CHAPTER IV
THE evening had worn to an end—a really terrible evening for Rose, though both she and Cecily had talked and laughed with apparent ease. Cecily followed her cousin into her bedroom, lighted the candles, rearranged the curtains, was solicitous for her comfort, and, with a flow of light talk, kept her at a distance.
“Good-night, dear,” she said at last, kissing her hastily. “You must be dreadfully tired. Don’t be frightened if you hear a footstep on the stair in the small hours. Robert doesn’t generally come up till then. He writes so late.”
Mrs. Summers’ eyes questioned her mutely, but Cecily’s did not waver.
“Jane will bring your tea when you ring in the morning. Good-night. Sleep well.” She went out smiling, and as the door closed upon her Rose moved mechanically to the nearest chair and sat down. She felt dazedand stupid. Emotions had succeeded one another so rapidly in the past eight hours that the state of mind of which she was most acutely conscious was bewilderment. Through this confused sense, however, self-reproach pierced sharply. How like one of life’s practical jokes it was, to bring her thousands of miles over-sea to tell her best friend what any spiteful acquaintance in the village might have placed within her knowledge. Mrs. Summers looked round the pretty, peaceful room with a sense of oppression. Over the windows, the rose-patterned chintz curtains hung primly. She got up and pushed them aside, and then blew out the candles. A lovely night had succeeded the lovely day, and the garden was magical with moonlight. Sweet scents rose from it. Pools of shadow lay on the silvered grass. Deep and mysterious the great trees stood massed against the luminous sky.
Rose leaned against the window-frame, and let the silence and the peace quiet her thoughts, while she tried to realize the stranger she had found in the place of the old impulsive Cecily. It was the self-control that chilled and baffled her, even while she admired its exercise. Mentally she reviewed the evening,and found Cecily’s demeanor excellent. Her manner towards her husband had been perfectly friendly. A stranger seeing them together, she reflected, would have thought them on very good terms, though Robert might have been pronounced rather absent-minded and preoccupied. At the remembrance of Kingslake, Rose’s face darkened.
“She needn’t have taken so much trouble,” was her bitter reflection. “He wouldn’t have noticed even if she’d been disagreeable. His mind was elsewhere.”
To Rose, whose recollection of Robert was as a lover, so devoted that the only clear idea she had retained about his personality was that he loved Cecily,—to Rose, his present obvious indifference seemed a thing almost incredible. It brought to her, as nothing else since her home-coming had brought to her, the realization that five years is long—that the heart of life may be cut out with its passing.
Mrs. Summers felt her eyes dim with sudden tears. She was hurt at her friend’s reticence. The Cecily she knew had vanished, and with her, it seemed, she had taken all youth, all keenness, all desire. In that moment of disappointment, Rose had a horrible premonition of age.
A tap at the door startled her. While she was hurrying towards it, across the moonlit room, it opened, and Cecily came in.
She was in a long, pale-colored Japanese wrapper, her hair all loose about her face. Standing there in the moonlight, she was the girl Mrs. Summers remembered, and with a revulsion of feeling too glad for words she took her by the arms and put her into an easy-chair near the window.
“It was so lovely, I blew out the candles,” she began.
“Yes,” murmured Cecily, absently. She leaned forward and touched her cousin’s dress with trembling fingers. “It wasn’t because I was horrid or anything that I didn’t stay,” she said, incoherently. “It was because I was afraid to begin. I’m afraid to let myself——” She put her hand on her breast with a gesture that, to Rose, was more eloquent than the broken sentence.
“Tell me, dear,” she urged. “I would have bitten off my tongue rather than have said all I did to-day, but, apart from that, I can’t help seeing that things are wrong with you. I felt it from the first moment. It made me nervous, I suppose, and so I babbled on like a fool about the first thing that came into my head.”
“It doesn’t matter,” returned Cecily, in a weak voice. “It isn’t that.”
“Tell me,” urged Rose again.
“It’s difficult,” she murmured, after a moment, “because there doesn’t seem anything definite to tell. It’s justcomelike this.”
There was a silence through which Mrs. Summers waited patiently.
“Rose,” she heard at last, “you saw Robert with me, before you went away. He seemed in love, didn’t he?”
“I never saw any one quite so infatuated.” Mrs. Summers’ reply was emphatic.
“And now he speaks of me ‘quite nicely.’... It seems strange, doesn’t it?” She spoke very quietly, as though she were tired.
“I shall never forgive myself!” murmured Rose, turning her head away.
Cecily was roused. “Don’t worry about that!” she exclaimed. “It’s almost a relief to know that there’s something definite—that it’s not only just boredom—with me.” Before Rose could speak, she added, hastily, as though with a determination to get out the words, “Do you know he’s invited Dick Mayne to stay here?”
Rose’s dress rustled with her quick movement of surprise. “He!Invited Dick Mayne?” she echoed.
“Yes—Dick Mayne—to amuse me,” replied Cecily. In the moonlight Rose saw the bitter little smile on her lips.
“But surely he remembers—why, he used to be as jealous as——”
“Hush!” exclaimed Cecily, with a mockery at which her friend winced. “Jealousy is a vulgar passion!”
“Don’t!” murmured Mrs. Summers, vaguely.
“No,” returned Cecily, after a moment. “Because I suppose there’s a good deal to be said for Robert. I didn’t understand the game. I didn’t understand men a bit when I married, Rose, though I knew so many. And I was no baby either. I was five-and-twenty.”
“One can be very much of a baby at five-and-twenty,” observed Mrs. Summers.
“You see, when we married,” Cecily went on, in the same even voice, “Robert wanted me all to himself. He was quite unreasonable about it. He was hurt because I urged that we should live in town.... I tried to have some common-sense. I tried to look ahead—forboth of us. I knew in my heart it would be bad for him—for any man—to have no circle, to drop out of things. But he wouldn’t see it. We needed only one another, he said. So I gave in at last, and we settled down here. And naturally we dropped out of all the town set. You know how easily one can do that, especially when there’s very little money. And we had very little indeed at first.”
Rose nodded. “I know,” she said.
“At first, of course, for the first year or more perhaps, it was Paradise. I needn’t bore you with all that.... Then at the end of the second year, baby came ... and I was awfully happy. Perhaps even then Robert was beginning to be bored—I don’t know. I was too happy to suspect it.” There was a long pause. As she talked, Cecily had drawn herself into the shadow, so that her face was hidden; when she spoke again her voice was almost inaudible.
“She was a sweet baby, Rose.... Her hair....” She checked herself abruptly, with a half sob. Mrs. Summers’ hand touched hers. She knew the whole bitterness of the tragedy. Cecily’s life had been in danger at the birth of her little girl, and later she had written that this would be her only child.
“I got very ugly after that,” she went on at last. “I fretted so. I couldn’t help it. I must have been very dull then. I dare say I didn’t amuse Robert.”
Mrs. Summers made an impatient exclamation.
“Ah, but it was a mistake!” cried Cecily; “men expect to be amused. If we want to keep them we must work hard.... And then when I did try to pull myself together and be cheerful, it was too late. Nothing I did pleased him. If I put on a pretty frock he never noticed. If I tried to talk in my old way—I used to be quite amusing once, wasn’t I, Rose?” She broke off with a pathetic little laugh. “When I fooled, you know, he was irritated, and asked me what on earth I was driving at. He would never let me talk about his work. He said it annoyed him to have it ‘pawed over.’” She stopped short, and Rose felt her trembling. “I can’t tell you all of it,” she whispered. “It hurts too much.”
Mrs. Summers waited a few moments.
“And lately he has begun to talk about the necessity for friendships,” she began, in a voice purposely hard and matter of fact.
“Yes,” she continued, “while you weretelling me about that girl and her theories it all sounded so familiar.”
“She has adopted your husband’s theories, you think?”
Cecily shook her head with a faint smile.
“No. He has adopted hers. It’s a new phase with Robert. That’s why I’ve been suspecting a fresh influence lately.” She hesitated. “Robert’s like that,” she said at last. “He’s susceptible to every new impression. He reflects everything that——” She paused. “It’s the same with his work,” she went on. “He is always under some fresh influence. Lately it’s been swashbuckling. He’s made money out of that.”
“Why, his work used to be psychological!” exclaimed Rose. “Minute analysis and hair-splitting distinctions!”
“I know. That was one of the phases. There have been many masters since then. And now, I suppose, there will be as many—mistresses.”
She spoke with a quiet irony, more painful than any display of grief. It was the tone of a woman already so disillusioned that a fact more or less made comparatively little difference.
“Cecily,” ventured Mrs. Summers, almost timidly, “there may be nothing wrong.”
Cecily made a weary movement. “Do you know, that seems of little importance. It’s the other things that count, and when they’ve gone——” She did not finish the sentence. Outside, the garden, all vaporous, blue and silver, was like a vision. Softly, quite softly at first, a nightingale began to sing, each note falling like a drop of crystal water through the blue air. Both women were motionless till the song ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
“How beautiful!” murmured Rose.
“I shall miss this garden,” said Cecily, suddenly. “I have worked in it for three years. Every woman ought to have a garden—then at least she getssomeof the roses of life. Areyouhappy?” she added, almost in the same breath, with startling abruptness.
Mrs. Summers hesitated. “Yes,” she returned, finally, “in a placid way—yes. But then, I’m a practical woman. I always left the stars out of my calculations, didn’t I? Jack and I suited each other. We have continued to suit each other. I never expected him to be the lover of romance. Poor dear! he’s not at all made for the part. But he wears well, you know, Cis. And,” her voice softened, “I have the babies.”
Cecily was silent. “Yours is the sane view of life,” she said at last.
“I know; though in moods, fortunately rare, I would exchange it for aninsane one,” returned Mrs. Summers, with a laugh. “Though I leave the stars out, I don’t forget they are there.”
“I wonder?” returned Cecily.
“Are you going to say anything about this to your husband?” asked Mrs. Summers, with apparent irrelevance.
“No,” said Cecily, briefly.
“And Mayne? Are you going to have him down here?”
“Yes. Why not? If Robert wishes it, how can I object? I shall be very glad to see Dick again,” she added.
“Is it wise?”
“That’s Robert’s affair.”
“I was thinking of Dick.”
“That’shisaffair. He had my answer long ago, and he knows I meant it. Besides,” she smiled a little, “don’t worry—I’ve lost my looks.”
“Dick is not that sort.”
“Every man is that sort.”
Mrs. Summers glanced at her, as she sat with the little mocking smile still on her lips.
“O Cis, dear,” she murmured, deprecatingly.
Cecily got up. “I must go,” she said; “I’m wearing you out.”
Mrs. Summers also rose. With a sudden movement she drew her friend into her arms. For a moment Cecily resisted. Then to the elder woman’s relief she broke into a passion of tears.
“I’ve been so wretched, Rose,” she whispered, incoherently. “He was everything to me. All the world! And now he goes to another woman, and tells her all the things that he used—and says all the words that—— Oh, what’s the good of talking!” she wailed. “It’s all over and done with. He doesn’t care any more. And I suppose he can’t help it. Sometimes I think I don’t care either. And then, all at once——”
It was the old wail, the woman’s plaint, eternal as the hills, ever recurring as the wind and the rains recur; as monotonous as they.