Rosemary did not sec Elza again that day. Just before dinner Rosa came
with a short scribbled note from her. "Maurus is very restless," it
said, "I don't like to leave him. Will you and dear Lord Tarkington
forgive me if I don't join you at dinner?"
The evening was dreary. Jasper said very little, and Rosemary felt
thoroughly out of tune with him; he had a meek air about him that
irritated her. Hers was not a nature to sympathize with remorse, and
Jasper's manner gave the idea that he regretted having forced her into a
decision. So she gave curt answers when he spoke to her, and after
dinner he retired into the smoking-room with the excuse that he had some
business letters to write. She sat reading most of the evening, her
nerves on edge, hearing all sorts of mysterious sounds through the
apparent stillness of the house.
When Jasper came to say "good night" she felt sorry for him. He looked
forlorn and miserable, and reason told Rosemary that he of all people
ought not to be allowed to suffer through a situation that was none of
his making. Poor Jasper! She, his wife, had dragged him, unwillingly
enough, into this impasse wherein his quiet habits of a wealthy English
gentleman were hopelessly perturbed and his outlook outraged at every
point. So, after she had returned his last kiss and saw him going
upstairs, slowly, dragging one step after another, almost like an old
man, she ran after him and linked her arm in his, and gave him a tender
and sympathetic smile. The look of gratitude which he gave her in return
warmed her heart. Here at least was no divided duty. In a moment of
pique--it was nothing less than that--she had linked her fate with
Jasper Tarkington, accepted from him all the lavish gifts that wealth
could buy, and which he so generously bestowed upon her. In exchange for
that he only asked for her love; and if the love which he gave and
demanded did not reach that sublime ideal of which Rosemary had once
dreamed, at any rate it was loyal and ungrudging, and she had no right
to let her caprice stand in the way of his happiness.
It was perhaps strange that these thoughts should come to her at a
moment when her whole soul was torn with a terrible sorrow and a racking
anxiety; perhaps they came because on this very day she had made the
greatest abdication of her will that she had ever done in all her life.
She had always acted for herself, judged for herself, set herself a high
standard of straight living and straight thinking, and lived up to it.
To-day she had left a decision which should have been hers in the hands
of another. She knew that she had done right, but her pride was
humiliated, and to soothe that pride she set herself a fresh standard of
duty to Jasper and determined to live up to that.
But ever afterwards she turned away with a shudder from thoughts of this
evening, when she probed the full depth of Jasper's passion for her, and
saw before her like a row of spectres the vision, of an endless vista of
years, during which every caress would mean for her an effort, and every
kiss a lie.
The new standard of duty which she had set herself would be very
difficult to live up to. She had never loved Jasper, only hoped that she
might learn to love him one day, but on this fateful evening she
realized that she might in time learn to hate him.
When at last she was alone she found herself unable to rest. Through the
open window the sounds of the oncoming storm became more and more
insistent. It was rolling in on the bosom of the clouds from over the
mountains in the west. Already one or two vivid flashes of lightning had
rent the sky, and now and then great gusts of wind swept across the
valley and sent a soughing and whispering through the trees. The poplars
bowed their crests, and the twisted branches of the old acacias shivered
and cracked in the blast. It was insufferably hot, and there was a smell
of sulphur in the air. Rosemary in a thin lace wrap could not succeed in
keeping cool. She stood by the open window, longing for the storm to
break in all its fury, so that she might be rid of this feeling of
oppression which was so unendurable, because the storm, far or near, had
gone on almost uninterruptedly for over twenty-four hours. Rosemary's
thoughts now were with Elza. She pictured to herself the unfortunate
woman wrestling with a decision which either way must mean the breaking
of her heart. Elza, who outwardly seemed just a soft, futile, pampered
doll, with thoughts fixed on her menus and her servants, was a veritable
heroine, strong and tenacious, proud without vanity, loving without
weakness, the type that represented everything that was finest and best
in a woman. She was of the stuff that religious martyrs were made of in
the past, and she would not come to a decision without a terrible
struggle. If in the end her heart overruled the dictates of justice and
of right, her remorse would be as devastating as her courage hitherto
had been sublime.
If Elza had been a religious woman she would not have suffered nearly so
cruelly. The pagan knows nothing of the comfort of prayer, of diving
blindly from the rocks of care into the ocean of God's love. And Elza
was only a pagan from whom the thin veneer of Christianity laid on in
early life had been rubbed off long ago. She would not now be on her
knees, murmuring with heaven-born resignation: "Lord, not my will, but
thine be done!" she would be fighting a tough battle, wrestling with her
heart, castigating her tenderest feelings, fighting alone, unaided,
unconsoled.
Poor, poor Elza! Rosemary, looking out into the storm, seemed to see the
pretty round face distorted by grief, the big, child-like eyes gazing
bewildered on the immensity of the puzzle which the Fates had set for
her to solve. And while Rosemary gazed the storm became full of
pictures, each lightning flash revealed a face. Elza! Philip, dark-eyed,
enthusiastic, the idealist! Anna, gentle and resigned. Maurus, the man,
the head of the family, the trunk of the tree weaker than its branches.
And then Peter. Oh, Peter filled the night with his presence. There was
Peter in flannels, a boy with bright eyes and curly head, fighting his
life's battles with a cricket bat and a joke. Peter home on leave from
that hell in Belgium, receiving from his king the supreme reward for an
act of almost unequalled bravery, of which, in his boyish way, he would
often look quite ashamed. And Peter that night in June, long ago.
Peter's strong arms round her shoulders. Peter's impassioned words,
vying in melody with the nightingale. Peter's kiss that opened wide the
portal of Heaven; and, lastly, Peter the mysterious, the subtle, unseen
influence in whose wake strode sorrow and disaster. And the rumbling of
the thunder brought back to Rosemary's ears Jasper's words of warning:
"I only wish I had your belief in coincidences"; and "Ever since Peter's
arrival I have seen nothing but one calamity after another fall upon
these wretched people here." And then that awful, awful indictment which
she had been unable to refute: "Don't you know that Peter Blakeney is a
paid spy of the Roumanian Government?" The thunder brought the echo of
those terrible words. Louder and louder, for the storm was drawing
nearer, and the echo of those awful words drowned the very sound of
thunder.
All at once the storm broke in all its fury; there was a deafening crash
and a flash of lightning so vivid that for the space of one second the
garden stood revealed as if in broad daylight before Rosemary's gaze,
clear-cut in every detail, every tree, every leaf, every flower, every
ripple upon the lake, each pebble upon the garden walk; and in that one
second Rosemary had seen Peter standing on the gravel walk, not fifty
yards from her window, and looking up at her--gazing. She caught his
eyes in that one flash. He was dressed in a dark suit, his cricketing
cap was on his head. It had been an instant's flash, but she had seen
him, and he was gazing up at her window. And their eyes had met in that
one flash, right through the storm.
After that all was darkness, and though from time to time the night was
rent by lightning flashes, Rosemary did not see Peter again. And when
later on the storm subsided, and, wearied out, she went to bed and
slept, she dreamt that all her suspicions of Peter had been proved to be
wrong. She dreamt that she was a few years younger, that they were on
the river together, in a punt, and that the nightingale was singing. She
dreamt of the lapping of the water against the low-lying river bank, of
the scent of meadow-sweet, and of the honey-coloured moon that painted
long lines of golden light upon the reeds. She dreamt that Peter kissed
her, and that she was free to give him kiss for kiss.