‘But you will come to _my_ ball,’ said the duchess with decision. The
‘but’ was in answer to Sainty’s assertion that he did not go to balls.
‘_Vous vous faites ridicule, mon enfant._ That you shouldn’t accompany
your wife everywhere, that I can see; it would be silly; but equally it
is not right never to be seen at all. People ask if anything is wrong
with you that you can’t appear, if you are half-witted or have fits.’
‘It is very kind of them to occupy themselves with my affairs,’ said
Sainty. ‘I shouldn’t have supposed that most people remembered that I
exist.’
‘But it is perhaps as well they _should_ remember it sometimes,’ said
his grandmother, with a significant glance at Cissy.
‘I should have thought the one form of entertainment from which a lame
man might have been held excused was a dance,’ Sainty persisted.
‘Ah! there are dances and dances,’ replied the duchess. ‘This is not a
dance _où l’on dansera_, it is a serious entertainment. I don’t say it
will be amusing; I don’t give this kind of thing for my own amusement or
for other people’s; there will be ministers, public men, royalties;
_enfin_ a solemn thing, and you are of the family. You must come,
mustn’t he, Cissy?’
‘Oh, certainly, if you wish it, dear,’ Cissy answered lightly. ‘I should
think it would just suit him. He will find people to whom he can talk
about the housing of the working classes. You know how I always _love_
coming to Sunborough House, but not to _this_ kind of thing; you have
said yourself how it bores you.’
Sainty smiled at his wife’s complete assumption of equality with his
grandmother, both in age and position. He couldn’t help reflecting how
enchanted Lady Eccleston’s daughter would have been a short year ago at
the prospect of attending the function of which she now spoke so
slightingly as being for the uninitiated.
‘Well, you will both come, like good children,’ said the duchess easily.
‘We don’t live only to amuse ourselves, you know.’
And so it came about that Belchamber found himself attending the ball in
question, and very much lost in that glittering throng. At first he had
been amused by the show, as he might have been by a scene in a
pantomime. The pompous men, bearers of great names or high positions,
stuck about with orders, the indecent bejewelled women, the lights, the
flowers, the music: it all made an effect of some gorgeousness, with the
really stately beautiful house as a background. But after an hour or so
he became aware of a sense of intolerable weariness. He had taken it for
granted that he and Cissy would be entirely independent of each other,
and that after he had shown himself to his grandmother and the duke, and
amused himself for a little while with the pageant, he would be free to
depart whenever it pleased him; but to his astonishment Cissy had
remarked that she had no intention of staying late and she would be very
much obliged if he would take her home in his brougham. ‘I want Gibson
early to-morrow morning,’ she explained, ‘so I don’t want to take him
out to-night, and I haven’t been in bed before three one night this
week. We can just show ourselves, and then slope.’
Once at the ball, however, she seemed to find it less dull than she had
anticipated, for Sainty several times caught sight of her dancing, which
she had announced that she certainly should not do, and had quite failed
in his endeavour to get speech of her to tell her that he would walk
home and leave the carriage for her. The night was fine and his own
house not five minutes away. Any one but Sainty would simply have gone
and left his wife to find it out. But this was a course which his
invincible conscientiousness forbade his taking. As he hung forlornly
about, hustled by the people who crowded in and out of the rooms, he
thought that surely no sound in nature was so ugly as that of a quantity
of human voices all talking at once and endeavouring to dominate each
other. He came presently on Mrs. de Lissac, who always soothed his
exasperated nerves; but after all he need not go to a ball to see _her_.
‘We could have had a much pleasanter talk in your house or mine, without
having to try and outshout a hundred other people,’ he said.
‘I never can quite get over the strangeness of being here at all,’ Alice
answered. ‘It always seems rather like a fairy story to me, when I think
of my very simple bringing-up at the rectory, that I should come to rub
shoulders with all these grandees.’
‘It is a fairy story in which you have certainly been the good fairy,’
said Sainty warmly. ‘I can’t tell you the difference it has made to me
having you in London to come and talk to sometimes.’
‘It is dear of you to say that. I like to think that to you I am not the
rich woman and possible subscriber or hostess, but just your old govey
that you loved when you were a little boy. Sometimes, dear,’ she added,
with a timid look of great tenderness, ‘I fancy you are not much happier
now than you were then.’
Sainty passed the back of his hand wearily across his eyes. ‘Happy,’ he
said; ‘is anyone happy? Think of the lives that are being led within a
mile of us to-night; can any one be happy with the cry of those millions
in his ears? Certainly not these people with their eternal desperate
pursuit of amusement who are afraid of being left for five minutes in
company with their own thoughts.’
‘Poor boy! you certainly are _not_ happy or you would not be so bitter.
It is dreadful to think of those poor people. I often wonder if we have
a right to be so rich when there are so many starving; but my dear
husband says this is Socialism, and if we weren’t rich we couldn’t give
away so much, and certainly he is very generous; and he says that all
these things that I feel as if it was wrong to spend so much on give
employment to lots of poor people to make, who would be out of work if
there were no rich people to buy things.’ She brought out this
time-honoured piece of argument with such a triumphant pride in her
spouse’s wisdom that Sainty thought of nothing less than combating it.
‘There is one form of happiness that _you_ ought to enjoy in
perfection,’ he said, ‘that of being and doing good.’
Alice blushed. ‘Oh, you mustn’t call me good,’ she said; ‘but I was
going to say, if there is a lot of misery and poverty, I’m sure there
has never been so much done towards relieving it as nowadays.’
‘The “World’s Bazaar,” for instance,’ said Sainty.
‘Well--yes, dear--that and other things. And I’m sure if, as you say,
being and doing good makes us happy, you ought to know it too.’
‘I!’ cried Sainty. ‘Whom do I make happy?’
‘Oh, you are always doing kind things for people, and see how happy you
make your wife.’
‘My wife’s happiness is very much independent of me; indeed, I am rather
the principal drawback to it.’ The words slipped out almost before he
was aware. Even to this kind old friend he had never spoken of his
relations with his wife, and this seemed neither the time nor the place
he would have chosen to do so. Mrs. de Lissac looked pained, but she
took advantage of his little outbreak to say, ‘I have sometimes wanted
to speak to you about your wife, but have not quite liked to. I think
you and she should be more together. You leave her too much to herself.
She is very young and pretty to be so independent, and perhaps a little
thoughtless.’
‘Talking of Cissy,’ Sainty interrupted, ‘can you tell me where she is?
As a beginning of acting on your advice, you see we have come into the
world together to-night, and I am actually waiting to go home till she
is ready.’
A sinuous young lady, clad in a sheath of some glittering, shimmering
blackness, turned at the words and held out her hand. ‘How d’ye do, Lord
Belchamber?’ she said. ‘I don’t believe you remember me. Are you asking
for Lady Belchamber? I saw her not five minutes ago with Mr. Morland.’
With a start Sainty recognised Amy Winston. The unrelieved black of her
dress, and of a long pair of gloves that were pulled up to her elbows,
lent a baleful pallor to her face and neck, and above her brow there
shone in her dusky tresses a single diamond star which, if real, was a
very remarkable ornament to belong to a single woman said mainly to
support herself by the manufacture of magazine tales and occasional
verse. At sight of this siren good Mrs. de Lissac fell back into the
crowd, while the young man to whom Miss Winston was talking, after a
half glance at Sainty, made off not less hastily, so that they were left
facing one another.
‘I remember you perfectly, Miss Winston,’ Sainty said, ‘although we have
not met very lately. You were kind enough to say you had seen Lady
Belchamber. I wish you would tell me where I should find her; she wanted
to go home early to-night, and I think may be looking for me.’
‘She didn’t appear to be, ‘replied the young woman, with the faintest
suspicion of insolence; ‘nor, I must say, did she seem in any particular
hurry to get home. She was going into the garden with _le beau cousin_.
Didn’t you know the garden was lit up? it is one of the great features
of the Sunborough House parties. Let’s go and look for them.’
Sainty couldn’t well refuse. He was thinking how much more indecent a
very low-necked bodice was on a thin woman than on a fat one.
‘Wasn’t that Ned Parsons who left you just now?’ he asked, as they made
their way towards the staircase.
‘Yes. He has become very fashionable since his book was such a success;
he goes everywhere now. By the way,’ she added, with a little laugh, ‘I
suppose that’s why he bolted at sight of you; he thinks you haven’t
forgiven him for the liberty he took with your coming-of-age party.’
‘I should have thought he had quite as much reason to fear my
grandmother; yet I find him at her house.’
‘Oh, well--a great ball like this is hardly being at people’s house, you
know; it doesn’t count. But as a matter of fact he and the duchess have
quite made it up. They met at Lady Eva’s, and the duchess prepared to
crush him. “I hear, Mr. Parsons,” said she, in her most regal manner,
“that you have put me in a book.” “Who can have told you such a thing?”
Ned asked, with touching innocence. “The duchess in my book is old and
ridiculous; how _could_ she be meant for you?”’
Sainty couldn’t help laughing. As they emerged into the cooler and less
crowded garden, his guide waited for him to come up beside her. Hitherto
she had preceded him, worming her way through the crowd with a deftness
bred of long habit, at which Sainty marvelled, and talking lightly to
him over her shoulder.
‘One doesn’t often see you at this sort of thing,’ she said.
‘It is only the second ball of my life,’ Sainty answered. ‘You were at
my first too.’
‘Ah! the famous ball immortalised by Parsons. Is it possible that it can
be three years ago?’
‘Nearly four now.’
‘Good heavens! so it is. How old we are all getting! Your wife was there
too; it was the year she came out. How little any of us thought what was
going to happen, except perhaps dear Lady Eccleston. I shouldn’t wonder
if _she_ had had an inkling even then.’
Sainty did not like his companion’s tone, but hardly knew how to resent
it. He had hoped by a rather stiff silence to intimate his want of
appreciation of her particular form of humour, but she continued to
chatter quite unabashed by his unresponsiveness.
‘Cissy is quite a success,’ she continued; ‘it is astonishing how
quickly she has caught on. I don’t know any one who has more admirers,
unless perhaps it’s Mrs. Jack Purse, and she’s been much longer on the
scene of battle.’
‘And who may she be?’ Sainty asked, hoping to divert the stream of Miss
Winston’s malevolence from his own vegetable patch.
‘Lord Belchamber, where _have_ you lived? I wish she could hear you;
she’d die of it. Why, Mrs. Jack is smartest of the smart. She knows
hardly any one but Jews and royalties. I was quite astonished to find
her at the Suffords’ at Whitsuntide. Hylda Sufford said she couldn’t
imagine why she came to her, but I think the Guggenheim’s party for the
prince falling through had something to do with it.’
‘My wife didn’t tell me she met you at the Suffords’.’
‘Oh, I don’t know how I came to be asked, but I was.’
‘And did you amuse yourself?’
‘Oh, we had great fun. One night we all dressed up for dinner. Hylda was
a harlequin and Ella Dalsany the columbine.’
‘Do you mean to say that Lady Sufford came down to dinner in tights
before the footmen?’
‘Gracious, yes! And Gladys Purse was Mephistopheles and Lady Deans
Marguerite; but we all thought Cissy had the best idea.’
‘And what was that?’ asked Sainty nervously. He had neither asked nor
received any account of the Suffords’ country-house party.
‘Why, she just put on her best frock and all her diamonds, and said she
was the Traviata.’
Sainty was not sure that this inspiration of his wife’s exactly appealed
to him. He walked in gloomy silence.
‘Didn’t she tell you about it?’ asked Miss Winston. ‘She had a
tremendous success. Mrs. Jack, with her red legs and cock’s feather, was
nowhere. Cissy has one immense pull over Gladys Purse as far as the
younger men are concerned. It’s terribly expensive to admire Mrs. Jack;
whereas a charming but impecunious youth like Claude Morland gets many
little advantages by the way from his devotion to his pretty cousin.’
In spite of an effort to keep her talk on the level of impartial
ill-nature, Miss Winston could not quite help a touch of scornful
bitterness in her mention of Claude.
Scattered images had been loosely grouping themselves in Sainty’s brain
as she talked, half-forgotten incidents of his coming-of-age party, the
softly opening door, his encounter with his cousin in the sleeping
house, his examination of Claude as to his feelings for this same
lady--it seemed to him that he began to detect a certain method in the
apparently purposeless gossip with which she was favouring him. And
then, blinding in its sudden illumination, there flashed across his mind
the recollection of the anonymous letters. Here was the key to their
authorship thrust suddenly into his mind. He felt the quick instinctive
recoil of a man about to tread on something nasty, and then a sort of
shuddering pity for what the creature at his side must have suffered.
None knew better than he how they were wounded who put their trust in
Claude Morland. He wanted to turn and hurry from her, or at least to
find something that should stop the flicker of her evil tongue. He found
nothing better to say in the shock of the moment than ‘Do you think you
ought to talk to me so about my wife?’
Sunborough House has, for the heart of London, a relatively large
garden, which being cunningly illumined with Chinese lanterns and little
coloured lamps, the next day’s papers were already reporting that the
effect was ‘fairy-like.’ Despite these beauties and the somewhat chilly
allurements of an English summer night, only a few of the most
flirtatiously inclined had been persuaded to drag their expensive skirts
over the sooty London grass, and Sainty and his companion had the
further end of the enclosure, which they had now reached, practically to
themselves. As he made his feeble protestation, they came, round a tree,
upon the glass doors of a sort of little summer-house which backed up
against the high railing that divided the garden from the Park.
Miss Winston gave one glance into the lighted interior. ‘I think we are
_de trop_ here,’ she said, turning to Sainty, and, slipping nimbly from
his side, she vanished in the soft shadows of the shrubbery. Almost at
the same moment the door was opened from within with such suddenness
that Sainty, who had not the agility of the fair Aimée, could only save
himself from being struck by throwing himself back into the angle formed
by the tree and the railing, and in this small space he now found
himself made a close prisoner by the open door, which was firmly held in
position by the broad back of a man, as he could see through the glass.
He reflected that his position was not a dignified one, that as the
inmates of the summer-house were evidently leaving it, he had only to
stay quiet till they were gone, and then push the door and follow them
at his leisure; and they need never know how nearly he had been tricked
into playing the spy upon them. Miss Winston had evidently counted on
finding her quarry there (perhaps from personal knowledge of his
cousin’s habits), and had hoped that she could so excite his jealousy
that he would not be able, once there, to resist the temptation of
looking. He had no doubt as to whom he would have seen, even before he
recognised Claude’s voice. He was relieved to hear that there was
nothing lover-like in it. Morland spoke in brief business-like tones
through which pierced a scarcely disguised note of annoyance. ‘Then you
won’t see him?’ he said, pausing against the door, evidently continuing
some discussion they had been having.
‘I daren’t,’ Cissy answered. ‘I’m sure it would kill me.’
‘Then you must do the other thing; there are not two ways about it; and
the sooner the better. If you’re right, you’ve no time to lose. But are
you quite sure?’
‘Oh yes, quite. I wasn’t at first, but I am now.’
‘It’s cursedly unfortunate----’
They spoke low, and as they moved off he could hear no more.
Sainty pushed the door, and stepped out from his temporary prison. Of
the fragment of dialogue that he had overheard he did not understand a
word; indeed, he did not pay it any particular attention at the time; he
supposed it to refer to some of the many plans the two were always
discussing. He was accustomed to Cissy’s use of needlessly strong
language. ‘I should simply die of it’ was a common phrase with her for
expressing dislike of the most trivial things. It was not till months
after they were spoken that the words came back to him with a new
significance.
He followed the retreating figures up the garden, his feeling one of
relief at the failure of an ill-natured plot of which he had been meant
to be the victim. Miss Winston’s motive was not difficult to guess. It
all seemed like something in a novel or a play, curiously theatrical and
unlike life; but at least the _dénouement_ had been essentially
undramatic.
When he reached the front hall, he found Cissy already cloaked among the
group of people who were waiting for their carriages.
‘Where _have_ you been?’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for
you. I told you I wanted to go home early. I thought you must have
gone.’
‘I was looking for you,’ Sainty answered. ‘I was told you had gone into
the garden, so I went there after you; but we must just have missed.’
In the brief transit to their own door neither spoke. Sainty was
wondering if he ought to say anything to Cissy of the ill-will that was
dogging her footsteps, to put her on her guard against evil tongues. A
woman in her exceptional position could not be too careful to furnish no
weapons to scandal. Yet it was not only Miss Winston’s vengeful jealousy
that had warned him to look after his wife. Had not kind little Mrs. de
Lissac tried to suggest that he left her dangerously unguarded? Even the
duchess had hinted the advisability of his being more with Cissy. It was
evident that she was being talked about. Cissy herself seemed to provide
him with just the necessary opportunity for speech, so difficult to find
in their divided lives. To his surprise, instead of going immediately
upstairs on arriving at home, she followed him into his rooms on the
ground-floor. His study, though of Spartan simplicity compared to the
rest of the house, had the indefinable pleasant air of rooms much lived
and worked in. Everything in it was meant for use, and daily used. Books
seemed to accumulate round Sainty like some natural growth. The one lamp
with its plain green shade lighted the comfortable litter on the big,
serviceable writing-table, and on another table near it was the humble
appliance by help of which, as in his college days, he sometimes
refreshed himself with a midnight cup of tea if he was working late.
‘How cosy you are in here,’ Cissy said, looking about her. ‘I must have
spent five times as much on my boudoir, but with all its silk walls and
cushions and frills and furbelows it doesn’t look as homey as this.’
‘You’re never in the house for long enough to do more than scratch off a
dozen notes,’ said Sainty, ‘unless you have people with you. Nothing
ever looks like a home in which people don’t live.’
‘I think it’s the books,’ Cissy went on. ‘They are wonderful furniture.
I really must get some.’
She lingered, wandering about the room looking at one thing and another.
‘What’s this for?’ she asked, coming to the old kettle with its lamp.
‘Sometimes I like a cup of tea if I’m working. It’s a bad habit I got
into at Cambridge.’
‘How shocking for the nerves, my dear,’ cried Cissy, with a lifelike
imitation of old Lady Firth. ‘Well, you might have a decent-looking
kettle and teapot. I shall have to give you one. Do you mean you could
make a cup of tea now, this minute? What fun! Do make me one. I’m cold
and famished. It will be lovely.’
Sainty obediently set about lighting the spirit-lamp and preparing the
demanded refreshment. He was not a little puzzled by this latest caprice
of his wife.
Cissy went to the door, and called the butler. ‘You needn’t sit up,’ she
said. ‘Give me a candle, and then put out the lights and go to bed.’ She
came back, and flung herself into an armchair, her summer wrap of satin
and lace billowing foamlike round her.
Sainty, as he made the tea, was wondering how he could introduce the
subject on which he wanted to speak. It was not once in six months he
would have such an opportunity. He must not let it slip. And yet he was
unwilling to sermonise when for once she was in so friendly a mood. He
brought the cup of tea to her, and stood looking down at her as she
gulped little teaspoonfuls of the hot liquid.
‘You have never told me anything about your visit to the Suffords’,’ he
said.
Cissy looked up suddenly. ‘What about it?’ she asked distrustfully.
‘I mean about the dressing up for dinner and all that. Was it amusing?’
‘Oh, _that_!’ said Cissy indifferently, but with an air of relief. ‘I
didn’t suppose it would amuse you to hear about such nonsense. Who told
you?’ she asked, with a return of suspicion.
‘Miss Winston. I met her to-night. I hadn’t seen her for years.’
‘That’s a nasty cat,’ Cissy remarked with conviction. ‘She hates me.’
‘Oh, you know it?’
‘Know it? Of course I know it. Why----’ She seemed to think better of
what she was going to say, and checked herself. ‘What did she say about
me?’ she asked.
‘She spoke in a way I didn’t like,’ Sainty answered. ‘For some reason
that woman is your enemy, and I wanted to tell you to be on your guard
against her.’
‘Oh, thanks, that’s all right. I’m not afraid of Aimée Winston,’ and she
smiled a little cold smile at her own thoughts.
‘Don’t you think,’ said Sainty, with some hesitation, ‘that you are a
little imprudent sometimes? a little careless of appearances? that, in
fact, you rather give a horrid woman like Miss Winston occasion to take
away your character?’
‘Oh, my character!’ said Cissy lightly. She had set down her tea-cup,
and was pulling off her long gloves, and rubbing her round white arms
softly over each other.
‘I think, you know,’ Sainty went on, ‘you are beginning to be talked
about a little. It was not only Miss Winston, but some one else, a nice
woman, who----’
‘Mrs. de Lissac, for a fiver!’ interjected Cissy. ‘There’s another woman
who don’t love me, though not for the same reason.’
‘Well, it _was_ Alice, as it happens,’ Sainty admitted; ‘but she only
said the kindest things, that you were too young and pretty to be left
so much to yourself. You know even the duchess implied that I ought to
be seen with you sometimes.’
‘Well,’ said Cissy imperturbably, ‘why aren’t you? It seems to me that
it is _you_ who are failing in your duties, according to all these
ladies, not me.’
The coolness of the retort took Sainty’s breath away for the moment.
‘But you know,’ he stammered, ‘that there is nothing you would like
less. I have never pretended to any right to control your actions. You
know you are free to amuse yourself as you like. All I ask is that you
won’t compromise yourself, won’t get talked about, and--and all that.’
He ended rather lamely. He half expected an outburst. To his surprise
she leaned towards him, and laid her hand very gently on his.
‘Don’t you think,’ she said, and her voice was kind, ‘that you _are_
rather to blame perhaps? If I _am_ talked about, isn’t it partly your
fault? Can I help it if other men admire me?’ She had unclasped her
cloak, as the tea warmed her, and now, as she rose, it slipped from her
and fell into the chair. She was standing very close to him, a beautiful
woman, her beauty enhanced by everything that dress could do for it. Her
breath was on his cheek, the faint heady fragrance of her garments
troubled his nostrils, the dazzling fairness of her bare shoulders was
close under his eyes. He drew back a little, bewildered. ‘I don’t
understand,’ he murmured. ‘I have tried not to annoy you. You remember
what you said. After that I naturally could not trouble you.’
Cissy sprang suddenly away, and caught up her cloak. There was in her
movement something of the recoil of a spring that has been forced too
far in one direction and has suddenly escaped.
‘Ah, no,’ he heard her whisper, ‘I can’t----’ and then aloud, with a
sudden scornful flash, ‘No, _of course_ you can’t understand,’ she said.
‘Heavens! it’s nearly three ... and I, who meant to go to bed early.
There’s a fate against it. Give me my candle. Good night--or what’s left
of it.’ She hurried past him, almost snatching the candle from his hand.
The feeble flicker of it had vanished from the great well of the
staircase, while he still stood in the doorway dumbly wondering.
What had she meant? Was it possible that she repented of her cruelty,
that she wished----For a moment it had seemed so. Yet he could not
believe it. Vividly he recalled the night of their wedding, her agonised
repetitions that she never could be his. And yet her following him to
his room, her words, still more her looks. He stood there long
irresolute, wondering if he were losing a great opportunity. Once he
started to go and seek her. He looked up at the skylight far above,
where the first faint coming of morning was making a pale twilight. He
listened, but in all the silent greyness of the big house he could hear
no sound but the innumerable ticking of clocks. A breath of chill
discouragement seemed to steal down to him where he stood. He had a
vision of the grotesque figure he should cut, misled by his own fatuity,
and meeting closed doors, or the half concealed impertinence of a
waiting-maid, and slowly he turned back into his own rooms and shut the
door.