The task was so far unpleasant to her that she was anxious to secure the
first opportunity and get it over. Her moment would come with the two
hours after dinner in the study.
It did not come that evening; for Majendie telegraphed that he had been
detained in town, and would dine at the Club. He did not come home till
Anne (who sat up till midnight waiting for that opportunity) had gone
tired to bed.
Her determination gathered strength with the delay, and when her moment
came with the next evening, it came gloriously. Majendie gave himself
over into her hands by bringing Gorst, of all people, back with him to
dine.
The brilliant prodigal approached her with a little embarrassed youthful
air of humility and charm; the air almost of taking her into his
confidence over something unfortunate and absurd. He had evidently
counted on the ten minutes before dinner when he would be left alone with
her. He selected a chair opposite to her, leaning forward in it at ease,
his nervousness visible only in the flushed hands clasped loosely on his
knees, his eyes turned upon his hostess with a look of almost infantile
candour. It was as if he mutely implored her to forget yesterday's
encounter, and on no account to mention in what compromising company he
had been seen. His engaging smile seemed to take for granted that she was
a lady of pity and understanding, who would never have the heart to give
a poor prodigal away. His eyes intimated that Mrs. Majendie knew what it
amounted to, that awful prodigality of his.
But Mrs. Majendie had no illusions concerning sinners with engaging
smiles and beautiful manners. And with every tick of the clock he
deepened the impression of his insolence and levity. His very charm
and the flush and brilliance that were part of it went to swell the
prodigal's account. The instinct that had wakened in her knew them,
the lights and colours, the heralding banners and vivid signs, all the
paraphernalia of triumphant sin. She turned upon her guest the cold eyes
of a condign destiny.
By the time dinner was served it had dawned on Gorst that he was looking
in Mrs. Majendie for something that was not there. He might even have had
some inkling of her resolution; he sat at his friend's table so
consciously on sufferance, with an oppressed, extinguished air, eating
his dinner as if it choked him, like the last sad meal in a beloved
house.
Majendie, too, felt himself drawn in and folded in the gloom cast by his
wife's protesting presence. The shadow of it wrapped them even after Anne
had left the dining-room, as though her indignant spirit had remained
behind to preserve her protest. Gorst had changed his oppression for a
nervous restlessness intolerable to Majendie.
"My dear fellow," he said, "what is the matter with you?"
"How should I know?" said Gorst with a spurt of ill-temper. "I'm not a
nerve specialist."
Majendie looked at him attentively. "I say, _you_ mustn't go in for
nerves, you know; you can't afford it."
"My dear Walter, I can't afford anything, if it comes to that." He paused
with an obscure air of injury and foreboding. "Not even, it seems, the
most innocent amusements. At the rate," he added, "I have to pay for
them." Again he brooded, while Majendie wondered at him, in brotherly
anxiety. "I suppose," Gorst said suddenly, "I can go up and see Edith,
can't I?"
He spoke as if he doubted, whether, in the wreck of his world, with all
his "innocent amusements," that supreme consolation would be still open
to him.
"Of course you can," said Majendie. "It's the best thing you can do.
I told her you were coming."
"Thanks," said Gorst, checking the alacrity with which he rose to go to
Edith.
Oh yes, he knew it was the best thing he could do.
Edith's voice called gladly to him as he tapped at her door. He entered
noiselessly, wearing the wondering and expectant look with which a new
worshipper enters a holy place. Perpetual backslidings kept poor Gorst's
worship perpetually new.
Colour came slowly back into Edith's face and a tender light into her
eyes, as if from the springing of some deep untroubled well of life. She
seemed more than ever a creature of imperial vitality, bound by some
cruel enchantment to her couch. She held out her hands to him; and he
raised them to his lips and kissed her fingers lightly.
"It's weeks since I've seen you," said she.
"Months, isn't it?" said he.
"Weeks, three weeks, by the calendar."
"I say--tell me--I _am_ to come and see you, just the same?"
"Just the same? Why, what's different?"
"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me, when a man's married, it's bound
to make a difference."
Edith's colour mounted; she made an effort to control the trembling of
her mouth, the soft woman's mouth where all that was bodily in her love
still lingered. But the sweetness deepened in her eyes, which were the
dwelling-place of the immortal, immaterial power. They met Gorst's eyes
steadily, laying on his restlessness their peace.
"Are you going to be married, Charlie?" said she, and smiled bravely.
He laughed. "Oh, Lord, no; not I."
"Who is, then?"
"Walter, of course. I mean he is married, don't you know."
"Yes, and is there any difference in him to you?"
"In him? Oh, rather not."
"In whom, then?"
"Well--I don't think, Edie, that Mrs. Walter--I like her--" he stuck
to it--"I like her, you know, she's charming, but--I don't think she
particularly cares for _me_."
"How do you know that?"
"How do I know anything? By the way she looks at me."
"Oh, the way Anne looks at people--"
"Well, you know, it's something tremendous, something terrible.
Unutterable things, you know. She knocks the Inquisition and the day of
judgment all to pieces. They're simply not in it. It's awfully hard lines
on me, you see, because I like her."
"I'm glad you like her."
"Oh, I only like her because she likes you, I think."
"And I like her. Please remember that."
"I do remember it. I say, Edie, tell me, is she awfully devoted and all
that?"
"To Walter? Yes, very devoted."
"That's all right, then. I don't think I mind so much now. As long as
I can come and see you just the same."
"Of course you'll come and see me, just the same."
He pondered for a long time over that. Seeing Edith was the best thing he
could do. To-night it seemed the only good thing left for him to do. He
lived in a state of alternate excitement and fatigue, forever craving his
innocent amusements, and forever tired of them. None of them were worth
while. Seeing Edith was the only thing that was worth while. He refused
to contemplate with any calmness a life in which it would be impossible
for him to see her. If the poor prodigal had not chosen the most elevated
situation for the building of his house of life, he was always making
desperate efforts to leave the insalubrious spot, and return to the high
and windswept mansions of his youth. To be with Edith was to nourish the
illusion of return. Return itself seemed possible, when goodness, in the
person of Edith, looked at him with such tender and alluring eyes. In
spirit he prostrated himself before it, while he cursed the damnable
cruelty that had prevented him from marrying her. Through that act of
adoration he was enabled to live through his alien and separated days.
It kept him, as he phrased it, "going," which meant that, wherever his
rebellious feet might carry him, he continued to breathe, through it, the
diviner air.
And Edith had lain for ten years on her back, and every year the hours
had gone more lightly, through the hope of seeing him. She had outlived
her time of torment and rebellion. There was a sense in which her life,
in spite of its frustration, was complete. The love through which her
womanhood struggled for victory in defeat had fulfilled itself by gradual
growth into something like maternal passion. There was no selfishness in
her attitude to him and his devotion. By accepting it she took his best
and offered it to God for him. With fragile, dedicated hands she nursed
and sheltered the undying votive flame. She seemed a saint who had
foregone heaven and remained on earth to help him. Her womanhood, wrapped
from him in veil upon veil of her mysterious suffering, had never removed
itself from him. She held him by all that was indomitable in her own
nature, and in spite of his lapses, he remained her lover.
She was aware of these lapses and grieved over them and forgave them,
laying them, as she had laid her brother's sin, to the account of her
unhappy spine. In Edith's tender fancy her spine had become responsible
for all the shortcomings of these beloved persons. If Walter could have
married Anne seven years ago there would have been no dreadful Lady
Cayley; and if she could have married poor Charlie she would not have had
to think of him as "poor Charlie" now. It had been hard on him.
That was precisely what poor Charlie was thinking. And if that
sister-in-law was to come between them, too, it would be harder still.
But Edith insisted that she would make no difference.
"In fact," said she, "you can come more than ever. For if Walter's
absorbed in Anne, and Anne's absorbed in Walter--"
He took it up gaily. "Then I may be absorbed in you? So, after all, it
turns out to my advantage."
"Yes. You can console me. You can console me now, this minute, if you'll
play to me."
He was always lamenting that he could do nothing for her. Playing to her
was the one thing he could do, and he did it well.
He rose joyously and went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys
with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific?
Or loud and strong?"
"Oh, loud and strong, please. Very strong and very loud."
"Right you are. You shall have it hot and strong, and loud enough to wake
the dead."
That was his rendering of Chopin's "Grande Polonaise." He let himself
loose in it, with a rush, a vehemence, a diabolic brilliance and clamour.
The quiet room shook with the sounds he wrenched out of the little humble
piano in the corner. And as Edith lay and listened, her spirit, too,
triumphed, and was free; it rode gloriously on the storm of sound. It
was, she said, laughing, quite enough to wake the dead. This was the
miracle that he alone could accomplish for her.
And downstairs in the study, Anne heard his music and started, as the
dead may start in their sleep. It seemed to her, that Polonaise of
Chopin, the most immoral music, the music of defiance and revolt. It
flung abroad the prodigal's prodigality, his insolent and iniquitous
joy. That was what he, a bad man, made of an innocent thing.
Majendie's face lit up, responsive to the delight and challenge of the
opening chord. "He's all right," said he, "as long as he can play."
He listened, glancing now and then at Anne with a smile of pride in his
friend's performance. It was as if he were asking her to own that there
must be some good in a fellow who could play like that.
Anne was considering in what words she would intimate to him that Mr.
Gorst's music was never to be heard again in that house. Some instinct
told her that she was courting danger, but the approval of her conscience
urged her on. She waited till the Polonaise was over before she spoke.
"You say," said she, "he's all right as long as he can play like that. To
me, it's the most convincing proof that he's all wrong."
"How do you make that out?"
"I don't want to go into it," said Anne. "I don't approve of Mr. Gorst;
but I should think better of him if he had only better taste."
"You're the first person who ever accused Gorst of bad taste."
"Do you call it good taste to live as he does, as I know he does, and you
know he does, and yet to come here, and sit with Edie, and behave as if
he'd never done anything to be ashamed of? It would be infinitely better
taste if he kept away."
"Not at all. There are a great many very nice things about Gorst, and his
caring to come here is one of the nicest. He has been faithful to Edith
for ten years. That sort of thing isn't so common that one can afford to
despise it."
"Faithful to her? Poor darling, does she think he is?"
"She doesn't think. She knows."
"Preserve me from such faithfulness."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I do know. And you know that I know." In proof of her contention she
offered him the incident of the four-in-hand.
Majendie made a movement of impatience. "Oh, that's nothing," he said.
"He doesn't like her. He likes driving, and she likes a front seat at any
show (I can't see her taking a back one); and if she insisted on climbing
up beside him, he couldn't very well knock her off, you know. You don't
seem to realise how difficult it is to knock a woman off any seat she
takes a fancy to sit on. You simply can't do it."
Anne was silent. She felt weak and helpless before his imperturbable
levity.
He smoked placidly. "No," he said presently. "Gorst mayn't be a saint,
but I will acquit him of an unholy passion for poor Sarah."
Anne fired. "He may be a very bad man for all that."
"There again, you show that you don't know what you're talking about. He
is not a 'very bad man'. You've no discrimination in these things. You
simply lump us all together as a bad lot. And so we may be, compared with
the angels and the saints. But there are degrees. If Gorst isn't as good
as--as Edie, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's bad."
"Please--I would rather not argue the point. But I am not going to have
anything to do with Mr. Gorst."
"Of course not. You disapprove of him. There's nothing more to be said."
He spoke placably as if he made allowance for her attitude while he
preserved his own.
"There is a great deal more to be said, dear. And I may as well say it
now. I disapprove of him so strongly that I cannot have him received in
this house if I am to remain in it."
Astonishment held him dumb.
"You have no right to expect me to," said she.
"To expect you to remain, or what?"
"To receive a man of Mr. Gorst's character."
"My dear girl, what right have you to expect me to turn him out?"
"My right as your wife."
"My wife has a right to ask me a great many things, but not that."
"I ought not to have to ask you. You should have thought of it yourself.
You should have had more care for my reputation."
At this he laughed, greatly to his own annoyance and to hers.
"Your reputation? Your reputation, I assure you, is in no danger from
poor Gorst."
"Is it not? My friends--the Eliotts--will not receive him."
"There's no reason why they should."
"Is there any reason why I should? Do you want me to be less fastidious
than they are? You forget that I was brought up with very fastidious
people. My father wouldn't have allowed me to speak to a man like Mr.
Gorst. Do you want me to accept a lower standard that his, or my
mother's?"
"Have you considered what my standard would look like if I turned my best
friend out of the house--a man I've known all my life--just because my
wife doesn't happen to approve of him? I know nothing about your Eliotts;
but if Edie can stand him, I should think you might."
"I," said Anne coldly, "am not in love with him."
He frowned, and a dull flush of anger coloured the frown. "I must say,
your standard is a remarkable one if it permits you to say things like
that."
"I would not have said it but for what you told me yourself."
"What did I tell you?"
"That Edith cared for him."
He remembered.
"If I did tell you that, it was because I thought you cared for Edie."
"I do care for her."
"You've rather a strange way of showing it. I wonder if you realise how
much she did care? What it must have meant to her when she got ill? What
it meant to him? Have you the remotest conception of the infernal
hardship of it?"
"I know it was hard."
"Forgive me; you don't know, or you wouldn't be so hard on both of them."
"It isn't I who am hard."
"Isn't it? When you're just proposing to stop Gorst's coming here?"
"It's not I that's stopping him. It's his own conduct. He is hard on
himself, and he is hard on her. There's nobody else to blame."
"Do you mean to say you think I'm actually going to tell him not to come
any more?"
"My dear, it's the least you can do for me after--"
"After what?"
"After everything."
"After letting you in for marrying me, you mean. And as I suppose poor
Edie was to blame for that, it's the least _she_ can do for you to give
him up. Is that it? Seeing him is about the only pleasure that's left to
her, but that doesn't come into it, does it?"
She was silent.
"Well, and what am I to think of you for all this?"
"I cannot _help_ what you think of me," said she with the stress of
despair.
"Well, I don't think anything, as it happens. But, if you were capable of
understanding in the least what you're trying to do, I should think you a
hard, obstinate, cruel woman. What I'm chiefly struck with is your
extreme simplicity. I suppose I mustn't be surprised at your wanting to
turn Gorst out; but how you could imagine for one moment that I would do
it--No, that's beyond me."
"I can only say I shall not receive him. If he comes into the house,
I shall go out of it."
"Well--" said Majendie judicially, as if she had certainly hit upon a
wise solution.
"If he dines here I must dine at the Eliotts'."
"Well--and you'll like that, won't you? And I shall like having Gorst,
and so will Edie, and Gorst will like seeing her, and everybody will be
pleased."
Overhead Mr. Gorst burst into a dance measure, so hilarious that it
seemed the very cry of his delight.
"As long as Edie goes on seeing him, he'll think it's all right."
Overhead Mr. Gorst's gay tune proclaimed that indeed he thought so. He
broke off suddenly, and began another and a better one, till the spirit
of levity ran riot in immortal sounds.
"So it's all right. She's a good woman. It's the only hold we've got on
him."
"If all good women were to reason that way--"
"If all good women were to reason your way, what do you think would
happen?"
"There would be more good men in the world."
"Would there? There would be more good men ruined by bad women. Because,
don't you see, there'd be no others left for them to speak to."
"If you're thinking of his good--"
"Have you thought of hers?"
"Yes. Supposing he ends by marrying somebody else, what will she do
then?--poor Edie!"
"If the somebody else is a good woman, poor Edie will fold her dear
little hands, and offer up a dear little prayer of thankfulness to
heaven."
Upstairs the music ceased. The prodigal's footsteps were heard crossing
the room and coming to a halt by Edith's couch.
Majendie rose, placid and benignant.
"I think," said he, "it's time for you to go to bed."