“To any man? To what man? There’s the point. You see the importance. It’s the heart of the secret. Who is it? For whom was she ready to give up, in her own words, name, friends, career——?”
“Well, practically she did that, didn’t she, when she married Carey? She buried herself in the country. She didn’t write a line. You said yourself that she put her career behind her. Why shouldn’t it be written to Carey?”
“Oh, don’t be absurd. It’s Carey that makes it impossible. How could Carey have written a letter needing such an answer? Little he cared. What was her genius to him? Isn’t it obvious, isn’t it plain as print, that Carey happened, Carey and all he stands for,afterthe writing of this letter, because of some hitch? Why wasn’t the letter sent? What happened? What folly? What misunderstanding? What disillusionment? What realization of danger?—to send her, with that letter half written, into Carey’s arms? Carey, that stick, that ordinary man! And on the top of itThe Resting-placecomes out, thecri du cœur—or, if you like, Lila, the satire—(for I’m beginning to believe you’re right) the satire ofThe Resting-place. I tell you, I smell tragedy.”
“It’s supposition, it’s mere supposition,” said Miss Howe impatiently.
“Isn’t all detective work supposition to begin with? Wait till I’ve made my book. Wait till I’ve sifted my evidence, till I’ve ranged it, stick and brick, step by step, up, up, up, to the letter.”
Suddenly from where he sat, half way between me and them, Kent spoke—
“Anita, you can’t publish that letter.”
Her face, all their faces, turned towards us. She stared.
“Why not?” And then—“Why do you sit out there? Come here. Come into the light.”
He did not stir.
She frowned, puckering her eyes.
“Such a fog,” she said fretfully. “I can’t see you. Can’t you keep that door shut, Jenny?” Then—“Well, Kent—why not? Why not?”
He said slowly—
“It’s not decent.”
She flared at once.
“Decent! Not decent! What on earth do you mean?”
He kept her waiting while he thought it out.
“I mean—it’s not right, it’s not fair. To whomever it was written, that’s her business, not our business. And that letter——It’s vile, anyway, publishing her letters.”
She stared at him in a sort of angry bewilderment.
“But why? I shall write her life. One always does print letters.”
“Not that sort of letter,” he said.
“But don’t you see,” she cried, “thatthatletter, justthatletter——”
He said—
“That’s why. How dare you read that letter here—aloud—tonight? It—it’s ghoulish.”
“Kent!” There was outrage in her voice.
“But, Kent——” Miss Howe intervened—“we knew her—we care—it’s in all reverence——”
And Mr. Flood—
“My dear man, she’s not a private character. The lives that will be written! Anita’s may be the classic, but it won’t be the only one. Letters are bound to be printed—every scrap she ever wrote. Nobody can stop it. It’s only a question of time. The public has its rights.”
“To what?” He turned savagely. “You’ve had her books. She’s given enough. Will you leave her nothing private, nothing sacred?”
“But, Kent, can’t you see——” Anita had an air of pushing Miss Howe and Mr. Flood from her road—“aren’t you artist enough to see——? A writer, a woman like Madala, she has no private life. She lives to write. She lives what she writes. Sheiswhat she writes. She gives her soul to the world. She leaves her riddle to be read. Don’t you see? to be read. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what I’m going to do—read her—for the rest of you, for the public. Because—because they care, because we all care. It’s done in all honour. It’s a tribute. And for what I am going to do, such a letter is the key.”
She spoke softly, sweetly, persuasively. She wooed him to agree with her. She was extraordinarily eager for his approval. And the approval of the others she did win. They were all murmuring agreement.
His eyes strayed over them, undecidedly, seeking—not help. I do not know what he sought, but his eyes found mine.
“You——” he said to me—“would you want your letter——?”
Anita’s voice thrust in sharply. In the instant the pleading, the beauty, the woman, was gone from it. It was cold and shrill.
“Jenny’s views can hardly concern us.”
But he did not listen to her. He had drawn some answer from me that satisfied him. He got up.
“Oh,” I cried beneath my breath, and I think I touched his arm—“you won’t let her?”
He shook his head. Then he went across to where Anita stood, her eyes on him, on me, while she listened to Miss Howe whispering at her shoulder.
“Look here, Anita!” he began.
“I’m looking,” she said.
He checked a moment, puzzled. Then he went on—
“That letter—you can’t print it. You’ve no right. It’s not your property.”
She waved it aside.
“I shall be literary executor. She promised. It’s mine if it’s anyone’s. It’s no good, Kent, it goes into the book. Nothing can alter that. Nothing——”
Then she stopped dead. There was that same odd look in her eye as there had been when she watched us—that flicker of curiosity, and behind it the same gleam of inexplicable anger.
“Look here——” she said very deliberately—“lookyouhere—what has it got to do with you?”
It was not the words, it was the tone. It was shameless. It was as if she had cried aloud her hateful questions—‘Did you love her?’ ‘What was there between you?’ ‘I want to know it all. It tears me not to know.’ But what she said to him, and before he could answer, was—
“If, of course—anyone—had any right—could prove any right——” She broke off, watching him closely. But he said nothing. “If,” she said, and poked with her finger, “if that letter—if you recognized it—if that were the rough draft of a letter that had been sent——”
He stared down at her. His face was bleak.
“You’ll get no copy from me, Anita!”
“Oh!” She caught her breath, fierce and wicked as a cat with a bird, yet shrinking as a cat does, supple, ears flat. “I only meant—I saidright. If anyone—if you could satisfy me—if you have any right——”
He said—
“I have no right.”
“Oh well, then!” She shrugged her shoulders.
“But,” he held stubbornly to his purpose, “whoever has a right to it—you can’t print that letter.”
She laughed at him.
“You’ll see! You’ll see!”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll see.”
They held each other’s eyes, angry, angry. I felt how Kent Rehan loathed her. And she—yes, she must have hated him. She was all bitterness and triumph and defiance. Yet all the time I was wanting to catch him by the arm and say—‘Be kind to her. Say something kind and she’ll give in.’ I knew it. He had only to say in that instant—‘Anita, I beg of you——’ and she would have given him the letter. I knew it. I know it. I don’t know how I knew it, but I was sure. But he was a man: of course he saw nothing. He was very angry. He looked big and fine. I wondered that she could stand outfacing him.
But she, for answer, picked up the letter, and affected to search through it.
“Had I finished? Where was I? Ah, yes—‘An immortal spirit——’”
His hand came down heavily and swept the light table aside.
“You can’t do it. You shan’t do it. By God you shan’t.”
How it happened I couldn’t see. He was too quick. But at one moment she held the letter, and in the next he had it, and was kneeling at the grate, while she cried out—
“Kent!” And then—“Lila! Jasper! Stop him!”
Nobody could have stopped him. There was no flame, but the fire still burned, a caked red and black lump, smouldering on cinders. He picked it up—with his naked hands—thrust in the crumpled stiff paper, and smashed it down again, so that the lump split, and still held it pressed down, with naked hands, till the sheet had charred and shrivelled into nothing. I suppose it all happened in a few seconds, but it seemed like hours. I was in a train smash once: I wasn’t hurt; but I remember that I came out of it with just the same sense of being battered and aged. This scene I had only watched: I had not shared in it: I was still in the little outer room. Yet I was shaken. I heard Mr. Flood call out—“Kent, you crazy fool!” I heard Anita—“Let mego, Lila!” And then the women were between me and him, and I could only see their backs, and there was a babel of voices, and I found myself sitting like a fool, clutching at the arms of my chair, and saying over and over again—“Oh, his hands, his hands, his poor hands!” The tears were running down my cheeks.
But nobody noticed me. They were all too busy. The group had shifted a little. The Baxter girl was edged out of it, and I watched her for a moment as she sat down again, her cheeks flaming, her eyes as bright as wet pebbles. She looked—it’s the only word—consumptive with excitement. Every now and then she tried not to cough. I heard her saying—“It’s the fog, it’s the awful fog!” defensively. But nobody listened. They were all watching Anita.
Anita was dreadful. She was tremulous with anger. She was like a pendulum with the check taken away. Her whole body shook. She couldn’t finish her sentences. She talked to everyone at once.
Miss Howe had her by the arm. Miss Howe was trying to quiet her—
“My dear woman—steady now! You don’t want a row, you know! You’ve got the rest of the papers.” But she might have talked to the wind.
“He comes into my house—my property—in my own house——It’s an outrage! Kent, it’s an outrage!”
Kent Rehan rose to his feet. It was like a rock breaking through that froth of women. He stood a moment, nervously, brushing the black from his hands and wincing as he did so. Then he looked up. His eyes met her. He flushed.
“Kent! Kent!” She flung off Miss Howe.
The intensity of reproach in her voice startled me, and I think it startled him. I found myself thinking—‘All this anger for what? for a burnt paper? It’s impossible! But then—then what’s the matter with her?’
He said awkwardly—
“I’m sorry, Anita.”
“You!” she cried, panting—“You, to interfere! D’you know what you’ve done, what you’ve tried to do? Will you take everything, you and he? Haven’t I my work too? Oh, what you’ve had from her, what you’ve had from her! And now you cheat me!”
He was bewildered. He said again—
“I’m sorry, Anita.”
She came close to him. Her little hands were clenched. There was a wail in her voice—
“You! Aren’t you friends with me? Didn’t I share her with you? Isn’t she my work too? What would you say if I came to your house and saw your work, your life work that she’d made possible, your pictures that are her, all her—and slashed them with a knife? What would you do if I’d done that, if I’d cut it to ribbons, yourSpring Song?”
That moved him. I saw a sort of comprehension lighting his stubborn face. The artist in her touched the artist in him. Of what lay behind the artist he had no knowledge. But he said, quite humbly—
“Anita, I’m sorry!”
Yet I knew that he was not sorry for what he had done.
“Sorry! Sorry! Much good your sorrow does!” she shrilled, and I saw him stiffen again. She was strange. She valued him, that was so plain, and yet, it almost seemed in self-defence, she was always at her worst with him. “Sorry! It was the key of the book. You’ve spoilt my book.”
“Nita! Nita! One letter!” Miss Howe was almost comical in her dislike of the scene. “As if you couldn’t pull it off without that.” She pulled her aside, lowering her voice—“Nita, what’s the use of a row? Pull yourself together. Put yourself in his place. Besides—you can’t afford——” She looked at Kent significantly. Anita’s pale glance followed her and so their eyes met again. She was angry and sullen and irresolute. Another woman would have been near tears.
“Kent,” she began. And then—“Kent—if we quarrel——We’re too old to quarrel——If you had a shadow of excuse——”
He waited.
She took fire again because he did not meet her half way.
“But if you think you’ve stopped me——” she cried. She broke off with a laugh and a new idea—“As if,” she said slowly and scornfully, “as if Madala would have cared!”
He said distinctly—
“You didn’t know her. You’d never understand——”
“Ah,” she said, pressing forward to him, “why do you take that tone? What is it I don’t understand? If you’d help me with what you know, it could be big stuff. I’d forgive you for the letter if you’d work with me.” She hung on his answer.
But he only said, not looking at her, in the same tone—
“You’d never understand.” And then, with an effort—“I’ll go, Anita. I’m going. I’d better go.”
Without waiting for her answer he went across the room to the little sofa near me where the hats and coats lay piled. I heard him fumbling for his things.
But Anita went back to the others. The watching group seemed to open to receive, to enclose her. Her head had touched the lamp as she passed under it, and set it swaying wildly, so that I could scarcely see their faces in that shift of light and shadow through the thickened air. But I heard her angry laugh, and her voice overtopping the murmur—“Mad! He was always mad! If he weren’t such an old friend——” And then the Baxter girl’s voice—“Think of the sketches there must be!” And Miss Howe—“What I say is—you don’t want to quarrel!” And hers again—“Did you hear him?Inot understand Madala! Mad, I tell you! If I don’t know Madala——”
It was at that moment that I looked up and saw a woman standing in the doorway.
“Anita!” I murmured warningly. But my voice did not reach her, and indeed, she and the little gesticulating group in the further room seemed suddenly far away. The air had been thickening for the last hour, and now, with the opening of the door, the fog itself came billowing in on either side of the newcomer as water streams past a ship. It flooded the room, soundlessly, almost, I remember thinking, purposefully, as if it would have islanded us, Kent and me. It affected me curiously. I felt muffled. I knew I ought to get up and call again to Anita or attend to the visitor myself, but the quiet seemed to dull my wits. I found myself placidly wondering who she was and why she did not come in; but I made no movement to welcome her. I just sat still and stared.
She was a tall girl—woman—for either word fitted her: she had brown hair. She was dressed in—I should have said, if you had asked me, that I could remember every detail, and I can in my own mind; but when I try to write it down, it blurs. But I know that there was blue in her dress, and bright colours. It must have been some flowered stuff. She looked—it’s a silly phrase—but she looked like a spring day. I wanted her to come into the room and drive away the fog that was making me blink and feel dizzy. There was a gold ring on her finger: yes, and her hands were beautiful—strong, white hands. In one she held the brass candle-stick that stood in the hall, and with the other she sheltered the weak flame from the draught. Yet not only with her hand. Her arm was crooked maternally, her shoulder thrust forward, her hip raised, in a gesture magnificently protecting, as though the new-lit tallow-end were fire from heaven. Her whole body seemed sacredly involved in an act of guardianship. But half the glory of her pose—and it was lovely enough to make me catch my breath—was its unconsciousness; for her attention was all ours. Her eyes, as she listened to the group by the hearth, were sparkling with amusement and that tolerant, deep affection that one keeps for certain dearest, foolish friends. It was evident that she knew them well.
“Can’t you keep that door shut, Jenny? The draught——”
Anita’s back was towards me. Her voice, as she spoke over her shoulder, rang high, muffled, imperious, and—I laughed. In a flash the stranger’s eyes were on me, and I found myself thrilling where I sat, absurdly startled for the moment, because—she knew me too! She knew me quite well. She was smiling at me, not vaguely as who should say—‘Oh, surely I’ve seen you somewhere?’ but with intimate, disturbing knowledge. It was the glance that a doctor gives you, the swift, acquainted glance that, without offence, deciphers you. I was not offended either, only curious and—attracted. She looked so friendly. I half began to say—‘But when? but where?’ but her bearing overruled me. Her mouth was pursed conspiratorially: if her hand had been free she would have put a finger to her lip. I smiled back at her, flattered to be partner in her uncomprehended secret. But I was curious—oh, I was curious! It was incredible to me that Anita and the rest should stand, subduing their voices to the soft, thick stillness that she and the fog between them had brought into the room, and yet remain unconscious of her vivid presence. I was longing to see their faces when they should at last turn and see her, and yet, if you understand, I was afraid lest they should turn too soon and break the pleasant numbness that was upon me. And upon them—the spell was upon them too. It was the look in her eyes, not glamorous, but kind. It healed. It passed like a drowse across the squabblers at the table: it stilled Anita’s feverish monologue. Indeed the room had grown very still. There was no sound left in it but the slurring of the lamp. It rested upon Kent as he stood in dumb misery, and I watched the strained lines of his body slacken and grow easier beneath it. At that—at that ease she gave him—suddenly I loved her.
And as if I had spoken, as if I had touched her with my hand, her eyes, that had grown heavy with his trouble, turned, brightening, upon me, as if I were the answer to a problem, the lifting of a care. But what the problem was I could not then tell; for, staring as she made me—as she made me—into her divining eyes, I saw in them not her thought but my own at last made clear to me—my dream, my hope, my will and my desire, newborn and naked, and, I swear it, bodiless to me before that night and that hour. It was too soon. I was not ready. It shamed me and I flinched, my glance wandering helplessly away like a dog’s when you have forced it to look at you. And so noticed, idly, uncomprehending at first, and then with a stiffening of my whole body, that her hand did not show as other hands, blood-red against the light she screened, but coldly luminous, like the fingers of a cloud through which the moon is shining: and that her breast was motionless, unstirred by any breath.
Then I was afraid.
I felt my skin rising. I felt my bones grow cold. I could not move. I could not breathe. I could not think.
A voice came out of the fog that had thickened to a wall between the rooms—a voice, thin, remote, like a trunk call—
“Can’tyou keep that door shut, Jenny? The draught——” and was cut off again by the sudden crash of an overturned chair. There was a rush and a cry—a madman’s voice, shouting, screaming, groaning—
“Madala Grey! My God, Madala Grey!” and Kent’s huge body, hurling against the door, pitched and fell heavily.
For the door was shut.
I ran to him. He was shaken and half stunned, but he struggled to his feet. It was dreadful to see him. He was like a frightened horse, shivering and sweating. His lips were loose and he muttered unevenly as if the words came without his will. I caught them as I helped him; the same words—always the same words.
I got him to the sofa while the rest of them crowded and clamoured, and then I found myself taking command. I made them keep off. I sent Anita for water and a towel and I bathed his forehead where he had cut it on the moulding of the door. Mr. Flood wanted to send for a doctor, but I wouldn’t have it. I knew how he would hate it. Then someone—the Baxter girl, I think—giggled hysterically and said something about a black eye tomorrow, and then—“How did it happen?” “Did you see, Miss Summer?” And at that they all began to clamour again like an orchestra after a solo, repeating in all their voices—“Yes, what happened? What on earth was it? Did you see him? Some sort of a seizure? I told you twice to shut that door. The draught——Are you better now, old man? Kent—what happened?”
They were crowding round him again. He pointed a shaking finger.
“She saw,” he said. “She knows——”
“Jenny?” Anita turned on me sharply, an employer addressing a servant at fault. “Oh, of course—you were in here too. What happened then?”
I had a helpless moment.
“Well?” she demanded.
I stared at her. It was incredible, but there was actually jealousy in her voice. It said, pitifully plainly—‘Again I have missed the centre of a situation!’
“Well?” she repeated. And then—“If you saw something——” She altered the phrase—“Tell us what you saw.”
But I had not missed the quick fear that had shown, for a moment, in Kent’s eyes—fear of betrayal even while his tongue was betraying him.
I laughed. I thought to myself as I answered, ‘Oh, I am doing this beautifully!’ And I was. My voice sounded perfectly natural, not a bit high. I had plenty of words. I said, most jauntily—
“Oh, Cousin Nita, I could hardly see my own nose. The fog had been simply pouring in. My fault—I didn’t latch the door properly, I suppose. And then you called, and Mr. Rehan went to shut it for me, and he slithered on the mat, and——”
“I see!”
“Of course! Parquet——” The Baxter girl took a step or two and pirouetted back to us. “Perfect! You ought to give a dance, Miss Serle.”
Anita made no answer, but taking the can and the towel she opened the door of dispute, and, stooping an instant on the threshold to lift some small object from the floor, went out of the room. We heard her set down her load on the landing, and the rattle of the sash as she threw up the window, paused, and shut it again. She came back. A fresh inflow of acrid vapour preceded her and set us coughing. It was the stooping, I suppose, that had reddened her cheeks, for she was flushed when she came back to us. It was the only time that I ever saw my cousin with a colour. She spoke to us, a little gaspingly, as if the fog had caught her too by the throat—
“Jenny’s quite right. One can’t see an inch in front of one. No—not a cab in hearing. You’ll have to resign yourselves to staying on indefinitely. What? oh, what nonsense, Kent! As if I’d let you go in that state! Besides, there’s Jasper’s poem. Are you going away without hearing it?” The soft monologue continued as she shepherded them to the fire. “That’s always the way—one talks—one gets no work done. Get under the light, Jasper! Beryl, help me to move the table. Oh yes, Jasper, I forgot to tell you, I met Roy Huth the other day and he had just read——”
I heard a movement behind me. I turned. Kent had half risen. He spoke—
“Sit down. Sit down here.” He touched the cushion beside him.
I shook my head.
“Not yet. My cousin——”
“Ah——”
We were silent.
I watched Anita. She stood a few moments in unsmiling superintendence, while the women settled themselves and Mr. Flood sorted his papers and cleared his throat. Then, as I had known she would do, she returned soft-footed to her purpose. At the same moment I left Kent Rehan’s side. When she reached the archway between the two rooms, I was there.
“And now——” she confronted me—“what happened?”
“I told you.”
She smiled.
“Did you? I have forgotten. Tell me again.”
“Anita—he slipped. He fell. He was shutting the door.”
“Did he replace this?” She opened her little hand. The wedge of paper that I had twisted lay on her palm. “It was shut in the door when I opened it just now.” She waited a moment. Then, with a certain triumph—“Well?”
I said nothing. What was there to say?
She tossed it from her.
“Don’t be silly, Jenny! What was it?Whowas it?” Her eyes were horribly intelligent.
“He slipped. He fell. He was shutting the door.” I felt I could go on saying that for ever and ever.
The red patches in her cheeks deepened. She spoke past me, rudely, furiously—
“I intend to know. I’ve a perfect right——Kent, I intend to know.”
I put out my arms carelessly, though my heart was thudding, and rested them against the doorposts.
“He’s shaken—a heavy man like that. Better leave him alone.”
“I intend to know,” she insisted. And then—“Jenny!Jenny!Let me pass.”
“No!” I said.
For a second we stood opposed, and in that second I realized literally for the first time (so dominating had her personality been) that she was shorter than I. She was dwindling before my eyes. I found myself looking down at her with almost brutal composure. That I had ever been afraid of her was the marvel! For I was young, and she was elderly. I was strong, and she was weak. Her bare arms were like sticks, but mine were round and supple, and I could feel the blood tingle in them as my grip tightened on the woodwork. She was only Anita Serle, the well-known writer; but I was Jenny Summer, and Kent was needing me.
“Jenny—you will be sorry!” Her eyes and her voice were one threat. Such eyes! Eyes whose pupils had dilated till the irids were mere threads that encircled jealousy itself—jealousy black and bitter—jealousy that had stolen upon us as the fog had done, obscuring, soiling, stifling friend and enemy alike—jealousy of a gift and a great name, of a dead woman and a living man and their year of happiness—jealousy beyond reason, beyond pity—jealousy insatiable, already seeking out fresh food, turning deliberately, vengefully, upon Kent and upon me.
I felt sick. I had never dreamed that there could be such feelings in the world. And now she was going to Kent, to probe and lacerate and poison—
“No!” I said.
Actually she believed that she could pass me!
I still held fast by the door-posts, and she did not use her hands. We were silent and decorous, but for an instant our bodies fought. She was pressed against me, panting—
“No!” I said.
Then she fell away, and without another word turned and went back into the other room.
I saw Miss Howe whisper some question. There was an instant’s silence. Then her answer came—
“Much better leave him alone. Yes—rather shaken—a heavy man like that.”
It was defeat. She was using my very words, because, for all her fluency, she had none with which to cover it.
I was sorry. I felt a brute. But what else could I have done? I stood a moment watching her recover herself. Then I went back to Kent.
He did not look up, but he moved a little to give me room. I sat down beside him. We were shut away between the wall and the window, in the shadow, out of sight of the others. It was very peaceful. Now and then I looked at Kent, but he was staring before him. He had forgotten all about me again, I knew. But I was content. It made me happy to be sitting by him. My thoughts hopped about like birds after crumbs. I remember wondering what I should do on the morrow—where I should go? That Anita would have me in the house another twenty-four hours was not likely. I had ten pounds. I did not care. I knew that I ought to be anxious, but I could not realize the need. I could not think of anything but him; yet I was afraid to speak to him. He sat so still. His face was set in schooled and heavy lines. There came a stir and a clash of voices from the other room, but he did not seem to hear it. It was only the end of a poem. In a little it had settled down again into the same monotonous hum, but for a moment I had thought that it was the break-up, and after that I had no peace. It had scared me. It made me realize that I had only a few minutes—half an hour at most—and that then he would be going away—and when should I see him again? Never—maybe never! He had his life all arranged. He didn’t even know my name. I felt desperate. I couldn’t let him go. I didn’t know what to do. I only knew that—that I couldn’t bear it if he went away from me.
It was then that he moved and straightened himself in his chair with a sigh, that heavy, long-drawn sigh that men give when they make an end. ‘Work or play, joy or grief, it’s done with. And now——?’ Such a sigh as you never hear from women. But then we are not wise at ending things.
I thought that he was getting up, that he was going then and there, and instinctively I hurried into speech, daring anything—everything—his own thoughts of me—rather than let him go.
“Yes—that’s over!” I translated softly.
He turned with such a stare that I could have smiled.
“I meant that. How did you know?”
“Why shouldn’t I know?” I did smile then. It made him smile back at me, but doubtfully, unwillingly.
“Can you read thoughts—too?” The last word seemed to come out in spite of himself.
“Not always. Yours I can.” My face was burning. But I could have spared myself the shame that made it burn, for he did not understand. My voice said nothing to him. My face showed him nothing. He was thinking about himself. But he leant forward in that way he has—a dear way—of liking to talk to you.
“Can you? I never can. Only when I paint. I can put them into paint, of course. But not words.Shesaid——” and all through the subsequent talk he avoided the name—“she said it was laziness, a lazy mind. But I always told her that that was her fault. I—we—her people—were just wool: she knitted us into our patterns. She was a wonder. You know, she—she was good for one. She was like bread—bread and wine——” His voice strained and flagged.
I nodded.
“Yes. I felt that too.”
He glanced sideways at me.
“Ah, then you knew her?” His voice (or I imagined it) had chilled. It began to say, that faint chill, that if I too were of ‘the set,’ he could not be at ease. But I would not give him time to think awry.
“No, no! Only tonight. But I do know her.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight,” I said and looked at him.
“Then——” his hand tightened on the chair, “you saw? I was right? Youdidsee?”
“I saw—something,” I admitted.
“Some one?”
I nodded.
His face lighted up. He pulled in his chair to me.
“Her hands—did you notice her hands? I have a drawing of them somewhere. I’ll show it to you——” He stopped short: Then—“What is your name?” he asked me.
“Jenny. Jenny Summer.”
He considered that fact for a moment and put it aside again.
“I’d like you to see it. Anita will want it for that damned scrap-book of hers. She’ll be worrying at me—they all will.”
“You won’t let it go?” I said quickly.
He shook his head.
“No. But they can’t understand why. They can’t understand anything. They thought I was mad just now. So I was, for that matter. To see her again, you know—to see her again——”
“I know,” I said.
He laughed nervously.
“Hallucination, of course. Thought transference. What you please. They’d say so. Do you think so? And I’d been thinking of my picture of her. Oh, I admit it. So we must look at the matter in the light of common-sense.”
“But I saw her too.”
His eyes softened, and his voice.
“Yes. You were there. That’s comfort. You saw her too—standing there with her dear hands full of cowslips——”
“A torch,” I said.
“Cowslips——” he checked on the word. “What?”
“She was carrying a candle,” I insisted. “It had just been lighted. She was holding it so carefully.”
We stared at each other.
“You’re sure?”
“Sure.”
He fell back wearily in his chair.
“What’s the good of talking? She’s dead. That’s the end of it. I was dreaming. Of course. But when you said that you saw, for a moment I believed——What does it matter? What does it matter anyway? But her hands were full of cowslips.”
I turned to him eagerly. I knew what to say. It was as if the words were being whispered to me.
“That was your Madala Grey. But mine—how could she be the same? Oh, can’t you see? We’ve never seen the real Madala Grey. She gave—she became—to each of us—what we wanted most. She wrote down our dreams. Shewasour dreams. Can’t you see what she meant to my cousin? Anita toils and slaves for her little bit of greatness. Butshewas born royal. That’s why Anita hates her so—hates her and worships her. Why, she’s been a sort of star to you all—a symbol—a legend—
“But the real Madala Grey—she wasn’t like that. She was just a girl. She was hungry all the time. She was wanting her human life. And he, the man they laugh at, ‘the thing she married,’ he did love that real Madala Grey. Why, he didn’t even know of the legend. Don’t you see that that was what she wanted? She could take from him as well as give. Life—the bread and wine—they shared it. Oh, and it’s him I pity now, not you. Not you,” I said again, while my heart ached over him. “You—can’t you see what she showed you? Not herself——”
“What then?” he said harshly.
I made the supreme effort.
“But what—a woman—one day—would be to you.”
I thought the silence would never break.
The strange courage that had been in me was suddenly gone. I felt weak and friendless. I wanted to cry. I waited and waited till I could bear it no longer. Then I lifted my eyes desperately, with little hope, to read in his face what the end should be.
I found him looking at me fixedly—atme, you understand, not through me to a subject that absorbed him, but at me myself. It was as if he were seeing me for the first time. No—as if he recognized me at last.
Then the doubts went, and the shame and the loneliness. It made me so utterly happy, that look on his face. I felt my heart beating fast.
He said then, slowly—I can remember the words, the tone and pitch of his voice, the very shaping of his mouth as he said it—
“Do you know—it’s strange—you remind me of her. You are very like her. You are very like Madala Grey.”
The hunger in his voice hurt me. I wanted to put my arms round him and comfort him. I might have done it, for I knew I was still but half real to him. But I sat still—only, with such a sense in my heart of a trust laid upon me, of an inheritance, of a widening and golden future, I said to him—
“Yes. I know.”
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Transcriber’s Notes:Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.Typographical errors were silently corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.