The epidemic of typhoid up at Achnaleesh, which had begun so suddenly
and violently, had ceased with the same suddenness, and from the first
day that no fresh case was reported no fresh case occurred at all. There
was every reason to be satisfied with this vanishing trick of the germ,
though the manner of its vanishing was as inexplicable as its
appearance. Typhoid, in other words, had appeared without the source of
infection being traced, and had disappeared again with the same
mysteriousness. It had gone like one of Thurso's headaches, as if the
tap had been turned off, and after the ball he had shown no sign that he
thought he ought to go back North again. This quite fell in with his
wife's wishes, which she had not thought good to express to him, for
she desired for many reasons that he should be here in London with her
for awhile, and the principal of these had been that she was aware that
people were "wondering" about herself and Villars. Though there was
nothing to wonder about, she still preferred that people should not do
so, and Thurso's presence would act as a sort of extinguisher to these
guttering flames. The memory of the world, she knew, was in general very
short. The events of one week are quite sufficient to put out of its
head anything that may or may not have occurred the week before; but
when it does happen really to have got tight hold of something, whether
true or imaginary, its memory has the tiresome tenaciousness of a
child's. You may change the subject, point out of the window, rattle
with toys, or expose bright objects to view, but the world, like a
child, though it may give a distracted attention to these lures for a
moment or two, soon gets a glassy eye again, and repeats, "But what
about----" The world was doing just that now, and she felt that Thurso's
presence gave a better chance of solid distraction than any bright
objects that she could dangle before it.
The ball, for instance, had been an object positively dazzling in its
brightness, and though it differed in kind even from other functions
which the outside observer might think to be similar, she wanted more
than that, though the hugeness of its success could not fail to gratify
even one who was so accustomed to succeed. Other functions might have
all London assembled in no less beautiful a house, dancing to the
identical band, with everybody in tiaras and garters; but it was quite
obvious to those who knew that Lady Thurso had hit the very top note
that time, the note that is only struck once in a season. What the top
note was it was impossible to say, just as it is impossible to say why
the same ingredients can make two perfectly different puddings, except
that in both cases it depends on the cook. The same people probably had
been to twenty other balls, and danced to the same music, and said the
same things, but inscrutably, though certainly, it was _the_ ball of the
year, and competition was futile. That new feature--the staircase of
wild-flowers--might have had something infinitesimal to do with it; that
glorious dining-room, not turned upside down and smothered in flowers,
might have helped, for the chic of not decorating a room at all, but
letting it remain as it appeared when nothing was going on, so that
apparently you could have this kind of entertainment without fuss or
preparation of any kind, was undeniable. Yet, again, nobody could turn
her staircase into a country lane without thought. So the upshot was
that Lady Thurso alone knew exactly how to do it: what to keep
unadorned, as if she was going to dine alone; what to decorate, and how
to decorate it; what to say, how to look, what to wear. She looked, it
may be remarked, magnificent, and wore no jewels at all. Nobody hitherto
had thought of that. All her guests outshone her, and she outshone them
all. That, perhaps, was a vibration in the top note, which in any case
was as clear as a musical glass.
But much as the ball was talked about, she knew that Rudolf Villars and
she were talked about more. Wherever people met together during the
subsequent week--and just at this time of the year there was nowhere
that they did not meet--the ball had to be mentioned, but like a
corollary came the question, "Is he still devoted to her?" And the
number of comments on that, the interpretations, the conjectures, the
inferences, would have made any of those myriad women whose ideal is to
be talked about in that kind of way satisfied to live or die happily
ever afterwards. Unfortunately, Catherine Thurso did not claim kinship
with such. It gave her not the smallest pleasure to know that a
situation (or want of it) that concerned her should be the one thing
that everybody else discussed as if it concerned them. Had she, when she
met Villars again at the bazaar, only felt, "Can it be he? I should
never have known him," she would not have troubled her head about what
anybody else might be saying. But she had not enjoyed that dispassionate
attitude. Instead, something within her, independent of her own control,
had said "Rudolf," just as she had said it twelve years ago. Twelve
years ago the volume of her emotional chronicles had been closed with a
snap. Now that ambiguous book was reopened again on the very page at
which it had been cut short. The vague girlish excitement, trouble and
joy was presented to her notice again; but now it was presented, not in
that dim light, but in the blaze and illumination of her womanhood.
Passion had not been awake in her then, the potential fire still
smouldered under the damped coals of immaturity; but now those had
passed away, a fire was ready to spring up, a fire of retarded dawn,
with the splendour of noonday waiting on it. Was it really so? Already
she feared to ask herself that question, for fear of the answer to it.
The pretence of playing at being strangers, when at the bazaar she had
called him "Your Excellency," had broken down with singular
completeness. That very night at her house he had established a footing
of old friendship, to which, in bare justice, he was perfectly entitled.
She could not defend herself against that, she could not resent it, even
if she had wished to do so. Years ago he had loved her, and had asked
her to marry him, and if that does not entitle a man to take the
attitude of an old friend, when next relations of any sort are resumed,
there is nothing in the world that does. Also--and this was no minor
point--she had half accepted him, and then thrown him over. Neither by
look nor word did he appear to cast that up against her now, and she
could not, in response to his generosity, deny him the standing of a
friend.
Yet though he had but claimed, tacitly, but by a right that she could
not dispute, the privilege of friendship, she knew that he implied much
more. She knew quite well that he still loved her. There was no question
about it in her mind, and it disquieted her. But the love of other men
had not disturbed the serenity of her own _insouciance_, and the fact
that this man did told her that he was not as others.
It was characteristic of her and of the worldly wisdom with which she
always ordered her life that she crammed into the week that followed her
ball engagements which would ordinarily have taken even her ten days to
get through. She had seen at once that a question of some importance
would some time have to be answered, and having made up her mind what
her answer would be, she also made it impossible for herself, as far as
was in her power, to leave herself leisure for reconsidering it. She
had, as has been said, no real moral code to refer it to. She had been
born, as we must suppose many people are, without a moral sense, and her
upbringing and environment had not generated it. She did not, for
instance, refrain from stealing owing to the wickedness of so doing, but
merely because it was mean and nasty, like going about with dirty
gloves. And as regards other points, no sense of morality dictated her
decision now. To put it baldly and blankly, as she did to herself, here
was a man who had loved her twelve years ago, and, she felt certain,
still loved her; while she, on her side, was stirred again as she was
stirred twelve years ago. Only now she was Thurso's wife.
Worldly wisdom, however, said much more than this to her. Her first
impulse to treat him with formality was clearly mistaken. If she did not
treat him with the friendliness that was so undoubtedly his due, the
world would certainly say that she was cold to him in public only to be
warm in private; and from the point of view of the world, the
conclusion, though actually false, would surely be accredited.
Obviously, the proper attitude, since he desired to be treated as a
friend, was to do so. It was here that Thurso's presence in London was
desirable. The whole affair was delicate, and if he was somewhere in
Caithness, where there might be typhoid or there might not, it gave the
gossips far more excuse for raging furiously together. There was no
doubt that she would see a good deal of Rudolf Villars during this month
or two of London; her husband should, therefore, see a good deal of him
too.
* * * * *
She had a charming place on the Thames, just below Maidenhead, left her
by her mother, a low, rambling, creeper-covered house, with one foot in
the river, one in the garden. Here she often entertained from Saturday
till Monday, not with any mistaken notion that it was a rest, after the
bustle and fatigue of London, to get into the tranquillity of
Thames-side, but in order to bustle more than ever. London, it was true,
was sufficiently busy, but in London one was not in evidence, anyhow,
until eleven or so in the morning; and while in London, also, even if
there were people in the house, they looked after themselves, and need
only be given their beds and their food. But at Bray the bustle began
earlier, since, as this was the country, everyone thought it necessary
to play a round of golf, or row wildly on the Thames, before the day
began at all; while nobody ever went to bed till nearly morning, since
in the country nobody need get up. Thurso and Maud were going to motor
down with her on Saturday afternoon, but as Maud had not appeared at the
time appointed, it was to be taken for granted that she was doing other
things, and would find her way down on her own account. Catherine, on
the other hand, like most busy people, was punctual to the minute.
"Well, she's not here," she said, as she stepped into the car, "and,
really, we can't wait, Thurso. Unless we start now, people will get
there before we do, and that is never considered quite polite."
"No, it's as well to be in one's house if one has asked people to stay
in it," he remarked, "though they probably get on beautifully without
one."
He got in after her, but stood for a moment with his hand on the door,
as if wanting to give Maud another minute. Her eye happened to fall on
it, and she saw it was trembling. The next moment he sat down, caught
her eye, and looked away again, flushing a little. There was something
aimlessly furtive about all this which was unlike him. But all this week
she had been a little uneasy about him; he had seemed nervous, easily
startled, uncertain of himself. And as they started, though caresses
were not frequent between them, she laid her ungloved hand on his.
"Thurso, old boy," she said, "are you well? There is nothing the matter
with you?"
He started at her touch, and withdrew his hand.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "but your rings are so cold. Yes, I am
perfectly well. I don't know why you ask."
"Because you don't look very well," she said. "Maud told me you had had
several very bad headaches up in the North."
"I had; but this is rather ancient history, is it not? It has not
occurred to you to inquire about them during the last ten days."
"Maud only told me this morning," she said.
"I have had no return of them since I came to town."
The footman had got up by the chauffeur, and the big Napier car bubbled
and whirred to itself a moment, and then slid noiselessly off, with
rapid but smooth acceleration of its pace, over the dry street. It was
checked for a moment at the corner into Piccadilly, poised like a
hovering hawk, and then glided into the street. The road-way was very
full, but, dancing elastically on its springs, it flicked in and out of
the congested traffic with the precision of a fish steering its way
between clumps of waving water-weed. It seemed, indeed, more like a
sentient animal, a fine-mouthed horse, or some trained setter, than a
machine, or as if intelligence and discernment, a brain that thought and
calculated and obeyed, lived in that long painted bonnet, rather than
merely pistons and cylinders and all the crack-named apparatus of its
mechanism. It slackened its speed before one would have thought that any
block in the traffic ahead was discernible, as if scenting the need from
far off; it cut in and out of moving cabs and omnibuses, as if possessed
of occult knowledge with regard to the pace they were going, and what
lay invisible ahead of them; it foresaw impediments to its free movement
that seemed as if they could not be foreseen, and conjectured openings
that appeared inconjecturable. But all down Piccadilly, all down
Knightsbridge, Thurso seemed unaccountably nervous. He could hardly sit
still, but kept shifting and fidgeting in his seat, frowning and
starting and grasping the side of the car, and once even calling out to
the chauffeur, who, in fact, was one in a thousand for combined
carefulness and speed, bidding him go more quietly through the jostle of
traffic. This, again, was quite unlike him, though like what he had been
for the last ten days, and his wife, seeming not to watch, watched him
narrowly, but without comment. But when it came to his calling a warning
to the inimitable Marcel, who would sooner have flayed all the skin off
his own hands than let another vehicle scrape one grain of paint off the
splash-board of his beloved car, she could not help protesting. Besides,
it looked so silly to jump about like that.
"Dear Thurso," she said, "what is the matter? He is driving perfectly
carefully."
Thurso frowned, still looking anxiously at the road in front, and spoke
with unveiled irritation.
"He is driving recklessly, it seems to me," he said. "As if it mattered
whether we saved five minutes on the road. But women are never content
till they've had some smash. That was simply the result of wanting to
get in front of a cab now, instead of waiting two seconds."
This, again, was quite unlike him. His tone and his words distinctly
lacked courtesy, and "Hamlet" without the Prince was not less like the
play than was Thurso when he forgot his manners like her husband. She
was always ready to account for any failing, whether of omission or
commission, by physical causes, and Thurso's rudeness she unhesitatingly
put down to his not feeling well. But in that case it would surely be
better both for him and her if he did not continue a mode of progression
that made him jumpy.
"If you are nervous," she said, "let us cross the Park, and put you down
at Paddington. You can take the train."
"That is absurd," he said shortly.
They went on in silence for a little, and Thurso made an immense effort
to pull himself together, or, at any rate, the effort seemed to him to
be immense. But he knew that lately the effort to do anything he did not
feel inclined to do had been enormously increased. Those moments of
quickened consciousness which were his seemed to make his brain in the
intervals more lethargic, less able to give orders. He knew quite well
that his nerves were out of order, and though it was true that, since
coming to town, as he had just told his wife, he had had no return of
his neuralgia, he had for the last ten days always silenced its
threatenings, sometimes even before such threatening was really
perceptible, by a liberal use of that divine drug which never failed. He
believed, too, if he thought about it, that he was taking larger doses
than those prescribed, and knew that he was intentionally absent-minded
when he poured out his draught. Nor had he taken it only for anodynic
purposes; more than once or twice--he could not say how many times, but
certainly less than fifty--he had taken it for the pure pleasure of its
effects. He knew he had begun to be dragged into the habit, as a man
whose clothes are caught between revolving cogwheels is dragged in,
unless by a superhuman effort he can break loose. It was not that he did
not struggle against it, but he struggled with mental reservations. Two
days ago, for instance, he had resolved not to touch it for forty-eight
hours, promising himself, as a reward for his abstinence, a pleasant
hour or two when he got down to Bray. After that, so he had planned, he
would continue to break free from it by a carefully graduated course.
His next treat should be three days afterwards; after that there should
be abstention for four days. For he was rather frightened already at
his previous indulgence, and at the greed with which he longed for it.
During the last week in Scotland he had taken it every day, and
sometimes twice. Sometimes he said to himself that it suited him.
Perhaps he was abnormal, but it made him feel so well, so alive. Then,
again, he would recognise the danger that lay in front of him, and vowed
to set about the task of breaking from the habit. But it must be done by
degrees; he already could make no larger resolve than that. But that he
did resolve. The interval between his treats should become longer and
longer, until he craved no more. Craved! How he craved now! It was that
which made him so nervous and irritable. But he must have that one full
dose when he got down to Bray. He had promised himself that, and he felt
as if it were almost a duty to perform that promise.
Meantime, whatever in his brain was lethargic and inert, some sense of
cunning and precaution was always strong, and he knew that it was most
important that Catherine should not think that there was anything wrong.
So before the pause after his last rather snappish reply had made it
impossible to refer back, he spoke again in a different tone.
"You must forgive me for speaking rudely just now," he said, "and I am
sure that Marcel is really careful. But I had the most dreadfully trying
time up in Scotland, and those horrible headaches did not make things
easier. As a matter of fact, I saw Dr. Symes when I was there, and he
told me I was on edge. But he did not attach the least importance to it.
He said the best thing I could do was to come down here and amuse
myself, and forget all about the typhoid."
That, again, was true as far as it went, but no further. Dr. Symes had
said these things with regard to his neuralgia: he had not pronounced on
the cure for it.
"But there's no harm in seeing a doctor," she said, "and telling him all
you feel and all you do. Then he tells you to avoid curried prawns, and
you pay only two guineas."
He laughed.
"I have better uses for even so small a sum," he said, while his mind
said to itself: "Two guineas' worth of laudanum! Two guineas' worth of
laudanum!"
"But it's so much better to be told if there's anything wrong," she
said, "and so nice to be told that there isn't."
"But I am sure of that, without being told," said he.
The house at Bray was long and low and rambling, straggling down at one
point to the very edge of the river, but for the most part standing in
the middle of flower-beds and short-turfed lawn and stiff yew-hedges cut
into fantastic shapes, which screened the customs of its inhabitants
from the population in boats, so that the Sunday afternoon crowd could
not, as in most of the river-side houses, see exactly who was there,
what they had for tea, who smoked and slept, who read, and who played
croquet. Indeed, had it not been for this impenetrable barrier of
thick-set foliage, what they had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner would
have been equally public property; for Lady Thurso had built a big open
pavilion on the terrace just above the river, where, when the day was
hot, her party took all their meals. Another pavilion nearer the house
served as a drawing-room, card-room, or smoking-room, and on a fine
Sunday nobody more than set foot in the house itself from breakfast till
bed-time. A dozen guests or so were all that the house would hold, but
if, as often happened, people proposed themselves when the sleeping
accommodation was already commanded, it was possible to get beds for
them at a neighbouring hotel. To-day, however, there was to be no
sleeping out; it was doubtful, indeed, whether the house itself would be
full. Maud was certainly coming; Count Villars, Alice Yardly, and her
husband, were also certainties, as were Jim Raynham and Ruby Majendie,
who had proposed to each other--Lady Thurso never could find out who
"began"--on the night of her ball; and a couple of American cousins
brought their number up to ten.
Catherine hardly knew whether or no she was glad that she had so small a
party. For once, it is true, she would have a fairly quiet Sunday; but,
worried as she was, not only about this private emotional history of her
own, but also (though she told herself this was causeless) about her
husband, she was not sure whether it would not have been a greater rest
to have plenty of superficial arrangements to make, and plenty of people
who did not touch her inner life to amuse. She did not at all believe in
thinking about things unless some practical step was to be the outcome
of thought, in which case you got an instant dividend for your
investment; but if thought was to end in nothing, your dividend was
composed of worry only. However, even with these few people in the
house, she could manage to keep herself fairly well occupied. The
American cousins, too, a plain and elderly millionaire, very dyspeptic
and intensely mournful, with his wife, who was young, voluble, and
carried about with her pails, as it were, of gross and fulsome flattery,
with which she industriously daubed everybody who was in the least worth
daubing, would certainly want--especially in view of Thurso's
irritability--a little careful management. She almost wished she had not
invited them, but she inherited from her mother that idea of American
hospitality which makes all other hospitality appear niggardly in
comparison, and did not consider she had done her duty by even the most
undesirable cousins if she only asked them to dinner. "Cousins must be
asked to stay, even if crossing-sweepers," was the line on which she
went. These particular cousins, she acknowledged to herself, were
rather trying, but she acknowledged it to nobody else.
In spite of the desirability of arriving before your guests, Silas P.
Morton and Theodosia, whom her husband always addressed in full as
"Theodosia," giving each syllable its due value, had arrived before
them, and met them hospitably at the front-door.
"Why, if this doesn't tickle me to death!" exclaimed Theodosia, "to
receive you at your own house, Catherine! And how are you, Lord Thurso?"
Thurso stifled a wish that something would tickle Theodosia to death,
and she proceeded.
"My! what a beautiful motor! Why, if it isn't cunning! Silas and I got
here just half an hour ago, and your servants brought us tea right away
out on the lawn, and made us ever so much at home. But, as I'm for ever
saying to everybody, 'Catherine is just perfect, and everything she has
is just perfect--her husband, her servants, her motor-car, and her
crackers.' You should have seen Silas tackle the crackers! Don't I tell
everybody so, Silas?"
When Theodosia was present there was never any fear of awkward
silences--awkward speeches were the only possibilities; but she covered
up every awkward speech so quickly with another that none of them
mattered much. She was usually talking when somebody else was talking,
and always when nobody else was.
"Don't you tell everybody what, Theodosia?" inquired her husband.
"Why, that Catherine is just perfect. But Englishmen are so perfect,
too, that I guess it's right for perfect American girls to marry them.
Why, your ball the other night! I thought I knew something about balls,
but Catherine's ahead of me there, though we've had some bright evenings
in New York. I guess you're proud of your wife, Lord Thurso, and I
guess she's proud of you."
This was all very pleasant, and it was not only a salute-explosion of
geniality on the part of Theodosia; she exploded all the time like a
quick-firing gun. She was never sick or sorry, or tired or silent; she
was always bright, and a contemplative mind might seriously wonder
whether anything known to occur in this uncertain world would make her
stop talking. She talked all the time that she was in a dentist's chair,
even though her speech was impeded by pads and gags and creosote; and
she had once talked without intermission through a railway accident, not
even stopping to scream. At intervals the voice of her husband said
"Theodosia!" like a clock striking, but the ticking went on all the
same.
"And if that isn't the cunningest yew-hedge I ever saw," she said, "with
a door cut right through the middle of it as if it was a wall; and
there's the river just beyond with the boats, like people on the
side-walk. Lord Thurso, can you see the river from where you are
sitting? Silas, change places with Lord Thurso, because I want him to
see the river through the door in the yew-hedge. My! look at that
bug--what do you call it? Oh yes, butterfly--sitting right here on the
arm of my chair! Isn't it tame! The bugs in America aren't half so tame
as that: they hustle more; but I think it's English not to hustle so
much. You eat your tea without hustling, too, Lord Thurso. I call that
the true British tranquillity, and I just adore it. Don't I, Silas?"
Catherine, however, distinctly hustled over her tea, and got up. It was
she who had asked Theodosia here, and she did not for a moment repent
having done so; but she began to foresee that it would be necessary to
provide Theodosia with relays of companions who should take her for a
series of walks, and "rides" in the punt (as Theodosia would say), and
other rides in motors, if she wanted to save her Saturday to Monday
from utter shipwreck. She thanked Heaven Maud was coming, who handled
loquacious people so serenely, and listened, or appeared to, to their
impossible conversation with an interest that was quite marvellous.
Clearly, also, it was by a direct dispensation of Providence that Alice
Yardly was to be of this party, for Alice also asked for nothing more
than to be allowed to talk without intermission. Theodosia talked of
things she saw--the river, the road, the bug, the yew-hedge; her eyes
supplied unfailing topics of conversation to her tongue. While Alice
talked with the same incessantness of things you could not see--faith
and healing, and false claims of mortal mind. Between them they would
cover the whole ground. And both of them were perfectly happy sitting
opposite anybody else who might talk simultaneously, as long as he asked
no question which interrupted the flow of their volubility. Clearly,
then, Providence intended that Alice and Theodosia should be paired,
like blessed sirens, and keep up a perpetual flow of conversation to
which nobody else need listen.
But at present Maud had not arrived, so she took Theodosia down to the
river, and "punted her around," as that lady's phrase went. Catherine
punted around, so she felt, as she had never punted before; she would
have punted to Oxford, if necessary, to keep this appreciative lady away
from the house till Maud or Alice Yardly arrived, either of whom were
capable of tackling her. Protective instincts governed those unusual
physical activities. She was responsible for the advent of Theodosia;
she was therefore responsible for keeping Theodosia away from Thurso.
So it was not till seven had clanged from the church tower at Maidenhead
that she turned the punt homewards, and found on arrival that everybody
had come, and that everybody had gone to dress. She herself was a
dresser of abnormal quickness, and found she had still nearly half an
hour to spare after she had seen Theodosia safely to her room. So,
instead of wasting it alone, she went to talk to Maud. The latter was
betwixt and between, with a hovering maid, and a river of hair making
Pactolus down her back. The highest geniality flowed on the other side.
"Dearest Catherine," she said, "I know it was too awful of me, but, of
course, you didn't wait. Everything has been late to-day--at least, I
have--and I was late for lunch, and things were amusing, and as I had
told my maid to take my traps, and other people were going down to
Taplow, I came down with them, and was dropped here. Isn't the country
looking too divine! Of course, Thurso came with you. We broke down--you
never heard such a bang--and serve me right. Do stop and talk to me for
five minutes, because I know you dress like summer lightning. How many
maids surround you? Three, is it? What fun it was all last week! You do
give your relations and connections a good time. Please wear your
smartest to-night--jewels and all. It is so chic to be smart in the
country and shabby in London. And it's an old-established custom for you
to smoke a cigarette while I am dressing, before it's time for you to
dress. There's half an hour yet."
Catherine lit a cigarette, and, catching Maud's eye, nodded in the
direction of her maid and spoke in French.
"Send her away for a few minutes," she said.
Maud gave a giggle of laughter.
"What a bad language to choose," she said, "because Hortense is
French--aren't you, Hortense? Will you go away, please, and come back
when her ladyship goes away?"
Then Maud turned to her sister-in-law.
"Now, Catherine, what is it?" she asked.
"Well, first, do be very kind to me, Maud, and take Theodosia away on
all possible occasions, so that she gets on Thurso's nerves as little as
may be."
Maud brought a long plait of hair round her shoulder and held it in her
mouth for a moment.
"Then I know what you want to talk about," she said. "Theodosia first:
I'm on; and afterwards?"
"Of course you know. Thurso's nerves. He was fearfully jumpy all the way
down. He made efforts, but you don't have to make efforts if you are
well, do you? He was rather rude, too, which is so unlike him. He is not
rude when he is well. You told me he had bad attacks of neuralgia up in
Scotland."
"Yes, day after day," said Maud.
She paused a moment, wondering whether she had better say that which was
on the tip of her tongue. Then she decided to do so. After all, it was
her brother's wife to whom she was talking, and the matter was one that
clearly concerned her. Even more than that, she was talking to
Catherine, to whose wisdom, above that of, perhaps, all others, she
felt it natural to confide perplexity or trouble.
"He had got to get through the day's work," she said, "and to enable him
to do so, to get relief from this horrible pain, he took laudanum, which
had been prescribed for him, rather freely. I allow that before the end
I was more anxious about that than about his neuralgia. I think he ought
to get the limits laid down by a doctor. It can't be right for anybody
to take that sort of drug absolutely at his own discretion."
"Ah! but his headaches have ceased," said Catherine. "He told me there
had been no return of them since he came to town."
"I am very glad," said Maud, "because--well, it can't be a good thing to
get in the habit of taking that stuff, though while he was up in
Scotland and the neuralgia was so bad he had to get relief somehow. But
if his headaches have ceased, I suppose one need not be anxious any
more."
Catherine heard a certain hesitation in her voice, and saw the same in
her face.
"You are not telling me quite all," she said. "I think you had better.
You are afraid of something more. If your fears are groundless, there is
no harm done; if they have foundation, it is best for me to know. Of
course I guess what it is."
Maud put down her brush, and turned to her sister-in-law.
"Yes; I expect you guess quite correctly. It is this: He has begun to
take it for its own sake--for the sake of its effects. Coming up in the
train he thought I was asleep, and I saw him--yes, I spied on him if you
like--I saw him go to his bag, take out the bottle, and have a dose. He
had no headache; he was never better. He wanted the effects of it. It
was a big dose, too--double the ordinary one, I should say. He did not
measure it. I think he did the same thing up in Scotland."
Catherine got up, and looked out of the window in silence for awhile.
"You did perfectly right to tell me, Maud. Thank you," she said. "But it
is hell--damnation, you know. What do you advise?"
"Get him to see a doctor."
"He won't. I suggested it to-day. And one doesn't want to lose any time;
the pace accelerates so quickly on that awful road. Poor Thurso! Of
course it is desirable that I should appear to find out what you have
told me for myself--find out, that is to say, that he is taking this
drug."
"You may say I told you, if necessary," said Maud. "What are you going
to do?"
"I can't make any plan yet. I must see."
Catherine left the room, and went down the passage to her own. Outside
her husband's dressing-room, next hers, was standing his valet, and a
sudden thought occurred to her.
"Is his lordship dressed, do you know?" she asked.
"No, my lady. His lordship told me he would call me when he began," said
the man.
She went to the door, tapped, and entered.
"Flynn told me you were not dressing yet," she said, "though both you
and I will be late if we don't begin."
"I waited till I heard you come to your room," he said. "What is it?"
"Only I am afraid you must take in Alice Yardly and have Theodosia next
you. I am sorry: it is the upper and nether millstones. But we'll change
about to-morrow."
Thurso was lying on his sofa, doing nothing, and with no book or paper
near him; nor did he look as if he had been sleeping. His eyes were
bright and alert. He looked radiantly happy and cheerful; it was not the
same man who had frowned and started all the way down in the car.
"Why should we change about to-morrow?" he said. "I delight in Theodosia
and I adore Alice. Her extraordinary silliness makes me feel wise in my
own conceit, and conceited in my own wisdom. Is it really dressing-time?
How tiresome! Don't let us dine till nine to-morrow. It is absurd dining
before in the summer. One oughtn't to lose a minute of this heavenly
twilight hour by doing anything in it."
Catherine had walked to the open window by which his sofa was drawn up;
and was observing him closely. He stretched himself with the
luxuriousness of some basking animal as he spoke, and she saw he had a
cigarette in each hand, both of which were burning.
"Is that a new plan?" she said, "smoking two cigarettes at once?"
"Yes, so far as I am concerned; but it's not original. Don't you
remember the Pirate King in 'Peter Pan' smokes two--or was it
three?--cigars together, because he is such an astounding swell? My God!
what a play! It put the clock back thirty years. The moral is that you
can't have too much of a good thing. You should lay your pleasures on
thick, not thin; butter your cake on both sides, and put jam on the top.
I am awfully happy to-night. It was an excellent idea of yours to come
down here. How wonderful the light is! how good everything smells!"
He was speaking with a sort of purr of sensuous enjoyment, though the
words were clear and unblurred. She had seen him like this once before,
when in the spring he had sought relief from an attack of pain with
laudanum. She thought then that it was the mere cessation of it which
caused that ecstasy; now she knew what it was, and her heart sank.
His long, lazy stretch turned him a little on the sofa, so that he faced
her as she stood by the window, with the rosy evening light flooding her
face.
"And, my God! how beautiful you are, Catherine!" he said. "You are made
for worship and immortality. There never was a woman so wonderful as
you."
Catherine pulled herself together, called up her courage. Something must
be done.
"Thurso, let us leave my charms for a moment," she said. "Tell me, have
you had any headache to-day? I hope not."
"Headache! No. I've forgotten what headaches are like."
"Then, why have you been taking that stuff--laudanum, opium, whatever it
is? Oh, it's so dangerous!"
"I--I haven't. What do you mean?" he said, stumbling over the words.
She caught sight of a small medicine-glass on his washing-stand, and
took it up and smelled it.
"Where is the use of saying that?" she asked, holding it out to him.
He got up quickly, ashamed for a moment of having lied to her, but more
ashamed of his stupidity in not being more careful; but when she came in
he was so uplifted and vivified by the drug that he had been off his
guard. But his shame was infinitesimal compared to his anger with her.
She had spoiled, smashed up all his happiness by her interference.
Instead of that wonderful sense of well-being and complete physical and
mental contentment, he felt now only furiously angry with her. What
right had she to break in upon him like this, making him lie to her,
which he hated, and making his lie instantly detected?
"And where is the use of your interfering like this?" he cried. "You
have spoiled it all now: you have robbed me of it, and it was mine! It
would serve you right if I took another dose now, straight away, and did
not come down. You know nothing at all about it. I was an absolute
martyr to that neuralgia up in Scotland, and I began--yes, I did
begin--to get into the habit of taking this. But I am breaking myself of
it; you didn't know that. Till this evening I had not taken any for two
days, and after that I was not going to take any more for three days,
and after that not for four. You seem to think.... I don't know what
you think."
She felt at that moment more tenderly towards him than she had felt for
years. His weakness--his voluble, incoherent weakness--his childish
excuses, touched her. There was something almost woundingly pathetic,
too, in his graduated resolves, as if a habit could be cured that way.
His anger roused no resentment in her, and she spoke appealingly, full
of pity.
"Oh, Thurso, you don't know what a dangerous thing you are doing," she
said--"indeed, you don't. The very fact that you do it makes you unable
to see what you do. Be a man, and don't think about two days, or three
days, or four days, but stop it now at once. The longer it goes on, the
more difficult it will be to break it. Give me the bottle, or whatever
it is, like a good fellow, and let me throw it away. You will be glad
you have done so every day of your life afterwards. Please, I entreat
you."
His anger died out as she spoke, for the effect of the drug was still on
him, enhancing his enjoyment of the light and the country fragrance, and
enhancing the glory of her superb beauty as she pleaded with him. She
had not resented the angry things he had said to her: that was fine of
her, and fine she always was, and she was not contemptuous of the lie he
had babbled and stuttered over. She seemed not to remember it, and that
was generous. Above all, his craving for the drug was satisfied for the
moment, and, so he added somewhere very secretly, he could always get
some more. Nor was his will yet entirely enslaved, and all his best self
told him that she was right beyond any question or possibility of
argument.
He hesitated only a moment, then unlocked his despatch-box and took out
a half-empty bottle. The sight of it made his desire flicker into flame
again; but, after all, he had fully intended to take no more for three
days. Then he swept that away also. His will for the time was set on
breaking the habit now and at once. He held it out to her.
"Yes; you are right," he said. "Here it is. Don't despise me if you can
help it, Cathy."
The use of the shortened name touched her, too.
"Oh, my dear, don't talk of that," she said; "and thank you most
awfully, Thurso. You will never regret this."
She went to the window and poured the brown fluid out among the leaves
of the creepers, with a little shudder at the stale, sickly smell of it.
Then she flung the bottle into the shrubbery.
"I ought to thank you," he said; "and I do."
* * * * *
The evening was extraordinarily warm and windless, and though they had
dinner in the open pavilion in the garden, Mr. Silas P. Morton only sent
for the second thickest of his black-and-white plaids to put round his
venerable shoulders as a precaution against chills, and after dinner a
bridge-table was started for the occupation of the Americans and Jim and
Ruby, while the others preferred for the present to wander about in the
deepening dusk. The light still lingered in the west and beneath it the
steely grey of the river smouldered with the reflected sunshine that the
sky still retained. Moths hovered over the huddled fragrance of the dim
garden-beds, emerging every now and then from the darkness into the
bright light cast by the lamps in the pavilion where the little party
had dined, and the veiled odours of night began to steal onto the
air--the odours of tobacco-plant and night-stocks, of dewy foliage, ripe
hayfields, and damp earth, which are so far more delicate and suggestive
than the trumpet-blown fragrance of the day. Though crimson still
lingered in the west, overhead the steel-blue of night was darkening
fast, and minute stars were beginning to be lit. From the rest of the
world the colour had already faded: it was an etching, a marvellous
mezzotint of black-and-white.
Catherine, when they rose from the table, found Villars by her side, in
a manner that irresistibly implied that he meant to have a stroll with
her, and leaving the others--Maud had already towed Alice Yardly out of
Thurso's immediate neighbourhood, and was listening to a fearfully
interminable account of Mrs. Eddy's relation to Phineas P. Quimby--they
went down through the door cut in the yew-hedge, which had so roused
Theodosia's enthusiasm, to stroll along the river-front and catch the
last of the evening light. Opposite, on the other bank of the river, a
tent was pitched, and outside it three or four young men were seated,
having supper at a tablecloth spread on the grass, and lit by a couple
of Chinese lanterns. Their fire for cooking burned bravely on the river
edge, and the smell of aromatic wood-smoke was wafted across to them.
It all looked exquisitely simple and uncomplicated. Catherine rather
envied that, for her own life just now seemed involved and ravelled; she
did not feel confidence in the future. Indeed, she was not sure whether
even the next ten minutes would be quite easy, for woman of the world
though she was, and conversational engineer, skilled at directing the
flow of talk into the channels in which she wished it to run, she felt
vaguely nervous with her companion. At dinner he had been the polished,
suggestive talker, but it had seemed to her all the time as if he was
talking from the surface only, saying the quick, glib things that came
so easily to him. And now, when they had separated themselves from the
others, she found her impression had been correct.
"It was so good of you to ask me here," he said, "quietly, like this;
for it means that you admit me again to friendship and intimacy with
you--at least, so I take it."
He struck a match to light his cigarette, holding it in the screen of
his hollowed hands, so that the flame illuminated his face very vividly.
He had changed extraordinarily little: his dark eyes still had the
sparkle of fire and youth in them, and their corners were still unseamed
and unwrinkled. His face had grown neither stout nor attenuated; his
hair was still untouched by grey, and a plume of it hung, as she had
always remembered it, a little apart and over his forehead. He wore
neither moustache nor beard, and a very short upper lip separated his
large and essentially masculine mouth from a thin, aquiline nose. Then,
as he flicked his match away, he threw back his head with the gesture
she knew so well.
"Or is that presumptuous of me?" he asked. "I charge you to tell me
that, and not let me go on being presumptuous unwittingly."
She laughed.
"It is not in the least presumptuous," she said. "I ask the whole world
to a ball or a big party, since it does not matter who is there, owing
to the crowd. But here in the country I ask only the people I want to
see, or for some reason have got to see--you are not among the
latter--and the more one wants to see of them, the smaller is the
party."
"You encourage me," he said. "It is kind of you. Now, my dear lady, we
have not seen each other for some time, and though old history is
tiresome, I do want to know one thing. Never mind the history, the
events, but sum it up for me. Are you happy? Have you been happy?"
She paused a moment. He had a right to know that too.
"Yes, immensely happy," she said with all honestness--"at least, my life
suits me, which, I suppose, implies happiness. I am--what is the cant
phrase?--in harmony with my environment. And--and you?"
The moment she had asked it she questioned her wisdom in doing so. It
gave him, if he chose, a sort of opportunity.
"Ah, well, I have been hard-working and ambitious," he said, "and I have
got what I wanted. I suppose one should be content with that. Diplomacy
suits me; London suits me; a third thing, indeed, suits me."
"And that?" she asked.
"What you have just so kindly promised me--your friendship. I place it
first, I think, not third."
She laughed again, still a little nervously, and conscious of a
determination not to let the conversation get more intimate than this.
But for the moment it was out of her hands, for he went on in that cool,
quiet voice, separating each word from its neighbours, giving to each
its individual value.
"People who have once been friends," he said, "and after an interval
come together again, often make a great mistake in wondering and
worrying about the past. Please do not suspect me of such a stupidity; I
am more than content to take up the present, just as it is, fragrant
with the promise of your friendship, and fragrant with the knowledge
that you have been, and are, happy. I would have given my whole life, as
you know, to make you that, and now that it has come to you without any
effort on my part, why, let us rejoice over the economy of my energy."
They had come to the end of the path by the river, where an ironwork
gate gave onto the highroad outside, and paused a moment before
retracing their steps. A big yellow moon had risen over the trees to the
east, so that while the western part of the sky still glowed with
sunset, the east was flooded with that cold white flame that turns every
colour into ivory or ebony. And this strange effect was reproduced on
his face, for the warmth of the west shone on one cheek, while on the
other was the white coldness of the moon. And fantastically enough she
felt herself for the moment reading his words in this double light. They
seemed capable of two interpretations.
But instantly she told herself that she was utterly unjustified in such
a conjecture. His words had been absolutely guileless, nor had she the
smallest cause for interpreting them otherwise. What she had done was to
read into them the knowledge that twelve years ago she had treated him
shabbily, and now credited him with an impulse of revenge. Yet she
feared him a little. Beneath his quiet, kind words there was something
white-hot and keen-edged. As he had said, he wanted things and got them.
What, then, did he want of her? He had told her--her friendship.
It was like him, too, like his consummate cleverness, which it required
cleverness to perceive at all, so subtle and natural was it, to say
these strong and serious things about her happiness and her
friendship--things which he must know would remain in her mind--and then
round off the sentence with a pure triviality about the economy of
energy. It gave her, however--as, no doubt, he meant it to do, since he
had said his say--an opportunity for altering the direction of the
conversation without abrupt transition.
"I really don't know if one ought to rejoice in economy of energy," she
said, as they turned to walk back. "There is such an enormous lot of
energy in the world, and I think there would be less trouble if it was
scarcer. I know I have quite as much as I have any use for. I should
find more of it embarrassing."
"You are admirable," he said. "I believe there is never a scheme to help
and relieve distress brought before you to which you do not give real
support--not the mere buttress of your name, but your time, your pains,
your energy. But, you see, you economise energy in other directions."
"What directions?" she asked.
"Emotional. You never worry, do you? You never regret, you never allow
passion of any sort to master and exhaust you."
This, again, was rather more intimate than she liked, yet, somehow, she
did not resent it. Perhaps it would be truer to say that she could not
resent it, for in his very gentleness there was inherent a strength that
made resentment futile. You might as well resent the slow, grinding
movement of a glacier. In any case, it would do no good to resent it,
and Catherine always set her face against purposeless attitudes.
"No; I don't think I worry much," she said. "But, then, I am very happy.
I have little to worry about."
Then suddenly she told herself that she was being afraid of this man,
and to her next words she summoned her courage, asserting herself
against him, announcing her independence.
"And certainly I do not often regret," she said. "People talk of destiny
as if it was a force outside themselves. If I thought that, no doubt I
should often regret the dealings of destiny with me. But I don't, for in
almost all important decisions--the things that really make one's
life--destiny is nothing more nor less than one's own will. And my will
isn't weak, I think."
"I am sure it is not," said he. "But what if the destiny or will of
another comes into conflict with yours?"
"Oh, then one has to fight," said she.
"In all your battles, then," said he, "may success ever attend the most
deserving!"
She laughed.
"That is ambiguous. That may be a curse, not a blessing, on my arms."
"You think, then, that I am so disloyal as to be able to imagine even
that anyone is more deserving than you?" he asked.
Again he was a little flowery. Her effort had done her good, and she
could tell herself that he was even a little fruity.
"You still delight in phrases, I see," she observed.
"In sincere ones," he answered.
* * * * *
They joined the others after this, finding that the millionaire cousin,
to his infinite chagrin, had lost seven-and-sixpence, and not long after
Catherine suggested adjournment to the women of the party. She herself,
for some reason, felt really rather tired, though she had been fresh
enough at dinner, and went upstairs immediately and to bed. But sleep,
in spite of, or perhaps in consequence of her tiredness, did not soon
come to her, and first one thing, then another, held her back from
crossing the drowsy borderland. Now it would be the thought of Thurso
that pulled her back into waking consciousness, and the perplexed
wonder as to what was the wise step to take about him. You could not
play with drugs like that; it was safer to play with loaded guns. Yet he
had allowed her to throw that bottle away: his will was his own
still.... Then her mind took a swift excursion forward into the events
of next week. It was crammed from end to end, and she must go up to town
quite early on Monday. She was glad it was full; she would have no time
for thought. She did not want to think.... Then she turned on her side
and proceeded to do so.
Why had Rudolf Villars come back to trouble the busy tranquillity of her
life? He had said that he had come back--it amounted to that--to resume
his friendship with her. But what if she could not give it him--what if
friendship was not the word for her with regard to him? She felt quite
sure he still loved her--had never ceased to love her. And for herself?
No one else had ever affected her as he did. She felt all she had felt
twelve years ago. She resented that; she rebelled against it. Her will,
she had asserted, was her destiny; but what if it came into conflict, as
he had said, with another will? She was afraid of him, too, or was it of
herself that she was afraid?
And he had changed so little! Youthful violence, perhaps, had gone, but
the strength of a man had taken its place. If only he had aged in body
even!
Round and round in her head went the incessant wheel of thought. She
thought of Thurso again, and of the danger in which he stood; she
thought of a hundred things, and then she thought of Rudolf Villars
again. She could almost hear his voice in her ears.
She had drawn back her curtains, leaving only the blind to cover the
wide-open windows, and the moon outside shone full on it, making the
furniture and details of her room vividly visible. The walls were
white, the sofas and chairs were white also, and on her dressing-table
glimmered the silver of the mirror-frame and the silver handles of
brushes and toilet articles. How much or how little, she thought, these
common-place, familiar things might mean! How external sights and sounds
and objects could be soaked with emotion, and how, again, they could be
just like dry sponges, hard and gritty almost to the touch, dead and
fossilised! And all she saw here, in this her bedchamber, was no more
than dry sponge; no wine or liquor of love had soaked into those things.
All her life, but once for a few short weeks, she had been without it,
and how much she had missed she was now unwillingly and rebelliously
beginning to guess. 'Arry and 'Arriet in the street, who shouted songs
and changed hats, were so infinitely richer than she, in spite of all
that was hers--her position, her gifts, her beauty. All these should
have been just the trappings and embellishment of the chariot in which
Love rode. Without Love they were nothing--odds and ends, fit for a
jumble sale. Once, it is true, she had seen the chariot of Love ready
for her, but she had turned back from it, though her foot was on the
step. She had been very young; she could not guess how all-important was
her choice, and at that age her mother's will rather than her own had
been her destiny. But now again she felt sure the chariot was coming to
her. What she had rejected before was to be offered her again.
Yet still her will was her destiny, and sooner than play with these
thoughts or admit argument about them, she got up, meaning to read a
book till sleep came to her. The book she wanted was on the table in the
window, and before she lit a candle she crossed the room to get it. The
clock on her mantelpiece had just chimed two, and a light shone from
under the chink of the door on the left that led to Thurso's
dressing-room, so that she knew he was awake still. Also, from outside
she heard the subdued crunch of gravel under the heel of someone who
still loitered in the air of this still summer night. And then below his
breath someone outside--the loiterer, no doubt--began whistling a
plaintive Hungarian folk-tune that she had not heard for years. But
that--that untutored little melody was soaked and dripping with emotion
for her.
* * * * *
The step passed on round to the door that opened into the garden, and
she heard it no more. But she did not, even though she had found her
book, care to read, but, gently drawing up the blind, she sat at the
open window. The moon had swung to its zenith, and a huge flood of white
light was poured on the shrubbery where she had thrown the bottle, and
on the lawn and flower-beds; and she sat there long, drinking in the
serenity of the cloudless night.
Then the sound of another step, quick but stealthy, came to her ears,
and next moment she saw Thurso crossing the path to the shrubbery. He
struck a match, and seemed by its light to be searching eagerly for
something. Eventually he found it, and, emerging again, held it up in
the moonlight. There was a drop or two still remaining in the bottle,
and, turning it upside down, he let them trickle into his mouth.
END OF VOL. I.
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A Sicilian tragedy, in which an Englishwoman marries a man with the
blood of the island in his veins and an unconquerable propensity to
revert to the characteristics of its inhabitants.
=Memoirs of my Dead Life.= By GEORGE MOORE. 1 v.--3921.
A series of sketches, in some of which the love-affairs of the
author's early life are realistically set before the reader.
=Prisoners.= By MARY CHOLMONDELEY. 2 vols.--3922/23.
Miss Cholmondeley's latest work is a splendid study of the action
of remorse. The chivalrous victim immured in an Italian prison must
have suffered indeed from an appreciation of the fickleness and
weakness of woman.
=Puck of Pook's Hill.= By RUDYARD KIPLING. 1 v.--3924.
This new work consists of a series of incidents and chapters from
the older history of Britain, told to two young children by the
long-dead actors themselves, with the magic help of the "Oldest Old
Thing in England."
=Paul.= By E. F. BENSON. 2 vols.--3925/26.
A powerful psychological romance, in which love, duty and
conscience play important parts, and the obscure workings of the
feminine mind are laid bare with the author's accustomed skill.
_The Tauchnitz Edition is to be had of all Booksellers and Railway
Libraries on the Continent, price M 1,60. or 2 francs per volume. A
complete Catalogue of the Tauchnitz edition is attached to this work._
End of Project Gutenberg's The House of Defence v. 1, by E. F. Benson