IV

And yet, Straker reminded himself, Furnival wasn't an ass. He had

brain for other things, for other women; for poor Nora Viveash quite

a remarkable sufficiency of brain, but not for Philippa Tarrant.

You could see how he was being driven by her. He was in that state

when he would have done anything to get her. There was no folly and

no extravagance that he would not commit. And yet, driven as he was,

it was clear that he resented being driven, that he was not going

all the way. His kicking, his frantic dashes and plunges, showed

that the one extravagance, the one folly he would not commit was

matrimony.

Straker saw that very plainly. He wondered whether Miss Tarrant

would see it, too, and if she did whether it would make any

difference in her method.

It was very clear to Straker that Miss Tarrant was considering

Furnival, as she had considered him, as she had considered young

Reggy Lawson, as she had considered Mr. Higginson, who was not so

young. As for Reggy and his successor, she had done with them. All

that could be known of their fatuity she knew. Perhaps they had

never greatly interested her. But she was interested in Laurence

Furnival. She told Straker that he was the most amusing man of her

acquaintance. She was, Straker noticed, perpetually aware of him.

All Monday morning, in the motor, Miss Tarrant in front with

Brocklebank, Furnival with Mrs. Viveash, and Straker behind, it was

an incessant duel between Furnival's eyes and the eyes that Miss

Tarrant had in the back of her head. All Monday afternoon she had

him at her heels, at her elbow. With every gesture she seemed to

point to him and say: "Look at this little animal I've caught. Did

you ever see such an amusing little animal?"

She was quite aware that it was an animal, the creature she had

captured and compelled to follow her; it might hide itself now and

then, but it never failed to leap madly forward at her call. The

animal in Furnival, so simple, so undisguised, and so spontaneous,

was what amused her.

Its behavior that Monday after tea on the terrace was one of the

most disconcerting things that had occurred at Amberley. You could

see that Mrs. Viveash couldn't bear it, that she kept looking away,

that Brocklebank didn't know where to look, and that even Fanny was

perturbed.

As for Mr. Higginson, it was altogether too much for him and his

honesty. He was visibly alienated, and from that moment he devoted

himself and his honesty to Mary Probyn.

Young Reggy was alienated, too, so profoundly that he spoke about it

aside to Straker.

"Between you and me," said young Reggy, "it's a bit too strong. I

can't stick it, the way she goes on. What does she _mean_ by it,

Straker?"

People were always appealing to Straker to tell them what women

meant by it. As if he knew.

He was glad to see that young Reggy had turned, that he _could_

turn. He liked Reggy, and he felt that he owed him a good deal. If

it had not been for Reggy he might, two years ago, have been

numbered as one of the fallen. He had been pretty far gone two years

ago, so far that he had frequently wondered how it was that he had

not fallen. Now it was clear to him. It had been her method with

Reggy that had checked his own perilous approaches. It had offended

his fine sense of the fitting (a fastidiousness which, in one of her

moods of ungovernable frankness, she had qualified as "finicking").

For Reggy was a nice boy, and her method had somehow resulted in

making him appear not so nice. It nourished and brought to the

surface that secret, indecorous, primordial quality that he shared,

though in less splendor and abundance, with Laurence Furnival. He

had kept his head, or had seemed inimitably to have kept it. At any

rate, he had preserved his sense of decency. He was incapable of

presenting on the terrace at Amberley the flaming pageant of his

passion. Straker was not sure how far this restraint, this

level-headedness of young Reggy, had been his undoing. It might be

that Miss Tarrant had required of him a pageant. Anyhow, Reggy's

case had been very enlightening to Straker.

And it was through Reggy, or rather through his own intent and

breathless observation of the two, that Straker had received his

final illumination. It had come suddenly in one inspiring and

delivering flash; he could recall even now his subsequent

sensations, the thrilling lucidity of soul, the prodigious swiftness

of body, after his long groping in obscurities and mysteries. For it

had been a mystery to him how she had resisted Reggy in his young

physical perfection and with the charm he had, a charm that

spiritualized him, a charm that should have appealed to everything

that was supersensuous in Philippa Tarrant (and Philippa would have

had you believe that there was very little in her that was not). It

was incomprehensible therefore to Straker how any woman who had a

perfect body, with a perfect heart in it, could have resisted Reggy

at his best--and for Mr. Higginson.

To be sure, compared with Mr. Higginson he was impecunious; but

that, to Straker's mind, was just what gave him, with the other

things, his indomitable distinction. Reggy's distinction stood

straight and clean, naked of all accessories. An impecuniousness so

unexpressed, so delicate, so patrician could never have weighed with

Philippa against Reggy's charm. That she should deliberately have

reckoned up his income, compared it with Mr. Higginson's, and

deducted Reggy with the result was inconceivable. Whatever Straker

had thought of her he had never thought of her as mercenary. It

wasn't that. He had found out what it was. Watching her at play with

Reggy's fire (for to the inconspicuous observer the young man had

flamed sufficiently), it had struck Straker that she herself was

flameless.

It was in the nature of Reggy's perfection that it called, it

clamored for response. And Philippa had not responded. She hadn't

got it in her to respond.

All this came back vividly to Straker as he watched her now on the

terrace, at play with the fiercer conflagration that was Laurence

Furnival.

She was cold; she had never kindled, never would, never could

kindle. Her eyes did, if you like; they couldn't help it--God made

them lights and flames--but her mouth _couldn't_. To Straker in his

illumination all the meaning of Philippa Tarrant was in her mouth.

The small, exquisite thing lacked fulness and the vivid rose that

should have been the flowering of her face. A certain tightness at

the corners gave it an indescribable expression of secrecy and

mystery and restraint. He saw in it the almost monstrous denial and

mockery of desire. He could not see it, as he had seen Nora

Viveash's mouth, curved forward, eager, shedding flame at the brim,

giving itself to lips that longed for it. Philippa's mouth was a

flower that opened only at the touch, the thrill of her own gorgeous

egoism. He read in it the triumph of Philippa over the flesh and

blood of her race. She had nothing in her of the dead. That was the

wonder of her. The passion of the dead had built up her body to the

semblance and the promise of their own delight; their desire, long

forgotten, rose again, lightening and darkening in her amazing eyes;

the imperishable instinct that impelled them to clothe her in their

flesh and blood survived in her, transfigured in strange impulses

and intuitions, but she herself left unfulfilled their promise and

their desire.

Yes--that was what her mouth meant; it was treacherous; it betrayed

the promise of her body and her eyes. And Furnival was feeding his

infatuation on the meanings of her eyes and of her body--meanings

that were unmistakable to Straker.

As if she had known what the older man was thinking of her, Philippa

rose abruptly and turned her back on Furnival and began to make

violent love to old Lady Paignton. Her eyes challenged Straker's

across the terrace. They said: "Look at me. I will be as beautiful

for this old lady as for any male thing on earth. More beautiful.

Have I ever set my cap so becomingly at any of you as I am setting

it now at her? Have you ever seen finer eyes than these that I make

at her, that I lavish on her out of the sheer exuberance of my

nature? Very well, then; doesn't that prove that you're wrong in all

things you've been thinking about me. _I_ know what you've been

thinking!"

As if she knew what he was thinking she made herself beautiful for

him. She allowed him presently to take her for a walk, for quite a

long walk. The woods of Amberley lured them, westward, across the

shining fields. They went, therefore, through the woods and back by

the village in the cool of the evening.

He had seldom, he might say he had never, seen Philippa in so

agreeable a mood. She had sunk her sex. She was tired of her

terrible game, the game that Straker saw through; she was playing

another one, a secret, innocent, delightful game. She laid herself

out to amuse Straker, instead of laying _him_ out (as he put it), on

the table, to amuse herself.

"Philippa," he said, "you've been adorable for the last half hour."

"For the last half hour I've been myself."

She smiled as if to herself, a secret, meditative smile. The mystery

of it was not lost on Straker.

"I can always be myself," she said, "when I'm with you."

"For half an hour," he murmured.

She went on. "You're not tiresome, like the others. I don't know

what there is about you, but you don't bore me."

"Perhaps not--for half an hour."

"Not for millions of half hours."

"Consecutive?"

"Oh, yes."

She tilted her head back and gazed at him with eyes narrowed and

slanting under their deep lids.

"Not in an immortality," she said.

She laughed aloud her joyous appreciation of him.

Straker was neither uplifted nor alarmed. He knew exactly where

he stood with her. She was not considering him; she was not

trying to get at him; she was aware of his illumination and his

disenchantment; she was also aware of his continuous interest in

her, and it was his continuous interest, the study that he made

of her, that interested Philippa. She was anxious that he should

get her right, that he should accept her rendering of herself.

She knew at each moment what he was thinking of her, and the

thing that went on between them was not a game--it was a duel, an

amicable duel, between her lucidity and his. Philippa respected

his lucidity.

"All the same," said Straker, "I am not the most amusing man you

know. You don't find me exciting."

"No." She turned it over. "No; I don't find you at all exciting

_or_ very amusing. How is it, then, that you don't bore me?"

"How can I say?"

"I think it is because you're so serious, because you take me

seriously."

"But I don't. Not for a moment. As for an immortality of

seriousness----"

"At least," she said, "you would admit that possibly I might have a

soul. At any rate, you behave as if you did."

He dodged it dexterously.

"That's where the immortality comes in, is it?"

"Of _course_," said Philippa.

V

She went on amusing Straker all evening, and after dinner she made

him take her into the conservatory.

The conservatory at Amberley is built out fanwise from the big west

drawing-room on to the southwest corner of the terrace; it is

furnished as a convenient lounge, and you sit there drinking coffee,

and smoking, and admiring Brocklebank's roses, which are the glory

of Amberley. And all among Brocklebank's roses they came upon

Furnival and Mrs. Viveash.

Among the roses she shimmered and flushed in a gown of rose and

silver. Among the roses she was lovely, sitting there with Furnival.

And Straker saw that Miss Tarrant was aware of the loveliness of

Mrs. Viveash, and that her instinct woke in her.

She advanced, trailing behind her the long, diaphanous web of her

black gown. When she was well within the range of Furnival's

sensations she paused to smell a rose, bending her body backward and

sideward so that she showed to perfection the deep curved lines

that swept from her shoulders to her breasts, and from her breasts

downward to her hips. A large diamond star hung as by an invisible

thread upon her neck: it pointed downward to the hollow of her

breasts. There was no beauty that she had that was not somehow

pointed to, insisted on, held forever under poor Furnival's excited

eyes.

But in a black gown, among roses, she showed disadvantageously her

dead whiteness and her morbid rose. She was aware of that. Mrs.

Viveash, glowing among the roses, had made her aware.

"Why did we ever come here?" she inquired of Straker. "These roses

are horribly unbecoming to me."

"Nothing is unbecoming to you, and you jolly well know it," said

Furnival.

She ignored it.

"Just look at their complexions. They oughtn't to be allowed about."

She picked one and laid it against the dead-white hollow of her

breast, and curled her neck to look at it there; then she shook her

head at it in disapproval, took it away, and held it out an inch

from Furnival's face. He recoiled slightly.

"It won't bite," she murmured. "It'll let you stroke it." She

stroked it herself, with fingers drawn tenderly, caressingly, over

petals smooth and cool as their own skin. "I believe it can feel. I

believe it likes it."

Furnival groaned. Straker heard him; so did Mrs. Viveash. She

stirred in her seat, causing a spray of Dorothy Perkins to shake as

if it indeed felt and shared her terror. Miss Tarrant turned from

Furnival and laid her rose on Mrs. Viveash's shoulder, where it did

no wrong.

"It's yours," she said; "or a part of you."

Mrs. Viveash looked up at Furnival, and her face flickered for a

moment. Furnival did not see her face; he was staring at Miss

Tarrant.

"Ah," he cried, "how perfect! You and I'll have to dry up, Straker,

unless you can go one better than that."

"I shouldn't dream," said Straker, "of trying to beat Miss Tarrant

at her own game."

"If you know what it is. I'm hanged if I do."

Furnival was tearing from its tree a Caroline Testout, one of

Brocklebank's choicest blooms. Miss Tarrant cried out:

"Oh, stop him, somebody. They're Mr. Brocklebank's roses."

"They ain't a part of Brockles," Furnival replied.

He approached her with Brocklebank's Caroline Testout, and, with his

own dangerous, his outrageous fervor, "You say it f-f-feels," he

stammered. "It's what you want, then--something t-tender and living

about you. Not that s-scin-t-tillating thing you've got there. It

tires me to look at it." He closed his eyes.

"You needn't look at it," she said.

"I can't help it. It's part of you. I believe it grows there. It

makes me look at it."

His words came shaken from him in short, savage jerks. To Straker,

to Mrs. Viveash, he appeared intolerable; but he had ceased to care

how he appeared to anybody. He had ceased to know that they were

there. They turned from him as from something monstrous,

intolerable, indecent. Mrs. Viveash's hands and mouth were

quivering, and her eyes implored Straker to take her away somewhere

where she couldn't see Furnival and Philippa Tarrant.

He took her out on to the terrace. Miss Tarrant looked after them.

"That rose belongs to Mrs. Viveash now," she said. "You'd better go

and take it to her."

Furnival flung the Caroline Testout on the floor. He trod on the

Caroline Testout. It was by accident, but still he trod on it; so

that he seemed much more brutal than he was.

"It's very hot in here," said she. "I'm going on to the terrace."

"Let's go down," said he, "into the garden. We can talk there."

"You seem to be able to talk anywhere," said she.

"I have to," said Furnival.

She went out and walked slowly down the terrace to the east end

where Straker sheltered Mrs. Viveash.

Furnival followed her.

"Are you coming with me or are you not?" he insisted. "I can't get

you a minute to myself. Come out of this, can't you? I want to talk

to you."

"And I," said Miss Tarrant, "want to talk to Mrs. Viveash."

"You don't. You want to tease her. Can't you leave the poor woman

alone for a minute? She's happy there with Straker."

"I want to see how happy she is," said Miss Tarrant.

"For God's sake!" he cried. "Don't. It's my last chance. I'm going

to-morrow." Miss Tarrant continued to walk like one who did not

hear. "I may never see you again. You'll go off somewhere. You'll

disappear. I can't trust you."

Suddenly she stood still.

"You are going to-morrow?"

"Not," said Furnival, "if you'd like me to stay. That's what I want

to talk to you about. Let's go down into the east walk. It's dark

there, and they can't hear us."

"They have heard you. You'd better go back to Mrs. Viveash."

His upper lip lifted mechanically, but he made no sound. He stood

for a moment staring at her, obstructing her path. Then he turned.

"I shall go back to her," he said.

He strode to Mrs. Viveash and called her by her name. His voice had

a queer vibration that sounded to Miss Tarrant like a cry.

"Nora--you'll come with me, won't you?"

Mrs. Viveash got up without a word and went with him. Miss Tarrant,

standing beside Straker on the terrace, saw them go down together

into the twilight of the east walk between the yew hedges.

Philippa said something designed to distract Straker's attention;

and still, with an air of distracting him, of sheltering her sad

sister, Mrs. Viveash, she led him back into the house.

Furnival returned five minutes later, more flushed than ever and

defiant.

That night Straker, going down the long corridor to his bedroom, saw

Fanny Brocklebank and Philippa in front of him. They went slowly,

Fanny's head leaning a little toward Philippa's. Not a word of what

Philippa was saying reached Straker, but he saw her turn with Fanny

into Fanny's room. As he passed the door he was aware of Fanny's

voice raised in deprecation, and of Philippa's, urgent, imperative;

and he knew, as well as if he had heard her, that Philippa was

telling Fanny about Furnival and Nora Viveash.