"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."
During the days that followed Dick Wantele's return home, it seemed to
him as though a magic wand had been waved over Rede Place.
Mrs. Maule had no wish to keep her famous guest to herself. Even to the
two men who watched her with a rather cruel scrutiny so much was clear.
She seemed, indeed, to delight in exhibiting General Lingard to the
neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood were only too willing to fall in
with her pleasure.
The gatherings were small, when one came to think of it--eight or ten
people to lunch, ten or twelve people to dinner.
How accustomed Dick grew to the formula which had at first so much
surprised him! "Dear Mrs. Maule," or "Dear Mr. Wantele" (as the case
might be) "We hear that General Lingard is staying at Rede Place. It
would give us very great pleasure if you would bring him over to lunch
or dinner, whichever suits you best."
But there Athena wisely drew the line. No, she would not take General
Lingard, or allow him to be taken, here and there and everywhere! He
was at Rede Place for rest. But the agreeable people, the people who
would amuse and interest him, and the people who if dull had, as it
were, a right to meet the lion, were asked in their turn to come.
They would arrive about half-past one, filling the beautiful rooms
generally so empty of human sounds, with a pleasant bustle of talk and
laughter. They would lunch in the tapestry dining-room, none too young
or too old to enjoy the far-famed skill of Richard Maule's Corsican
chef; and then, according to their fancy, or according to Athena's whim,
they would wander about the house, looking at the pictures and fingering
the curios which enjoyed an almost legendary reputation; or better still
stream out into the formal gardens, now brilliant with strangely tinted
autumn flowers, and fantastically peopled with the marble fauns and
stone dryads brought from Italy and Greece by old Theophilus Joy.
Finally they would go away, thanking Athena earnestly for the delightful
time they had had and telling themselves and each other that Mrs. Maule
was, after all, a very charming person, and that the stories of her
heartless conduct to her husband, of her long absences from home, of
her--well--her flirtations, were probably all quite untrue!
The dinner-parties were slightly more formal affairs, but they also,
thanks to all those concerned--and especially to Mrs. Maule--were quite
successful, and very pleasant.
For the first time for many years, Athena Maule and Dick Wantele were
thrown into a curious kind of intimacy. They had constantly to consult
each other, and to confer together. "You see, I want to get all this
sort of thing over before Jane arrives!" she once exclaimed; and Wantele
had looked at her musingly. After all, perhaps she spoke the truth.
Strange ten days! No wonder that Dick Wantele was surprised, almost
bewildered, by Athena in her new rôle--by Athena, that is, in the part
of good-humoured, graceful, tactful hostess of Rede Place. Hitherto his
imagination had never followed his cousin's wife on the long visits she
paid to other people's houses. Now, with astonishment he realised that
she must be, even apart from her singular beauty, and what had become to
him her perverse, and most dangerous charm, an agreeable guest.
She thought of everything, she thought of everybody, even of Mabel
Digby. Mabel Digby was allowed to have her full share in the
festivities, in the glorifications--for they were nothing else--of
General Lingard, and that although Athena had never liked Mabel, and
thought her a tiresome, priggish girl. Yes, all that fell to Mrs.
Maule's share was managed with infinite tact, good humour, and good
taste. The guests were not allowed to bother Richard, or to interfere
with Richard's comfort and love of ease. Occasionally one or two old
friends, who perchance had hardly seen him for years, would be taken
into the Greek Room to talk to him for ten minutes....
Not the least strange thing was that General Lingard apparently enjoyed
it all. Sometimes, nay often, he said a deprecating word or two to one
or other of his hosts--a word or two implying that he saw the humour of
the whole thing. But within the next hour he would be accepting rather
shame-facedly the flattery lavished on him by some pretty, silly girl,
or, what was more to his credit, listening patiently to an older woman's
account of a son who was in "the service," and for whom the great man
she was speaking to might "do something."
* * * * *
To the amateur soldier who in any capacity forms part of an army on
active service, the most extraordinary thing, that which at once strikes
his imagination and goes on doing so repeatedly until the campaign is
over, is the fact that for most of the weary time, he and his fellows
are fighting an invisible enemy.
During each of these long, unreal days when he had scarce a moment to
himself, for it fell to his share to see that everything ran smoothly,
Dick Wantele found himself engaged in close watchful combat with an
invisible foe. He would have given much to be convinced that he was
pursuing a phantom bred of his own evil imagination, and sometimes he
was so convinced.
Then the mists with which he was surrounded would part, suddenly, and
the fearsome thing was there, before him.
Mabel Digby was the first lantern which lighted up the dark recess into
which Wantele's mind was already glancing with such foreboding.
It was the third day after his return home, and with the aid of
telegrams and messengers a considerable party had been gathered together
for what had been a really amusing and successful luncheon party. When
the last guest--with the exception of Mabel, who hardly counted as a
guest--had been duly sped, Mrs. Maule and General Lingard slipped away
together; and Wantele offered to walk back with Mabel to the Small Farm.
They were already some way from the house, when she told him a piece of
news that was weighing very heavily on her heart.
"Have you been told," she asked, "about Bayworth Kaye? He's at Aden, it
seems, and seriously ill. They think it's typhoid. His parents only
heard yesterday. They're awfully worried about him. Mrs. Kaye can't make
up her mind whether she ought to go out to him or not."
And then, as he turned to her, startled, genuinely sorry, he saw a look
on her young face he had never seen there before; it was a terrible
expression--one of aversion and of passionate contempt.
Mrs. Maule and General Lingard were walking together, pacing slowly side
by side. Though a turn of the path brought them very near, Lingard was
so absorbed in what Athena was saying that he did not see Wantele and
Miss Digby. But Athena saw them, and with a quick, skilful movement she
guided her own and her companion's steps in a direction that made it
impossible for the four to meet.
Mabel Digby remained silent for some moments, and then she turned
abruptly to Wantele.
"Why isn't Jane Oglander here?" she asked. "I thought you expected her
last week. Her friend must be a very selfish woman!"
"I don't think Jane would care for the sort of thing we had to-day,"
Wantele said reflectively. Why had Mabel looked at Athena with so
strange--so--so contemptuous a look? "Still, she'll have to get used to
seeing him lionized."
"Write and ask her to come as soon as she can, Dick. It's--it's stupid
of her to stay away like that!"
Wantele glanced round at the speaker; and then, to his concern and
surprise, he saw that her face was flushed, her brown eyes soft with
tears. "I was thinking of Bayworth," she faltered. "He looked so
dreadfully unhappy when he went away, Dick, and--and I can't help
knowing why."
The hours and the days wore themselves away quickly--all too quickly for
Athena Maule and Hew Lingard, slowly and full of acute discomfort and
suspicion for Dick Wantele.
Occasionally the young man tried to tell himself that perhaps the real
reason of his discontent was their guest's attitude to himself. It was
clear that the famous soldier did not like the younger of his hosts, in
fact he hardly made any attempt to conceal his prejudice, and the two
men, though of course forced into a kind of intimacy, saw as little as
they could of one another.
It was with his hostess that General Lingard spent every odd
moment,--every moment that he could spare from the work on which he was
engaged--a book he had promised to write by a certain date. And after a
very few days Wantele discovered with amusement, discomfiture, amazement
that Lingard was actually consulting Athena about his book, reading her
passages as he wrote them.
And then Wantele told himself with shame that the doing of this was not
so foolish or so strange, after all,--for the book was to appeal to the
general public, and Mrs. Maule might reasonably be supposed to belong to
that public.
But not even Wantele in his darkest, most suspicious moods suspected the
depth, the reality of Lingard's peril.
The exciting, exhilarating experiences which were now befalling him
produced on one who was essentially a man of action, not a philosopher
and thinker, an extraordinary mental and even physical effect.
The absurd homage, the crude flattery, to which Lingard found himself
subjected by the young and the foolish among Mrs. Maule's guests annoyed
rather than pleased him, but he would be moved to the soul when a word
said--often an awkward, shy word--showed how great was the place he had
conquered in the estimation of those of his fellow-countrymen and
countrywomen who were jealous for their country's glory.
He had instinctively discounted the newspaper fame showered so freely
upon him on his immediate arrival in England; he was humorously
conscious that he owed it in a great measure to the absence of any other
competing lion of the moment.
True, he had at once received a number of invitations from hostesses of
the kind who make it their business to secure the latest celebrity, and
he had grudged the time he spent over the writing of coldly civil
refusals. Lingard had also been plagued with innumerable letters from
people who vaguely hoped he would be able to do something which would
contribute in some way to their advancement, or that of their near
relations. And then there had come absurd and painful communications
from lunatics, begging-letter writers, and autograph hunters.
Not till he came to Rede Place did the position he had won become really
clear to him, though pride and good breeding made him appear to take his
triumph lightly.
And Athena Maule shared it all with him! The very letters he received
were, at her entreaty, shown to, and discussed with her in a way which
gave each of them a special value and importance. Athena was much more
impressed with his triumph than he allowed himself to be; and when alone
with her,--and they were very often alone together,--Lingard
unconsciously moved in a delightful atmosphere of subtle, wordless
sympathy and flattery.
Jane Oglander, absorbed in the physical crisis through which was passing
the friend with whom she was staying, became even to her lover
infinitely remote; though Lingard liked to remind himself, now and
again, that it was Jane who had given him his new, enchanting comrade
and friend.
Athena Maule appeared to Hew Lingard the most selfless human being he
had ever known. And yet, each day, when the guests, the people she so
kindly asked to meet him, were all gone, and when he and she were
enjoying an hour of rest and solitude together, to which he had now
learnt to look forward so eagerly, she was always ready to talk to him
about herself. Soon there was no subject of conversation between them
which held for Lingard so potent, so entrancing a lure.
There came a day when the soldier, more moved, more secretly excited,
more exhilarated than usual, was able to express to her something of
what he felt.
Among those who had been bidden to Rede Place was an old man, a Crimean
veteran who in his day had enjoyed, though of course on a smaller scale,
much the same kind of experience Hew Lingard was now passing through.
The two had been allowed, by tacit consent, to have a considerable
amount of talk together, and Lingard had been greatly touched and moved
by the other's words of understanding praise, and appreciation, of the
difficult, perilous task he had accomplished.
Sure of her sympathy and understanding, he told Mrs. Maule all that the
veteran's words had meant to him, and at once, as was her wont,--though
he remained quite unconscious of it,--she brought the subject round to
the personal, the intimate standpoint: "You don't know," she said
softly, "what it means to me to know that you met that dear old man
here."
And that had given him his chance of saying what he felt each day more
and more, namely that he owed everything, _everything_ to her,--to her
thoughtful kindness and to her instinctive knowledge of what would at
once please and move him.
How amazed he would have been could he have seen into Athena's heart!
She had thought it rather absurd that Lingard should care so much for
praise uttered by such an unimportant person as the poor, broken old
officer who led a quiet and rather eccentric existence on the edge of a
lonely common some way from Rede Place. He had originally come into the
neighbourhood in order to be near Mabel Digby's father, and Athena had
never thought him to be of the slightest consequence,--indeed, she had
only assented to his being asked to meet General Lingard because Mabel
had earnestly begged that he might be.
* * * * *
Conscious hypocrisy is far rarer than the world is apt to believe, and
only succeeds in its designs with those who are mentally ill-equipped.
The women who work the most mischief in civilized communities are
supreme egoists, and an egoist is never a conscious hypocrite.
When dealing with a being of the opposite sex to her own, Athena Maule
always held up to his enraptured gaze a magic mirror in which was
reflected the beautiful and pathetic figure of a deeply injured woman:
one who had made a gallant fight against the harsh fate which had
married her to such a man as Richard Maule, and which placed her in
subjection to so cruel and contemptible a creature as was Richard's
kinsman and heir, Dick Wantele.
Mrs. Maule was also affected, and very powerfully so, by all that took
place during the ten days which elapsed between Dick Wantele's return
and Jane Oglander's arrival.
The people among whom she habitually lived knew nothing of such men as
Hew Lingard. Rich and idle always, vicious or virtuous according to
their temperament and the measure of their temptations, they had no use
for the great workers of the world, unless indeed those workers'
struggles, victories, and defeats lay in the world of finance.
Thus it was that General Lingard presented to Athena Maule the
attractive human bait of something new, untasted, unrehearsed.
She did not mean to act ill by Jane Oglander; on the contrary, as the
days went on, Lingard's betrothed became in Mrs. Maule's imagination a
cruel, almost a pitiless rival. She could not help contrasting her own
life with that which was now opening before her friend. Jane was about
to be lifted, through no merit, no effort of her own, into a delightful,
a passionately interesting and shifting atmosphere, that which surrounds
a commanding officer's wife in one of the great military centres of the
Empire at home or abroad.
Athena longed to try her power--the power she knew to be almost
limitless in one direction--on the type of man with whom Jane would
henceforth be surrounded, a type of whose very presence Jane, she knew
well, would scarcely be aware! It was strange, it--it was horrible to
think that Jane would be leading a delightful and stimulating existence
while she, Athena, would be going the same dreary round among the same
selfish, stupid people of whom she had grown so tired.
During those days when she was acting, for the first time, as the real
mistress of Rede Place, and as hostess to a man whom all the world
wished at that moment to meet and entertain, Mrs. Maule told herself
again and again, with deep, wordless anger, that life was indeed using
her hardly.
How ironic the stroke of fate which made a Jane Oglander be chosen by a
Hew Lingard! There was one consolation--but Athena was in no mood for
finding consolation--in the thought that both General Lingard and Jane
would ever regard Mrs. Richard Maule as the most welcome, the most
honoured of their guests. Thanks to that fact, she would enter and
doubtless achieve the social conquest of that official section of the
English world into which her incursions had been few and seldom
repeated.