Things One Shouldn't Say
When the men came in after dinner that evening Mrs. Darling sat alone in
a huge red satin _causeuse_; one of those queer, hard, tufted royal
things that fashion pitched in among the wigs and powder of one past
period.
She wore a gown of gray gauze with bands of beaded and jeweled fringe at
corsage and knees. Few women can wear gray. Nina could, and did.
The other women were grouped near, talking, but not with her. They had
not shunted her; but she had gone apart and sat so. It was her way when
the time for the reappearance of the men drew near. Nobody misconstrued.
They all understood.
"And yet, how she does make a party go, you know!" whispered her hostess
to the duchess. "She's really quite wonderful at it."
"I like her," confessed the duchess. "She's such nice lines about her
waist, too, hasn't she?"
"Y-yes," faltered Lady Bellingdown, "she's quite a picture. I do wish
Nibbetts wouldn't pitch into her so. It's very nasty of him."
"But Caryll will never believe what he says," the duchess offered
comfortingly. "Men never do."
As she spoke the doors slid apart and the six men straggled in in
procession, scattering slowly like a flock of settling birds. Each
married man tried to avoid his wife and rather missed the mark.
Caryll Carleigh walked to where Mrs. Darling sat, circled her and took
the other end of the red tufted thing that was made for two. She just
smiled.
All the rest began to talk at once. The air warmed with: "They made it a
point to drive through once a year and preserve the right of way--" "He
said: 'Don't hurry!' but she took it and the branch caught her and
carried her off--" "Oh, no, it wasn't that winter; it was when I was in
Malta--" and so on, and so on.
Sir Caryll lifted his eyes and lowered his voice. "Do you know, I was
sure my heart was dead. I was certain of it. But now I begin to doubt."
She smiled still, staring straight before her.
"Do look at me," he pleaded. "Your eyes are so wonderful. Like an
elixir. They give me back all that I have lost. Do look at me."
"Do you know," she asked, complying with his request, "that I'm
considered a very bad woman?"
"I don't believe it."
"Oh, but I am. You ask Lord Kneedrock. He'll tell you. He has a hash
about a reincarnated tiger that he tells every one. He calls my hands
claws."
She looked down at her hands then and Caryll's gaze followed hers. They
were wonderful hands, every finger a psychic index.
"Some day I'll let you hold one for a little," she said, moving them
slightly. "You can judge for yourself what they're like then."
He was conscious of the most curious of thrills. It coursed through him
from head to toes. It stimulated him, wonderfully. It redoubled his
courage.
"Adieu, ordinary rules!" his heart cried. "To the front and fire!" And
his voice said: "Has Kneedrock ever held them?"
"Oh, yes. Ever so many have. I'm making a study of holding hands. Some
men keep boring into your palm with their thumb, and some like to grind
all your knuckle-bones together, crosswise. They never seem to think how
the woman may feel."
"I fancy, under such circumstances, if I were you, I should say
something," said Sir Caryll, laughing.
She looked at him, seriously. "What, for instance?"
"'Oh, you hurt! Let go!'"
"I'll try to remember," she said, without a smile. "You think that is
better than just bearing it?"
"Yes. Unless you like it."
"Oh, I never like it. I grew weary of it long ago. Men are all so
dreadfully alike. Unless you are going to be different, I--Are you going
to be different?"
"I'm heart-broken," said Carleigh, not quite seriously. "Perhaps that
constitutes a difference."
"I know exactly how it feels to be heart-broken." She nodded wisely.
"You feel that it will kill you; but it doesn't. The third day one takes
pudding, as usual."
"Tell me," he pleaded suddenly, "did you love your husband?"
"Oh, no," she answered with emphasis. "What a stupid question!"
"What went on before he died?"
She laughed. "Lots," was her laconic answer.
"Were you very lonely?"
"No. I had compensation."
He felt a violent throb through all his veins.
"A lover?" he asked boldly.
Instantly her eyes came to his. "You really do think bad of me, then?"
Her tone was reproachful. "You think that when I said people considered
me a very bad woman they meant baddest bad, and that they considered
right?"
"No," he corrected. "I didn't stop to think. What I said just jumped
into my head. I'm curious about you--that's all."
"I'm not going to tell you my story," she declared. "You ask Kneedrock.
He'll tell you that I shot my husband to marry another man, and that the
other man begged to be excused. Kneedrock's very entertaining when he
begins to be confidential about me."
"How can you joke about such things?"
"I joke about everything. It's my way of getting on."
"But such an awful tale!"
"Oh, dreadful!" she said, easily.
He felt a bit uncertain and his laugh showed it. "The other man was an
idiot," he told her.
"Quite so," she assented.
There was a movement among the others. They were going to have bridge.
All had risen and their backs were turned. Quickly he laid his hand upon
hers. Then:
"Oh, how you interest me!" he exclaimed, below his breath. "You've had a
bad time, too. I know it. I feel it. You'll tell me, and I'll tell you,
and there'll be something in the world I'll care about again. You see, I
thought--I really was sure--that all the caring about things had been
killed in me forever."
Her hand was quiet beneath the throbbing of his own. He had a singular
hand for a man--one of those rare hands that pale and flush, that shiver
and burn.
It burned now, but hers had no responding heat or throb. If his quivered
with a passionate call for some response, the response came not. He had
to recognize that no sleeping ardor stirred to the call of his caress.
But her eyelids drooped lower and lower until her lashes lay close
against her cheeks, and then as he looked--and longed--he saw suddenly
with an ecstatic thrill of surprise and delight that tears shone among
them.
"You feel--something?" he murmured breathlessly. "What?"
"I feel for you," she answered. "You are so young. How old are you? Do
you mind telling me?"
Certainly he had not expected that answer. "I am twenty-six," he said.
"But why?"
"Twenty-six!" Her eyes were still closed. "I am thirty," she said
softly. "That is why."
He felt quite bewildered; in a maze as to her meaning. "I know you've
had a bad time, too," he said again. "You'll tell me all about it, won't
you? Don't join the bridge crowd. They'll be playing there for hours,
and we can sit here and have ourselves to ourselves. Do! Do! I want to
know such a lot, and you'll tell me all."
She drew her hand gently away. "Will I?" she whispered. "Will I,
truly?"
He seized her hand a second time, "Yes--yes, you will. You're going to
be so kind--so good--to me. You're going to let me have your trouble to
think of instead of mine. I'm so tired of the ceaseless agony of mine. I
didn't do anything, you know. 'Fore God, I didn't do anything. It was
all a plot, and now they've ruined her life and mine. Perhaps it was a
plot with you, too."
"No," she breathed. "With me it was a plan."
"Never mind the difference," he protested. "They say, you know, that I
was in love with the mother. I wasn't. Really, I wasn't. But they told
her and the engagement was broken. It was all the most horrible thing
imaginable. You'll hear it on all sides.
"Of course no one would believe that story about you, but every one
believes the one about me. They haven't ruined you, but they have ruined
me. And then people think that Scotland should have helped me." He
paused, quite pale, his voice shaking.
His hand had closed harder and harder on hers, and now he drew it
nearer. When he had pressed it between both of his own for a long
minute, he felt a painful point within his palm, and, freeing her, he
looked. On her third finger sparkled a diamond cross.
It was a great, awkward thing to be attached to a ring, although lovely
enough in itself. The cross had marked his flesh. He turned her hand and
saw that the ring was shaped and carven like a crown--a crown with
points.
"The cross and the crown?" he questioned then. "Your own design?"
"His mother's," she said, still with closed eyes. "If I had been his
wife it would have been mine. But as I can never be his wife he gave it
to me to wear--because I loved him."
"The man who backed out?" Carleigh asked.
"The same man," she made answer.
"Stupid idiot!"
"With all my heart."
With which she opened her eyes and rose abruptly.
"You are very young," she said in the most casual of tones. "Oh, dear,
but you are so very young. When you've gone further on in life you'll
know that very few of those that really love can ever marry. I almost
think that it is the first sign of a great love to be separated. And a
good thing too. It leaves one one's dreams."
The tone startled him, but the matter of her speech suited. She moved
toward the fire. Kneedrock stood there, facing the chimney-piece.
"What are you doing?" she asked him, gaily. "Have you stopped playing?"
"They don't want me just now," he said.
Carleigh felt annoyed; but he followed close after her.
"We were talking of such interesting things," she went on, still
addressing the viscount's back.
"I dare say. What for instance?" he asked, without turning.
"I've told Sir Caryll that you will tell him all of my story," she
pursued, ignoring the question. "You will--won't you?"
"The whole of it?"
"Yes."
"I hope that it will interest him more than it does me."
"If it bores you to repeat it, you needn't," said Nina, gently. "But it
is rather dramatic, you know. I mean that night, and all that happened."
"Poor Darling!" muttered Kneedrock.
Carleigh felt most uncomfortable.
"Nibbetts was there, you know," she explained tranquilly. "He was always
a friend of the family."
"We're first cousins," said the viscount shortly.
"And once--once, in India--he fought for my good name," she continued,
easily.
"The good name of the family," the cousin corrected--unnecessarily it
seemed to Sir Caryll.
"It came to the same thing," she added.
Carleigh wished that the other man would go back to the game and thus
end this bewilderingly frank conversation. And the next instant he did,
and they two were alone again.
"You _have_ had a hard time," he said, quickly. "I fancy I ought to know
all about the story, Mrs. Darling, but I don't. I haven't any
connections in the army. We are all diplomatic people. It's very stupid
in us, I suppose."
"Not quite that," she returned. "I've sometimes thought that we are
stupid to go in for the army so strongly. But it is all an affair of
blood and bigness, I imagine."
He laughed. "Blood and bigness," he repeated. "How cleverly you put it!
And with us it is--"
"Brains and littleness," she cut in.
Then he laughed again, outright. So outright that those at the tables
heard, threw up their heads, listened, and then bowed their heads
again, masking significant smiles.
"There is no one like Nina," Lady Bellingdown commented under her
breath.
"Oh, he is saved, if you mean that," Sir George declared lightly.
"I told you so," reminded the duke, proudly. "I said: 'Nina will wake
him up.' She always wakes everybody up. She says what you wouldn't think
she'd say, and it wakes one up most uncommonly."
And they went forward with their game. For that matter so did Mrs.
Darling and Carleigh.
"Are you stopping here for long?" he asked.
"For as long as I can stand it."
"You mean--"
She clasped her hands behind her head and gazed intently into the very
soul of the embers. "I mean that I soon choke and stifle in the close
air of man. I am happier alone."
Freshly startled, he stared afresh. "It's always bad, then?" he asked
sympathetically. "You don't get over it?"
"It's always bad." She paused a second or more, and then turned toward
him, her eyes narrowed in that characteristic style which Kneedrock had
described so harshly.
"But it is glorious, all the same," she cried with an odd little soft
rapture. "You haven't come to that yet. You've not gone on to where one
fights for the mere joy of loving love, in life, as one fights for
breath in a suffocating pit. Why shouldn't I love to love? I love to do
it. I love it all. I'd double the stakes at every loss, if I could. Do
you follow me?"
"N-no," stammered Sir Caryll, a trifle stunned by the sudden shock of a
boomerang idea. "N-no--I--er--I--"
"But you will to-morrow," she declared, nodding at him. "You will
to-morrow. I'll go first and you'll follow."
"Oh, if you mean that--"
"I never give up," she asserted. "I never will--"
"Does it look hopeless?" he broke in, laughing.
"I will tell you that to-morrow."
"When to-morrow?"
"We'll get off an hour before luncheon. I'll be down here waiting for
you at a quarter to twelve precisely."
"You'll find _me_ waiting," said Carleigh, smiling.