No dramatic crisis came to break down the endless monotony of Lily's
dissatisfaction as time went on. But she envisaged the possibility of
one.
"Supposing I meet the man I could have loved--supposing I _do_ love
him?"
The specious echo of words that might have been spoken by her father,
by Miss Melody, by any of those who had stood for wisdom to her
childhood, followed on the thought.
"_Why meet trouble halfway?... How weak to torture oneself about
something which may never happen ... crossing bridges before one comes
to them...._"
Something in the last phrase awoke a long-dormant memory.
They had said that to her, long ago--the new metaphor leaving a little
picture on her plastic, childish mind--in the old days when she had
been afraid, because the east wind would give Vonnie earache.
They had said that it was naughty and ungrateful to run and meet
trouble halfway. Of course Vonnie wouldn't get earache. And Vonnie had
gone out into the east wind, and had got earache. The agony of those
nights of silent strain was upon Lily once more as she remembered.
Illumination came to her.
They had bluffed her into accepting those old catchwords then, but was
she of her own free-will to be bound by them now?
"_Don't put things into words--don't let imagination run away with
you. Beware of imagination. It's morbid to dwell upon what may never
happen._"
Shove it all out of sight! Bury it without looking at it! Embark upon
adventure by the line of least resistance!
And then, when that which was buried rises to confront you, in stark,
unescapable reality, then, realize that your defences are not ready,
that an emergency is upon you with which you have deliberately unfitted
yourself to cope, that Truth, your only weapon, you have long ago cast
from you at the bidding of those who read its name Morbidity.
But she was dimly aware that, as submission had blinded her once, so
bitterness obscured her vision now.
The old, inculcated instinct for seeking advice beset her often, but
she decided it in the realization that no glib outside verdict could
now carry weight with her.
Half enviously, half mockingly, she thought of the old literary
convention that, in a time of mental crisis, some chance encounter,
some wisdom met almost at random, should provide the unforgettable word
holding the key of solution.
"_She never saw the lame cobbler again, but his words had made all life
look different henceforward...._"
There were no such fortuitous sign-posts in real life, Lily decided.
More than one adviser, nevertheless, sought her unasked.
"All is not well with you, my Lily."
Aunt Clo's penetrating gaze had underlined her words.
"Shall I tell you, little one, that I foresaw this some time ago? _Moi
aussi, j'ai passé par là._ There comes a day, is it not so?"
"What?" asked Lily, mildly bewildered.
"_Jeunesse, jeunesse!_" said Aunt Clo, quite in her old way. "Youth
calls to youth, my Lily, as well I know. And watching you, I have
re-lived my own past. You know something of the story of my past. Do
not, I beseech you, little one--do not let me live to see tragedy
repeat itself."
"Tell me what you mean, Aunt Clo."
"Lily, Lily! Fencing is unworthy of you--utterly unworthy of us both."
"I want to know what you think," said Lily wearily.
"Think!" repeated Aunt Clo solemnly. "What _can_ I think?"
Her niece was utterly unable to find a reply to the portentous
conundrum.
Miss Stellenthorpe put one hand upon Lily's shoulder and plunged a
long, deep look into her eyes.
Then she sank into a seat and allowed the saddest of smiles to dawn
upon her lips. She shook her head slowly from side to side. "Who am I,
that you should turn to me, my dear? I, who made such a shipwreck of my
youth? But O, little one! How lightly I should count the cost, if it is
to save you from the same folly, from the same life-time of regret!"
Had Aunt Clotilde really some message to interpret?
Lily looked at her with a faint stirring of hope. Miss Stellenthorpe's
fine eyes were glowing.
"Lose all, and you shall find all!" she declared. "The old Prophets
knew much, my Lily. Listen, child. It will cost you, to break through
the old traditions--who knows it better than I? But you must have
courage. You must break free. Your soul asks it of you. And that
other--your rightful mate--how can he fulfil himself without you?"
Lily was paralyzed. How difficult, how impossible to stop Aunt Clo in
mid-career with the startling commonplace: "There is no other."
"But it's not--there's no one who----"
"_Bambina_--ah, how readily the old name comes! Leave subterfuges to
smaller souls. _Leave_ them, I say!"
Aunt Clo's voice rose in a crescendo of impassioned admonishment.
"I do not ask for names--for details. I may perhaps have hoped for
a fuller, freer response from you--but I understand. _Je comprends
tout--je ne suis pas comme les autres, moi qui vous parle._ But
whatever the circumstances, whatever the difficulties, you must find
courage to disregard them. It is your soul that is at stake, my Lily.
And after all--what are you risking? The good opinion of conventional
moralists!"
Aunt Clo's middle finger met her thumb in a resonant snap of utter
contempt for all conventional moralists.
"What do they know of such needs as ours? I say ours advisedly, my
Lily. You know the outline of my life's story. There was only one
man--though many have desired me--but only one man who supremely
mattered. And he was bound, even as you are. And she to whom he was
bound--she who had called herself my friend--she betrayed us both. She
refused him his freedom."
Aunt Clo bowed her head, as though unwilling to face Lily's reception
of such a climax.
"You ask me," said Miss Stellenthorpe, after a slight silence which
neither had broken, "you ask me why, swept off our feet as we were, he
and I did not take the law into our own hands. My reply to you is that
I had to suffer the double bitterness of _her_ betrayal, and of _his_.
For he failed me--his courage was less than mine. Although I urged him
to take the strong way, the high line, he did not do so. He was afraid.
I cast pride to the winds, my Lily--I held back nothing. But that
other--she tempted him with specious pleadings of her 'rights,' and he
was weak. I do not seek to deny it now. He took the coward's refuge."
Miss Stellenthorpe gazed sombrely at her niece.
"Flight. With her."
There was a solemn silence.
"But it was not to speak of myself that I came, _carina_, but of you.
Do not wreck your life, little one, for a scruple. You have courage,
_n'est-ce-pas_? It needs but one mighty effort to shake off the old
superstitions--and after that Love, Freedom, Self-expression! Are these
not worth a sacrifice?"
"Yes--if----"
"Go to your lover!" said Aunt Clo with a clarion call. "I am not afraid
to say it," and indeed she was not. "_Go to your lover._"
It was more than difficult to undeceive Aunt Clo. Nor, when she finally
took her departure, did Lily feel certain that Miss Stellenthorpe had
relinquished all hope of her niece's ultimate defiance of the seventh
commandment.
It gave her a faint sense of ironical amusement to discover that her
father's thoughts had taken the same direction as had Aunt Clo's,
inspiring in him diametrically opposite emotions.
Lily went to stay with him, and was glad that she looked ill enough to
justify her leaving London whilst Nicholas was obliged to remain there.
"I'm sorry Nicholas couldn't get away," said Philip rather nervously.
"It's very good of him to spare you. You're not looking quite as well
as you generally do, my child."
This was Philip's nearest approach to an uncomplimentary statement.
"I'm tired," Lily said.
"Come, come, come," said Philip.
The bracing admonition was marred by his uncertain tone, and the
anxious glances that he kept casting towards his daughter.
At last he said to her:
"My little pet, you're not fretting about anything, are you? I'm sorry
to see you so--so pale."
Something in the kind, familiar, anxious tone stirred Lily suddenly.
She began to cry.
"Poor little child!" said Philip.
He seemed less surprised than Lily had expected him to be, at her
sudden weakness, and stroked her hair with hands that trembled a little.
"Tell me all about it," he suggested.
Lily had never thought it possible that she should put her vague
disappointment and weariness into words, least of all to her father.
Nevertheless she found herself trying to do so.
"It isn't anything--that's the worst of it. Nothing definite. Only
Nicholas--Nicholas and I--I wish I loved him more than I do--he's
disappointed in me."
"No, no," protested Philip. "That great deprivation is worse for you
than for him--besides, my poor dear child, you're still young----"
"It isn't that," said Lily. "He was kinder than I can ever say about
that--after all, it isn't my fault, and besides, I _might_ have
a child, even yet--they didn't say it was impossible. It's just
ourselves--Nicholas and me."
"My child!"
Philip Stellenthorpe looked thoroughly frightened. "I know there's a
great disparity of years--but you were fully aware of that when you
married him. You were in love with him, Lily."
She made no answer.
"And he with you," said her father hurriedly. "I was deeply touched, at
the time, by the way in which he spoke of you. But, my little darling,
you know that being in love, as people call it, isn't a thing that
lasts for ever. Something better comes to take its place. And there
are bound to be little frictions, in even the happiest marriages. You
mustn't let yourself exaggerate. There's been no misunderstanding
between you, has there?"
Lily knew that by the word "misunderstanding" he meant dispute, and she
said that there had been none.
"There, then, you see! What is there to fret about? Nicholas is devoted
to you."
"I know."
"And he's your husband, my dear child. You love him."
"I am very fond of him," said Lily slowly. Then she added, speaking
more for the relief of words, than with any recollection of her
hearer, "It's just because I'm fond of him that I'm so unhappy. I can't
give him anything real--I've tried and tried to think that I could,
and it's no use--I'm sorry because of him, and I'm sorry because of
myself--I've missed the best there is, somehow, and I'm realizing it
more and more as I go on, and now I just feel as though I couldn't go
on any more. If I wasn't fond of Nicholas, I think I should leave him."
"Don't talk like that--don't say terrible things like that. You don't
know what they mean," Philip exclaimed in great agitation. "Don't you
know that it's a mortal sin?"
"What is?"
"To let your thoughts turn for a moment, after your solemn marriage
vows, to--to any thought of--'for better for worse--till death us do
part,' and cleaving to him _only_----"
"But I shan't go away. I _am_ fond of Nicholas. It would be much easier
for me if I weren't," said Lily.
"What do you mean?"
Lily did not seek to explain what she meant. It was scarcely clear even
to herself, save that her affection for Nicholas was real of its kind,
and therefore must debar her from the drastic and impetuous measures
for which her whole undisciplined youth craved.
She remained away on one excuse after another.
Her old schoolmate, Dorothy, came home from India, and although Lily
admired Dorothy's healthy, fair-headed, unbeautiful babies, and went
almost daily to play with them, she would not admit that her own
childlessness roused in her any regret.
Nor did it.
But she watched with sick envy Dorothy's eagerness for her Indian mail
letters, and the tears that clouded her frank, unsentimental gaze, as
she spoke of "poor Frank"--who would not be able to afford leave for a
long while.
"You are lucky, Lily, to live in England with no dreadful complications
about having to go up to the hills, for the sake of the babies, and
leave your man, sweltering away in the awful heat. And now I've got to
leave Dolly behind, and go back with only Aileen, and I shan't have her
after our next leave at home, I don't suppose. Frank is so good he'd
let me stay at home with them altogether, like some wives do--but of
course I wouldn't."
"Do you think he needs you more than the children do?"
"Well, I do, but apart from that," said Dorothy, "I know I jolly well
can't do without _him_!"
She laughed as she spoke, and Lily knew that she did so because she was
so much in earnest.
"I've got to finish my mail letter," said Dorothy, who had always hated
writing letters.
Lily watched her pull out the perennial block of thin ruled paper to
which every day she added a fresh, scrawled contribution.
She herself wrote every few days to Nicholas, and in reply received
short letters, indited upon Club notepaper, informing her that
he was very busy, or that he had gone past their house, that the
exterior painting seemed to be getting on well, that he hoped she
was feeling stronger, and would not hurry back to town just yet, the
more especially as workmen were still in the house. He was always her
devoted husband.
Lily divined haste in the notes, as well as the affectionate feeling
that was part of Nicholas. She wrote and told him that Kenneth was
to come home in a week's time, and that she should like to await his
arrival. Her husband's answer was one of cordial acquiescence, and then
he wrote no more for several days.
Lily, as usual, found Kenneth everything that she herself had never
dared to be.
He had spent most of his holidays with friends, about whom he
vouchsafed the scantiest particulars to his family.
"A fellow I know," or "One of the chaps at the place where I've just
been staying," said Kenneth, or, more non-committally still, "Somebody
or other that one came across somewhere or other."
"I should like to hear something about this visit of yours, my boy,"
said Philip, in tones that unwittingly suggested a strong sense of
suspiciousness.
"Oh, it was all right."
"So I suppose--so I suppose," Philip laughed rather nervously. "Had it
not been 'all right,' as you express it, no doubt I should have been
informed. But we've not been told very much about your amusements, or
about your young friends themselves. Your school-fellow's father is--or
rather was, a good many years ago--an acquaintance of mine, as you
know. Besides, my dear boy, I like to know something about the sort of
people with whom you're friendly."
Philip's voice had become rebukeful.
"Oh, they're all right," said Kenneth.
"How many brothers and sisters has Graham got?" enquired Lily hastily.
"There were two or three kids knocking about, and a girl with her hair
up. She's the eldest."
"Oh, Jean Graham. I think I met her in the Park one day--rather pretty,
with fair curly hair."
"Oh," said Kenneth indifferently. But the thought appeared to awaken
some association. "I say, Lily, who do you know with carrotty hair?"
"I don't know. Heaps of people. Nobody in particular. What do you mean,
exactly?"
"Somebody who's a friend of your old man's. At least----"
"That's not at all a nice way of talking, Kenneth," said his father
gravely. "Apologize to your sister."
"No, never mind, Father," Lily interposed.
She remembered, with curious detachment, the two little girls, Vonnie
and Lily--who had always been so gentle and respectful in their speech,
knowing quite well that anything else would offend the susceptibilities
of Father and Mother most terribly.
"It's most disloyal to speak in that rude, foolish way of a near
relation--and one who has been so kind to you, too," Philip told the
boy.
"Sorry."
Kenneth's tone was so cheerfully unconcerned that Lily hurriedly
broke across the light-hearted echo of it that seemed to linger,
inappropriately, in the atmosphere diffused by Philip's deep vexation.
"What were you going to tell us about? Somebody with red hair whom
Nicholas knows?"
"M'm."
Philip raised his eyebrows at the unceremonious mutter, and sighed, but
he uttered no spoken rebuke. Lily wondered whether he gauged the full
imperviousness of Kenneth to those silent tokens of disapproval that
had been so potent with Philip's elder children.
"A fattish girl, with red hair."
Philip looked up sharply.
"I don't know whether you mean Doris Dickenson," said Lily. "She has
red hair. She's a hospital nurse."
"That's it. I knew I'd seen her before. She looked after you when you
were ill."
"Yes, she did, but when----"
"I saw her, and old--I mean, Nicholas, too--the other day, when I was
coming through London."
"Nonsense, my dear boy," said Philip curtly. "You must have made a
mistake. Your brother-in-law would have told me if he'd seen you."
"He didn't see me."
"Then where were you?"
"Just going along down the street. It's all on the way to Victoria
station."
"I never gave you leave to hang about London by yourself. I told you to
come straight through, in a four-wheeled cab."
"I missed that train----"
"You never told me," exclaimed Philip in horrified tones. "Besides,
what do you mean? I met you at the station here at seven o'clock
myself. How can you have missed the train?"
"I missed that slow one you wrote about, but I found there was a much
better one that got to the junction in time for the connection. At
least, it really arrived five minutes after my train was supposed to
start, but I knew it would be late, just as it always is. I had heaps
of time."
"You had no business to alter the arrangements that Father had made for
you, my boy."
"Sorry," said Kenneth in exactly the same cheerful, impersonal accents
that he had used before.
"And besides, what would have happened supposing the train hadn't been
late? You might have had to spend the night there."
Philip's tone was that of one who points out some terrible danger
barely escaped.
Lily felt conscious of a spasm of sharp impatience. No wonder that
Kenneth was reticent, even as she herself, as a child, had frequently
been deceitful, in the endeavour to evade Philip's portentous anxieties
and distrusts.
He was beginning now a serious exposition of the utter inability of
"very young people" ever to judge what was best, and Lily felt that she
must stop him before her own exasperation made itself felt.
"But what about Nicholas, Kenneth? Why didn't you speak to him?"
Kenneth turned to her, obviously rendered loquacious by his desire to
follow her lead.
"Well, I'd really half thought of looking him up, only then I saw
scaffolding and stuff outside, and I thought he wouldn't be there. But
I looked up at the windows and saw him, as it happened, staring out.
And I was just going to cross the street when a taxi drew up at the
door, and the carrotty-haired one got out, and ran up the steps like
blazes and let herself in. So then I bunked off."
"Let herself in," repeated Philip slowly, "How could she do that?"
"With a key," said Kenneth matter-of-factly. "I suppose old Nicholas
didn't want the fag of going down to answer the door, and the servants
were all away, or out, or something."
"Yes," said Lily, "the servants are all away; there's only a caretaker."
She spoke quite automatically, but her mind had instantly registered
and accepted the new situation unconsciously disclosed by Kenneth,
almost without surprise. She suddenly felt as though she had found a
clue to some evasive conviction that had been eluding her.
"That's why he hasn't written to me lately," she reflected calmly.
Then she became aware of her father.
"Kenneth is talking nonsense, my little Lily," he said tremulously.
"It's all quite--quite--quite unimportant, of course, but you mustn't
let yourself----"
She recognized that he was torn between a terrified desire to reassure
her, his own sense of shock and outrage, and the old, pathetic instinct
to conceal, at all costs, from Kenneth any significance in what Kenneth
had just said.
"It's all right," she said, smiling at him without any effort at all.
"What's up?" Kenneth demanded, glancing from one to the other.
"Nothing, my boy, nothing at all. Why should there be anything up, as
you call it?" said Philip, grey-faced and shaking. "Only I don't like
you to--to tell foolish stories like that."
"But why----"
"Don't argue, now, Kenneth. You know Father will never allow arguing.
Now that will do, we needn't say any more about it."
Lily saw on Kenneth's young face exactly that slow awakening to an
uncomfortable sense of mystery, that would presently give way to
concealed surmisings and surreptitious attempts at trapping down the
truth, that had made life a thing of perpetual furtiveness to her own
childhood.
She felt so strong a nervous impulse to speak the rending, shattering
truth aloud that it came as a sharp relief to see Kenneth, after a
suspicious stare at his father, get up and leave the room.
Lily gave Philip no time for the evasions that he was obviously and
piteously seeking in his own mind.
"It's all right." She strangely found the words of reassurance on her
lips again.
"I know Nicholas. I think he probably has been--unfaithful--with this
girl. But it's a sort of passing madness--you mustn't think he's like
that really."
"Lily--Lily, my poor child. But we mustn't rush at conclusions, my poor
darling. I can question Kenneth quietly, later on--without letting him
realize anything, of course."
"No, no. I'm going partly on intuition, Father."
"But had you suspected before, then?"
"Oh no. I knew the girl was--well, a flirt, to put it mildly, and of
course I knew that Nicholas admired her. But he's never even seen her
since my illness, ages ago."
"How can you tell that, my poor child--what do you know of these
things? This business must be tackled by a man. Shall I go up to town
at once?"
"I don't think so."
Hard-won certainties, that Lily had scarcely known herself to possess,
rallied round her. Her own inner convictions crystallised into
decisive speech, gained strength every moment.
"No. It isn't a question for that sort of thing at all--I mean scenes
and interviews and recriminations. I shall have to tell Nicholas that I
know, and then--then I suppose we shall talk it all over, and see what
ought to be done--if anything."
"You don't realize," groaned Philip. "My poor little inexperienced
child, you must be guided by me. It may not be as bad as we think."
Lily thought for a moment and then found herself speaking with a
decision that surprised herself.
"This is something that I must decide for myself. You can't help me.
Nobody can, except Nicholas himself. I should like him to come down
here, please."
"You would rather that than let me take you up to London? But are you
sure that he will come?"
"Quite sure," said Lily.
In her own mind, she was thinking that very likely Nicholas would write
and ask her to come home, before she had even time to send her summons
to him. He wasn't deceiving her, "leading a double life," as the
conventions of fiction and the drama.
It had all been a sort of accident, probably, Lily reflected. Almost
certainly Nicholas, like all weak natures, would feel the instant need
of salving his own sense of degradation by making a confession.
Philip was groaning.
"If you had only been more open with me the other day! I had no idea
things had gone so far--I thought it was a vague, passing discontent,
that meant nothing. But you must have realized even then that he was
wronging you in some such terrible way. I could never have believed
it, never. However, we mustn't meet trouble halfway, I suppose."
He sighed heavily.
"My poor child, there is at least a remedy open to you, if things are
as we fear--though God forbid it should ever come to that."
"What?" asked Lily.
"You can claim your freedom," said her father very low. "There is _one_
cause for which the marriage tie may be dissolved, in the eyes of God."
Lily realized with a shock of astonishment that here was an aspect of
the case which actually had not presented itself to her mind.
Divorce.
A second chance! The words flashed through her mind, opening up an
illimitable vista of freedom, a sudden, unlooked-for way of escape
from that which had appeared unescapable. She had longed wildly and
hopelessly for a miracle that would obliterate the years that had
elapsed since her marriage to Nicholas Aubray.
Against her own sense of conventional decorum, against her father's
shocked unhappiness, relief sprang to life within her at the thought
that the miracle might yet take place, the writing of the years might
be erased, the irrevocable revoked.