The construction of the intermediate pieces of line which were to
connect Liverpool with Southampton by a direct route were finished
by July, and, running powers over the lines of other existing
companies having been acquired, the new service was open for traffic
by the beginning of August. As Mr. Palmer had foreseen, the immense
saving of time and convenience of transport effected by this direct
linking together of the two ports had been, as soon as the Bill for
the projected line had passed the Houses of Parliament, instantly
recognised by the various fleets that used these ports, and its success
was assured long before its completion. Added to this, the economical
and businesslike methods of running trains which were adopted by him,
based on American systems, enabled the line to cut down rates, while it
secured for its customers far more rapid transport, so that it obtained
from the first practically a monopoly of the goods traffic between
the ports. A quantity of gentlemen, who in some vague sort of manner
considered that they were acting in the sacred name of patriotism,
wrote hundreds of violent letters to the papers, protesting against
this fresh American invasion; while others, equally vaguely, in the
sacred name of Art, ranted themselves hoarse over the steel-girder
budges that desecrated the most lovely spots in the rural fortresses of
England, and the black, squat, but eminently efficient, engines that
drew the trains of unlovely merchandise. But this _vox_, _et præterea
nihil_, soon died away, and the only influence it had on traffic was
perhaps to call added attention to the eminent advantages enjoyed by
the customers of Mr. Palmer's line. Consequently, neither he nor they
had any quarrel with it.
'All this he had foreseen, and more. It became practically necessary,
as he had known all along, for Swansea and Cardiff to put themselves
into communication with this system, and as early as June, as we have
seen, surveyors were busy on the Molesworth estate over the route.
The winter before Mr. Palmer had purchased both it and the adjoining
Wyfold estate, knowing that the line of direct communication must
pass through one or the other; and when towards the end of July the
experts pronounced very strongly in favour of the Molesworth route, he
forwarded their recommendation to Amelie, with the request that she
would come and talk matters over with him before she left town.
The last month had not passed very happily for her; it lacked, at
least, that wonderful edge of happiness which May and June had given
her. The little rift which had opened between her and Bertie had not
closed again, and, if anything, it had become rather wider. She had
obeyed his request, and not asked Mrs. Emsworth to lunch, but she had
done so unwillingly, rebelling in her mind against this arbitrariness
which expected to be obeyed and yet would give no reason for what
it wished done. In consequence--for her protest, though mute, was
very obvious--the spirit of her compliance was almost as irritating
to him as her disobedience would have been. Furthermore, at that
interview she had had with him suspicion, vague and darkling, she
knew lurked in the shadow of her mind; the piece of him she did not
know irresistibly connected itself with Mrs. Emsworth. There it had
grown like some mushroom, and, though she did not officially, so to
speak, recognise its existence, it was there. Other things, too, had
tended to separate them, and in particular the treatment (or so she
called it) of her mother by the world of London. She had expected to
see and saw that London in general flocked to Mrs. Palmer's new house,
where the entertainments, if not quite so wildly improbable as those
which awoke the echoes in the glades of Long Island, were on the most
lavish and exuberant scale. Consequently London, with its keen eye for
the buttered side of the bread, went there in its crowds, drank Mrs.
Palmer's champagne, danced to her fiddles, won her money at bridge, and
enjoyed the performances of all the most notable singers and pianists
in the world with the greatest contentment. But what Amelie saw also
was the half-shrugged shoulders, the instantaneous glance of the eye,
the raised eyebrow, the just-not-genuine smile of those who were the
most constant _habitués_ there. Mrs. Palmer, in fact, was in London,
not of London. This Amelie resented, and, by way of retaliation, she
had, as was perfectly natural, her mother constantly in her own house,
and filled it with Americans perhaps rather more than was perfectly
natural. For the rest, there had been nothing the least resembling an
open breach between her and Bertie; he accepted the continual presence
of her countrymen without the slightest protest, and never, even by the
smallest inflection of voice or manner, was other than absolutely civil
to everyone she asked. Indeed, the perfect evenness of his manner added
its quota to the constraint that lay between them; in her heart of
hearts she knew that he often found neither interest nor entertainment
in her guests, and the chilled perfection of his mode of conducting
himself towards them but served as a barrier the more.
But what most stood between them was her undefinable suspicion about
Mrs. Emsworth. On that day the cankerworm had entered, and since then
she had again and again asked herself whether Bertie's affection for
her had ever been of the same quality as the love she had felt for
him. She remembered with horrible distinctness his words, 'I want
to be fire,' and they, which at the moment had seemed to her but an
expression of the ever unsatisfied yearning of love, which always,
however perfect, still desires to go yet deeper, now wore a more
sinister interpretation, and were to her the kindling of a secret
heart-burning. What if this natural and simplest interpretation was
true? What if he had never really felt fire for her?
Such was the abbreviated reading of her spiritual diary down to the
day when she drove to see her father. Though he had been in London all
this last month, she had scarcely set eyes on him, so immersed had he
been in the railroad business, and it was with a childish eagerness
that she looked forward to having a long talk with him. In the trouble
of her mind she felt great longing for that kind, unwearied affection
which he ever had for her--an affection not very demonstrative, but
extraordinarily real and solid. The effusiveness of her mother's love
just now was less satisfying to her, for Mrs. Palmer had been for the
last six weeks a mere whirling atom in the mill of social success; and
while one hand, so to speak, was entwined round Amelie's neck in a
maternal embrace, the other would be scribbling notes of invitation and
regret to the flower of England's nobility.
She got to the house rather late for lunch, and was struck by the
resemblance which the moral atmosphere of the dining-room bore to that
of Basle railway-station. There was the same sense that everybody was
just going to catch a train; that they were exchanging last words as
they took their hurried meal. Her father, next whom she sat, was an
exception, for he ate his thin slices of toasted Hovis bread and drank
his milk with the deliberateness which his digestion demanded; but
everyone else seemed to be unable to attend to what was going on at
this moment, because they all were thinking of what they would be doing
the next. Even her father, too, seemed rather preoccupied, and from
time to time she saw that his eyes were fixed on herself with a certain
anxious look, which was removed as soon as he saw she observed it.
With regard to the railroad scheme, his explanation after lunch was
very short. A big ordnance map showed her where the line would enter
the park, where it would enter the tunnel, not to appear again till
it had passed outside the precinct. Its whole course would be quite
remote from the house--remote also from the wooded side of the park;
they would be as unconscious of its presence there as if it was in the
next county. The Wyfold route, on the other hand, which perhaps might
be adopted if Amelie put serious obstacles in the company's way, would
actually be very much closer to the house and the forested piece of the
park than the other.
Mr. Palmer made these explanations as if he anticipated some opposition
on Amelie's part, and he was pleased to find none.
'It seems to me much the most sensible plan,' she said; 'and, as
you say, the railway will really interfere with us less if it is in
Molesworth than if it was in Wyfold. I must just tell Bertie about
it, and I will send you my formal consent this evening. I will leave
everything connected with the sale in your hands.'
She pushed the maps away from her with rather a weary air.
'And how are you, papá,' she said, falling into her old habit of
addressing him. 'I haven't set eyes on you for weeks.'
Mr. Palmer gave a moment's consideration to how he was before he
answered.
'Well, I guess I'm a bit out of condition in the brain,' he said. 'From
the business point of view, England is the most enervating place I ever
came to. These directors and business men here are about as much use as
nursery-maids. They go down to their offices round about eleven, and
sit there till one. Then they eat a heavy lunch, and stroll back about
two to see if anything has happened. Of course it hasn't; things don't
happen unless you make them happen. So they light a big cigar, and go
down to Woking for an evening round of golf after the fatigues of the
day. Saturdays they don't put in an appearance at all. That's their
idea of business. And it tells on me rather; it's difficult to keep up
ordinary high pressure when you're surrounded by so many flabby bits
of chewed string. I guess I'll go back to America in the fall, and get
braced up.' 'It don't affect mamma,' said Amelie, falling more and more
into her native vernacular. 'She just flies around same as ever. She's
having a real daisy of a time, she says.' Mr. Palmer did not listen
to this; he was pursuing his own melancholy reflections on English
business methods.
'It reminds me of a poultry-yard,' he said. 'An Englishman, on the rare
occasions when he lays an egg, has to flap his wings and crow over it,
instead of sitting down to hatch it. Why, I suppose they've given fifty
lunches to boards of the directors over this twopenny-halfpenny line
of mine already. There was a luncheon on the formation of the board;
there was a luncheon to celebrate their determination to set to work
at once; there was a luncheon to celebrate their doing so. There was a
dinner on the occasion of the cutting of the first sod of earth; they
brought down some fool-sort of Highness to do it. They had a week at
the seaside when the Bill passed through the House, and when the first
train runs next month, they'll all go and have a rest-cure on the
completion of their labours. What they want is something to cure them
of their habit of always resting.' He got up from his chair in some
impatience, folded up the maps, and stood looking at his daughter in
silence for a moment.
'Say, Amelie,' he said, 'and what kind of time have you been having?
All going serene and domestically? Bertie been behaving himself? Do
either of you want anything? You look a bit down, somehow--kind of
tired about the eyes.'
Amelie looked up at him; the 'tired about the eyes' seemed to be a
wonderfully true interpretation of how she felt.
'Oh, we trot along,' she said. 'I suppose everyone has their bits
of worries. Mamma has when she accepts three dinner invitations for
the same evening. You have when your directors give luncheon-parties
instead of doing business. We all have.'
'Can't see why you should,' he said. 'I don't like you to worry,
Amelie. What's it all about?'
He paused a moment.
'Have you heard anything about Bertie which bothers you?' he asked; 'or
hasn't he been good to you?'
She did not answer at once, for, in her rather super-sensitized frame
of mind, it seemed to her that her father's first question was not
vague or general, but that he had some special, definite reason for
asking. From that it was but the shortest of links necessary to couple
the question with that which grew mushroom-like in the shadow of her
mind.
'No; he has been perfectly good to me, and I have heard nothing that
bothers me,' she said.
She looked up at her father as she spoke. He was standing close to
her--a short, gray-whiskered man, insignificant in face and features
except for those wonderful eyes. In his hand, the hand which by a
stroke of the pen, a signing of the name, could set in motion the force
of millions, was a little silver paper-knife which she had once given
him. Even now, as she knew--for he had said he could only give her five
minutes after lunch--there were waiting for him a hundred schemes to
be considered, a hundred more levers to move the world 'as he chose.
But he stood there, waiting with a woman's infinite patience for any
impulse towards confidence she-might feel--just a tender, solicitous
father, grasping in his hand a daughter's insignificant gift.
'We have always been chums, Amelie,' he said, with a sort of appealing
wistfulness. 'When you were quite little, you always used to bring me
your little worries for us to smooth out together. I used to be pretty
smart at it; I used to be devilish proud of the way I could take the
frown out of your little forehead.'
She held out her hand to him.
'You are an old darling,' she said, with unshed tears springing to her
eyes. 'But I tell you this truth: it is only I who have been worrying.
I have been imagining all sorts of things, so that I have got to
believe them. That is the matter with me.'
'You have heard nothing specific?' he asked.
Again that question arrested her, awoke her imaginings, and she made up
her mind on what had long been a pondered idea.
She got up at once.
'Nothing whatever,' she said, with a resumption of her usual manner.
'Now I am going. Take care of yourself, papa darling, and wake this
sleepy old county up. I adore its sleepiness myself, and I know you can
never rouse it, otherwise I should not suggest it.'
The carriage was waiting for her, and she got briskly in.
'Mrs. Emsworth's,' she said to the footman.
As she drove there, she tried to stifle thought, for she knew that her
design was to confirm or dispel a suspicion that should never have been
hers. She was doing a thing which was based on a wrong done to her
husband in thought. That she knew, but she combated it by saying to
herself.
'What if it is true?'
She found Mrs. Emsworth at home and delighted to see her, and for a
little they just interchanged the generalities which, between two
people who have not seen each other for some time, are the necessary
ushers to real talk. The day was very hot, and Dorothy, catlike, basked
and purred in it. There was something rather _décolleté_ about her
appearance, and something in her general atmosphere was equally so. She
was, in fact, very different, so she struck Amelie, from the woman who
told the gardener's son the fairy-story on the dewy lawn at Long Island.
'I am charmed to see you,' she said for the second time, when Amelie
was seated; 'and I was furious the other day when you put me off
coming to see you at Molesworth. Had you a prim party? If so, it was
kind of you. Priggish, prim, and prudish--those are the qualities I
dislike--probably,' she added with admirable candour, 'because I do not
happen to be fortunate enough to possess them.' She paused a moment;
then an idea seemed to strike her. 'And where and how is Bertie?' she
asked. 'I haven't set eyes on him for months--not since the party in
Long Island, in fact.'
'He said he hadn't seen you since then the other day,' said Amelie.
'No; I'm rather hurt, because at one time, you know, we were the
greatest friends. I used to see him every day nearly. Then---'
She got up with her slow, catlike movements, and stretched herself
luxuriously, and laughed a lazy laugh of somewhat animal enjoyment.
Something about Amelie's attitude--her reserve, her stiffness, which
was altogether unlike what she remembered of her in Long Island--rather
irritated her, and woke in her that _gamin_ spirit of mischief which
was a very sensible ingredient in her nature. Amelie was putting her
nose in the air, giving herself airs, and if there was one thing in
the world Dorothy could not stand, it was that. Then, to fortify the
mischievous spirit, she remembered the unexplained return of her
present to Bertie. He, too, was giving himself airs; his nose was in
the air. And when Dorothy saw a nose in the air, it was her habit to
very rudely lay hold of it, so to speak, and rub it in the mud. Then,
as a coping-stone to her nose-in-air theory, had come Amelie's refusal
to let her come over to Molesworth. Decidedly this was a case for
treatment. Also her love of making mischief--an occupation, we are led
to infer, specially designed by Satan--was rather strong in her. So she
laughed her laugh, and continued.
'Then he dropped me,' she said--' just opened his fingers and let me
drop. I suppose I ought to have been broken, but I wasn't.'
She had sat down again in a very long, low chair opposite Amelie, and
noticed, with great inward amusement, the tense interest with which
Amelie listened to her.
'I suppose Bertie's been playing about again,' she thought to herself.
'An amorous young man, but it isn't playing the game now he's married.'
And, with only three-quarters of her mind bent on mischief, she went on:
'Yes, I suppose I ought to have been broken, but one gets tough, you
know. But when I sent him a really charming wedding-present, and had
it sent back without a word, I thought it was rather strong. That was
being dropped with a vengeance.'
'Did Bertie do that?' asked Amelie.
'Yes, dear, unless you did. Back it came, anyhow. Now, if I had not
been the sweetest-tempered, meekest little Moses that ever lived, I
should have--well, made it unpleasant.'
Amelie flushed; her manner was still far from pleasing Dorothy, for she
sat as upright in her chair as if the plague lurked in the back or arms
of it.
'I don't understand you,' she said; 'how could you make it unpleasant
for Bertie?'
Mrs. Emsworth laughed; Amelie really was too stately for words.
'My dear, you are new to London, of course, but I wonder that no candid
friend has ever told you. Bertie was once just madly in love with me.
It was a great bore though I liked him well enough. But such classical
ardour was beyond me. His letter--has he never confessed to you about
the letter he wrote me? It was quite a lyrical letter, and it made me
scream. I was just _the_ only thing on God's earth.'
'Can you show it me?' asked Amelie very quietly. 'I should think it
must be amusing.'
She made a rather pitiful attempt to laugh.
'I wish I could,' said the other, still maliciously; 'I am sure you
would shriek over it. But I tore it up ages ago--last autumn, to be
accurate, the first time I saw Bertie in America. It was rather kind of
me--rather excessively kind, I have sometimes thought; I might have had
some fun over it.'
She glanced carelessly across to Amelie. The girl had grown quite pale,
even to the lips, and her hands were trembling. Instantly a compunction
as quick as all her emotions seized the other.
'Ah! you mustn't mind my nonsense, dear Amelie,' she cried, jumping up.
'I have been talking very foolishly; I did not think it would make you
mind like that.'
She took the girl's hand, but Amelie withdrew it.
'But there was this letter,' she said. 'And Bertie did make love to
you?'
'Yes; why not? Show me the man, the most respectable married man, who
says he has never kissed another girl in his life, and I will show you
a liar. What does it matter?'
'A lyrical letter?' said Amelie.
'Yes, I wish I had kept it; I would show it you.'
Suddenly a wave almost of physical nausea swept over Amelie. She had
all the stainless purity of thought of a girl who has been married
young to the first man she has ever loved, and in the first moment of
her knowing definitely that Bertie at one time had made love to this
woman she felt sick--simply sick. She rose from her chair, and put on
her gloves, while Dorothy watched her, conscious that some emotion
which she herself had so long forgotten, had she ever experienced it,
that she no longer comprehended it, mastered her. And, with the best
intentions in the world, not recognising that any further allusion to
her own friend-ship with Bertie would only further disgust and sicken
his wife, she said:
'That was all. There was never anything more--anything wrong.'
Amelie turned on her a marble face.
'How am I to know?' she asked. 'What prevented it? His morals, the
lyrical letter-writer, or yours?'
Dorothy felt a strong though momentary impulse to box her ears. It
would probably have been a good thing if she had yielded to it. She
herself had felt for Amelie a sort of wondering pity that a matter so
long dead could possibly be bitter still, and, acting under that, she
had done her best to reassure her. But Amelie had slapped that generous
impulse in the face; she had also chosen to express doubt as to the
truth of what she had been told; and a rather more pronounced felinity
awoke in Dorothy's face.
'You had better go and talk it out with Bertie,' she said.
'Ask him to repeat what he remembers of that letter. He is sure to have
some recollection of it even now that he is so happily married. You can
then draw your own conclusions, and, as far as I am concerned, you are
perfectly free to do so. Oh yes, and tell him that I constantly use the
dressing-bag he so kindly returned, and think of him.'
Amelie went out, feeling as if her world had fallen in ruins about her
head. Possibilities which she had been ashamed of harbouring in her
mind suddenly leapt out into flaring certainties, and they enveloped
her. She could not think as yet coherently or connectedly; wherever she
turned her thoughts, a flame flashed in her eyes. All her secret doubts
were justified: Bertie had loved this woman; it was she who had called
out the notes of his lyre, while she herself was given the shillings
and pence--all the small change of the dower of love which he had once
showered on Mrs. Emsworth. She could get no further than this; in this
circle her thoughts ran round and round, like a squirrel in a revolving
cage. Wherever she tried to go, she was still pawing round that one
circle; she could get no further; the range of her mental processes
was limited to that. And she now knew at once that she had to go on
her way, whatever it was, unattended, uncomforted; and even in the
exaggerated desolation of these first moments she could make the one
resolve that no one, not even her father, should ever know. This her
pride imperatively demanded: whatever she had to bear, she would bear
in silence. And she could bear anything except pity.
'I want to be fire'--that was explained now, and that he should want
that seemed to her an added insult.
'My dear Amelie,' he seemed to say, 'you are a charming girl, but you
don't interest me--like that. I wish you did; I really wish you did.'
She bit her under-lip till it was white with the pressure of her
teeth, and clasped her hands so tightly in her lap that the sharp
facets of the stones in her rings dinted her fingers. The future
spelt impossibility. There were hours daily to be gone through with
Bertie; what of them? What of the little lover-like caresses that were
still constant between them? What, indeed, of the whole tissue of his
simulated love--of his wish to be fire? For the moment, whether it
was true or not that the acme of his relationship with Mrs. Emsworth
culminated actually in that 'lyrical letter' or not, she hardly cared;
it was there, in any case, that his fire had burned--had burned itself
out.
For a moment the spinning cage of her thoughts paused, and she moved
forward in a straight and horrible line. Since her engagement to Bertie
those two had not met. Bertie had returned her wedding-present; he had
refused to have her at the house. Why? Because he was afraid of seeing
her, lest The fire had burned for her; what if it had _not_ yet burned
itself out?