Читать книгу: «Scarlet and Hyssop: A Novel», страница 12

But she got up and did not offer to return the caress.

Marie required a few moments in which to steady herself after he had left her. She had been utterly taken by surprise. If Jack had emptied the contents of the waste-paper-basket over her, he would not have astonished her more. For days now she had had the impression that some change had come over Jack. At first she had put it all down to his regret for his telling her that her name was coupled with Jim Spencer's, but by degrees it had seemed to her that there must be something more. But this possibility she had only glanced at to reject. It could not be. Then he had kissed her.

Suddenly it seemed to her that the place where his lips had been burned her; she felt as if she had been insulted; a fine state of mind for a wife, she told herself angrily. Then, with a remorseless frankness, her conscience told her why she felt thus. It was because she had made herself a stranger to him; her heart was not here, it was with another. And Jack was her husband. Anyhow, she would face it honestly. She had despised and shown her scorn for him when he told her what people said, thinking she was honest in her indignation. But what if he had told her what nobody said, but what she knew, and what she was perfectly well aware Jim Spencer knew? Had she been so faithful, then, as to warrant her cold and burning words to Jack! She had scorned and then ignored the actual falsehood of his words, but what of that which was true, which he did not know – the real essential truth of that which lay behind the falsehood?

She gave a little frightened gasp as these intimate discoveries, cape after cape, bay after bay, came into vision. And what complaint had she of her husband, but that they had long been at discord? No breath of scandal, even from the gutter, had ever reached her ears about him. She had no reason, absolutely none, for supposing that he had not been far more faithful to her than she to him. But when he kissed her she had shrunk away from him.

Now, since her drive in the Park a few days before, and the discovery attendant thereon that efforts were necessary, a militant spirit had possessed Mildred. She was seen everywhere, at her loudest and most characteristic; she had simply summoned Maud from the retirement at Windsor, she had secured a record party for next Sunday, and for the sake of general completeness she had determined, in spite of Lady Ardingly, to ask Jack and Marie. The notice was very short, and, instead of writing a note, she drove round this morning to Park Lane to deliver her invitation verbatim; she likewise wished, in case Marie was in, to air a few poisonous nothings, scouts, as it were, of her advancing armies. And arriving at this moment, she was admitted and shown upstairs.

"Dearest Marie, it is ages, simply ages!" she began. "I have come to supplicate. Do come down to Windsor from Saturday till Monday. You shall not be bored; there is Guardina to sing to you, and the place really looks too lovely. Maud has been describing it to me; she came up yesterday. And there are half the Front Bench coming on Sunday. It might be useful for Jack to be there. My dear, what do you think of Jack's speech? However, about Saturday first."

"I don't think we can," said Marie. "We have already refused two Saturday parties on the plea of – If I only could remember the plea it might be more hopeful. Political plea, I think."

"That's just right, then," said Mildred. "Jack will have a quiet talk with the old gang. Besides, Marie, if one only saw you on the days when you had not refused an invitation, I should not know you by sight in a year. So you'll come."

"Well, I think 'political' covers it," she said. "I shall be charmed if Jack has made no other arrangement. And his speech. What do you think of it?"

Mildred held up her hands in despairing deprecation.

"I thought I should have died," she said. "It is too sad when you see a clever man industriously digging his own grave. One always does it eventually by mistake, but on purpose like that, and with his eyes open!"

"Did it strike you so?"

"Surely, and the ridiculous point is that Jim said almost precisely the same things down at Freshfield."

"That surely, then, is, as far as it goes, as the Times would say, in favour of both of them," remarked Marie. "To my mind, there is a new party in birth. You may call it Imperial, I suppose. It is far from Jingo. Jack's speech is the antithesis of Jingoism; it is also not – well, Northamptonish. It is beginning to roar as every well-conducted baby should."

Mildred's appetite for politics was at all times bird-like. She pecked and hopped away. On this occasion she hopped away to a considerable distance.

"I have seen a good deal of Jim lately," she said. "In fact, I am afraid I have been seeing a little too much."

"You mean you are getting tired of him?" asked Marie, who, from having been rather absent, was now intent and alert.

"Dear me, no! not that at all. I delight in him," said Mildred, rapidly adding wings and new courtyards to the structure Lady Ardingly had indicated. "But people talk so easily and without foundation. You know what I mean."

She leaned back a little in the shadow as she spoke, feeling that she was really a very gifted woman, for her speech had many edges. In the first place, it was dramatically amusing to blood her second invention with the life of her first; a sharp edge was that she more than half believed that there was something between Marie and Jim, and what she had said was therefore of the nature of a test question; and, thirdly, granting this, how would Marie meet the claim on her property?

The paper she had been reading slid rustling to the ground off Marie's lap. It seemed to her as if some dark room familiar to her, though she could not tell how or when she had seen it, had been suddenly illuminated.

"Oh, my dear Mildred," she said, "if one pauses to pick scraps of paper out of the gutter to see what is written on them, one would spend all one's life in the same slum. I should have thought you, of all people, would not have cared an atom what people said, so long, of course, as there was no earthly truth in it."

Mildred settled herself in her chair. There was plenty more, she felt, where this came from.

"But has your experience of the world taught you that?" she asked.

"Taught me not to care what people say?" said Marie – "yes, I may certainly assure you of that. For instance – " and she paused.

Mildred rustled suggestively.

"There is no reason I should not tell you," said Marie. "It is this. Oddly enough, some fortnight or three weeks ago exactly the same thing was said about me as you are afraid will be said about you. I was supposed, in fact, to be much attached to Jim. So I am; we are the greatest friends. But this charming world uses 'friend' in two senses. Probably some cook of a woman, finding nothing to say to some valet of a man, said so. And the kitchen section of London society, I have been told, talked about it. But any perfectly inane piece of fabrication like that soon dies of – of its own inanition."

"But who on earth started anything so absurd?" asked Mildred.

"I have no idea; I did not even want to know. I was angry, I will allow, for a day or two. Then other things came and swallowed it up. It became merely dull. It simply did not interest me. I assure you I had almost forgotten it. I suppose one has lots of enemies one does not know of. Probably I had made some cook of a woman, as I said, angry without intending it. I – yes, something of that sort."

It was not till these words were on her lips that a sudden idea, wild and preposterous as it might be, occurred to her. It came into her mind quite unbidden, and was wholly unaccountable. Mildred laughed quite naturally.

"Ah, you are the Snowflake," she said – "our one unsmirchable. It is all very well for you to shrug your shoulders at what the world says!"

"That is exactly what I am told was said of me," said she quietly. "I was supposed to have melted. Did the story, then, reach you?"

"Some sort of a story did," said she. "It seemed to me not even worth repeating to you."

"Quite right. It wasn't."

Mildred rose.

"I must fly," she said. "Too delightful of you to come on Saturday, Marie! I always think nothing is complete without you."

She went gracefully out, leaving the air heavy with some languid scent, and went down the stairs rather quicker than she had come up. There was something closely resembling a flea in her ear. And everything had looked so well on paper. Unfortunately, Marie did not in the least remind one of paper.

But, leaving out all that was not to her taste in this last interview, her clouds were showing the traditional silver lining. It was, for instance, quite evident to her that Maud's golden lover had not in the least finished with her. She, when questioned on the subject, cultivated a strong reserve, which, as her mother concluded, implied in itself something which admitted of reservation. It was certain, on Maud's own authority, that Anthony had been to Windsor, but with that her nose went into the air quite like Marie's, and it was impossible to talk familiarly with such an icicle. And her mother thanked God that she herself was not of such a temperament.

Altogether, then, the solid ground had not failed beneath her feet. But it was best to make efforts; either she had been on the verge of a precipice or her nerves had led her to believe that she was. In either case, there was no such tonic as a good dose of the world – that combined soporific to the conscience and astringent to the energies. She had, it is true, applied herself to the wrong bottle when she went to see Marie, but that was easily set right, and by way of antidote she drove on to Lady Ardingly's, who, it appeared, was "up," but about whom there hung at this hour of the morning a veil of mystery, not to be dispelled without further inquiries. These inquiries were favourable, and Mildred was conducted, still by the footman, to her dressing-room.

Lady Ardingly was seated in a costume that it would be impossible to specify without being prolix, and possibly indelicate, writing notes. An uneasy shadow of a maid hovered near her, to whom she paid no attention. The footman, in obvious perturbation, opened the door and waited, in obedience, it would seem, to a command.

"Ah, my dear, how are you?" said Lady Ardingly, addressing her last note. "One moment, if you will be so kind. Walter, take these, and have them sent at once by hand. They must all wait for answers. In case any are not in, let them be brought back. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lady."

"Say it, then."

"All to be delivered, and if" – and he glanced at the two letters – "if their lordships isn't in, the notes not to be left."

And he cast a glance of awe and astonishment at his mistress and fled.

Lady Ardingly was, in truth, an astonishing object. Nothing had been done to her; she was, with the exception of certain linen garments, as her Maker had willed she should be. Short and scant gray hair imperfectly covered her head; her face, of a curious gray hue, was arbitrarily intersected by a hundred wrinkles and crow's-feet.

"I am in dishabille," she said, rather unnecessarily; "but every old woman is in dishabille. You will get used to it, my dear, some day. So you have come to tell me what every one is saying about Jack's speech. Yes, I am ready for you," she threw over her shoulder to her maid.

That functionary took her stand by her mistress and handed the weapons. A powder-puff began the work, followed by an impressionist dusting on of rouge. Lady Ardingly grew beneath the work of her hands. Then a thick crayon of charcoal traced the approximate line where her eyebrows had once been, and a luxuriant auburn wig framed the picture. Mildred, who locked up even from the eyes of her maid such aids as she was accustomed to use, looked on with a sort of shamefacedness. Just as Marie had just now given almost a shock to her instinct of covering up and doing in secret the processes of thought, of showing to the world only the finished and diplomatic product, so Lady Ardingly gave a shock to her body. Each of them – differing by the distance of miles – was alike in this. And the frankness of both was inconceivable to her. Yet both, in their way, possessed calmly and fully what it cost her long effort to catch a semblance of. Neither minded being natural, and both naturally were so. Mildred's naturalness – a rare phenomenon – was the outcome of intense artificiality.

"And what is every one saying of Jack's speech?" repeated Lady Ardingly, with one eye closed, regarding with some favour a brilliant patch of rouge on her left cheek. "Or what do you say? You can scarcely yet have heard what people think of it."

"Surely he has almost declared himself a Liberal," suggested Mildred.

"So the Daily Chronicle said," remarked Lady Ardingly. "What else?"

"But, on the other hand, the Cabinet would sooner have such a critic on their side than against them."

"Ah, my dear, you have read the Standard too. So have I. Have you not any opinion of your own?"

"Yes; he is on the edge of a precipice."

Lady Ardingly's decorative hand paused.

"And what is the precipice?" she asked. "You have not forgotten our talk, I see."

Mildred lost patience a little.

"Your advice, you mean," she said.

"My advice, if you prefer. I am so glad you have been behaving with such good sense. And as for Jack's speech, I tell you frankly I was astonished with delight. He seems to me to have hit exactly the right note, and he is in the middle of the right note, like Guardina when she sings. I consider him as having the ball at his feet. He has sprung to the front at a bound. Now his supporters will push him along. He has only got to keep greatly en évidence, and he need do nothing more till the first meeting of the Cabinet."

"Has his speech done all that for him?" asked Mildred.

"Yes, certainly, for it is the speech of a man of action, of whom there are fewer in England than the fingers on my hand. He told his audience that speeches are not in his line. That is immensely taking, when at the time he was making a really magnificent one. Yes, Jack is assured, if only you are careful," she added in French, which, if considered a precautionary measure against her maid's comprehension, was not a very tactful move, since the latter was a Frenchwoman.

Mildred's eye brightened; at the same time she thought she would not tell Lady Ardingly that Marie and he were probably coming to Windsor the next Sunday.

"Dear Jack!" she said, "I have always had an immense belief in him. And now his time has come."

"I feel certain of it, provided he makes no faux pas. And what of your other friend, Jim Spencer? He also spoke last night, I see. I have not read his speech yet."

"There is no need. He said what Jack said," replied Mildred.

"Indeed. I am glad, then, you took measures to kill that absurd gossip we spoke of the other day. Otherwise people would say that he had been inspired by Marie."

"You think of everything, I believe," said Mildred.

"I have a great deal of time on my hands. But now you must go, my dear. To-day I happen to be busy."

Lady Ardingly held out a rather knuckly hand. She clearly did not wish that her face, new every morning, should be disturbed just yet.

"Ah, by the way," she added, "please let me drive down to see you on Sunday afternoon, according to your invitation. I am afraid I forgot to answer it."

Now, no such invitation had ever been given, and Mildred knew it; so, no doubt, did Lady Ardingly. She paused a moment before answering.

"Of course, we shall be charmed!" she said.

"She has asked Jack, and does not want me to come," thought Lady Ardingly. Then aloud: "So sweet of you! Your garden must be looking lovely now. Good-bye, my dear."

CHAPTER XV

It was Sunday evening, and the lawn at Riversdale was brilliantly crowded. The last returns had come in the day before, and the Conservatives had even increased their already immense majority. Every one in the set that congregated to Mildred's house was delighted, and there was a general sense of relaxation abroad, which might have degenerated into flatness, had there not been so many other amusing things to think about. The season was practically at an end, and, like a flock of birds who have denuded some pasture of its wire-worms, every one was preparing, that feeding-ground finished with, to break up into smaller patches and fly to the various quarters of the globe. Guardina and Pagani had both of them, oddly enough, developed signs – not serious – of an identical species of gouty rheumatism, and had been ordered to Homburg for a fortnight by the same doctor, who was a man not without shrewdness. The Breretons were going a round of Scotch visits in the middle of the month, Jack Alston and his wife were doing the same, and Lady Devereux was consulting Arthur Naseby as to the possibility of being at Cowes and Bayreuth for the same days in the same week. They thought it could be done. Lady Ardingly alone was going to fly nowhere. She proposed to take a rest-cure at her country house for a fortnight, and, with a view to securing herself from all worry and ennui, had engaged four strong people to play Bridge continually, and was on the look-out for a fifth table, who would make her party complete. Amid all these plans for the future there was but little time to look backwards, and all the events of the last month, the last week, the last day even, were stale. The opera was over, and Guardina, instead of living her triumphs o'er again, was only thinking about Homburg, and the various delightful ways in which she could spend the very considerable sum of money she had earned. She was almost as good at spending as she was at earning, and she promised herself an agreeable autumn. The election, similarly, was a stale subject; every one who mattered at all had got his seat, including Jim Spencer, and the only thing connected with Parliament which was of any interest was Jack's seat in the Cabinet. Only yesterday he had been semi-officially asked whether he would take the War Office, and he had replied that he had not the slightest objection. He, too, felt agreeably relaxed, and disposed to take things easily. He had slaved at the work and been rewarded; his tendency was to eat, drink, and be merry. Another chain of circumstances also conduced to the propriety of this. He had made a second attempt to enter into more tender relations with his wife, and again she had visibly shrunk from him. And with the bitterness of that, and the relaxation which followed his success, there had come mingled the suggestion of consoling himself.

The day had been very hot, and Marie, between the heat and the struggle that was going on within her about Jack, had suffered all the afternoon from a rather severe headache, and had retired to her room about six with the idea of sleeping it off if possible, and being able to put in her appearance again at dinner. But sleep had not come; her headache, instead of getting better, got distinctly worse, and when her maid came to her at dressing-time, she sent word to Mildred, with a thousand regrets, that she really did not feel equal to appearing. Subsequently, just before dinner, Mildred herself had come to see her, rustling and particularly resplendent, with sympathy and salts and recommendations of antipyrin, a light dinner and bed.

Marie had all the dislike of a very healthy person for medicines, but the pain was almost unendurable, and before long she took the dose recommended. Soon after came her maid with some soup and light foods, and she roused herself to eat a little, conscious of a certain relief already. Her dinner finished, she lay down again, and in a few minutes was fast asleep.

She woke feeling immensely refreshed, her headache already insignificant, and with a strong desire for the cool, fresh air of the night. Her room, baked all day by the sun, was very hot, and the sight of the dim shrubberies outside, and beyond them the misty moonlit field that bordered the Thames, tempted her to go out. She had already told her maid not to sit up, and, turning up her electric light, saw that it was nearly midnight, and that she must have slept close on three hours.

She leaned for a few moments out of her open window, but only the faintest breeze was stirring the tree-tops, and here the air was heavy and motionless. A half-moon, a little smeared with mist, rode high in the southern heavens, making the redder lights from the rows of lanterns on the lawn look tawdry and vulgar. The tents were brilliantly lit, and she could see cards going on in one, while in another the servants were laying out supper for those who would sit late over their Bridge or conversation. Even at this distance she could distinguish Arthur Naseby's shrill tones, and laughter punctuated his sentences. He was evidently having a great success. Up and down the middle of the lawn itself, where moonlight struggled with the lanterns, she could see little groups standing talking, and in the foreground was Mildred saying good-bye to some who were going. "It is so early," Marie could hear her say; "it can hardly be Monday yet." Jack was standing by her.

Marie turned back into the room and put out the electric light, then went across to the window again. Much as she would have liked a stroll in the cool darkness of the shrubberies, she in no way wished to mingle with the group on the lawn, and receive sympathy for her indisposition and felicitations on her recovery; still less did she desire what Mildred would call a "quiet chat," before going to bed, which in other words meant to be one of a bevy of people all talking loud and listening to nobody. But by degrees the leave-takers went, and those who remained drifted back to the tents and the lights. It would be easily possible, she thought, to slip out, leaving the lawn on her left, and stroll through the trees down towards the river, where she would get the breeze without the fatigues of conversation.

She slipped a gray dust-cloak over her dress and went quietly down-stairs. The drawing-room was empty, and she passed out of the French-window on to the gravel path. In ten paces more she had gained the shelter of the long shrubbery that ran parallel to the lawn, and was screened by it from all observation. She threw the hood of her cloak back from her head. A breeze, as she had hoped, came wandering and winding up the dusky alleys from the river, laden with the thousand warm and fragrant smells of the summer, and with open mouth and ruffled hair she drank it greedily in. Her headache had ceased, and the deep, tranquillized mood of pain removed occupied her senses. The bushes on each side were gently stirred by the wind, and now a waft of the heavy odour of syringa, or the more subtly compounded impression from the garden beds, saluted her as she passed. She had left the path, and felt with a thrill of refreshment the coolness of dew-laden grass touch her feet. Above her head the leaves of the tree-tops, in the full luxuriance of their summer foliage, let through but little light, but in certain interspaces of leaf she could see from time to time a segment of the crescent riding dimly in the heat-hazed sky, or a more prominent star would now and then look down on her. Then, as she left the garden behind, a fragrance more to her mind came to her – the fragrance not of garden-beds and cultivation, but the finer and more delicate odours of July field-flowers, floating, as it were, on the utterly undefinable smell of running water from the Thames.

Thus, having passed the lawn and its occupants, she turned through into the more open spaces by a lilac-bush that stood near the path, remembering, so she thought, that there was a seat here, and a hammock much frequented by Maud. She had, it seemed, recollected the position of this to a nicety, for on rounding the lilac-bush she came straight on to the hammock, and gave a little cry of surprise to find it tenanted.

"Maud, is it you?" she asked gently.

The girl sprang up.

"How you startled me!" she cried, "Why, it is you, Lady Alston."

"Yes, dear. I slept, and my headache was really gone when I awoke, so I determined to have a stroll before going to bed. And you, too, have come away, it seems."

The girl got up.

"And you were looking for my hammock, were you not, to lie down in! Do get in. There is a seat here for me, too. Or shall I go away, if you want to be alone?"

"By no manner of means," said Marie. "Stay with me a quarter of an hour or so, and then I shall go back to bed."

"But you are really better?" asked Maud.

"I am really all right; there is no excuse for me at all stealing away like this. I ought to have gone out and talked to people; but I felt lazy and rather tired, and only just came out for a breath of air. It is cooler here; but how hot for midnight! 'In the darkness thick and hot,'" she said half to herself.

Marie lay down in the hammock the girl had vacated, and there was a few moments' silence. Then, "Would it tire you to talk a little, Lady Alston?" she said. "About – you know what about."

"No, dear," said Marie. "And one can always talk best about intimate things in the dark. If one is only a voice one's self, and the other person is only a voice, one can say things more easily. Is it not so?"

Maud drew her chair a little closer to the head of the hammock, so that both were in the dense shade of the lilac-bush. Immediately outside the shadow of the bush beneath which they sat was the pearly grayness of the third of the lawns, on which the moon shone full.

"Yes, it is about him," said Maud. "I think – I think I have changed. No, it is not because my mother or anybody has been pressing me; in fact, I think it is a good deal because they have not. I saw him here once a fortnight ago, and I liked him. I did not do that before, you know."

"Did you tell him so?" asked the other voice.

"Yes; in so many words. He asked me to put out of my mind all the prejudice which had been created in it by his being, so he said, thrown at my head. I promised him to try. And I have tried. It makes a great difference," she said gravely.

"And you have seen him once since," said Marie, with a sudden intuition.

"How did you know?" asked Maud.

"You told me – your tone told me. And what then, dear?"

"I liked him better when I saw him than I did when I remembered him. Is that nonsense?" she asked quickly.

"I feel pretty certain it is not," said Marie.

"I am glad, for it seemed to me a very – how shall I say it! – a very certain sensation. And I want to see him again – oh, I want very much to see him again! It is all changed – all changed," she repeated softly.

"And do you feel happy?" asked Marie, not without purpose.

"Yes, or miserable; I don't know which."

Marie took the soft hand that leaned on the edge of her hammock and stroked it gently.

"Dear Maud," she said, "I am very glad. It is a great privilege" – and her heart spoke – "to be able to fall in love."

"Is it that?" asked Maud, leaning her face against the other's hand.

"Yes, dear, I expect it is that," said Marie.

They sat thus for some while in silence, for there was no more to be said, yet each – Maud for her own sake, Marie for Maud's and for her own as well – wished to halt, to rest for a little on the oars. Marie was lying back in the hammock, wrapped in it like a chrysalis; the other sat crouched and leaning forward by her side, her hands interlaced with the other's. The wind whispered gently, the stencilled shadows of leaves moved on the grass, and outside on the open was an ever-brightening space of moonshine, for the cool night air was dissolving the last webs of the heat haze. Then suddenly, without warning, came a voice from near at hand.

"I have told you the truth," it said. "I did attempt the renewal. But she does not care for me. I come back to you, if you will take me."

"I take you?" said a woman's voice. "Oh, Jack! Jack!"

The words were quickly spoken, and on the moment two figures came round the lilac-bush and out into the full blaze of the moonlight. There they stopped, and the woman threw her arms round the man's neck and kissed him.

The thing had happened so quickly that Marie could not have got out of the hammock or betrayed her presence before it was over. But she had just turned her head, half raising it, and saw. And Maud saw too.

Next moment the others had passed behind an intervening bush, and once again there was silence but for the gentle whispering of the wind, and stillness but for the play of stencilled shadows on the grass. Marie still held Maud's hand; she still lay in the hammock, only her head was a little raised.

A minute perhaps passed thus, and neither moved. Then Marie raised herself and sat on the side of the hammock. Her hand still held that of the other.

"You saw?" she said quietly to Maud.

"Yes, my mother!"

Marie unclasped her hand.

"Maud, dear, go indoors and go to bed," she said.

"No, no!" whispered the girl. "What am I – Oh – oh!" and a long sobbing sigh rose in her throat.

Marie got up.

"Come, then, we will go together," she said, in a voice which she heard to be perfectly calm and hard.

"What are you going to do?" asked Maud.

"If I knew I would tell you," said Marie.

The lights were still brilliant on the lawn, and as they passed behind the screen of bushes Arthur Naseby's voice was still shrill. Marie found herself noticing and remembering details with the most accurate observation; it was here, at this bend in the path, that there would be a smell of syringa, and a little further on a dim scent of roses. Close to the house a cedar cast a curious pattern of shade; a square of bright light fell on the gravel path from the open drawing-room windows. It was no wonder she remembered, for a very short time had passed since she had been here. But everything not trivial was changed.

In a very few minutes' space they were together in Marie's bedroom. As she went to the window to draw the blinds, she looked out for a moment. The tents were lit; there was Bridge in one, in another the servants had nearly finished laying supper. And looking, she made up her mind as to what she should do in the immediate future. She turned back into the room.