CHAPTER XI
THE Kingslakes had been in town nearly eight months. They had taken a flat in Westminster, and Cecily had been thankful for the work entailed by the move. She was thankful to leave the Priory; thankful even to part from her beloved garden. The whole place seemed to her desecrated, besmirched. That for the heights, as for the depths, of human happiness and human woe the same scene should be set, may be sport for the gods. For the actors in the drama it is agony, and it was with relief unspeakable that Cecily set her face towards London and a different existence.
It was only when the flat was in order, and life began to run smoothly, that she realized how much easier, as far as outward circumstances were concerned, existence had become. It was, as she had suggested to Robert, very simple to see little of one another. When her husband was indoors he was alwaysin his study. But Robert was very little at home in those days.
Cecily asked no questions. He went his way; she hers. London seized them both, and whirled them, for the most part, in opposite directions. When they met, it was with friendliness, tempered on Robert’s side with an implied, perfunctory reproach. “Remember this is your doing. This state of things is the outcome of your wish,” was what his manner expressed, while with visible relief he accepted his freedom. Cecily sometimes smiled when, directly after one of their infrequent lunches together, she heard the front door bang, and listened to her husband’s impatient summons for the lift. The smile was still bitter, but, as time went on, it hurt less.
In those early days in town, Cecily saw her husband very mercilessly. The scales had so completely dropped from her eyes that her clearness of vision startled even herself. There were times when, heightened by fierce jealousy, her old passion for him revived so strongly that she could scarcely restrain herself from the madness of throwing herself into his arms, appealing to him, begging him to come back to her—to love her. At such moments she always had the sensation of being held tightby some one who laughed, some one who said coldly, “You fool! When he’s hurrying to another woman, to whom, if you are lucky, he will speak of you ‘quite nicely.’” And when she had raged, and fought, and struggled till she had exhausted herself, she was always thankful for the iron arms that had held her, and the icy voice that had checked her passion.
It was after the subsidence of such an outbreak of emotion, that she generally saw Robert dispassionately, as an outsider might have seen him, or rather with an amount of penetration which no outsider, however dispassionate, could have attained. She acquired an almost preternatural insight, a sort of projection of her mind into his, so that she actually witnessed his self-deception, saw the clouds which he purposely, yet almost without his own volition, raised between his own consciousness and naked truth. She realized, with something that was almost scornful amusement, how the idea of inviting Mayne, with all that such an invitation might imply, had first struck him. How he had thrust the thought from him as a poisonous snake,—and invited Mayne. She saw how, by this time, he had allowed himself to acquire merit by encouraging Mayne’s visit. His wife was unreasonable (because she didn’tknow anything)—this, in his mind also, appeared in parenthesis, and was so lightly skimmed in thought that it scarcely counted. Besides, when she had expressed her wish for their practical separation, therehadbeen nothing, and that made all the difference, and brought him on happily to the contemplation of his own generosity in welcoming a friend of hers, at a time when she was not even aware that there was also a friend ofhisfor whom the same cordiality might be expected.
It was with a shock sometimes that she found herself making a minute analysis of her husband’s mental condition with a degree of calmness, of interest even, at which she could only wonder. In the meantime, as far as outward interests and preoccupations were concerned, she made haste to fill her life. In her determination to do this she had never wavered since her talk with Mayne. The hoursmustbe filled. So far as occupation went, she could and would “pull herself together.” She began to look up her old friends, and found them more than willing to receive her. Cecily had always been popular, and her husband was beginning to be well known, and probably, also, beginning to grow rich. Whether sheowed her immediate acceptance to the memory of her own former charm, or to the more tangible advantages she now offered as the wife of a popular novelist, Cecily wisely did not inquire. She wanted acquaintances. She could have them for the asking. And she was grateful for one friend.
Mayne was living at his club while he considered at his leisure a fresh campaign of exploration. He and Cecily saw one another frequently. But it was not till she took his incessantly urged advice and began to write, that she felt that any of her methods of filling the hours were more than husks which she ate for lack of good bread. Often on looking back to the day when she first took up her work again, she thought with wonder of the occasion. It was the day Robert had expressed his desire to employ the services of Philippa Burton as secretary. Rather to Cecily’s surprise he had been in to lunch. It was nearly a month, she reflected, since such a thing had happened, and her surprise deepened when, instead of going directly the meal was at an end, he asked for coffee, and lighted a cigarette. For a time he talked disjointedly on indifferent topics, bringing the conversation round at last to his work and its many vexations.
“I’ve got more than I can do,” he declared, with a worried frown. “Brough is bothering for those short stories, and there’s my new novel, and the play, and half my time’s taken up with business letters and all the machinery of the thing.” He paused as if in thought. “I really think a secretary would pay me,” he exclaimed presently.
“Why not have one, then?” asked Cecily, taking a cigarette from the box between them.
“I don’t know how to—— What about Miss Burton?” he suggested, concluding the hesitating sentence sharply, as though the idea had just occurred to him. “She does shorthand, and she’s very hard up, poor girl. She was at Lady Wilmot’s yesterday when I called.”
Cecily lighted her cigarette, and walked with it to the window-seat, where she sat down with her back to the light.
“And you suggested it to her?” she asked.
“No. I had no opportunity of speaking to her.”
A hysterical desire to laugh seized her. She controlled it, grasping with her left hand the corner of the cushion on which she sat, and was silent.
“I should only want her—and indeed shecould only come—for an hour or two in the morning,” Robert went on, quite fluently now. “She has her own work—enamelling, isn’t it? And of course she wouldn’t want to give that up entirely. But she can’t make a living at it; and I thought, as she’s a friend of yours, if I could do her a good turn——”
Cecily rose. “By all means do her a good turn,” she said. “But what has that to do with it? The question is, will she make a good secretary? If you think she will, I should engage her. I must go and get ready. I promised to meet Mrs. Carrington at three o’clock.”
As she closed the door after her, Robert shrugged his shoulders. He was honestly reflecting that it was the unreasoning prejudice of women that made marriage slavery. Dispassionately he reviewed his own case. Granted that if she knew of his relations with Philippa, it would be impossible to make his wife view them from any but the vulgar standpoint; granted this, the point at issue was that she didnotknow. From her point of view, therefore, he was the conventionally faithful husband, and, this notwithstanding, it wasshewho had annulled their married life. So far as her knowledge went, Philippa was a mere acquaintanceof his, a woman with whom, during her stay at Sheepcote, he had been moderately friendly; a woman to whom, because she was poor and comparatively friendless, he wished to extend a helping hand. Immediately, her attitude, if not hostile, had been at least uncordial. He began to rage at its obvious injustice. Regarded from Cecily’s standpoint it was monstrous. On no stronger ground than that of a frivolous accusation of lack of affection on his part, to insist on a practical separation, and then to be jealous of his women friends!
He rose from the table with an exclamation of impatience. It was amazing that no later than yesterday he should have dreaded making this proposition to Cecily, that he should have shrunk from it as something in bad taste, something forced upon him only by the pressing necessity of helping a proud woman, who would be helped in no other way. His scruples had been needless, and even ridiculous. By her own action Cecily had set him free to do what he would with his life. He took his hat, and later a hansom, and drove to Fulham.
Cecily sat in her bedroom on the edge of her bed, her hands folded in her lap.Mechanically she had taken her hat and veil from the wardrobe, and as mechanically laid them aside, forgetting she was going out. Presently she wandered into the drawing-room, and began to walk up and down. Misery, jealousy, loneliness, had shrunk away before a sort of cold anger and contempt; a longing to be free, to shake off forever a yoke that had become hateful; to have the power to becomeherselfonce more. Should she tell Robert she knew? Should she demand her freedom, and go? Part of her nature leaped at the thought. It would so simplify the struggle. She could go away, immerse herself in work, force herself to forget. Thus she would so easily spare herself humiliation, the sight of the woman she hated in her own house, at her husband’s side. “And why should I stay? Why should I?” she clamored to one of the other women within her. “He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t want me.... Not now.” “But some day he will want you,” another voice unexpectedly returned. “What then? Am I to wait meekly till he’s tired of her? Am I to be at hand to console him in the intervals of his love affairs?”
She heard herself break into a short, scornful laugh, and almost before it ceased the otherself had spoken. “Think of him wanting you—and suppose you were not there? You know how he would look. Picture it. Could you bear it?Canyou go?” All at once the room swam before her in a mist of tears, and she knew she could not.
She went to the window and pushed it wider open. Before her, springing like a long-stemmed flower towards the blue of the sky, was the campanile of Westminster Cathedral. Behind its rose-pink summit white clouds drifted, and round it circled white pigeons. It was a tower that Cecily had learned to love, its very incongruity in the midst of London roofs appealing to her imagination. It was an exotic flower, blossoming radiantly above the gray heart of London. She looked at it to-day with a fresh sense of its beauty. It affected her like the glamour of an Eastern story. With a keen sense of gratitude she realized that beauty once more had power to thrill her. She remembered how at the Priory last year the blue sky had been hateful, the sunshine vain. “I’m getting better,” she half whispered. “When it doesn’t matter at all, any more, I shall be well. Perhaps some day I shall be well.” The thought brought a great wave of consolation. She went quickly intoher bedroom, put on her hat and gloves, and without waiting for the lift, walked downstairs.
As she turned the corner of the street, thefaçadeof the cathedral came into sight. Cecily let her eyes wander over its galleries, its recesses, its stone carvings, its mysterious little staircases, its strange domes, and pillared loggias. She loved it all, curious and fantastic as it was. She had not meant to go in, but as she passed, she saw that the unfinished doors of the great entrance were open, and far away in the recesses of what looked like a shadowy cave, the candles burned like a row of stars. Cecily paused. A palm-branch laid between two chairs served as a barricade to the scarcely completed entrance, and she went in at the side door, and sat down just within. She knew the interior of the cathedral well, but to-day its likeness to some gigantic work of nature—a great branching sea-cave perhaps—struck her more forcibly than ever. The uncovered brickwork in its ruggedness and simplicity heightened this effect. It was wonderful now with a mosaic of sunshine which, filtering through the small panes of the west windows, covered the brickwork between the mighty arches with a design in gold. Far beneath, the choir itself was in shadow. Inshadow also was the great red cross, with the pallid Christ, suspended, as it seemed, in mid-air.
A service was going on, and from behind curtains, at the back of the altar, came the sound of singing. The sweet boys’ voices filled the vaulted spaces above the altar as though clouds of incense had melted into song. An unfinished chapel on the right, near the door, was almost concealed by scaffolding, over which hung cloths of sacking, but between the folds of this screen Cecily caught a glimpse of one of the mosaic workers—a girl, evidently mounted upon an improvised platform, for Cecily saw only her dark head high up against an already completed background of mosaic. The chapel was flooded with dusty golden sunlight, in the brightness of which her young face looked vague and indistinct. Her right hand moved swiftly as she worked at the halo round the head of a saint. Through a veil of golden haze, Cecily had a vision of burnished silver and gold, of peacock color and rose, lining the walls of the chapel, and her thoughts were carried back to the mediæval artisans in cathedrals now hoary with age; to the workers of long ago whose busy hands are dust. She thought of possible yearsto come, when the golden halo of that saint should be dim with age, and, like the myriads of artisans before her, the girl-worker should have passed into oblivion.
The service had ceased, but Cecily still sat on, in a sort of dream. She saw in the distance a procession of dim purple-robed figures with white cassocks come down from the choir-loft and disappear. The space before the altar was empty. Silence had fallen, but she did not move.
The cathedral had laid its spell upon her. She felt it like a quiet hand upon her heart. By its actual religious significance, in a narrow sense at least, she was not affected. But in so far as it stood for something detached from the fever and the fret of human existence, it began to assume a great meaning. For the first time in her life she longed for a serenity which should lift her above the storms of passion; for interests independent of the love of man. It was characteristic of Cecily, that, desiring a thing strongly, she should definitely try to gain it.
What was the first step for her, individually, towards spiritual freedom? Surely to create. It was the craving of her whole nature. She longed for freedom; so only could she befree. Then and there she began to think out and plan in detail an idea which long ago she had been too happy, and lately too wretched, to translate into writing. The mosaic of sunshine faded from the walls, the great church grew dim while she sat, still thinking. When at last she rose, and, a little dazed, stepped from the twilight of the nave into the street, the sun had sunk below the opposite houses, and the saffron-colored sky told of evening. Cecily put back her head, and with her eyes followed the soaring campanile till they rested on the cross which at its summit pierced the quiet sky.
With no sense of incongruity, but with a curious feeling of gratitude, she reflected upon the nature of her meditation within the building to which that tower belonged. A few moments later she reached her own doorstep, and that same evening she began to write.