CHAPTER XXI
WHEN Cecily returned, it was about six o’clock. She was tired, and after asking for Rose, and hearing that she was in her room, she decided to dress at once, and afterwards rest on the sofa in the drawing-room, till the arrival of her guests.
As she walked into the room some time later, the surface of her mind was full of little preoccupations and interests. She had invited pleasant people for Rose’s farewell dinner, and she hoped the evening was going to be a success.
She had already been into the dining-room to see and approve the table decoration, and she now looked critically about the drawing-room, altering the position now of a bowl of roses, now of one of the lights. It all looked very charming, she thought, as she arranged a cushion behind her head on the pale-colored empire sofa, and lay back watching the fire with wide, preoccupied eyes.
Beneath the trivialities were stirring graverthoughts, deeper speculations. They were insistent, if scarcely defined, and when she heard behind her the sound of an opening door, and her husband entered, the sight of him brought them into sudden definite form.
As she looked up, she was shocked by the strained, nervous expression of his face. He came forward with a sort of groping movement, regarding first the lighted room, and then his wife’s evening gown, with irritable surprise.
“Is any one coming?” he began.
“We have a dinner to-night, you know,” she answered, surprised, for earlier in the day he had discussed the subject.
He uttered an impatient exclamation. “The house is always full of people,” he declared. “It’s sickening! Can’t you have a quiet evening now and then? Who’s coming?”
Cecily glanced at him, and controlling herself with an effort, spoke gently.
“We talked about all of them only this morning,” she said. “The Eversleighs, Lady Ashford, Colonel Ferguson, Miss Devereux, Dick Mayne——”
“Oh—naturally!” he interrupted, with a sneer.
The color rushed to her cheeks. There was a little pause.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, looking at him steadily.
“My reasons must be fairly obvious.”
“They escape me,” returned Cecily. “Surely, Robert,” she added, after a breathless pause, “we need not continue the conversation you began the other evening?”
“There is every need,” he declared. “The last time we discussed this subject, you thought my attitude towards it ‘very funny,’ I remember. I’m sorry I haven’t your sense of humor. Funny as you may consider it, I intend to talk about what you find so ridiculous—my honor. It’s time, I think, since you seem to have forgotten yours.”
Cecily got up slowly from the sofa, and leaning against the mantelpiece, faced him with dangerously bright eyes.
“That is not true,” she said, deliberately. “But that it doesn’t happen to be true is no thanks to you.”
Kingslake, his nerves strained to the uttermost, had lost all self-control, and was letting himself go, but he recoiled a step before his wife’s gaze.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“You really want me to tell you?” Her voice came to him icily. “Very well, then, I will. Two years ago, I was a wretched, unhappy woman because you had ceased to care for me, and I had therefore ceased to care for—anything. But I never suspected there was a reason—I thought it had just happened so—I thought I had somehow failed to keep your love. Then, quite by chance, I heard of Philippa Burton.”
Robert’s face changed. “But till that day at the Priory——” he began.
Cecily’s eyes suddenly fell. She turned her head aside, with a sort of unbearable shame. “Robert!” she urged in a low voice, “don’t try to deceive me any more. Before that day at the Priory you had seen her constantly—every day, in fact, for months.”
He looked at her uncertainly. “And you knew this—all the time?”
“Not all the time. Not till a few days before you took rooms for her in the village, and then only by the strangest chance.”
There was a silence. Robert broke it in a curious, shamed voice.
“Cecily, I swear to you that Miss Burton and I were only friends.”
She stood tracing figures on the shelf of themantelpiece with her forefinger. When she spoke it was very quietly.
“You should be careful where you make love to your friends, Robert. The garden is a more or less public place.”
He started, then began to pace the room.
“Cecily!” he urged. “Listen——”
She interrupted him with a sound that was half a sob.
“Ah, Robert!—please don’t. What does it matter now? It hurts me so to hear you—and you see Iknow.... What does it matter when it first——” Her voice sank almost to a whisper, but she recovered herself. “Under the circumstances,” she added, “what was I to think of your invitation to Dick?”
There was another silence.
“Cecily,” he began again at last, clearing his throat, “do you—do you really imagine——?”
She turned once more and looked him full in the face, and again his eyes fell before hers. “What I try to imagine, is that youdidn’tthink,” she said, slowly. “You were so engrossed that you had forgotten—much. But sometimes, Robert—to be truthful—I find it hard to accept even that explanation.”
He continued to walk restlessly about theroom. “So you—you impute to me vile motives like that?” he asked, uneasily.
“Youdothink them vile? I’m glad of that,” she answered, slowly. “In any case you didn’t know Dick. He loves me as you have never loved me.”
He turned sharply and gazed at her. “You dare to tell me that!”
“Yes,” said Cecily, quietly, “I dare. I owe it to Dick that I’m no longer the miserable, helpless woman I was when he came home.Then, I was dependent for all that makes life upon the love of one man—who had failed me. Now, I have a life of my own, friends of my own, work of my own. And it was Dick who showed me how to trust myself, and shake myself free!”
He stood looking at her. In the midst of the whirl of emotions within him, jealousy, resentment, humiliation, and a childish longing for comfort, he thought how beautiful she was. He realized every detail of her gleaming dress; he saw the whiteness of her breast, the curve of her lips, the droop of her cloudy hair.
“In the intervals of love-making, no doubt?” he suggested.
Her eyes grew hard. “Is it necessary tobe insulting? Dick has never made love to me since I have been your wife.”
For a long moment he looked at her. He believed what she said. Cecily had never lied to him. If she said so, he told himself, it was true, and with the assurance came an almost terrible sense of relief. He was still thinking chaotically; the wound inflicted by Philippa to his pride still rankled with an intolerable smart. Cecily’s attitude towards him was a further humiliation—but the last evil had not descended. His wife was still his.
He paused in his restless pacing and stood before her.
“Cecily,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “won’t you be friends? I have behaved badly. I admit it.” He felt a sort of pleasure in this self-abasement, but Cecily did not move. “I give you my word it’s all over,” he went on, desperately. “Miss Burton will never come here again. I shall never see her again. I love you. Really, I love you. I can’t see you drifting away from me——”
She did not speak, and with her silence waves of growing resentment, of unreasonable anger, began to gather. “But you must give up this intimacy with Mayne,” he added, with a change of voice. He waited. “After all,you are my wife. I have a right to demand that.” He took an impatient step towards her and put out his hand to draw her to him. Suddenly she recoiled from him and began to speak in a low, rapid voice, vehemently, passionately.
“Did you love me when I was wretched—longing for you—eating my heart out with misery? No! You never even noticed that I was miserable. But now—now, when I’ve got back my looks, when I’m rather admired, rather sought after—now, when your love affair is over because the woman has deceived you—now you come to me and profess love! To me such love is an insult, whether it’s offered by a woman’s husband or any other man!” She paused and with a great effort added, with quiet deliberation, “I refuse to give up my friendship with Dick. It’s no more, it will never be anything more than a friendship, but”—she paused—“it’s the best thing I’ve had in my life.”
For a second’s space they looked at each other silently.
“Mr. Mayne,” said the maid at the door.
Mayne entered. There was a moment’s embarrassing silence while his look travelled, scarcely perceptibly, from one to the other.Then he spoke coolly, without haste, as usual.
“I’m at least half an hour too early. I don’t deserve my hostess to be ready.”
Robert glanced at his watch. “Youarevery early,” he said, significantly, “but I will go and dress.”
His face was white with anger as he passed Mayne on the way to the door.
When it closed upon him, Mayne went up to the mantelpiece and stood opposite Cecily.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, gravely.
She tried to keep her voice steady, and smiled. “Nothing—nothing that matters. A silly little argument, that’s all.”
“Your husband is suspicious of our friendship?”
Cecily glanced at him appealingly, then suddenly dropped her head on her clasped hands.
“Oh, don’t, Dick! Don’t!” she whispered. “I can’t go through it all again.”
Mayne stood looking at her down-bent head. All at once he leaned over her.
“I wish to God you loved me,” he said, in a low, passionate voice.
She raised her face and looked at him steadily.
“I wish to God I did,” she answered, very slowly.
He made a sudden movement towards her and checked himself.
“Could you——?... No! That isn’t what I’ve got to say.” He passed his hand over his face and went on, doggedly, “Cis, I’m going away.”
Cecily started.
“That’s why I came early,” he went on, in the same unemotional tone. “I hoped to find you alone.... I must go, Cis. For a long time I’ve known it, but I’ve kept it at the back of my mind and wouldn’t look. And now, at last, Mrs. Summers has made me drag it out, and so——” He finished the sentence with a gesture.
“Rose?” repeated Cecily, vaguely.
“She’s quite right,” he said. “It’s not fair to you——” She made a protesting movement, but he intercepted it and drew himself up. “It’s not fair tometo stay,” he added, firmly.
Her hand dropped at her side. “Not fair to you?” she echoed, as if a new light had broken. “No; it isn’t—it isn’t.” She moved to the sofa and let herself drop against the cushions as though exhausted. “I’vebeen selfish, Dick,” she went on, still in the same dazed voice. “I’ve been so thankful for your help. So glad of you—you can’t think how glad. And all the time I never realized what it must have meant to you.” She put up her hand to her head with a touchingly childish gesture. “I’ve been horribly selfish.”
He stood looking at her—looking as though by his intense gaze he would print her face upon his memory forever. Only vaguely he heard what she was saying. His senses were too full of her to heed. The faint fragrance of her dress, the sweet blue of her troubled eyes, the quivering of her lips, were making his heart beat to suffocation.
“No, dear,” he murmured, absently, “no.”
“Yes,” she insisted. “Oh, Dick! it has been hateful of me, but do you know what helped me to pull myself together? It was knowing you—you loved me ... and admired me. It was such a long time since I had known that any man felt that.... It was mean of me, contemptible—but somehow it helped me awfully. It gave me back my self-esteem. It flattered my vanity.... Dick, don’t youhateme?”
He laughed gently. “Did you think Ididn’t know it?” he said. “Did you think I wasn’t glad?”
With a sudden movement she rose, and, facing him, spoke urgently, almost imperatively.
“Dick,” she said, “I’m going to say to you what you said to me two years ago. Don’t waste your life over one human being. The world is wide, and it’s before you. And you’re a strong man. Go, and forget me.”
“I shall go,” said Mayne, briefly.
“When?” She faltered a little over the word.
“To-morrow.”
She was silent, looking at him; trying to realize life without him.
“The sooner the better,” he said, at last, drawing a long breath. “I’m used to setting out for nowhere at a moment’s notice, you see. So this will be our farewell feast, Cis. You’ll drink to my—to my success?”
“To your happiness, Dick,” she whispered, in a shaking voice.
Mayne looked at her again with such a long gaze that her eyes sank.
“Cecily,” he said at last, huskily, “we’ve known each other for a long time. Do you know the years I’ve loved you?... Andperhaps I shall not come back.... May I kiss you once—just to remember all my life?”
She looked at him gravely. “Yes, Dick,” she answered.
With a half cry, Mayne drew her into his arms, and put his lips to hers. It was the kiss he had dreamed of for years; a kiss that in a rapture of mingled torture and delight expressed all that for years he had felt for the woman he held for one brief moment like a lover. A colored mist swam before him as he raised his head. He felt Cecily gently disengage herself, and it was the silence in the room that cleared his brain, and then his sight.
Kingslake was standing just inside the door.
For a moment the stillness seemed to press upon the air like a visible, tangible weight before it was broken by Robert’s savage laugh.
“What liars you women are,” he said, slowly, under his breath, his eyes upon his wife. “Aren’t you? All of you! All alike!”
Mayne made a menacing step towards him.
“Be careful what you say!” he began, in as low a voice. “We’d better be alone. Cecily,”—he turned to her—“will you go?”
“No,” she said, quietly. “I prefer to stay.” She looked past Mayne at her husband.
“All I said to you just now is true——”
He laughed again.
“You take a low view of my intelligence, my dear child.”
“If it were only your intelligence!” broke in Mayne in a tone low still, but vibrating with passion scarcely controlled, “that wouldn’t matter.” Suddenly he went towards him, standing close, and speaking in a rapid tone, almost in his ear. “Listen!” he said. “This once, at least, you shall see yourself as I see you—as any fairly decent man sees you. You knew all about me. You knew how for years—ever since I was a boy at Oxford—I loved her and hoped to make her love me—tillyoucame on the scene. Then I saw it was all up. Well, I took it pretty decently, didn’t I? I went away. I stayed away. I didn’t come home till I felt myself cured of all but affection for your wife. Then I met you, and you pressed me—beggedme to come to your house. And I came to you—in all good faith, God knows—as your friend, as well as your wife’s. Before I’d been in the house an hour I saw you were neglecting her. Then you brought that woman down, and I wondered.It was only by degrees that I saw what you wanted, you——” He checked himself before the word was out. “How does it strike you?” he went on, falling back a step. “Tell me! You knew Ihadloved her. In the old days you were jealous enough of our friendship. What do you think of a husband who neglects his wife, insults her by bringing his mistress to her house, and then calls an old lover upon the scene? That I cared for her too much to insult her—that she is the woman you know her to be, is no thanks to you. If——”
Robert’s face was white, but he broke in upon the other man’s torrent of words with a voice of ice.
“And you really expect me to believe this—this eloquent—what shall I call it? It is certainly no explanation.”
Cecily, who had been standing motionless at the head of the sofa, now came swiftly to her husband.
“Please listen to me,” she said, breathlessly. “You have lived seven years with me. You know whether I speak the truth. Do you or do you not believe me when I tell you that Dick has never kissed me before? He is going away at once—to-morrow, and——”She hesitated a moment. Before she could recover, Robert spoke.
“Very ingenious,” he said. “Do I believe you? With my experience of your sex, my dear Cecily—certainly not.”
There was a silence. Then, as though coming to a decision, Mayne turned deliberately towards Cecily.
“I shall not go to-morrow,” he said. “You know you can rely upon me.”
“Yes,” returned Cecily, slowly, “I will remember it.”
He took her hand a moment, then released it, and went to the door. When it closed after him, Cecily found herself wondering whether she had or had not heard the hall door-bell a few moments before. She glanced at Robert, who was moving with slow, blind steps towards the window.
It was then that a sudden vision of the rose-garden at the Priory flashed upon her mental sight. Once more she saw Philippa in her husband’s arms. History, she reflected, with an impulse to break into dreadful laughter—history had repeated itself, with a slight difference. How ludicrous, how futile, howawful, life was with its senseless blending of the grotesque and tragic; materials for aheartrending farce, to be played before what monstrous spectators!
She stood in the middle of the room, her hands clenched and clasped tightly to her breast, in an agonized struggle with her laughter and her tears.
Had she really heard the hall bell or not?
The question, a vital one, as for some reason it seemed to her, was answered a moment later, when the door opened, and the maid announced, “Lady Ashford and Miss Devereux.”
They came in smiling, suave, unconscious, with outstretched hands. Cecily, smiling also, went forward with composure to receive her guests.