“That’s life,” she laughed. “If you take the chocolate one, you always wish you had taken the jam-puff. And, after all,” a little wearily, “what does it matter—chocolate or jam? Equally sweet, perhaps, and equally unwholesome.”
He joined in her laugh and held out his hand. “I must go now. Let me come again soon, will you? I enjoyed your charming luncheon-party, but much more have I enjoyed this talk with you. Somehow I always want to talk to you, and I have the reputation for being rather a silent man. I wonder why you inspire me?”
Her hand was in his and she smiled mischievously and mockingly as she said: “I suppose it’s because I talk so much. It makes you feel that you must uphold the superior ability of your sex in all things, even conversation.”
But he did not smile. His eyes were searching her face, noting the soft, velvety texture of the skin—how he longed to press his lips on her full, creamy throat even more than on her lips—the satiny gloss of her luxurious hair, the long eyelashes which, as he stood above her, swept her cheeks, the small, straight nose and delicate ears.
“You are a very sweet and fascinating woman,” he said suddenly, “and I am sorry that we ever did anything so vulgar as to use your portrait for a book cover.... Good-bye.”
For a few minutes after he had taken his departure Claudia sat thinking about him. Unlike Frank Hamilton, he did not set her pulses singing, and leave her inwardly shaken when he released her hand; but, on the other hand, she found herself considering him more seriously. She conjectured more about him; she found herself wanting his opinion, just as she did Colin Paton’s. Colin! That reminded her of the beginning of their conversation. Colin had clearly shown that their friendship was to him but a small thing. She found herself clenching her fingers into the palm of her hand as she reflected on the secret he had kept from her. This man Littleton was not in any way the equal of Colin Paton, either in brain or in character; but he was evidently trying to tell her how much he appreciated their acquaintanceship, trying to let her know that he realized now what a big part a woman might play in his life. Pat was quite,quitewrong. Colin was an unemotional fish; he even took their friendship coldly.
“And I want love, life, warmth!” she cried to her empty drawing-room. “I am tired of leading this deadly existence. I want someone to love me, to tell me so, to make me feel that he loves me.”
She looked at the room through a blinding mist, so that the delicate walls and the Louis Quinze furniture allswum in a haze, and nothing stood out save the fact that the room, like her heart, was empty, and there was no one to hold out two arms ready to enfold her.
Then she strangled a sob in her throat, and the room became once more the charming, orderly room it always was, filled with sweet scented flowers and majestic palms.
“You’re a fool, Claudia, a fool! a fool! a fool!” she said through her half-closed teeth. “You want things that you will never get, that probably don’t exist except in your stupid imagination.”
Then she went quickly out of the room to her bedroom, where her outdoor clothes were lying on the bed. She rang the bell for her maid.
“Order the car for me, please. I am going to see Mrs. Iverson. Give me that box of picture-puzzles I got for her.”
Fay always wanted her. She would go where she was wanted.
Claudia asked the usual question of the nurse who met her in the hall of the flat. It was now three weeks since Fay’s accident.
“Sir Richard said definitely to-day that everything has now been tried,” said the nurse sadly, for both the day and the night nurse had grown fond of their odd little patient. “I think they always knew it was hopeless.... I fear she is growing suspicious. She cried a good deal of last night, and only slept for a couple of hours. Nurse Calderon said she thought she heard her whisper to herself in the night: ‘Oh, God! I can’t! I can’t! Let me get better!’ Poor little thing! It’s too horrible, and, of course, everything will—will get worse.”
Claudia, who had read up the progress of such cases in a medical book she had found in Gilbert’s library, gave assent. She knew that the end of such cases is the abject humiliation of human flesh where so many of the functions of the body are paralysed. The account had made her feel sick in the reading, and she shrank from the thought of all that lay before the girl—she was little more—who lay in the bedroom beyond.
Claudia opened the bedroom door full of misgivings, her heart very heavy as the thought of Fay’s night vigil,so that she was unprepared for the sight that met her gaze. The room always was a bower of flowers, generally coloured ones, for Fay said bluntly that white ones reminded her of a funeral; but this afternoon it presented an unusually gay aspect. The apartment was almost gaudy, and at first Claudia did not take in why it was so bright. Fay was propped up among a nest of pillows, her tiny face, very little changed, hidden under an enormous black hat with three great blue feathers floating over it. The bed was strewn with hats, the chairs were littered with them. Pink cardboard boxes of various sizes stood everywhere.
“Darling, you’ve come in the nick of time,” called out Fay excitedly. “Isn’t this a duck of a hat? You see, I must have some new hats. I shall be better soon now, and it’s no good getting up and finding you’ve got nothing to put on your cocoanut. And Madame Rose has got all her new models for the summer. This is French. You can see that with half an eye, can’t you? I call it shick, don’t you? Something like a hat.”
A dark-eyed Jewess, who had evidently brought the hats, was standing at the foot of the bed, and broke in with:
“Straight from Parry, Miss Morris,” she said glibly, though it was evident that it had been concocted in some cheap London warehouse. “Very latest thing. Real style there. I thought of you as soon as I saw it. It’s too good for anyone else, I said.”
“Ah! did you? Give me the hand-glass. I want to see how my dial looks under it. Ugh! like an under-done muffin left out in the rain. Give us over the rouge and the powder-puff. And the bunch of curls out of the drawer. Where’s that eyebrow pencil I had this morning? I rub the blessed stuff off on the pillow. There! that’s better, cocky. Now I’ve got a bit of bloom. We’re not forty and in the cupboard yet, thank the Lord! Itsaves a lot of trouble if you’ve got dark eyebrows. Yours don’t rub off and get smeary, do they?”
“It’s curious,” smiled Claudia, removing one of the hats in order to sit down, “that your eyebrows are so light when your hair is so dark.”
Fay gave a whoop that showed her lungs were not affected.
“You dear holy innocent! Did you think my hair was really this colour? Not much. The hair-dresser does it, and jolly expensive it is. My hair, as a child, was a silly soppy sort of light shade, so I improved on it. I’m much more effective with black hair. Makes a bit of a contrast. Got the idea out of a story where a man was raving over blue eyes and black hair. First of all, I tried red. But it’s so difficult with hats and all the boys call you Ginger.”
She might have been discussing the colour of a parasol, so impersonal and frank was her tone. Evidently it never occurred to her that these were what is called in ladies’ papers, “secrets of the toilet-table.”
Fay turned to the girl, who was adjusting the trimming on another hat, equally large and covered with roses of a nightmare shade of pink.
“You remember my hair when it was red, don’t you, Vera?” She chuckled. “I remember you didn’t know me when I came into the shop, and you was so polite”—she gave Claudia a wink—“that I knew you hadn’t spotted me. I’d run up the devil of a bill, and Madame Rose was giving me the frozen eye just then. I think I shall keep to black now. It does suit me, doesn’t it?”
“Admirably,” returned her sister-in-law, controlling a desire to laugh.
“I like your hair,” commented Fay; “there are sort of coloury bits in it. I thought at first you must dye it, only Jack told me you didn’t, and that it was like that when you were a kid. It’s real pretty. Darling, try on thishat. I want to see it on someone else. There’s no doubt it’s stylish. I hate the sort of hats nobody notices. When I pay big money I like to get the goods.”
Claudia good-naturedly removed her own smart little toque of white brocade and skunk, and placed the top-heavyconfectionupon her head.
Fay’s face was a study in astonishment and dismay as she looked at the other woman.
“Well, I’m blowed! It looks—oh! sort of funny—and”—she shook her head—“Vera, are you sure it’s good style? All right, keep your hair on, I didn’t say it wasn’t, only—— Crickey Bill, does it look like that on me?”
The girl from the shop eyed Claudia with no great favour. Her small, beady eyes looked sourly and enviously at the perfectly-cut, black velvet gown and elegant skunk and ermine furs. She was cute enough to realize that Claudia’s clothes were the “real thing” and spelt not only money—her own wares were absurdly overpriced—but taste. She was accustomed to serving “ladies” in the profession, who familiarly called her “Vera, my dear,” and asked, and generally took her advice, as well as swallowed her fulsome flattery.
“Take it off,” said Fay almost sharply. “I hate it now. It’s too large, it’s too——” Then, with a sudden change to wistfulness, she added, “but it’s you that makes it wrong. You’re good style, and I’m not. I’m common, dead common. I don’t wonder you didn’t want me in the family.”
“Fay, dear, don’t.” Claudia glanced at the sulky Vera, who was packing up the hats. Apparently Fay had never heard of the undesirability of washing dirty linen in public.
“You’re a lady. A blind man could see that. If you hadn’t been so sweet I’d have hated you directly I saw you. I knew what you were at once. Of course, Jack is a perfect gentleman, but that’s different somehow,except”—vaguely—“I liked him a bit extra for it. He looks different in his clothes to the other men, and yet those men spend a lot of money too. I knew a man once, he owned a couple of halls in the Midlands, and he told me he had fifty-two waistcoats, one for every week of the year. I don’t suppose Jack’s got as many as that?”
She was adjusting a saucy matinée cap, a dainty affair of pink ribbon and lace.
“I am sure he hasn’t.”
“Won’t you take no hat at all?” said the annoyed shop-girl, breaking in rudely. “You might take this one with the pink roses. I’m sure that’s quite enough.”
“No, no, I’ll wait till I can come to the shop. Here, my dear, here’s a half a crown for your trouble. I’ll come in—soon.” She looked quickly from the shop-girl to Claudia, a desperate question in her blue eyes.
“That’s a much better arrangement,” returned Claudia cheerfully. “We’ll go together, shall we?”
“Yes, yes,” cried Fay eagerly, clapping her hands. “But, I say,” as the door closed behind the girl and her hat-boxes, “will you take me toyourhat shop where that came from?”
“With pleasure.”
“What; come here.” Fay beckoned her imperiously to her side. “Do you mean you are not ashamed of me? I could keep my mouth dead shut, you know. Do you mean that you’d let me wear the same sort of hats as you, that you’ll try and make a lady of me?”
Claudia could not speak, she gently nodded.
“Well,” said Fay huskily, her eyes suspiciously moist, “you’reitall right, that’s all I can say. I—you can touch me for anything you want. You’ve only got to ask me. I say, hand me over that leather case from the chest of drawers—yes, that’s the one.”
Wonderingly, Claudia obeyed, and handed her the case which was a cheap leather imitation.
Fay opened the case with a key from under her pillow and rummaged inside. Presently she produced a small box.
“There! I want to show you this. It’s for you. It’s quite straight; you needn’t think I got it in any—any way you wouldn’t like. I bought it off someone who was hard up.” “It” was a diamond and ruby brooch, and quite a tasteful affair in the form of two hearts, transfixed by an arrow.
“Oh! but Fay, I couldn’t——”
“Take it, I say, or I shall think you don’t mean what you said just now. Two hearts, d’yer see—you and me! Quite romantic, isn’t it? Put it on that lacy thing at your throat. Yes, it looks nice. No, you’re not going to thank me. Just give me a kiss, that’s all.”
For a few moments the lips of the two met, so different in their upbringing and views of life, but strangely brought together by the hand of Fate.
“Now look at my joolery. Never seen it, have you? Well, it aint so dusty, if I says it. I’ve always got them to shell out all right. After all,” with a quaint little touch of vanity, “when you top the bill you’re worth it, and I don’t believe in making yourself cheap or making men meaner than they are. Not that I exactly like them for what they give you, but it shows they do like you, because a man doesn’t stump up easily.... There, that’s a stunning pendant, isn’t it? It cost two hundred and fifty, because I went and chose it.”
Claudia was astounded at the value of the jewellery that reposed in the shabby, unremarkable leather case. She saw that Fay loved the things by the way she touched them. Some of them were beautiful. But presently Fay gave a sigh and, selecting a large diamond pendant which she put round her neck, over her nightdress, she shut up the case. “Put the things back,” she said queerly. “I—I——” Then, to Claudia’s dismay, she began to sobrather pitifully like a frightened child. Claudia drew the little head to her breast.
“Hush, dear, you mustn’t excite yourself. It’s bad for you. Nurse will say it’s my fault, you know.”
“I’m not very old,” sobbed Fay, “I’m only twenty-two. Some people live to be very old.”
Claudia tried to think of a laughing reply, but no words would come. She could only rearrange the matinée cap and put her own cool cheek against the one wet with tears.
“Fay, dear, to please me—you said you’d do anything for me—don’t cry so. Are you—are you in pain?”
She wiped the tears away gently with her handkerchief, the rouge from the cheeks coming off too.
Presently Fay grew a little calmer.
“Claudia, I want to ask you something because you are honest.” Oh! how Claudia’s heart sank! She dreaded what the next words would be, but as usual the unexpected came from Fay.
“Do you thinkthisis a punishment for—for not being good? Nurse has got a Bible, and I—just for fun—asked her to read me a bit. It frightened me. I’m not what you call bad, am I?”
“No, Fay,” said Claudia steadily, determined that not all the religion or moral teaching in the world should make her distress the doomed woman. “No, Fay, don’t distress yourself. I don’t believe for an instant this is a punishment.” She tried to speak simply, but the task was difficult. Her own religion was a very vague one. She believed that if there were a God, as so many Christians averred, a God who was all-loving, understanding beyond finite conception, there could never be any question of punishment such as Fay suggested. Fay’s mind and morals were stunted, undeveloped. Since she had come in contact with the queer people who were her fellow “pros,” Claudia had come very clearly to recognize thatthe lives of such artistes, especially those like Fay, who had been born practically on the boards of a music-hall, were not subject to the ordinary judgments of society. Theirs was a little world of its own, with its obligations, its own ideas of right and wrong. To do another artiste out of a job, to queer her turn, to refuse to put your hand in your pocket for a deserving case, to crib another person’s business or her “fancy boy,” those were unpardonable sins in Fay’s world. To have flitted from lover to lover—in her case without any breaking of hearts or ugly recriminations—was only a venial one.
Fay gave a huge relieved sigh. “If you say so, I won’t worry about that any more. Of course, mind you, I ought to have kept straight. Mother told me that when I was a kid. But I don’t know. Men always liked me, you see, and I’m fond of them. Of course, I knowyouwouldn’t do the things I’ve done.”
Claudia inwardly winced. That very morning she had had an impassioned lover-like letter from Frank complaining that she never came for the sittings now. “I know you have been a great deal with your sister-in-law, but sometimes I fear you cannot care for me when you can live without seeing me. To me, you are the whole world.”
“I expect Jack and I are pretty poor tripe,” continued Fay calmly. Then a new thought struck her. “I say, that night I fainted, I thought I heard a nice voice in the hall, a man’s voice. It wasn’t the doctor, because he’s got a down-in-your-boots voice, and it wasn’t none of my pals. Was it someone, or did I fancy it?”
“I think it was probably a friend of mine, Colin Paton. He got the specialist and nurse for you, and often inquires after you.”
“That’s jolly decent of him, because he doesn’t know me from Adam.” She looked round her at the many vases crowded with flowers. “But people have been niceto me, haven’t they? It shows I’m liked, doesn’t it?” It was such harmless vanity that Claudia smiled. “Is your friend a great swell, Sir Somebody or other?”
“Oh, dear, no.” Claudia found herself laughing at the idea of anyone calling Colin Paton “a great swell.” She must remember to tell him, he would enjoy the joke too. Then she stiffened a little. No, she would not tell himanything. He left her out of his life. “He’s the simplest and kindest of men, a friend one can always rely on.” Her sense of fairness prompted her to say so much.
“He’s old, then?”
“No, about thirty-eight. Did my description sound like a greybeard?”
“Yes, ‘kind’ sounds so old somehow. Of course, he’s gone on you. He must be. Would he come and see me, do you think? Why,” with a sudden flash of inspiration, “it must be the man Polly said was here that night and treated her as if she was a duchess, and thanked her for everything. Polly flopped immediate. She’s had a balmy look ever since. Oh, yes, I don’t think! Is he handsome?”
“No, only nice looking.”
“Well, I should like him to have black, flashing eyes—don’t you love black, flashing eyes—and dark curly hair, and long, white hands like the man in the novel, ‘Did He Love Her.’ I’ll just have to listen to his voice.... Must you go now? Oh, well, I suppose I mustn’t be selfish. Jack will be in soon. It’s rough on Jack me being like this, isn’t it? Only a log for a wife.... He’s better than I expected, because”—with a canny wag of her head—“Jack didn’t marry me to have me lying here, like this. Men like their women to be pretty lively and ‘on the go,’ especially when they marry someone of my sort. Poor old boy! I’m really fond of Jack, you know. He’s always treated me decently. I hope I’llget well or else—— All right, yes, of course, I won’t worry. Come again to-morrow. Where are you going?”
“To my mother’s. She’s got a musical afternoon, and I must look in. Several grand opera stars and a great pianist. It will be very fireworky, I’m sure. Good-bye, dear.”
Fay kissed her hand gaily as Claudia smilingly withdrew.
In the hall she met Jack coming in.
“Hallo! Claud.” He heaved a deep sigh. “I say, this is breaking my heart.”
“Don’t think aboutyourheart, think about hers,” said Claudia, putting her hand on his shoulder. He looked very dejected and some of the youth had gone out of his face. The contented, well-fed expression was flecked with something closely resembling unhappiness. “She is not likely to live for many years, and let’s try and make the best of it for her, Jacky boy.”
“It’s hell hearing her talk about her new songs and going to Paris with me.... I shall blurt out the truth one day, sure as Fate. It’s lucky I’ve got a stolid sort of look, but it breaks me up inside. I remember talking to you once about thinking too much and rootling about for meanings in life. Why should Fay have to die like this? She hasn’t harmed anyone!”
Claudia shook her head and was silent. Many greater minds than poor Jack’s had wrestled with that problem, and there had never been, and never would be, any answer. With Jack, his belated questioning was rather pathetic. He had never wanted to ask questions, he had been content just to live, and now his happy-go-lucky love for Fay had turned into tragedy.
As they stood there they could faintly hear the parrot in the distance still calling, “Chuck it! Chuck it!” accompanied by a hoarse chuckle that seemed to mock them with some uncanny knowledge. The little hall was tidynow, but it meant that its volatile mistress would never dash through it any more.
“I say, Claud,” said Jack, taking off his coat, “what’s come over Gilbert? I went into court to-day—a fellow I know was interested in an arbitration case, had money invested—and when we got there I found Gilbert had been briefed. He started splendidly in that ‘listen to me’ sort of manner, and then he got muddled. He couldn’t remember the name of the firm he was speaking about, and he had to ask his junior. Everybody was noticing it. Why, he used to have such a ripping memory! What’s wrong with the works?”
Claudia was not so alarmed as she well might have been had she known the symptoms of nerve breakdown.
“Perhaps he took the case up in a hurry, sometimes he has to do that, you know.”
“No, he didn’t, because the fellow with me told me that he knew he had been secured for the case a long time ago. I heard someone say he was going to pieces.”
“He wants a holiday.... Mother will think I am never coming. Go in and talk to Fay.”
He saw her into her car, and a few minutes later Claudia found herself alighting on the red carpet outside her old home. The sounds of a violin played by a master hand reached her as she entered. The Rivingtons were just going, Mrs. Rivington very shrill and chatty, and the General rather tottery and deaf.
“I say,” said Mrs. Rivington, with a glint of malice in her eye, “is it true your friend Frank Hamilton is going to marry Mrs. Jacobs? Good thing for him, I should say. She’s just rolling in money, almost indecent, and anyone can see she’s madly in love with him. It’s all very well to talk art,” sneeringly, “but it usually spells money, doesn’t it? Artists are just like the rest of us, only they pretend a bit more. He’s always with her, so I suppose the engagement will be announced soon.”
Claudia attributed the remarks to ill-nature on Mrs. Rivington’s part, for her chief occupation in life was planting arrows as often as she could in the weak spots in her friends’ armour. Claudia could afford to smile serenely in reply. Did she not know whom Frank loved? A woman rather enjoys a clandestine love-affair, and Claudia hugged to herself her closer knowledge of Frank’s inner life. She knew she was the core of it.
“Mr. Hamilton’s in there now, talking to the Duchess of Roxford,” continued Mrs. Rivington. “Ridiculous how artists are run after, isn’t it? I don’t suppose he was anyone in particular. Artists never are. Some people find that interesting, but I must say, personally, I prefer good breeding. So unmistakable. Good-bye. It’s too dreadful about The Girlie Girl, but I was right, after all, wasn’t I?”
Claudia stood quietly in the doorway until the violinist, the great Ysaye, had finished playing. There were many well-known people present, great names in the social and artistic firmaments, for Circe had always held a little court all her life, and she had cleverly managed to pursue her uneven way without offending any of the powerful social leaders, who, though they always remembered her trespasses against her, generously spoke with more or less indulgence of them. She was hated by a few, like Lady Currey, but they did not count for very much. Circe had never been actively malicious, and she had always been too immersed in her own affairs to find time to be inquisitive about other people’s, hence she had acquired a certain reputation for fair dealing and generosity of character not altogether deserved. Now she very seldom entertained, but when she did so, she did it superlatively well, and many artists she had encouraged in their young and aspiring days were glad to do her honour.
The music stopped and she found Frank at her side.
“At last! I have been waiting for you all the afternoon.I was afraid you were not coming. Claudia, this cannot go on. You are driving me mad. It is deliberate? Have you all the time just been playing with me?”
“Hush! don’t be so indiscreet.” She smiled, for Mrs. Rivington’s words returned to her mind. Frank Hamilton attracted by Mrs. Jacob’s money-bags! “I’ll talk to you later. You shall get me some tea. I must go over and speak to mother.”
She threaded her way, with handshakes and smiles, to where Circe, in a most exquisite frock, sat in a shaded corner, among a lot of scented cushions. She was talking with more animation than usual to a man whose back was towards Claudia. With her quick eye for beauty, she noticed that he had a particularly well-shaped head, which was finely set on his shoulders. Circe was talking in French to him.
“Eh bien, mon cher, Claudia est très belle, et elle est—”
Circe caught sight of her, and stopped short. Had it not been almost impossible, Claudia would have thought that her mother looked distinctly embarrassed and taken aback. Then the well-known sweet smile drifted over her still beautiful mouth, and the momentary impression vanished.
“Claudia, we were just talking of you. You are late, child. Let me introduce to you an old friend, Mr. Mavrocopoulos.”
The man rose and bowed with unusual grace, and Claudia saw a very well-preserved man of about fifty-five, with black hair flecked with grey, and remarkably fine dark eyes. She returned his evident look of interest, and again she received a peculiar impression as of something that was vaguely familiar and yet somewhat dreamlike. She was aware that Circe was watching them.
“Have I not met you before?” inquired Claudia. “Your face seems familiar to me, somehow.”
Something flashed into his eyes, and his lips smiled as he turned to Circe.
“No, Claudia, I don’t think you can remember Mr. Mavrocopoulos. He has not been in England for many years.”
“But I saw you when you were a child of three,” said the man. “I remember you well, very well. I do not pretend that I should have known you as that child, but I remember you well.”
Claudia knew his name as that of a famous and very wealthy Greek family, and she recalled a rumour that had once linked it with her mother’s. Had they found happiness together? Were there golden memories between them? She wondered curiously how a man and woman felt in such a case, who, after the lapse of many years, met again. Did yesterday seem as to-day? Was memory sharp or dulled by time, did they remember the high-water-mark of their passion, or the moment when they had said good-bye? Were they glad to meet again? If she and Frank met after many years, would they——? Then suddenly she heard Fay’s voice saying confidently: “I know you wouldn’t do the things I’ve done.” But Circe had done them, too, and she had not had the excuse poor Fay could bring forward.
There were no signs of regret on her mother’s face. She never spoke as one who finds any bitterness in the dregs of such a past. Indeed, she always spoke as one who felt that she had fulfilled her destiny, who has eaten stolen fruit joyously, without a scruple, without a fear. Her mother’s contempt was for women who looked longingly over the hedge and were afraid to jump.
With a few more words Claudia left the two together.
Circe’s slanting eyes, carefully made up, but in the shaded light still siren-like and magnetic, looked for some seconds into the eyes of the man beside her.
“She is like you, Demetrius, and she has always been my favourite,” she murmured.
His only answer was to take her hand in his, and raise it to his lips.
“I return to Rome next week, but I take back with me a living picture, the incarnation of a dream.”
Claudia was sipping the cup of tea that Frank had procured for her, when she bethought herself that she had not yet seen Patricia.
“Have you seen Pat? It is not humanly possible that she has tucked herself in a corner!”
His eyes were hungrily devouring her face, and lingering on her lips, so that she had the pleasant sensation of a secret caress. Mrs. Jacobs! How ridiculous!
“I saw her disappear half an hour ago in a conspirator-like manner with Mr. Colin Paton, into that room over there.”
He pointed to a closed door, which was the door of the library.
“Nonsense. What have they got to conspire about?”
There was a little frown between her brows. Colin washerfriend.
“Why do men and women usually conspire to be alone together?”
Without answering, Claudia crossed the hall, and abruptly turned the handle of the library-door.
Seated close together, talking very earnestly, Pat more excited than she had ever seen her, were the two whom Frank had seen disappear half an hour before. As a matter of fact, it had only been ten minutes, but Frank had always had his doubts of Colin’s friendship.
“ ... bushels of apples and immense quantities of ...” Pat was saying, when her sister came in. “Oh! Claudia, you have come. We’d almost given you up.”
In an utterly different style from her own, Patricia was looking most attractive that afternoon. She had on asoft white charmeuse gown, which showed the long lines of her figure, and clung around her in a manner calculated to send her admirers crazy. The cool nonchalant look which she usually wore had given place to something more intense, more human. Something seemed to have aroused her from her virginal slumber, and is not that brightness in the eyes, that flush on the cheek, generally aroused by a male? Claudia took all this in at a glance, and it was not till afterwards that she had time to reflect on the odd subject-matter of their earnest conversation.
“I wondered where you were,” said Claudia, rather frigidly. “How do you do, Colin? I think mother wants you, Pat.” It was a fib, but she had to explain her entrance.
Then she turned with a sweet but cold smile to Colin Paton, who had quietly risen.
“I hear you have written a great book and are going to become famous. Congratulations! I must buy a copy as soon as it comes out.... Frank, I want some more tea. I’m so thirsty.”
Pachmann was playing as they made their way back to the tea-room, his fairy-like fingers lightly caressing the keys into exquisite joyousness.
“I want you to come to the studio to dinner next Monday,” said Frank eagerly. “You always said you’d like to meet Henry Bridgeman and his wife if I could arrange it?” Claudia was a great admirer of Bridgeman’s etchings. “Well, they are coming to dinner at the studio on Monday. Will you come too?”
“Of course, I shall be delighted,” returned Claudia, not even troubling to think of her engagements. “I shall love it. And”—with a hard laugh—“I’ll come for a sitting to-morrow if you like, before I go to Fay.... Dear, you mustn’t say such things here. It’s compromising.” A loud chord on the piano, immediately followedby the sound of a man’s voice, made her raise a warning finger. “Hush!”
The words came clearly enough to both of them as they stood together.
“Ah! fill the Cup, what boots it to repeat,How Time is slipping underneath our feet:Better be jocund with the fruitful grapeThan sadden after none, or bitter fruit.”
“Ah! fill the Cup, what boots it to repeat,How Time is slipping underneath our feet:Better be jocund with the fruitful grapeThan sadden after none, or bitter fruit.”
“Ah! fill the Cup, what boots it to repeat,How Time is slipping underneath our feet:Better be jocund with the fruitful grapeThan sadden after none, or bitter fruit.”
“Ah! fill the Cup, what boots it to repeat,
How Time is slipping underneath our feet:
Better be jocund with the fruitful grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter fruit.”
It was Liza Lehmann’s setting, and the accompaniment thundered and rumbled, and then softened down to a plaintive, appealing melody. It might have been the voice of Circe herself, beckoning, alluring, promising....
“Ah! love, could you and I with Fate conspireTo grasp the sorry scheme of things entireWould we....”
“Ah! love, could you and I with Fate conspireTo grasp the sorry scheme of things entireWould we....”
“Ah! love, could you and I with Fate conspireTo grasp the sorry scheme of things entireWould we....”
“Ah! love, could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire
Would we....”
After all, why had she so many scruples? How did she come to be possessed of them? Why did she hesitate to grasp her happiness?
She looked up and found Colin Paton’s eyes fixed upon her, and they wore an expression she did not know.
Then she heard Frank’s voice murmuring in her ear. “Claudia, if you only knew how much I love you. If you would only trust yourself to me. Why are you afraid?”
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully, “I don’t know.”
She gave him a particularly tender smile, out of sheer feminine perverseness, impelled by something that rankled and festered within her. Colin Paton should be made to understand that there was at least one man who was a real friend to her, yes, and might be more.
“Turn down an empty Glass....”
“Turn down an empty Glass....”
“Turn down an empty Glass....”
“Turn down an empty Glass....”
Why not?
Claudia was leisurely dressing for the dinnerà quatreat Frank’s studio, leisurely, because there was something in the warm May air, stealing in through the windows, that made her dawdle and dream. She and Pat had motored out into the country that morning, and lunched at a quaint old inn covered with wistaria, just outside Penshurst, and the spell of the country, with its riot of scent and song, still possessed her. She thought of the hedges, with their tender greens; the young grass studded with gold and silver, for the buttercups and daisies were gaily blooming; the lilac in the cottage-gardens, just bursting into exquisite flower; the primroses with their pale beauty, nestling at the roots of the trees; the fruit blossom making a poem in delicate pinks and whites. She looked at the bowl of wild hyacinths she and Pat had gathered as excitedly as a couple of Cockney children, and she wished that she could have stayed in fairyland a little longer. She had been so happy for a few hours, for she loved the country. She had put away all the problems that beset her, and she had let the sweet perfection of Nature soothe her into something closely resembling peace. She had givenherself up to its healing, and she was still between it and noisy nerve-racking London as she donned her clothes. In accordance with her mood, she had chosen to wear a simple, almost girlish dress of faint pinks, that reminded her of the orchards they had passed through, and, as a finishing touch to remind her of their excursion, she pinned some primroses on her corsage. Their delicate perfume was like fresh honey.
Her maid noticed that she looked very young that night, with the dreams in her eyes and on her lips, even younger than her twenty-three years. Usually she looked much older, for her self-possessed manner, inherited from her mother, her dignified carriage and air ofsavoir fairemight have belonged to a woman of twenty-eight. To-night she almost had the illusion that she was still an unmarried girl, with The Great Choice before her. The soft, warm air seemed to breathe love, to say, “Take your fill of its sweetness, your life is still to make.” The impassioned song of the birds, the riot and colour, the bursting life in bud and blossom, what did it all say, but:
“Come, all lovers, to the feasting,Where the wine of life is yeasting,Soul of human, brute or flower,This your purest, fullest hourDrink your fill of Love’s own brew.”
“Come, all lovers, to the feasting,Where the wine of life is yeasting,Soul of human, brute or flower,This your purest, fullest hourDrink your fill of Love’s own brew.”
“Come, all lovers, to the feasting,Where the wine of life is yeasting,Soul of human, brute or flower,This your purest, fullest hourDrink your fill of Love’s own brew.”
“Come, all lovers, to the feasting,
Where the wine of life is yeasting,
Soul of human, brute or flower,
This your purest, fullest hour
Drink your fill of Love’s own brew.”
Even Rhoda Carnegie’s cynical words the previous evening at the Prime Minister’s dinner-party seemed part of the day. “Is love to be confined within the small circlet of a wedding-ring? Why, it would be like trying to pour the sea into a thimble.” After all, most intelligent people nowadays scoffed at the wedding-service, with its “forevers” and “till death.” Those ideas had all been swept away.
As she rearranged the wild hyacinths for the mere pleasure of touching them, she asked herself if there stilllingered any belief in those “forevers.” Honestly, no. She did realize that love is too big a thing to be confined within a wedding-ring. It was not that kind of scruple that held her back. Love, as she had once said before her marriage, was the only convention she owned. She recalled the words of James Hinton. “Love, and do as you please.” Many people had taken this as their text for lax morality, but they had not understood him rightly. It was not an easy saying, but a hard one. Love! How often did one love in a lifetime? She had thought she loved Gilbert, and she really had at the time. But his neglect and coldness had killed her love. Could a great love be killed? “Many waters cannot quench love——” was that not merely the high standard which we should all try and uphold, but can never attain to? An impossible standard, surely, except for rare, ethereal beings without sexual instincts, strong human needs.
“And I don’t want an ethereal love,” she said aloud.
The dachshund, who had been slumbering peacefully on the couch, awoke, and looked at her interrogatively. His faithful soul was afraid she had called him.
“Only talking to myself, Billiken,” she said, smiling at him. “Why, even you, Billie—I am your little world, your sun and your moon and your stars, but you like me to stroke and pat you. Oh, Billie! I must befirstwith someone. I don’t belong to anyone really, not of my own free will, and I want to so much, so much. I’m not strong enough to stand alone. I don’t want to stand alone.”
She was first with Frank, the only thing that mattered in his life. He had told her so often and often. Perhaps, yes, perhaps she would give herself to him, and make him happy, make herself happy. Stupid Jack had said that illicit relations with a man would never make her happy. But he was an ass, anyway. Why should not Frank make her happy? Why should Circe’s daughter not behappy as, apparently, her mother had been? Perhaps Circe had gone through a similar period of happiness and hesitation before she—— No, she could not honestly follow that line of argument. Her mother had only made a marriage of convenience, her father had never counted at all, and she knew instinctively, without any harsh judgment, that Circe had an entirely different nature from her own. There were no subtle shades of feeling in her mother, no understanding of intellectual and emotional heights. Claudia had discovered that as a child. Her mother never shared her enthusiasm for books or pictures, she would have looked with but languid interest that morning at the blue mist of the hyacinths stretching far away under the trees. Claudia had felt like shouting as she and Pat turned the corner and saw the beautiful carpet at their feet, but her mother would only have feared that she might be getting her feet damp on the grass. No, the example of Circe taught her nothing. They were mother and daughter, but they were different.
She went to the window and leaned out, looking up at the darkly blue sky and the steady stars, which watched in remote peacefulness over the traffic of Knightsbridge.
Her only justification now or at any time would be the strength of her love. She had her heritage of passion, but something that had not restrained her mother would always restrain her. Did she love Frank? He loved her, she never doubted that, but did she love him? She asked herself if the secrecy of such relationship would not harass her? Would the stolen meetings be the sweeter for the necessary secrecy, or would there not be a certain degradation in the whispered rendezvous? She could hear herself as a girl calling it, with fine youthful dogmatism, a “hole-and-corner” business. Did love save it from that reproach?
At the back of her Billie barked sharply, and withdrawing her head from the window, Claudia heard twovoices raised in unusual excitement outside her door. She went across to it and threw it open.
She just caught the end of a sentence spoken by her husband in his most dictatorial, angry tones. “ ... you can take a month’s notice. I refuse to overlook the matter. I have enough affairs on my hands without keeping a man I cannot rely on. You can go.”
The man, who was an excellent valet, answered with considerable conviction. “You did not tell me, sir. I know you did not. You may have thought you did, but you did not say anything about the suit-case.”
The man went towards the servants’ quarters, and Gilbert, turning, saw her in the doorway. His face was very unbeautiful in its anger. He looked almost apoplectic, his skin was so red and mottled. He had grown lately to look many years older than his age.
“Gilbert, did I hear you giving Marsh notice to go? He is such an excellent servant. What has he done?”
He came inside and sat down on the couch, breathing rather heavily. For a moment he seemed unable to answer.
“Forgot some instructions I gave him this morning, and then had the impertinence to say I never gave them. How”—irritably—“could I forget such an important thing?”
He was pulling himself together by an effort, but his mouth twitched.
“Was it very important?”
“Yes. I told him to send my dress-suit to my chambers. I was going down to a political dinner at Wynnstay”—Wynnstay was his father’s home—“I thought the bag was there, and when I went to catch the train—Imbecile! Most important. I haven’t told you. I expect to stand for Parliament shortly. Father finds the responsibility too much, and, of course, the seat is safe.”
“But, Gilbert,” expostulated Claudia, contrary to herlatter custom of listening, if not in agreement, in non-disagreement, “you have too much to do already. Don’t you think——”
“Oh, don’t rub it in, for heaven’s sake.... Besides, I’ve promised Neeburg to take a holiday.... I’m certain I told Marsh about packing my clothes.”
“He is usually very reliable.”
“Oh, well! have it as you like. Butanyman with as many things to remember as I have, would be liable to forget—trifles. Doctors are so ridiculously bigoted.” His face was slowly becoming an unhealthy white, the redness was fading away. He looked at her obviously asking her to agree with him. Neeburghadscared him a little ... but Neeburg didn’t understand the strain of a barrister’s work. Claudia was only a woman and, of course, she wouldn’t understand either.... No good trying to explain. A long sea voyage ... six months’ rest ... ridiculous! A fortnight at Le Touquet would set him up ... a man knew his own constitution best. But perhaps it was just as well he had been prevented from going to Wynnstay that evening.... He was a little tired. He would have an early dinner and go to bed by ten.
He became aware that she was regarding him in a critical, impersonal way, which, though he was relieved she had ceased to expect wildly enthusiastic responses to her exalté moods, somehow annoyed him. No woman, especially a wife, had any right to look so at a man.
“Why are you staring at me?” he asked, with a frown.
“I was wondering why Nature took the trouble to bring us together. I have been in the country all day, and there she seemed so gentle, so beneficent, so sympathetic. You felt like throwing yourself down among the daisies on the grass and saying, ‘Take me, everything you do must be good and wise.’ And in reality Nature is so cruel, so horribly cruel. Passion is Nature’s greatestforce after self-preservation, and I wonder how many thousands of lives it ruins. I never realized until recently that ‘Love is cruel as the grave’ meant that.”
“Are you blaming me for our marriage? I never persuaded you into it against your will.”
“No. Nature persuaded me into it, and Nature made these soft, delicate primroses.” She touched the flowers at her breast. “Surely it seems strange that so much gentle beauty and sordid cruelty should go hand-in-hand?”
He raised his thick, heavy eyebrows. He was feeling better now. Perhaps, after all, he would go down to the club on the chance of seeing Mathews about that case on Tuesday.
“Nature has only one object in bringing men and women together,” he said slowly. Her words had reminded him of his father’s and mother’s grievance and hints. His father had mentioned it when he suggested giving up his seat in Parliament to him, and made it the text for a diatribe against the modern woman and her absent sense of duty. After all, his father was right. A man ought to have a son. “You know, Claudia, while we are speaking on this matter, my father and mother are very disappointed that——”
“Don’t!” she said sharply, the girlish, wistful look gone from her face. “How can you talk about that—now. Have you no sense of delicacy—of—of decency——?” She drew in her breath with a jerk. “Don’t ever speak again, please, of your parents’ disappointment. I know you have always considered them before me, but this is the limit.... You don’t love me—you never did love me. I will not bear children to a man who does not love me.”
He shrugged his shoulders and rose from the sofa. She had turned away from him, only her back was visible. The dress was cut in a low, V-shaped opening,and there were two pretty dimples that invited a man’s kisses. But her husband did not notice them, he had never noticed them, and he saw only the back of a neurotic, unreasonable woman. He was going towards the door when she stopped him.
“Gilbert, do you remember that afternoon at Wargrave, when I asked you if I came first.... I asked if you loved me a great deal.... Why did you lie to me? Your work, your ambition, have always come first, and after the first few months of our marriage, I have meant nothing to you.” She spoke quite calmly, with none of the heat and excitement she had shown on the night she had come back from the Rivingtons. “Gilbert, please answer a straight question. Why did you tell me that lie?”
“It wasn’t a lie. I meant it. Only you women are so exacting and——”
She slowly inclined her head.
“I see. Perhaps you weren’t aware at the time it was a lie. You never have analysed your emotions. You meant it—at the moment. Passion had got both of us by the throat. I loved you, but although I didn’t realize it, passion blinded my eyes to your real character and how unsuitable we were to one another. And passion urged you on to marry me, when you ought to have married a nice, tame woman who would have been content with occasional crumbs. Oh! why does Nature bring the wrong people together! Why! Why! Gilbert, I wish we had been lovers instead of husband and wife, then—then the mistake would not have been irrevocable.”
He was genuinely shocked. “Claudia, I would rather not listen to such things. Really, the licence women allow themselves nowadays—— I can’t think how such ideas enter your head.”
She smiled, with a touch of amusement as well as a tinge of sadness, as she answered him:
“All sorts of unorthodox ideas get into women’s heads nowadays. I know you can’t understand, and that’s the trouble. You were made one way and I another, and then there came a whirlwind and threw us together.” She held out her hand. “Don’t let’s quarrel any more. I begin to see things more clearly.... I was cheated by Nature, not by you. But ... certain things you were—going to speak about, are quite impossible. Those days are gone for ever. We must each in our own way make the best of the remainder of our life.... Have you decided to go to Le Touquet at once?”
He was puzzled by her new attitude and the calmness of the frank brown eyes that confronted him.
“Yes, I promised Fritz to get away as soon as possible. I’ve asked Colin to go over with me. I knew you wouldn’t want to leave town just now, at the beginning of the season.” He had not considered the possibility of her going with him, but something in her new, almost friendly, attitude, made him add the last sentence.
“I will come if you wish it, Gilbert.”
He hesitated. She played golf much better than he. So did Colin, but that was different. The primitive man was strong in Gilbert.
“I think it’s hardly worth while disarranging your plans. You’ve got heaps of engagements, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but——”
“If Colin can come, we’ll just take it quietly; golf all day and go to bed early. A fortnight of that will soon pick me up. Later on in the summer we’ll go for a holiday together.”
“Very well.”
He went towards the door again, and Claudia picked up a light wrap for her shoulders. She would be rather late for Frank’s dinner-party.
At the door he fidgeted with the handle and finally turned to her. “Perhaps I did forget to tell Marsh,Claudia. Smooth him over, will you? You’re good at that kind of thing. Tell him that—er—I’ve come to the conclusion that—he didn’t hear me.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him why he did not tell Marsh himself. Then she remembered her newborn resolution, and let him go his own road.
“I’ll see what I can do in the morning. Good-night, Gilbert.”
The small dining-room of Frank’s studio-flat had that cosy, friendly air that only a small room can achieve. That there was little more space than was occupied by the table laid for four only seemed to increase the pleasantness of the apartment, which was lit by four red candles in old pewter candlesticks on the table. Their red shades confined the circle of light to the white tablecloth, and allowed the rest of the room to appear pleasantly soft and vague. An enormous bowl of red roses filled the centre of the table, and some of their broken petals were scattered over the cloth, while an Eastern scarf of some filmy material shading from orange to blood-red was loosely disposed with an air of artistic negligence around the centre bowl.
Frank Hamilton looked down at his handiwork and found it good. But still he fidgeted with the back of a chair as he surveyed it, and his eyes were bright with some mental or physical excitement. He was not often restless, but to-night his nerves were evidently on edge. His teeth gnawed his lower lip and his eyes constantly sought the clock.
Then, after giving a last touch to the table, he pulled out a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked acorner cupboard where he kept liqueurs and wines. He never forgot to lock that cupboard, no matter how late his company left or how high his visions had soared, for he had a great mistrust of servants. His usual manner was half dreamy, rather abstracted, as though the sordid details of everyday life passed him by, but the impression that he gave was misleading. Often his mind was most practical when his eyes seemed only to hold vague dreams and beautiful, unworldly ideals, and if anyone thought to drive an easy bargain at such a time he found himself mistaken. As a child at school Frank had always managed to elude just punishment by that same manner of aloofness from desks and copybooks, and from quite early manhood women had taught him to realize how that air, combined with obvious good looks and the reputation for “temperament,” could be made valuable. The way in which his eyes would light up with sudden enthusiasm, the frank expressions of admiration which came easily to his lips, the appeal which he made by a seemingly exclusive devotion to the woman of the moment, had always made him a favourite with the fair sex, who contrasted him with the more phlegmatic males of their acquaintance to his great advantage, for “it’s the high-falutin stuff the women bite on.”
Men did not like Frank Hamilton, and he was seldom seen in their company. A few artists dropped in on him occasionally to talk “shop,” but they were never heard to speak of him with any enthusiasm. Indeed, among them he had the reputation for being “close,” and that happy-go-lucky, jovial crowd that lends and borrows with equal ease found this unforgivable. He was not willing to “part,” nor did he try to put commissions in their way, and lately, as de Bleriot had been heard to say at the Chelsea Arts Club, “Hamilton’s getting altogether too big for his boots.”
After Frank had put the liqueurs on the sideboard,he noticed that the card which had been attached to the bunch of roses he had just arranged had fallen to the ground. He picked it up and re-read it with a little smile of amusement.