CHAPTER XX
CECILY and Mrs. Summers had arrived at the coffee stage of lunch. They were alone, Robert having left a message that he was going out.
Cecily had received the intimation with secret resentment. It struck her as discourteous to their guest, that her husband, who had only just returned, should not have arranged on that first day, which was also the last of Rose’s visit, to spend some of his hours at home. As the result of long reflection, she had met him cheerfully the previous evening, and had been relieved to find that he showed no inclination to allude again to the interrupted subject of their difference. She determined to ignore the matter; to behave as though the discussion had never arisen.
Rose glanced at her once or twice as she sat absently stirring her coffee.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked at length, breaking the silence abruptly.
The depth of Cecily’s reflection was indicated by her start.
“Robert,” she answered, laconically.
“What about him?”
“Lots of things. But chiefly how ill he looks.”
“He can’t have heard anything, can he?” suggested Rose after a moment.
Cecily made a little movement expressing ignorance. “She was here this morning as usual,” she said.
“Yes,” Rose agreed. “It can’t be that. And,” she added, suddenly, “I don’t believe he cares any more about her.”
“Some one else?” suggested Cecily, with a little laugh.
“Yes—you.”
Cecily raised her head, and looked full at her friend. There was in her face a curious mixture of expression; a sort of pitying consternation and a faint gleam of amusement. It was the glance with which a mother might have heard of some unreasonable and rather troublesome caprice on the part of her son. Rueful annoyance was coupled with a slight admixture of tenderness.
“It would be so like Robert,” was all she said in reply to Rose.
“And if it’s true,” pursued Rose after a moment, “would you——?” She paused.
“Oh, Rose!” said Cecily. “Rose——?” She drew her breath in suddenly. “If you hit a live thing on the head often enough, you make it insensible. What’s the good of caressing it then?”
Mrs. Summers was silent.
“Robert ought to go away,” Cecily continued, rising from the table. “He’ll be ill if he doesn’t. I’d like him to go yachting with the Daintons,” she went on, meditatively. “They are always asking him. I wonder if it could be managed?”
“No doubt,” Rose assured her.
“If only he could get away before he hears anything—and stay away till that young woman is safely married!”
Despite herself, Rose laughed. “That young woman” as designated by Cecily was irresistible.
“You’ll never be a saint, my dear!”
“A saint?” she repeated, absently, her mind evidently still preoccupied. “Why should I be? I’m only worried about Robert.” She continued to discuss in detail plans for persuading her husband to take a long holiday, and only roused from hermusings upon the subject to glance hurriedly at the clock.
“Dick will be here in a minute!” she exclaimed. “You’re sure you don’t mind my leaving you? You know I wouldn’t under ordinary circumstances, but business is business, and I must see Coombs to-day.” She hurried away, and live minutes later looked in, putting on her gloves as she spoke.
“You’re all ready except your hat, aren’t you, Rose? You needn’t start before a quarter to three. It’s at the Court theatre, you know—quite close. Good-bye; I dare say I sha’n’t be very much later than you. I’d like to get a little rest before dinner to-night.”
She went out with a smiling nod, and left Rose meditating upon her prettiness, till a ring at the bell startled her, and Mayne was announced.
“You know Cecily’s not coming?” was her greeting as they shook hands.
“So she told me. Has to see her agent, or something.”
“Yes, a business matter. Sit down and have a cigarette; we’ve got half an hour before the matinee.”
Mayne complied. As he settled himself in the easy-chair opposite to her, Rose wasconscious of very mixed emotions. She liked Mayne. She had always liked him, even in his hobbledehoy stage, when she had first discerned his boyish admiration for Cecily. She looked at him now, and sighed at the perversity of fate. This man, with his unobtrusive air of determination and quiet strength, was the man Cecily should have married. Why could she not have cared for him?
Her heart misgave her, and the half-formed determination in her mind for a moment melted. It was after all possibly a dangerous, certainly a thankless, task to interfere. She found herself wishing, wishing with all her strength, that she did not know Cecily so well; that she might at least have the excuse that it was not for an outsider to forecast the future. And in the midst of chaotic reflections, she found herself speaking.
“Do you know,” she said, suddenly, “that Philippa Burton is going to marry that young Nevern?”
Mayne started. It was the first time that Philippa’s name had been mentioned between them with significance.
“No,” he said. “Who told you?”
“That queen of gossips, Lady Wilmot, of course.”
“Is she sure?”
“Yes. They’re keeping the engagement secret, but Nevern’s mother discovered it, and went to Lady Wilmot in tears.”
Mayne inquiringly raised his head.
“Oh, merely because he’s the only son, and she’s jealous at the thought of any daughter-in-law, I believe,” returned Mrs. Summers in reply to his look. “Of course,” she added, with a shrug, “it would be interesting to know what hints Lady Wilmot dropped during the interview. She knows nothing actually, but she’s very curious about the situation here.”
Mayne did not speak for a moment. “And—Kingslake?” he asked, presently.
“Doesn’t know—yet.”
Dick lifted his eyebrows. “Cecily?” he said, with some difficulty.
“Yes. Lady Wilmot called yesterday, and told both of us—in strict confidence.”
Mayne’s rather set face relaxed into a quizzical smile. Rose answered it calmly.
“Oh, yes!” she said. “But quite apart from the fact that by this time she’s told half London, I meant you in any case to know.”
Mayne looked at her. “Why?” he asked.
“I leave that to your intelligence,” said Rose, meeting his eyes steadily.
There was a long pause.
“How well Cecily looks!” she remarked presently in an ordinary tone. “She’s wildly busy, but it seems to suit her.”
“It suits most of us, I imagine,” returned Mayne, slowly.
“Are you carrying out the doctrine?”
“No.”
“No? What are you doing, then?”
“Idling.”
“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
Mayne threw his cigarette end out of the window.
“You think I ought to be moving on?”
“Yes,” said Rose, abruptly, as though moved by a sudden determination. “Why don’t you?”
He again met her eyes, this time doggedly.
“Why should I?”
Rose took her courage in both hands. There was something in the man’s face which showed her she had need of it.
“Dick,” she said, quietly, “it hasn’t taken me long to discover that people are talking.”
He smiled grimly. “But that is perennial.”
“And,” continued Rose, undaunted, “her husband is jealous.”
This time he laughed unpleasantly. “Of what? Her success?”
“Partly. But not only that. Of her—of you.” It was out now, and she took breath a little uneasily.
He rose, and stood leaning against the window-frame.
“In the face ofthat?” he jerked his head in the direction of Robert’s study, and laughed again. There was something in his tone, a savage irony, mingled with a kind of appeal, that made it very difficult for Rose to keep her head. Yet she managed to answer coolly.
“Oh, yes—quite. But, as I’ve often found, it takes one man to expect logic from another.”
“There’s something more important than logic that the average man surelymayexpect,” returned Mayne. He had thrown off all attempt at lightness of tone by now.
“What’s that?”
“Common decency.”
They looked at one another. “My dear Dick,” said Rose, slowly, “when one comes down to the primitive emotions, one mustn’t expect even that. Put love, jealousy, or hatredin one scale—and civilization will be a feather in the other.”
He continued to look down at her. When he spoke it was under his breath.
“I agree. Hatred, you say? By God——” He checked himself, and turned abruptly towards the window.
Rose watched him a moment. “Dick,” she said, “you have only one person to consider—Cecily.”
He wheeled round. “And Ihaveconsidered her. Kingslake overreached himself there. He knew I cared for her. What hedidn’tknow, was how much I cared.”
Rose hesitated before she made her appeal. “Listen to me, Dick,” she began, very gently. “I see what you’ve done for Cecily. You’ve restored her confidence in herself for one thing. You’ve given her back her youth—even her beauty; all she was losing, in short. She herself says so. She would never have had the courage to take up life again if it hadn’t been for you.” She paused, and then said suddenly, “Now there’s only one more thing you can do for her—go.”
She saw she had struck the right note, but she saw, too, the struggle in his face before he broke out into speech.
“But why?” he urged. “Why, in heaven’s name? It isn’t as though there had ever been a word—Cecily only wants my friendship. I know that well enough, worse luck,” he added, with a hopeless want of logic which Rose found pathetic. “I’ve never troubled her with anything else. Gossip, you say? Very well. I’ll see less of her. But to go away——”
“It isn’t only that,” interrupted Rose, stemming his torrent of words.
“What, then?”
She lay back in her chair, and her eyes travelled to the blue sky, and to the tall shaft of the campanile. “All sorts of things,” she answered, slowly. “What an abominably penetrating book the Bible is, when one doesn’t read it too often,” she added, after a moment, with apparent irrelevance. “‘The heart is deceitful above all things’—Robert has discovered that, if I mistake not.”
Mayne was silent.
“I believe he used to think himself rather a noble fellow at one time,” she went on, “with his higher love and so forth—whatever that may mean.”
Mayne uttered a contemptuous exclamation. “Well?” he demanded, “but how does that illustrate my case?”
“You talk about Cecily’s friendship,” she returned, “but aren’t you, unconsciously, perhaps, relying a little, just a very little, on that patience from which you hoped so much before she married?”
Mayne said nothing. He had seated himself once more in the arm-chair, and Rose was aware of the rigidity of his attitude. It was as though his body had become suddenly frozen.
She went on, not quite steadily. “You hate me for saying it, of course. So should I, if I were you. But, Dick—you and I are not by nature self-deceivers. We think straight. And when one person loves, even though the other does not, is it quite safe? There comes a weak moment—a sense of the dreariness of life—gratitude on one side; on the other a strong emotion. Oh, Dick,youknow as well as I do.”
Mayne raised himself slowly, and bent towards her. When he began to speak it was slowly, also, as though he were feeling for the words.
“So now,” he said, “when I’ve helped her to be self-reliant; when she’s found a life of her own, apart from his; now, when he’s thrown over by the woman who has fooled him,nowI’m to disappear in order that he may enslave her again!” He rose swiftly, witha bitter laugh, and stood before her. “Oh, you good women! you good women!”
Rose watched him as he walked blindly towards the mantelpiece and stood leaning his elbow upon it.
“You misunderstand me,” she said, at last; “I am not arguing from the standpoint of the conventional ‘good woman’ at all. I—well, I have no rigid views on the subject. I look upon each case as something to be considered on its own merits, or demerits.”
“And on which side would you put mine?” He asked the question with mockery.
“Viewed from the outside,” returned Rose, judicially, “I should say it has merits. Cecily has been badly treated. You are a decent man, and there are no children to be considered. But there are two drawbacks. One is that she doesn’t love you—yet, at least. The other—and it is the most important—is Cecily’s own nature.”
Mayne turned round. “Yes?” he said. “What about that?”
“You spoke of her husband enslaving her again,” she answered. “He will never do so. All that made that possible is over. But Cecily happens to be a very faithful woman. I’ve sometimes thought,” observed Mrs.Summers, reflectively, “that to bestow this characteristic upon a woman is the last refinement of cruelty on the part of the gods.” She paused a moment, and shrugged her shoulders. “I may be wrong. In any case Cecilyhasthe faithful temperament. She has loved her husband. She will never really love again. But that is not saying there’s no danger if you stay. Let us imagine that you stay. Cecily is a woman—therefore all things are possible. But, Dick, can you look me in the face and tell me that you don’t know the disaster of—of such a possibility? Even now, though she doesn’t love him, she’s worrying about Robert because he looks ill, because he’s unhappy,—heaven knows what. Just the maternal instinct, you know. She will never cease to worry about him. Suppose you gained your point; would you keep her friendship? Would you get anything worth having in its place? Dick, youknowyou wouldn’t!”
He was silent, and after a moment she went on in a low tone.
“It’s because the really good things in life are so few, that I want you not to run the risk of losing——”
Mayne faced her. “The best I’ve had?” he suggested, finishing the sentence slowly.
Mrs. Summers nodded, and was annoyed to find her eyes filled with tears.
The room was quite still for what seemed a long time, and when a clock struck they both started.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Mayne, with a glance at it. “We’ve missed that show.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, mechanically.
He drew himself up as though with a sudden resolve. “Do you mind if I go? I—I feel rather as though I’d like to walk a thousand miles or so,” he added, with a forced laugh.
She put out her hand. “Yes, go,” she said, very kindly. “You don’t forget you’re dining here to-night? Cecily told me to remind you that dinner is at half-past eight.”
He nodded. “All right.” He was still holding her hand, and suddenly he raised it to his lips, dropped it hurriedly, and went out without a word.
Mrs. Summers stood looking at the back of her hand. “If I’d been in his place, I should have cut you off instead,” she said, savagely under her breath—“with a blunt knife, too!”