gloom.

— Amanda will be very glad; and I can work there too. I am, as you know, a model, but I also work at designing dresses, so that when I am too old for modeling I shall still be able to provide Amanda with the means of comfort.

I exclaimed: Splendid! It is agreed, then! Good-bye, Rosamund — and good evening, for now.

When the road took me in, I remembered that the coffee still stood in our two cups, cold and forgotten.

By the end of that week I believed I loved her; by the end of the month I was certain of it — she, and no other, must be my wife. Was it not an irony: Sally's efforts going to waste, pointing me toward one eligible girl after another and my refusing — and then to be refused myself when I came forward to ask for the one I love, believing she loves me with the same strength and tenderness!!...

One evening we lingered on the shore after Amanda had gone to sleep. The night breeze blew, and Rosamund shivered; so I covered her head and shoulders with a blue blanket we had been sitting on. In that moment I thought I saw a nymph in the moonlight. Then

I asked her to share my life with me. I can still see her eyes shining with the pain of refusal.
— Rosamund, my dear, how can I show you the absurdity of this punishment you have vowed yourself to carry through? For the ignorance and recklessness of youth you scourge yourself, and you sacrifice me — and little Amanda, who needs a father...
— Robert, my dear — and she laid her soft hands on me — please, please say nothing more. I cannot explain this feeling, and I will not try to justify it. You have not seen what I saw. You have not seen the misery of despair and loneliness; but I saw them on his face.
— Why do you blame yourself because he did not trust you?
She turned to me tenderly: Do you not think I would know if your mind and your heart were groaning with wounds?! And she buried her face in her hands. Then I knew for certain that she loved me.
— Then you will not marry me, Rosamund?
She looked at me with eyes clouded with misery:
"No, Robert — not now and not in the future. We take from life what we deserve. I do not deserve you, and I could never make you happy while this shadow lives between us. But your friendship, for me and for Amanda, is our greatest consolation."
— My friendship is yours, both of you, for life.
After that we no longer met unless Amanda was between us — each of us silently submitting to a chance that would have it no other way.
Amanda's two little hands alone could have encircled my heart. She taught me how to treat children of three, her own age.

The following year I went to the summer house two weeks before Rosamund was to take her summer holiday. In truth they were the two most miserable weeks of my life — with no Rosamund and no Amanda. They had become the people closest to me in my world — the happy family I dreamed of building.
Ah, how cruel the memory of the day I came near to losing them, and forever:
They were at the house — a week after her arrival — which stood on a rise; a path wound down from it to the shore, ending at the cabin at the foot of the garden overlooking the sea. There I spent four hours a day, writing. Often I would watch them: Rosamund stretched on the sand with her body that had turned the color of honey, and Amanda romping blissfully between the sand and the water's edge.
That day was hot; the sun shone from a sky of faded blue, and the breeze had grown so gentle that the sea turned young again and lost its wrinkles. Sally was not there; she had gone to meet her husband at the station.

Obeying some obscure impulse, I went to the window and looked toward where Rosamund and Amanda had been a moment before. The shore was empty of them. It was not Rosamund's habit to go down into the water without me. What had happened now? My eyes swept the sea anxiously...
A few arms' lengths from the shore I saw the child floating, and Rosamund fighting savagely to reach the little one. In a flash I was barefoot on the shore. A deadly fear seized me: what if I were too late?... Roughly I shouted to Rosamund: Get back to shore while you can — I will bring Amanda.
There I dove, and came back quickly with the beloved little one. I laid her on her stomach and knelt beside her,

giving her artificial respiration. Nothing possessed me but one urgent desire: to bring life back to the child whose breathing had gone still, in whom there was nothing left but broken beats of the heart.

Rosamund was there, her lips moving in the prayer "O my God." I prayed too: "Let her live. She is little. Give her back to us, I beg you, dear God. Let her run and shout and play again."

— Go to the house and telephone the doctor. Do not look like that, Rosamund. She is not going to die. Hurry. When she came back, three minutes later, Amanda breathed and gave her first gasping cry. Little by little her breathing grew regular, and the glow came back to the wilted, darkened face. Then I stood and carried the little body, still unconscious, to the house.

As I bent to lay her on the bed she stirred in my arms. Never in my life have I known a rapture equal to the one that rose in me then. I turned to Rosamund: "She will recover!" And I went out to the shore, where I gave my pent-up sobs free rein..

It was late afternoon when I returned to the house that day. In the garden I saw Rosamund; I ran, and she came toward me.

I gave her no chance to speak, but said:
— Rosamund, I want you for my wife. It shall be as you wish, in name only — I swear it — but I want to be a father to Amanda. If she had died... ah, Rosamund! I love you, and I love your child as if she were my own child. Will you let me share her with you?

There was a radiance and a joy in her as she stretched up her neck and took my head between her hands, saying:
— Robert, you gave my child back to me. It seems fate meant us to be a family.

With the gladness of hope I grasped her shoulders:
Is your long privation over, Rosamund?
— I was a woman who had lost hope, before I knew you were beside me in the sea. I knew I could not save Amanda and that I would die too; and then I knew for certain how right you were, that I was hasty in believing I could live independent of others, sufficient unto myself... I could not even save my own daughter...

I took her chin in my hand so that she looked straight into my eyes.

She went on bravely: And there you were: between us and death. And at last I knew I was right to love you. Ah, Robert! I love you — I love you so much.

I took her in my arms, and into my kiss I poured the longing and yearning of all the past months, whispering: "Rosamund, my darling!..."

(From the English)