It was as if nothing had happened that Philippa came to him on the terrace the next morning (which was a Tuesday) before breakfast. As if nothing had happened, as if she had hardly met Furnival, as if she were considering him for the first time, she began cross-questioning Straker.
"You know everybody. Tell me about Laurence Furnival.Ishe any good?"
Straker replied that she had better inquire at the Home Office, the scene of Furnival's industry.
Philippa waved the Home Office aside. "I mean, will he everdoanything?"
"Ask Fanny Brocklebank."
He knew very well that she had asked her, that she had got out of Fanny full particulars as to Furnival's family and the probable amount of his income, and that she had come to him as the source of a finer information.
"Fanny wouldn't know," said she.
"Then," said Straker, "ask Mrs. Viveash."
She turned on him a cold and steady gaze that rebuked his utterance. How dare he, it said, how dare he mention Mrs. Viveash in her presence?
She answered quietly: "There will hardly be time, I think. Mrs. Viveash is going to-day."
Straker turned on her now, and his look expressed a sort of alien and repugnant admiration. He wondered how far she had gone, how much she had told, by what intimations she had prevailed with Fanny to get Mrs. Viveash out of the house. Mrs. Viveash, to be sure, had only been invited for the week-end, from the Friday to the Tuesday, but it had been understoodthat, if her husband prolonged his business in Liverpool, she was to stay till his return. Viveash was still in Liverpool—that had been known at Amberley yesterday—and Mrs. Viveash had not been asked to stay. It had been quite simple. Mrs. Viveash, not having been asked to stay, would be obliged to go.
"And is Furnival going, too?" he asked.
"I believe not," said Philippa.
An hour later Mrs. Viveash joined them in the avenue where he waited for Miss Tarrant, who had proposed that he should walk with her to the village.
In the clear and cruel light of the morning Mrs. Viveash showed him a blanched face and eyes that had seen with miserable lucidity the end of illusion, the end of passion, and now saw other things and were afraid.
"You know I'm going?" she said.
Straker said that he was sorry to hear it; by which he meant that he was sorry for Mrs. Viveash.
She began to talk to him of trifles, small occurrences at Amberley, of the affair of Mr. Higginson and Miss Probyn, and then, as by a natural transition, of Miss Tarrant.
"Do you like Miss Tarrant?" she asked suddenly, point-blank.
Straker jibbed. "Well, really—I—I haven't thought about it."
He hadn't. He knew how he stood with her, how he felt about her; but whether it amounted to liking or not liking he had not yet inquired. But that instant he perceived that he did not like her, and he lied.
"Of course I like her. Why shouldn't I?"
"Because"—she was very slow about it—"somehow I should have said that you were not that sort."
Her light on him came halting, obscured, shiveringwith all the vibrations of her voice; but he could see through it, down to the sources of her thinking, to something secret, luminous, and profound—her light on Philippa.
She was instantly aware of what she had let him see.
"Oh," she cried, "that was horrid of me. It was feline."
"It was a little," he admitted.
"It's because I know she doesn't like me."
"Why not say at once it's because you don't like her?"
Her eyes, full, lucid, charged with meaning, flashed to him. She leaped at the chance he offered her to be sincere.
"I don't," she said. "How can I?"
She talked again of trifles, to destroy all cohesion between that utterance and her next.
"I say, I want you to do something for me. I want you to look after Furny."
"To look after him?"
"To stand by him, if—if he has a bad time."
He promised her. And then Miss Tarrant claimed him. She was in her mood of yesterday; but the charm no longer worked on him; he did not find her adorable that morning.
After a longish round they were overtaken by Brocklebank in his motor-car. He and Furnival were returning from the station after seeing Mrs. Viveash off (Furny had had the decency to see her off). Brocklebank gave a joyous shout and pulled up two yards in front of them.
As they stood beside the car Straker noticed that Furnival's face had a queer, mottled look, and that the muscles of his jaw were set in an immobility of which he could hardly have believed him capable.He was actually trying to look as if he didn't see Miss Tarrant. And Miss Tarrant was looking straight at him.
Brocklebank wanted to know if Miss Tarrant cared for a run across the Hog's Back before luncheon.
Miss Tarrant did care—if Mr. Straker did.
Furnival had got down from his seat beside Brocklebank and had opened the door of the car, ignoring Straker. He had managed in his descent to preserve his attitude of distance, so much so that Straker was amazed to see him enter the car after Miss Tarrant and take his, Straker's, place beside her. He accomplished this maneuver in silence, and with an air so withdrawn, so obscurely predestined, that he seemed innocent of all offense. It was as if he had acted from some malign compulsion of which he was unaware.
Now Brocklebank in his motor was an earnest and a silent man. Straker, left to himself, caught fragments of conversation in the rear. Miss Tarrant began it.
"Why did you give up your seat?"
"You see why," said Furnival.
Straker could see him saying it, flushed and fervent. Then Furnival went one better, and overdid it.
"There's nothing I wouldn't give up for a chance like this."
Straker heard Philippa laughing softly. He knew she meant him to hear her, he knew she was saying to him, "Could anything be more absurd than the creature that I've got in here?"
There was a pause, and then Furnival broke out again:
"I've seen Mrs. Viveash off."
"That," said Miss Tarrant reprovingly, "was the least you could do."
Furnival made that little fierce, inarticulate sound of his before he spoke. "I hope you're satisfied. I hope I've done enough to please you."
"Oh, quite enough. I shouldn't attempt to doanythingmore if I were you."
After that there was silence, in which Straker felt that Furnival was raging.
Fanny Brocklebank came to him the next morning in the library, where he had hidden himself. She was agitated.
"Put that book down," she said. "I want to talk to you."
Straker obeyed.
"Jimmy—I'm fond of Philippa. I am, really."
"Well—what's up?"
"Philippa's making a fool of herself and she doesn't know it."
"Trust Philippa!"
"To know it?"
"To make a fool of anybody on earth—except herself."
"This is different. It's Larry Furnival."
"It is. And did you ever see such a spectacle of folly?"
"He doesn't understand her. That's where the folly comes in."
"He's not alone in it."
But Fanny was past the consolations of his cynicism. Her face, not formed for gravity, was grave.
"He's got an idea in his head. An awful one. I'm convinced he thinks she isn't proper."
"Oh, I say!"
"Well, really—considering that he doesn't know her—I can't altogether blame him. I told her so straight out."
"What did she say?"
"She said how funny it will be when he finds out how proper she is."
"So it will, won't it?"
Fanny considered the point.
"It's not half as funny as she thinks it. And, funniness and all, she didn't like it."
"You can hardly expect her to," said Straker.
"Of course," said Fanny, musing, "there's a sort of innocence about him, or else he couldn't think it."
Straker admitted that, as far as Philippa went, that might be said of him.
"That's why I hate somehow to see him made a fool of. It doesn't seem fair play, you know. It's taking advantage of his innocence."
Strakerhadto laugh, for really, Furny's innocence!
"He always was," Fanny meditated aloud, "a fool about women."
"Oh, well, then," said Straker cheerfully. "She can't make him——"
"She can. She does. She draws out all the folly in him. I'm fond of Philippa——"
That meant that Fanny was blaming Philippa as much as she could blame anybody. Immorality she understood, and could excuse; for immorality there was always some provocation; what she couldn't stand was the unfairness of Philippa's proceeding, the inequality in the game.
"I'm very fond of her, but—she's bad for him, Jimmy. She's worse, far worse, than Nora, poor dear."
"I shouldn't worry about him if I were you."
"I do worry. You see, you can't help liking him. There's something about Furny—I don't know what it is, unless it's the turn of his nose——"
"Do you think Philippa likes him? Do you think she's at all taken with the turn of his nose?"
"If she only would be! Not that he means to marry her. That's the one point where he's firm. That's where he's awful. Why, oh, why did I ever ask them? I thought he was safe with Nora."
"Did you?"
"Something must be done," she cried, "to stop it."
"Who's to do it?"
"You or I. Or Will. Anybody!"
"Look here, Fanny, let's get it quite clear. What are you worrying about? Are you saving Philippa from Furnival, or Furnival from Philippa?"
"Philippa," Fanny moaned, "doesn't want saving. She can take care of herself."
"I see. You are fond of Philippa, but your sympathies are with Furny?"
"Well he canfeel, and Philippa——"
She left it there for him, as her way was.
"Precisely. Then why worry about Philippa?"
"Because it's really awful, and it's in my house that it'll happen."
"How long are they staying?"
"Lord knows how long."
"Poor Fanny. You can't get them to go, can you?"
"I've thought of things. I've told Will he must have an illness."
"And will he?"
"Not he. He says, as I asked them, I ought to have the illness. But if I did she'd stay and nurse me. Besides, if we ousted the whole lot to-morrow,they'llmeet again. He'll see to that; and so will Philippa."
There was a long pause.
"I wantyouto do it. I want you to tell her."
"Good Lord, what am I to tell her?"
"Tell her it isn't nice; tell her it isn't worth while; tell her Furny isn't fair game; tell her anything you can think of that'll stop her."
"I don't see myself——"
"I do. She won't listen to anybody but you."
"Why me?"
"She respects you."
"I doubt it. Why should she?"
"Because you've never made yourself a spectacle of folly. You've never told her you're in love with her."
"But I'm not," said poor Straker.
"She doesn't know that. And if she did she'd respect you all the more."
"Dear Fanny, I'd do a great deal for you, but I can't do that. I can't, really. It wouldn't be a bit of good."
"You could speak," Fanny said, "to Furny."
"I couldn't."
"Whynot?" she cried, in desperation.
"Because, if I did, I should have to assume things—things that you cannot decently assume. I can't speak to him. Not, that is, unless he speaks to me."
He did speak to him that very night.
It was after ten o'clock, and Straker, who ought to have been in the drawing-room playing bridge, or in the billiard-room playing billiards, or in the smoking-room talking to Brocklebank—Straker, who ought to have known better, had sneaked into the library to have a look at a brief he'd just got. He ought to haveknown better, for he knew, everybody knew, that after ten o'clock the library at Amberley was set apart as a refuge for any two persons who desired uninterrupted communion with each other. He himself, in the library at Amberley—but that was more than two years ago, so far before Philippa's time that he did not associate her with the library at Amberley. He only knew that Furnival had spent a good deal of time in it with Nora Viveash, and poor Nora was gone. It was poor Nora's departure, in fact, that made him feel that the library was now open to him.
Now the library at Amberley was fitted, as a library should be, with a silent door, a door with an inaudible latch and pneumatic hinges. It shut itself behind Straker with a soft sigh.
The long room was dim and apparently deserted. Drawn blinds obscured the lucid summer night behind the three windows opposite the door. One small electric globe hung lit under its opaline veil in the corner by the end window on the right.
Straker at the doorway turned on the full blaze of the great ring that hung above the central table where he meant to work. It revealed, seated on the lounge in the inner, the unilluminated corner on the right, Miss Tarrant and Laurence Furnival.
To his intense relief, Straker perceived that the whole length of the lounge was between the two. Miss Tarrant at her end was sitting bolt upright with her scarf gathered close about her; she was looking under her eyelids and down her beautiful nose at Furnival, who at his end was all huddled among the cushions as if she had flung him there. Their attitudes suggested that their interview had ended in distance and disaster. The effect was so marked that Straker seized it in an instant.
He was about to withdraw as noiselessly as he had entered, but Miss Tarrant (not Furnival; Furnival had not so much as raised his head)—Miss Tarrant had seen him and signed to him to stay.
"You needn't go," she said. "I'mgoing."
She rose and passed her companion without looking at him, in a sort of averted and offended majesty, and came slowly down the room. Straker waited by the door to open it for her.
On the threshold she turned to him and murmured: "Don't go away. Go in and talk to him—about—about anything."
It struck him as extraordinary that she should say this to him, that she should ask him to go in and see what she had done to the man.
The door swung on her with its soft sigh, shutting him in with Furnival. He hesitated a moment by the door.
"Come in if you want to," said Furnival. "I'm going, too."
He had risen, a little unsteadily. As he advanced, Straker saw that his face bore traces of violent emotion. His tie was a little crooked and his hair pushed from the forehead that had been hidden by his hands. His moustache no longer curled crisply upward; it hung limp over his troubled mouth. Furnival looked as if he had been drinking. But Furnival did not drink. Straker saw that he meant in his madness to follow Philippa.
He turned down the lights that beat on him.
"Don't," said Furnival. "I'm going all right."
Straker held the door to. "I wouldn't," he said, "if I were you. Not yet."
Furnival made the queer throat sound that came from him when words failed him.
Straker put his hand on the young man's shoulder. He remembered how Mrs. Viveash had asked him to look after Furny, to stand by him if he had a bad time. She had foreseen, in the fierce clairvoyance of her passion, that he was going to have one. And, by Heaven! it had come.
Furnival struggled for utterance. "All right," he said thickly.
He wasn't going after her. He had been trying to get away from Straker; but Straker had been too much for him. Besides, he had understood Straker's delicacy in turning down the lights, and he didn't want to show himself just yet to the others.
They strolled together amicably toward the lounge and sat there.
Straker had intended to say, "What's up?" but other words were given him.
"What's Philippa been up to?"
Furnival pulled himself together. "Nothing," he replied. "It was me."
"What did you do?"
Furnival was silent.
"Did you propose to her, or what?"
"I made," said Furnival, "a sort of p-proposal."
"That she should count the world well lost—was that it?"
"Well, she knew I wasn't going to marry anybody, and I knew she wasn't going to marry me. Now was she?"
"No. She most distinctly wasn't."
"Very well, then—how was I to know? I could have sworn——"
He hid his face in his hands again.
"The fact is, I made the devil of a mistake."
"Yes," said Straker. "I saw you making it."
Furnival's face emerged angry.
"Then why on earth didn't youtellme? I asked you. Why couldn't you tell me what she was like?"
"You don't tell," said Straker.
Furnival groaned. "I can't make it outnow. It's not as if she hadn't got a t-t-temperament."
"But she hasn't.Thatwas the mistake you made."
"You'd have made it yourself," said Furnival.
"I have. She's taken me in. Shelooksas if she had temperament—she behaves as if she had—oceans. And she hasn't, not a scrap."
"Then what does she do it for? What does she do it for, Straker?"
"I don't know what she does it for. She doesn't know herself. There's a sort of innocence about her."
"I suppose," said Furnival pensively, "it's innocence."
"Whatever it is, it's the quality of her defect. She can't let us alone. It amuses her to see us squirm. But she doesn't know, my dear fellow, what it feels like; because, you see, she doesn't feel. She couldn't tell, of course, the lengthsyou'dgo to."
Straker was thinking how horrible it must have been for Philippa. Then he reflected that it must have been pretty horrible for Furny, too—so unexpected. At that point he remembered that for Philippa it had not been altogether unexpected; Fanny had warned her of this very thing.
"How—did she—take it?" he inquired tentatively.
"My dear fellow, she sat there—where you are now—and lammed into me. She made me feel as if I were a cad and a beast and a ruffian—as if I wanted k-kick-kicking. She said she wouldn't have seen that I existed if it hadn't been for Fanny Brocklebank—I was her friend's guest—and when I tried to defend myselfshe turned and talked to me about things, Straker, till I blushed. I'm b-blushing now."
He was.
"And, of course, after that, I've got to go."
"Was that all?" said Straker.
"No, it wasn't. I can't tell you theotherthings she said."
For a moment Furny's eyes took on a marvelous solemnity, as if they were holding for a moment some sort of holy, supersensuous vision.
Then suddenly they grew reminiscent.
"How could I tell, Straker, how could I possibly tell?"
And Straker, remembering the dance that Philippa had led him, and her appearance, and the things, the uncommonly queer things she had done to him with her eyes, wondered how Furnycouldhave told, how he could have avoided drawing the inferences, the uncommonly queer inferences, he drew. He'd have drawn them himself if he had not known Philippa so well.
"What I want to know," said Furnival, "is what she did it for?"
He rose, straightening himself.
"Anyhow, I've got to go."
"Did she say so?"
"No, she didn't. She said it wasn't necessary.Thatwas innocent, Straker, if you like."
"Oh, jolly innocent," said Straker.
"But I'm going all the same. I'm going before breakfast, by the seven-fifty train."
And he went. Straker saw him off.
That was far and away the most disconcerting thing that had happened at Amberley within Straker's recollection.
It must have been very disagreeable for Philippa.
When, five days ago, he had wondered if he would ever live to see Philippa disconcerted, he had not contemplated anything like this. Neither, he was inclined to think, had Philippa in the beginning. She could have had no idea what she was letting herself in for. That she had let herself in was, to Straker's mind, the awful part of it.
As he walked home from the station he called up all his cleverness, all his tact and delicacy, to hide his knowledge of it from Philippa. He tried to make himself forget it, lest by a word or a look she should gather that he knew. He did not want to see her disconcerted.
The short cut to Amberley from the station leads through a side gate into the turning at the bottom of the east walk. Straker, as he rounded the turning, saw Miss Tarrant not five yards off, coming down the walk.
He was not ready for her, and his first instinct, if he could have yielded to it, would have been to fly. That was his delicacy.
He met her with a remark on the beauty of the morning. That was his tact.
He tried to look as if he hadn't been to see Furnival off at the station, as if the beauty of the morning sufficiently accounted for his appearance at that early hour. The hour, indeed, was so disgustingly early that he would have half an hour to put through with Philippa before breakfast.
But Miss Tarrant ignored the beauty of the morning.
"What have you done," she said, "with Mr. Furnival?"
It was Straker who was disconcerted now.
"What have I done with him?"
"Yes. Where is he?"
Straker's tact was at a disadvantage, but his delicacy instantly suggested that if Miss Tarrant was not disconcerted it was because she didn't know he knew. That made it all right.
"He's in the seven-fifty train."
A light leaped in her eyes; the light of defiance and pursuit, the light of the hunter's lust frustrated and of the hunter's ire.
"You must get him back again," she said.
"I can't," said Straker. "He's gone on business." (He still used tact with her.) "He had to go."
"He hadn't," said she. "That's all rubbish."
Her tone trod his scruples down and trampled on them, and Straker felt that tact and delicacy required of him no more. She had given herself away at last; she had let herself in for the whole calamity of his knowledge, and he didn't know how she proposed to get out of it this time. And he wasn't going to help her. Not he!
They faced each other as they stood there in the narrow walk, and his knowledge challenged her dumbly for a moment. Then he spoke.
"Look here, what do you want him for? Why can't you let the poor chap alone?"
"What do you suppose I want him for?"
"I've no business to suppose anything. I don't know. But I'm not going to get him back for you."
Something flitted across her face and shifted the wide gaze of her eyes. Straker went on without remorse.
"You know perfectly well the state he's in, and you know how he got into it."
"Yes. And I know," she said, "what you think of me."
"It's more than I do," said Straker.
She smiled subtly, mysteriously, tolerantly, as it were.
"What did you do it for, Philippa?"
Her smile grew more subtle, more tolerant, more mysterious; it measured him and found him wanting.
"If I told you," she said, "I don't think you'd understand. But I'll try and make you."
She turned with him and they walked slowly toward the house.
"You saw," she said, "where he was going before I came? I got him out of that, didn't I?"
He was silent, absorbed in contemplating the amazing fabric of her thought.
"Does it very much matter how I did it?"
"Yes," said Straker, "if you ask me, I should say it did. The last state of him, to my mind, was decidedly worse than the first."
"What do you suppose I did to him?"
"If you want the frankness of a brother, there's no doubt you—led him on."
"I led him on—to heights he'd never have contemplated without me."
Straker tried to eliminate all expression from his face.
"What do you suppose I did to him last night?"
"I can only suppose you led him further, since he went further."
By this time Straker's tact and delicacy were all gone.
"Yes," said Miss Tarrant, "he went pretty far. But,on the whole, it's just as well he did, seeing what's come of it."
"Whathascome of it?"
"Well, I think he realizes that he has a soul. That's something."
"I didn't know it was his soul you were concerned with."
"He didn't, either. Did he tell you what I said to him?"
"He told me you gave him a dressing down. But there was something that he wouldn't tell. Whatdidyou say to him?"
"I said I supposed, after all, he had a soul, and I asked him what he meant to do about it."
"What does he?"
"That's what I want him back for," she said, "to see. Whatever he does with it, practically I've saved it."
She turned to him, lucid and triumphant.
"Could any other woman have done it? Do you see Mary Probyn doing it?"
"Not that way."
"It was the only way. You must," she said, "have temperament."
The word took Straker's breath away.
"You didn't like the way I did it. I can't help that. I had to use the means at my disposal. If I hadn't led him on how could I have got hold of him? If I hadn't led him further how could I have got him on an inch?"
"So that," said Straker quietly, "is what you did it for?"
"You've seen him," she answered. "You don't seriously suppose I could have done it for anything else! What possible use had I for that young man?"
He remembered that that was what she had said about Mr. Higginson. But he confessed that, for alady in a disconcerting situation, she had shown genius in extricating herself.
Fanny's house party broke up and scattered the next day. A week later Straker and Will Brocklebank saw Furnival in the Park. He was driving a motor beyond his means in the society of a lady whom he certainly could not afford.
"Good God!" said Brocklebank. "That's Philippa."
By which he meant, not that Furnival's lady in the least resembled Philippa, but that she showed the heights to which Philippa had led him on.
Brocklebank agreed with Straker that they had got to get him out of that.
It was difficult, because the thing had come upon Furnival like a madness. He would have had more chance if he had been a man with a talent or an absorbing occupation, a politician, an editor, a journalist; if he had even been, Brocklebank lamented, on the London Borough Council it might have made him less dependent on the sympathy of ruinous ladies. But the Home Office provided no competitive distraction.
What was worse, it kept him on the scene of his temptation.
If it hadn't been for the Home Office he might have gone abroad with the Brocklebanks; they had wanted him to go. Straker did what he could for him. He gave him five days' yachting in August, and he tried to get him away for week-ends in September; but Furnival wouldn't go. Then Straker went away for his own holiday, and when he came back he had lost sight of Furnival. So had the Home Office.
For three months Furnival went under. Then one day he emerged. The Higginsons (Mary Probyn and her husband) ran up against him in Piccadilly, or rather, he ran up against them, and their forms interposed an effective barrier to flight. He was looking so wretchedly ill that their hearts warmed to him, and they asked him to dine with them that evening, or the next, or—well, the next after that. He refused steadily, but Mary managed to worm his address out of him and sent it on to Fanny Brocklebank that night.
Then the Brocklebanks, with prodigious forbearance and persistence, went to work on him. Once they succeeded in getting well hold of him they wouldn't let him go, and between them, very gradually, they got him straight. He hadn't, Fanny discovered, been so very awful; he had flung away all that he had on one expensive woman and he had lost his job. Brocklebank found him another in an insurance office where Fanny's brother was a director. Then Fanny settled down to the really serious business of settling Furnival. She was always asking him down to Amberley when the place was quiet, by which she meant when Philippa Tarrant wasn't there. She was always asking nice girls down to meet him. She worked at it hard for a whole year, and then she said that if it didn't come off that summer she would have to give it up.
The obstacle to her scheme for Furny's settlement was his imperishable repugnance to the legal tie. It had become, Fanny declared, a regular obsession. All this she confided to Straker as she lunched with him one day in his perfectly appointed club in Dover Street. Furny was coming down to Amberley, she said, in July; and she added, "It would do you good, Jimmy, to come, too."
She was gazing at him with a look that he had cometo know, having known Fanny for fifteen years. A tender, rather dreamy look it was, but distinctly speculative. It was directed to the silver streaks in Straker's hair on a line with his eyeglasses, and he knew that Fanny was making a calculation and saying to herself that it must be quite fifteen years or more.
Straker was getting on.
A week at Amberley would do him all the good in the world. She rather hoped—though she couldn't altogether promise him—that a certain lady in whom he was interested (he needn't try to look as if he wasn't) would be there.
"NotPhilippa?" he asked wearily.
"No, Jimmy, not Philippa. You know whom I mean."
He did. He went down to Amberley in July, arriving early in a golden and benignant afternoon. It was precisely two years since he had been there with Philippa. It was very quiet this year, so quiet that he had an hour alone with Fanny on the terrace before tea. Brocklebank had taken the others off somewhere in his motor.
She broke it to him that the lady in whom he was interested wasn't there. Straker smiled. He knew she wouldn't be. The others, Fanny explained, were Laurence Furnival and his Idea.
"His Idea?"
"His Idea, Jimmy, of everything that's lovable."
There was a luminous pause in which Fanny let it sink into him.
"Then it's come off, has it?"
"I don't know, but I think it's coming."
"Dear Mrs. Brockles, how did you manage it?"
"I didn't. That's the beauty of it. He managed it himself. He asked me to have her down."
She let him take that in, too, in all its immense significance.
"Who is she?"
"Little Molly Milner—a niece of Nora Viveash's. He met her there last winter."
Their eyes met, full of remembrance.
"If anybody managed it, it was Nora. Jimmy, do you know, that woman's a perfect dear."
"I know you always said so."
"Hesays so. He says she behaved like an angel, like a saint, about it. When you think how she cared! I suppose she saw it was the way to save him."
Straker was silent. He saw Nora Viveash as he had seen her on the terrace two years ago, on the day of Philippa's arrival; and as she had come to him afterward and asked him to stand by Furnival in his bad hour.
"What is it like, Furny's Idea?" he asked presently.
"It's rather like Nora, only different. It's her niece, you know."
"If it's Nora's niece, it must be very young."
"It is. It's absurdly young. But, oh, so determined!"
"Has she by any chance got Nora's temperament?"
"She's got her own temperament," said Fanny.
Straker meditated on that.
"How does it take him?" he inquired.
"It takes him beautifully. It makes him very quiet, and a little sad. That's why I think it's coming."
Fanny also meditated.
"Yes. It's coming. There's only one thing, Jimmy. Philippa's coming, too. She's coming to-day, by that four-something train."
"My dear Fanny, how youdomix 'em!"
It was his tribute to her enduring quality.
"I asked her before I knew Laurence Furnival was coming."
"Sheknew?"
"I—I think so."
They looked at each other. Then Fanny spoke.
"Jimmy," she said, "do you think you could make love to Philippa? Just,just," she entreated (when, indeed, had she not appealed to him to save her from the consequences of her indiscretions?), "until Furny goes?"
Straker's diplomatic reply was cut short by the appearance of Laurence Furnival and Molly Milner, Nora's niece. They came down the long terrace with the sun upon them. She was all in white, with here and there a touch of delicate green. She was very young; and, yes, she was very like Mrs. Viveash, with all the difference of her youth and of her soul.
Furnival was almost pathetically pleased to see Straker there; and Miss Milner, flushed but serene in the moment of introduction, said that she had heard of Mr. Straker very often from—she hesitated, and Straker saw what Fanny had meant when she said that the young girl had a temperament of her own—from Mr. Furnival. Her charming smile implied that she was aware that Straker counted, and aware of all that he had done for Furnival.
As he watched her he began to see how different she was from Nora Viveash. She was grave and extraordinarily quiet, Furnival's young girl. He measured the difference by the power she had of making Furnival—as Straker put it—different from himself. She had made him grave and quiet, too. Not that he had by any means lost his engaging spontaneity; only the spontaneous, the ungovernable thing about him wasthe divine shyness and the wonder which he was utterly unable to conceal.
It was at its height, it had spread its own silence all around it, when, in that stillness which was her hour, her moment, Philippa appeared.
She came down the terrace, golden for her as it had been two years ago; she came slowly, more slowly than ever, with a touch of exaggeration in her rhythm, in her delay, in the poise of her head, and in all her gestures; the shade too much that Straker had malignly prophesied for her. But with it all she was more beautiful, and, he could see, more dangerous, than ever.
She had greeted the three of them, Fanny, Brocklebank, and Straker, with that increase, that excess of manner; and then she saw Furnival standing very straight in front of her, holding out his hand.
"Mr. Furnival—but—hownice!"
Furnival had sat down again, rather abruptly, beside Molly Milner, and Fanny, visibly perturbed, was murmuring the young girl's name.
Something passed over Miss Tarrant's face like the withdrawing of a veil. She was not prepared for Molly Milner. She had not expected to find anything like that at Amberley. It was not what she supposed that Furnival had come for. But, whatever he had come for, that, the unexpected, was what Furnival was there for now. It was disconcerting.
Philippa, in fact, was disconcerted.
All this Straker took in; he took in also, in a flash, the look that passed between Miss Tarrant and Miss Milner. Philippa's look was wonderful, a smile flung down from her heights into the old dusty lists of sex to challenge that young Innocence. Miss Milner's look was even more wonderful than Philippa's; grave and abstracted, it left Philippa's smile lying where shehad flung it; she wasn't going, it said, to takethatup.
And yet a duel went on between them, a duel conducted with proper propriety on either side. It lasted about half an hour. Philippa's manner said plainly to Miss Milner: "My child, you have got hold of something that isn't good for you, something that doesn't belong to you, something that you are not old enough or clever enough to keep, something that you will not be permitted to keep. You had better drop it." Miss Milner's manner said still more plainly to Philippa: "I don't know what you're driving at, but you don't suppose I take you seriously, do you?" It said nothing at all about Laurence Furnival. That was where Miss Milner's manner scored.
In short, it was a very pretty duel, and it ended in Miss Milner's refusing to accompany Furnival to the Amberley woods and in Philippa's carrying him off bodily (Straker noted that she scored a point there, or seemed to score). As they went Miss Milner was seen to smile, subtly, for all her innocence. She lent herself with great sweetness to Brocklebank's desire to show her his prize roses.
Straker was left alone with Fanny.
Fanny was extremely agitated by the sight of Furnival's capture. "Jimmy," she said, "haven't I been good to you? Haven't I been an angel? Haven't I done every mortal thing I could for you?"
He admitted that she had.
"Well, then, now you've got to do something for me. You've got to look after Philippa. Don't let her get at him."
"No fear."
But Fanny insisted that he had seen Philippa carrying Furnival off under Molly Milner's innocent nose, and that her manner of appropriating him, too, vividlyrecalled the evening of her arrival two years ago, when he would remember what had happened to poor Nora's nose.
"She took him from Nora."
"My dear Fanny, that was an act of the highest moral——"
"Don't talk to me about your highest moral anything.Iknow what it was."
"Besides, she didn't take him from Nora," she went on, ignoring her previous line of argument. "He took himself. He was getting tired of her."
"Well," said Straker, "he isn't tired of Miss Milner."
"She's taken him offthere," said Fanny. She nodded gloomily toward the Amberley woods.
Straker smiled. He was looking westward over the shining fields where he had once walked with Philippa. Already they were returning. Furnival had not allowed himself to be taken very far. As they approached Straker saw that Philippa was pouring herself out at Furnival and that Furnival was not absorbing any of it; he was absorbed in his Idea. His Idea had made him absolutely impervious to Philippa. All this Straker saw.
He made himself very attentive to Miss Tarrant that evening, and after dinner, at her request, he walked with her on the terrace. Over the low wall they could see Furnival in the rose garden with Miss Milner. They saw him give her a rose, which the young girl pinned in the bosom of her gown.
"Aren't they wonderful?" said Philippa. "Did you ever see anything under heaven so young?"
"She is older than he is," said Straker.
"Do you remember when he wanted to givemeone and I wouldn't take it?"
"I have not forgotten."
The lovers wandered on down the rose garden and Philippa looked after them. Then she turned to Straker.
"I've had a long talk with him. I've told him that he must settle down and that he couldn't do a better thing for himself than——"
She paused.
"Well," said Straker, "itlookslike it, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Philippa. "It looks like it."
They talked of other things.
"I am going," she said presently, "to ask Miss Milner to stay with me."
Straker didn't respond. He was thinking deeply. Her face was so mysterious, so ominous, that yet again he wondered what she might be up to. He confessed to himself that this time he didn't know. But he made her promise to go on the river with him the next day. They were to start at eleven-thirty.
At eleven Fanny came to him in the library.
"She's gone," said Fanny. "She's left a little note for you. She said you'd forgive her, you'd understand."
"Doyou?" said Straker.
"She said she was going to be straight and see this thing through."
"What thing?"
"Furny's thing. What else do you suppose she's thinking of? She said she'd only got to lift her little finger and he'd come back to her; she said there ought to be fair play. Do you see? She's gone away—to save him."
"Good Lord!" said Straker.
But he saw.
It was nearly twelve months before he heard again from Miss Tarrant. Then one day she wrote and asked him to come and have tea with her at her flat in Lexham Gardens.
He went. His entrance coincided with the departure of Laurence Furnival and a lady whom Philippa introduced to him as Mrs. Laurence, whom, she said, he would remember under another name.
Furnival's wife was younger than ever and more like Nora Viveash and more different. When the door closed on them Philippa turned to him with her radiance (the least bit overdone).
"Imade that marriage," she said, and staggered him.
"Surely," he said, "it was made in heaven."
"If this room is heaven. It was made here, six months ago."
She faced him with all his memories. With all his memories and her own she faced him radiantly.
"You know now," she said, "why I did it. It was worth while, wasn't it?"
His voice struggled with his memories and stuck. It stuck in his throat.
Before he left he begged her congratulations on a little affair of his own; a rather unhappy affair which had ended happily the week before last. He did not tell her that, if it hadn't been for the things dear Fanny Brocklebank had done for him, the way she had mixed herself up with his unhappy little affair, it might have ended happily a year ago.
"But," said Philippa, "how beautiful!"
He never saw Miss Tarrant again. Their correspondence ceased after his marriage, and he gathered that she had no longer any use for him.
All afternoon since three o'clock he had sat cooling his heels in a corner of the hotel veranda. And all afternoon he had been a spectacle of interest to the beautiful cosmopolitan creature who watched him from her seat under the palm tree in the corresponding corner.
She had two men with her, and when she was not occupied with one or both of them she turned her splendid eyes, gaily or solemnly, on Oscar Thesiger. And every time she turned them Thesiger in his corner darkened and flushed and bit his moustache and twirled it, while his eyes answered hers as he believed they meant him to answer. Oscar Thesiger was not a cosmopolitan himself for nothing.
And all the time while he looked at her he was thinking, thinking very miserably, of little Vera Walters.
She had refused him yesterday evening without giving any reason.
Her cruelty (if it wasn't cruelty he'd like to know what it was) remained unexplained, incomprehensible to Oscar Thesiger.
For, if she didn't mean to marry him, why on earth had they asked him to go abroad with them? Why had they dragged him about with them for five weeks, up and down the Riviera? Why was he there now, cooling his heels in the veranda of the Hôtel Méditerranée, Cannes? That was where the cruelty, the infernal cruelty came in.
And her reasons—if she had only given him her reasons. It was all he asked for. But of course she hadn't any.
What possible reason could she have? It wasn't as if he'd been a bad lot like her French brother-in-law, Paul de Vignolles (good Lord, the things he knew about de Vignolles!). He was, as men go, a decent sort. He had always known where to draw the line (de Vignolles didn't). And he wasn't ugly, like de Vignolles. On the contrary, he was, as men go, distinctly good looking; he knew he was; the glances of the beautiful and hypothetical stranger assured him of it, and he had looked in the glass not half an hour ago to reassure himself. Solid he was, and well built, and he had decorative points that pleased: a fresh color, eyes that flashed blue round a throbbing black, a crisp tawny curl in his short moustache and shorter hair. He was well off; there wasn't a thing she wanted that he couldn't give her. And he was the admired and appreciated friend of her admired and appreciated sister, Agatha de Vignolles.
And for poor little Vera, as far as he could see, the alternatives to marrying him were dismal. It was either marrying a Frenchman, since Agatha had married one, or living forever with that admired and appreciated woman, looking after the little girls, Ninon and Odette. She had been looking after them ever since he had first met her and fallen, with some violence, in love with her.
It was a bit late now to go back on all that. It had been an understood thing. Vera herself had understood it, and she—well, she had lent herself to it very sweetly, shyly, and beautifully, as Vera would. If she hadn't he wouldn't have had a word to say against her decision.
It wasn't as if she had been a cold and selfish woman like her sister. She wasn't cold; and, as for selfish, he had seen her with Agatha and the little girls. It was through the little girls that he had made love to her, that being the surest and shortest way. He had worked it through Ninon and Odette; he had carried them on his back by turns that very afternoon, in the heat of the sun, all the way, that terrible winding way, up the Californie Hill to the Observatory at the top, where they had sat drinking coffee and eating brioches, he and Vera and Ninon and Odette. What on earth did she suppose he did it for?
But she hadn't supposed anything; she had simply understood, and had been adorable to him all afternoon. Not that she had said much (Vera didn't say things); but her eyes, her eyes had given her away; they had been as soft for him as they had been for Ninon and Odette.
Why, oh why, hadn't he done it, then?
He couldn't, because of those two infernal, bilingual little monkeys. They were clinging to her skirts all the way down the hill.
They were all going to Nice the next day; and that evening the de Vignolles had gone down to the Casino and Vera hadn't gone. It would have been all right if the children had not been allowed to sit up to see the conjuror conjuring in the lounge. But they had sat up; and that had brought it to ten o'clock before he had Vera for a minute to himself.
He may have chosen his moment badly (it wasn't easy to choose it well, living, as the de Vignolles did, in public), and perhaps, if they hadn't had that little difference of opinion, he and she—— It was in the evening that they had had it, between the conjuring tricks and the children's chatter, in the public, the intolerablypublic lounge, and it was only a difference of opinion, opinion concerning the beauty of the beautiful and hypothetical lady who was looking at him then, who had never ceased to look at him and Vera and the children when any of them were about.
Thesiger couldn't get Vera to say that the lady was beautiful, and the little that she did say implied that you couldn't be beautiful if you looked like that. She was not beautiful (Thesiger had admitted it) in Vera's way, and on the whole he was glad to think that Vera didn't look like that; but there was, he had contended, a beauty absolute and above opinion, and the lady had it. That was all. Perhaps, now he came to think of it, he ought not to have drawn Vera's attention to her; for he knew what Vera had thought of her by the things she hadn't said, and, what was worse, he knew what Paul de Vignolles thought by the things hehadsaid, things implying that, if the lady were honest, appearances were against her. Of her and of her honesty Thesiger didn't feel very sure himself. He found himself continually looking at her to make sure. He had been looking at her then, across the little table in the lounge where she and her two men sat drinking coffee and liqueurs. She kept thrusting her face between the two as she talked; she had a rose in her bronze hair, which made him dubious; and when their eyes met, as they were always meeting (how could he help it?), his doubt leaped in him and fastened on her face. Her face had held him for a moment so with all his doubt, and he had stared at her and flamed in a curious excitement born of Vera's presence and of hers, while he smiled to himself furtively under the moustache he bit.
And then he had seen Vera looking at him.
For a moment she had looked at him, with wide,grave eyes that stayed wide until she turned her head away suddenly.
And the lady, who was the cause of it all, had got up and removed herself, softly and, for her, inconspicuously, taking her two men with her out into the garden and the night.
Of course he had understood Vera. He had seen that it was jealousy, feminine jealousy. And that was why, in the drawing-room afterward, he had hurried up with his proposal, to make it all straight.
And she had refused him without giving any reasons. She had gone off to Nice by the one-forty-four train with the de Vignolles, Paul and Agatha and Ninon and Odette; she had left him in the great, gay, exotic hotel above the palm trees, above the rose and ivory town, above the sea; left him alone with the loveliness that made him mad and miserable; left him cooling his heels on the veranda, under the gaze, the distinctly interested gaze, of the beautiful and hypothetical stranger.
How beautiful she was he realized after a dinner which figured in his memory as one of those dinners which he had not enjoyed, though as a matter of fact hehadenjoyed it or the mere distraction of it. By way of distraction he had taken the table next to hers, facing her where she sat between her two men.
She was an American; that fact had at first made his doubt itself a little dubious. And she was probably from the South (they were different there). Hence her softness, her full tone, her richness and her glow. Hence her exotic strain that went so well with the false tropics of the scene. But whether she were a provincialor an urban, or, as she seemed, a cosmopolitan splendor, Thesiger was not cosmopolitan enough to tell. She might have been the supreme flower of her astounding country. She might have been, for all he knew, unique.
She was tall, and her body, large and massive, achieved the grace of slenderness from the sheer perfection of its lines. Her attire, within the bounds of its subservience to Paris, was certainly unique. It was wonderful the amount of decoration she could carry without being the worse for it. Her head alone, over and above its bronze hair, coil on coil and curl on curl, sustained several large tortoise-shell pins, a gold lace fillet, and a rose over each ear. It was no more to her than a bit of black ribbon to a young girl. Old rose and young rose mingled delicately in the silks and gauzes of her gown; here and there a topaz flashed rose from her bodice and from the dusk of her bared neck. There was a fine dusk in her whiteness and in the rose of her face, and in the purplish streaks under her eyes, and deeper dusks about the roots of her hair. And gold sprang out of her darkness there; gold and bronze and copper gleamed and glowed and flamed on every coil and curl. Her eyes held the light gloriously; they were of a luminous, tawny brown, wide apart, and slightly round, with a sudden fineness at the corners. The lids had thick black lashes, so short that when they drooped they had the effect of narrowing her eyes without darkening them. Her nose, small and straight, was a shade too broadly rounded at the tip, but that defect gave a sort of softness to her splendor. Of her mouth Thesiger could not judge; he hadn't seen it at rest; and when she talked her white teeth flashed at him and disturbed him.
As he looked at her, disturbed, and he hoped, disturbing,he thought of little Vera Walters, of her slender virginal body, of her small virginal face, smooth, firm, and slightly pointed like a bud, of her gray eyes, clear as water, and of the pale gold and fawn of her hair. He thought of her tenderness and of her cruelty. He caught himself frowning at it over themousse de volaillehe was eating; and just then he thought that the other woman who was looking at him smiled. Most certainly she gazed.
The gaze was condoned and allowed by the two men who followed it.
She was superb; but the men, the men were awful. To begin with, they were American, altogether too American for Thesiger. One, whom the lady addressed with some ceremony as Mr. Tarbuck, was the big, full type, florid, rough-hewn, civilized by the cut of his clothes and the excessive cleanness of his shaving. From the first he had oppressed and offended Thesiger by his large and intolerably genial presence. The other, whom she familiarly and caressingly called Binky, was small and lean and yellow; he had a young face with old, nervous lines in it, the twitching, tortured lines of the victim of premature high pressure, effete in one generation. The small man drank, most distinctly and disagreeably he drank. He might have been the wreck of saloon bars, or of the frequent convivial cocktail, or of savage, solitary drinking.
The lady seemed to be traveling under Tarbuck's awful wing, while the outrageous Binky wandered conspicuously and somewhat mysteriously under hers. She was attentive to the small man and peeled his peaches for him, while the large man, smiling largely and with irrepressible affection, peeled hers. The large man (flagrantly opulent) had ordered peaches. He supposedthey'd be the one thing that durned hotel hadn't got.
Thesiger conceived a violent hatred for him and for the small man, too. He always had hated the male of the American species. He looked on him as a disagreeable and alien creature; at his best a creature of predatory instincts who appropriated and monopolized all those things of power and beauty that belonged, properly speaking, to his betters; at his worst a defiler of the sacred wells, a murderer and mutilator of the language, of his, Oscar Thesiger's, language.
The two were murdering it now, the large man with a terrible slow assurance in the operation; the small man, as it were, worrying it between his teeth, disposing of it in little savage snaps and jerks and nasal snarlings. He would stop eating to do it. That was when his beautiful and hypothetical companion left him to himself.
For the lady had a curiously soothing and subduing effect on the small man. Sometimes, when his snarls were too obtrusive, she would put out her hand, her small, perfect hand, and touch his sleeve, and he would cease snarling and begin to peck feebly at the things before him, or at the things before her, as the case might be. Thesiger actually saw her transferring theentréeshe had just tasted from her own plate to his; he heard her coaxing and cajoling him, calling on him by his offensive name of Binky. "Eat, little Binky! Little Binky, eat!"
There seemed to be some rule in a game they had, by which, if she first touched or tasted anything, Binky could not honorably refuse it.
It was clear that she had a hold on the small man. Thesiger had noticed that when she cancelled his orders for drinks he made no resistance, while he bitterlyresented Mr. Tarbuck's efforts at control. She would then inquire gaily of Mr. Tarbuck whether he was in command of this expedition or was she?
To-night, her fine eyes being considerably occupied with Thesiger, the small man asserted his independence and was served, surreptitiously as it were, with a brimming whisky and soda.
He had got his hand on it when the lady shot out a sudden arm across the table, and with a staggering dexterity and impudence possessed herself of his glass. Over the rim of it she kept her eyes on him, narrowed eyes, darting mockery of Binky under half-closed lids; and, with her head tilted back, she drank; she drank daintily, about an inch down, and then she gave the glass to the large man, and he, as if honor and chivalry compelled him also, emptied it.
"Did you that time, Binky," she murmured.
Thesiger heard her. She was looking at him, obviously to see how his fastidiousness had taken it. She leaned forward, her elbows on the table, and her head, propped on her hands, tilted slightly backward, and she gazed at him under her lowered eyelids with her narrowed, darting eyes. Then suddenly she lowered her chin and opened her eyes, and he met them full.
Her gaze, which had first fascinated, now excited him; very curiously it excited him, seeing that he was thinking about Vera Walters all the time. So unabashed it was, and so alluring, it sent such challenge and encouragement to the adventurous blood, that under it the passion that Vera would have none of detached itself from Vera with a fierce revulsion, and was drawn and driven, driven and drawn toward that luminous and invincible gaze. And Thesiger began to say to himself that the world was all before him, althoughfor him Vera had walked out of it; that he was a man of the world; and that he didn't care.
It seemed to him that the beautiful American smiled again at him. Then she got up, and swept down the dining-hall, swinging her rosy draperies. The two men followed her, and Thesiger was left alone in that vast place, seated at his table, and staring into a half-empty wineglass, to the embarrassment of the waiter who hovered by his chair.
After all, she left him an ultimate scruple; he could not altogether trust his doubt.