VI

Durant had an idea, or rather two ideas, one purely comic, the other

comic or tragic, according to the way you took it. He first of all

discovered that the Colonel was laying siege to the heart of Mrs.

Fazakerly, and at the same time conducting his campaign with an

admirable discretion. There never was a little Colonel of militia so

anxious to avoid committing himself. Not that the event could be

considered doubtful for a moment. Measuring all risks, it was in the

highest degree incredible that he would be called upon to suffer the

indignity of repulse.

There was nothing extraordinary in that. To be sure, on the first

face and blush of it, Durant had wondered how on earth Mrs.

Fazakerly could tolerate the Colonel; but, when he came to think of

it, there was no reason why she should not go a great deal farther

than that. The Colonel's dullness would not depress her, she having

such an eternal spring of gaiety in herself. She might even find it

"soothing," like the neighboring landscape. And as she loved her

laughter, it was not improbable that she loved its cause. Then she

had the inestimable advantage of knowing the worst of him; her

intelligent little eyes had seen him as he was; she could lay a soft

finger on all his weak spots. There was this to be said for the

Colonel, that he was all on the surface; there was nothing,

positively nothing, behind him. Besides, Mrs. Fazakerly was not

exacting. She had not lived forty years in the world without knowing

the world, and no doubt she knew it too well to ask very much from

it. Then the fact remained that the Colonel was an immaculate

gentleman, immaculately dressed, and he was not the only item in the

program. Coton Manor would be thrown in, and there were other

agreeable accessories. Mrs. Fazakerly's tastes were all of the

expensive sort, and her ambition aimed at something vaster than the

mere adornment of her own person. In her household she displayed a

talent, not to say a genius, for luxurious order. But a little

dinner at the cottage opposite the lodge gates had convinced Durant

that this elegance of hers was of a fragile and perishable sort. The

peculiar genius of Mrs. Fazakerly clamored for material and for

boundless scope. It could not do itself justice under two thousand a

year at the very least. As things stood its exuberance was hampered

both as to actual space (her drawing-room was only eighteen feet by

twelve) and as to the more glorious possibilities that depend on

income. At Coton Manor she would have a large field and a free hand.

Heaven only knew what Mrs. Fazakerly's mind was made up of; but

quite evidently it was made up.

So far so good; but there was less certainty as to the Colonel's

attitude. As yet nothing was to be seen, so to speak, but his

attitudes, which indeed were extremely entertaining. The little

gentleman was balancing himself very deftly on the edge of

matrimony, and Durant watched with a fearful interest the rash

advance and circumspect retreat, the oscillating hair's-breadth

pause, the perilous swerve, and desperate contortion of recovery.

Durant felt for him; he had so much to lose. Under Miss Tancred the

working of his household was already brought to such exquisite

perfection that any change must be for the worse. He had found out

what became of Miss Tancred in her mysterious disappearances. As far

as he could see the business of the estate was entirely

superintended by the lady. He came across her in earnest

conversation with the gardener; he met her striding across the

fields with the farm-bailiff; he had seen her once on her black mare

inspecting some buildings on the farthest limit of the property, the

obsequious builder taking notes of her directions. She was obviously

a capable woman, a woman of affairs. He presumed that these matters,

with her household and secretarial work, filled up her days; he knew

too well that whist accounted for her evenings. He did not know if

there was any margin, any dim intellectual region, out of time, out

of space, where Miss Tancred's soul was permitted to disport itself

in freedom; she seemed to exist merely in order to supply certain

deficiencies in the Colonel's nature. Mrs. Fazakerly had once

remarked that Frida was "her father's right hand." It would have

been truer to have said that she was right hand and left hand, and

legs and brain to the student of meteorology. There had evidently

been some tacit division of labor, by which she did all the

thinking and all the work while he did the talking. Thus, to

continue Durant's line of argument, the Colonel's comfort was

secured to him without an effort on his part (otherwise it would not

have been comfort); and when all was said and done Mrs. Fazakerly

was a most indifferent player of whist.

Then there was the Colonel's age. Durant knew a man who had taught

himself the 'cello at fifty-five. But the Colonel was not that sort

of adventurous dilettante. Neither was Mrs. Fazakerly exactly like a

violoncello, she was more like a piano; while Miss Tancred, from the

Colonel's point of view, was like a hurdy-gurdy. Not a difficult

instrument the hurdy-gurdy; you have only to keep on turning a

handle to make it go. To be sure, you can get rather more out of a

piano; but pianos are passionate things, ungovernable and slippery

to the touch. The Colonel was fond of the humbler instrument that

gave him the sense of accomplishment without the effort, the joys of

the _maestro_ without his labor and his pain.

He was in a double dilemma. If he had to choose between Miss Tancred

and Mrs. Fazakerly his choice would never be made. On the other

hand, if he decided for both, his comfort would be more insecure

than ever. There would be jealousy to a dead certainty; in all mixed

households that was where the shoe pinched. To pursue that vulgar

figure, the Colonel's daughter was like a pair of old and easy shoes

made by a good maker, a maker on whom he could rely; a wife would be

like new boots ordered rashly from an unknown firm. They would be

his best pair, no doubt, but your best pair is generally the

tightest. He had some trying years before him; and well, a man does

not put on new boots for a long uphill scramble.

So the Colonel's breast was torn with internecine warfare, desire

battling with habit, and habit with desire. No wonder if in that

awful struggle the fate of one insignificant individual counted for

nothing. Frida Tancred never had counted.

Durant admitted that his imagination was apt to work in somewhat

violent colors, and that there might be a point of view from which

the Colonel would tone down into a very harmless and even pathetic

figure; for Mrs. Fazakerly he had no terrors. But there was the

girl. It was hard to say exactly what he had done to her. Apparently

he had taken her soul while it was young and squeezable, and had

crushed it till it fitted into all his little habits; he had

silenced her heart with commonplaces, and dulled her intellect with

his incomprehensible fatuity. And through it all he had been the

most innocent little gentleman alive. Oh, yes, he was pathetic

enough in his way. He himself was only an instrument in the hands of

irrepressible Nature who couples wild soul with tame, hot blood with

cold blood, genius with folly, and makes her sport of their unhappy

offspring. And Nature was playing a glorious game with Frida Tancred

now.

That was Durant's second idea; the thought that had struck him so

unpleasantly after his last interview with her. To put it coarsely,

he had a suspicion, a fear, that Miss Tancred was beginning to fall

in love with him. He might have known that it would happen. It was

just the sort of damnable irony most likely to pursue that

unfortunate woman. There could be no mistake about it; he knew it;

he knew it by many subtle and infallible signs. Somewhere he had

heard or read that no nice man ever knows these things. That was all

nonsense; or, if it had any meaning at all, it could only mean that

no nice man ever shows that he knows. The fact remained that if he

had loved her he would not have known.

For the disagreeable circumstance itself he called Heaven to witness

that he had not been to blame. He had been ready to do his part, to

fall down and worship the unknown Miss Tancred, the Miss Tancred of

his vision. The hour had been ripe, the situation also, and the

mood; the woman alone had failed him. Heaven knew he had done

nothing to make her care for him. True, he had given her a certain

amount of his society; since she found a pleasure in it he would

have been a brute to deny her that poor diversion, that miserable

consolation for the tedium of her existence. Perhaps he had tried

too much to be sympathetic; but who again would not have tried? He

had given her nothing to go upon. What had he ever given her beyond

some infinitesimal portion of his valuable time, at the most some

luminous hour of insight, or perhaps a little superfluous piece of

good advice that was of no possible use to himself? For these things

she had given herself--given herself away. How ludicrously pathetic

some women are! You do them some kindness on an afternoon when you

have nothing better to do and they reward you with the devotion of

eternity; for they have no sense of proportion. The awkward thing is

that it lays you under an eternal obligation to do something or

other for them, you don't know exactly what; an intolerable position

for a nice man.

So Durant's first feelings were surprise, annoyance, and a certain

shame. Then he began to feel a little flattered, being perfectly

sure that Frida Tancred was not the woman to give herself away to

any ordinary man. He was the first, the only one, the one in a

thousand, who had broken down her implacable reserve. He ended by

feeling positively proud of his power to draw out the soul of a

creature so reticent and passionless and strange.

His time was not yet up, and the question was: Ought he to go or

stay? He would have found or invented some pretext, and left long

ago, but that in him the love of pleasure brought with it an equal

fear of giving pain. It would give pain to the Colonel (who, after

all, had received him kindly) if he went before his time. By the art

of graceful evasion Durant had escaped many such an old gentleman as

the Colonel; but when it came to doing the really disagreeable and

ungraceful thing it seemed that his courage failed him.

There was no doubt in Miss Tancred's mind on the delicate point. She

was even capable of making a sacrifice to keep him.

He met her one morning riding on her black mare. Miss Tancred looked

well on horseback; the habit, the stiff collar, the hard hat, were

positively becoming, perhaps because they left no room for

decorative caprice. She drew up, and Durant ran his hand lovingly

over the warm shining neck and shoulders of the mare. Miss Tancred's

eyes followed the movements of his hand, then they traveled up his

tall figure and down again.

"Your legs are rather long," said she, "and you're heavier than I

am; but you can ride her if you like."

"I shouldn't think of it," said Durant, magnificently mendacious. He

had been very early enlightened as to his chances with the mare; but

the temptation to ride her had never died in him.

"Unless you ride," she continued, "there is nothing for you to do

here. Then you'll be bored to death; and then, I suppose, you'll

go?"

"And bury myself? And then?"

"You won't be buried long. You'll rise again fast enough, somewhere

else."

"And what if I do go and do all these things?"

"Well, I don't want you to go--and do them."

She moved on, and he walked beside her, his hand on the mare's mane.

"I can't think why you've stopped so long. Every morning since you

came I've been expecting you to go. I thought you'd say your father

was dying, or that your partner was ill, and you had urgent business

in town. It's what they all do. Do you know, we've asked no end of

people down, and they never stay more than three days. They always

get letters or telegrams, or something. No, I'm wrong; one man

stopped a week. He sprained his ankle the first day, and left before

he was fit to travel."

(Durant laughed. She really amused him, this _ingenue_ of thirty,

with the face of a Sphinx and the conversation of a child.)

"And they never come again. There's something about the place they

can _not_ stand."

They were walking leisurely together in full sight of Coton Manor.

She gazed at it anxiously.

"Does it--does it look so very awful?"

"Well--architecturally speaking--no, of course it doesn't."

"Ah, you're getting used to it. Do you know you'll have been here a

fortnight next Monday?"

About the corners of her mouth and eyes there played a dawning

humor.

"Come, that sounds as if you did want me to go."

"No it doesn't. How could it? If you don't believe me, here's the

proof--you can ride Polly every day if you'll stop another week."

Another week! Most decidedly she had a sense of the monstrous humor

of the thing. If she could see it that way she was saved. He had not

the heart to kill that happy mood by a coarse refusal; it would have

been like grinding his heel on some delicate, struggling thing just

lifting its head into life.

Besides, she had really touched him. His legs, as Miss Tancred had

observed, were a little long, otherwise Durant had the soul and the

physique of a tamer of horses. The sight of Polly filled him with

desire that was agony and rapture; he saw himself controlling the

splendid animal; he could feel her under him, bounding, quivering,

pulsating, he himself made one with every movement of her nervous,

passionate body. It was too much. Beside that large, full-blooded

pleasure, his scruples showed colorless and light as air.

That happened on a Friday. He had only two clear days more. He found

himself seriously considering the desirability of staying over

Monday.