cosily round the fire, with the lights soft and the fire an enormous
red glow. Patricia was very subdued. She was happy and unhappy at the
same time. The contrast of this evening, and this quiet fireside, with
the previous evening's hot and tempting excitement, was impressive; it
shook her. She knew that this was in some way better than the other;
she felt herself yielding to it upon the one hand as she had done
upon the other to passion; and as she knew and remembered, she became
confusedly restless. She wondered if the Maynes always spent their
evenings quietly, and in such blessed and unendurable tranquillity.
"I couldn't bear to," she thought, with the tears starting into her
eyes. "I'm wicked. I must have excitement. I couldn't stand it. I
should scream, and make a dash--like Amy running for the train!"
But as if Claudia had guessed what were Patricia's thoughts, she said:
"This is the first evening Edgar and I have both been at home for about
six weeks--seven weeks--except that night when you came to dinner."
Patricia sighed wearily, her eyes closing in despair at the sense of
guilt which oppressed her. There was a moment's silence. In the middle
of it, Claudia rose. "Oh, by the way, Edgar. Patricia's hard up. She
wants to ask your advice. I promised you'd help her."
"No, no. I don't ..." began Patricia, and looked round for support. But
Claudia was no longer in the room. The door was closed. She was alone
with Edgar, as one imprisoned; and everything Edgar stood for in her
mind was hostile to passion and folly and hot-mouthed temptation.
She could not bring herself to meet his glance. She could look no
higher than the shoulders of his dark grey tweed suit. His small and
well-shaped feet were opposite her own. He lay back in a chair which
was the counterpart of the one in which Patricia sat. Edgar, the maker
of this home, who breathed restraint and clear understanding and
ridicule of emotional recklessness. She was ashamed and tongue-tied.
But one grey tweed suit is very like another, and when Edgar spoke
she could not help quickly glancing up, with resentment of his
unsusceptibility to the charm which she knew herself to be capable of
exercising. He was very brown, and his brown eyes were very honest, and
his lips were very clearly and pleasantly moulded, as though he smiled
easily. He was smiling now.
"I expect you'd better, hadn't you?" he asked, with perfect gravity and
good-humour.
There came into Patricia's heart a trust which was rare, and an
irresistible call to candour. It annihilated her resentment, her
hostile clinging to the memory of Monty and the fever in her blood
which he represented.
"I didn't mean to ask your advice," she said, looking straight at
Edgar. "You couldn't advise me. You couldn't understand how I'm placed."
"Of course I couldn't," agreed Edgar. "Unless you'd tell me. Of course,
you _could_ do that."
"Are you laughing at me?" demanded Patricia, with sharp anger. Then,
the question unsolved, she went on. "It's quite true. I'm coming to the
end of my money; and I don't know what to do. I'm not making any money
just now: only spending it. And I ought to work."
"What sort of work?" asked Edgar. "What can you do?"
The colour filled Patricia's cheeks. She was again ashamed before him,
with the same feeling of shackled personality.
"I'm afraid, nothing," she said, speaking at first with a sort of dry
impertinence, and afterwards with rather wistful humility. "Nothing
that you would regard as anything. I've been writing. I want to write.
I think I've got talent. But ... I'm only a beginner. You see, I was in
an office during the War; and I had a little money when my uncle died;
and I've sold a few of the things I've written."
"What d'you mean by nothing that I should regard as anything?" inquired
Edgar. Patricia remained silent, the colour slowly rising, and her
heart frozen. She could not withstand his personality, but she was
fighting against its approach to herself. "You want to keep on the life
of a woman of leisure!" he proceeded, smiling again. He changed his
attitude, sitting more upright in his chair. "It's awfully hard to go
back to drudgery."
Patricia's heart leapt--at the thought, and at his affectionate
kindness.
"I simply couldn't," she cried breathlessly.
"I'm sure you could. You could do anything you chose." There came from
those steady eyes a look that was full of encouragement, of sympathy.
To Edgar there was no question. He trusted her. It was he who evoked
her quality. Patricia found herself agitated in self-abhorrence.
"O-oh!" she cried, in pain. "If you _knew_...." The painful colour
again flooded her cheeks.
"Suppose you tell me," begged Edgar.
"No." Patricia stared into the fire, her hands clasped upon the arm
of her chair. She was driven to defiance that shocked herself. "I
couldn't. And you couldn't understand. There are all sorts of things
in my _nature_ that you couldn't understand. You ... you've got a cold
will. You don't shrink and waver. You're not impulsive and ...."
Edgar rose from his chair, his hands in his pockets. He stood looking
away from Patricia, as if in deep thought. At last he said:
"Do you resent my will, that you call it cold? Why should you do that?
It's unjust. I've no wish but to help you. As a matter of fact, I
haven't a cold will. I'm obstinate; and I shrink and waver. But I don't
shrink and waver once I've made up my mind. I made up my mind some
time ago that I loved you and wanted to marry you, and to help you; and
so there's no more hesitation about _that_."
Patricia was astounded. She turned sharply, her lips parted in
amazement. He was in earnest. His words made her heart race. Then anger
came--and again shame--and an emotion which she did not analyse.
"Marry? When.... Don't be ridiculous!" cried Patricia.
Edgar looked down at her, apparently as grave and unmoved as before,
although his voice was changed.
"Why not?" he asked. "I'm in love with you. Will you marry me?"
Patricia laughed, almost savagely. She was deeply moved, and her
present emotion, in conflict with all she had been feeling so recently,
made her voice loud and angry, as if she were afraid.
"Love me ... I don't feel that you love me," she said with bitterness.
"Something quite different. I feel that you're interested in me----"
"Well, I should hope so!" cried Edgar, apparently amazed. "Isn't that
essential?"
"And I don't love you," said Patricia, vehemently. "I don't!" She was
still emphatically protesting. "I respect you. I think you're ... I
think you're everything that's kind and ... inhuman." She was trying to
remain calm, to equal his restraint with her own; and she was failing.
The failure gave her a passionate sense of inferiority to him that
was intolerable. Suddenly she began to cry, her hands outstretched
helplessly before her. "It's no good.... It's no good!" she sobbed
through her tears, her little face distorted with the torment of her
heart. "I'm ... an awful ... _beast_!"
Edgar took the outstretched hands in his own, dropping to one knee in
order to do so. He was so gentle, so extraordinarily inviting of trust
and sincerity and goodness, that Patricia's head came forward for the
merest instant, and touched his shoulder, as if there to find relief
from her own suffering.
"Do think of it," he urged, his face so near her own, so comprehending,
so full of love. "Patricia ...."
She rose in anguish, beating her hands together.
"You think it's so simple. You think it's a question of talking and
persuading. You don't know what love is," she said, in this violent,
strangled voice. And then, as if indignantly, she added: "Nor do I! Nor
do I! I _couldn't_. I don't know how to love. I'm too much of a beast.
I'm too selfish and ugly-hearted! And if you knew anything about my
nature you wouldn't _want_ to love me. You'd hate me." And with that
she began to dry her eyes, staring away from him, and trembling.
"You're so silly to talk of being wicked," Edgar said. "How are you
wicked?" A very faint tinge of humour came into his voice at her
persistent remorse. "What's your particular form of wickedness? Don't
be so vague, my dear. You'd enjoy it more if you _were_ thoroughly
wicked. Let me help you not to be wicked!"
Patricia made no answer. When he repeated her name she ignored him.
In a minute, as if she were trying to be conversational, she went on,
still in a dreary, hopeless tone:
"Isn't it funny. I've been coming across ... all sorts of people's
ideas of love ... lately--both girls and men;--and they're all of them
different. They're none of them ... mine. And I _must_ have _my_ way of
love!"
Edgar was also upon his feet, facing her.
"What _is_ your way of love?" he asked. "It's my way, too. The others
aren't love. They're phantasms." But Patricia would not speak. Only a
little tearful smile, as at some baffling secret knowledge which he
could never share, played upon her lips and in her eyes. The smile, as
well as her silence, provoked his complaint. "There's a sort of sublime
cheek about you," said Edgar, wonderingly, "that isn't likely to be
equalled. I asked you to marry me. You ramble on about other people's
ideas of love. The ideas of other people don't interest me."
"Exactly!" cried Patricia, thrown back into anger and shame and
resistance. "That's exactly why nobody could ever possibly love you.
You're only interested in your own ideas."
"They're not enough, my dear. I want _your_ love."
"I could _never_ love you," said Patricia, trying to speak coolly, and
remaining unconvincing in her childish emphasis. "I could never love
anybody so ... so bitterly inhuman!"
"Well, won't you try?" he urged, puzzled at her quarrelsomeness and
unable to reconcile it with the indifference he had feared. "You like
me, don't you?"
Patricia shook her head, unexpectedly.
"No!" she cried. "I _don't_ like you. I hate you. I shall always hate
you. You make me feel such a cad!"
And with that she left him, going in search of Claudia. Edgar, his
heart beating, and his temper ruffled, remained standing as he had
stood during the latter part of their interview. He did not see her
again that night. She had left the house by the time Claudia returned
to the room, and brother and sister averted their eyes from each other
at their first encounter.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: PLAYING WITH FIRE
i
Patricia made some important discoveries about herself within the next
twelve hours. She was sleepless, and her brain was active. She found
that all love-stories were entirely wrong, that they were too simple
and too prudish. They did not represent her own feelings at all. And
the more she tried to discover what her own feelings were, the more
bewildered she became. Like so many other matters connected with
herself, as to which she had no standards of comparison, her feelings
seemed to Patricia to be unique. She was both ashamed and exultant at
this.
At first she was too frantically troubled at the position in which she
found herself to be anything but exclamatory. Within an amazingly short
time she had allowed three men to make love to her, if with certain
restrictions; and her sense of purity was horrified at this. There
immediately followed, by reaction, some vehement attempts to justify
her own conduct. But when she had been hysterical for a little while
Patricia became calmer. The calm was even more false than the hysteria.
It was in fact a feature of advanced hysteria. She was not equal to the
strain which the events of the last few days had created.
"I don't love any of them," she said. "I'm too selfish--too wicked. I
don't deserve to be loved. And I'm _not_ loved, either. I wanted Harry
to adore me. He couldn't! I want Monty ... he fascinates me. He excites
me. I like it, and hate myself for liking it. He's passionate; he's
sensual. And _I'm_ passionate; _I'm_ sensual. It's the wicked side of
me coming out. And I only want Edgar to respect me. Respect!" She gave
a hollow little mocking laugh. "He doesn't know me. He doesn't care
for me. He couldn't adore me, because he despises me. He couldn't be
passionate about me, because he's too cold. He's cold, I tell you. He
doesn't know what it is to want somebody _fiercely_. I've got no power
over him at all. And I must have power! I _must_!"
ii
Her mind went creeping back to Edgar, with a sort of raging contempt.
"He thinks love's an endless conversation. He thinks it's like paying
another person's daily cheque into your own account, and being able
to draw cheques to the same amount. It's a transaction. It _isn't_.
There's no romance in him. He's business. He'd engage me as a wife
as he'd engage a secretary. 'Good post.' A considerate employer!
Everything in the day's round--breakfast, love, business ... I _hate_
him! I could never move his judgment. He'd be kind; but he'd never
really give in to me. Besides, I don't want to be just a part of a
man's life. I wouldn't. I must be the whole of it. I'm too big to be a
part of anything. The man I marry must adore me....
"It's strange. I could--I couldn't ever feel any shyness or pride
with Edgar. I could tell him anything that came into my head.... No,
I couldn't. He's intelligent; but he's amused at me. He doesn't take
me seriously. That's his limitation. He thinks I'm a funny little
insect. If I told him I was wonderful, he'd say, 'In what way?' Fancy
trying to live with a man who asks what your ideas of love are! No, he
wouldn't.... He'd say, quite calmly: 'Yes, I suppose you are. We all
are, in our way.' He does everything with his head. He hasn't _got_ a
heart! He'd think me silly and vain and....
"Of course, if I was worn out--a poor, broken dispirited girl who just
wanted a home, and food, and if I fitted in with his work, then it
would be different. I'm not! I'm young! I want love and life, and other
young people ... and admiration. I want power. And I want to be loved
for my beauty ... as Monty loves me. I want to be desired, as Monty
desires me. Edgar _couldn't_ feel for me in that way.... He only cares
for himself.... For me, perhaps, in a funny way. But only as something
secondary to himself.
"I could go on living with Edgar all my life....
"I couldn't live with him at all. I could have lived with Harry,
because ... Harry's stupid. He's obtuse. But he's charming. Edgar's not
charming. He doesn't _want_ to be. He could be, if he wanted to be. He
only wants to be quite honest, quite fair.... My God! Fancy wanting to
be quite fair in love!
"Why is it that I attract these men?" She laughed again, murmuring. She
was diverted at her own scorn of her three lovers. Had life nothing
better to offer her than a choice between charm and desire and cool
affection? It seemed not. And yet on the whole, they were personable.
Harry and Monty were handsome. Edgar, if not handsome, was not
fantastically ill-looking. He had a good plain clean-cut face, and his
hair and eyes and teeth were good. Oh, she admitted that! But she was
thinking of them, not as men whom one might notice or fail to notice in
the street, but as possible husbands....
Not only as husbands; but as husbands for Patricia Quin!
iii
These thoughts represented her arrogance. There remained her modesty.
It did not apply in the case of Harry, because Harry lay, as it were,
in the past. And he had not wanted to marry her. Did Monty? Patricia's
thought of that was a wild blur. But the secret of her feeling of
resentment towards Edgar suddenly emerged once more in the modest mood
which now came. She had been able to charm Harry: she both attracted
and excited Monty: she did not know what could attract Edgar to
herself, since she felt she did not charm him at all. How charm the
basilisk? If she tried to charm him he would think her _farouche_.
"He likes the truth. He'd soon find out that there's nothing in me at
all. I'm only a shallow, pleasure-loving girl, who's caught his eye
because she's pretty and young. That's nothing. Fifty thousand girls
would do as much. He'd find me out. There's nothing in me. There's
only vanity and ... and wickedness. He wouldn't like that. He'd be
displeased with me for not being wise and good ... and sensible....
"He's kind. I trust him....
"What on earth am I talking like this for? Anybody would think I wanted
to persuade myself to marry him. I don't. I don't love him; and never
could love him; and I'll never marry him. He'd bore me. Besides, it's
ridiculous. It's not as though I'd asked him to want me. I'm not a
beggar--yet. And he doesn't really want to marry me at all. He couldn't
care for me.
"I'm inferior to him. I have thoughts and feelings he wouldn't like.
I'm full of ugliness and selfishness and wickedness.
"I'm no good. I'm no good to anybody. I'm horrible.
"Not really quite horrible. I'm only a ... you see, I'm ... I _am_
nice. I _am_ good!
"No, I'm no good. I'm no good to anybody...." There was a long
tormented pause. Very low, with a sudden flush of blood to the cheeks,
in an almost vicious despair:
"Except Monty...."
iv
There was a letter from Monty lying beside her plate upon the
breakfast-table. It said:
"Dear Patricia: Come to dinner--here--to-morrow night ('To-night'
when you get this). We'll dine and talk, and perhaps go and dance
somewhere. Monty."
"Here" was his own house in South Hampstead. Patricia read the note as
a command, and her brows were raised. Then she re-read it as an appeal.
Her heart began to beat a little faster. For the first time she was
repelled by the warning sense of danger. It was in a mood entirely
reckless that she threw the letter aside, determined to go. The
hardness was again in her eyes. It was as though she had snapped her
fingers at Edgar; but her heart was heavy, and the curve of her lips
was that of shame and defiance.
v
Monty sat in the studio waiting for his visitor. Those hangings which
had supplied such barbaric decoration upon the night of the September
party had been replaced. The whole studio was filled with colour,
blazing from wall to wall. And Monty sat in sombre Napoleonic gloom
amid the marvels of his invention. His face gave no sign of the slow
and melancholy thoughts which were passing steadily, processionally,
before his concentrated attention. Monty never hurried. He always
saw his way clear before taking any step. He had a slow, fatalistic
patience which was almost always rewarded.
For weeks now Monty had thought that Patricia Quin was desirable.
He had seen her first at his own party in September, and since then
upon many occasions. He had looked at her at first, speculating, with
the cool observation of a connoisseur. There was much grace, much
wilfulness: her movements were delightful, and the play of her light
emotions full of singular interest. For a little while Monty had
wondered how innocent she really might be; for he appreciated freshness
as much as any traditional roué could have done, and he disliked what
was callow. His experience of women also made him suspicious of the
assumption of purity in such young women as interested him. One of
Monty's precepts had been "You cannot shock a woman." It revealed in
him a standpoint already fixed.
As he had seen Patricia his interest in her had grown. She amused
him by her confidence, her ignorance; she was fresh, and she had
spirit. Moreover, when he thought of her, Monty had the air of one
grimly smiling. Spirit in a young girl entertained him: it could be
played with, and tormented. With its positive effects upon those less
sophisticated than himself he had no concern. For Monty it had no
positive effects, since he was entirely impervious to the behavior of
others where his own determination was engaged. Such a spirit would
be amusing to break. Nothing more. Even as he thought that, Monty had
an increased stolidity of air. But his interest was not only in her
spirit, which was probably the mark of unstable will. Patricia seemed
to him in every way delectable. She was unspoilt; she was to be won by
flattery; she was to be kept by insolence.
Nevertheless, Monty did not under-rate the address which might be
required in winning Patricia. He had dealt previously with young women
who were without experience of love. He foresaw that Patricia would
be shy as a doe, ready at a single alarming move to fly. She could
be flattered, interested, cajoled, by way of her vanity; but not yet
was the moment to be ruthless. That, perhaps, was a part of the game.
Patricia could be roused, indulged, enjoyed, slowly punished. At least
she must be handled with finesse. Monty calculated his finesse.
A point which alarmed him was that his own interest had grown beyond
what he had at first imagined that it would be. He had not been, at
any time, wholly cold-blooded in his design. That was not the whole of
Monty's nature. He had a slow, rising passion; and it was this which
determined his actions in all matters of sex. But he had been surprised
to find, especially at their last two meetings, that Patricia's
innocence, and her virgin coldness, had moved him to an unexpected
degree of desire. Only by the greatest self-control had he refrained
from alarming her.
Monty appeared to sleep as he sat in his chair in that
barbarically-decorated room with the glass roof. A look of heaviness
spread across his face. Slowly his head fell back among the cushions.
He was intently listening, and his eyes were closed.
Monty had been right. The noise he had heard had been that made by the
bell. An instant later the studio door opened and Patricia appeared,
demure, even roguish, but pale and, as he immediately saw, in a state
of over-strained nerves which signalled caution. She was alarmed by
the sense of danger, in no mood of submission, but as timid as a wild
bird. So much was clear even from her glance round the empty studio,
the involuntary sway of recoil which marked her realisation of its
emptiness.
"Hullo!" cried Patricia, in greeting. "Am I the first?"
"You're the most welcome," Monty assured her. "Come and sit down. What
a cold hand! Is it so very cold out?"
"Freezing," Patricia assured him. "And it's a horrid journey, you know."
"How stupid of me!" murmured Monty. "Yes, that's very stupid. I'm so
sorry. It's unpardonable of me."
"Never mind. It's really quite all right. Who else is coming?" she
asked, eagerly. "Not that I need anybody else, of course." The quick
addition was a conscious attempt to placate him, the result of an
effort to seem more experienced than in fact she was. It did not
deceive Monty.
"That's so kind," he answered. "To dinner--nobody. I thought you
wouldn't mind just ourselves. But afterwards there are several
people--Felix, and ... oh, I forget. Rudge and Cynthia Blent and
Mackinnon and Timothy Webster. Several more. But they won't be here
till good and late."
Patricia nodded. Monty had not failed to observe her relief. He felt
he had been wise in thus departing from his original intention, and
preparing an after-dinner party. His letter had suggested another
pastime, as they both knew. Neither commented. It might have been, he
thought, a trivial piece of policy; in reality, as Monty instantly
saw, it had saved the day. He was perfectly well-aware that otherwise
Patricia would have been on edge for the evening.
"Very fortunate," he thought definitely. "Something's been happening to
her. Look at the eyes, the pupils ... hands.... Drawn lips. Not only
fear of me. ... Strange. What can it be? It's Greenlees, I suppose; but
what? Is she deeper, or stupidly excitable?"
"Dinner is served, sir," said Jacobs, from the doorway.
"Come along!" Monty caught Patricia's arm with an attempted air of
gaiety. It was essential him that he should touch her. At that moment
his impulse was savagely to embrace her, to force her body against his
own, to hold her to him while he kissed ravenously her neck and cheeks
and shoulders.
Patricia started at the touch, and there was a warning degree of
resistance in her slightly rigid arm.
"I'm so glad you've got the hangings up again in the studio," she said,
with attempted ease as they entered the dining-room thus linked and
apart. "They make it like a necromancer's consulting room."
vi
"And supposing myself to be the necromancer," said Monty, across the
table, "how would you wish to consult me?"'