He was a little late as judged by the iron punctuality of Arundel, and he found the ladies assembled. He had one moment of intense nervousness as he entered, but it was succeeded by an eagerness not less intense when he saw Elizabeth's cordial and welcoming smile. That set the note for him; he had already determined on the same key, and he knew himself in tune with it.
As he shook hands with the girl he laughed and turned to Mrs. Hancock, involuntarily detaining Elizabeth's hand one second, not more, than was quite usual.
"I was rather nervous," he said. "I intruded on Elizabeth's practice this afternoon. Perhaps she has told you. In fact, I meant to stay to wait for your return and Edith's, but I found it quite impossible."
"Dear!" said Mrs. Hancock. "Yes, Lind has told us dinner is ready. Did Elizabeth scold you?"
Elizabeth, equally relieved, laughed.
"You behaved very rudely, Edward," she said; "and, as a matter of fact, I didn't tell them. I wanted to screen you. But as you don't seem in the least ashamed of yourself I shall give you up."
"What revelations we are going to have!" said Mrs. Hancock. "Yes, your favourite soup, Edward. Mrs. Williams thought of it when she heard you were coming. She sent out for the cream. Now let us hear all about it. I thought there was some mystery."
This was not quite true. Mrs. Hancock had not thought anything whatever about it. But this phrase of purely dinner conversation disconcerted Elizabeth for a moment. Edith, suddenly looking up, perceived this obscure embarrassment.
"No, Aunt Julia, there was no mystery," said Elizabeth. "There was merely my mistaken kindness in sparing Edward. Now I shall sacrifice and expose him. He came in when I was practising quietly, so that I didn't hear him, and sat down to listen. And when I had finished my piece I turned round and saw him, and, of course, I was startled and annoyed. Wasn't it caddish of him! Do say it was caddish!"
That should have been sufficiently robust to have carried off and finished with the subject. But it so happened that Mrs. Hancock went on.
"My dear, what words to use!" she said. "Edith will be up in arms. Look, there is another flash of lightning! We shall have a regular storm, I am afraid. And what did you say to him?"
"She told me to go away," said Edward, "which I did. And I asked her to forgive me. I don't know if she's done that yet."
The desire for secret communication with her prompted and impelled him.
"I shall ask her later if she has," he said, raising his eyes to her face. "Her screening me was a sign of her softening."
"But her giving you away now shows signs of hardening again," said Edith.
"Perhaps she doesn't know her own mind," said Edward, still looking at her, and knowing but not caring that he had no business to force replies on her, so long as he could talk with a meaning that was clear to her alone.
This time the secret look that leaped out to him below her amazement showed again through the trouble and brightness of her face.
"I know my mind perfectly," she said. "I will forgive you if you are sorry."
"I am. But I liked hearing you play when you didn't know any one was there."
Mrs. Hancock looked vaguely and beamingly round.
"But I always thought that people played best when there was an audience to listen to them," she said.
"There was an audience," remarked Edward.
Mrs. Hancock saw the fallacy without a moment's hesitation, and enlarged on it till it became more clear than the sun at noonday.
"But she didn't know there was," she said lucidly, "and so it would count as if there wasn't. Listen, there is the rain beginning again, like that beautiful piece of Edward's which always makes me feel sad. He shall play it to us after dinner. Was it one of your pieces that Elizabeth was playing before, Edward?"
Mrs. Hancock always spoke of immortal works by classical masters as if Edward's atrocious renderings of them gave him the entire right and possession of them.
"No," said he, "it was her own. I shall always think of it as the Elizabintermezzo."
Mrs. Hancock turned an attentive eye on the asparagus dish.
"Finish it, Edward," she said; "it is the last you will get from my garden this year, and what an amusing conversation we are having about Elizabeth and you! Elizabintermezzo—the intermezzo which Elizabeth plays! What a good word! Quite a portmanteau!"
All this private signalling of Edward to her, all his double-edged questions as to whether she had forgiven him, seemed to Elizabeth in the worst possible taste. She had just now announced, so frankly that she could not be imagined to be serious, that he had behaved caddishly that afternoon, and his behaviour now seemed to endorse her judgment. And yet she, by her outspokenness perhaps, had set the fashion of double-edged speech; it was justifiable in him to think that she meant to allude to what neither of them openly alluded to. But he was caddish; she felt irritated and disgusted with him. She looked at him with eyebrows that first frowned and then were raised in expostulation.
"Haven't we all had enough of my practice this afternoon?" she said.
As she looked at him she noticed what she had noticed a hundred times before, how his hair above his forehead grew straight and then fell over in a plume. And while her mind was ruffled with his behaviour, she suddenly liked that enormously. She wondered if it was elastic, that thickness of erect hair, like a spring-mattress; she wanted to put her hand on it. And that radical and superficial emotion called physical attraction had begun—superficial because it concerns merely the outward form and colour of face and limbs, radical because all the sex-love in the world springs from its root which is buried in the beating heart of humanity. Afterwards, no doubt, those roots may dissolve and become part of the life-blood, red corpuscles of love, but without them there has never yet opened the glorious scarlet of the flowers of passion, nor the shining foliage that keeps the world green.
Thus, at the very moment when he was indifferent to her except that she was a little nauseated by his behaviour, he began to become different to all others, and very faintly but authentically it was whispered to her that he and she "belonged," that they fitted, entwined and interlacing, into this great Chinese puzzle of a world. Instantly she shut her ears to the whisper. But she had heard it.
He had the decency, she allowed, to change the subject.
"No encore for the intermezzo," he said; "but 'Siegfried' is being given this day week, and I have got a box for it. I want you all to come."
"Well, that would be a treat," said Mrs. Hancock. "These are the first white-heart cherries we've had from the garden, Edward. You must take some! 'Siegfried!' That is by Wagner."
Elizabeth banished from her mind caddishness and springy hair alike.
"Oh, Aunt Julia!" she exclaimed.
"That is capital, then!" said Edward, knowing the value of an atmosphere of certainty. "We had better all sleep in town so that we can stop to the end without any sense of being hurried, which would spoil it all. I'll see to all that, and, of course, it's my treat."
Mrs. Hancock's face changed, but brightened again as she caught the full flavour of the first white-heart.
"Sleep in town!" she said. "I never——Aren't the cherries good? I shall tell Ellis he was quite right when he wanted extra manure. Delicious! But sleep in town, Edward! Is that necessary? Can't we come away before the end, for I quite agree with you that it is no use stopping in your seat grasping a fan in one hand and your dress in the other, waiting for the curtain to go down. And even then, they all come on and bow. Wouldn't it be better if we all slipped out in plenty of time to catch the theatre-train, as we always do?"
Elizabeth sighed.
"Aunt Julia, I would sooner not go at all than come away before the end," she said. "It's the love duet, you know, and oh! I've never seen it!"
Aunt Julia looked mild reproof.
"My dear, we mustn't be in a hurry. We must think it over and see how we can contrive."
"We can contrive by stopping in town," said Elizabeth. "Or couldn't you drive down in your car afterwards?"
"But, my dear, it might be a wet night, and if we drove back it would only be reasonable to drive up. Shall we have coffee in here now for an exception, and then we need not interrupt ourselves? Yes, Lind, coffee in here, not in the drawing-room, but here. It would only be reasonable, as I said, to drive up, for it would be no use going by train, while Denton took up the car empty, and if it was a wet night I should not like him hanging about all afternoon and evening, for his wife expects a baby." This was aside to Edward, though since Edith was soon to be married she did not so much mind her hearing.
"But his wife isn't going to hang about all afternoon and evening," said Elizabeth swiftly.
"My dear, let me talk it over with Edward! And Denton would not know how to meet us at the opera—we might miss him, and then what would happen?"
Edward laughed.
"Then, Mrs. Hancock, you would have to sleep in town uncomfortably, without night things, instead of sleeping comfortably according to my plans."
"But I should have to take Filson," said Mrs. Hancock, rather unwisely, since if you mean not to do a thing—and she had not the smallest wish to see "Siegfried"—it weakens the position to argue, however sensibly, about it.
"Of course you would take Filson!" said Edward. "Take Lind as well, if you like! I will arrange it all."
"Well, it would be an event, wouldn't it, to see the opera and sleep up in town," said Mrs. Hancock, who, though she did not mean to go, a little hankered after anything of this sort, if it was to be had without any expense. "But there would be a great deal to think of and to plan. I always forget if you take cream, Edward. Yes? A great deal to plan, for if one is to go one must look tidy, and have a few jewels."
She formed a rapid mental picture of herself in the front of a box with the pearls, and perhaps the tiara. It rather attracted her, but she felt that if she stayed in a hotel she would not get a wink of sleep all night with thinking of those treasures. She rejected the picture, but simultaneously a bright idea struck her.
"Wednesday next, did you say?" she asked guilefully.
"No, Thursday."
Mrs. Hancock made a gesture of impatience.
"Well, if that isn't annoying," she said, "when we were arranging it so nicely and getting over every difficulty. Because Thursday is Mrs. Martin's garden-party, which I haven't missed in all the years I have been at Heathmoor, and I mustn't miss it! She would think it so unkind, for she always says she depends on me. I wonder if she could possibly change her day. Listen to the rain. I hope you have brought your mackintosh, Edward. No, I'm afraid it's too late to ask her, for the invitations are already sent out. Well, that does knock our delightful plan on the head. How battered the garden will be, though we want rain. And 'Siegfried,' too; of all operas that is the one I should so like to see again. But I have an idea. Yes, pray light your cigarette, Edward! What if you took these two girls up to see it? Couldn't they be supposed to chaperone each other, and Edith so nearly married, too? I don't know what people would think, though!"
Mrs. Hancock was the soul of good nature, and having so adroitly shown the impossibility of herself partaking in this plan, thought nothing of the disagreeableness of spending an evening alone.
"But couldn't you come after the garden-party, mother?" asked Edith.
"My dear, I should be a rag! Mrs. Martin says that she feels no responsibility if I am there at her party, but I assure you I do. I have always said it is no use trying to listen to music unless you are fresh. It is an insult to the music. But I wonder if it is very wrong of me to suggest such a thing. Edith, darling, the candle-shade. Well done! You have saved it. But if you girls go up together and join Edward in town I don't see who will know. Well, that will be a secret for us all to keep! Shall we all go into the drawing-room? Hark how the rain is falling! We must have some music."
"Then that's settled?" asked Edward.
"If these young ladies approve. But what a lot we have to arrange—where you are to go, and where they are to meet you, and the train they are to come back by in the morning." She paused a moment as she took up her patience pack.
"And Filson shall go up with them!" she proclaimed. "It will make me feel more comfortable if I know Filson is there. What a talk we have had! I declare it is half-past nine already! Do let us have some music! Edith, dear, I think you might open the window into the garden a little bit. If any of us feel it damp, we can close it again. Look, there are two aces out already. What a good beginning!"
Edward turned to Elizabeth.
"And you like the 'Siegfried' plan?" he asked.
"But it's too nice of you! I——"
She stopped.
"Do go on," he said, speaking low.
Suddenly Elizabeth saw that Edith was observing them.
"I suppose I shall have to forgive you," she said, in a voice clearly audible, "now that you are taking me to 'Siegfried.'"
And the very fact that she spoke aloud, so that Edith could hear, falsified, so she felt, the truth of her light speech. She knew he would not take it quite lightly, and she allowed him to put one construction on it, so that Edith might put another.
His eye quickened with the secret message he sent to her, and she did not refuse it.
"But it wasn't a bribe," said he with his lips. "I made the plan before I sinned. So play your intermezzo."
A week afterwards Elizabeth was walking up and down the long garden-path while the morning was yet dewy. She had awoke early on this day that she and Edith were going up to town to see the opera, woke with a sense of ecstatic joy in life, of intense and rapturous happiness. For the last week she had been living in a storm of emotion, that seemed not to come from within her, but from without, beating and buffeting her, but giving her, from time to time, serene and wonderful hours. She had wrestled with and worked over the transcript of "Siegfried" until she had made the music her own, and she seemed to have come into a heritage that was waiting ready for her to claim it. The passionate excitement of the true musician, with all its flow of flooding revelations, its stream of infinite rewards was hers; she had entered that kingdom which, to all except those few who can say "we musicians know," is but a beautiful cloudland and a place of bewildering mists. But now for her it had cleared; she had come into her own, and saw steadfastly what she had before but guessed at, of what she had heard but hints and seen images. Till now, with all her love of music, she had been but a speller of the mere words that made its language, knowing the words to be beautiful and feeling their nameless charm. But now it was as if the printed page of their poetry was open to her. There was meaning as well as beauty, coherence and romance in the sounds which had hitherto but suggested images to her.
The revelation had not come singly; the golden gates had not swung open of their own accord. Well, she knew the hand which for her had thrown them open, the wind that had dispersed the mists. She was in love, in love, as she had once said indifferently and disappointedly, with "a common man." Beyond any shadow of doubt it was that which had opened out the kingdom of music for her; thus quickened, her receptive nature had been enabled to receive. Hitherto she had been like a deaf man, vivid in imagination, to whom the magic of sound had been described. Her perceptions had been dormant; she had but felt the light as the bud of a folded flower may be imagined to feel it. Now she received it on expanded petals.
About that love itself she had at present no qualms, she admitted no recognition of its hopelessness, she had no perception of its dangers. She was too full of the first wonder of its dawning to guess or to care what the risen day might bring forth. The fact that Edward was engaged to be married to her cousin was a complete safeguard against dangers which she barely conjectured, and the very thought of hope or hopelessness made no imprint on her mind, for in the presence of the thing herself she could not bring herself to consider the possible issues of it. It exalted and possessed her; the fact that she loved filled her entire being, which already brimmed with her new perceptions of music. Each heightened the other, each was infinite, possessing the whole of her. She had no thought for the morrow, or for the day, or for herself. The whole of the eagerness of her youth was enslaved in a perfect freedom. She was blind and ecstatic, and in truth was running heedlessly, sightlessly between quicksands and deep seas and precipices, unconscious of them all, and above all, unconscious of herself, absorbed by love and melody, even as the dew on the lawn was being absorbed by the sun.
Above, the sky was unflecked by cloud and as yet of pale and liquid blue; the warm air had still a touch of night's coolness in it, and the young day seemed like a rosy child awakening from sleep. At the end of the garden the tall elms stood motionless, towers of midsummer leaf, and the smell of the evaporating dew that had lain all night in the bosom of red roses and among the thick-blade grass of the lawn, told her where it had slept. It hung thick on the threads of the netted fruit-trees, and glimmered on the red-brick wall that ran alongside the shining gravel walk. Already the bees had begun their garnerings, the birds were a-chuckle in the bushes, and suddenly the whole pervading sweetness and song of the morning smote on Elizabeth's heart, already full to overflowing, and demanded the expression of her gratitude. She was compelled to thank somebody for it—not Ellis, not Aunt Julia, not Edward even.
"Somebody, anyhow!" she said aloud.
Edward, from long living at Heathmoor, had little to learn about comfort, and the arrangements he had made for the two girls were of a completeness that Mrs. Hancock could hardly have rivalled, even if she had been concerned with plans for herself. He had gone up to town by the 9.6 a.m. that morning, and had shown himself but briefly at his office, devoting the rest of his time to orders and inspection. He had been to see the rooms prepared for their reception at the Savoy, bedrooms for the two girls, with a sitting-room between, had shown in a practical way that he recollected Elizabeth's ardour for sweet peas and Edith's respect for roses, had ordered tea to be ready for their arrival, a table to be reserved in the restaurant for their dinner between the acts, and an entrancing little supper to be served in the sitting-room when the opera was over. Finally, he was waiting at the station with his motor for their arrival.
It was not only the desire for their comfort that prompted this meticulous supervision, for the evening in prospect was symbolical to him of a parting, a farewell, and, with the spirit in which all farewells should be said, he wished to join hands with Elizabeth once more festally and superbly, not with lingering glances and secret signs, but to the sound of music and to the sight of a glorious drama. He had spent this last week among waves and billows of emotions, and, though his ship had not foundered, his lack of experience as a sailor in such seas had completely upset him in every other sense. But to-night, he had told himself, he would reach port; already he had rounded the pier-head, and within a few hours now he would put Elizabeth ashore. The pier was decorated for her reception, flags waved and bands played. He would part with her splendidly, and go back to his boat, where Edith would await him for their lifelong cruise in calm and pleasant waters.
He had made, so he honestly believed, the honest decision, and though honesty is a virtue which is so much taken for granted that it is ranked rather among the postulates of life than among its acquirements, honest decisions are not always made without struggle and difficulty. He felt for Elizabeth, the actual flesh and blood and spirit of her, what he had only hitherto imagined in the dreams which, a few months before, he had settled to have done with. Bitterly, and with more poignancy of feeling than he had thought himself capable of, he regretted his precipitancy in their abandonment; in a few months more he would have seen them realized, he would have had his human chance, of an attractive boy with a girl, to have made them true. But he had not waited; he had shaken himself awake, and, with full sense of what he was doing, had made love to and been accepted by the girl he knew and liked and admired. To-day he acknowledged his responsibility and had no intention of shirking it. A week of what was not less than spiritual anguish had resulted in this decision. In one direction he was pulled by honour, in the other by love. He had a "previous engagement," which, he had settled, took rank before anything else whatever. He believed, without the smallest touch of complacency, that Edith loved him, but he believed also (and again not a grain of that odious emotion entered into his belief) that had he been free Elizabeth would have accepted him. Since his deplorable lapse a week ago, she had treated him with a friendlier intimacy than ever; this, for they had had no further word on the subject, he interpreted to mean that out of the generosity of her nature she had completely forgiven him and obliterated the occurrence, and that her friendliness was meant to show how entirely she trusted him for the future. In this he was absolutely right; he was right also in the corollary he instinctively added, that she would not have adopted this attitude unless she was fond of him. She could quite correctly have kept him at arm's length, she could have continued to manifest that slight hostility to him which had previously characterized her behaviour. But she had not; she had given him a greater warmth and friendliness than ever before.
So far he could let his thoughts bear him without shame or secrecy. But there went on beneath them a tow, an undercurrent, which, though he suppressed and refused to regard it, was what had caused, in the main, the soul-storm in which he had been buffeted all this week. He believed there was more than friendliness in her regard for him, and with the terrible sharpsightedness of blind love (as if one of his eyes saw nothing, while the other was gifted with portentous vision) he had not missed the signs, little signs, a look, a word, a movement, which are the feelers of love, waving tentacles of infinite sensitiveness, that threadlike and invisible to the ordinary beholder, shrivel and spring and touch instinctively without volition on their owner's part. No one, fairly and impartially judging, could say that Elizabeth had behaved to him except with friendly unreserve. But to him she seemed to reserve much, to reserve all.
In spite of all this, Edward, as he waited on the platform for the arrival of their train, had no doubt that he was doing right in following the demands of honour. He had killed his dreams, so to speak, when he engaged himself to Edith; to-night, to the sound of flutes and violins, he was going to conduct their funeral, and did not see that in reality he was intending to bury them alive, and that dreams are not smothered by burial; rather, like the roots of plants, they grow and flourish beneath the earth, sending up the sap that feeds their blossoms. He did not contemplate the future with dismay; he believed that both he and Edith would have a very pleasant, comfortable life together, according to the Heathmoor pattern. And with a touch of cynicism, which was unusual with him, he added, as the train steamed in, that this was more than could be said for many marriages. Then, before the train stopped, he saw Elizabeth get out and look round for him with shining, excited eyes, and his heart beat quick at her recognition of him.
The three met with jubilance, and drove straight to the Savoy, for there was not more than time to have tea and dress. The day, like the last dozen of its predecessors, had been dry and dusty, and the roadway in front of the hotel had been liberally watered. Stepping out of the motor, Edith slipped and fell heavily, her foot doubled under her. Bravely she tried to smile, bravely also she tried to get up. But the smile faded in the agony of her twisted ankle, and she was helped into the hotel.
It seemed at first that it might be a wrench of little consequence, the pain of which would be assuaged by ten minutes' rest. But all that ten minutes did for her was to give her a badly swollen ankle, and show the utter impossibility of her setting foot to the ground. Then, swathed in wet bandages, and lying on the sofa in the sitting-room, she took a peremptory line with the others.
"You two must go," she said; "and if you wait here any longer you will be late. If you aren't both of you ready to start in a quarter of an hour, I shall go myself, bandage and all, if I have to hop there."
"But you can't spend the evening alone," said Elizabeth. "And we——"
"I shan't spend the evening alone, because we shall all have supper together. Dinner, too, if you will be awfully kind, Edward, and have it up here with me instead of in the restaurant."
Edward had already yielded in his heart—yielded with a secret exulting rapture. The Fates, though at Edith's expense, were giving him a splendid farewell to Elizabeth. They would be alone together for it; he did not let his thoughts progress further than that.
"If you insist——" he began.
"Am I not insisting? My dear, it is a dreadful bore, but we must make the best of it. Be kind, and order dinner here instead, and go to dress."
Elizabeth was left alone with her cousin.
"But Aunt Julia!" she said. "What will she say?"
"I have thought of that. Mother mustn't know. You must coach me up when you come back, and—and I shall have sprained my ankle when we came back to the hotel at the end. Don't forget! Oh, do go and get ready, Elizabeth; it's all settled! I can't bear that Edward should be disappointed in not seeing 'Siegfried,' nor, indeed, that you should. It would be perfectly senseless that you should stop at home because I can't go!"
It cost Elizabeth something to argue against this. She wanted passionately to see the opera, and if a dream-wish, a fairy-wish, for a thing that was impossible could have been presented to her that morning, she would have chosen to see the awakening of Brunnhilde alone with Edward. His wild-blurted speech when he intruded upon her practising a week ago she had buried, so complete since then had been his discretion, and if she thought of it at all, she thought of it only as a momentary lapse, an unguarded exaggeration. Since then she had not defended herself against him by any coldness of manner, any unspoken belittlement of him, and they had arrived at a franker and more affectionate intimacy than ever before. She did not inquire or conjecture what his secret emotional history was. She was safeguarded enough from him by his engagement to Edith; while from herself her own integrity of purpose seemed a sufficient shield. Yet she argued against Edith's insistence on the fulfilment of the fairy-wish.
"But Aunt Julia wouldn't like it," she said.
"I can't help that!" said Edith. "I want it so much that I don't care what mother would think. Besides, she won't think anything. She will never know." Edith paused a moment and flushed.
"Besides, dear," she said, "if I asked you and Edward, or even wanted you not to go, what reason could there be for it? It would appear so—so odious—as if——I can't say it! Oh, go and dress!"
The unspoken word was clear enough, and it contained all that Elizabeth was conscious of. It would have been odious that either of them should harbour the thought that Edith could not put into words. It was sufficient.
The two came back to dine at the end of the first act, full to the brim of music, intoxicated with the beady ferment of sound and drama, and both a little beside themselves with excitement. At present the music, and that alone, held them; in the flame of their common passion each as yet paid little heed to the other, except as a sharer in it. Elizabeth hardly touched any food; she was silent and bright-eyed, exploring her new kingdom. But with Edward, the return to the hotel, to the common needs of food and drink, above all, to Edith, took him poignantly back into the actual world again. Once again, more vividly than ever before, his choice which he told himself was already decided, was set before him as he sat with Elizabeth silent and strung-up on the one side, with Edith intelligently questioning him, with a view to subsequent catechism of herself on the other. Her questions seemed idiotic interruptions; he could barely make courteous narrative—"And then Mime told him about his youth. And then he began to forge the sword. Yes, it was Palstecher who played Siegfried—he was in excellent voice...."
He did not revoke his choice, but he ceased to think of it. He wanted only, for the present, to hasten the tardy progress of the hands of the clock to the moment when it would be time for him to go away again alone with Elizabeth. But the aspect of this evening, as his farewell to her, was ousted in his mind by the prospect of the next hour or two. He thought less of what it symbolized; more and growingly more of what it was. But even as no thunderstorm bursts without the menace of gathering clouds, so the thickening intensity of his emotions warned him with utterly disregarded caution, that forces of savage import were collecting. Had a friend laid the facts, the possibilities, the danger before him, and asked his opinion as to what a man should do under such circumstances, unhesitatingly would he have advised, without regard to any other issue, that he should not go back alone with Elizabeth. Let him take a waiter from the hotel, a stranger out of the street, rather than trust himself alone to keep a steady head and a firm foot in those precipiced and slippery places. Had he believed that Elizabeth had no touch of more than pleasant friendly feelings towards him, he might have been justified in believing in himself. But—and this was the very spring and foundation of his excitement, his expectancy—he did not so believe. He fancied, rightly or wrongly, that she had shown signs of a warmer regard for him than that. But still, as unconvincingly as a parrot-cry, he kept saying to himself, "Edith trusts me, and therefore I trust myself." He did not even feel he was doing a dangerous thing; he felt only that he had an irresistible need to be with Elizabeth in the isolation of the darkened house when Brunnhilde awoke.
The performance, viewed artistically, was magnificent. From height to height mounted the second act, till the sounds of the noonday, the murmurs of the forest, grew from the scarcely audible notes to the full triumphant symphony of sunlight and living things, pervading, all-embracing, bringing the voice of all nature to endorse heroic deeds, and at the same time to bring to the hero the knowledge of his human needs. To him, even as to Siegfried, it woke in his heart the irresistible need of love, of the ideal mate, of the woman of his dreams, who sat beside him. Once only, as the clear call of the bird rang through the hushed house, did Elizabeth take her eyes off the stage, and turned them, dewy with tears and bright with wonder, on him. She said no word, but unconsciously moved her chair a little nearer his and laid her ungloved hand on his knee.
He had one moment's hesitation—one moment in which it was in his power to check himself. There was just one branch of a tree, so to speak, hanging above the rapids down which he was hurrying, and it was just possible, with an effort, to grasp it. He made no such effort. Deliberately, if anything in this fervour of growing madness could be called deliberate, he let that moment go by; deliberately he rejected the image of Edith awaiting their return, and, all aflame, acquiesced with his will in anything that should happen. Deliberately he cast the reins on the backs of his flying steeds, and not again did the sense that he had any choice in the matter come to him. The last atom of his manliness was absorbed in his manhood. Elizabeth's hand lay on his knee, the fingers bending over it inwards. Gently he pressed them with his other knee, and he felt her response. She had but sought that touch to assure herself she was in tune with him, one with him over this miracle that she was looking at; but on the moment she felt there was more than that both in that pressure of her hand and her own response to it. But she was too absorbed, too rapt to care; nothing mattered except Siegfried, and the fact that she and Edward were together and beating with one heart's-blood about it.
And presently afterwards Brunnhilde lay beneath the pines in her shining armour, and through the flames, the vain obstacle that barred his approach to her, came Siegfried. Of no avail to her was the armour of her maidenhood, for while she slept he loosened it, and of no avail to stay his approach was the fierceness of the flames that girt her resting-place. At his kiss—the kiss that sealed her his—the strong throb of her blood beat again in her body; the eyes that had so long been shut in her unmolested sleep were unclosed, and she sat up and saluted the sun, and she saluted the day and the earth and all the myriad sounds and sights and odours that told her she was born into life again. Siegfried had stood back in awe at the wonder and holiness of her awakening, and she turned and saw him. And once more Elizabeth turned to Edward, and their eyes met in a long glance.
To each, at that moment, to her no less than to him, it was the drama of their own souls that was unfolding in melody and love-song before them. She needed to look at him but for that one glance of recognition, for there on the stage she learned, as she saw the immortal lovers together, the immortality of love. The whole air rang with this supreme expression of it, the violins and the flutes and that glorious voice of Brunnhilde spoke for her, and it was her companion, here in the box with her, who bore the rapture higher, who completed it, made it perfect. Indeed, there was greeting in the farewell; if he said "vale" to her he sang "ave" also. But his "vale" was less now than a mutter below his breath.
She sat with her arms resting on the front of the box till the last triumphant notes rang out, and through the applause that followed she still sat there, unmoving. There was no before or after for her then; her consciousness moved upon a limitless, an infinite plane. He had left his place, and when she turned he was standing close behind her. Again their eyes met in that long look, and the question that was in his saw itself answered by the smile, shy and solemn, that shone in hers. Then, still in silence, they went out into the crowd that filled the passages.
The entrance porch was crowded with the efflux of the house, waiting for their carriages to arrive, and Elizabeth saw the surging, glittering scene with a strange, hard distinctness; but it all seemed remote from her, as if it was enclosed in walls of crystal. The crowd was no more to her than a beehive of busy, moving little lives, altogether sundered in intelligence and interests from herself and Edward. The whole world had receded on to the insect-plane; it crawled and skipped and jostled about her, but he and she were infinitely removed from it, and it aroused in her just the vague wonder of a man idly gazing at a disturbed ant-hill, hardly wondering what all the bustle was about. Here and there stood members of this throng, waiting quietly in corners, taking no part in the movement, and it just occurred to her that in a room in the Savoy Hotel there was another such member of this queer, busy little race waiting their return. But even the thought of Edith barely found footing in her mind; she was but another specimen under glass.
The night was quite fine, and in a moment or two they had made their way out of the doors and were walking down the queue of carriages to find their motor. He had suggested that she should wait while he hunted it and brought it up, but she preferred to go out of this crowded insect-house to look for it with him. The street was full also of the vague throng, that also seemed utterly unreal, utterly without significance; she would scarcely have been surprised if the lights and the people and the houses and the high-swung moon had all collapsed and melted away, leaving only a mountain-top girt with flames that rose and fell with gusts of sparkling melody. She would not be alone there; her whole self, her completed self, at least would be there—the self which she had seen so often, had criticized and belittled, which, till this evening, she had never known to be herself. Now she knew nothing else. All the rest was a mimic world, full of busy little insects.
The motor was soon found, and she stepped in, followed by Edward. She had heard him give some directions to the chauffeur about driving down to the Embankment, and going to that entrance of the hotel, and they slid out of the queue and turned. So intensely did she feel his presence that it seemed to bring him no nearer to her when he took her hand in his, when she heard him whisper—
"Brunnhilde—you awoke!"
"Yes, Siegfried," she answered.
And his arms were round her, and for one second she clung close to him as he kissed her.
Then, even while his fire burned close to her, so that it mingled with her own blaze, and while the ringing of the music that was mystically one with it drowned all other sound, the real world, the actual world, which had quite vanished from her consciousness, stood round her again, menacing, reminding, appalling. Her real self, her integrity, her honour pointed at her in amazement, in horror, so that through their eyes, and not through the eyes of her passion, she saw herself and what she was doing, and what she was permitting, and what she was rapturously welcoming. Memory, loyalty, honesty cried aloud at her, and though it seemed that she was tearing part of herself away she wrenched herself free.
"Oh, what are we doing?" she cried. "We are both mad! And you——Oh, why did you let me? Why did you make it possible for me? Let me go, Edward!"
He had seized her again.
"I can't!" he said. "You are mine, and you know it! It's you that I have dreamed of all my life! We both dreamed, and we have awoke to-night to find it is true!"
Again, and this time easily, she shook herself free of him, for that in him which had struggled before, which had planned this evening as a farewell to her, came to her aid. For the moment, Elizabeth, far stronger than he in will, was wholly against him, and against him he had honourable traitors in his own house.
"We dreamed to-night of impossible things," she said; "and I have awoke again."
She began to tremble violently as the struggle to maintain that first flush of true vision seized her. It had come to her with the flashing stroke of impulse; now—and here was the difficulty—she had to keep hold of it.
"Edward, you see it as I do really!" she said. "You know we've been mad, mad! Ah, thank God, here we are!"
The motor had stopped by the hotel door, and already a porter was coming across the pavement to it.
"No, we can't leave it like this," he said. "Let's drive on for a little. Just for ten minutes, Elizabeth." He was on the near side of the carriage and tried to prevent her getting up.
"Come to your senses!" she said.
"But it is impossible to meet Edith like this!" he said. "She will see——"
He considered that for a moment. What if she did see? Was not that exactly what he desired? But Elizabeth interrupted him.
"She won't, because she mustn't," she said. "I can do my share, you must do yours. Get out, please!"
Next moment he followed her into the hotel. At the door of the sitting-room she paused a moment, feeling suddenly tired and incapable, and she looked appealingly at him as he joined her.
"Edward, do help me!" she said. "I rely on you!"
The tremendous pressure at which she had been living all day helped Elizabeth now, for reaction had not come yet, and whatever at that moment she had been set to do she would have done it with ten thousand horse-power. She made a rush of it across the room to where Edith lay, dropping fan, gloves, handkerchief on her way, and it seemed that Edward's help would chiefly consist in listening.
"Oh, my dear," she cried, "we've gone quite mad, both Edward and I! There is nothing in the world but Brunnhilde and Siegfried!"
She kissed Edith, and went on breathlessly, turning the deep tumult of her soul into the merest froth.
"Siegfried and Brunnhilde, Brunnhilde and Siegfried! I felt I was Brunnhilde, darling, and I was rather surprised that Edward did not kiss me!"
"I will now, if you like!" remarked Edward, taking his cue unerringly.
"Yes, do; you're such a dear for having taken me! Perhaps you had better not, though. It's a little late; you should have done it earlier, and besides, Edith might not like it. We must consider Edith now, after thinking about our own enjoyment all the evening. How is the ankle? I ask out of politeness, dear; I don't really care in the least how your ankle is! I only care for Siegfried! Oh, do let's have supper at once. I had no dinner to mention, and I am brutally hungry. That is the effect of emotion. After daddy was charged out pig-sticking, and was nearly killed, I ate the largest lunch I ever remember. Ah, they are bringing it! I shall never go on hunger-strike whatever happens to me! Siegfried! That wasn't quite in tune. Oh, Edith! Now help me to pull her sofa up to the table, Edward. Then she needn't move at all. And how is your ankle? I do care, really!"
This remarkable series of statements and questions could hardly be called conversation, but it served its purpose in starting social intercourse again.
Edith turned to Edward.
"Is she mad?" she asked. "And are you mad, too?"
"Yes, he has got dumb madness," said Elizabeth. "He hasn't said a word all the evening. Occasional sighs. Oh, I wish you had been there, Edith! Yes, certainly soup! For the third time I inquire about your ankle!"
Looking up, she caught Edward's eye for a moment. He was eagerly gazing at her, as Siegfried gazed at Brunnhilde—that was in some opera she had once seen in remote ages ago, in some dim land of dreams, in——And as she looked at him the stream of her babbling talk froze on her lips and her heart beat quick, and she was back again in the darkness of the motor, and she was saying to him, "Yes, Siegfried!" without thought of anything but the present moment, and of her love. Then, with a sense of coming from some infinite distance, she was back in this sitting-room again, conscious that Edith had said something, and that she had not the remotest notion what it was.
But Edward answered.
"That is capital!" he said. "I am glad it is better. Of course, you and Elizabeth will drive down in the motor to-morrow morning, so that you needn't walk at all. When will you go? I must tell Joynes at what time he is to come round."
So he, Edward, also belonged to his world, not to the world of the mountain-top and the ring of flame. Of course he did; he was going to marry Edith on October 8th, and it was not yet certain if she herself would be there or not. She would be leaving about then for India—it depended on whether she could get a passage by the boat that left Marseilles on the 15th. She felt like a child saying over to itself some absurd nonsense rhyme. July, August, September, then October—"Thirty days hath October." It did not sound right. Quail—yes, why not quail? So little while ago she lay on her mountain-top, and Siegfried loosed her armour and kissed her.
Supper was over, and Edith was saying something to her about her looking very tired. She was suggesting that she should go to bed. For herself, she was going to sit up a little longer and have a chat with Edward, for he had to coach her thoroughly in the opera, since Mrs. Hancock was never to know—at least, not at present—the true history of the evening.
Elizabeth found herself laughing at that; it seemed so unnecessary to say that Mrs. Hancock must never know the true history of the evening. Nor must Edith herself ever know the true history of the evening—never, never. There was no question of "not for the present" about that. But that Mrs. Hancock should not know the mere fact that she and Edward went to the opera alone seemed a ludicrous stratagem, laughable.
"What a tangled web we are going to weave all about nothing," she said. "I warn you, Edith, I shall be sure to forget, and let it out!"
"Oh, mother would be horrified!" said Edith. "You must take care!"
Elizabeth sat down and took one of Edward's cigarettes. Somehow, her revulsion of feeling against him had altogether vanished, and her yearning for him was stealing back again like pain that has been temporarily numbed and begins to reassert itself. The dream, the impossibility was that on October 8th he was going to marry Edith. It was quite incredible, a mere piece of nonsense that she had heard down at some dream-place called Heathmoor, where everybody was fast asleep. It was just part of the dreams of one of them, of Aunt Julia, perhaps, who certainly had no pains or joys, only comforts. She herself had to humour the dream-people, saying things to those drowsy people (of whom Edith was one) which really had a meaning, but not for them.
"But have we really done anything so awful?" she asked. "Is it highly improper that Edward and I should go to the opera together? There were about two thousand people there to chaperone us, and a lot of them were so respectable—bald men and stringy women!" She laughed again. "Did you see the one just behind us, Edward?" she said. "I'm sure you did! She had been out and got caught in a sudden shower of diamonds. She was peppered with them. There were several on her forehead, and I think one on her nose. Oh, dear!"
"And why that?" asked Edith.
"Because I feel quite mad, and because I am afraid I shall recover. I suppose I shall go to Heathmoor again to-morrow. There will be Lind there, and Mr. Martin, and, and——Any other place would be as bad. It isn't that Heathmoor is more impossible than London or India, or any other place would be. Yes, I'll remember that you sprained your ankle after the opera—about now, in fact; and then I helped you to bed, and then I went to bed myself, exactly as I'm going to do! Oh, I'm so tired! Good-night, Siegfried and Brunnhilde! Edward, you are a darling for taking me!"
Next minute she was alone in her bedroom, and there shot through her like fire a pain, agonizing and contemptible, which she had never known before; the intolerable torture of jealousy seized her, and she writhed in its grip. As clearly as if the scene was before her eyes, she knew what was happening next door. She could almost hear Edith saying in that quiet, sincere voice of hers, "Now we shall have a little time alone, Edward. I thought dear Elizabeth was never going. Is she not queer and excited to-night?" And she would hold out her hand to him, and he would sit on the edge of her sofa holding it in his, and he would bend to kiss her, not once, not once only. They would whisper together the words that were natural and proper between pledged lovers, the words that but an hour ago he was burning to say to her. Now, she made no doubt, he was glib with them to Edith. And yet an hour ago she had wrenched herself away from his arm and his kiss with horror and upheaval of her nature. Of that horror there was nothing left now in the hour of the first onslaught of jealousy. Now it was inconceivable to her that when he had offered her what she longed for, the thought of which, given to another, made her writhe with jealousy, she could have rejected it. She had repulsed him for wanting to give her what her whole heart cried out for, and what was hers, though he had already sworn it away to another. He had not met her, then; he did not know that she was ordained for him, even as he for her. And now, just because he had promised like a child, not knowing what he promised, he was giving all that by right was hers to a girl whom he did not love.
For a moment that thought, namely, that Edith was nothing to him, assuaged her; she might as well be jealous of a dog that he caressed and mumbled nonsense-love to, and her rage turned against herself for having been so insane as to give him scruples instead of welcome. What if she went back now into the room she had so lately left, and said to Edith, "Let him go; you will have to let him go. It is not you he cares for!" What if she challenged him to say which of them he chose? She knew well what his answer would be.
Inconceivable as was her folly in rejecting him, equally inconceivable was her mood on that morning—was it only the morning of to-day?—when she walked about the dewy garden in an ecstasy of happiness at the knowledge of her love. She had thought it was sufficient to love; it had made her happy to do that. But she had understood nothing of its nature then. It was only when she saw Brunnhilde awake to Siegfried's kiss that she had begun to understand. And the full understanding had come when Edward clasped and kissed her, and she for that moment had clung to him, only to push him away, to thrust from her just that which she wanted, which her whole soul needed. It was but a foolish fairy-tale she had told herself among the roses and sweet peas—a tale of sexless, bodiless love, fit for a Sunday School or a Bible-reading—a tale of white blossoms and white robes—a thing for children and old maids.
The Inquisition had another pair of pincers heating for her; they were ready now, and glowing. What if his moment's heat and flash of desire for her was but the fruit of excitement, but the froth which the music had stirred up in him? Certainly it had been easy to quell it. She had but to tell him to let go of her and he obeyed; to get out of the motor, and then he stood on the pavement. She despised his weakness, for surely a man who was in earnest, who was stirred even as she was stirred, not by some mere breeze of attraction, or by the excitement of a stimulated scene, but felt the heart's need, would not have relinquished her as easily as that. Yet it looked to her in unreasoning agony that it was so, for now he was with Edith, indulging in more madrigals, no doubt. Yet, when she thought as collectedly as might be for a second she had the cold water ready for those pincers. She knew really that what she now called his weakness was in reality of the same stuff as her own strength; that which made her strong—that grotesque angular old image called "Honour"—was one with the reason of his yielding to her. She was left alone with that now; next door a precisely similar idol presided over the two whom she raged to think upon.
Yet, if he had not so easily succumbed to her strength, or if, to put it more truthfully, if they had not both been held in by the force that restrained the hot impulse, that governed, that laid cool hands on the reins he had flung away, would she, so she asked herself now, have continued to persist, have ranged her will and purpose against his, till there was no more courage left in her? She did not know; swift and decisive though the struggle had been, it seemed to have taken all the force of which she was capable to make it at all.
For the moment there was remission for her at the hands of her jealousy, and she walked across to the window and stood behind the curtain looking out on to the moon-emblazoned river. The flood-tide was at its height, and the reflection of the lights from the farther bank lay on the lake-like surface in unwavering lines. Stars and moon burning in the blaze of an everlasting day, and something in the calm of the night, in the eternal progress of those shining worlds, gave her a momentary tranquillity, so that she was able to ask herself this question, on the answer to which all depended, with a mind aloof from herself. How long her will could have held out against her love she did not know, but she knew she would not have chosen to yield.
And at that moment she had won, had she but known it, the first real battle of her life. For that moment she stood with her banner waving round her. The next she was back in the thick of themêléeagain, without tactics, without any sense of there being any one in command of the army she fought with, or even of herself being but a unit in an immense warfare. She felt utterly alone, struggling, yet hardly knowing why, knowing only that the odds against her seemed desperate.
The injury to Edith's ankle which, according to the authorized version, had happened on their return from the opera to the hotel, gave more trouble than she had expected, and ten days after its infliction she was still a limping pedestrian. This morning she was whiling away the half-hour that would elapse before the motor took her out with her mother, in a long chair in the strip of shade just outside the drawing-room window, with an unread paper on her knees, hearing rather than listening to Elizabeth's stormy performance on the piano. The agitation that sounded there was not confined to those musical excursions, for ever since that night at the opera there had been something about Elizabeth that her cousin would have summed up in the word "queer." Had not other circumstances and other people been "queer," too, she would probably have been content to define without analysis. As it was, she had spent a good deal of time during this last week in attempting to penetrate this queerness of Elizabeth, and seeing if it fitted in with other oddities. And she had come to the uncomfortable conclusion that they were not unconnected.
Very small phenomena—more remembered now than noticed at the time—had announced, like horns faintly blowing, the train of circumstances that were growing peaked, like a volcano-cone, and promised eruption. Such, for instance, had been her sense that something had happened on the afternoon when Edward had interrupted Elizabeth's practising. It was barely noticeable at the time, but it tended to confirm her view of subsequent happenings, which began to take shape and substance in her mind on the evening of the opera. That night Elizabeth had been rather oddly excited, and though an excited Elizabeth was a daily, if not an hourly, phenomenon, her excitement then had been of peculiar texture. Though not given to similes, it had represented itself, quaintly enough, to Edith's mind, under the image of Elizabeth holding some young living thing—a puppy or a kitten—down in a bucket of water to drown it, while to draw off attention from her employment she had been wildly and incoherently talkative. At the time it had struck Edith that her excitement was not merely a reaction from the climax of music and drama; she was certainly attempting to drown something, and while her tongue was voluble with vivid talk her fingers were holding something down, shrinking but resolute.
This was not wholly an affair of memory and interpretation; the impression had been conveyed to Edith at the time, and now, taken in conjunction with other events and conclusions, it assumed the importance of a cipher, when a numeral is prefixed to it. And the numeral, without doubt, was Edward. For on the night of the opera, after Elizabeth had gone to her bedroom, Edward had lingered for a talk, and he had been as inanimate as Elizabeth had been vivid, as grey as she had been rainbowed. He was absent-minded, preoccupied, inaccessible; he had nothing enthusiastic or enraptured to tell her about the opera which had so stirred his companion, and yet when questioned he said that so far from being disappointed with it it had been magnificent. To her comment that Elizabeth had seemed to enjoy it, he had for reply, that "he believed she did." Half a dozen times he had tried to rouse himself, and for a few minutes had pulled himself up by muscular effort, as it were, to a normal level, but as often as he thus exerted himself he fell back again below the surface, below waves and waters. And once more her own image of Elizabeth trying to drown something occurred to her. Then, again, Edward would ask after her injured ankle, and not listening to her reply, repeat his inquiries; he suggested a train for their return next morning to Heathmoor, having himself arranged half an hour before they were to drive down in his car. Finally, Edith, half-amused, half-piqued with him, had told him that whether he knew it or not, he was tired, and had better follow Elizabeth's example and go to bed. For a few minutes after that he had roused himself to the performance of the little loverlike speeches, the touches and hints of their relationship. It had never been the habit of either to be demonstrative, but to-night these attentions seemed to her purely mechanical things, wooden and creaking, not the result of the fatigue with which she had saddled him.
Since that night, instead of seeing him, as she was accustomed to do, every evening on his return from town, she had not once set eyes on him. He had telephoned next day that stress of business kept him that night in London (a thing that occasionally happened) but the same stress of business, it appeared, had prevented his coming down to his house next door ever since. A Sunday had intervened, and he had merely told her that he was engaged to pay a week-end visit, and this morning a further note had come, saying that a similar engagement prevented his coming down on the Saturday that was at hand. It was true that he had written to her with frequent regularity, for every morning presented her with a note from him, but those communications were of the most unsatisfactory description, with perfunctory regrets for his continued absence, and perfunctory assurances of the imperativeness of the employments which detained him. Once he had said that the hot weather had pulled him down from the usual serenity of his health, and visited him with headaches, but her inquiry and sympathy on this point had brought forth no further allusion to it. He was still staying at the Savoy Hotel, for while work was so heavy it was not worth while getting to Heathmoor late in the evening, only to leave by the early train in the morning. This, he said, would only add further fatigue to a fatiguing day. And he had clearly written in, between lines, "I should not set eyes on you, even. How is your ankle?"
These notes, as has been mentioned, arrived with regularity, but they were not the only communications received at Arundel from him. Twice, to Edith's knowledge, Elizabeth had heard from him, and, allowing herself now to suspect everything and everybody, Edith imagined that her cousin had heard oftener than that. For the early post was delivered at the house an hour before breakfast-time, and was sent up to the rooms of its various destinations. But a week ago now, Edith, by chance, had come down before its arrival, and when it came had sorted it out herself and seen the neat unmistakable handwriting; and to-day, in obedience to a definite jealousy and suspicion, she had come down early again, and again found that Edward had written to her cousin. This time, hating herself for it, yet unable to resist, she had fingered the envelope and come to the conclusion that there were certainly two sheets in it. To neither of these letters had Elizabeth made the slightest allusion.
There remained to colour, as it were, all these various outlined features with a general "wash" the aspect of Elizabeth, the impression of her. Of Edward she could only judge by the tenor of his notes, and in them he revealed nothing except reticence. But Elizabeth was here, her moods, her appearance, her voice, all gave information about her; and if Edward's notes suggested reticence, Elizabeth suggested repression. It required very little knowledge of human nature (luckily for Edith, since her acquirements in that supreme branch of knowledge were of the most elementary description) to see that her mind was beset by some monstrous incubus. Often she sat silent and absorbed, and then, with an effort, would break into a torrent of broken-winged high spirits and gaiety, which presented the appearance of a fair forgery of her normal appreciative pleasure in life. Then, with equal suddenness, she would seem incapable of keeping up this spurious pageant, and in the middle of some voluble extravagance she would sink back again into a nervous silence. More than once this change had come on the ringing of the front door bell, which, sounding in the kitchen passage, was clearly audible from the garden. Not once or twice only in this last week had Edith seen her drop suddenly into a restless silence when this innocent harbinger was heard, while with eager and shrinking anxiety she watched beneath dropped eyelids for the appearance of a visitor. Sometimes some such would appear and Elizabeth would soon make an excuse for a visit to the house or a conjecture as to the arrival of the post.
Now up till the moment of her falling in love with Edward, Edith's potentialities for jealousy had remained practically dormant and sealed up in her nature, the reason presumably being that she had not cared enough about anybody to be able to wake that green-eyed monster, three-quarters fiend and one-quarter angel, from its hibernation. For though jealousy is a passion which at first sight seems wholly ugly and contemptible, it must not be forgotten that its very existence postulates the pre-existence among its ancestors of love. Love, we may say, represents one of its grandparents; it is always of that noble descent. Or, if it be argued that a passion so utterly mean is wholly lacking in the open-hearted trust which so emphatically is in the essence of love, it must at least be conceded that love is in the hand that turns the key or breaks the seal of the cell where jealousy lies confined, then flings open the door to let the wild and secret prisoner escape and roam. The love that is lofty, that seeks not its own, will no doubt wring its hands in despair to see what sort of intruder it has set loose, will use its best efforts, shocked at the appearance of this monster, to confine it again; but without love never has jealousy been allowed to get free, to root about among the springing crops of the heart, devouring, trampling, spoiling. And in Edith's case her love had from the first come mixed with the sense and pride of possession; its first act, while yet new-born, was to set guards round its treasure, sentinels to watch. To-day they were wide-eyed and alert.
From inside the drawing-room came the sound of the galloping squadrons of chord and scale and harmony; Brahms was working up to one of his great intellectual crises with an attack thought out, brilliantly manoeuvred, before delivering the irresistible assault. Then quite suddenly the music entirely ceased in the middle of a bar, and there was dead silence. For half a second Edith conjectured the turning of a page, but the half second grew and grew, and it was clear that it was no such momentary halt as this that had been called. Simply, Elizabeth had finished, had broken off in the middle.
An idea, an explanation leaped into Edith's mind, suggested to her by one of her green-eyed sentinels, and in her present mental condition, sapped as it was by the secret indulgence of a week's jealousy, she was unable to resist testing the accuracy of her conjecture as she was to resist the demands of her lungs for air. But in pursuance of her object she waited without moving until the pulse in her clenched hand had throbbed a hundred beats. Then very quietly she got out of her chair and went softly in through the open garden door into the drawing-room.
Elizabeth was sitting with her back towards her at the writing-table that stood at the far end of the room. As Edith entered the swift passage of her pen ceased, and she sat with her head resting on one hand, thinking intently. Then, taking it up again, she began writing once more. Edith had seen enough for her present purpose, and she took an audible step forward. Instantly Elizabeth turned round, and as she turned she shut the blotting-book on her unfinished letter.
"Oh, how you startled me!" she said. "I thought somehow you had gone out driving with Aunt Julia."
Edith sat down.
"No, the car has not come round yet," she said. "It will be here in a minute. We shall pass the post-office; I will post your letter for you."
Elizabeth turned farther round in her chair, but her hand still lay on the closed blotting-book.
"Oh, I was only just beginning a scribble to father!" she said. "It will not be ready."
Edith considered the days of the week; but she felt that she knew it was not to her father that Elizabeth was writing.
"It will just catch the mail if I post it for you," she said. "Otherwise it will have to wait another week."
"Then it must wait another week," said Elizabeth.
Jealous people never themselves feel the wantonness and cruelty of their unconfirmed suspicions; they only know that these are not suspicions at all, but certainties.
"I noticed that you had a letter from Edward again this morning," she said.
Elizabeth slightly shifted the blotting-book, and Edith registered the fact—for so it seemed to her—that the letter was lying there.
"Again?" said Elizabeth.
Edith felt that she was not being wise. But jealousy is of all passions the most pig-headed; it only says "I must know, I must know!"
"Yes, you heard from him a week ago."
Elizabeth, who had been startled by her cousin's entry, was cool enough now. She perfectly understood what prompted this catechism. But little did Edith know how gallant a battle was being fought on her behalf by the girl whom she now so utterly distrusted and suspected; little also did she know that which Elizabeth was using her whole strength to conceal.
Elizabeth laughed; she meant to laugh, anyhow; the effort might pass for a laugh.
"Yes, I believe I did," she said. "And as for that, I rather fancy you have been hearing from him every day."
"Naturally. Did he say in his letter to you when he expected to come down here again? He has not told me that."
"No, he did not mention it, as far as I remember. He appears to be very busy."
"He appears to have time to write very long letters to you!" said Edith, hatred and resentment flashing out. Till that moment she had not known that she hated her cousin.
Elizabeth opened her blotting-book, took out of it her unfinished letter, and from under it Edward's. She slipped them into a piece of music that lay there, and, holding it in her hand, stood up and left the table.
"What do you know about the length of his letter to me?" she asked.
Edith saw her mistake. The instinct that said "I must know, I must know!" had been wonderfully ill-inspired in its notions of how to find out.
"I happened to take it up; it was a thick letter," she said, hopelessly trying to efface her steps, giving as reason an irrational excuse.
"I don't know the thickness of Edward's letter to you," said Elizabeth. "It is no concern of mine how many sheets he writes you."
She paused a moment.
"You speak as if you resent Edward's writing to me at all," she added.
Edith saw that she could get at nothing in this way. Swiftly and unexpectedly she shifted her attack, answering Elizabeth's comment by another question.
"Why does he keep away from Heathmoor?" she said.
Elizabeth had not been expecting anything of this kind. She winced as from a blow, and had to wait a moment before she could trust her voice to be steady.
"Has he not told you?" she asked. "I thought it was work during the week, and a couple of visits for the Sundays that he is away."
Two instincts were dominant in Edith—love and jealousy, inextricably intertwined, disputing for mastership. Love and its yearning anxiety—a cord, so to speak, of which jealousy held the other end, pulled her here.
"But it's so strange of him," she said; "and his letters are strange! I don't understand it at all. Can't you help me to understand, Elizabeth? You are so much cleverer than I! Has it anything to do with music?"
There was no mistaking the sudden and piteous sincerity of her tone. Half a minute ago she had been all anger, all hate, all suspicion. Now she appealed to her whom she had hated and suspected.
Elizabeth felt her eyes grow suddenly dim.
"If I were you, I wouldn't worry, Edith!" she said. "I should be quiet, not let my thoughts run away with me, and—and trust that everything is all right."
"Then there is something wrong?" asked Edith.
"I didn't say that. I didn't mean to imply it. Take it that he is busy, that he has visits he feels he must pay. Why should he conceal things from you? Why should you assume there is anything to conceal?"
Edith instinctively shrank from making the direct accusation which all this week her jealousy had been dinning in her ears so that her head rang with it. Elizabeth would simply deny it, but it would put her on her guard (here jealousy was busy to prompt) and the chance of finding out more would be lost. Her emotion had narrowed and enfeebled the scope and power of thought; she could make no plan.
"I am very unhappy," she said simply.
Elizabeth took a step towards her.
"I am sorry for that, dear," she said. "But—but don't make yourself unhappy. Don't contribute to it."
The expected summons came, and even as the wheels of the motor crunched the gravel Lind sounded the gong and Mrs. Hancock entered. The household books had proved at least a sovereign less than she had expected, also the coral necklace with the pearl clasp had come back from the jeweller's in its new case, with Edith's initials on it. She felt that these two delightful phenomena were somehow dependent on each other; the money she had spent on the new case seemed to be returned to her by the modesty of the household books.
"Dearest, are you ready?" she asked Edith. "Let us start at once and we can go round by the old mill. And what delicious tunes you have been playing, Elizabeth, my dear. Edward will think you have got on when he hears you again. Why, you hardly limp at all this morning, Edith! I knew that the lotion I gave you last night would make you better."
Mrs. Hancock settled herself among her cushions. She had lately got a new one, rather stiff and resisting, which admirably supported the small of her back. The footstool from the stores continued to give complete satisfaction.
"And such a lovely day!" she said. "Just not too hot! Oh, what a jolt, and yet I hardly felt it at all with my new cushion. I see there has been a dreadful accident in a Welsh colliery. So sad for the poor widows and families! What a lot of misery there is in the world. But, as Mr. Martin says, we should not dwell on it too much, for fear of dimming our sense of thankfulness for all our blessings. And Edward? Have you heard from Edward? When is that naughty boy coming back? You will have to scold him, dear, for neglecting you while he absorbs himself in making money. There! Did you not hear the cuckoo just say 'Cuck'?—there is a rhyme about it. Yes, Edward is really quite greedy, stopping up in London like this to make money. Yet, after all, dear, you must consider that he is working for you, making himself rich for you."