“Icouldn’t have done it! I should have let you go on. I shouldn’t have written—I shouldn’t have spoken! And I have been alone with him. I have let him—I have let him—”
“Beryl!”
“No, no! It isn’t too late! Don’t be afraid!”
“Thank God!” said Lady Sellingworth.
She had no feeling of self-pity now. All her compassion for herself was obscured for the moment in compassion for the girl. The years at last were helping her, those years which so often had brought her misery.
“But what am I to do? I’m afraid of him. Oh, do help me.”
“Hush, Beryl! What can he do? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“But I’ve nobody. I’m all alone. Fanny is no use. And he means—he won’t give it up. I know he won’t give it up. I was always afraid in a way. I always had suspicions, but I trampled them down. Dick Garstin told me, but I would not listen. Dick Garstin showed me what he was.”
“How could he?”
“He did. It’s there in the studio—that horrible picture, the real man, the man I couldn’t see. But I must always have known what he was. Something in me must always have known!”
She seemed to make a violent effort to recover her self-control. She dropped her hands, took out a handkerchief and wiped the tears from her eyes. Then she went to the sofa where her muff was lying, drew out the letter that was in it, went over to the fireplace and threw the letter into the flames.
“Adela,” she said, “I’ve been a beast to you. You know—my last visit to you. You’re brave. I suppose I always felt there was something fine in you, but I didn’t know how fine you could be. All I can do in return is this—never to tell. It isn’t much, is it?”
“It’s quite enough, Beryl.”
“There isn’t anything else I can do, is there?”
Her eyes were asking a question. Lady Sellingworth met them calmly, earnestly. She knew what the girl was thinking at that moment. She was thinking of Alick Craven.
“No, there isn’t anything else.”
“Are you quite sure, Adela? I owe you a great deal. I may forget it. One never knows. And I suppose I’m horribly selfish. But if I make you a promise now I’ll keep it. If you want me to promise anything, tell me now.”
“But I don’t want anything from you,” said Lady Sellingworth.
She said it very quietly, without emotion. There was even a coldness in her voice.
The great effort she had just made seemed to have changed her. By making it she felt as if, unwittingly, she had built up an insurmountable barrier between herself and youth. She had not known, perhaps, what she was doing, but now, suddenly, she knew.
I grow too old a comrade, let us part. Pass thou away!
The words ran in her mind. How often she had thought of them! How often she had struggled with that wild heart which God had given her, which in a way she clung to desperately, and yet which, as she had long known, she ought to give up. She was too old a comrade for that wild heart, and now surely she was saying farewell to it—this time a final farewell. But she had felt, had really felt as if in her very entrails, for a moment the appeal of youth. And she could never forget that, and, having responded, she knew that she could never struggle against youth again.
Beryl had conquered her without knowing it.
The winter night was dark when Miss Van Tuyn stood in the hall of Lady Sellingworth’s house waiting for the footman to find a taxicab for her. A big fire was burning on the hearth; the old-fashioned hooded chair stood beside it; and presently, as no taxicab came, she went to the chair and sat down in it. She felt very tired. Her whole body seemed to have been weakened by what she had just been through. But her mind was charged with intense vitality. The thoughts galloped through it, and they were dark as the night. The cold air of winter stole in through the doorway of the hall. She felt it and shivered as she lay back in the great chair which, with its walls and roof, was like a hiding-place; and for the first time in her life she longed to hide herself. She had never before known acute fear—fear that was based on ascertained facts. But she knew it now.
The young footman stood on the doorstep bareheaded, looking this way and that into the blackness, and she sat waiting. In her independence she had never before known what it was to feel abandoned to loneliness. She had always enjoyed her freedom. Now she felt a great longing to cling to someone, to be protected, to lean on somebody who was much stronger than herself, and who would defend her against any attack. At that moment she envied Lady Sellingworth safe above stairs in this silent and beautiful house, which was like a stronghold. She even envied, or thought she did, Lady Sellingworth for her years. In old age there was surely a security that youth could never have. For the riot of life was over and the greatest dangers were past.
She longed to stay with Adela that night. She thought of her as security. But she dared not expect anything more from Adela. She had already received a gift which she had surely not deserved, a gift which few women, if indeed any other woman, would have given her.
She looked towards the open door and saw the footman’s flat back, and narrow head covered with carefully plastered hair. He was calling now with both hands to his mouth: “Taxi! Taxi!”
But there came no sound of wheels in the night, and she put her hands on the sides of the chair and got up.
“Can’t you find a cab?”
“No, ma’am. I’ve very sorry, but there doesn’t seem to be one about. Shall I go to the nearest cab rank?”
Miss Van Tuyn hesitated. Then she determined to fight her fear.
“It isn’t raining, is it?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then I’ll walk. It’s not far. I shall pick up a cab on the way probably.”
The young man looked relieved and stood aside to let her go out. He watched her as she walked down the square towards the block of flats which towered up where the pavement turned at right angles. The light from the hall shone out and made a patch of yellow about his feet. He noticed presently that the girl he was watching turned her head and looked back, almost as if she were hesitating. Then she walked on resolutely, and he stepped in and shut the door.
“Wonder if she’s afraid of going like that all by herself!” he thought. “I only wish she was my class. I wouldn’t mind seeing her home.”
Just before she was out of sight of Lady Sellingworth’s house Miss Van Tuyn looked back again. The light was gone. She knew that the door was shut and she shivered. She felt shut out. What was she going to do? She was going back to Claridge’s of course. But—after that? She longed to take counsel with someone, with someone who was strong and clear brained, and who really cared for her. But who did care for her? Perhaps for the first time in her life she was the victim of sentimentality, of what she would have thought of certainly as sentimentality in another. A sort of yearning for affection came to her. A wave of self-pity swept over her. Her independence of spirit was in abeyance or dead. Arabian, it seemed, had struck her down to the ground. She felt humiliated, terrified, and strangely, horribly young, like a child almost who had been cruelly treated. She thought of her dead father. If he had been alive and near could she have gone to him? No; for years he had not cared very much about her. He had been kind, had given her plenty of money, but he had been immersed in pleasures and had always been in the hands of some woman or other. He had not really loved her. No one, she thought with desperation, had ever really loved her. She did not ask herself whether that was her fault, whether she had ever given to anyone what she wanted so terribly now, whether she had any right to expect generosity of feeling when she herself was niggardly. She was stricken in her vanity and, because of that, she had come down to the dust.
It was frightful to her to think, to be obliged to think, that Arabian all this time had looked upon her as a prey, had marked her down as a prey. She understood everything now, his fixed gaze at her in the Cafe Royal when she had seen him for the first time, his coming to Garstin’s studio, his subtle acting through the early days of their acquaintance. She understood his careful self-repression, his reticence, his evident reluctance to be painted, overcome no doubt by two desires—the desire to become intimate with her, and the desire to possess eventually a piece of work that would be worth a great deal of money. She understood the determination not to allow his portrait to be exhibited. She understood the look in his face when she had told him of her father’s sudden death, the change in his demeanour to her since he had known the fact, the desire to hurry things on, to sweep her off her feet. She understood—ah, how she understood!—why he had not wished Adela to join them in the restaurant! She remembered a hundred things about him now, all mixed up together, in no coherent order, little things at which she had wondered but which she wondered at no longer; his distaste for Garstin’s portraits because they were of people belonging to the underworld, his understanding of them, his calm contemplation of the victims of vice, his lack of all pity for them, his shrewd verdict on the judge which had so delighted Garstin. And how he had waited for her, how he had known how to wait! It was frightful—that deliberation of his! Garstin had been right about him. Garstin’s instinct for people had not betrayed him. Although later Arabian’s craft had puzzled even him he had summed up Arabian at a first glance. Garstin was diabolically clever. If only he were less hard, less brutally cynical, she might perhaps go to him now. For he had in his peculiar way warned her against Arabian. She flushed in the dark as she thought of Garstin’s probable comments on her situation if he knew of it! And yet Garstin had told her that Arabian was in love with her. Was that possible? Her vanity faintly stirred like something, albeit feebly, reviving. Arabian had marked her down as a prey. She had no doubt about that. Her brain refused to doubt it. But perhaps, mingled with his hideous cupidity of the accomplished adventurer, the professional thief, there was something else, the lust, or even the sensual love, of the primitive man. Perhaps—she realized the possibility—he believed he had found in her the great opportunity of his life, the unique chance of combining the satisfaction of his predatory instincts with the satisfaction of his intimate personal desires, those desires which he shared with the men who lived far from the underworld.
If that were so—and suddenly she felt that it was so, that she had hit upon the truth—then she was surely in great danger. For Arabian was not the man to let an unique opportunity slip through his fingers without putting up a tremendous fight.
She must find someone to help her against this man. Again she thought of Garstin. But he had his own battle to fight, the battle about the portrait. Then she thought of Craven. Obscurely long ago—it seemed at least long ago—she had felt that she might some day need Craven in her life. How strange that was! What mysterious instinct had warned her then? But now Craven was hostile to her. How could she go to him? And then there flashed upon her the thought:
“But I can’t go to anybody! I have promised Adela.”
That thought struck her like a blow, struck her so hard that she stood still on the pavement. And she realized immediately that either she must do without any help at all, or that, in spite of all that had happened, she must ask Adela to help her. For she could never break her promise to Adela. She knew that. She knew that she would rather go under than betray Adela’s confidence. Adela had done a fine thing, something that she, Beryl, had not believed it was in any woman to do. She could not have done it, but on the other hand she could not be vile. It was not in her to be vile.
She heard a step in the darkness and realized what she was doing. Instantly she hurried on, almost running. She must gain shelter, must be in the midst of light, must be between four walls, must speak to someone who knew her, and who would not do her harm. Claridge’s—old Fanny! A few minutes later she entered the hotel almost breathless.
On the following afternoon Craven called on Lady Sellingworth about five o’clock and was told by the new footman in a rather determined manner that she was “not at home.”
“I hope her ladyship is quite well?” he said.
“I believe so, sir,” replied the man. “Her ladyship has been out driving to-day.”
“Please give her that card. Wait one moment.”
He pencilled on the card, “I hope you are better,—A.C.,” gave it to the man, and walked away, feeling sure that Lady Sellingworth was in the house but did not choose to see him.
In the evening he received the following note from her:
18A, BERKELEY SQUARE,
Thursday.
DEAR MR. CRAVEN,—How kind of you to call and to write that little message. I am sorry I could not see you. I’m not at all ill, and have been out driving. But, between you and me—for I hate to make a fuss about trifling matters of health—I feel rather played out. Perhaps it’s partly old age! You know nothing about that. Any variation in my quiet life seems to act as a disturbing influence. And the restaurant the other night really was terribly hot. I mustn’t go there again, though it is great fun. I suppose you didn’t see Beryl? She has been to see me, but said nothing about it. Be nice to her. I don’t think she has many real friends in London.—Yours very sincerely,
ADELA SELLINGWORTH.
“What is it? What has happened?” Craven thought, as he put down the letter.
He felt that some drama had been played out, or partially played out, within the last days which he did not understand, which he was not allowed to understand. Lady Sellingworth chose to keep him in the dark. Well, she had the right to do that. As he thought over things he realized that the heat in the restaurant could certainly not have been the sole reason of her strange conduct on the night when they had dined together. Something had upset her mentally. A physical reason only could not account for her behaviour. And again he thought of Arabian.
Instinctively he hated the man. Who was he? Where did he come from? Craven could not place him. Beyond feeling sure that he was a “wrong ‘un” Craven had no very definite opinion about him. He was well dressed, good looking—too good looking—and no doubt knew how to behave. He might even possibly be a gentleman of sorts, come to England from some exotic land where the breed of gentleman was quite different from that which prevailed in England. But he was surely a beast. Craven detested his good looks, loathed his large and lustrous brown eyes. He was the sort of beast who did nothing but make up to women. Something inherently clean in Craven rejected the fellow, wished to drive him into outer darkness.
Could Lady Sellingworth know such a man?
That seemed quite impossible. Nevertheless, certain things persistently suggested to Craven that at least she had some knowledge of Arabian which she was deliberately concealing from him. The most salient of these things was her reiterated attempt to push him into the company of Beryl Van Tuyn. It was impossible not to think that Lady Sellingworth wished him to interfere between Beryl Van Tuyn and Arabian. On the night of the dinner in Soho she had attempted to persuade him to go back to the restaurant and to see Beryl home. And now here in this letter she returned to the matter.
“Be nice to her. I don’t think she has many real friends in London.”
“Go to see Beryl; don’t come to see me.”
Between the lines of Lady Sellingworth’s letter Craven read those words and wondered at the ways of women. But he did not mean to obey the unwritten command. And he felt angry with Lady Sellingworth for giving it by implication. She might have what she considered a good reason for her extraordinary behaviour. But as she did not allow him to understand it, as she chose to keep him entirely in the dark, he would be passive. It was not his business to run after Beryl Van Tuyn, to interfere almost forcibly between her and another man, even if that man were a scoundrel. Miss Van Tuyn was a free agent. She had the right to choose her own friends, her own lovers. Once he had decided that he would not give up his intimacy with her in favour of another man without a struggle, the sort of polite, and perhaps subtle, struggle which is suitable to the twentieth century, when man must only be barbarous in battle. But since the encounter in Glebe Place he had changed his mind. Disgust had seized him that day. What could he think but that Beryl Van Tuyn had deliberately induced him to come to Glebe Place, in order that he might see not only her absolute indifference to him but also her intimacy with Arabian? Her reason for such a crude exposure of her lightness of conduct escaped Craven. He could not conceive what she was up to, unless her design was to arouse in him violent jealousy. He did feel jealous, but he was certainly not going to show it. Besides, the delicacy that was natural in him was disquieted by what he thought of as the coarseness of her behaviour.
As once more he looked at Lady Sellingworth’s letter he was struck by something final in the wording of it. There was nothing explicit in it. On the contrary, that seemed to be carefully avoided. But the allusions to old age, to disturbing influences, the decision not to go again to theBella Napoli—these seemed to hint an intention to return to a former state of being, to abandon a new path of life. And he remembered a conversation with Francis Braybrooke at the club, the interest it had roused in him. Some slumbering feeling for romance had been stirred in him, he now thought, by that conversation, by the information he had received about the distinguished recluse who had lived a great life and then suddenly plunged into old age and complete retirement.
Now he seemed to hear a door shutting, and he was outside it. She had allowed him to enter her life for a short time, to enter it almost intimately. But she was surely repenting of that intimacy. He did not know why. Did he ever know why a woman did this or that? There was no suggestion in the letter that he should ever call again, no hint of a desire to see him. She was only sorry, politely sorry, that she had not been able to see him that day. But no reason was given for the inability. She had not considered it necessary to give him a reason. When she had gone abroad without letting him know he had said to himself that his brief friendship with her had come to an end. He felt that more acutely now. For she had come back from abroad. She was close to him in London. She had tried him again. Evidently she must have found him wanting. For once more she was giving him up. Perhaps he was too young. Perhaps he bored her. He did not know.
“I don’t suppose I shall ever know.”
To that conclusion he came at last. And the sense of finality grew in him, cold and inexorable. She was a mystery to him. He did not love her. He had never thought of her as she had thought of him. He had never known or suspected what her feelings for him had been. But he felt that something which might have meant a good deal, even perhaps a great deal, to him was being withdrawn from his life. And this withdrawal hurt him and saddened him.
He locked up her letter in his dispatch box. It would be a souvenir of a friendship which had seemed to promise much and which had ended abruptly in mystery. He did not answer it. Perhaps, probably, he would have done so but for the last two sentences in it.
After Lady Sellingworth had written and sent her note to Craven she felt that she was facing a new phase of life, and she thought of it as the last phase. Her sacrifice of self was surely complete at last. She had exposed her nature naked to Beryl Van Tuyn. She had given up her friendship with Alick Craven. There was nothing more for her to do. The call of youth had wrung from her a response which created loneliness around her. And now she had to find within herself the resolution to face this loneliness bravely.
When she wrote to Craven she had meant him to understand something of what he had understood. Yet she did not desire to hurt him. She would not have hurt him for the world. Secretly her heart yearned over him. But she could never let him know that. He might be puzzled by her letter. He might even resent it. But he would soon forget any feeling roused by it. And he would no doubt soon forget her, the old woman who had been kind to him for a time, who had even been almost Bohemian with him in a very mild way, and who had then tacitly given him up. Perhaps she would see him again. Probably she would. She had no intentions of permanently closing her door against him. But she would not encourage him to come. She would never dine out with him again. If he came he must come as an ordinary caller at the ordinary caller’s hour.
Seymour Portman called on her in the late afternoon of the day when she wrote to Craven. Just before his arrival she was feeling peculiarly blank and almost confusedly dull. She had gone through so much recently, had lived at such high tension, had suffered such intense nervous excitement, in the restaurant of theBella Napoliand afterwards, that both body and mind refused to function quite normally. Long ago she had stayed at St. Moritz in the depth of the winter, and had got up each morning to greet the fierce blue sky, the blazing sun, the white glare of the enveloping snows with a strange feeling of light, yet depressed, detachment. She began to have a similar feeling now. Far down she was horribly sad. But her surface seemed to say, “Nothing matters, because I am in an abnormal condition, and while I remain in this condition nothing can really matter to me.” Surface and depths were in contradiction, yet she was not even fully aware of that. A numbness held her, and yet she was nervous.
She heard the drawing-room door open and Murgatroyd’s voice make the familiar announcement; she saw Seymour’s upright, soldierly figure come into the room; she smiled a greeting to her old friend; and the sound of Murgatroyd’s voice, the sight of Seymour coming towards her, her own response to sound and sight, did not conquer the sensation of numbness.
“Yes, he is here. He does not forget me. He loves me and will always love me. But what does it matter?”
A voice seemed to be saying that within her. Recently she had suffered acutely; she had made a great effort; she had conquered herself and been conquered by another. And it had all been just too much for her. She was, she thought, like one who had fought desperately lying in deadly silence and calm on the deserted battlefield, utterly passive because utterly tired out.
But Seymour did not know that. He knew nothing of all that had happened, and Beryl knew everything. And she thought of a picture called “Love locked out.” It was hardly fair that Seymour should know so little. And while he was quietly talking to her, telling her little bits of news which he thought would interest her, letting her in by proxy as it were to the life of the great world which she had abandoned but in which he still played a part, she was thinking, “If Seymour knew what I have done! If I told him, what would he think, what would he say?” He would be pleased, no doubt. But would he be surprised? And while she listened and talked she began to wonder, but always without intensity, about that. Seymour would think she had done the inevitable thing, what any thoroughbred was bound to do. And yet—would he be surprised nevertheless that she had been able to do it? She began presently to feel a slight tingle of curiosity about that. Had she, perhaps, to a certain extent justified Seymour’s fidelity? He had a splendid character. She certainly had not. She had done countless things that Seymour must have hated, and secretly condemned. And yet he had somehow been able to go on loving her. Was that because he had always instinctively known that somewhere within her there was a traditional virtue which marched with his, that there was a voice which spoke his language?
“I suppose, in spite of all, in a way we are akin,” she thought.
And she began to wish vaguely that he knew it, that he knew what had happened between her and Beryl. As she looked at his “cauliflower,” bent towards her while he talked, at his strong soldier’s face, at his faithful eyes, the eyes of the “old dog,” she wished that it were possible to let Seymour know a little bit of the best of her. Not that she was proud of what she had done. She was too much akin to Seymour to be proud of such a thing, But Seymour would be pleased with her. And it would be pleasant to give him pleasure. It would be like giving him a small, a very small, reward for his long faithfulness, for his very beautiful and touching loyalty.
“What is it, Adela?” he said.
And a keen, searching look had come into his eyes.
She smiled vaguely, meeting his gaze. She still felt curiously detached, although she was able to think quite connectedly.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I feel you are not as usual to-day.”
“In what way?”
“Something has happened. I don’t, of course, wish to know what it is. But it has changed you, my dear.”
“In what way?” she said again.
His reply startled her, set her free from her feeling of numbness, of light detachment, from what she called to herself her “St. Moritz feeling.”
“I feel as if you were coming into possession of your true self at last,” he said very gravely. “But as if perhaps you scarcely knew it yet.”
A slow red crept in her cheeks, which would never know again the touch of the artificial red.
“Dear Seymour! My true self! I wonder what sort of self you think that is?”
“That’s easily told. It is the self I have been loving for so many years. And now—”
He got up, still alert in his movement, out of his chair.
“You are going?”
“Yes. I have to meet ‘Better not’ at the Marlborough to talk over His Majesty’s visit to Manchester.”
“Ah!” she said.
“Better not” was the nickname given at Court to a certain much-valued gentleman about the king.
She did not try to detain Seymour. But when he had gone deep depression overcame her. She was the helpless victim of a tremendous reaction. So long as she had been in activity she had been able to endure. Even the horror of theBella Napoli, complex and cruelly intense as the probing of steel among the nerves of the body, she had been able to live through without obvious flinching. But then there had been something to do, something to deal with, something to get the better of. There had been a necessity for action. And now there was nothing. Her activities were over. Seymour had broken the curious spell which for a short time had bound her, and now she realized everything with unnatural acuteness.
What was the good of coming into possession of her true self? What was the good of anything? Life was activity. Her late close contact with youth, her obligation to do something difficult and, to her, tremendous for youth had taught her that anew, and now she must somehow reconcile herself to extinction. For this was really what lay before her now—extinction while still alive. Better surely to be struggling with horrors than to be merely dying away. She even looked back to the scene with Beryl and thought of it almost with longing. For how she had lived in that scene! At moments during it she had entirely forgotten herself.
Was that perhaps life, the only real life—entire forgetfulness of self? If so, how seldom she had lived! In all her sixty years, in all her so-called “great life,” for how short a time she had lived!
She had just then, even in the midst of her reaction, a feeling of illumination. She was in darkness, but around the darkness, as if enclosing it and her in it, there was light, a light she had never been really aware of till now. Something within her said:
“I see!”
She went up to her bedroom, shut herself in, went to a bookshelf, and took down a Bible which stood on it. She turned its pages till she came to the Sermon on the Mount. Then she began to read. And presently, as she read, a queer thought came to her. “If the ‘old guard’ could see me now!”
It was late when she stopped reading. She shut up the Holy Book, put it back on the shelf, and took down a volume of poems. And after reading the Bible she read the poem of the Wild Heart. And then she read nothing more. But her reading had waked up in her a longing which was not familiar to her except in connexion with what she supposed was the baser part of her, the part which had troubled, had even tortured her so many times in her life. She had often longed to do things for men whom she loved, or fancied she loved. Now she was conscious of a yearning more altruistic. She wished to be purely unselfish, if that were ever possible. And she believed it to be possible. For was not Seymour unselfish? He surely often forgot himself in her. But she had always remembered herself in others.
“What a monstrous egoist I have been all my life!” she thought, with a sense of despair. “Only once have I acted with a purely unselfish motive, and that was with Beryl. Yes, Beryl gave me the one opportunity I took advantage of. And now it is all over. Everything is finished. It is too late to try a new way of living.”
She forgot many little sacrifices she had made in the war, or she did not count them to her credit. For patriotism in war seemed as natural to her as drawing breath. She was thinking of her personal life in connexion with individuals. She had once been unselfish—for Beryl. That was over. Everything was over. And yet Seymour had said that he felt as if at last she were coming into possession of her true self. So he had noticed a difference. It was as if what she had been able to do for Beryl had subtly altered her. But there was nothing more for her to do.
That evening she felt loneliness as she had never felt it before. A sort of mental nausea seized her as she dressed for her solitary dinner. For whom was she changing her gown? For Murgatroyd! How grotesque the unwritten regulations of a life like hers were! Why go down to dinner at all? She had no appetite. Nevertheless, everything was done in due order. Her hair was arranged. Cecile looked at her critically to see that everything was right. For Murgatroyd! Even a jewel was brought to be pinned in to the front of her gown. It was a big ruby surrounded by diamonds, and as it flashed in the light it brought back to her the hideous memory of Arabian.
What would he do now? It was very strange that after ten years she had been able, indeed she had been obliged, to revenge herself upon him, this man whom she had never known, to whom she had never even spoken. And she had never dreamed of revenge. She had let him go with his prey. Probably her jewels had enabled him to live as he wished to live for years. And now she had paid him back! Did Fate work blindly, or was there a terribly subtle and inexorable plan at work through all human life?
“Miladi does not like to wear this ruby?” said Cecile.
“Why do you say that?”
“Milady looks at it so strangely!”
“It reminds me of something. Yes, I will wear it to-night. But what’s the good?”
“Miladi—?”
“No one will see it but myself.”
“Milady should go out more, much more, and receive company here.”
“Perhaps I’ll give a series of dinners,” said Lady Sellingworth with a smile.
And she turned away and went down.
Murgatroyd and a footman were waiting for her. On the dining table was a menu telling her what she had to eat, what her cook had been, and was, busy over in the kitchen. She sat down at the big table, picked up the menu and glanced at it. But she did not see what was written on it. She saw only in imagination the years before her, perhaps five years, perhaps ten, perhaps even more. For her race was a long living one. She might, like some of her forbears, live to be very old. Ten years more of dinners like this one in Berkeley Square! Could that be endured? As she sipped her soup she thought of travelling. She might shut up the house, go over the seas, wander through the world. There were things to be seen. Nature spread her infinite variety for the sons and the daughters of men. She might advertise inThe Timesfor a travelling companion. There would be plenty of answers. Or she might get one of her many acquaintances to come with her, some pleasant woman who would not talk too much, or too little.
Fish!
When, finally, some fruit had been put before her, and Murgatroyd and the footman had left the room, she remained—so she thought of it—like a mummy in the tomb which belonged to her. And presently through the profound silence she heard the hoot of a motor-horn. Someone going somewhere! Someone who had something to do, somewhere to go! Someone from whom all the activities had not passed away for ever!
The motor-horn sounded again nearer. Now she heard the faint sound of wheels. The car was coming down her side of the Square. The buzz of the machine reached her ears now, then the grinding of brakes. The car had stopped somewhere close by, at the next house perhaps.
She heard an electric bell. That was in her own house. Then the car had stopped at her door.
She listened, and immediately heard a step in the hall. Murgatroyd, or the footman, was going to the door. She wondered who the caller could be. Possibly Seymour! But he never came at that hour.
A moment later Murgatroyd appeared in the room.
“Miss Van Tuyn has called, my lady, and begs you to see her.”
“Miss Van Tuyn! Ask her—take her up to the drawing-room, please. I am just finishing. I will come in a minute.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Murgatroyd went out and shut the door behind him.
Then Lady Sellingworth took a peach from a dish in front of her and began to peel it. She had not intended to eat any fruit before Murgatroyd had given her this news. But she felt that she must have a few minutes by herself. Not long ago she had been appalled by the thought of extinction: had yearned for activity, had even desired opportunities for unselfishness. Now, suddenly, she was afraid, and clung to her loneliness. For she felt certain that Beryl had come to ask her to do something in connexion with Arabian. Something must have happened since their interview yesterday, and the girl had come to her to ask her help.
She ate the peach very slowly, scarcely tasting it. At last it was finished, and she got up from the table. She must not keep Beryl waiting any longer. She must go upstairs. But she went reluctantly, almost in fear, wondering, dreading what was coming upon her.
When she opened the drawing-room door she saw Beryl standing by the fire.
“Adela!”
Beryl came forward hurriedly with a nervous manner Lady Sellingworth had never noticed in her before. Her face was very pale. There were dark rings under her eyes. She looked apprehensive, distracted even.
“Do forgive me for bursting in on you like this at such an hour!”
“Of course!”
She took Beryl’s hand. It was hot, and clasped hers with a closeness that was almost violent.
“What is it? Is anything the matter?”
“I want your advice. I don’t—I don’t quite know what to do. You see, there’s nobody but you I can come to. I know I have no right—I have no claim upon you. You have been so good to me already. No other woman would have done what you have done. But you see, I promised never to—I can’t speak to anyone else. I might have gone to Dick Garstin perhaps. . . . I don’t know! But as it is I can’t speak to a soul but you.”
“Is it something about that man?”
“Yes. I’m afraid of him.”
“Why?”
“I’m sure he doesn’t mean to—I’m sure he won’t give me up easily. I know he won’t!”
“Sit down, Beryl.”
“Yes—may I?”
“Have you seen him?”
“Oh, no—no!”
“Has he written?”
“Yes. And he has called to-day. Last night directly I got back to the hotel I gave orders at the bureau that if he called they were to say ‘not at home.’”
“Well then—”
“But he got in!”
“How could he?”
“When they said I was out he asked for Fanny—Fanny Cronin, my companion. He sent up his card to her, and as I hadn’t spoken to her—you know I promised not to say anything—she told them to let him come up. She likes him!”
“And were you in the hotel?”
“No, thank God I was really out. But I came back while he was still there.”
“Then—”
“No, I didn’t see him, as I told you. When I was just going up in the lift, something—it was almost like second sight, I think—prompted me to go to the bureau and ask if anyone was in our rooms. And they told mehewas with Fanny, had been with her for over an hour.”
“What did you do?”
“I went out at once. I called on one or two people, I stayed out till nearly half-past seven. I walked about in the dark. I was afraid to go near the hotel. It was horrible. Finally I thought he must have gone and I ventured to go back. I hurried through the hall. The lift was there. I went into it at once. I didn’t look round. I was afraid he might have come down and be waiting about for me. When I got to our apartment I went straight to my bedroom and rang for my maid. She said he was gone. Then I went to Fanny. He had been having tea with her and had stayed two hours. He had—she’s very foolish, poor old thing!—he had completely fascinated her.”
Suddenly she blushed violently.
“I have no right to say that about Fanny. But I mean he had laid himself out to—”
“I quite understand,” said Lady Sellingworth, with a sort of awkward dryness which she could not evade though she hated herself for it.
It was hideous, she felt, being mixed up with this old Miss Cronin and Beryl Van Tuyn in a sort of horrible sisterhood of victims of this vile man’s fascination. Her flesh crept at the indignity of it, and all her patrician pride revolted at being remembered among his probably innumerable conquests. At that moment she felt punished for having so often in her life betrayed the best part of her nature.
“I quite understand, Beryl. You need not explain.”
“No.”
There was an unpleasant silence during which neither woman looked at the other. Then Lady Sellingworth said:
“But you haven’t told me everything. And if I am to—if anything is to be done, can be done, I suppose you had better tell me everything.”
“Yes. I want to. I must. Mr.—he told Fanny that I was—that I had promised to marry him.”
“Ah!”
“He told her that I had been to his flat on the very day that I had heard of my father’s death and since. He promised Fanny that—that when we were married she should have a home with us. Isn’t that horrible? Fanny has been afraid of my marrying because, you see, she depends in a way on me. She doesn’t want to leave me. She’s got accustomed—”
“Yes—yes.”
“He told her that people knew about my visits to him. Mrs. Birchington lives in the flat opposite his, and she knows. He contrived that she should know. I realize that now.”
“A man like that lays his plans carefully.”
“Yes. Oh—how humiliating it all is! Fanny was enthusiastic about him.”
“What did you say?”
“I was very careful. Because I promised you! But I know she thinks—she must think I am in love with him. But that doesn’t matter. Only it makes things difficult. But it isn’t that which brought me here. I’m afraid of him.”
“Have you ever written to him?”
“No—never!”
“But you say he has written to you.”
“Yes. When he left Fanny he wrote a letter in the hotel and had it sent up to my room. Fanny gave it me just now. I’ve got it here.”
She drew a letter out of a little bag she had brought with her.
“I—I can’t show it—”
“Oh—please—I don’t want to see it!” said Lady Sellingworth, with an irrepressible shrinking of disgust.
“No, of course not. Adela, please don’t think I imagined you did! But I must tell you—I know you hate all this. You must hate it. Oh, do forgive me for coming here! I know I oughtn’t to. But I’m afraid—I’m afraid of him!”
“Why are you so afraid? What can he do?”
“A man like that might do anything!”
“Are you sure? I think such a man is probably a coward at heart.”
But Miss Van Tuyn shook her head.
“He’s got nerves of steel. I am sure of it. Besides—”
She paused, and a strange conscious look came into her face—a look which Lady Sellingworth did not understand.
“Yes?” she said at last, as Beryl did not speak.
“Adela, I know you will not believe me. I know—you spoke once of my being very vain, but—but there are things a girl does know about a man, really there are! They may seem ridiculous, crazy to others, but—”
“What is it, Beryl?”
“I believe besides wanting my money he wantsme. That’s why I’m afraid. If it weren’t for that I—perhaps I shouldn’t have come to-night. Can you believe it?”
Lady Sellingworth looked at the girl with eyes which in spite of herself were hard. She knew they were hard, but she could not help it. Then she said:
“Yes, I can believe it.”
“And that he may—he may persist in spite of all. He may refuse to give it up.”
“Haven’t you got a will?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you use it?”
“Yes. But I’m afraid of him. I believe I’ve always been afraid of him. No one else has ever been able to make me feel as I do about him. Once I read an article in a paper. It was about a horrible play—a woman who was drawn to a man irresistibly in spite of herself, to a hateful man, a murderer. And she went; she had to go. I remember I thought ofhimthen. It was a fascination of fear, Adela. There are such things.”
“Do you mean to say that after what I have told you—”
“I want someone to get him away, to drive him away from me so that I shall never see him, so that he will never come near me again! I might go to Paris. But it would be no use. He would follow me there. I might go to America. But that would be just the same. He says so in this letter.”
She held up the letter in her hand.
“Does he threaten you?”
“No—not exactly! No, he doesn’t! It’s worse than that. If he did I think I might find the courage. He’s subtle, Adela. He’s horribly subtle! Besides, he doesn’t know—he can’t know that you have told me what he is.”
“He might guess it. He probably guessed it. He recognized me in the restaurant.”
“Yes. He didn’t want you to come to our table. But he never spoke of you afterwards. He didn’t say a word, or show the slightest sign. But in this letter I feel that he suspects—that he is afraid something may happen through you, and that—”
“Perhaps he knows you came to see me last night.”
“How could he?”
“It wouldn’t be difficult for a man of that type.”
“I walked home alone, and nobody—”
“That doesn’t prove anything. He is subtle, as you say.”
“I am sure from this letter that he guesses something has happened, that I may have been set against him, and that he doesn’t mean to give me up, whatever happens. I feel that in his letter. And I want someone to drive him away from me. Oh, I wish I had never seen him! I wish I had never seen him!”
Again Lady Sellingworth heard the cry of youth, and this time it was piteous, almost despairing. She did not answer it in words. Indeed, instead of showing any pity, any strong instinct of protection, she turned away from Beryl.
The girl wondered why she did this, and for a moment thought that perhaps she was angry. The situation was difficult, horribly difficult. Beryl had delicacy enough to understand that. Perhaps she ought not to have come to Adela again. Perhaps she was asking too much, more than any woman could bring herself to do, or to try to do. But she had no one else to go to, and she was really afraid, miserably afraid.
Lady Sellingworth stood quite still by the fire with her back to Beryl, and as the silence continued at last Beryl made up her mind that there was nothing to be hoped for from her and got up slowly.
“Adela,” she said, trying to summon some pride, some courage, “I understand. You can’t do anything more. I oughtn’t to have come. It was monstrous, I suppose. But—it’s like that in life. So few people will help. And those that do—well, they get asked for more. I’ll—I’ll manage somehow. It’s all my own fault. I must try to—”
Then Lady Sellingworth turned round. Her white face was very grave, almost stern, like the face of one who was thinking with concentration.
“I’m ready to try to do what I can, Beryl,” she said. “But there’s only one way I can think of. And to take it I shall have to tell the whole truth.”
“About me?”
“About you and myself.”
“Oh—but you couldn’t do that!”
“I believe that I ought to.”
“But—but—to whom?”
“There’s only one person I could possibly speak to, and he’s the finest man I have ever met. He might do something. I’m thinking of Seymour Portman.”
“Adela! But you couldn’t tellhim!”
“Why not?”
“Adela—he loves you. Everyone knows that.”
“And that’s just why I could tell him—him only.”
Miss Van Tuyn looked down. Suddenly she felt that she had tears in her eyes.
“You have kept your cab, haven’t you?” said Lady Sellingworth.
“Yes.”
“Go home now. I will telephone to Seymour. I’ll let you know later—to-morrow morning perhaps—what he thinks had better be done. Now, good night, Beryl!”
She held out her hand. Beryl took it, but did not press it. Somehow she felt awed, and at a distance from this pale quiet woman.
Lady Sellingworth touched the bell, and Beryl Van Tuyn left the room.