Thornton returned in due time. The autumn session began. The weeks and months passed. Their relations remained the same as when they had parted in the summer. Towards Clytie he manifested a kindly indifference, so long as she obeyed his wishes. When she went counter to them he flared up, showed his teeth, and swore; on which occasions Clytie would draw herself up, and, with her chin in the air, leave the room and retire into her studio. Then, after two or three days of evil sullenness, the fancy would take him to kiss her, and lightly swear that she was the loveliest woman in the world. But Clytie had lost all responsive feeling. She met him not wholly unaffectionately, but calmly, presenting an obedient, passionless cheek. Thereupon he would either storm again or laugh, reminding her of a time when her lips sought his, asking her why she had frozen, where was the Clytie of their bridal month. And if he pleaded gently, womanlike, she would relent a little, yield to him, striving to blot out the objects that met her sight as she looked back towards the past. Then there would recur the season of indifference, which Clytie had grown to welcome.
The daily life went on, she scarce knew how. Visiting, entertaining, painting, filled her days. And she dreamed wistful little dreams.
And then there came to Clytie a great calm, a new, strange happiness, in the midst of the life she had thought to be broken. She would sit by herself and think, with a smile playing round the corners of her lips, and a light in her eyes. Again the order of things seemed changed. Again a newer life, with newer hopes and responsibilities, lay before her. For the time her art, her needs, were forgotten. Trifling, dainty occupations absorbed her as she sat in the solitude of the studio on the chilly autumn days, her feet luxuriously buried in the bearskin before the great fire. Sometimes Mrs. Farquharson would come and help her, with a yearning hunger in her eyes that Clytie knew the meaning of; for Caroline was a childless woman. And then Clytie would kiss her silently and Caroline would shake her head and laugh, and talk in her bright way of the wonder that would be.
Only at times did a wave of bitterness pass over her. If all that had happened in her married life since the train had carried her out of Bordighera station had been different! If only she could see her husband as she saw him that day, by the ruined tower, when she passed her hand over his hair and thought him all that could suffice a woman's needs! Sometimes she looked at him now, furtively, when his face was in repose. He seemed the same, handsome, brave, ideally perfect in manhood. Why had not the glamour lasted? Why should the “dream be better than the drink”? And then she would turn away and the thought would rise:
“Why did I not continue blind? Would to God this knowledge of him had never come!”
He grew a little kinder to her, however. It was a rough, patronising tenderness, it is true, but yet Clytie felt grateful. A little act of forethought and consideration softened her towards him much more than it warranted. Perhaps in spite of all he might have won her to him again, and brought her lips to his in a kiss of rare meaning—for at certain times there are wondrous tendernesses and wondrous powers of forgiveness in woman. But Thornton lost the golden chance, being busy with his muck-rake.
He came home one afternoon, in an evil humour. Clytie, prepared to welcome him, looked up kindly from her lounge-chair as he came into the studio, but as she saw the blackness of his face, her heart sank. A footstool came in his way, and he sent it, with a kick, sliding along the polished floor.
“Why do you litter up the place with these infernal traps, Clytie?” he asked crossly as he came up to the fire to warm his hands.
Clytie, like a wise woman, held her peace. Silence is a very good friend sometimes. But as he remained there moodily, without saying a word, and the silence was growing uncomfortable, she asked him what was amiss.
“Everything's amiss!” he replied roughly—“all through your silly folly. Read that!”
He drew a letter from his pocket book and threw it into her lap. It ran:
Dear Hernshawe:
As I think Simmons would be a more satisfactory man for Burchester than Hammerdyke, I have suggested the former to the local Conservative association. As they seem rather at a loss for a suitable candidate, I think they will accept my nominee.
Yours truly,
E. Godderich.
“I am sorry, Thornton,” said Clytie, laying the letter down on the afternoon tea table by her side. “But you hardly expected to have a chance so soon.”
“Do you suppose I am going to slave away at this hack's work for two or three years?”
“No; but this is only the second or third vacancy that has occurred.”
“What does that matter? Godderich promised to run me as soon as he saw an opening. Hernshawe was amazed at this letter this morning. Don't talk of what you know nothing about. It's simply infernal spite on Godderich's part! Who is Simmons? A damned cheesemonger with a jubilee knighthood, and as much brains as a double Glo'ster! Godderich has the reputation for this sort of thing. That was why I wanted to keep in with him. If you had taken a ha'porth of interest in the matter, it would not have happened. You have treated the man in your confounded icy don't-address-me-or-I'll-petrify-you kind of way, and you have put his back up against us!”
“I always treated him courteously,” said Clytie.
“Yes, by Jove, I know what that means!” sneered Thornton. “And now you can have the satisfaction of seeing how your courtesy has played the fool with my plans.”
“I can't understand you, Thornton,” she replied wearily. “I should have thought you of all people would have preferred to win your own battles.”
“So I shall in future. I shall take jolly good care not to ask you to help me any more! After all your fine professions of identifying yourself with my life and that sort of rot I really thought you would be willing to help me—in about the only way a woman can.”
“By a silly, ignoble flirtation? Would you really hope to win success by your wife's dishonour?”
“Oh, rot!” cried Thornton savagely. “Who the devil talked about dishonour?”
“Well, then, we don't see things in the same light,” said Clytie quietly. “And I am very glad you have lost Godderich's influence, if that is what it depended upon.”
He turned and faced her, in one of his blind rages.
“Why don't you say at once you don't care a little damn about me? It would be nearer the truth. What the deuce did I marry you for, when there are thousands of better women in the world who are to be had for the asking? About the only thing I have ever asked you to do for me was to employ a little womanly tact, and then you get up on the high horse, damme! and talk about dishonour! One would have thought you had been bred in a nunnery instead of the disreputable gutter in the King's Road I found you in!”
“Oh, stop!” said Clytie, rising. “If I were well, perhaps I might be angry and amuse you with a row. But I am not equal to it at present, believe me. I'll see you at dinner.”
She walked towards the door, but Thornton intercepted her with three or four quick strides.
“I'm hanged if you do!” he said. “I have too much respect for my digestion. I'm not going to stay in the house with you!”
And he strode out of the studio, slamming the door.
“Thank God!” said Clytie to herself.
And so the film of reconciliation that new circumstances had begun to spread was rudely torn asunder, and the breach between them grew greater than before. For several days Clytie suffered. Then she resigned herself to the inevitable, and in her thoughts drifted away from her husband. For they were sweet thoughts, full of unspeakable consolation. And the weeks wore on, and the evenings grew shorter and shorter, and the little pile of dainty needlework grew higher in the press. Thornton rarely disturbed her; the time that he could spare from his official duties he passed as a man about town idles the hours away. A man with the least domestic tastes in the world, he found no especial pleasures in his house. His wife did not amuse him; the cooking at his club was more to his taste than that which awaited him at home. There was no earthly reason why he should use the house for any other purpose than sleeping, breakfasting, and the occasional entertainment, which was now discontinued for a season. He lived his own life, more or less satisfactory to himself, and left Clytie to her own devices. Wherefore she not unfrequently thanked the Almighty. She lived practically alone. Winifred came to see her from time to time. Mrs. Farquharson was often with her. The shrewd eyes of Caroline saw that there was something wrong in the marriage of which she had augured such fair fruits. But as Clytie proudly kept all her troubles to herself, Caroline could do no more than surround Clytie with her mute sympathy. This gradual discovery was a shock to her faith in human nature. One of the two had failed; which one was it? Her instinct told her that it was not Clytie; her husband unequivocally affirmed that it was Hammerdyke. When her instinct and her husband differed she sometimes trusted to one and sometimes to the other, by way of giving a certain variety to life. When they coincided she had no option but to believe. So, although giving up her hero cost her a great pang, her heart went out more than ever to her friend.
It was a period of strange new happiness for Clytie. It showed itself outwardly in her art. No one but herself has ever seen the pictures that she painted during this time—not even Caroline. They were all unfinished, sketched in the hurried, semi-impressionist manner with which from her early girlhood she had been wont to give objectivity to her cravings and imaginings; but they were dainty, laughing, tender things, a world of waxen touches and sweet hopes. It would be hard to say how many small panels she covered with the promises of this new life. Sometimes, when she was quite alone, she would lock the door and take them out and arrange them along the wall on the ledge above the dado, and gladden her heart with them. After which she would collect them hastily and lock them up, with a smile at her own foolishness. She meditated now and then, before the fire, with closed eyes, turning over the leaves of her Book of New Formulas, which had grown somewhat tear-stained and dusty; but she found in it nothing relating to present things, and she laughed quietly at the omission, resolving to rectify it by and by. It was strange that she had not included this in her scheme of life. And yet, after all, was it so strange? She could not quite decide. But the future she never questioned. The evolution of her own individuality seemed in no wise to concern her. She had projected herself into another life. And she looked at the world, and again she saw it fair; and peace rested on her eyelids as she slept. And the weeks went on.
One evening in the middle of December Thornton and herself were alone together. They had finished dinner and he was smoking a cigar with his coffee in the dining-room. Relations between them were beginning to grow kindlier again. That is to say, he curbed his temper, inquired after her health, and occasionally spent an evening at home. They had not spoken much during the meal. Now that they had so few interests in common, their conversation was generally desultory. The one great and precious bond that was to be between them was rarely mentioned. It was too deeply rooted in the holiest place of Clytie's soul for her to discuss it in the commonplace interviews she had with her husband, and his interest in the matter did not go much beyond a rather irritating sense of responsibility. Some feeling of the sort prompted him on this evening to allude to the subject.
“I heard from the Claverings this morning,” he said, knocking off his cigar ash into the fender. “They want us to go and spend Christmas with them in their new place in Hampshire.”
“Oh?” said Clytie politely.
She had seen Mrs. Clavering several times during the summer in town, and further acquaintance had only increased the antipathy she had conceived in Paris. Thornton, however, had been pretty intimate with them during the latter part of the season, and he had met Major Clavering again in Scotland. Hence the invitation.
“Well,” asked Thornton, “what shall I do? Of course your going is out of the question.”
“Naturally,” replied Clytie, glad that that point was settled without any discussion. “Why do you ask me?”
“To know what your wishes are as regards myself. Clavering has got some good shooting, I believe, and his wife always keeps a decent house. I don't see what good I should be here; but still, if you would like me to stay on and see you through, I don't mind a bit.”
He meant to be magnanimous. Perhaps he expected his wife to be duly grateful; as it was she only replied somewhat wearily:
“You must do whatever you think best, Thornton. I should not like to keep you here on my account, while you might be having a good time with your friends.”
“Oh! it's all the same to me,” he said. “It's just as you like.”
Clytie shook her head despondently. If there could have been any pleasure to either of them in his staying, these questions would have been impossible. It was love and not politeness that should have kept him by her side.
“You are very kind to think of it, Thornton,” she said, “and I thank you for asking me; but you couldn't do much if you stayed, you know.”
“I think I should be somewhat in the way,” he said good-temperedly. “That sort of thing is not much in my line. However, I did not like to accept without asking you. Are you sure you don't mind?”
“Oh, quite sure!” said Clytie suavely.
So the point was amicably settled, and Thornton went down to Hampshire to shoot Clavering's pheasants and to be led cynically captive by Clavering's wife. To avoid giving the latter a gratuitous loophole for sarcastic attack, he forbore to hint at the cause that prevented Clytie from accompanying him. He said vaguely that she was with her people. Mrs. Clavering did not press the point in any way, as she reciprocated Clytie's dislike, and was perfectly indifferent as to what became of her. In fact she was greatly relieved when Thornton announced that he was coming alone. Him she could manage as she liked—or thought she could, which comes to the same thing.
The house which the Claverings had taken for the winter was one that appealed to the quieter tastes of a man like Thornton. There was good hunting in the neighbourhood, and the stables were well filled with hunters, some of which Major Clavering had hired for the season. Over the estate attached to the house was excellent partridge shooting, and the covers were stocked with pheasants. The house itself was straggling—as a country house should be—roomy, and capable of accommodating comfortably the large party that was assembled for Christmas. It contained two billiard tables, a concert room staged for private theatricals, and a magnificent club-furnished smoking-room with a specially made baccarat table. Among the party the masculine element greatly preponderated, but the few women who were there had been carefully selected by the hostess to maintain a nice equilibrium. The major invited the men, and his wife, running over the list, had settled upon the women. She was doubly grateful that Clytie had thought fit to decline.
On the evening of his arrival Thornton came down early after dressing and found Mrs. Clavering alone in the drawing-room, reclining luxuriously before the blaze under the great marble chimney-piece.
“Clavering must have come into a pot of money in order to run this,” he said, parting his coat tails. “I have just been round the place. I had no idea it was such an extensive development.”
“Yes. It's better than soldiering. Tom's looking out for a place of his own something after the style of this. The Dynevors wanted to go to Australia, and so they have let it to us cheap.”
He nodded, not very interested, and twirled his moustache in silence.
“You are not making a very good start by way of being amusing,” said Mrs. Clavering. “How is your wife?”
“Oh, very well. But I don't see how that topic could amuse you. Matrimony isn't very funny.”
“Glad to get out of the toils, I suppose.”
“Passably. It leaves me free in the society of the only woman I have reasonably cared for,” he said, without changing his attitude.
“Have you come down to play at that sort of thing again?” she asked, arching her eyebrows, with a little supercilious curl on her thin lips.
“That's what you wanted me here for, I suppose.”
“You came to shoot little birds on the invitation of my adoring husband.”
“Perhaps the motives were mixed. You wouldn't believe me if I told you I had come to see you. That was my main inducement. I suppose I ought to have begun better and told you of my longing and despair. Let me make my declaration now, Clara.”
“Bah! my friend. What is the meaning of all this?” she said cynically. “You don't care a straw for me—you told me yourself I had gone off lamentably. And I don't rate you a halfpenny above your worth. You are a fine-looking man with impulses and animal passions instead of brains and heart; and if you were to die to-morrow, my delicate appreciation of my dinner would not be impaired. So why in the name of common sense have we revived this miserable farce?”
“It's a kind of absinthe. We like it.”
“If I could pump up any enthusiasm about you,” she went on, not heeding his epigram, “I could understand it. But you are bad all through. You would not even be moderately faithful to me—as you are not to your wife.”
“What the devil do you mean?” asked Thornton quickly, showing his teeth. But Mrs. Clavering laughed.
“Do you take me for a fool, or a woman of the world, my friend? I have eyes and I have ears. I'll go into particulars if you like.”
“That would scarcely be interesting,” he said.
He looked at her for some moments and then burst out into his resonant laugh, expecting boyish indulgence for his peccadilloes. His whole-hearted animal laughter was irresistible. The woman joined in.
“I don't know which is the worse of us two,” she said. “Perhaps I. I forgive you.”
The piquant cynicism of this revived liaison attracted Thornton, was an enjoyable complement to the essentially masculine side of that country-house life. He was a keen, brilliant sportsman, a famous shot, a perfect though reckless rider, standing out in all physical qualities far above the other men of his type who were his fellow-guests. By them he was flattered, in an honest British way, his acts were applauded, and his opinions received with respect. In the slaying of creatures, brute or human, he was an indubitable authority. And although he was accustomed to a certain shade of deference from his associates, it never failed to gratify his somewhat barbarous nature. Much of him had remained undeveloped. Small things pleased and captivated him. To be the central figure in this tiny world of sport was unalloyed pleasure to the man of fierce passions and heroic courage. And the bitter philandering in his relations with Mrs. Clavering amused, stimulated, irritated, and fascinated him. In his own way, therefore, he was enjoying himself exceedingly. Beyond writing Clytie a hurried note on the second day after his arrival, he scarcely recalled to himself her existence. When he did it was with petulant annoyance. He wished to God he had not been such a fool as to marry. And now what the deuce was the point of having children? But that was his wife's concern after all, for which he cordially thanked the wise contriver of the human mechanism.
Christmas came, was celebrated with much festivity. On Boxing Day there was a big partridge drive over a distant corner of the estate. It had been carefully saved for this one day's sport and the birds were accordingly plentiful. The best portion of it—a field sloping from a ridge and skirting a pine wood and then merging into a wide gorse-covered pasture tract—was reserved till after lunch. But the sport was good in the outlying approaches to this, and it was not without some irritation that Thornton tore open a telegram which a breathless messenger brought up. It announced the birth of a son. Thornton went on with the line across the wet, ploughed fields, but until they halted for lunch luck did not come his way.
Mrs. Clavering and the other ladies had walked over with the luncheon-baskets. The day was warm and relaxing. They lingered over the meal longer than they had intended. When a keeper came up and suggested that if they wanted to shoot the slope before dusk they had better be starting, the men sprang up in a hurry and betook themselves thither. Thornton was the extreme man, on the right, near the pine wood, which was being beaten. His ill-success in the morning had piqued his vanity. He was not accustomed to be second or third in matters of prowess. After he had brought down his first brace his whole frame was kindled with the desire to slay. Even partridges he could not kill calmly. Covey after covey was driven out of the wood, and as he had the first chance, his bag increased speedily. They had thus proceeded halfway down the long, straggling slope. The keeper by Thornton's side had just handed him his gun, and was watching the wood with intent, outstretched hand. A covey was being driven. At that moment another messenger, a boy, ran down the slope and put a telegram into Thornton's hand. With an impatient oath he stuffed it into the pocket of his shooting-coat, just in time to be able to fire his two barrels into the whirring flight of birds. The next man to him fired simultaneously. Two birds fell. The warm dispute that arose caused Thornton to forget the existence of the telegram in his pocket. And the continuance of the drive kept his mind entirely from it.
But when the party arrived home, and were standing for a moment in the hall, Mrs. Clavering came up to him and asked whether he had received his second telegram safely. Then he remembered. He drew it out, read it.
“Damn!” he muttered under his breath, and crumpling the flimsy sheet into a ball, threw it with a gesture of impatience into the fireplace. Then he turned and talked with Mrs. Clavering until he went upstairs to change.
As chance willed, the crumpled telegram had not fallen into the blazing wood fire, but had struck upon a log and dropped on its unkindled side. And chance willed that Mrs. Clavering should have noticed this. Women of her type are cynically unscrupulous. As soon as the hall was clear of men she picked up the telegram and read it. Her face, which when she was by herself was somewhat faded, grew a little grayer. She put the telegram in her pocket.
Chance willed also that Thornton and Mrs. Clavering should find themselves alone for a long spell after dinner in the little withdrawing-room, where smoking was permitted. Most of the men were tired. One or two of the women had gone up to their rooms. The rest were playing billiards. Thornton was in gay spirits, talking recklessly, giving her openings for sarcasms, and then closing in upon her with a brutality. It was an amusing game.
Suddenly she asked him irrelevantly:
“When are you going back to London?”
“You're a wise woman,” he replied, leaning back in his chair. “But what do you mean?”
“I asked you a question—a simple one. Are you going to London to-morrow?”
“No; why should I?—unless you are getting sentimental over me, and would prefer the illusion of my absence to the disenchantment of my bodily presence. If you mean it as a hint, of course I'll go.”
“I do mean it as a hint,” she said with a hard kind of drawl. “I didn't know you were quite such an unreasoning brute. Hadn't it occurred to you that it was only common decency to go off and help bury your newborn child?”
She rose, and gathering up her skirts, left him before he had time to recover.
Thus it had happened with Clytie during Thornton's absence. There came a morning at the end of the Old Year when the snow and sleet dashing against the window could be dimly heard in the heavily curtained room, and Clytie feebly whispered: “Give me the child.” Gently they told her that the life had merely fluttered on the threshold and passed back into the silence whence it came. And she sank back on her pillows, struck to the heart with a dumb, hopeless heartsickness.
Recovery was slow. Clytie lay for many days quite listless, the tears rolling down her cheeks, physical weakness aiding to make her feel a great self-pity. The long waiting, the fear, the pain, all had been counted as nothing if at the close there could have lain in her arms a little child—one whose touch would draw all pain from her heart, make her forget every sorrow. And the passionate child hunger, begotten of the pangs of maternity, woke within her and cried for satisfaction.
The whole weight of the world's misery crushed down upon her. She awoke to a gray world. Its glory had departed. There was nothing left to live for, and a great despair came over her. What was the use of dragging out this broken, colourless existence until the time,—hopelessly remote it seemed to her, now that the blood ran again strongly through her veins,—should come for her to die? She passed through the phase common to all strong natures in supreme moments of weariness, when death seemed the only solution. One little draught out of a phial, an agonised convulsion, perhaps, and then eternal nothingness. She did not fear the annihilation which her materialism had taught her was the end of things. She had no eschatological sentimentality. But the full-pulsed animal's instinctive clutching after life held her back; the fit passed off, and she decided to live through another act of the dreary tragedy.
All feelings of tenderness, trust, common confidence in her husband, were swept away forever. The faintest breath of the old attraction caused her to shiver with repulsion. Henceforward they were mere acquaintances, who subsisted from a common fund, lived under the same roof, and performed certain conventional actions in common, for the sake of their own relations with a society that demands a certain outward show of harmony between husband and wife. Thornton had come to town from Hampshire in the vilest of tempers. For a day or two he positively hated Clytie. Then the seriousness of her illness had awakened in him a superficial sympathy. But as soon as she was out of danger he regarded her with cold dislike. She had abruptly terminated his pleasant holiday. She had gravely endangered his liaison with the only woman by whom he had been otherwise than purely sensually attracted, wherein lay an odd fascination, and in thus compelling him to her side she had sharply reminded him that a married man, if he wishes to keep in with the world, must not parade himself too conspicuously as his own master. And Thornton had his own reasons for not wishing to openly outrage society.
As soon as she was able to travel Clytie went to Durdleham, for the first time since her marriage. The quiet, easy life soothed her for a while. She was in that condition of hopelessness when inaction seems the highest good. Mrs. Blather attributed her dejection to the objective cause, and sympathised with her as one woman can with another, and strove to cheer her; but still she privately thought this long brooding somewhat morbid. Clytie always went to extremes. But although she naturally was unconscious of the subtleties of dreariness in the causation of her sister's state, she was none the less helpful with her sympathy—and sympathy very often is all the stronger from the narrowness of the channel in which it flows.
February and March passed in the quiet, monotonous Durdleham way. But as the spring grew into her blood Clytie felt the tingling of life once again, and the period of inactivity was over. She was not of the temperament to sit long with folded hands and lament over the futility of things. The old restlessness of her girlhood, though strangely modified, again urged her towards a fuller, more vivid existence. Again she looked out upon the world and its mysteries with a knowledge begotten of sorrow, and again vague longings took possession of her. She faced the new condition of things bravely, resolved to struggle towards a newer, better content. If the short dream had come true, she would have found happiness in the guidance of another life; but the high gods had ordained otherwise. As before her marriage, her only problem was the working out of her own individuality; for henceforward Thornton would be her husband only in name. In what direction should she carry herself so as to prevent the fulfilling of her needs from developing into ignoble egoism? As a girl she had studied life eagerly, had painted from artistic impulses, from desire for fame, and from material necessity. Her enthusiasms, the intimacy of her odd social life with Kent and Winifred, had kept her pure and fresh. Now all was changed. She was alone. She had learned many things: the touch of the fire of passion, the taste of the waters of bitterness. Definite enthusiasms seemed to be wanting; only the artistic impulse urging creation remained to her—together with mechanical skill. How was she to occupy her life to a fair and noble purpose? She tried to solve the problem calmly, was wise enough to smile when she discovered that she failed. One cannot range a row of potential enthusiasms in front of one, like oranges, and select in cold blood. So Clytie determined to have faith
“... large in time,
And that which shapes it to some end.”
As soon as she had arrived at this decision she threw off her moodiness and became bright again, to the great joy of Mrs. Blather, who was sighing for her to join in such Easter dissipations as Durdleham society offered. In obedience to her sister, therefore, Clytie burst upon Durdleham like a revelation. During her girlhood Durdleham had regarded her as odd, refused to accept her as conducive to social amenities. Now it worshipped her with dazzled eyes—the whirligig of time thus bringing in its revenges. The irony of the position amused her, but at the same time it brought out in her much that was good and whole-hearted. She saw, perhaps for the first time, that much of the decorous dulness that had once chafed her to frenzy proceeded from an almost childlike ignorance of the possibilities of enjoyment. For a wild moment the idea entered her head to convert Durdleham to epicureanism. Janet, to whom she confided this visionary scheme, stared at her open-mouthed, and Clytie burst out into genuine mirth. Durdleham was willing to be amused, eager to be brightened by a brilliant woman; but it would not be convinced. It held by its principles, would not yield an iota in a single formula. Still it could be brought to treat a paradox as a joke instead of brooding over it with the stolidity of a hen sitting on a china nest-egg. And that much Clytie did accomplish during the short season of her social triumph.
In the middle of April she was requested by Thornton to return to London. He had thrown up the private-secretaryship, as his purpose in accepting it had been already served. By dint of self-assertion he had identified himself with the non-parliamentary chiefs of the Tory party, and during the early spring had rendered efficient electioneering services. His chance of a candidature was therefore only a question of time. But as he wished to neglect no means of keeping himself in evidence, he still felt bound to call upon his wife to aid him socially—that is to say, to preside at his table and receive his guests. This Clytie was not disinclined to do, especially as his summons was couched in pleasant and courteous terms. So she bade farewell to Durdleham and returned to London.
When her train arrived at Euston she was surprised at seeing Thornton on the platform. He wore a gray frock-coat with a dark rose in the buttonhole, and lavender kid gloves. He came forward and greeted her, raising his hat before he shook hands.
“Have you had a tiring journey? You are looking very well. As I was paying a call near Primrose Hill,—ghastly place to live in, isn't it?—I thought I might as well pick you up here with the brougham.”
“That was very kind of you, Thornton,” she said.
They talked of indifferent subjects during the long drive to South Kensington: the theatres, odds and ends of gossip. When they got home he accompanied her into the drawing-room and drank a cup of tea.
“You're a deuced lovely woman, you know, Clytie,” he said, his great bulk sprawling over a small drawing-room chair, his hands in his pockets. “I have half a mind to fall in love with you again. If you had not turned into absolute ice, perhaps I should. You've got that same devilish witchery in your skin that made me go wild over you a year ago.”
“Oh, please don't talk of that, Thornton. It is the past,” she said, with a tremor.
“Well, upon my soul!” he said, gathering himself together. “I don't see why it might not be the present. I was going to unfold to you a little scheme by which we might live politely together, but, by Jove! now I look at you and reflect that you are my wife after all—you're so gloriously beautiful, Clytie!”
He rose, but she was on her feet before him, having sprung up with a beating heart. She looked at him with a fearful surmise in her glance, and as he made a stride towards her she recoiled in a terror she had not known before.
“Oh, no, no, no! For God's sake!” she cried, catching at her breath, instinctively putting out her hands to keep him off. “That is all over. We loved one another once. A horrible mockery of it is more than I can bear.”
“Confound it, Clytie!” he exclaimed, clenching his hands and showing his teeth, “you're my wife, and, by the Lord! I'll kiss you if I choose!”
The flash of his brown eyes that had once overpowered her will now made her shudder. She stiffened into a woman of iron, with bloodless cheeks. Standing up perfectly rigid, she closed her eyes, and hung her hands against her sides.
“Kiss me, then, since you claim the right,” she said in a choked voice.
For a moment or two he stood looking at her. Then with a loud laugh he flung himself back in his chair.
Clytie with shame and horror in her heart rushed from the room.
It was not an encouraging home-coming. The incident, though not repeated, upset many of her plans for the reconstitution of her existence. It added a new dread. For she had counted upon the continuance of the entire indifference with which Thornton had grown to regard her. A sudden outburst like this had not occurred for many months. What guarantee had she that this was not the beginning of a series of spasmodic rekindlings of a fire she had thought dead? For some days anxiety lay heavy on her mind. But human nature is very elastic; if it were not so, God help us all! After a while she recovered and was able to talk calmly to Thornton, who began by treating her with an ironical politeness, and then relapsed into his usual cheerful indifference. Once while discussing their mutual relations she broached the subject of separation.
“I won't consent,” he replied. “As we can't be lovers, we may as well be friends. You would gain very little by it. Besides, people would talk, and for me that is an important consideration.”
“It hardly concerns me,” she said, with a touch of cynicism that was new to her. “Still, if you wish it very much, I will remain.”
“I do wish it, Clytie,” he said in a softened voice. “You can go your way, I will go mine. But we must live together as far as the world sees us.”
Clytie yielded with some misgivings, and set herself to work to discover interests in life.
The society life of London, in which she was free to play an important part, did not satisfy her. She saw too deep below the surface of things to be guilty of the silly cynicism that finds society hollow, its aims futile, and its morals corrupt. There is earnestness even among cultivated men and women. But society is formal, conventional, and in the external rules of life differs only in degree from Durdleham. True, it has a far wider intellectual scope. Contrary to Durdleham, it permits the possession of ideas, but it is just as punctilious as to their correct expression. The elaborate ceremonial of society weighed upon Clytie. She preferred a simpler, directer life. There were so many wrappings of convention to be pierced through before she could get to the heart of a thing or a person, and they wearied, irritated her. And now, as Thornton seemed to care very little whether she placed herself in evidence or not, beyond playing the part of hostess in his house, she consulted merely her own desires in her acceptance of invitations. But as the circle from which these mainly proceeded was that into which her husband's reputation, tastes, and political aspirations had led her, she did not find in it the interests which particularly affected her. It was beyond her power either to feel or to simulate an interest in Thornton's ambitions. Nor did she feel called upon now to profess the tenets of Thornton's political creed. She was a solitary, unconventional Radical in the midst of the most uncompromising Torydom, which is an unenviable position even for the least rabid politician. The political section, therefore, of her social circle she studiously avoided. The purely fashionable, frivolous element, that goes to Hurlingham and Ascot, and makes itself merry over material things, had attracted her the previous year with its graceful epicureanism. She had still been proud of her husband and his boyish zest in amusement, and she had caught from him the spirit of laughing Babylon. But now it was pain to be with him when he chatted and jested with pretty girls and idle young men. His light-hearted gaiety jarred upon her. She saw that men and women were affected by his charm, and she had half longings to tell them it was a lie. So she withdrew herself from their midst as much as possible. By this process of elimination Clytie's circle became conveniently limited. She was sick at heart, and she turned more and more to the friends of her girlhood.
Mrs. Farquharson's Sunday evenings became pleasant spots in her barren week. She went there alone, as in the old days. Nothing was changed there: the same faces, the same bright, eager talk, the same welcome. Clytie became her old self, was astonished to find how many enthusiasms she still retained. She almost forgot that she was married, and had said farewell to theories of life and such like vanities. Only at times, when her own art came within the range of a friendly arrow, did she wince and remember with a pang that Clytie Davenant was dead. Redgrave, whom she occasionally met, forbore, with a portrait painter's intuitive delicacy, to question her upon the progress of her art under its new conditions. He divined that his prophecies had been correct, and he was sad; because he had had great hopes of Clytie. In a tentative way he spoke of it to Mrs. Farquharson, who confided to him her own surmises as to the dubious success of the marriage. Then Redgrave brightened, and declared that there was hope yet.
“What do you mean?” cried Caroline with a touch of indignation; whereat Redgrave smiled in his serene way.
“I mean that hitherto she has tried to look at life through her art. Now she will be able to look at art through her life.”
“Then her art will be very feeble and miserable!”
“Clytie's life has never been feeble and miserable,” he replied. “I feared it was going to be so—in a special sense, you know; I feared that she would be overpowered by the physical element her husband would bring into her atmosphere, and that she would develop into the fashionable married woman, and thus, at the same time, suffer in spirituality and lose her grip upon the subjects that form her artistic range.”
“I can't see how an unhappy married life can help her,” said Caroline. “If such a deterioration is possible, it has taken place already.”
“Doubtless it has,” Redgrave replied earnestly. “But it is not final. If she lives within herself again, she will recover spirituality and grip—both strengthened by experience and suffering. That is the most precious knowledge, Mrs. Farquharson, which we have bought with sorrow.”
“Then mine must be very worthless,” cried Caroline. “And I'm very glad of it. I would rather be ignorant and happy than wise and sad. And I could wish the same for poor Clytie. I can understand the good and beautiful things of this world as well as most people, but I don't believe in art to all that extent. I may be a Philistine,—God forbid it, but perhaps I am,—and I like to see people happy.”
“That depends upon what you call happiness,” said Redgrave.
But Caroline was not to be led into an argument. She had her views and expounded them.
“I mean common, all-round human happiness,” she said, “that makes you laugh to yourself when there's no particular reason for it. And I'd sooner Clytie have that and never touch a brush than paint the most world-convulsing pictures and be wretched.”
“But if she painted world-convulsing pictures, as you call them, she would be happy—much happier than under the other conditions.”
“Oh, no, she wouldn't!” she replied, with a conclusive nod. “You are quite wrong, my dear good friend. It is a secondary consideration to a woman whether she convulses the world or not. It might amuse and gratify her to do iten passant, but it is onlyen passant. Believe me. I don't give my sex away as a general rule, but I make you a present of that! So if you're glad,” she added with triumphant feminine logic, “that Clytie has made an unhappy marriage, I think it is simply detestable of you!”
So Redgrave, routed, retired in confusion; but he took his own ideas with him.
One Sunday evening, early in July, Mrs. Farquharson ran into the room where Clytie, just arrived, was taking off her wraps.
“I have been waiting by the window ever so long, watching for your carriage. You are quite late. I wanted to see you before you came into the drawing-room. Who do you think is here? Guess!”
Clytie saw at once by Caroline's face. A little thrill of gladness sent the colour to her cheeks and caused her eyes to sparkle as she paused with one glove half off and looked quickly at her friend.
“Kent?”
Caroline nodded, glad at seeing that Clytie was pleased.
“I wanted to drop you a line, but how could I on Sunday in this postless town? George only condescended to tell me last night that he was coming. If we had as little sense as men, I wonder how on earth we should get on! He met him out a week ago and persuaded him.”
“It will be quite like an old evening, dear,” said Clytie. “I shall be so glad to see him.”
“It is strange you should not have met,” said Caroline; and then she added reflectively: “Well, perhaps it isn't.”
She had her own theories on the subject. And to say a woman has her own theories is to say a good deal.
“But I don't see why he should have let us almost lose sight of him,” she continued.
“What reason does he give?”
“Oh, the reason that makes one so helpless, you know. A man you like comes to you and says: 'I have sinned against you without any cause whatever. It was just my own badness, and nothing else, and now I am humble and repentant'—and what are you to do but forgive him? He's very penitent now and vows amendment.”
Clytie completed her little toilet arrangements and went downstairs with Caroline. On their way Caroline asked her where Thornton was.
“He's at Goodwood, staying with some people there. He went down yesterday for the races.”
“Wouldn't it have brightened you up to have gone too?” asked Caroline with deliberate tactlessness, darting a quick feminine side glance. But Clytie broke into a laugh.
“Oh! good gracious, no! I didn't even know he was going till yesterday, when Roberts asked me about something he was to do during the master's absence. We are quite old married people now, Caroline, and we each go more or less our own way. It saves a lot of trouble. You see, he knew I wouldn't care for Goodwood and the set he's in with there—the Claverings and such like.”
“Yes, I think you are better off here,” said Caroline.
“I know I am,” replied Clytie, taking her arm. And then they went into the drawing-room.
Clytie's first impulse on entering was to look round for Kent. She met his eyes fixed upon her from the other side of the rather crowded room, and she gave him a little nod of greeting. He rose and joined the knot of people who were surrounding her. Both were self-conscious to the extent of knowing that, as they had once been a familiar couple in that company, it would be inexpedient to allow it to be noticed that their meeting was an event to them. They shook hands, with a friendly commonplace, and joined in the general conversation. Redgrave, French, the journalist, Mr. Singleton, Mrs. Tredegar, were there—most of the old faces, a few new ones. To see Kent's among them was a joy to Clytie. She had never understood why he had broken from her. Now and then the true solution passed through her mind, but she rejected it. It was incongruous with his action. Love begets wants, and it is the nature of man to clamour for them. This was her hasty conclusion. But she had avoided thinking very deeply upon the subject, instinctively deeming it wiser to refrain.
He had not changed, she thought; and wondered whether he would notice any change in her. She found herself listening again to him as he talked, in his downright, earnest way, quickly noting familiar turns of thought and expression, admiring the thoroughness of his unconventional enthusiasm. The old contented humility of spirit came back to her. How much more real than hers was his life! How much she had learned and could learn from him! And for a short, swift moment the laughter and talk sounded dull in her ears, and all the objects around, all the faces save one, melted away into the blue cigarette smoke, and that one face remained—sitting at a table opposite to her, the lamp between them—and the brows were intent on the sheet over which a quill pen was scratching assiduously; and the surroundings shaped themselves into her old rooms in the King's Road. Then, just as swiftly as it had come, the dream vanished, and Clytie sighed. The talk languished a little. Kent looked somewhat wistfully at her. She leaned forward and beckoned him with a smile and a little upward movement of her chin.
“Come down and give me some supper,” she said. “I did not eat anything before coming out.”
“That was foolish of you,” he said involuntarily.
Then they both laughed.
“You are just the same as ever,” she said. And they went downstairs.
It was a tradition in Harley Street that on Sunday evenings a cold supper should be laid in the dining-room from half-past eight onward, so that guests could go down whenever it so pleased them. To break up the continuity of the evening by a formal gathering around a supper table was opposed to Caroline's notions. Besides, irregularities in meals were one of the features of the house. You need never be in time, and there was always food when you wanted it. To the erratic and unregulated visitor it was paradise. Caroline paid her servants extra wages to insure satisfaction in this respect. So Clytie's little manouvre was quite in accordance with the recognised order of things.
They found the dining-room unoccupied. She sat down near the end of the table, while Kent, a little way off, gravely carved some chicken, which he brought to her together with some salad and a jug of claret-cup. Then he sat down by her, at the corner.
“But aren't you going to eat anything yourself?” she asked, laughing.
“I am not hungry.”
“Oh, that doesn't matter. Do go and get something, to keep me in countenance. How can I eat when you are sitting watching me like that, with your elbow on the table?”
“I have done it so often before. It seemed natural to sit by you while you had your meal. I was forgetting. You see my manners have not improved. However——”
He rose for the purpose of helping himself to some food, but Clytie stopped him, made him sit down again.
“There! It was silly of me,” she said. “I did not think of it. Don't be any different from what you used to be. Let us imagine that this evening is one of the old Sunday evenings here. Ah! If you only knew how glad I am to see you. What an eternity it has been since we met.”
“Eighteen months,” said Kent laconically. “The longest eighteen months I h I have ever lived.”
“Why?”
“Don't you think I have missed you?”
“So much as that?”
“Yes; so much as that.”
“My poor Kent!” said Clytie, troubled. “I wish I could do something for you.”
“Ah,es ist vorbei,” he said, puckering his brows, as he watched the rings he was making in the damask with an inverted wineglass. Then his forehead suddenly cleared, and he looked up with his frank laugh.
“You see I am just as much of a bear as ever. Instead of telling you what a delight it is to be with you again, I come to you complaining, and I ought to have every reason not to rail at fortune.”
“You are doing great things, I hear,” said Clytie. “Tell me about them.”
“Oh, they are neither great nor much worth telling. Theopusis being translated into German, and part of it will be soon published by the University of Vienna.”
“That is a feather in your cap.”
“A big one. I don't think I am given to running after notoriety and that sort of thing, but it is gratifying to be recognised a little. It encourages one.”
“Ah, it does!” said Clytie with more meaning than she intended.
“So I have been working away at it harder than ever.”
“I wish I had your enthusiasm,” she said. “And your power of work. Do you remember your lectures?” They talked a little about the old days, half sadly, half tenderly. Those memories were very pleasant. Then they came back to the present.
“Winnie tells me you are a great man now at the Museum. I am so glad.”
Kent waved his hand deprecatingly and laughed. “Winifred is quite an Iris,” he replied. “For she comes down to earth sometimes and tells me things about you. Yes, I am quite a man of affluence these days. I am the head of the department. I have got so much money I don't know what to do with it.”
“I hope you employ some of it in giving yourself proper meals,” said Clytie. “Or do you still have your extraordinary suppers?”
“Oh, I live just the same,” said Kent. “If I began to be respectable in one thing, I should gradually become so in all.”
“And the rooms are just the same as ever?”
“A few more pictures and odds and ends. And I have got a carpet. That's Wither's doing. He came to see me in the winter and caught a cold, due to the bare boards, so he said. When he had recovered he made me go and buy a thick Turkey square. After that I had serious designs of forbidding him the rooms lest he should turn them into a boudoir altogether.”
They laughed over this idea. Clytie asked him whether he still kept the tripods before the fireplace, and whether the paraffin oil can in the corner harmonised well with the carpet. It was like a breath of fresh air to meet Kent again.
Suddenly he pointed to her plate.
“You are not eating anything.”
“I am not hungry,” said Clytie with some demureness.
“But if you have not had your evening meal, you'll get faint. What did you come down for, if you merely wanted to pick at the wing of a chicken and to put hardly any of it into your mouth?”
Then Clytie burst out into merry laughter. He was so downright and honest. Just the same as ever.
“Oh, you foolish Kent! I should have thought even you could have invented that.”
“Did you really want to see me?” he asked, brightening.
“Why, of course! Do you suppose I am devoid of human attributes?”
This brought them nearer than they had been since the time that Kent realised he loved her. To Kent this meeting was enchantment. To see her sitting by him, bright, laughing, her old self, was enough to make him lose sense of the past eighteen months of hopeless longing. He thought to himself that it was better she had not learned, since her ignorance gave him this sweet half hour.
“I suppose we must be going upstairs soon,” she said, with a little wistful wrinkling of her forehead. “When shall I see you again?”
Kent started at the question. It troubled him. He did not know what answer to make.
“Within less than another year, I hope,” he said.
“Oh, yes, Kent. We mustn't be strangers any more. It's not good for us. Would you care about seeing me very often?”
“I am not coming to call upon you,” he replied bluntly.
The actual words were ungracious. But there was a flash of eager longing in his eyes that lent the words a subtle meaning. And Clytie rose from the table with a little gasp of pain as the truth burst upon her.
“Oh, Kent, Kent!” she cried, greatly moved.
Their eyes met, and this time there was no mistake. He knew that she had guessed. But with a great effort he evaded the appeal.
“No; I can't come to your house to see you,” he said huskily. “There you are Mrs. Hammerdyke, and I shouldn't know you. Your home is full of interests and associations in which I could only be a stranger and an intruder. To me you are Clytie, the Clytie whose daily life I used to share—and only as Clytie can I bear to see you.”
“Would it help you to see me as Clytie?” she asked.
“Yes, dearly,” he said.
“Then you can always come in to the studio when I am with Winifred, and I shall always be here on Sunday evenings. Don't you think I want to see you too—as Clytie!”
“Thank you. Thank you,” he said in a low voice, taking her hand. “Now it is time for us to go upstairs.”