HEDDON COURT had been purchased by a wealthy Hardacre at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and was exhibited by his grandnephew, the present occupant, as a gem of Georgian architecture. Mr. Hardacre had but a vague idea what the definition meant, but it sounded very impressive. As a matter of fact, it was a Palladian stone building, with pediments over the windows and severe rustication on the lower courses. As none of the succeeding Hardacres had any money to devote to extensions, the building had remained in its original perfection of formality, and Mr. Hardacre did well to be proud of it. The grounds had been laid out in the Italian style; but the tastes and fashions of over a hundred years had caused the classic architect's design to be practically indiscernible. A lawn with trim flower-beds, bounded by an arc of elm-trees and bordered by a circular carriage drive faced the south front. Along the east front ran a series of terraces. The highest, a foot or two below the level of the drawing-room floor, ended on the north in a porticoed temple, now used as an afternoon lounge, and incongruously furnished with rugs and frivolous wickerwork chairs and tables. The next terrace, some eight feet below, was devoted to a tennis court. A thick hedge of clipped yew and a screen of wire netting hid the lowest, the most charming of all, which, surrounded on all sides by a sloping bank and flanked on three sides by tall trees, had been delicately turfed for a bowling-green and was now used for croquet.
In this stately paradise, warmed by sunny September weather, Jimmie had already spent two or three blissful days. His only regret was the absence of Aline. She had been invited, but for reasons in which doubtless Tony Merewether had a place, she had declined the invitation. She gave Jimmie to understand that she had already had her holiday, that the house could not possibly look after itself any longer, and that she had no clothes fit to appear in among his grand friends. The last argument being unanswerable, save by contentions at which the young woman tossed a superior head, Jimmie had yielded and come down alone. His regret, however, was tempered by the reflection that Aline was probably enjoying herself after the manner of betrothed maidens, and it did not seriously affect his happiness. Either chance or the lady's own sweet courtesy towards a guest had caused him to see much of Norma. She had driven him over to Chiltern Towers, where the sittings had begun. She had walked with him to Cosford to show him the beautiful fourteenth-century church with its decorated spire. She had strolled with him up and down the croquet lawn. She had chatted with him in the morning-room yesterday for a whole rainy hour after lunch. His head was full of her beauty and condescension. It was not unnatural that they should be thrown much together. Morland's day was taken up by partridges and electors. Mr. Hardacre, honestly afraid of Jimmie, not knowing what on earth to talk to him about, and only half comprehending his conversation, kept out of his way as much as his duties as host would allow, and Mrs. Hardacre, who, though exceedingly civil, had not forgotten her defeat in the studio, felt justified in leaving his entertainment in the hands of others who professed to admire the creature. These were Norma, Morland, and Connie Deering.
This afternoon they found themselves again alone together, at tea in the classic temple at the end of the terrace. Mrs. Hardacre and Connie had driven off to pay a call, and the men were shooting over ducal turnips. Jimmie had received an invitation to join the shooting-party, but not having handled a gun since boyish days (and even then Jimmie with firearms was Morland's conception of the terror that walketh by day), and also having an appointment with the princess for a second sitting, he had declined, and Morland, when he heard of it, had clapped him on the back and expressed his fervent gratitude.
Jimmie had been narrating his morning's adventures at Chiltern Towers, and explaining the point of view from which he was painting the portrait. It was to be that of the very great lady, with the blood of the earth's great rulers in her veins. It was to be half full-length, just showing the transparent, aristocratic hands set off by rich old lace at the wrists. A certain acidity of temper betrayed by the pinched nostrils and thin lips he would try to modify, as it would be out of keeping with his basic conception. Norma listened, interested more in the speaker than in the subject, her mind occasionally wandering, as it had been wont to do of late, to a comparison of ideals. Since that half-hour's loneliness on the platform of the little Highland station, she had passed through many hours of unrest. To-day the mood had again come upon her. A talk with her mother about the great garden-party they were giving in two days' time, to which the princess and the duchess were coming, had aroused her scorn; a casual phrase of Morland's in reference to the election had jarred upon her; a sudden meeting in Cosford with Theodore Weever, and a laughing reference to the decorative wife had brought back the little shiver of fear. The only human being in the world who could settle her mood—and now she felt it consciously—was this odd, sweet-natured man who seemed to live in a beautiful world.
As he talked she listened, and her mind wandered from the subject. She thought of his life, his surroundings, of the girl whose love affair he had told her of so tenderly. She took advantage of a pause, occasioned by the handing of a second cup of tea and the judicious choosing of cake, to start the new topic.
“I suppose Aline is very happy.”
Jimmie laughed. “What put my little girl into your head?”
“I have been thinking a good deal about her since you wrote of her engagement. Is it really such an idyll?”
“The love of two sweet, clean young people is always idyllic. It is so untainted—pure as a mountain spring; There is nothing quite like it in the world.”
“When are they going to set up house together?”
“Soon, I hope.”
“You will miss her.”
“Of course,” said Jimmie, “enormously. But the thoughts of her happiness will keep me pleasant company. I shall get on all right. Meanwhile it is beautiful to see her. She does n't know that I watch, but I do. It is sweet to see her eyes brighten and her cheeks flush and to hear her laughter. It is like stepping for an enchanted moment into a fairy-tale.”
“I wish I could step into it—just for one enchanted moment,” said Norma..
“You?” asked Jimmie.
“I have never been in one in my life. I disbelieved in them till you came like an apostle of fairyland and converted me. Now I want the consolations of my faith.”
An earnest note in her voice surprised him. She did not meet his eyes.
“I don't understand you,” he said.
“I thought perhaps you would,” she answered. “You seem to understand most things.”
“You have your own—happiness.”
He hesitated on the word. A quick glance assured her of his ingenuousness. She longed to undeceive him, to shriek out her heartlessness, her contempt for herself and for her life. But pride and loyalty to Morland restrained her within bounds of sanity. She assented to his proposition with a gesture of the shapely hand that lay on the tea-table absently tracing the pattern of the cloth.
“Yes, I have that. But it isn't the fairyland of those two children. You yourself say there is nothing like it in the world. You don't know how I pine for it sometimes—for the things that are sweet and clean and untainted and pure as a mountain spring. They don't come my way. They never will.”
“You are wrong,” said Jimmie. “Love will bring them all to you—that and a perfect wedded life and little children.”
For a flash she raised her eyes and looked full into his, and for the first time the love in the man's heart surged tumultuously. It rose of a sudden, without warning, flooding his being, choking him. What it was of yearning, despair, passion, horror that he saw in her eyes he knew not. He did not read in them the craving of a starved soul for food. To him their burning light was a mystery. All that ever reached his consciousness was that it was a look such as he had never before beheld in a woman's face; and against his will and against his reason it acted like some dark talisman and unlocked floodgates. He clenched the arms of the wickerwork chair, and bit his lip hard, and stared at the ground.
Norma broke into a hard laugh, and lay back in her chair.
“You must be thinking me a great fool,” she said, in her usual mocking tones. “When a woman tries to swim in sentiment, she flounders, and either drowns or has to be lugged ignominiously to shore. She can't swim like a man. Thanks for the rescue, Mr. Padgate.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“What do you mean?” he said curtly.
“I'm back on dry land. Oh! it is safer for me. There I am protected by my little bodyguard of three—the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I can't get on without them.”
Jimmie leaped from his chair and brought his clenched hands down to his sides in a passionate gesture.
“Stop talking like that, I say!” he cried imperiously.
Then meeting her scared and indignant glance, he bowed somewhat wide of her.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, in a tone of no great apology, and marched out of the little temple and along the gravelled walk of the terrace. Flight, or the loss of self-control, was his only alternative. What she thought of him he did not care. The sense of increasing distance from her alone brought security to his soul.
At the further end he met Mrs. Deering just back from her drive.
“Why, what is the matter, Jimmie?” she asked, twirling an idle sunshade over her pretty head, for the terrace was in deep afternoon shadow.
“Nothing,” he replied, with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “I am going for a walk before dinner.”
He left her standing, reached the highroad and pounded along it. What a fool he had been! What a mad fool he had been!
Mrs. Deering, with a puzzled expression on her face, watched him disappear. She turned and strolled down to Norma, who greeted her with a satiric smile.
“What have you been doing to Jimmie?” asked Mr. Deering.
“I have been giving him lessons in worldly wisdom.”
“Poor dear! They seem to have disagreed with him.”
Norma shrugged her shoulders. “That's his affair, not mine.”
“You don't mean to say that you and Jimmie have quarrelled?” laughed Connie. “How delightful! I've always wanted to quarrel with Jimmie just for the pleasure of kissing and making friends. But it has been impossible. Is it serious?”
“I hope not,” Norma answered; and then after a pause, “Oh, Connie, I'm afraid I've been a positive brute.”
Which evidence of a salutary conviction of her own wrongdoing shows that Jimmie's amazing shout of command had not aroused within her any furious indignation. Indeed, after the first moment of breathless astonishment, she had expressed an odd, almost amusing thrill of admiration for the man who had dared address her in that fashion. It was only a small feminine satisfaction in the knowledge that by going away he would punish himself for his temerity that had restrained her from summoning him back. As soon as he was out of call, she reproached herself for misconduct. She could have strangled the wanton devil that had prompted her cynical speech. And yet the same devil had saved an embarrassing situation. Wedded life and little children! If she had spoken what was trembling on her lips, how could she have looked the man in the face again? Her sex was revolting against that very prospect, was clamouring wildly for she knew not what. She dared not betray herself.
She greeted him smilingly in the drawing-room before dinner, as if nothing had occurred, and chatted pleasantly with Morland over his day's fortunes. Jimmie observed her with a sigh of relief. He had passed the last two hours greatly agitated; he had trembled lest he had revealed to her his soul's secret, and also lest his unmannerliness had given unpardonable offence. In any case, now he saw himself forgiven, and breathed freely. But he remained unusually silent during dinner, and spent most of the evening in the billiard-room with Mr. Hardacre.
That gentleman, joining the ladies later, fell into conversation with his daughter.
“How long is Padgate going to stay?” he asked, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.
“Till the princess has completed her sittings, I suppose,” said Norma.
“I wish she'd be quick. I don't know what to do with the fellow. Does n't shoot, can't play billiards worth a cent, and does n't seem to know anybody. It's like talking to a chap that does n't understand your language. I've just been at it. Happened to say I'd like to go to Rome again. He fetches a sigh and says so should he. 'Some of the best wild-duck shooting in the world,' I said. He stared at me for a moment as if I were an escaped lunatic. Now, what on earth should a reasonable being go to that beastly place for except to shoot wild-duck on the marshes?”
Norma laughed the little mocking laugh that always irritated her father.
“You need n't be afraid of not entertaining Mr. Padgate. He must have enjoyed the conversation hugely.”
“Damme—if the fellow is laughing at me—” he began.
“He would not be the very fine gentleman that he is,” said Norma. “Where is he now?”
“Morland relieved guard in the billiard-room, when the post came in,” growled Mr. Hardacre, who shrank from crossing swords with his daughter, and indeed with anybody. “He is happy enough with Morland.”
At that particular moment, however, there was not overmuch happiness in the billiard-room. A letter from Aline had been accompanied by one for “David Rendell, Esquire” which she had enclosed. Morland read it, and crushed it angrily into the pocket of his dinner-jacket, and began to knock the balls about in an aimless way. Jimmie watched him anxiously and, as he did not speak, unfolded his own letter from Aline. Suddenly he rose from the divan where he had been sitting and approached the table.
“There is something here that you ought to know, Morland. A man has been enquiring for you at my house.”
“Well, why should n't he?” asked Morland, making a savage shot.
“He enquired for David Rendell.”
Morland threw down his cue.
“Well?”
“I am afraid Aline, who is a miracle of sagacity as a general rule, has made a mess of it. You mustn't be angry with my poor little girl. Her head is full of sweeter things.”
“What has she done?” Morland asked impatiently.
“I'll read: 'I told him that Mr. Rendell was a friend of yours, and gave him your present address. He muttered something about a false name and went away without thanking me.'”
“Good God!” cried Morland, “what damned fools women are! Did she say what kind of a man he was?”
Jimmie looked through the letter, and finding the passage, read: “'An odd-looking creature, like a mad Methodist parson!'”
Morland uttered an exclamation of anger and apprehension. His brow grew black, and his florid comely features coarsened into ugliness.
“I thought so. It could n't have been any one else. He was the only person who knew. She has given me away nicely. The devil only knows what will happen.”
Jimmie leant up against the table and folded his arms, and looked at Morland moving restlessly to and fro and giving vent to his anger.
“Who is this man you seem to be so afraid of?” he asked quietly.
Morland stopped upon the unpleasant word, then shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes, I suppose I am afraid of him. One can't reckon upon anything that he might or might not do. He's like a mad cat. I've seen him. So have you.”
“Yes—that socialist maniac you dragged me to hear one Sunday in Hyde Park.”
“Whew!” said Jimmie. He remembered the look in the orator's eyes, his crazy, meaningless words, his fierce refusal to enter into friendly talk; also Morland's impatient exclamation and abrupt departure as soon as they had learned the man's name.
“He's as mad as a hatter,” he said. “If he should take it into his head to come down here and make a row, there will be the deuce to pay,” said Morland.
Jimmie reflected for a moment. The man, with his wild talk of maidens lashed to the chariot-wheels of the rich, must have been tortured by the sense of some personal wrong.
“How does he come into the story?” he asked. “You had better tell me.”
“The usual way. Oh, I wish to God I had never got into this mess! A man of position is an infernal fool to go rotting about after that sort of thing. Oh, don't you see? He had a crazy passion for her, was engaged to her—he was mad then. When I came along, he had to drop it, and he has been persecuting her ever since—divided between the desire to marry her in spite of everything, and to murder me. That's why I had the assumed name and false address. I would n't have let you in for this bother, but I could n't go and run the risk of being blackmailed at a confounded little stationer's shop up a back street. He has been trying to get on my track all the time—and now he's succeeded, thanks to Aline. Why the devil could n't she hold her tongue?”
“Because she is an innocent child, who has never dreamed of evil,” said Jimmie.
Morland walked about the room, agitated, for a few moments, then halted.
“Oh, yes, I know, Jimmie. She is n't to blame. Besides, the mischief is done, so it's no use talking.”
“Were you thinking of any such possibility in the summer when you asked me to help you?” said Jimmie. Morland cast a quick, hopeful glance at his friend.
“Something of the sort. One never knows. You were the only man I could rely on.”
“Does this man know you by sight?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then what are you so afraid of? Look here, my dear old boy,” he said cheerily, “you are being frighted by false fire. If it is only a question of dealing with the man when he comes here—that is, supposing he does come—which is very unlikely, I will tackle him as the only person who knows anything about David Rendell. I'll tell him David Rendell is in Scotland or Honolulu.”
“He is on the track of the false name,” said Morland, uneasily. “Aline mentions that.”
“He is bound to come to me first,” said Jimmie. “I'll fix him. We'll get on capitally together. There's a freemasonry between lunatics. Leave it all to me.”
“Really?” cried Morland, in great eagerness.
“Of course,” said Jimmie. “Let us go upstairs.”
They passed out of the billiard-room in silence. On their way to the drawing-room Morland murmured in a shamefaced way his apologia. He was just at the beginning of his electoral campaign. It was his own county. He was hand in glove with the duchess, sovereign lady of these parts, and she never forgave a scandal. “Besides,” he added, “to quote your own words, it would break Norma's heart.” Also, employing the limited vocabulary of his class and type, he reiterated the old assurance that he had not been a beast. He had done all that a man could to make amends. If Jimmie had not loved him so loyally, he would have seen something very pitiful in these excuses; but convinced that Morland had atoned as far as lay in his power for his fault, he trembled for the happiness of only those dear to him.
Norma met them on the drawing-room landing.
“I was coming down to see what had become of you,” she said.
“I have been the culprit. I restore him to you,” laughed Jimmie. He entered the room and closed the door. The betrothed pair stood for a moment in an embarrassed silence. She laid a hesitating hand on his sleeve.
“Morland—” she said diffidently. “I was really wanting to have a little talk with you. Somehow we don't often see one another.”
Morland, surprised at the softness in her voice, led her back to the billiard-room.
THE development of the germ of goodness in woman may be measured by her tendency towards self-sacrifice. Even the most selfish of her sex, provided she has some rudimentary virtues, hugs close to her bosom some pet little thorn which she loves to dig into her shrinking flesh. She enjoys some odd little mortification, some fantastic humiliation, that is known only to the inner chamber of her soul. Your great-hearted woman practises Suttee daily, greatly to the consternation of an observant yet unperceptive husband. Doubtless this characteristic has a sexual basis, psychological perhaps rather than directly physiological, being an instinctive assertion of the fundamental principle of passivity, which in its turn is translated into the need to be held down and subdued. Thus, if the man does not beat her, she will beat herself; if he is a fool, she will often apply caustic to her wisdom, so that she may reverence him; if he is a knave, she will choke her honesty. Side by side with the assertion of this principle, and indeed often inextricably confused with it, is the maternal impulse, which by manifold divergences from its primary manifestation causes women to find a joy, uncomprehended by men, in pangs of suffering. The higher the type the stronger the impulse towards this sweet self-martyrdom.
Some such theory alone explains the softer tones in Norma's voice when she spoke to Morland. She had passed through two periods of sharp development—the half-hour in Scotland and the hours she had spent since her talk with Jimmie that afternoon. She acted blindly, obeying an imperative voice.
They sat down together on the raised divan. She was dressed in black, with a bunch of yellow roses at her bosom, and her neck and arms gleamed white in the shadow cast by the green shades over the billiard-table. Her face had softened. She was infinitely desirable.
“I have been thinking over our relations, Morland,” she said. “Perhaps I have been wrong.”
“What do you mean?” he asked in some alarm.
“I told you when you asked me to marry you that it would be wise to put sentiment aside. You agreed, against your will, and have observed the convention very loyally. But I have not treated you well. In putting sentiment aside I was, perhaps, wrong. That is what I wanted to say to you.”
“Let me see that I understand you, Norma,” said Morland. “You wish that we should be more like—like ordinary lovers?”
“We might try,” she whispered.
She waited. Heaven knows what she waited for; but it did not come. The Imp of Mischance again scored his point. The man's mind was filled with the thoughts of another woman in her agony and of a crazy avenger coming with murder in his heart. He took her hand mechanically and raised it to his lips. Her yielding to the caress told him that he could throw his arms around her and treat her loverwise; her words told him that he ought to do so.
Yet he did not. For the moment he was passionless; and to men of his type is not given the power, possessed by men of imaginative temperament, of simulating passion. He forced a laugh.
“How do you think we might begin?”
She went on bravely with her self-imposed task of submission.
“I have heard that the man generally takes the initiative.”
He kissed her on the cheek. To do less would have been outrageous.
“I am glad you realise that I am in love with you, at last,” he said.
“Are you sure that you are in love with me?” she asked, the chill that had fallen upon her after the lack of response to her first whisper growing colder and colder.
“Of course I am.”
“That is all I wanted to hear. Good-night,” she said in an odd voice. She rose and put out her hand. Morland opened the door for her to pass and closed it behind her.
Norma went straight to her room, feeling as though she had been tied by the heels to a cart-tail and dragged through the mud. Half undressed, she dismissed her maid summarily. Every place on her body that the girl's fingers touched seemed to be a bruise. She went to bed stupefied with herself.
Meanwhile Morland rang for whisky and soda, and cursed all that appertained to him, knowing that he had missed an amazing opportunity. After the way of feeble men, he thought of a hundred things he might have said and done that would have brought her to his feet. Had he not been watching patiently, ever since his engagement, for her to put off her grand airs, and become a woman like the rest of them? He should have said the many things he had often said to others. Or, if words were difficult, why in the world had he not kissed her properly after the manner accepted by women as the infallible argument? He conjured up the exceeding pleasantness of such an act. He could feel the melting of her lips, the yielding of her bosom; gradually he worked himself into a red-hot desire. A sudden resolve took him upstairs. There he learned that Norma had retired for the night, and returning to his whisky in the billiard-room, he cursed himself more loudly than before. A hand thrust into the pocket of his dinner-jacket met the poor girl's crumpled letter. Mechanically he took it to the empty grate, and then cursed the fire for not being lit. When Mr. Hardacre came down for a final game of billiards, he found his future son-in-law in an irritable temper, and won an easy game. Rallied upon his lack of form, Morland explained that the damned election was getting on his nerves.
“Did n't get on them when you were shooting to-day,” said Mr. Hardacre.
“I made believe that the birds were the beastly voters,” replied Morland.
Norma had not yet come down the next morning when he started for Cosford on electioneering business. Nor did he meet her, as he hoped, in the town, carrying on the work of canvassing which she had begun with great success. A dry barrister having been sent down to contest the division in the Liberal interest, was not making much headway in a constituency devoted to the duchess and other members of the tyrannical classes, and thus the task of Norma and her fellow-canvassers was an easy one. Today, however, she did not appear. Morland consoled himself with the assurance that he would put things right in the evening. After all, it was easy enough to kiss a woman who had once shown a desire to be made love to. Every man has his own philosophy of woman. This was Morland's.
Jimmie also started upon his morning's pursuits without seeing Norma. He was somewhat relieved; for he had spent a restless night, dozing off only to dream grotesque dreams of the mad orator and waking to fight with beasts that gnawed his vitals. He came down unstrung, a haggard mockery of himself, and he was glad not to meet her clear eyes. The three-mile walk to Chiltern Towers refreshed him, his work on the portrait absorbed his faculties, and his neighbours at the ducal luncheon-table, to which the duchess in person had invited him, clear-witted women in the inner world of politics and diplomacy, kept his attention at straining point. It was only when he walked back to Heddon Court, although he made a manful attempt to whistle cheerily, that he felt heavy upon his heart the burden of the night. It was a languorous September afternoon, and the tired hush of dying summer had fallen upon the world. The smell of harvest, the sense of golden fulfilment of life hung on the air. Jimmie swung his stick impatiently, and filled his lungs with a draught of the mellow warmth.
“The old earth is good. By God, it's good!” he cried aloud.
Brave words of a resolute optimism; but they did not lighten his burden.
He reached the house. Beneath an umbrella-tent on the front lawn sat Norma, her hands listlessly holding a closed book on her lap. Jimmie would have lifted his hat and passed her by, but with, a brightening face she summoned him. They talked awhile of commonplace things. Then, after a pause, she asked him, half mockingly, to account for his behaviour the day before. Why had he rated her in that masterful way?
“I can't bear you to speak evilly of yourself,” he said.
“Why, since I deserve it?”
“Theyouthat you sometimes take a pleasure in assuming to be may deserve it. The real you does n't. And it is the real you that I know—that has given me friendship and is going to marry my dearest friend. The other you is a phantom of a hollow world in which circumstances have placed you.”
“I think the phantom is happier than the reality,” said Norma, with a laugh. “'The dream is better than the drink.' The hollow world is the safer place, after all.”
“Where imagination doth not corrupt and enthusiasms do not break in and steal,” said Jimmie, with unusual bitterness. “I have seen very little of it—but you have told me things,” he continued lamely, “and your being in it and of it seems a profanation. When you wilfully identify yourself with its ideals, you hurt me; and when I am hurt, I cry out.”
“But why should you care so much about what I am and what I am not?” she asked in a tone half of genuine enquiry and half of expectancy, wholly kind and soft..
He dug the point of his stick into the turf and did not raise his eyes. He knew now what a fool's game of peril he was playing, and kept himself in check. Yet his voice trembled as he replied:
“Morland is very dear to me. You, his future wife, have grown dear to me also. I suppose I have lived rather a simple sort of life and take my emotions seriously.”
“I hope you thank God for it,” said Norma.
The swift rattle of a carriage turning into the drive broke the talk, which had grown too personal to be left voluntarily. Jimmie felt infinitely grateful to the visitors, like a man suddenly saved from a threatening precipice. Leaving Norma with a bow, he fled into the house and selecting a book from the library, went onto the terrace. He needed solitude. Something of which he was unaware was happening. Circumstances were not the same as when he had first arrived. Then he had looked on Norma with brave serenity. He was happy, loving her and receiving frank friendship from her condescending hands. Now it was growing to be a pain to watch her face, a dread to hear her voice. Sweet intercourse had become a danger. And a few days had brought about the change. Why? Of the riot in the woman's nature he knew nothing. In his blank ignorance, seeking the cause within himself, he asked, Why?
He crossed the tennis lawn, went through the little opening at the end of the hedge, and down to the seclusion of the croquet ground. Half-way along the sloping bank beneath the upper terrace some one had left a rug. He threw himself upon it, and tried like many another poor fool to reason down his hunger. But all the sensitive nerves with which the imaginative man, for his curse or his blessing, is endowed, were vibrating from head to foot. Her words sang in his ears: “Why should you care so much about what I am and what I am not?” The real answer burst passionately from his heart.
He had lain there for about half an hour when a gay little laugh aroused him.
“You idyllic creature!”
It was Connie Deering, bewitchingly apparelled, a dainty, smiling pale yellow butterfly, holding as usual an absurd parasol over her head.
“I have been looking for you all over the place,” she remarked. “They told me you were somewhere about the grounds. May I sit down?”
He made room for her on the rug, and taking the parasol from her hand, closed it. She settled herself gracefully by his side.
“I repeat I have been looking for you,” she said.
“The overpowering sense of honour done me has deprived me of speech,” replied Jimmie, with an attempted return to his light-hearted manner.
“Norma is entertaining those dreadful Spencer-Temples,” said Mrs. Deering, irrelevantly.
“I must have had a premonition of their terrors, for I fled from before their path,” he said. “After all, poor people, what have they done to be called names?” he added.
“They are ugly.”
“So am I, yet people don't run away from me.”
“I saw you run away from them,” she said with a significant nod. “I was at my bedroom window. They spoiled a most interesting little conversation.”
Jimmie was startled. He looked at her keenly, but only met laughing eyes.
“They interrupted me certainly. But I could n't have inflicted my society on Miss Hardacre all the afternoon.”
“You would have liked to, wouldn't you? Jimmie dear,” she said with a change of tone, “I want to have a talk with you. I'm the oldest woman friend you have—”
“And by far the sweetest and kindest and prettiest and fascinatingest.”
She tapped his hand with her fingers. “Ssh! I'm serious, awfully serious. I've never been so serious in my life before. I've got a duty. I don't often have it, but when I do, it's a terrible matter.”
“You had better go and have it extracted at once, Connie,” he laughed, determined to keep the talk in a frivolous channel. But the little lady was determined also.
“Jimmie dear,” she said, holding up her forefinger, “I am afraid you are running into danger. I want to warn you. An old friend can do that, can't she?”
“You can say anything you like to me, Connie. But I don't know what you mean.”
He suspected her meaning, however, only too shrewdly, and his heart beat with apprehension. Had he been fool enough to betray his secret?
“Are n't you getting just a little too fond of Norma, Jimmie?”
“I could n't get too fond of her,” he said, “seeing that she is to be Morland's wife.”
“That's just why you must n't. Come, Jimmie, have n't you fallen a bit in love with her?”
“No,” he said with some heat. “Certainly not. How dare I?”
Kindness and teasing were in her eyes.
“My poor dear husband used to say I had the brain of a bird, but I may have the sharp eyes of a bird as well. Come—not just one little bit in love?”
She had sought him with the best intentions in the world. She had long suspected; yesterday and to-day had given her certainty. She would put him on his guard, talk to him like an elder sister, pour forth upon him her vast wisdom in affairs of the heart, and finally persuade him-from his folly to more sensible courses.
“He sha'n't come to grief over Norma if I can prevent it,” she had said to herself.
And now, in spite of her altruistic resolve, she could not resist the pleasure of teasing him. She had done so all her life. Her method became less elder-sisterly than she had intended. But she was miles from realising that she touched bare nerves, and that the man was less a man than a living pain.
“I tell you I'm not in love with her, Connie,” he said. “How could I dream of loving her? It would be damnable folly.”
“Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie,” she said, enjoying his confusion, “what a miserably poor liar you make—and what a precious time you would have in the witness-box if you were a co-respondent! You can't deceive for nuts. You had better confess and have done with it.” Then seeing something of the anguish on his face, she bethought her of the serious aspect of her mission. “I could not bear you to break your heart over Norma, dear,” she said quite softly.
“Don't madden me, Connie—you don't know what you are saying,” he muttered below his breath.
Connie Deering had never heard a man speak in agony of spirit. Her lot had fallen among pleasant places, where life was a smooth, shaven lawn and emotions not more violent than the ripples on a piece of ornamental water. His tone gave her a sudden fright.
“You do love her, then?” she whispered.
“Yes,” said Jimmie, drawing himself up in a tight, awkward heap on the slope. “My God, yes, I do love her. I love her with every fibre of brain and body.”
The words were out. More came. He could not restrain them. He gave up the attempt, surrendered himself to the drunkenness of his passion, poured out a torrent of riotous speech. What he said he knew not. Such divine madness comes to a man but few times in a life. The sweet-hearted, frivolous woman, sitting there in the trim little paradise of green, with its velvet turf and trim slopes, and tall mask of trees, all mellow in the shade of the soft September afternoon, listened to him with wondering eyes and pale cheeks. It was no longer Jimmie of the homely face that was talking; he was transfigured. His very voice had changed its quality.... Did he love her? The word was inept in its inadequacy. He worshipped her like a Madonna. He adored her like a queen. He loved her as the man of hot blood loves a woman. Soul and heart and body clamoured for her. Compared with hers, every other woman's beauty was a glow-worm unto lightning. Her voice haunted him like music heard in sleep. Her presence left a fragrance behind that clouded his senses like incense. Her beauty twined itself into every tendril of every woman's hair he painted, stole into the depths of every woman's eyes. It was a divine obsession.
“You must fight against it,” Connie whispered tonelessly.
“Why should I? Who is harmed? Norma? Who will tell her? Not I. If I choose to fill my life with her splendour, what is that to any one? The desire of the moth for the star! Who heeds the moth?”
He went on reckless of speech until his passion had spent itself. Then he could only repeat in a broken way:
“Love her? Heaven knows I love her. My soul is a footstool for her to rest her feet upon.”
Connie Deering laid her hand on his.
“I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry, Jimmie. God bless you, dear.”
He raised the hand to his lips. Neither spoke. He plucked at the grass by his side; at length he looked up.
“You won't give me away, will you?” he said with a smile, using her dialect.
She went on her knees and clasped both his wrists. She said the first thing that came, as something sacred, into her head.
“I could no more speak of this to any one than of some of my dead husband's kisses.”
“I know you are a good true woman, Connie,” he said.
In the silence that followed, Norma, who had come to summon Connie to tea (the Spencer-Temples having called on their drive past the gates merely to deliver a message), and hearing the voice behind the hedge had been compelled against her will to listen—Norma, deadly white, shaken to the roots of her being, crept across the tennis lawn and fled in swaying darkness to her room.