'Est-ce qu'une vie de femme se raconte? elle se sent, elle passe,
elle apparait.'--SAINTE BEUVE.
I
That Sir George Downing should spend the last days of his sojourn in
Dorset at Kingpole Farm, a seventeenth-century homestead, where,
according to local tradition, Charles II. had spent a night in hiding
during his hurried flight after the Battle of Worcester, had been Mrs.
Robinson's wish and suggestion. He had welcomed the idea of leaving
Monk's Eype with an eagerness which had pained her, though in her heart
she was aware that she had thus devised a way out of what had become to
them both a most difficult and false situation.
Very soon after Downing's arrival at Monk's Eype Penelope had become
acutely conscious of the mistake she had made in asking him to come
there. After painful moments spent with him--moments often of
embarrassed silence--she had divined, with beating heart and flushed
cheek, why all seemed to go ill between them during this time of waiting
and of suspense, which she had actually believed would prove a
prolongation of the halcyon, dream-like days that had followed their
first meeting.
This beautiful, intelligent woman, with her strange half-knowledge of
the realities of human life, and the less strange ignorances, which she
kept closely hidden from those about her, had often received, especially
in her 'Perdita' days, confidences which had inspired her with a deep
distaste of those ignoble shifts and ruses which perforce so often
surround a passion not in itself ignoble, or in any real sense impure.
She had been glad to assure herself that in this case--that of her own
relation to Downing--nothing of the kind need sully the beginnings of
what she believed with all her heart would be a noble and lifelong
love-story. Accordingly, there had been a tacit pact as to the reserve
and restraint which should govern their relations the one to the other
during the few weeks of Downing's stay in England.
When the time came they would leave together openly, and with a certain
measured dignity, but till then they would be friends, merely friends,
not lovers.
But Mrs. Robinson had not considered it essential, or indeed desirable,
that there should be no meeting in the interval, and she had seen no
reason why her friend's schemes should not have what slender help was
possible from the exercise of her woman's wits. Hence she had planned
the meeting with David Winfrith; hence she had asked Downing to become
one of her guests at Monk's Eype, and after some demur he had
reluctantly obeyed.
During the days that had immediately followed his coming, days which saw
Downing avoiding rather than seeking his hostess's presence, Penelope
often pondered over the words, the first he had uttered when they had
found themselves alone: 'I feel like a thief--nay, like a
murderer--here!' Extravagant, foolish words, uttered by one whose
restraint and wisdom had held for her from the first a curious
fascination.
Alas! She knew now how ill-advised she had been to bring him to Monk's
Eype, to place him in sharp juxtaposition with her mother, with her
cousin Wantley, even with such a girl as Cecily Wake. The very
simplicity of the life led by Mrs. Robinson's little circle of
unworldly, simple-minded guests made intimate talk between herself and
Downing difficult, the more so that feminine instinct kept few her
visits to the Beach Room.
Now and again, however, a softened glance from the powerful lined face,
a muttered word expressive of deep measureless feeling, the feel of his
hand grasping hers, would suddenly seem to prove that everything was
indeed as she wished it to be between them, and for a few hours she
would feel, if not content, at least at peace.
But even then there was always the haunting thought that some extraneous
circumstance--sometimes she wondered if it could have been any foolish,
careless word said by Wantley--had modified the close intimacy of their
relation.
II
There had been a week of this strain and strange chill between them,
when one night Penelope, feeling intolerably sore and full of vague
misgivings, suddenly determined to seek Downing out in the Beach Room.
It fell about in this wise. After the quiet evening had at last come to
an end, she went upstairs with Cecily and old Miss Wake, dismissed
Motey, and then returned to the studio, hoping he would come to her
there.
But an hour wore itself away, and he did not come.
Mrs. Robinson went out on to the moonlit terrace, and for awhile paced
up and down, watching the lights in the villa being put out one by one.
She knew that her old nurse would not go to sleep till she, Penelope,
were safe in bed; and she felt, though she could not see them, Mrs.
Mote's eyes peering down at her, watching this impatient walking up and
down in the bright moonlight. But what would once have so keenly annoyed
her no longer had power to touch her. She even smiled when the candle in
Mrs. Mote's room was extinguished, and the blind carefully and
ostentatiously drawn down. She knew well that the old woman would sit
behind it, waiting impatiently, full of suspicious anger, till she saw
her mistress return from the place whither she was now bound.
As she went down the steps leading to the shore, Penelope, her eyes cast
down, pitied herself with the frank self-pity of a child deprived of
some longed-for happiness; she had so looked forward to these days with
Downing, spent in this beloved place, which she was about to give up,
perhaps never to see again, for his sake.
At last, when standing on the strip of dry sand heaped above the wet,
glittering expanse stretching out to the dark sea, Penelope came upon
the circle of bright light, warring with the moonlit shore below, thrown
by Downing's lamp through the window of the Beach Room.
The sight affected her curiously. For a moment she felt as if she must
turn back; after all, he was engaged upon matters of great moment,
perhaps of even greater moment to himself than the question of their
relation the one to the other. She suddenly felt ashamed of disturbing
him at his work--real work which she knew must be done before he went
back to town.
But the window, through which streamed out the shaft of greenish-white
light, was wide open, and soon Downing heard, mingling with the surge of
the sea, the sound, the unmistakable dragging sound, of a woman's long
clinging skirt.
He got up, opened the door, and, coming out took her in his arms and
drew her silently back with him into the Beach Room. Then, bending down,
his lips met and trembled on hers, and Penelope, her resentment gone,
felt her eyes fill with tears.
A kiss, so trifling a gift on the part of some women as to be scarcely
worth the moments lost in the giving and receiving, is with other women,
indeed with many other women, the forerunner of complete surrender.
In her thirty years of life two men only had kissed Penelope
Wantley--the one Winfrith, the other Downing.
To-night there came to her with amazing clearness the vision of a
garden, ill-cared for, deserted, but oh! how beautiful, stretching
behind a Savoy inn in the mountainous country about Pol les Thermes.
There she and Downing, drawn--driven--to one another by a trembling,
irresistible impulse, had kissed for the first time, and for a moment,
then as now, she had lain in his arms, looking up at him with piteous,
questioning eyes. How long ago that morning seemed, and yet how few had
been the kisses in between!
Suddenly she felt him loosen his grip of her shoulders; and he held her
away from himself, at arms' length, as deliberately, in the tone of one
who has a right to an answer, he asked her a certain question regarding
herself and Melancthon Robinson.
She was pained and startled, reluctant to tell that which she had always
kept secret, and which she believed--so little are we aware that most
things concerning us are known to all our world--had never been
suspected. But she admitted his right to question her, and found time to
whisper to her secret self, 'My answer must surely make him glad'; and
so, her eyes lowering before his piercing, insistent gaze, she told him
the truth.
But, as he heard her, Downing relaxed his hold on her, and with
something like a groan he said: 'Why did I not know this before? Why
should I have had to wait till now to learn such a thing from you?' And
as she, surprised and distressed, hesitated, not knowing what to say, he
to her amazement turned away, and in a preoccupied tone, even with a
smile, said suddenly: 'Go. Go now, my dear. It is too late for you to be
down here. I have work to finish to-night.' Then he opened the door,
and, with no further word or gesture of affection, shut her out in what
seemed for the moment utter darkness.
But as she slowly began groping her way up the steps, sick at heart,
bewildered by the strangeness, by the coldness, of his manner, the door
of the Beach Room again opened, and she heard him calling her back with
a hoarse, eager cry.
She hesitated, then turned to see his tall, lean figure filling up the
doorway, and outlined for a moment against the bright lamplit room,
before he strode across the sand to where she stood, trembling.
Once more he took her in his arms, once more he murmured the words of
broken, passionate endearment for which her heart had hungered, only,
however, at last again to say, but no longer with a smile: 'Go. Go now,
my beloved--for I am only a man after all--only a man as other men are.'
Then for some days Penelope had found him again become strangely cold
and alien. She had felt the situation between them intolerable, and
suddenly she had suggested the sojourn at Kingpole Farm. And on the eve
of his departure Downing again seemed to become instinct with the
mysterious ardour he had shown from the first moment they had met, from
the flash of time during which their eyes had exchanged their first
long, intimate, probing look.
Mrs. Mote had followed, with foreboding, agonizing jealousy, this
interlude of days in a drama of which she had seen the first, and of
which she was beginning to divine the last, act.
It is not the apparently inevitable sin, so much as the apparently
avoidable folly, which most distresses those onlookers who truly love
the sinners and the foolish. During those still summer days the old
nurse felt she could have borne anything but this strange beguilement of
her mistress, by one whom the maid regarded as having outlived the age
when men make women happy. The sight of Mrs. Robinson, with whom, to
Motey's doting eyes, time had stood still, hanging on his words, having
eyes only for this man, who, though no longer young, yet seemed even
older than his age, struck the watcher as monstrous because unnatural.
So far, Mrs. Mote had been unselfish in her repugnance for the
irrevocable step towards which she felt Penelope to be drifting, but of
late a nearer and more personal terror had taken possession of the old
woman. She was beginning to suspect that she herself was to have no part
in Mrs. Robinson's new life, and the suspicion drove her nearly beside
herself with anger and impotent distress.
Many incidents, of themselves trifling, had instilled this suspicion in
her mind. Mrs. Robinson was trying to do for herself all the things that
Motey, first as nurse, and later as maid, had always done for her.
Sitting in her own room, next door to that of her mistress, and feeling
too proud and sore to come unless sent for, Mrs. Mote would hear the
opening and shutting of cupboards and drawers, the seeking and the
putting away by Penelope--this last an almost incredible portent--of her
own hat, veil, gloves, and shoes!
Even more significant was the fact that of late Penelope had become so
considerate, so tender, of the old woman who had always been about her.
How happy a sharp, impatient word would now have made Mrs. Mote! But no
such word was ever uttered. Instead, Mrs. Robinson had actually
suggested that her maid should have a holiday. 'Me? A holiday? and what
should I do with a holiday?' Motey had repeated, bewildered, and then
with painful sarcasm had added, 'I suppose, ma'am, that is why you are
learning to do your own hair?'
She had watched her enemy's departure for Kingpole Farm with sombre eyes
and sinking heart, wondering what this unexpected happening might
portend to her mistress.
The day after that which had seen Downing leaving Monk's Eype, Mrs.
Robinson had found her riding-habit, and also a short skirt she often
wore when driving herself, laid out with some elaboration. 'I have
everything ready,' had said the old nurse sourly, 'for there will be
many rides and drives now, I reckon.' And Penelope, forgetting her new
gentleness, had exclaimed angrily: 'Motey, you are intolerable! Put
those things away at once!'
III
In most people's lives there has come, at times, a sequence of days,
full of deep calm without, full of inward strife and disturbance within.
The departure of Sir George Downing from Monk's Eype brought no peace to
the two women to whom his presence there had been of moment. Mrs. Mote
believed that his going heralded some immediate change in Mrs.
Robinson's life; as far as possible she never let her mistress out of
her sight, and the tarrying of Penelope from the villa an hour later
than she had been expected to do, more than once threw the old nurse
into a state of abject alarm. But Motey, during those still days, had
lost the clue to her nursling's heart and mind.
For some days and nights after Downing had left her, and she had
deliberately denied herself the solace of his letters, Mrs. Robinson was
haunted by the thought--sometimes, it seemed, by the actual physical
presence--of her first love, David Winfrith.
The memory of the hours spent by her with him at Shagisham constantly
recurred, bringing a strange mingling of triumph and pain. How badly she
had behaved to him that day! how treacherously! it might almost be said,
how wantonly! And yet, at the time, during that moment when she had come
close to him, and uttered those plaintive words which had so greatly
moved him, Downing for the moment had been blotted out of her memory, so
intense had been her desire to bring Winfrith back to his old
allegiance.
Now, looking back at the little scene, she knew that she had succeeded
in her wish--but at what a cost! And in a few weeks, she could now count
the time by days, it would become the business of Winfrith's life to
forget her. She knew how his narrow, upright mind would judge her
action; with what utter condemnation and horror he would remember that
conversation held between them, especially that portion of it which
concerned Sir George Downing.
The knowledge that Winfrith must in time realize how ill she had used
him that day brought keen humiliation in its train. 'I have been far
more married to him than I was to poor Melancthon!' she cried half aloud
to herself during one of the restless, unhappy nights, spent by her in
thinking over the past and considering the present; and the thought had
come into her mind: 'If I had married David, and then if he, instead of
Melancthon, had died, how much happier I should be to-day than I am
now!'
But even as she had uttered the words, and though believing herself to
be the only creature awake in the still house, Penelope in the darkness
had blushed violently, marvelling to find herself capable of having
conceived so monstrous an idea.
It added to Mrs. Robinson's unrest and disquiet to know, as she had done
through Wantley, now--oh, irony!--the only link between herself and
Kingpole Farm, that Downing and Winfrith had met more than once. The
interviews, or so she gathered from her cousin, had been, from Downing's
point of view, satisfactory, but she longed feverishly to know more--to
learn how David Winfrith had comported himself, what impression he had
made on the older man.
It was significant that Penelope never gave a thought as to how Downing
had impressed Winfrith. To her mind the matter could not admit of
doubt--his personality must dominate all those with whom it came into
contact.
Neither man knew of her relation, past or present, to the other. Still,
she felt a longing to be assured that all had gone well between them. It
added to her vague discomfort that Wantley, when telling her of what had
been the first meeting between the two men, had given her a quick,
penetrating look from out his half-closed eyes, and then had glanced
away in obvious embarrassment.
Well, she would soon have to see Winfrith, for on him she counted--and
she never saw the refinement of cruelty involved--to make smooth, as
regarded certain material matters, the path before her.
Mrs. Robinson wished to begin her new life stripped, as far as might be
possible, of all that must recall to her that which had come and gone
since she was Penelope Wantley. She hoped that by giving up the great
fortune left by her husband, she might blot out the recollection, not
only of poor Melancthon Robinson, for whose memory she had ever felt a
certain impatient kindliness, but also of David Winfrith, to whom her
tie of late years had been so close, though of that she had told Downing
nothing.
This intention of material renouncement had not been imagined in the
first instance by Penelope--the Robinson fortune had cost her so little
and had been hers so long! But Downing, during one of their first
intimate talks and discussions concerning the future, had assumed that,
on her return to England, she would at once begin arranging for its
dispersion, and she had instantly accepted the idea, and felt herself
eager to act on it. Indeed, she had said after a short pause, and it was
the first time that she had mentioned to this new friend and still
unfamiliar lover, the oldest of her friends and the most familiar of
her lovers, 'David Winfrith will help me about it all.'
'The new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs?' he had asked, and she had
answered quickly: 'Yes, his father is one of the trustees of the
Settlement, and he has helped me a good deal over it.'
No more had then been said, and since her return to England Mrs.
Robinson had done nothing concerning the matter.
But now she must bestir herself, see Winfrith, and that soon. He knew
all about her affairs, and she intended that he should help her to
hasten the inevitable formalities. As to what she was to say to him, how
to offer, to one so matter-of-fact and clear-headed, any adequate reason
for her proposed action, she trusted to her wit and to his obtuseness.
He had often found the courage to tell her that some adequate provision
should be made by her for the Melancthon Settlement, and that, as
matters stood, too much was left to her own conscience and her own
generosity. Well, she would now remind him of his unpalatable advice,
and tell him that at last she was about to follow it.
Penelope also found time, during the days which followed Downing's
departure, to think of her mother--to wonder, with tightened throat, how
Lady Wantley would meet the ordeal coming so swiftly to meet and
overwhelm her.
Even with those whose thoughts, emotions, and consciences seemed
channelled in the narrowest grooves it is often difficult to foresee
with what eyes, both of the body and of the soul, they will view any
given set of circumstances. Lady Wantley had always seemed extremely
wide-minded, in some ways nebulously so; but this had been in a measure
owing, so Penelope now reminded herself, to the fact that she had lived
a life so spiritually detached from those about her.
Since her husband's death the mother's loyalty to her only child had
been unswerving, and she seemed to have transferred to Penelope the
unquestioning trust she had felt in Penelope's father.
Old friends, including Mr. Julius Gumberg, had ventured to remonstrate,
and very seriously, when the lovely, impulsive girl had announced her
sudden engagement, after a strangely short acquaintance, to Melancthon
Robinson; but Lady Wantley--and her daughter, looking back in after
years, had often wondered sorely, with a shuddering retrospection, that
it had been so--had seemed quite content, quite certain, that her
beloved child was being Divinely guided.
She had accepted, with the same curious detachment, the fact of
Penelope's widowhood, and during the years which followed had encouraged
her daughter to lead the life that suited her best, looking on with
indulgent eyes while Mrs. Robinson enjoyed what she always later
recalled as the 'Perdita' stage of her existence.
This had been the period when the girl-widow, released from the bondage
into which she had entered so lightly, returned with intense zest to the
delightful frivolous world of which she had seen but little before her
marriage. For three or four years Mrs. Robinson enjoyed all that this
delicately dissipated section of society could give her in the way of
lightly balanced emotion and fresh sensation, and her mother had been
apparently in no wise shocked or surprised that it should be so.
Then had followed a period of travel, when the young widow had seen
something of a wider world. Finally, Penelope had settled down to the
life of which we know--still, when she was in London, seeing something
of the gay, light-hearted circle of men and women who had once
surrounded 'Perdita' with the pleasant and not insincere flattery they
are ever ready to bestow on any and every human being who for the
moment interests and amuses them. Mrs. Robinson had retained her place,
as it were her niche, among them. They still delighted in 'Perdita's'
beauty, and in her exceptional artistic gift; also--and she would have
felt indeed angered and disgusted had she known it--her reputed wealth,
which was by no means so great as was rumoured, played its part in
keeping up her prestige with a world which is apt to become at times
painfully aware of the value of money.
On the other hand, David Winfrith was not loved among these men and
women who considered high living thoroughly compatible with--indeed, an
almost indispensable adjunct to--high thinking. Winfrith took a grim
pleasure in acting as kill-joy to certain kinds of human sport to which
they were addicted, and, worse than that, he positively bored them! And
so, when Mrs. Robinson, having drawn him once more into her innocent,
but none the less dangerous, toils, had again formed with him an
absorbing and intimate friendship, certain of her acquaintances were no
longer as eager to be with her as they had once been, and they
considered that their dear 'Perdita' was making herself slightly
ridiculous.
Another reason why Mrs. Robinson found it impossible to divine how her
mother would regard what she was now on the eve of doing, was because
the younger woman knew well how her father would have regarded such a
union as that which she was contemplating.
Lord Wantley had not been in the habit, as his wife had always been, of
looking at life and those about him with charitable ambiguity; and there
was no doubt as to how the great philanthropist, who had been in his
lifetime a pillar of the Low Church party, regarded the slightest
deviation from the moral law. Penelope now remembered with great
discomfort and prevision of pain that concerning actual matters of life
and conduct Lady Wantley's 'doxy' had always been, so far as she knew
it, her husband's 'doxy.'