CHAPTER V
For two days Teddy made Kathleen conspicuous by his gallant attentions; so that on the evening of the third day she was somewhat taken aback when, instead of inviting her to sally forth for their usual stroll round the Capstone, he merely lingered in the hall after dinner to gladden her by a little airy chat, and then rather abruptly disappeared. A rumour passed about, later on, that he had been seen acting escort to a young girl, a very young girl—only his senior by four years or so.
Kathleen understood that she had been wrung dry of all material necessary for yet another addition to his "Observations of Eve"; and that now he was allowing himself a little pleasant relaxation from conscientious psychology.... He was young enough, and she old enough, that without embarrassment she could sham extreme indignation and a broken heart to those who chaffed her on his desertion. But she was sensible of a slight feeling of mortification, nevertheless; it was not in the nature of Kathleen to take even a schoolboy's defalcation lightly. She determined, however, to let no trace of this appear in her manner towards the culprit, when he should choose to approach her with a contrite desire to renew their charming intimacy. She was reading in the sitting-room the following morning, when Teddy marched in—and, on seeing her, looked very much inclined to back out again, speedily.
"Good morning, Teddy," said Kathleen.
"Oh ... 'morning!" with a marvellous recovery of sang-froid; "how are you? I was looking for my tennis-racket...."
"Rather warm for tennis this morning, isn't it? I thought we might walk over to Hele Bay and bathe there, if you've nothing better to do?"
"Er—I'm afraid I'm engaged," Teddy replied distantly. And, slightly raising his cap to her, strolled from the room.
Kathleen turned to meet the mischievous twinkle in the eye of Teddy's stepfather, leaning against the open garden door. She strove to laugh away her furious discomfiture.
"It looks as though I'd been jilted!"—(Nastylittle boy ... to let it happen in front of Napier Kirby!)
"Teddy always does that. Don't let it worry you. I'll walk with you to Hele Bay."
"Thanks!" between the condescension of the man and of the boy there was not much to choose. "Thanks; I'd rather go alone."
Giving Hele a wide berth, she went past the Haunted Farm, through the wood of the picnic, and across a stile into the lush pastured valley beyond. And she thought fiercely and incessantly of Napier Kirby....
Fred Worley, who admired his friend to the verge of boring to extinction anyone who cared to listen on the subject, had supplied her with quite an amount of interesting information. She had learnt that Kirby was born in New Zealand, but that he had at a very early age emigrated to Europe. After a great deal of adventuring, he had finally settled down to make money in the manufacture of a new line of cheap but effective motor-cars: the "Dagmar," of which he had by swift appreciative instinct acquired the patent.
Four years ago he had fallen headlong in love with Grace Frensham, and by his foolhardy uncalculating behaviour had nearly wrecked her chances of establishing a divorce case against the libertine who was Teddy's father.... ("And who sometimes comes to tea," Kathleen murmured under her breath.)
Worley seemed to regard the Kirbys' presence at Rapparee House as an enormous favour bestowed on himself and Trixie; a favour for which he was quite unable to account, unless it were that Nap was touched by his devotion.
"He's grateful for your admiration," remarked Kathleen; she had already noticed that the little man could absorb any quantity of this; and possibly was not at all averse to spending a couple of months in the continual company of his combined Boswell and Sancho Panza....
Yet Kirby was by no means a personage to be laughed at, despite his enormous vanity, his childishness, his affection for gaudy achievement. He had power; and he had brain; and swift subtle penetrations; probably unexpected tracts of chivalry, forbearance, in his strange composition. And he had come out on top in the great wrestle for place; a strong item in his favour, this—from the point of view of Kathleen, who scorned failure.
She became aware that the object of her meditations was taking a walk some sixty yards in her rear ... with evidently no manifest desire to catch up with her. She had no notion how long this state of affairs had existed ... but swung on, the blood raging at her lips ... because at swift sight of him had come the thought: "Howhe could make love, this—dark man!"
Presently, unable to bear any longer the mental obsession of him at her back, she halted; turned to face the reality. He smiled as he drew level—gleam of dazzling white in a mobile well-cut mouth.
"I told you I was going to Hele. How did you know I had come this way?"
"The patteran taught me," replied Napier nonchalantly.
"The patteran?"
Following his glance, she saw that she held some fragments of leaf in her hand. It was her wanton habit, while she walked and brooded, to pull leaves from hedge or bush and tear them abstractedly to bits along their network of veins. It was an easy matter to follow the trail of destruction.
"I said I wanted to go alone."
"Sure. And you can go alone. I'm quite happy as we were before you stopped. It's a treat to watch the way you walk."
Disdaining to walk any further as an exhibition for his applause, she lay down to rest in a field ablaze with some pungent yellow weed.
Instantly he had flung himself down at her side, and kissed her—and kissed her—as she flamed to sudden haggard beauty. Kissed her.... Grace, once fascinated by his very difference to the Anglo-Saxon, had for several months gently trickled cold water upon his outbursts of love; his pride smouldered ... till now it avenged itself upon the woman with brilliant eyes, and black heavy hair, and supple body pressing down the gay hot-scented weeds——This woman could never taunt him with the dark thick blood that flowed in his veins, because of the streak in her own that matched it....
"You—squaw ... didn't you feel that this had to happen, the second ever you set eyes on me...?"
Over-ripe, she needed only the touch.
... Sun steaming at high noon upon its yellow valley—his voice like molten gold—his kisses fire on her throat——Was there at last sufficient heat in the whole chilled world? She absorbed it; sucked it into her craving system; gave it out again in great torrid gushes. Napier was startled into fervour keener than he had meant to display in what was three parts a mere vicious back-fling at Gracie's charming lazy indifference. Somewhere deep down in the recesses of his nature, he registered a prudent hope that Temple knew how to look after his wife, and would not allow the thing to go too far....
Teddy brought Miss Cissy Norris in to lunch at Rapparee House, by Trixie's special permission. As Napier and Kathleen strolled out to the table laid by way of a change in the centre of the vegetable garden, the former heard old Mrs. Kirby state with remarkable affability:
"Biss Dorris—you are positively theodlypersod who cad brig a sbile to our Teddy's lips!"...
She would not have been forty-three had she not attached a quivering importance to the trappings of her romance; the delicious sense of secrecy and guilt; Napier's perfect play of indifference in the presence of others; amused appreciation of their susceptibility to his skilful management, so that again and again they snatched an apparently accidental meeting undisturbed. Most of all, she enjoyed making the elaborate excuses necessary to retire early to her room. Then came the lonely hour or two of anticipation—wild restlessness exulting in the foreknowledge that it would be soothed—that it could be soothed ... presently.
Oh, destiny and Trix Worley, you were astoundingly gracious to give me this little room in which I can be alone to think of my lover....
Her ears at strain to catch sounds of the party retiring to bed.... The last door closed.... Then vigil at the window which dropped barely six feet down to the paved courtyard.... Till his figure showed a dim blur in the sultry moonless night——Till she could throw on a cloak, and join him.
"Like the first bite off a great warmly flushed apricot," he murmured, kissing her throat.... Yes, she had been right in her surmise that the dark man could make love most wonderfully....
It was good, too, when, tumbled and dew-soaked, she slipped back to her white-and-pansy shelter, to repeat over and over again each new love-line he had given her—add it on to the old—the building of a song.
And that she took such intense pleasure in these trivial outward symbols of her rejuvenation, was it not convincing proof that youth must still be hers? Was it not the essence of youth—of extreme youth even?... Or else, Kathleen, was it age pursuing youth around a circular course, to a point where they almost touched?
But she was glad that her heart could still beat, and her cheeks flush, and her lips lie, for folly's sake. Too glad. The fever and glory of her nights must surely have been absorbed into the very walls of the room, so that the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, returning later on, would marvel at the queer hot thoughts that vaguely disturbed her peace, as a-sprawl upon the chintz counterpane, she read her favourite "Little Woman." ...
Whereas Kathleen came to know Napier better with the flight of days, he never expressed any curiosities with regard to her. Either he made love to her, brilliantly—or else talked, brilliantly, about himself, his past achievements, his schemes for the future, the reputation he had among his fellow-men for an uncanny flair in the choice and management of the wily automobile. "They all say: 'Go to Kirby! Kirby knows! He understands thenatureof cars!'——Well, it comes to just that; there's not an engine, good or bad, that I can't coax into putting out its best. Heard of Thesiger?"—mentioning a famous millionaire banker—"He said to a pal of mine: 'I'd no more think of buying a new make of car without first taking Kirby's advice——'"
The man boasted; but one believed in him. He radiated an atmosphere of success—and she had had enough of the temperament that hangs back from venture, irresolute, deprecating.
He presented the same blank surface of unconcern to the mention of any book or work of art which his own enthusiasm had not primarily chanced upon: "I like to discover the world for myself, and not have a showman at my elbow saying: 'Look!' all day long," said Nap Kirby—who himself was saying: "Look!" all day long ... or, by way of variation: "Look at me!"
But Kathleen rejoiced in his aloofness from her concerns. Oh, the rest, the utter rest mingled with the sensation of a new skin grown over the fretted others, which lay in the thought that her hidden sores and bitternesses, so apparent to Gareth, were entirely unsuspected by the sunny egoist who professed to love her. That where Gareth's own shrinking delicacy guessed instinctively how she could be hurt, and spared her whenever possible, insulting her doubly by his forbearance, Napier remained sublimely unaware of such matters as the approach of winter, and bathroom taps, and the strain of glamouring where glamour was no more, and the terror of forty-three next birthday, and a temper that had been chafed by daily intimacy with incompetence till it was harsh as the taste of blood in the mouth. She could go to Napier without the buzz of these torments about her brain and ears. She could go to him lightly ... hear him say, with that careless caress in his voice that was so wonderful to her—"You're like me, Kathleen, you think that——" or "You feel that——" confidently wrong in every one of his assumptions; never bothering to verify them. She wore the ready-made temperament ... and fervently, in her secret heart, did she thank him for it. More than for the starved passion he had satisfied, more than for the buoyant atmosphere of power he exhaled, Kathleen loved him because he did not understand her....
Meanwhile, Gareth wrote his book.
Its existence diffused a miraculous sheeny quality over everyday life. He had only to feel for the remembrance of it, a talisman between his palms—and things and people ceased to annoy, were merely a moving pantomime for his amusement. His sense of the whimsical, grown rusty with the years, was now suddenly restored to him. Even Kathleen no longer possessed the faculty of rasping him with her exasperated knowledge of his exact failings and what they had led to—or not led to—in the past. He did not notice that she bothered him at all any more ... so preoccupied was he with figures less real—infinitely more real. Just occasionally the talisman failed him; those were the hours following a mood when he had lacked the necessary spasm of energy to take up his pen and commence work, usually fluent enough after the start had been made. Those hours he would go sick with the fear that the old enemy within him—that which Kathleen had once named Atrophy of the Initiative, would eventually prevent even this cherished endeavour from fulfilment ... and those were the hours when again he was aware of Kathleen's voice.
Interludes, also, of the purely grotesque, when Trix Worley tumbled flat across his borderlands like an enormous figure in harlequinade, and lay a-sprawl and immovable ... his mentality was quite helpless against these irrelevant incursions.
But for the most part the merry haphazard days were dream-misted with secret consciousness of his table by the attic window. He enjoyed, as early as possible in the evening, bidding the noisy party 'Good night'; and leaving them to their games, their flirtations, their cards, their walks; stole up the creaking wooden stairway—surely the path to some hidden treasure of doubloons and moidores, pouring in dusty, twinkling showers all about a mouldering skeleton-form. The door closed behind him; the two candles lit, erect spear-heads of gold, envied by the far-off stars which thickly sprinkled the skylight patches. Then Gareth would sit down to the table; handle caressingly his pile of papers; fall into a reverie ... whence he was roused by the cool brush of fingers against his throat, across his eyelids.
She never failed to come, the cool girl of his dreams. He knew now that she must always have belonged to him; had even hovered mistily in the background of his thoughts, when his mother had called on her "youngest knight" one day to keep troth valiantly with love. It was the deep-hidden longing for her tenderness and shade which had made the years of glare and strain so wearying, so unbearable. And then, with the vision of the February wood, she had shown herself to him; in the attic with its murky fading corners, she had become real. He had gradually learnt a great deal about her: she did not sleep in the wood, as he had always supposed; but on the top of the hill, where stood a tumble-down bare-walled hut with a crooked door, and around it a patch of ground barren save for one fir-tree standing close against the window, catching the sunset flame in autumn, tip-tapping endlessly throughout the snowtime, A Grimm's-fairy-tale cottage; he believed there must be a grandmother in the kitchen that was eternally darkened by shadow of the fir-tree; but he had not yet raised the latch to see.
The girl whose touch was cool—Gareth did not doubt that somewhere she existed for him; but he had blundered, and so never found her. The hero of his book would not blunder thus. There lurked a queer and almost vicious pleasure in the endowment of this man with the essential quality himself had lacked, that he might win through to the essential end himself had missed. Gareth adored his conqueror, whose story he had fitted together bit by bit, pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, till now it stood complete, all but the final inspiration.
He lingered lovingly over the opening chapters, which described in tender detail Kay Rollinson's childhood as a harbour-urchin. Came an episode, at the age of fourteen or thereabouts, when the ever-dormant fear in his heart awoke to a vivid frenzy of terror ... he was driven by it inland—inland—away from all possible sight of that pallid grey-green ripple of ocean ... till at last, heedless in which direction he went, he reached the February wood; a wood haunted yet passionless ... where the vision came to him of a girl, slim and ragged and bare-ankled ... her thoughts were cool silent places where no water sounded; her voice touched the fear in his heart, and laid it to rest. Drowsing with his cheek pressed down to the carpet of sodden purple leaves, the boy knew that one day, inevitably, he would find such a girl, in such a wood.... And he vowed to wait for her, and be steadfast to his vision, till the full sweep of adventure brought it round.
Four years. And then—as had been the case with Gareth—Kay's adolescence was kindled by encounter with a girl flushed and vital and eager ...notthe girl of the February wood. They swept each other on to experiment ... a wild forbidden journey together in a tramp-steamer that had called at the harbour to take in coal ... a week, stealthy and rapturous, spent on an island off the coast of Ireland....
Then, at the height of rapture, inexplicable flight of the girl.
At first Kay was possessed by the one idea of seeking her out again, to renew the glory of which he had so staggeringly been deprived. But at the moment when his quest was successful, when, unseen himself, he saw her again, came realization that she was not the love he had waited for; and that the quest itself—ceaseless grapple with the void and desolate hours lacking her; memories that were as wounds that could not bear the lightest touch—all this tumult and turmoil of pain hitherto unknown—all was but that other curve of adventure which he must perforce accept without shirking, as he had accepted the wonder of her red hair, and her black eyes, and her passionate imperious ways.
Perhaps she never knew that he had seen her. He turned his back on the possibility of romance prolonged ... in silence returned to the harbour; to the workshop where he had been learning the business of ship-building, before sex had called him out and away.... And now, when time had out-worn the pain and the unsatisfied craving, the path was clear for that other girl—his girl—predestined his, now he had beaten down the temptation to forsake a mere promise ... a dream....
"Grant the path be clear before you——"
... And suddenly Gareth broke down; sat with face buried in his arms, shaking in every limb; the blood sweeping to his head and as quickly ebbing again ... strange clanging discords in his soul.... He hated Kay Rollinson for being able to do this, this which he had failed to do ... years ago, at Alpenruh. Was sick with momentary envy of the man he had summoned into being—his brain-creature—his slave.
There had been subtle fascination in thus deliberately setting him in the same circumstances as his own; in forcing him to the same crisis ... and wrenching him out triumphant.
But it wasn't fair—not fair—God had made Gareth Temple futile and rotten of will. Kay Rollinson's god had been kinder.
Well ... he had started to write; had pledged his self-respect to this one achievement at least. So he would have to go on mocking the man he was, with a splendid paper-and-ink conception of the man he thought himself. No ... he was not ungrateful; he loved his book, and the hero of it.... It was only just for a little while he hated him for not having blundered as he himself had blundered.... For Gareth the path was blocked now, if she should come ... if she should still come....
August throbbed and flared to a tropical consummation.
Gareth's holiday would finish to-morrow. And Kathleen's. How much of what each had separately found would be capable of transplantation to Pacific Villa, Hammersmith?
"Mr.Temple. Did you know that we livequiteclose to you, in London?"
Gareth had not known. It was something of a shock to realize that henceforth and at any moment a stout spectre might glide up behind him, touch him on the shoulder, beckon mysteriously—"Awordwith you. Inprivate." And then: "Mr.Temple. Is the daywetor fine?"...
Gareth was not quite sure if the tidings of her future proximity were blessed.
And Kathleen?
"Nap—I shall see you in London?" tensely.
"Well, what do you think? Perhaps not," he drawled, teasing her.
"When? Where? It won't be easy. It won't be the same as here."
"I'll fix something; don't you worry. We'll all be back in a fortnight. And I like loving old people in new places."
Laughing, she thanked him for the compliment. She was never harsh or bitter with Kirby.
"And in different climates?"
"There is no climate in this infernal country. It's all just weather. One day, you Indian woman, we'll run away together, South, and remember what it is to get comfortably tropical."
He spoke carelessly ... but out of the words "we" and "our" she wove herself a garment of warmth.... It was all right—romance was not at an end for her; romance was hers, here, and in London, and beyond London—he had said: "One day...."
Directly after sunset, on the last evening of his holiday, Gareth went down to the harbour.
Full tide. The waves had ceased to dash in; and jet-carved against the dull gold sky, cargo-steamer and sailing-boat floated high upon the brimming water, that was tranquil as a mother with babe at her breast. Ever and anon, a larger undulation from beyond the harbour mouth swang and stirred luminous green depths, and shivered the dreaming reflections of white wall and mauve roof and pink roof, till they spread in dark stains of wet over the edge of the quay.... A great lazy sea-monster, slobbering its triumph over a victim foredoomed.... Yes, the tide exhaled an evil impression to-night ... more than mere peace in this boundless endless ripple ... slumberous, replete....
Thus water would look when at last it could claim Kay Rollinson.
... For years he would have forgotten his round adventure. He had met the girl of his vision, the girl of the February wood; he was free when he met her; she had laid cool fingers on the fear in his heart, till it was at rest; till he ceased to defy it and grapple with it—but went to live with her inland, far inland, where there was no sea to remind him.
He had retired from ship-building. An age of steel and steam had arisen, which left him and his methods sadly in the rear. The sea was still being conquered—but not by him. He found other, lesser interests; farmed his own lands for his own pleasure; travelled; read books, and collected art treasures. He had many friends. And there was also his little daughter.
For years he had forgotten.
Came a day when he discovered that his young wife was loved by a youth younger than himself, weaker, with tender charming ways ... elfish ways.
Rollinson asked her if she would wed this newcomer, if he were dead and out of the way. She looked straight at him with her eyes that were blue hyacinths drenched in rain ... and replied:
"Yes."
"Would you go to him as things are—away from me?"
"No. Because of Iris."
That morning had come a letter informing him of a grave money loss. For his fortune had still remained in the ship-building business, when he retired from it.
The boy was rich—that boy to whom she would gladly have gone, if her husband were dead.
Clearly, Kay Rollinson reflected, his life stood in the way of her round adventure.
"That can be arranged." He loaded his revolver in all its chambers; wrote a letter to his closest friend—who happened to be that same youth with the charming elfish ways—explaining that unable to face financial ruin, he intended to shoot himself that night. And with his revolver in his pocket, he went out.
... They found him the next day, drowned in the canal of a town some miles distant. The revolver was in his hand—loaded in all its chambers.
The canal flowed wearily into a river, and the river to the sea. And no one could tell how water had eventually claimed the man who carried in his soul the fear of water....
So Gareth came by the end of his book: "The Round Adventure."