Ingworth came back soon. There was a slight bruise upon his upper lip, but that was all.
The two men—it was to be the last time in lives which had so strangely crossed—were friends in a sense that they had never been before. Both of them looked back upon that afternoon during the immediate days to come with regret and sorrow. Each remembered it differently, according to the depth of individual temperament. But it was remembered, as an hour when strife and turmoil had ceased; when, trembling on the brink of unforeseen events to come, there was pause and friendship, when the good in both of them rose to the surface for a little space and was observed of both.
"Now, Dicker, you just watch. They'll all be here soon for their afternoon drink—the local bloods, I mean. It's their substitute for afternoon tea, don't you know. They sit here talking about nothing to friends who have devoted their lives to the subject. Watch it for your work. You'll learn a lot. That must have been the way in which Flaubert got his stuff for 'Madame Bovary.'"
Something of the artist's fire animated the lad. He was no artist. He hadn't read "Madame Bovary," and it wouldn't have interested him if he had. But the plan appealed to him. It fitted in with his method of life. It was getting something for nothing. Yet he realised, to give him his due, a little more than this. He was sitting at the feet of his Master.
But as it happened, on that afternoon the local bloods were otherwise employed, for at any rate they made no appearance.
Lothian felt at ease. He had one or two more pegs. He had been so comparatively abstemious since his accident and under the regime of Dr. Morton Sims, that what he took now had only a tranquillising and pleasantly narcotic influence.
The nervous irritation of an hour before which had made him strike his friend, the depression and hollow misery which succeeded it, the few minutes of lyrical exaltation as he thought of Rita Wallace, all these were merged in a sense ofbien êtreand drowsiness.
He enjoyed an unaccustomed and languid repletion in his mind, as if it had been overfed and wanted to lie down for a time.
Mr. Helzephron sat down at their table after a time and prosed away in his monotonous voice. He was a man of some education, had read, and was a Dickens lover. He did not often have the opportunity of conversation with any one like Lothian and he made the most of it. Like many common men who are anxious to ingratiate themselves with their superiors, he thought that the surest way to do so was to abuse his neighbours, thus, as he imagined, proclaiming himself above them and flattering his hearer. Lothian always said of the landlord of the George that he was worth his weight in gall, and for a time he was amused.
At five o'clock the two visitors had some tea and toast and at the half hour both were ready to go.
"I'll run round to the post office," Ingworth said, "and see if there are any late letters."
"Very well," Gilbert answered, "and I'll have the horse put in."
The afternoon post for Mortland Royal left the town at three, and letters which came in by the five o'clock mail were not delivered at the village until the next morning unless—as now—they were specially called for.
Ingworth ran off.
"Well, Mr. Lothian," said the landlord. "I don't often have the pleasure of a talk with you. Just one more with me before you go?"
They were standing together at the bar counter when a page boy entered the lounge and went up to his master. "Please, sir," he said, "the new young lady's come."
"Oh, very well," Helzephron answered. "I'll be out in a minute. Where is she?"
"In the hall, sir. And shall Boots go down for her trunk?"
"Yes; tell him to go to the station at once with the hand-cart. A new barmaid," he said, turning to Gilbert, "for the four ale bar, a woman of about thirty, not much class, you understand, wouldn't do for the lounge, but will keep the working men in order. It's astonishing how glad they are to get a job when they're about thirty! They're no draw then, and they know it. The worst of it is that these older women generally help themselves from the till or the bottle! I've had fifty applications for this job."
He led the way out into the hall of the hotel, followed by Lothian, who was on his way to the stable yard.
A woman was sitting upon a plush-covered bench by the wall. She was a dark gipsy looking creature, coarsely handsome and of an opulent figure. She stood up as Helzephron came out into the hall, and there seemed to be a suggestion of great boldness and flaunting assertion about her, oddly restrained and overlaid by a timidity quite at variance with her appearance.
The landlord was in front, and for a moment Lothian was concealed. Then, as he was about to wish Helzephron good afternoon and turned for the purpose, he came into view of the new barmaid.
She saw him full face and an instant and horrible change came over her own. It faded to dead paper-white. The dark eyes became fixed like lenses. The jaw dropped like the jaw of a ventriloquist's puppet, a strangled gurgle came from the open mouth and then a hoarse scream of terror. The woman's arms jerked up in the air as if they had been pulled by strings, and her hands in shabby black gloves curved into claws and were rigid. Then she spun round, caught her boot in the leg of the chair and fell in a swoon upon the floor.
The landlord swore in his surprise and alarm.
Then, keen as a knife, he whipped round and looked at Lothian.
Lothian's face expressed nothing but the most unbounded astonishment. Help was summoned and the woman was carried into the landlord's private office, where restoratives were applied.
In three or four minutes she opened her eyes and moaned. Lothian, Helzephron and a chambermaid who was attending on her, were the only other people in the office.
"There, there," said the landlord irritably, when he saw that consciousness was returning. "What in heaven's name did you go off like that for? You don't belong to do that sort of thing often I hope. If so I may as well tell you at once that you'll be no good here."
"I'm very sorry, sir," said the poor creature, trembling and obviously struggling with rising hysteria. "It took me sudden. I'm very strong, really, sir. It shan't happen again."
"I hope not," Helzephron answered in a rather more kindly tone. "Elsie, go into the lounge and ask Miss Palmer for a little brandy and water—but what took you like this?"
The woman hesitated. Her glance fell upon Lothian who was standing there, a pitying and perplexed spectator of this strange scene. She could not repress a shudder as she saw him, though both men noticed that the staring horror was going from her eyes and that her face was relieved.
"I'm very sorry," she said again, "but the sight of that gentleman coming upon me sudden and unexpected was the cause of it."
"This gentleman!" Helzephron replied. "This is Mr. Gilbert Lothian, a famous gentleman and one of our country gentleman in Norfolk. What can you have to do with him?"
"Oh, nothing sir, nothing. But there's a very strong resemblance in this gentleman to some one"—she hesitated and shuddered—"to some one I once knew. I thought it was him come back at first. I see now that there's lots of difference. I've had an unhappy life, sir."
She began to sob quietly.
"Now, drink this," said the landlord, handing her the brandy which the chambermaid had just brought. "Stop crying and Elsie will take you up to your room. Your references are all right and I don't want to know nothing of your history. Do your duty by me like a good girl and you'll find me a good master. Your past's nothing to me."
Lothian and the landlord went out into the stable yard where the rainbow-throated pigeons were murmuring on the tiled roofs, and the ostler—like Mousqueton—was spitting meditatively. They discussed this strange occurrence.
"I never saw a woman so frightened!" said Mr. Helzephron. "You might have been old Bogy himself, Mr. Lothian. I didn't know what to think for a moment! I hope she doesn't drink."
"Well, I suppose we've all got a double somewhere or other," Lothian answered. "I suppose she saw some likeness in me to some one who has ill used her, poor thing."
"Oh, yes, sir," Helzephron replied. "That's it—she said as much. Half the plays and novels turn on such likenesses. I used to be a great play-goer when I was in London and I've seen all the best actresses. But I'm damned if I ever see such downright horror as there was in that girl's face. He must have been a bad un whoever he was. Real natural tragedy in that face—William, put in Mr. Lothian's horse."
He said good-bye and re-entered the hotel.
Lothian remained in the centre of the yard. He lit a cigarette and watched the horse being harnessed. His face was clouded with thought.
It was very strange! How frightful the poor woman had looked. It was a nightmare face, a face of Gustave Doré from the Inferno engravings!
He never saw the woman again, as it happened, and never knew who she was. If he had read of the Hackney murder in the papers of the year before he had given it no attention. He knew nothing of the coarse siren for whose sake the poisoned man of Hackney had killed the wife who loved him, and who, under an assumed name, was living out her obscure and haunted life in menial toil.
Dr. Morton Sims might have thrown some light upon the incident at the George perhaps. But then Dr. Morton Sims never heard of it and it soon passed from the poet's mind.
No doubt the Fiend Alcohol who provided the incidental music at the head of his orchestra was smiling.
For the Overture to the Dance of Death is curiously coloured music and there are red threads of melody interwoven with the sable chords.
CHAPTER VI
AN OMNES EXEUNT FROM MORTLAND ROYAL
"Wenn Menschen auseinandergehnSo sagen sie—auf Wiedersehn!Ja Wiederseh'n."—Goethe.
"Wenn Menschen auseinandergehnSo sagen sie—auf Wiedersehn!Ja Wiederseh'n."
"Wenn Menschen auseinandergehn
So sagen sie—auf Wiedersehn!
Ja Wiederseh'n."
—Goethe.
—Goethe.
Dickson Ingworth returned from the post office with several letters.
He handed three of them to Lothian. One was a business letter from the firm of Ince and Amberley, the other an invitation to a literary dinner at the Trocadero, the third, with foreign stamp and postmark, was for Mary Lothian.
As they drove out of the town, Ingworth was in high spirits. His eyes sparkled, he seemed excited.
"Good news by this post, Dicker?" Gilbert asked.
Ingworth had been waiting for the question. He tried to keep the tremulous pleasure out of his voice as he answered.
"Well, rather. I've just heard from Herbert Toftrees. When I saw him last, just before I came down here, he hinted that he might be able to influence things for me in a certain quarter.". . .
He paused.
Gilbert saw how it was. The lad was bursting with news but wanted to appear calm, wanted to be coaxed. Well, Gilbert owed him that!
"Really! Has something come off, Dicker, then? Do tell me, I should be so glad."
"Yes, Gilbert. It's the damnedst lucky thing! Toftrees is a topping chap. The other day he hinted at something he might be able to do for me in his deep-voiced, mysterious way. I didn't pay much attention because they say he's rather like that, and one mustn't put too much trust in it. But, by Jove! it's come off. The editor of theWire—Ommany you know—wants somebody to go to Italy with the delegation of English Public School Masters, as special correspondent for a month. They've offered it to me. It's a big step, Gilbert, for me! They will pay awfully well for the job and it means that I shall get in permanently with theWire."
"I'm awfully glad, Dicker. Splendid for you! But what is it exactly?"
"The new movement in Italy, anti-Papal and National. It's the schools, you know. The King and the Mayor of Rome are frightfully keen that all the better class schools, like our public schools, you know—shall be taken out of the hands of the Jesuits and the seminary priests. Games and a healthy sort of school life are to be organised for the boys. They're going to try and introduce our system if they can. A Harrow tutor, a Winchester man, undermasters from Haileybury, Repton and Denstone are going out to organise things."
"And you're going with them to tell England all about it! I congratulate you, Dicker. It's a big chance. You can make some fine articles out of it, if you take care. It should introduce your name."
"Thanks awfully, I hope so. It's because I got my running blue I expect. But it's jolly decent of the old Toffer all the same."
"Oh, it is. When do you go?"
"At once. They start in four days. I shall have to go up to town by the first train to-morrow."
"I'm sorry, but of course, if you must". . .
"Oh, I must," Ingworth said importantly. "I have to see Ommany to-morrow night."
Unconsciously, as he urged the cob onwards, his head sank forward a little, and he imitated the grave pre-occupation of Lothian upon the drive out.
Mary Lothian was sitting in a deck chair in front of the house when the two men came through the gate. A little table stood by the side of her chair, and on it was a basket of the thin silk socks her husband wore. She was darning one of the expensive gossamer things with a tiny needle and almost invisible thread.
Mary looked up quickly as the two men came up to her. There was a swift interrogation in her eyes, instantly suppressed but piteous in its significance.
But now, she smiled.
Gilbert was all right! She knew it at once. He had come back from Wordingham quite sober, and in her tender anxious heart she blessed God and Dr. Morton Sims.
She was told of Dickson's opportunity. Gilbert was as anxious to tell, and as excited as his friend. "Oh, Iamso glad, Dicker!" she said over and over again. "My dear boy, Iamso glad! Now you've got your chance at last. Your real chance. Never come down here again if you don't make the most of it!"
Ingworth sat down upon the lawn at her feet. Dusk was at hand. The sun was sinking to rest and the flowers of the garden were almost shouting with perfume.
Rooks winged homeward through the fading light, and the Dog Trust gambolled in the middle-distance of the lawn as the cock-chafers went booming by.
. . ."Think I shall be able to do it, Mrs. Gilbert?"
"Of course you will, Dicker! Put your very heart into it, won't you! It's your chance at last, isn't it?"
Ingworth jumped to his feet. "I shall do it," he said gravely, as who should say that the destinies of kingdoms depended upon his endeavours.
"And now I must go in and write some letters. I shall have to be off quite early to-morrow, Mrs. Gilbert."
"I'll arrange all that. Go in and do your letters. We're not going to dine till eight to-night."
Ingworth crossed the lawn and went into the house.
Gilbert drew his chair up to his wife.
She held out her hand. He took it, raised it to his lips and kissed it. He was at home.
"I'm glad, dear," Mary said, "that Dicker has got something definite to do. It will steady him. If he is successful it will give him a new sense of responsibility. I wouldn't say anything to you, Gillie, but I have not liked him so much this time as I used to."
"Why?"
"He doesn't seem to have been treating you quite in the way he used to. He's been talking a good deal to me of some people who seem to have taken him up in London. And I can't help knowing that you've done everything for him in the past. Really, Gillie, I have had to snub him quite severely, for me, once or twice."
"Yes."
"Yes.He assumed a confidential, semi-superior sort of air and manner. In a clumsy, boyish sort of way he's tried to suggest that I'm not happy with you."
Lothian laughed bitterly. "I know," he said, "so many people are like that. Ingworth has good streaks like all of us. But speaking generally he's unstable. I've found it out lately, too. Never mind. He's off to-morrow. Oh, by the way, here's a letter for you, dear, I forgot."
Mary took the letter and rose from her chair. Arm in arm they entered the house together and went upstairs to dress for dinner.
Gilbert had had his bath, had changed, and was tying his tie in front of the dressing table mirror, when the door of his room opened and Mary hurried in.
Her hair was coiled in its masses of pale gold, and a star of emeralds which he had given her was fixed in it. She wore a long dressing robe of green silk fringed with dull red arabesques—he had bought it for her in Tunis.
A rope of camels' hair gathered it in round her slender waist and the lovely column of her neck, the superb white arms were bare.
"What is it, dear?" he said, for his wife's fair face was troubled.
"Oh, darling," she answered, with a sob in her voice, "I've had bad news from Nice."
"About Dorothy?"
"Yes, Miss Dalton, the lady nurse who is with her has written. It's all been no use, Gillie, no use at all! She's dying, dear. The doctor from Cannes who has been attending her has said so. And Sir William Larus who is at Mentone was called in too. They give her three weeks or a month. They've cabled to India but it's a forlorn hope. Harold won't be able to get to her in time—though there's just a chance."
She sank down upon the bed and covered her face with her hands.
She was speaking of her sister, Lady Davidson, who was stricken with consumption. Sir Harold Davidson was a major in the Indian Army, a baronet without much money, and a keen soldier. Mary's sister had developed the disease in England, where she had been ordered from Simla by the doctors there. She was supposed to be "run down" and no more then. Phthisis had been diagnosed in London—incipient only—and she had been sent to the Riviera at once. The reports from Nice had become much worse during the last few weeks, and now—this letter.
Gilbert went to his wife and sat down beside her upon the bed, drawing her to him. He was fond of Dorothy Davidson and also of her husband, but he knew that Mary adored her sister.
"Darling," he said, "don't give way. It may not be so bad after all. And so much depends upon the patient in all illnesses—doesn't it? Morton Sims was telling us so the other night, you remember? Dolly is an awfully sporting sort of girl. She won't give in."
Mary leant her head upon his shoulder. The strong arms that held her brought consolation. The lips of the husband and wife met.
"It's dear of you to say so," Mary said at length, "but I know, dear. The doctor and the nurse have been quite explicit. Dorothy is dying, Gillie, I can't let her die alone, can I?"
"No, dear, of course not," he replied rather vaguely, not quite understanding what she meant for a moment.
"She must have some one of her own people with her. Harold will most likely not arrive in time. I must go—mustn't I?"
Then Gilbert realised.
His swift imagination pictured a lonely hotel death-bed among the palms and mimosa of the Côte d'Azur, a pretty and charming girl fading away from the blue white and gold with no loving hands to tend her, and only the paid services of strangers to speed or assuage the young soul's passage from sunshine and laughter to the unknown.
"You must go to her at once, sweetheart," he said gravely.
"Oh, Imust! You don't mind my leaving you?"
"How can you ask it? But I will come with you. We will both go. You will want a man."
Mary hesitated for a second, and then she shook her head.
"I shall manage quite well by myself," she said. "It will be better so. I'm quite used to travelling alone as you know. And the journey to Nice is nothing. I shall be in one carriage all the way from Calais. You could come out after, if necessary."
"I would come gladly, dear."
"I know, Gillie, and it's sweet of you. But you couldn't be of use and it would be miserable for you. It is better that I should be alone with Dolly. I can always wire if I want you."
"As you think best, dear. Then I will stay quietly down here."
"Yes, do. You have that poem to work on, 'A Lady in a Library.' It is a beautiful fancy and will make you greater than ever! It's quite the best thing you've done so far. And then there's the shooting."
"Oh, I shall do very well, Molly. Don't bother about me, dear."
She held him closer. Her cool white arms were around his neck.
"But I always do bother about you, husband," she whispered, "because I love you better than anything else in the world. It is sweet of you to let me go like this. And I feel so much happier about you now, since the doctor has come to the village."
He winced with pain and shame at her loving words. A pang went right through him.
It passed as swiftly as it had come. Sweet and loving women too often provide men with excuses for their own ill conduct. Lothian knew that—under the special circumstances of which his wife knew nothing—it was his duty to go with Mary. But he didn't want to go. He would have hated going.
Already a wide vista was opening before him—a freedom, an absolute freedom! Wild music! The Wine of Life! Now, if ever, Fate, Destiny, call it what he would, was preparing the choicest banquet.
He had met Rita. Rita was waiting, he could be with Rita!
And yet, so subtle and tortuous is the play of egoism upon conscience, he felt pleased with himself for his ready concurrence in his wife's plans. He assumed the rôle she gave him with avidity, and when he answered her she thought him the best and noblest of men.
"It will be dreadful without you, darling, but you are quite right to go. Send for me if you want me. I'll catch the next boat. But I have my work to do, and I can see a good deal of Morton Sims"—he knew well, and felt with shame, the cunning of this last statement—"and if I'm dull I can always run up to town for a day or two and stay at the club."
"Of course you can, dear. You won't feel so lonely then. Now about details. I must pack to-night."
"Yes, dear, and then you can go off with Dicker in the morning, and catch the night boat. If you like, that is."
"Well, I shouldn't gain anything by that, dear. I should only have to wait about in Calais until one o'clock the next day when the train de luxe starts. But I should like to go first thing to-morrow. I couldn't wait about here the whole day. Dicker will be company of sorts. I shall get to town about two, and go to the Charing Cross Hotel. Then I shall do some shopping, go to bed early, and catch the boat train from the station in the morning. I would rather do it like that."
Both of them were experienced travellers and knew the continental routes well. It was arranged so.
Mary did not come down to dinner. A tray was sent up to her room. Lothian dined alone with Ingworth. The voices of the two men were hushed to a lower tone in deference to the grief of the lady above. But there was a subdued undercurrent of high spirits nevertheless. Ingworth was wildly excited by the prospect before him; Gilbert fell into his mood with no trouble at all.
He also had his own thoughts, his own private thoughts.
—"I say, Dicker, let's have some champagne, shall we?—just to wish your mission success."
"Yes, do let's. I'm just in the mood for buzz-water to-night."
The housemaid went to the cellar and fetched the wine.
"Here's to you, Dicker! May you become a G. W. Stevens or a Julian Ralph!"
"Thanks, old chap. I'll do my best, now that my chance has come. I say I am awfully sorry about Lady Davidson. It's such rough luck on Mrs. Gilbert. You'll be rather at a loose end without your wife, won't you?—or will you write?"
He tossed off his second glass of Pol Roger.
"Oh, I shall be quite happy," Lothian answered, and as he said it a quiet smile came placidly upon his lips. It glowed out from within, as from some comfortable inward knowledge.
Ingworth saw it, and his mind, quickened by wine and excitement, found the truth unerringly.
Anger and envy flushed the young man's veins. He hated his host once more.
"So that is his game, damned hypocrite!" Ingworth thought. "I shall be away, his wife will be out of the way and he will make the running with Rita Wallace just as he likes."
He looked at Lothian, and then had a mental vision of himself.
"He's fat and bloated," he thought. "Surely a young and lovely girl like Ritacan'tcare for him?"
But even as he endeavoured to comfort his greedy conceit by these imaginings, he felt the shadow of the big mind falling upon them. He knew, as he had known so often of late, the power of that which was cased in its envelope of flesh, and which could not be denied.
Perhaps there is no hate so bitter, no fear so impotent and distressing, as that which is experienced by the surface for the depth.
It is the fury of the brilliant scabbard against the sword within, decoration versus that which cleaves.
Ingworth wished that he were not going away—leaving the field clear. . . .
"Have a cigar, Dicker. No?—well, here's the very best of luck."
"Thanks, the same to you!"
END OF BOOK TWO
BOOK THREE
FRUIT OF THE DEAD SEA
"Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.""Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe: let her breasts satisfy thee at all times: and be thou ravished always with her love.""And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?""His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins."
"Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth."
"Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe: let her breasts satisfy thee at all times: and be thou ravished always with her love."
"And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?"
"His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins."
CHAPTER I
THE GIRLS IN THE FOURTH STORY FLAT
"We were two daughters of one race;She was the fairest in the face;"—Tennyson.
"We were two daughters of one race;She was the fairest in the face;"
"We were two daughters of one race;
She was the fairest in the face;"
—Tennyson.
—Tennyson.
In the sitting room of a small forty-five pound flat, upon the fourth floor of a tall red-brick building in West Kensington known as Queens Mansions, Ethel Harrison, the girl who lived with Rita Wallace, sat sewing by the window.
It was seven o'clock in the evening and though dusk was at hand there was still enough light to sew by. The flat, moreover, was on the west side of the building and caught the last rays of the sun as he sank to rest behind the quivering vapours of London.
Last week in August as it was, the heat which hung over the metropolis for so long was in no way abated. All the oxygen was gone from the air, and for those who must stay in London—the workers, who could only read in the papers of translucent sunlit seas in Cornwall where one bathed from the beaches all day long; of bright northern moors where dew fell upon the heather at dawn—life was become stifling and hard.
In the window hung a bird-cage and the canary within it—the pet of these two lonely maidens—drooped upon its perch. It was known as "The Lulu Bird" and was a recurring incident in their lives.
Ethel was six and twenty, short, undistinguished of feature and with sandy hair. She was the daughter of a very poor clergyman in Lancashire, and she was the principal typist in the busy office of a firm of solicitors in the city. She had ever so many certificates for shorthand, was a quick and accurate machine-writer, understood the routine of an office in all its details, and was invaluable to her employers. They boasted of her, indeed, trusted her in every way, worked her from nine to six on normal days, to any hours of the night at times of pressure, and paid her the highest salary in the market.
That is to say, that this girl was at the very top of her profession and received two pounds ten shillings a week. Dozens of girls envied her, she was more highly paid than most of the men clerks in the city. She knew herself to be a very fortunate girl. She gave high technical ability, a good intelligence, unceasing, unwearying and most loyal service for fifty shillings a week.
Each year she had a holiday of fourteen days, when she clubbed with some other girls and they all went to some farmhouse in the country, or even for a cheap excursion abroad, with everything calculated to the last shilling. This girl did all this, dressed like a lady, had a little home of her own with Rita, preserved her dignity and independence, and sent many a small postal order to help the poor curate's wife, her mother, with the hungry brood of younger ones. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison in Lancashire spoke of their eldest daughter with pride. She had "her flat in town." She was "doing extraordinarily well"; "Sister Ethel" was a fairy godmother to her little brothers and sisters.
She was a good girl, good and happy. The graces were denied her; she had made all sweet virtues her own. No man wooed her, no man looked twice at her. She had no religious ecstasies, and—instead of a theatre where one had to pay—asked no thrills from sensuous ceremonial. She simply went to the nearest church and said her prayers.
It is the shame of most of us that when we meet such women as these, we pass them by with a kindly laugh or a patronising word. Men and women of the world prefer more decorative folk. They like to watch holiness in a picturesque setting, Elizabeth of Hungary washing the beggar's feet upon the palace steps. . . .
A little worker-bee saint, making a milk pudding for a sick washerwoman on a gas-stove in a flat—that comes rather too close home, does it not?
The light was really fading now, and Ethel put down her sewing, rose from her basket-work chair, and lit the gas.
It was an incandescent burner, hanging from the centre of the ceiling, and the girls' living room was revealed.
It was a very simple, comely, makeshift little home.
On one side of the fireplace—now filled with a brown and gasping harts-tongue fern in an earthen pot—was Ethel's bookshelf.
Up-to-date she had a hundred and thirty-two books, of the "Everyman" and "World's Classics" series. She generally managed a book and a half each fortnight, and her horizon was bounded by the two-hundredth volume. Dickens she had very much neglected of late, the new Ruskin had kept the set at "David Copperfield" for weeks, but she was getting on steadily with her Thackeries.
Rita had no books. She was free of that Kingdom at the Podley Institute, but the little black piano was hers. The great luxury of the Chesterfield was a joint extravagance. Both ends would let down to make a couch when necessary, and though it had cost the girls three pounds ten, it "made all the difference to the room."
All the photographs upon the mantel-shelf were Ethel's. There was her father in his cassock—staring straight out of the frame like a good and patient mule. . . .Her sisters and brothers also, of all ages and sizes, and all clothed with an odd suggestion of masquerading, of attempting the right thing. Not but what they were all perfect to poor Ethel, whose life was far too busy and limited to understand the tragedy of clothes.
Rita's photographs were on the piano.
There were several of her school-friends—lucky Rita had been to a smart school!—and the enigmatic face of Muriel Amberley with its youthful Mona Lisa smile looked out from an oval frame of red leather stamped with an occasional fleur-de-lys in gold.
There was a portrait of Mr. Podley, cut from theGraphicand framed cheaply, and there were two new photographs.
One of them was that of a curly-headed, good-looking young man with rather thick lips and a painful consciousness that he was being photographed investing the whole picture with suspense.
Ethel had heard Rita refer to the original of this portrait once or twice as "Dicker" or "Curly."
But, then, there was another photograph. A large one this time, done in cloudy browns, nearly a foot square and with the name of a very famous artist of the camera stamped into the card.
This was a new arrival, also, of the past few weeks, and it was held in a massive frame of thick plain silver.
The frame, with the portrait in it, had arrived at the flat some fortnight ago in an elaborate wooden box.
Ethel had recognised the portrait at once. It was of Mr. Gilbert Lothian, the great poet. Rita had met him at a dinner-party, and, if she didn't exaggerate, the great man had almost shown a disposition to be friendly. It was nice of him to send Rita his photograph, but the frame was rather too much. All that massive silver!—"it must have cost thirty shillings at least," she had thought in her innocence.
When the gas was turned up, for some reason or other her eye had fallen at once upon the photograph upon the top of the piano.
She had read some of Lothian's poems, but she had found nothing whatever in them that had pleased her. Even when her father had written to her and recommended them for her to read the poems meant less than nothing, and the face—no! she didn't like the face. "I hardly think that it's quite agoodface," she said to herself, not recognising that—the question of morality quite apart—her hostility rose from the fact that it was a face utterly outside her limited experience, a face that was eloquent of a life, of things, of thoughts that she could never even begin to understand.
In the middle of the room the small round table was spread with a fair white cloth and set for a meal. There was a green bowl of bananas, a loaf of brown bread, some sardines in a glass dish. But a place was laid for one person only.
Rita was in their mutual bedroom dressing. Rita was going to dine out.
The two girls had lived together for a year now. At the beginning of their association one thing had been agreed between them. Their outside lives were to be lived independently of their home life. No confidences were to be expected or demanded as a matter of course. If confidences were made they were to be free and spontaneous, at the wish or whim of each.
The contract had been loyally observed. Ethel never had any secrets. Rita had had several during the year of their association, but they had proved only minor little secrets after all. Sooner or later she had told them, and they had been food for virginal laughter for them both.
But now, during the last few weeks?—Ethel's glance flitted uneasily from the big photograph upon the piano to a little round table of bamboo work in one corner of the sitting room.
Upon this table lay a huge bunch of dark red roses. The stalks were fitted into a holder of finely-woven white grass—as delicate in texture as a panama hat—and the bouquet was tied with graceful bows and streamers of purple satin—broad, expensive ribbon.
A boy messenger, most unusual visitor, had brought them an hour ago. "For Miss Rita Wallace."
The quiet mind, the crystal soul of this girl, dimly discerned something alien and disturbing.
The door of the sitting-room opened and Rita came in.
She was radiant. Her one evening dress was not an expensive affair, a simple, girl's frock of olive-greencrêpe de chenein the Empire fashion, but the girl and her clothes were one.
The high "waist," coming just under the curve of the breast, was edged with an embroidery of dull silver thread, and the gleam of this upon its olive setting threw up the fair column of the throat the rounded arms, the whiteness of the girlish bosom, with a most striking and arresting lustre.
Round her neck the girl wore a riband of dark green velvet, and as a pendant from it hung a little star of amethysts and olivines set in a filigree of platinum, no rare nor costly jewel, but a beautiful one. She was pulling her long white gloves up to the elbow as she entered the room.
Ethel loved Rita dearly. Rita was her romance, the art and colour of her life. She was always saying or doing astonishing things, she was always beautiful. To-night, though the frock was an old friend, the pendant quite familiar, Ethel thought that she had never seen her friend so lovely. The nut-brown hair was shining, the young, brown eyes lit up with excitement and joy, the tints of rose and pearl upon Rita's cheeks came and went as her heart beat.
"A Duke might be glad to marry her," the plain girl thought without a throb of envy.
She was perfectly right. If Rita had been in society or on the stage she probably would have married a peer—not a Duke though, that was Ethel's inexperience. There are so few dukes that they have not the same liberty of action as other noblemen. The Beauty Market is badly organised—curious fact in an age when to purvey cats' meat is a specialised industry. But the fact remains. The prettiest girls in England don't have their pictures in the papers and advertise no dentrifice or musical comedy on the one hand, nor St. Peter and St. George, their fashionable West End temples, on the other. Buyers of Beauty have but a limited choice, and on the whole it is a salutary thing, though doubtless hard upon loveliness that perforce throws itself away upon men without rank or fortune for want of proper opportunity!
"How do I look, Wog dear?" Rita asked.
"Splendid, darling," Ethel answered eagerly—a pretty junior typist in Ethel's office, who had been snubbed, had once sent her homely senior a golliwog doll, and since then the good-humoured Ethel was "Wog" to her friends.
"I'm so glad. I want to look my best to-night."
"Well, then, you do," Ethel replied, and with an heroic effort forbore further questioning.
She always kept loyally to the compact of silence and non-interference with what went on outside the flat.
Rita chuckled and darted one of her naughty, provocative glances.
"Wog! You're dying to know where I'm going!"
Some girls would have affected indifference immediately. Not so the simple Wog.
"Of course I am, Cupid," she said.
"I'm going to dine with Gilbert."
"Gilbert?"
"Gilbert Lothian I mean, of course. We are absolute friends, Wog dear—he and I. I haven't told you before, but I will now. You remember that night I was home so late, nearly a month ago? Yes?—well I had been motoring to Brighton with Gilbert. I met him for the first time at the Amberleys'—but that you know. Since then we have become friends—such a strange and wonderful friendship it is, Ethel! It's made things so different for me."
"But how friends? Have you seen him often, then? But you can't have?"
Rita shook her head, impatiently for a moment, and then she smiled gently. How could poor old Wog know or understand!
"No!" she cried, with a little tap of her shoe upon the carpet. "But there are such things as letters aren't there?"
"Has he been writing to you, then?"
"Writing! I have had four of the most beautiful letters that a poet ever wrote. It took him days to write each one. He chose every word, over and over again. Every sentence is music, every word a note in a chord!"
Ethel went up to her friend and kissed her. "Dear old Cupid," she said, "I'm so glad, so very glad. I don't understand his poems myself, but Father simply loves them. I am sure you will be very happy. Only I do hope he is a good man—really worthy of my dear! And so"—she continued, with a struggle to get down to commonplace brightness of manner—"And so he's coming for you to-night! Now I know why you look so beautiful and are so happy."
Two tears gathered in the kind green eyes, tears of joy at her dear girl's happiness, but with a tincture of sadness too. With a somewhat unaccustomed flash of imagination, she looked into the future and saw herself lonely in the flat, or with another girl who could never be to her what Rita was.
She looked up at Rita again, trying to smile through her tears.
What she saw astounded her.
Rita's face was flushed. A knot of wrinkles had sprung between her eyebrows. Her mouth was mutinous, her brown eyes lit with an angry and puzzled light.
"I don't understand you, Ethel," she said in a voice which was so cold and unusual that the other girl was dumb.—"What on earth do you mean?"
"Mean, dear," Ethel faltered. "I don't quite understand. I thought you meant—I thought. . ."
"What did you think?"
"I thought you meant that you were engaged to him, Cupid darling!"
"Engaged!—Why Gilbert is married."
Ethel glanced quickly at the flowers, at the photograph upon the piano. Things seemed going round and round her—the heat, that was it—"But the letters!" she managed to say at length, "and, and—oh, Cupid, whatareyou doing? He can't be a good man. I'm certain of it, dear! I'm older than you are. I know more about things. You don't realise,—but how should you poor darling! He can't be a good man! Rita,does his wife know?"
The girl frowned impatiently. "How limited and narrow you are, Ethel," she said. "Have you such low ideals that you think friendship between a man and a woman impossible? Are you entirely fettered by convention and silly old puritanical nonsense? Wouldn't you be glad and proud to have a man with a wonderful mind for your friend—a man who is all chivalry and kindness, who pours out the treasures of his intellect for one?"
Ethel did not answer. She did not, in truth, know what to say. Therewasno reason she could adduce why Rita should not have a man friend. She knew that many singular and fine natures despised conventionality or ordinary rules and seemed to have the right to do so. And then—honi soit! Yet, inarticulate as she was, she felt by some instinct that there was something wrong. Mr. Gilbert Lothian was married. That meant everything. A married man, and a poet too! oughtn't to have any secret and very intimate friendships with beautiful, wilful and unprotected girls.
. . ."You have nothing to say! Of course! Thereisnothing that any wide-minded person could say. Ethel, you're a dear old stupe!"—she crossed the room and kissed her friend.
And Ethel was so glad to hear the customary affection return to Rita's voice, the soft lips upon her cheek set her gentle and loving heart in so warm a glow, that her fears and objections dissolved and she said no more.
The electric bell at the front door whirred.
Rita tore herself from Ethel's embrace. There was a mirror over the mantel-shelf. She gazed into it for a few seconds and then hurried away into the little hall.
There was the click of the latch as it was drawn back, a moment of silence, and then Ethel heard a voice with a peculiar vibration and timbre—an altogether unforgettable voice—say two words.
"At last!"
Then there was a murmur of conversation, the words of which she could not catch, interrupted once by Rita's happy laughter.
Finally she heard Rita hurry into the bedroom, no doubt for her cloak, and return with an excited word. Then the door closed and there was an instant of footsteps upon the stone stairs outside.
Ethel was left alone.
She went to her bookshelf—she did not seem to want to think just now—and after a moment's hesitation took down "Sesame and Lilies." Then she sat at the table with a sigh and looked without much interest at the bananas, the sardines and the brown bread.
Ethel was left alone.