CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
You may jeer at the instinct of a woman, plant the straight line of logic beside it and ridicule the comparison as you choose, but it is a sense, a subliminal sense, number it as you like, upon which she can rely as surely as on touch or scent or sight.
"One of those impulsive conjectures of yours," Traill had said to his sister in reply to her intuition of his relations with Sally. "You don't quite know what you're speaking about, and that gives you confidence. You're a woman." In the face of her accuracy he had said that. It is only retaliation a man has when a woman betrays the amazing abnormality of that sense which he can never hope to possess. He resorts to one weapon, the scientific reliability of evidence.
"Where's your evidence?" he asks, and having none, he smiles at her. But she knows; a knowledge that will sweep her into the fire of action, whilst he is methodically buckling on his armour of conviction with the straps of logical evidence.
It was this instinct, the sixth sense in Sally, that had cast her mind forward, flung it beyond herself into the future, where she saw the Tragedy that awaited her. From the moment she had seen that kiss, she had known that she had an enemy whose weapons were sure, whose wielding of them was quick and keen. From that moment, standing on the rise of so small, so insignificant an incident, she had seen ahead into the years and known what her end would be. With what evidence? None! With what reason? Little indeed of that. That they were standing with swords drawn when she had left the room and that when she returned the swords were sleeping in their scabbards and they were kissing to make friends—how much was there to be reasoned from that? Were not such incidents common to the relationship between brother and sister? Yet, beyond all that, Sally saw with a clearness of vision that penetrated every obvious deduction; saw away into the stretch of Time when his sister would have won him back to her side where she could have no place, no existence.
It might have been wrong, quite easily could have been false a thousand times, but it was knowledge to her, sure, fateful, undeniable knowledge; and from that day her instinct was keyed to find its proof. The cancerous disease of jealousy had dropped its first seed in the blood of her, and the vulturous growth began to spread its lean, clutching fingers about her heart.
"My sister's not hitting it off with her husband," Traill told her, that afternoon as they drove back to London.
"Is that what she was telling you when I went upstairs to take off my hat?" asked Sally.
"Yes."
"That was why you kissed her?"
"Exactly; did you see me kissing her?"
"Yes, when I came into the room."
"Yes; well, that's it. I always thought Durlacher was a fool," he added meditatively. "Used to tell her so before she married him. What in the name of God can you expect of a guardsman? He's one of those men who just lives through life—taking all, giving nothing. I doubt if the rotting of his body will be manure for the earth when he dies. He'd sell it if it were."
Sally closed her eyes, then opened them suddenly to study his face. Such stray phrases as these that fell from his lips always kept the knowledge in her mind of how hard he was.
"Has he been unkind to her?" she hazarded. She forced a spurious interest to please him.
"She says not—but then—she doesn't know. It's perhaps as well that she doesn't. My experience of divorce leads me to see that it's a dog's game; mountains are made out of molehills to weight the case one way or another, and he could probably retaliate with a lot of half-truths, quite unprovable; but the mere mentioning of them in the courts would leave a stain on her. No, it's perhaps as well that she doesn't know as much as I do. She just thinks they don't get on and a patch can settle a thing like that. Lord! The number of people nowadays who pull along all right, with marriage lines that are unrecognizable from their original condition because of the patches here and the patches there—why, they're legion!"
"Are you going to do anything about it?" she asked.
"Me? Oh, I suppose I shall have to be a sort of go-between. She's my sister, and as far as I can see, she's pretty miserable."
On this account, then, began his first visits to Sloane Street. There, the actors in this little play went through their parts—well trained, well rehearsed. There was never a note of the prompter's voice to reach the ears of Traill from the wings. He listened quietly, sympathetically to her tardy admission of the state of affairs. Three times he went to Sloane Street in the afternoon before he was placed in possession of all the subtle details and never once did he meet Durlacher. Durlacher, himself, was always away. It must be admitted that Traill was interested in these intricate details. They gave him insight into the vagaries, the pitfalls and the fallacies of the life with which he had to deal in the divorce courts. Undoubtedly they were of service to him; undoubtedly, moreover, blood is thicker than water, and he thought, he imagined, that he would be able to save his sister from an impending crisis.
On the third occasion, whilst they were sitting over tea in the drawing-room, the door opened and the man-servant announced—Miss Standish-Roe.
Traill stood up with a jerk and felt for his gloves.
Mrs. Durlacher's eyes lost no sight of that and she hurried quickly forwards.
"My dear child, how sweet of you!" She kissed her cheek affectionately. "Let me introduce you to my brother."
Traill turned and his mind was cast back to the night he had dined with his sister at the restaurant. This was the girl he had noticed; her father was the man who sat on boards in the city. He bowed with his eyes on her face.
"Surely you're not going to go yet, Jack," said Mrs. Durlacher. Her eyes were feverishly watching his hands as he began slowly to draw on his gloves. He hesitated. Miss Standish-Roe took the seat he had vacated and looked questioningly up into his face as though it were she who had made the request.
"Very well," he said. "Then I'll have another cup of tea with you."
From that moment, and Mrs. Durlacher's heart had leaped with exultation, she began to play for his humour, baiting the line that she cast with those little turns of phrase, those little feathers of speech which she knew would tempt him to rise to the surface of his mood. In a few moments, he was entertaining them with his tirades against conventional institutions.
"Conventionality," he exclaimed; "I'd sooner have the honest vice of the man who pleads guilty; I'd a thousand times sooner defend his case, than urge for a woman who just holds on to the virtue of conventionality with the tips of her fingers."
"You gave that lady a bad time the other day, Mr. Traill," said Miss Standish-Roe, admiringly.
"I did? Which one?"
"The lady who admitted to kissing the co-respondent."
"Why, you weren't in the court, were you?"
"No—but I read it in the paper—your sister told me about it."
Mrs. Durlacher looked apprehensively to her brother's eyes. From so small a thing as that he might unearth suspicion. But a pardonable vanity was touched in him. He turned no ground to find the intentions that lay beneath.
"Well,therewas a case," he said. "I've no doubt the woman was innocent of the worst; but that was an exact case of the virtue of conventionality. She'd just hung on to it, scraping her nails. She deserved all she got."
"And you persisted in trying to prove her guilty?" said Miss Standish-Roe, in amazement. "When you thought her innocent?"
"Why not?" he retorted. "Society wants to be purged of that sort of woman, and it's full of 'em."
Mrs. Durlacher deftly changed the subject.
"I've got a box to-morrow night, Jack, at some theatre or other," she said casually. "Harold's going out to dinner, will you dine with us and drag us along there?"
"Who's us?"
"Miss Standish-Roe and myself. We shall be all alone if you don't."
Sally's face rose in Traill's mind. If he went, this would be the first evening, except for those engagements which his profession demanded, on which he would have left her to dine at a restaurant by herself. But was he bound? Not in the least! The consideration that it might even seem to an outsider, decided him.
"Yes, I'll come," he said. "What time dinner?"
Again there was exultation in the heart of Mrs. Durlacher.
"Better be seven-thirty," she said.
He agreed. It never suggested itself to him that he wanted to go. He hated to seem bound. That was his reason. So he took it with an open mind, questioning nothing.
When he had gone, Mrs. Durlacher turned to her friend.
"You can come—can't you?" she asked.
Miss Standish-Roe nodded her head.
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
That evening, Traill removed the first pillar in the structure which Sally had built—the Temple of her security. Notwithstanding all Janet's advice, heedless, utterly, of Janet's point of view which had been held before her eyes on almost every occasion on which they had met during the last three years, she persisted in believing more surely in the mooring of her life to Traill's, so long as no mention of settlement was ever suggested.
There was full reason on her side for this. Unable to accept conditions as Janet would have had her take them—the abandoning of one master for the service of another—she knew that so long as Traill kept her by his side without a word of agreement, his honour as the gentleman she always knew him to be would remain as binding as any sanction of the Church.
On this evening, then, when he returned from his visit in Sloane Street, they went together to the little restaurant in Soho where they had taken their first dinner together.
There was Berthe and Marie—there was Madame—there was Alexandre—all still working together with the precious regularity of the Dutch clock.
"Bon soir, monsieur—bon soir, madame." Not an inflection was changed, not a note was altered. The firm hand of necessity had wound them up day after day, all those three years, and they had ticked together and tocked together to the swing of the pendulum of fortune ever since.
"I shall always love this place," said Sally cheerfully, as they sat down at the same table—sous l'escalier.
"Why?"
"Because you first brought me here." She stretched her hand across the table and lovingly touched his fingers. She was happy, then.
"You're not sorry that I did?" he asked seriously.
"Sorry—no! How could I be?" Trouble came too quickly into her eyes. It left them slower than it came.
"Do you remember what you said to me"—he reminded her—"just before we went on to my rooms?"
"I said so many things."
"No—oh, you didn't. You said so few; but you said one that struck in—deep—straight home."
"What was that?"
"You said I was a gentleman."
"So I believed then, when I first saw you. So I know now, after these three years and more."
"You know it—do you?"
"Yes."
"Yet I've never said anything to you about what I intend to give you for yourself, in your own right."
Pain struck into Sally's eyes. Her lips parted in fear and anticipation.
"Have you taken all that on trust?" he continued. "If I were to die, suppose—death is a great deed that even the smallest of us are able to accomplish—Berthe!" He turned to the attendant who was waiting—"Consommé—Omelette aux fines herbes—et poulet roti aux cressons."
"Oui, monsieur—Consommé—pour deux, monsieur?"
"The whole lot pour deux."
Berthe laughed with her little cooing sound in the throat.
"Omelette aux fines herbes, et poulet roti aux cresson—oui, monsieur."
She departed and they listened to the repetition of it all—
"Deux consommés—deux—" as she shouted it through the little doorway to the kitchen.
"Supposing I were to die," Traill repeated. He leant his elbows on the table and gazed steadily into her eyes.
"Why should you talk like that?" she pleaded, and all the while through her brain scampered the questions—"Does he mean if he were to die? Doesn't he mean if he were to leave me?" They danced a mad dance behind her eyes. Had he looked deep enough, he might have seen their capers.
"Because that sort of thing has to be talked," he said gently. "You haven't the faintest idea whether I've made any provision for you or not. I've often wondered would you ask, but you've never said a word. Aren't you rather foolish? Do you think you take enough care for yourself? Do you think you look far enough into the future? Don't you think you treat life too much in the same way as you did my offer of the umbrella on the top of the Hammersmith 'bus?"
Many another woman would have had it out then; flung the questions at him, preferring knowledge rather than torture of mind. To Sally this was impossible. Again she showed those same characteristics of her father. She hoped against almost all absence of promise; she had faith in the face of the blackest doubt. He had said—if he died—perhaps he meant that. Yet the kissing of his sister lifted like the shadow in a dream before her eyes. She knew he had been with Mrs. Durlacher that afternoon. Could she have won him still further? Sally knew her own impotence—bowed under it, recognized fully how powerless she was to hold him if once the links in the chain of their caring began to lose their grip. And now, he was offering to make provision for her. Inevitably that seemed to be the beginning of the end. Before, she was his, with that emotional phrase in her mind—as God had made them. Now she was to become his, because he had bought her, paid for her. There lay in that the difference between two worlds in her mind; and she fought against it with what strength she knew.
"I don't want to look into the future," she said bravely. "I hate looking into the future. I'm happy in the present; why shouldn't I remain so?"
"How will this prevent you? Doesn't it appeal to you at all, that when we came to live together, I took up a certain responsibility with you? I've got to fulfil that responsibility. This evening, when we go back, I'm going to draw out some form of settlement which I intend to place with you. I shall take it to my solicitor and get it legalized to-morrow morning."
She leant forward across the table and touched his hand again. Her lips were trembling; her whole face, which only a few moments before was bright with cheerfulness, was now drawn, pinched with the suffering and terror in her mind.
"Please don't," she said brokenly. "Please don't. I don't want any settlement as long as you care for me. What is a settlement to me if, as you say, you were to die? What good would it be to me then? Do you think I could bear to go On living?"
He searched her face with amazement. "You mustn't talk foolishness like this," he replied firmly, but not unkindly. "We've all got our own lives to get through. We've all got to answer for them one by one, and live them one by one as well. There's no condition of relationship in existence, which can make a man and a woman one person except in their imaginations and according to the fairy tales of the Church. You're a dear, simple, little child to talk about not being able to go on living if I were to peg out; but you would. You'd go on living. There's no doubt in my mind, but that you'd love some one else again."
"You little understand me," she exclaimed bitterly, "if you could ever think that."
"Well—in that respect, at least, I believe I understand human nature; and in that respect, too, I imagine it must be a surer criterion from which to judge of such matters. I don't insist upon it as a certainty—I only suppose it possible. But in any event you would want money to live upon, and my mind is quite made up that I ought to make a settlement on you. Why should you not want me to—eh? Why?"
She hung her head. To tell him, when she had no definite proof that he had thought of leaving her, might be to put the thought into his mind. She could not tell him. But pride did not enter the matter in the least. If it could have served her purpose in any way, she would willingly have let him know that she counted it possible for him to desert her. But the fear that it might create a suggestion to his consciousness which hitherto had not existed, locked the words in her lips. She would not have uttered them for a crown of wealth.
"Why?" he repeated. "Eh?"
"I'd rather you didn't," she said, with trouble in voice. "I'd rather you didn't—that's all."
"Well—I'm afraid it's got to be," he replied finally. "In my mind it's not fair to you, and I'm determined that where you're concerned, I shall have nothing with which to reproach myself. I shall draw it up this evening when we go back."
She looked pitiably about her. Now it seemed that the little Dutch clock, which had been ticking so merrily, so much in unison with life, all went out of time. It seemed a farce then, that little Dutch clock. All the romance went out of it—it was only a trade—a trade machine for the making of money, no longer the counting of happy hours. Everything seemed a trade then—everything seemed a trade.
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
That evening the settlement was drawn up. When he had finished it, Traill held it out to her.
"You'd better just read it through," he said; "the substance of it is there. To legalize, merely means to write the same thing at greater length and in less comprehensive English."
"I don't want to read it," she replied.
"But why?"
"It doesn't interest me. You've written it to please yourself, not to please me. Please don't ask me to read it!"
He was unable to follow the reasoning of this, and he shrugged his shoulders with a sense of irritation. "As you wish," he said quietly and put the paper away in a drawer of his bureau. "I'll give you a copy of this, at any rate."
Before they had gone abroad, Traill had taken a lease of the floor above his chambers, which contained rooms similar in shape and size to those in which he lived. These, he had decorated and furnished according to the slightest wish that he could induce Sally to express. In the room which she used as a sitting-room, he had given her a piano with permission to play on it whenever he was not in the rooms below. Most of the daytime, then, she was at liberty to make what noise she liked and, at all times, free to have any friends she wished to see, on the strict understanding that he was not to be bothered by them.
There was only one friend. Janet came to see her on every occasion when Traill had to be out for the evening—at a Law Courts dinner or some such public function, but she never met him.
"Why doesn't he want to meet your friends?" Janet once asked her.
"I have only one," Sally had replied, laughing.
"Well—why won't he meet me? I suppose you've shown him that photograph you've got of me? It's enough to put any man off."
"I shall never take any notice when you talk like that," said Sally.
"Very well—don't! But why is it?"
"I think I know—but I'm afraid you'll be angry."
"No, I shan't. Come along—out with it!"
"Well—I told him once—that first day I dined with him—that I should love you two to meet. I said I'd love to hear you argue—"
"Oh, God!" exclaimed Janet. She cast her eyes up to the ceiling. "That did it! What did he say?"
"He said he could love a woman, but he couldn't argue with her."
"Yes—of course he did. A woman has to be confoundedly pretty before a man's going to let her have a point of view. Even then, if she isn't fairly cute, it's his own he gives her. Then I suppose when you came to live here, he saw my photograph?"
"I suppose he—yes, I think he did. I showed it to him; or he asked who it was."
Janet broke out into a peal of harsh—strident laughter.
"It's a wonder he risks your bringing me as near as the next floor," she had said. "Lord! A woman with a face like mine, who argues! God help us!"
But once she had understood that point, Janet had never alluded to it again; had made no effort to catch a glimpse of the man who so filled Sally's life. So much, in fact, had she endeavoured to avoid their contact that, on one occasion, when she and Sally had been climbing up to the second floor, and the door of his room was opened, through which his voice had sounded, calling to Sally, she had run hurriedly up the stairs out of sight, her heart thumping with excitement when he had shouted out—
"Who the devil's that?"
The inclination to shout back—"What the devil's that to you?" she had clipped on the tip of her tongue; but only for Sally's sake.
On this evening, then, that the settlement was drawn up, Sally had slowly climbed the stairs to the floor above, and once in her little sitting-room, with the door closed behind her, she had seated herself upon the settee near the fireplace and gazed into the cheerless, unlighted fire with dry and tearless eyes.
To her, the shadow of the end fell on everything. Just a little more than three years and a bend in the road had shown it stretching across her path. True, it was only a shadow. He had said nothing whatever about leaving her; had not even suggested it in the slightest word he had uttered. She must pass through the shadow, then; but what lay upon the other side was beyond her knowledge, though not beyond her fear.
To drive the apprehensions from her mind, she rose suddenly, shrugging shoulders, as though her blood were cold, and went to the piano. Without thinking, she sat down, began to play; then her hands lifted from the keys as if they burnt her touch. She had as suddenly remembered. Traill was below. For a moment longer she sat there, just touching, feeling the notes with the tips of her fingers—listening to the sounds in her mind—then she rose, standing motionless, attentive to all the little noises in the room below.
She heard the clink of a glass. He was taking his whisky. The sound indicated that he would soon be going to bed. She glanced at the clock, ticking daintily on her mantelpiece. It was just after eleven. Thoughts, calculations began to wander to her mind. Downstairs, he had said good night, kissed her—gently, as he always did—and opened the door for her as she came upstairs. But then he did that every night. Every evening he kissed her, every evening he said good night; but then perhaps, some half-hour later, she would hear him mounting the stairs to her room, and her heart would hammer like steel upon an anvil until he had knocked at her door and she had whispered—"Come in."
Would he come up that evening, she wondered. Two weeks now had passed since he had been to her thus, and so her mind—searching, as it would seem, for its trouble—intuitively connected the circumstance with this event of the settlement. So she drove herself to judge him by the lowest standards—those standards to which a woman at last resorts when she thinks she sees the waning of her influence. That in the heart of them they seldom put first, but last. Yet in the ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is, in a man, the soonest to come and the soonest to go, while fondness, caring and affection may remain behind, untouched by its departure. The beast in the every man has little to do with the intellect, and it is with his intellect, above all things, that he loves truest and most of all.
But here Sally fell into that most common of women's mistakes. She judged him by his passions. If she did not hear his footsteps on the stairs that night; if his knock did not fall upon the door and startle the silence in her heart into a thousand pulsating echoes, then she knew that she would be one step nearer to the realization that it was the end indeed.
She looked again at the clock and then, with sudden decision, went into the other room and began to undress. From a drawer in the Chippendale chest which he had bought her, she brought forth a new nightdress, in-let with dainty openwork, which a few days before she had purchased. This she put on. Then she went to the mirror, scrutinizing herself in its polished reflection. Her hair was untidy. She took it all down and put it up afresh, curling the long strands around her fingers as he had often said he had loved to see them. When that was finished, she sprayed herself with scent—on her hair, her arms, her breast, turning the spray, before it spluttered into silence, in the direction of the pillow upon which she slept. Finally, she knelt down by her bedside and prayed—
"Oh God—let him love me—always—always; show me how I can keep him to love me—always—always."
So she prayed for a way, having already chosen it, as once before she had prayed for guidance, well knowing what course she was about to adopt. So most of us pray that we may know those things on which we have decided knowledge already. It helps us in the throwing of blame on to the shoulders of God. It consoles us—the deed being done—when we think that—at least—we prayed.
When she rose to her feet, she stood listening—listening intently. Then she moved to her bedroom door and opened it. She could hear him still moving in his room below; but now it was in the room beneath hers—beneath her bedroom. He was going to bed. She crept to the top of the stairs. Every sound she could hear there, the dropping of his boots on the floor, the opening and shutting of his cupboard doors as he put his clothes away. Then, last of all, the creaking of the springs of his bed as he got into it and moved to right and left, seeking the comfortable groove.
A heavy sigh forced its way through her lips. She had to swallow hastily in her throat to check the sudden rising of the tears. At last, with impulsive decision, she went back to her room, took a silk dressing-gown from the wardrobe, fitted her feet into little silk slippers and, without hesitation, without pausing to formulate her definite plan of action, she crept down the stairs again, opened the door of his sitting-room and stole in.
"Jack," she whispered. "Jack!"
Her throat was dry and the low voice found no resonance from the roof of her mouth. There was no answer. He had not heard her.
"Jack!" She said it again and tapped faintly on his door.
"That you, Sally?"
"Yes."
"What is it? Come in. I'm in bed. Believe I was asleep. What is it? Come in."
She opened the door gently. He sat up in bed, found matches, struck one and lit a candle.
"Lord!" he exclaimed, "you'll catch your death of cold. What do you want, child?"
"I can't get to sleep," she murmured, blinking her eyes at the sudden glare of the candle.
"Why not?"
He sat there, looking at her, his eyes dazed, half awake.
"I don't know."
"Thinking too much?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Well, count sheep going through a gate. A hundred's the prescribed amount."
She tried to smile because she knew that if she did not, he would think she was unhappy or depressed.
"No, I want you to let me have a book," she said; "I think perhaps if I read—"
"Of course, take anything you like, and try smoking a cigarette. That may make you drowsy."
He lay back on the pillows. For a moment, she stood, undecided as to what to do; then she went into the other room, taking up the first book that her hands touched in the darkness. There, again, she waited in silence. At last she undid the fastenings that held her dressing-gown tight about her and came back again into the room.
"What did you get?" he asked.
She looked for the first time at the cover.
"Macaulay's 'History of England.'"
The springs of the bed creaked to his chuckle of laughter.
"You'll go to sleep all right now," he said.
"But I think I'd like a cigarette, if I might."
"Yes, why not?"
"Where shall I find them?"
"In the case, in my waistcoat pocket. It's hanging over the back of the chair. What a ridiculous child you are to let that dressing-gown flap open like that. You'll catch your death of cold. Fasten it up—go on!"
She reluctantly did as she was bid; then searched for the case. When she had found it, she came down to the side of his bed and stood there, picking nervously at the cigarette in her fingers.
"Would you like me to blow out the candle?" she asked.
"Oh no, that's all right. I can blow it out from here. You get to the door and see your way out first."
She sat down slowly on the bed by his side, then bent forward, winding one arm around his neck, leaning the full weight of her body upon him.
"Good night," she whispered as her lips touched his.
"By Jove, you do smell of scent!" he exclaimed. "Do you always drown yourself in scent before you go to bed?"
"No." Her mouth was dry, her tongue like leather, scraping against her teeth. "Not always."
"Well, good night, little woman; you read half a page of Macaulay and you'll soon get to sleep. Kiss me."
She kissed him, longingly and then, as he half tried to turn, she felt conscious of her dismissal and rose hurriedly from the bed.
"Can you find your way upstairs without a candle?" he asked, when she had opened the door.
"Oh yes," she said stridently, "quite easily." And she departed, closing the door behind her. With a glimmer of wonder in his mind, he blew out the candle, just listened until he heard her footsteps pattering overhead, then turned over and fell asleep.
But there was no sleep to be found for Sally. When she was once within her room, she flung book and cigarette upon the bed and her body, just as she was, across them. Then came the deluge of her tears. If he had waited, listening to the sounds one moment longer before he went to sleep, he would have heard the choking sobs that broke between her lips.
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
When Traill came back early from the Temple the next evening and told Sally that he was dining with his sister at the house in Sloane Street, she took the announcement in silence, eyes lifting to his in a steady question, her heart wearily adding one more figure to the column of events which she had already compiled against her hopes of happiness.
As yet, openly, she dared question nothing. She knew too well the outlook of his mind where freedom of his own action was concerned. Now she was beginning to realize the full extent, the full impotence of her position as his mistress. Had she been legally his wife, he had given her no cause to complain, created no right for her criticism. As his mistress, she was still less justified in questioning his actions and to do so would, she knew to a certainty, bring down his wrath, more surely than ever draw to a close their relationship, the termination of which was shadowing itself upon the surface of her suspicion.
"Is your sister getting on better with her husband?" she asked.
"Somewhat, I think. I don't really know—it's difficult to say. I haven't seen him yet. She doesn't want me to speak to him about it. She thinks it might only make things worse. Says I've got a blunt way that 'ud ruffle what little patience he's got."
Sally looked directly, deeply into his eyes.
"You really think it is serious?" she said. "I suppose it wouldn't have been possible for her to have imagined it?"
"Imagined it? No! Why? What should she have imagined it for? We Traills haven't got an ounce of imagination between us. How could she imagine it? What good would it do her? A woman doesn't hesitate and stumble and drag a thing out of her with tears in her eyes, hating to talk about it, when the whole business is only a tissue of her imagination. Besides, what would she gain by it?"
"Your sympathy," Sally replied.
Traill walked into his bedroom with a laugh.
"A deuced lot she really cares about my sympathy," he exclaimed. "I assure you Dolly's not a sentimentalist. She only wants to cling to her rung of the ladder, that's all."
That was all, and Sally knew it; but she could say no more. She had tried to plant the seed of suspicion in his mind. She had failed. The ambitions which were a motive to all his sister's actions, he could see well enough; but to the means she used in gratifying them, he was blind. And Sally, though she knew nothing, dared not attempt the opening of his eyes.
"Are you going to change now?" she asked.
He mumbled an affirmative. She realized, sensitively, that his mind was pre-occupied with other things and, quietly, she crept out of the room, upstairs to the other floor where she stood, looking out of the window, finding her eyes watching the women who were wheeling round the corner of the Circus into Piccadilly, with skirts tight gripped about them, little reticule bags swinging with their ungainly walk, heads alert to follow any direction that their eyes might prompt them.
When Traill looked into his sitting-room a few moments later, looked through the opening front of a white shirt which he was in the process of dragging over his head, she had gone.
"What are you going to do with yourself this evening, Sally?" he asked, before his head was free of the folds of the stiff, starched linen. No answer was given him. Then, when he found he was alone, he cursed volubly at the intractable shirt. The words steadied on his lips as a knock fell on the door. He marched across the room as he was, holding up his garments with one hand and flung it open—one of his characteristic actions—he cared little how he appeared or whom his appearance affected.
"You? Come in!" he said.
A tall, well-featured man, well-dressed, well-groomed, walked in through the open door. With a certain amount of care—customary enough in him to hide the obvious—he laid his silk hat, brim upwards, upon the table, pulled off his gloves, threw them carelessly into it, and turned round.
"You're going out?" he said.
"Yes."
"Can't come and have dinner with me?"
"No, couldn't."
"Taking the little lady out, I suppose?"
"No, she's upstairs."
The man's eyes passed across Traill's face as they wandered to the portrait of James Brownrigg over the mantelpiece.
"Well, I'm at a loose end," he said. He took a gold cigarette-case from his pocket and extracted a cigarette. Traill continued his gymnastics with the shirt, forcing studs through obdurate holes, fastening links and muttering under his breath.
"I thought we might have dined together and taken the little lady to a music hall, like we did before. How long ago was that?"
Traill tramped into the other room and came out, struggling with a collar.
"Oh, last September, wasn't it?"
"Something like that, getting on for a year. How is she?"
"Oh, first rate. Will you have a drink?"
"No, thanks, old man. Where are you going to?"
"I'm dining with my sister. Going to some theatre, I believe."
"Ah, I saw your sister the other day, about a couple of weeks ago." He seated himself, hitching his trousers above the uppers of his boots. "Prince's, I think it was. Yes, she was skating with that Miss Standish-Roe."
"Yes, she's coming with my sister and me this evening."
"Is she?" Again his eye lifted to Traill's face. "Damned pretty girl."
Traill did not reply. Had he made some casual answer in the affirmative, the man's eyes might not have followed him as he walked back into his bedroom; the humorous twist of the man's lips might not have been visible. There would have been no thought to create it.
"What theatre are you going to?" he asked unconcernedly.
Traill mentioned the name, and began the singing of a hymn tune with impossible crescendos and various deviations from the melody.
"'Can a woman's tender careCease toward the child she bare?Yes, she may forgetful be ...'"
"I say!" he called out with unceremonious interruption to himself.
"What?"
"You say you've got a loose end?"
"Yes, there's Time got to be killed somehow."
"Well, take Sally out to dinner."
"What, the little lady?"
"Yes, she'll be lonely by herself. I gave her such damned short notice about this engagement of mine that she didn't have time to send for that friend of hers—that Miss Hallard. Would you mind doing that? Don't hesitate to say if you would."
"Oh no, I wouldn't mind in the least. But how about her?"
"I'll call out to her."
The visitor could hear him opening the door that led into the passage, then his voice—
"Sally!" The clattering of feet above reached them, the hurried opening of another door, as though the person called for had been waiting eagerly for the summons.
"I'm coming," she replied. Her heels tapped loudly—the quick successive knockings as on a cobbler's last—as she ran down the stairs.
"Mr. Devenish has come in to ask me to dinner, Sally," he said, before she reached the bottom. "He's going to take you instead; I can't go, of course."
The footsteps stopped.
Devenish, within the room, half-closed his eyes, bent his head in an attitude of amused attention. He heard many things in the silence that followed.
"Had I better go and dress?" she asked, after the moment's pause.
"Oh no, he's not changed. He's in here; come along."
Sally entered and Devenish moved forward to shake hands.
"Good evening, Miss Bishop; don't you hesitate to say if you'd thought of doing anything else. I just had a loose end, nothing to do—so I looked in here, hoping he might come out to dinner."
"It's very kind of you to think of it."
"Oh, not a bit. I shall be delighted. You say where you'd like to dine; it doesn't make the slightest difference to me. I'll go back and change if you prefer to dress."
"Oh no, thanks. Really, I think I'd rather not. If you don't mind my coming as I am."
"Not a bit."
She turned to Traill.
"Shall I go up and put on my hat, Jack?" There was no interest in her voice, no enthusiasm. This was a child doing the bidding of his master. Devenish saw through every note of it. He gathered—erroneously—that Traill had told her he was taking Miss Standish-Roe to the theatre; fancied that perhaps she may have seen or heard of the girl's undeniable prettiness, and was piqued with jealousy. Certainly it was not for love that she was coming out to dine with him. But that was no deterrent. He looked forward to it all the more.
"Yes, run up and put on your hat; we can all go out together if you're quick."
She went away quietly. They heard her mounting the stairs, but only Devenish noticed the difference in the way she had come down and the manner in which she returned. He also read its meaning.
"How long has she been living with you here?" he asked, when Traill had closed the door and returned to the continuance of his dressing.
"A few months over three years."
"Of course—I remember your telling me."
They fell into silence, Devenish watching his friend with half-conscious amusement as he clumsily tied a white tie, then shot his arms into waistcoat and coat, one after the other, with no study of the effect and apparently but little interest.
Lest it should seem unaccountable that this man, seemingly a stranger, walking casually one evening into his rooms, should be apparently so intimately possessed of the circumstances of Traill's relationship with Sally, it were as well to point out that men in their friendship are bound by no necessity of constant meeting. In a while they meet and for a while see nothing of each other; but when they meet—no matter what time may have elapsed since their last coming together—they are the same friends whose conversation might just have been broken, needing only the formalities of welcome to set it going on again, as you wind a clock that has run out the tether of its spring. To account then for the friendship of these two so diametrically opposed in character—for in Devenish's regard for appearances and Traill's supercilious contempt of them, there are the foundations of two utterly opposite characters—it is necessary to say that their friendship had been formed at school, after which, a train of circumstances had nursed it to maturity. At school, Devenish had been an athlete, superior to Traill in every sport that he took up. You have there the ground for approval and a certain strain of sympathy between the two men. The fact that at the 'Varsity Devenish had developed taste for dress was outweighed by the fact that he was a double blue, holding place in the fifteen and winning the quarter-mile in a time that justified admiration.
These qualities had left a lasting impression upon Traill. He disliked the dandy with a strong predisposition to like the man. Knowing little of his life in society, refusing to meet his wife—where he assured Devenish all friendships between man and man ended—he had retained that predisposition towards friendship and in the light of it had spoken, as every man does to another who is his friend, in an open yet casual way about his life with Sally.
"She lives with me," he had admitted. "If you'd rather not meet her, say so. If you'd like to, don't look down on her—I don't suppose you would, but I never trust the virtue of the married man, he's compelled to wear it on his sleeve. Anyhow, she's the best. I've never met any woman for whom I'd so readily contemplate the ghastly ceremony of marriage. But I suppose every one lays hold of what he can take. I'm absolutely satisfied as I am. The strange woman has no fascination for me now."
Two years and a half had passed since Traill had said that. Now Devenish had dropped in again for the third or fourth time and found them, still together, but with a vague and subtle difference upon it all, to which his astute mind had assigned the reason which Sally only, beside himself, was aware of. Traill was tiring. If Devenish did not know it instinctively, then he made his deductions from the fact alone that brought about the mentioning of the name of Coralie Standish-Roe. To him, with his own social knowledge of that young lady, the fact in itself was sufficient.
By the time that Traill was ready, Sally came down prepared to go out. They all descended the stairs together, parting in the street, where Traill held Sally's hand affectionately, then called a hansom and drove away.
With apparently casual glances, Devenish watched Sally's face as she looked after the departing cab. She followed it with her eyes as they walked up into the Circus; followed it until it welded into the mass of traffic and was lost from sight.
"Where shall we go?" he asked, when her features relaxed from their strain of momentary interest.
"Really, I don't mind," she replied indifferently.
He mentioned the restaurant in Soho. She shook her head definitely.
"Not there?"
"No, anywhere but there. I don't—" she hesitated.
"You don't care for the place?"
"Oh yes, I do. But—"
"Well, then—" He mentioned another and she agreed to anything rather than that which held so many happy associations.
When they were seated at their table, he leant back in his chair and looked at her pleasurably.
"You know, it's mighty good of you," he said, "to keep me company like this."
She was too impervious to outer sensation then to find repugnance at the tone of his voice; at another time she might have resented it. Now, scarcely the sense of the words reached her.
"Which would you prefer, a theatre or a music hall afterwards?"
"Whichever you like."
"Oh, we'll say a music hall, then. In a theatre, you're so bound to listen for the sake of the other people who want to hear. We'll go to the Palace."
She nodded her head in assent. There was no concealment of her mood, no hiding of her unhappiness. Even with this man above all others, whom she well knew was thoroughly aware of the relationship that existed between Traill and herself, she could not shake off the entangling folds of her depression, lift eyes that were laughing, throw head back and face it out until the ordeal of being in his company was over. At moments she tried—drove a smile to her lips for him to see; but she felt that it did not convince him; knew that it utterly failed to convince herself. When he began to speak about Traill, it faded completely from her expression.
"Jack's gone to a theatre to-night, hasn't he?" he asked ingenuously, when they had half struggled through the courses.
"Yes—"
"Duke of York's, isn't it?"
"Yes—I think it is."
He watched her closely, but her eyes were lowered persistently to her plate, or wandering aimlessly from table to table, never meeting his. The thought that this man might guess the running of the current of events, stung her to some show of pride that yet was not keen enough, not great enough in itself to master, even for the moment, the despair within. All the making up for the part it lent; but the acting of it was beyond her.
"You've met his sister, Mrs. Durlacher—haven't you?" he asked presently.
She saw no motive in this. She felt thankful for it—glad to be able to say that she had.
"She was at Prince's the other day when I was there and she told me that Jack had taken you down to Apsley."
"Yes, I went down with him in April."
"Lovely place—isn't it?"
"Yes, I thought it was wonderful. Did Mrs. Durlacher talk to you about me at all?"
She could not hold herself from that curiosity. Into her voice she drilled all the orderliness of casual inquiry; but give way to it she must. Devenish thought of all the things that Traill's sister had said to him; he thought of the many others, far more potent, that she had left unsaid in the silent parenthesis of insinuation.
"She said how pretty she thought you were," he replied.
Had he thought that would please her? Scarcely. If he knew her mood at all, he must have realized that this was but the sponge of vinegar held to the lips, softened but little, if at all, with the gentle flavour of hyssop.
They had finished dinner now and were just sipping coffee preparatory to departure.
"Is that all she said?" Sally asked, imperturbably.
"Oh no, I'm sure it wasn't. But that girl—Miss Standish-Roe—who's gone with them to-night—she was there, and she kept on breaking into our conversation so that really I can't quite remember."
Had he watched Sally's face then, as closely as he had watched it all through dinner, he would have seen the colour of ashes that swept across it, tardily letting the blood drain back into her cheeks.
"Miss Standish-Roe?" she repeated, almost inaudibly.
"Yes—Coralie—she's the youngest daughter of old Sir Standish-Roe. All the others have paired off. Didn't you know Jack was going with them to-night?"
"Not with her."
"By Jove—I'm sorry, then." He shrugged his shoulders to free himself from the sense of discomfort to his conscience. "I suppose I ought not to have mentioned it."
"Why not?"
It is hard to prevent a woman, in the stress of emotion, from becoming melodramatic. Tragedy twists her features, strikes unnatural lights in her eyes. She has but little understanding of the drama of reserve. She acts with her heart, not with her brain—with her emotions, not with her intellect. In a moment of Tragedy, it is possible for a man to think consciously in his mind of the appearance he presents. With a woman that is impossible. Considerate at every other time of the impression which she gives, a woman, with the full light of emotion upon her, throws appearances to the winds. She will cry, though she knows there is nothing less prepossessing; she will distend nostrils, curl her lip with an ugly turn, fling herself utterly into the grip of the situation, and lose dignity in the tempest of her feelings, unless it be, as in some cases, that the imperiousness of anger should add a dignity to her stature.
So, in that moment, it became with Sally. From the instant that she knew there was another woman in Traill's life—and it needed even less than instinct to show her that this girl was trying to steal him from her—the whole flame of jealousy licked her with a burning tongue. Quiet, sensitive, tender-hearted little Sally Bishop blazed into a furnace of emotion. She did not even know that she was melodramatic; she did not stop to think what effect her expression or her action would have on this man beside her. When he questioned the advisability of having told her that which came so near to the whole system of her being, she let reserve go, and feelings—a pack of sensations unleashed—raced riot across her mind, twisting her childish face into a haggard distortion of jealousy.
"Why not?" she repeated under her breath—"Why shouldn't you have mentioned it? Did he tell you not to?"
Before him, within the next few moments, Devenish could see the rising of a storm, and so he set his sails, kept a clear head, talked gently, almost beneath his breath, as if the matter were not of the import she found it. The jealousy of women was not unknown to him. He had met it often before; knew the tempest it called forth; had sailed through it himself with canvas close-reefed and tiller well-gripped in his hands. In Sally's eyes, as she branded her question on his mind, he could discern that unnatural glint which presages the driven action of a woman who is goaded to desperation. For Traill's sake, for her sake also, for his own sake too, it was essential to keep a steady head—move warily and take no risks.
"Did he tell you not to?" she asked again, before the plan of action was settled in his mind.
"Not at all—of course not. Why should he? Besides, if he had, should I have spoken to you about it? I thought you knew."
"No—I didn't know. How old is she—this girl?"
"About twenty-one, I suppose. Twenty-two—twenty-one."
"Is she pretty?"
Devenish screwed up his lips—lifted his shoulders.
"Is she?" she reiterated.
"Many people might not think so."
"But you do?"
"Well—I suppose—well, she's not what you'd call plain."
"Ah, you won't tell me. She is pretty—very pretty. Is she fair?"
"Yes."
"Fairer than I am?"
"Well—she has red hair, you see."
"Is her father wealthy?"
"I shouldn't think so. Of course they're by no means poor."
"He's a knight—you said."
"He's Sir—he's a baronet."
"That means the title's in the family."
"Exactly."
"Is she a nice girl? You know her—you said so."
"Oh yes, she's quite nice. Nothing very particular, nothing very wonderful."
She looked full to his eyes, her own starved for knowledge.
"You're not telling me the truth," she exclaimed suddenly. "You're telling me all lies. You're trying to save Jack. You know you've said too much in telling me that he was going with her to-night, now you're trying to smooth it over."
"My dear Miss Bishop—" He smiled amiably at her distress of mind—"Surely Jack can go with his sister and some other lady to a theatre without your being so unreasonably put out about it. You can't wish to tie him down."
"I don't wish to tie him down. That's the last thing I should dream of doing. But you know as well as I do that he hates that set in society, would never have gone near the house in Sloane Street if it had not been for his sister's unhappiness about her husband!"
Devenish looked up at her quickly with a swift change of expression.
"What unhappiness?" he asked.
"Why, that they're not getting on together."
The moment she had said it, a rush of fear that she had betrayed Traill's confidence, overwhelmed her with a sense of nausea.
"Please don't say I've said that," she begged.
"Certainly not; but, how on earth can you say it? Captain and Mrs. Durlacher may not be lovers in the passionate sense of the word, but I know of few married people who get on as well as they do."
She looked at him with increasing amazement.
"Some time ago—yes—perhaps. But not now?"
"Yes, now. I know it for a fact. They hit it off admirably."
Hit it off—Traill's very words! Then it was a lie. A lie of Mrs. Durlacher's that day when they were down at Apsley, a lie to win his sympathy at a moment when she had all but lost it. She had come down there to Apsley with the intention of estranging them. Traill had seen through that. Sally had realized at the time that that was what had stirred him to anger when he had come into the dining-room, finding his sister there with her. Mrs. Durlacher had failed then. She remembered her smothered feelings of delight at the attitude he was taking when she left the room; but it was after that, after she had gone upstairs, that Mrs. Durlacher, with this lie of her unhappiness, had won him to her side.
"Are you absolutely sure of that?" she whispered.
"Why, of course! If anybody's spreading that report about, it's a confounded lie."
Sally looked piteously about her. The iron teeth of the trap she had seen were surely fast in her now. As yet, she was unable to discern the deeper motive in Mrs. Durlacher's mind in which the proprietorship of Apsley Manor played so vital a part; but she was none the less certain of the designs that were being carried out so effectually to wrest Traill from her side. She was an encumbrance to his career. Had he told her that himself she would, with bowed head, have accepted the inevitable; but, coming to her in this way, this deep-laid plot and all the machinations of a woman whom, from the very first, she had had good reason to despise, a devil of jealousy was wakened in her. Obedience she might have given; her life she would willingly have offered; yet when it was a subtle poison that was being dropped into his mind to eat away his love for her, all force in her nature rose uppermost and she was driven to ends so foreign, so inconsistent with her whole being, that from that moment Devenish scarcely recognized her as the same woman.
"I can't come to the music hall with you," she said suddenly.
He looked at her suspiciously.
"Why not?" he asked.
"I couldn't—I couldn't sit there—I—"
It was impossible not to feel sympathy for her. The hardest nature in the world must yield its pity when the scourge of circumstance falls upon the weak. Devenish only knew in part what she was suffering. The mistress—deserted—is a position precarious enough, undesirable enough for any man to realize and feel sympathy for. To her mind, seeing that before her, he offered all such pity as he possessed. But of the love wrenched from her life, the heart aching with its overwhelming burden of misery, he saw nothing. She would get over it. He knew that. Women did—women had to. She would settle down into another type of existence. She would become some other man's mistress. She would pull through. He looked at her childish face and hoped she would pull through. The thought crossed his mind that it would be a pity—a spoiling of something not meant to be spoilt—if she lost caste and went on the streets. She deserved a better fate than that. But it would never come to that.
"What are you going to do, then?" he asked quietly.
"Oh, I don't know—anything—I don't know."
"You won't do anything foolish?"
"Foolish? How? Foolish?"
He leant his elbows on the table, bearing his eyes direct upon hers. The slight catch in her voice was breaking almost on a note of hysteria.
"You're excited, you know," he said gently. "You know, you're imagining things. You've got no grounds for them—I assure you you've got no grounds. Come to the music hall with me and forget all about it."
She shook her head.
"I couldn't," she replied; "I couldn't. I—I shan't do anything foolish, but I think I'll go now—now—if you've finished."
"Yes, I've quite finished. But I'm going to say something first."
"What?"
"Don't let your imagination run riot with you; and if I can do anything for you—there's nothing to be done, I mean—but if I can, you let me know. Will you?"
She nodded her head vaguely. It meant nothing to her; but she nodded her head.