There is a proverbial rule against playing with fire, but it is one
which, as Davison would have said, was evidently made by average people,
who would in fact rather play with something else. There are others to
whom fire is the only really amusing plaything; and though the
by-stander may hold his breath, nine times out of ten they will come out
of the game as unscathed as the professional fire-eater. This was not
precisely true of Mildred, who had still a wide taste in playthings; but
in the absence of anything new and exciting in her environment, she
found an immense fascination in playing with the fiery elements in
Maxwell Davison's nature, in amusing her imagination with visions of a
free wandering life, led under a burning Oriental sky, which he
constantly suggested to her. Yet dangerously alluring as these visions
might appear, appealing to all the hidden nomad heart of her, her good
sense was never really silenced. It told her that freedom from the
shackles of civilization might become wearisome in time, besides
involving heavier, more intolerable forms of bondage; although she did
not perceive that Maxwell Davison's dislike to her being a slave was
only a dislike to her being somebody else's slave. He was a despot at
heart and had accustomed himself to a frank despotism over women.
Mildred's power over him, the uncertainty of his power over her,
maddened him. But Mildred did not know what love meant. At one time she
had fancied her affection for Ian might be love; now she wondered
whether her strange interest in the society of a man for whom she had no
affection, could be that. She did not feel towards Ian as an ordinary
wife might have done, yet his feelings and interests weighed much with
her. Milly, too, she must necessarily consider, but she did that in a
different, an almost vengeful spirit.
One evening Ian, looking up from his work, asked her what she was
smiling at so quietly to herself. And she could not tell him, because it
was at a horrible practical joke suggested to her by an impish spirit
within. What if she should prepare a little surprise for the returning
Milly? Let her find herself planted in Araby the Blest with Maxwell
Davison? Mildred chuckled, wondering to herself which would be in the
biggest rage, Milly or Max; for however Tims might affirm the contrary,
Mildred had a fixed impression that Milly could be in a rage.
The fire-game was hastening to its close; but before Mildred could prove
herself a real mistress of the dangerous element, the sleep fell upon
her.
Except a sensation of fatigue, for which it was easy to find a reason,
there was no warning of the coming change. But Ian had dreams in the
night and opened his eyes in the morning with a feeling of uneasiness
and depression. Mildred could never sleep late without causing him
anxiety, and on this morning his first glance at her filled him with a
dread certainty. She was sleeping what was to her in a measure the sleep
of death. He had a violent impulse to awaken her forcibly; but he feared
it would be dangerous. With his arm around her and his head close to
hers on the pillow, he whispered her name over and over again. The
calmness of her face gradually gave way to an expression of struggle
approaching convulsion, and he dared not continue. He could only await
the inevitable in a misery which from its very nature could find no
expression and no comforter.
Milly, unlike Mildred, did not return to the world in a rapture of
satisfaction with it. The realization of the terrible robbery of life of
which she had again been the victim, was in itself enough to account for
a certain sadness even in her love for Ian and for her child. The
hygiene of the nursery had been neglected according to her ideas, yet
Baby was bonny enough to delight any mother's heart, however heavy it
might be. Ian, she said, wanted feeding up and taking care of; and he
submitted to the process with a gentle, melancholy smile. Just one
request he made; that she would not spoil her pretty hair by screwing it
up in her usual unbecoming manner. She understood, studying a certain
photograph in a drawer--what drawer was safe from Milly's tidyings?--and
dressed her hair as like it as she knew how, with a secret bitterness of
heart.
Mildred had found a diary, methodically kept by Milly, of great use to
her, and although incapable herself of keeping one regularly, she had
continued it in a desultory manner, noting down whatever she thought
might be useful for Milly's guidance. For whatever the feelings of the
two personalities towards each other, there was a terrible closeness of
union between them. Their indivisibility in the eyes of the world made
their external interests inevitably one. New friends and acquaintances
Mildred had noted down, with useful remarks upon them. She was not
confidential on the subject of Maxwell Davison, but she gave the bare
necessary information.
It was now late in the Summer Term and her bedroom chimney-piece was
richly decorated with invitation cards. Among others there was an
invitation to a garden-party at Lady Margaret Hall. Milly put on a fresh
flowered muslin dress, apparently unworn, that she found hanging in one
of the deep wall-cupboards of the old house, and a coarse burnt-straw
hat, trimmed with roses and black ribbon, which became her marvellously
well. All the scruples of an apostle of hygienic dress, all the
uneasiness of an economist at the prospect of unpaid bills, disappeared
before the pleasure of a young woman face to face with an extremely
pretty reflection in a pier-glass. That glass, an oval in a light
mahogany frame, of the Regency period, if not earlier, was one of
Mildred's finds in the slums of St. Ebbes.
She walked across the Parks, where the Cricket Match of the season was
drawing a crowd, meaning to come out by a gate below Lady Margaret Hall,
the gardens and buildings of which did not then extend to the Cherwell.
In their place were a few tennis-grounds and a path leading to a
boat-house, shared by a score or more of persons. While she was still
coming across the grass of the Parks, a man in flannels, very white in
the sun, came towards her from the gate for which she was making. He
must have recognized her from a long way off. He was a striking-looking
man of middle age, walking with a free yet indolent stride that carried
him along much faster than it appeared to do.
Milly had no idea who the stranger was, but he greeted her with: "Here
you are at last, Mildred! Do you know how much behind time you are?"--he
took out his watch--"Exactly thirty-five minutes. I should have given
you up if I hadn't known that breaking your promise is not among your
numerous vices, and unpunctuality is."
Who on earth was he? And why did he call her by her Christian name?
Milly went a beautiful pink with embarrassment.
"I'm so sorry. I thought the party would have just begun," she replied.
"You don't mean to say you want to keep me kicking my heels while you go
to a confounded party? I thought you knew I was off to Paris to-night,
after that Firdusi manuscript, and I think of taking the Continental
Express to Constantinople next week. I don't know when I shall be back.
Surely, Mildred, it's not a great deal to ask you to spare half an hour
from a wretched party to come on the river with me before I go?" It
struck Maxwell as he ended that he was falling into the whining of the
Occidental lover. He was determined that he would clear the situation
this afternoon; the more determined because he was conscious of a
feeling odiously resembling fear which had before now held him back from
plain dealing with Mildred. Afraid of a woman? It was too ridiculous.
Milly, meanwhile, felt herself on firmer ground. This must be Ian's
cousin, Maxwell Davison, the Orientalist. But there was nothing nomadic
in her heart to thrill to the idea of being on the Cherwell this
afternoon, in London this evening, in Paris next morning, in
Constantinople next week.
"Of course I'll come on the river with you," she said. "I'm sorry I'm
late. I'm afraid I--I'd forgotten."
Forgotten! How simply she said it! Yet it was surely the veriest
impudence of coquetry. He looked at her slowly from the hat downward, as
he lounged leisurely at her side.
"War-paint, I see!" he remarked. "Armed from head to heel with all the
true and tried female weapons. They're just the same all the world
over--'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose,'--though no doubt you
fancy they're different. Who's the frock put on for, Mildred? For the
party, or--for me?"
Milly was conscious of such an extreme absence of intention so far as
Maxwell was concerned, that it would have been rude to express it. She
went very pink again, and lifting forget-me-not blue eyes to his
inscrutable ones, articulated slowly:
"I'm sure I don't know."
Her eyes were like a child's and a shy smile curved her pink lips
adorably as she spoke. Such mere simplicity would not in itself have
cast a spell over Maxwell, but it came to him as a new, surprising phase
of the eternal feminine in her; and it had the additional charm that it
caused that subjugated feeling resembling fear, with which Mildred could
inspire him, to disappear entirely. He was once more in the proper
dominant attitude of Man. He felt the courage now to make her do what he
believed she wished to do in her heart; the courage, too, to punish her
for the humiliation she had inflicted upon him. Six months ago he would
have had nothing but a hearty contempt for the man who could beat thirty
yards of gravel-path for half an hour, watch in hand, in a misery of
impatience, waiting on the good pleasure of a capricious woman.
Meantime he laughed good-humoredly at Milly's answer and began to talk
of neutral matters. If her tongue did not move as nimbly as usual, he
flattered himself it was because she knew that the hour of her surrender
was at hand.
Milly knew the boat-house well, the pleasant dimness of it on hot summer
days; how the varnished boats lay side by side all down its length, and
how the light canoes rested against the walls as it were on shelves.
How, when the big doors were opened on to the raft and the slowly
moving river without, bright circles of sunlight, reflected from the
running water, would fly in and dance on wall and roof. She stood there
in the dimness, while Maxwell lifted down a large canoe and, opening one
of the barred doors, took it out to the water. Mildred would have felt a
half-conscious æsthetic pleasure in watching his movements,
superficially indolent but instinct with strength. Milly had not the
same æsthetic sensibilities, and she was still disagreeably embarrassed
at finding herself on such a familiar footing with a man whom she had
never seen before. Then, although she followed Aunt Beatrice's golden
rule of never allowing a question of feminine dress to interfere with
masculine plans, she could not but feel anxious as to the fate of her
fresh muslin and ribbons packed into a canoe. Maxwell, however, had
learned canoeing years ago on the Canadian lakes, and did not splash.
His lean, muscular brown arms and supple wrists took the canoe rapidly
through the water, with little apparent effort.
It was the prime of June and the winding willow-shaded Cherwell was in
its beauty. White water-lilies were only just beginning to open silver
buds, floating serenely on their broad green and red pads; but prodigal
masses of wild roses, delicately rich in scent and various in color,
overhung the river in brave arching bowers or starred bushes and
hedgerows so closely that the green briers were hardly visible. Beds of
the large blue water forget-me-not floated beside the banks, and above
them creamy meadow-sweet lifted its tall plumes among the reeds and
grasses. Small water-rats swam busily from bank to bank or played on the
roots of the willows, and bright wings of birds and insects fluttered
and skimmed over the shining stream.
The Cherwell, though not then the crowded waterway it has since become,
was usually popular with boaters on such an afternoon. But there must
have been strong counter-attractions elsewhere, for Milly and Davison
passed only one, a party of children working very independent oars, on
their way to the little gray house above the ferry, where an old
Frenchman dispensed tea in arbors.
There was a kind of hypnotic charm in the gliding motion of the canoe
and the water running by. Milly was further dazed by Maxwell's talk. It
was full of mysterious references and couched in the masterful tone of a
person who had rights over her--a tone which before he had been more
willing than able to adopt; but now the bit was between his teeth.
Perhaps absorbed in his own intent, he hardly noticed how little she
answered; but he did notice every point of her beauty as she leaned back
on the cushions in the light shade of her parasol, from the soft
brightness of her hair to the glimpse of delicate white skin which
showed through the open-work stocking on her slender foot.
When they were in the straight watery avenue between green willow walls,
which leads up to the ferry, he slackened the pace.
"And what are you going to do next week?" he asked, as one of a series
of ironical questions.
"A great deal; much more than I care to do. I'm going up to town to see
the new Savoy opera, and I'm going to a dance, and to several
garden-parties, and to dine with the Master of Durham."
"Quite enough for some people; but not for you, Mildred. Think of
it--year after year, always the same old run. October Term, Lent Term,
Summer Term! A little change in Vacations, say a month abroad, when you
can afford it. You aren't meant for it, you know you're not, any more
than a swallow's meant for the little hopping, pecketing life of a
London sparrow."
"Indeed, I don't see the likeness either way. I'm quite happy as I am."
He smiled mockingly.
"Quite happy! As it's very proper you should be, of course. Come,
Mildred, no humbug! Think how you'd feel if you knew that instead of
going to all those idiotic parties next week you were going to
Constantinople."
"Isn't it dreadfully hot at this time of year?"
"I like it hot. But at any rate one can always find some cool place in
the hottest weather. How would you like to go in a caravan from Cairo to
Damascus next autumn?"
"I dare say it would be delightful, if the country one passed through
were not too wild and dangerous. But Ian would never be able to leave
his work for an expedition like that."
Maxwell smiled grimly.
"I'd no idea you'd want him. I shouldn't. Do be serious. If you fancy
I'm the sort of man you can go on playing with forever, you're most
confoundedly mistaken."
Milly was both offended and alarmed. Was this strange man mad? And she
alone with him on the river!
"I don't know what you mean," she said, coldly.
"Don't you?" he returned, and he still wore his ironic smile--"Well, I
know what you mean all the time. You say I only know Oriental women,
but, by Allah, there's not a pin to choose between the lot of you,
except that there's less humbug about them, and over here you're a set
of trained, accomplished hypocrites!"
Indignation overcame fear in Milly's bosom.
"We are nothing of the kind," she said. "How can you talk such
nonsense?"
"Nonsense? I suppose being a woman you can't really be logical, although
you generally pretend to be so. Why have you pranked yourself out, spent
an hour I dare say in making yourself pretty to-day? For what possible
reason except to attract the eyes of a crowd of men, young fools or
doddering old ones--"
Milly uttered an expression of vehement denial, but he continued:
"Or else to whet my appetite for forbidden fruit. But there's no 'or'
about it, is there? Most likely you had both of those desirable objects
in view."
Milly was not a coward when her indignation was aroused. She took hold
of the sides of the canoe and began raising herself.
"I don't know whether you mean to be insulting," she said; "but I don't
wish to hear any more of this sort of thing. I'd rather you put me out,
please."
"Sit down," he said, with authority--the canoe was rocking
violently--"unless you're anxious to be drowned. I warn you I'm a very
poor swimmer, and if we upset there's not a ghost of a chance of my
being able to save you."
Milly was a poor swimmer, too, and felt by no means competent to save
herself; neither was she anxious to be drowned. So she sat down again.
"Put me out at the ferry, please," she repeated, haughtily.
They were reaching the end of the willow avenue, just where the wire
rope crosses the river. On the right was a small wooden landing-stage,
and high above it the green, steep river-bank, with the gray house and
the arbors on the top. The old Frenchman stood before the house in his
shirt-sleeves, watching sadly for his accustomed prey, which for some
inexplicable reason did not come. He took off his cap expectantly to
Maxwell Davison, whom he knew; but the canoe glided swiftly under the
rope and on.
"No, I sha'n't put you out, Mildred," Maxwell answered with decision,
after a pause. "I'm sorry if I've offended you. I've forgotten my
manners, no doubt, and must seem a bit of a brute to you. I didn't bring
you here just to quarrel, or to play a practical joke upon you, and send
you on a field-walk in that smart frock and shoes--" he smiled at her,
and this time she was obliged to feel a certain fascination in his
smile--"nor yet to go on with the game you've been playing with me all
these months. You forget; I've been used to Nature for so many years
that I find it hard to realize how natural the most artificial
conditions of life appear to you. I'll try to remember; but you must
remember, too, that the most civilized beings on earth have got to come
right up against the hard facts of Nature sometimes. They've got to be
stripped of their top layer and see it stripped off other people, and to
recognize the fact that every one has got a core of Primitive Man or of
Primitive Woman in them; a perfectly unalterable, indestructible core.
And the people who refuse to recognize that aren't elevated and refined,
but simply stupid and obstinate and no good."
Milly, if she would have no compromise with principles, was always quick
to accept an apology. She did not follow the line of Maxwell's argument,
but she remembered it was noted in a certain deplorably irregular Diary,
that he had lived for many years in the East and was quite Orientalized
in many of his ways and ideas. With gentle dignity she signified that in
her opinion civilized European manners and views were to be commended in
opposition to barbarous and Oriental ones. Maxwell, his face bent
towards the turning paddle, hardly heard what she was saying. He was
paddling fast and considering many things.
They came to where the river ran under a narrow grass field, rising in
a steep bank and shut off from the world by a tall hedge and a row of
elms, that threw long shadows down the grass and were reflected in the
water. A path led through it, but it was little frequented. On the other
side was a wide, green meadow, where the long grass was ripening under
rose-blossoming hedges, and far beyond was the blueness of distant hills
and woods. Maxwell ran the bow of the canoe into a thick bed of
forget-me-nots, growing not far from the bank. He laid the dripping
paddle aside, and, resting his elbows on his knees, held his head in his
hands for a minute or more. When he turned his face towards her it was
charged with passion, but most of all with a grave masterfulness. He had
been sitting on a low seat, but now he kneeled so as to come nearer to
her, and, stretching out his long arms, laid a hand, brown,
long-fingered, smooth, on her two slight, gray-gloved ones.
"Mildred," he said, and his voice seemed to have lost its harshness,
"I've brought you here to make you decide what you are going to do with
me and with yourself. I want you--you know I want you, but I don't come
begging for you as an alms. I say, just compare the life, the free,
glorious life I can give you, and the wretched, petty round of existence
here. Come with me, won't you? Don't be afraid I shall treat you like a
slave; I follow Nature, and Nature made you a queen. Come with me
to-night, come to Paris, to Constantinople, to all the East! Never mind
about love yet, we won't talk about that, for I don't really flatter
myself you love me; I'm only sure you don't love Ian--"
Milly had listened to him so far, drawing herself back to the farthest
end of the canoe, half petrified with amazement, half dominated by his
powerful personality. At these words her pallor gave way to a scarlet
flush.
"How dare you!" she cried, in a voice tremulous with indignation. "How
dare you talk to me like this? How dare you name my husband? You brought
me out here on purpose to say such things to me? Oh, it's abominable,
it's disgraceful!"
There was no room for doubt as to the sincerity of her indignation.
Maxwell drew back and his face changed. There were patches of dull red
on his cheeks, almost as though he had been struck, and his narrow eyes
glittered. Looking at him, Milly felt physical fear; she thought once
more of insanity. There was a silence; then she spoke again.
"Put me on to the bank here, please. I'll walk back."
"I shall let you go when I choose," returned he, in a grating voice. "I
have something to say to you first."
He paused and his frown darkened upon her. "You asked me how I 'dared.'
Dare! Do you take me for a dog, to be chained up and tantalized with
nice bits, and hardly allowed to whine for them? I say, how dare you
entice me with your beauty--it's decked out now for me--entice me with
all your beguiling ways, your pretence of longing to go away and to live
the free life in the East as I live it? Now, when you've made me want
you--what else have you been aiming at? You pretend to be surprised, you
pretend even to yourself, to be dreadfully shocked. What damned humbug!
With us only the dancing-girls venture to play such tricks as you do,
and they daren't go too far, because the men are men and wear knives.
But here you proper women, with your weakness unnaturally protected, you
go about pretending you don't know there's such a thing in the world as
desire--oh, of course not!--and all the while you're deliberately
exciting it and playing upon it."
Mildred had been right in saying that the gentle Milly could be in a
rage; though it was a thing that had happened to her only once or twice
before since her childhood. It happened now. Anger, burning anger,
extinguished the fear that had held her silent while he was speaking.
"It's false!" she cried, with burning face and blazing eyes. "It's
disgraceful of you to say such things--it's degrading for me to have to
hear them. I will get away from you, if I have to jump into the river."
She started forward, but Maxwell, with his tall, lithe body and long
arms, had a great reach. He leaned forward and his iron hands were upon
her shoulders, forcing her back.
"Don't be a fool," he said, still fierce in eye and voice.
Her lips trembled with fury so that she could hardly speak.
"Do you consider yourself a gentleman?"
He laughed scornfully.
"I don't consider the question at all. I am a man; you are a woman, and
you have presumed to make a plaything of me. You thought you could do it
with impunity because we are civilized, because you are a lady; for
bar-maids and servant-girls do get their throats cut sometimes still.
Don't be frightened, I'm not going to kill you, but I mean to make you
understand for once that these privileges of weakness are humbug, that
they're not in nature. I mean to teach you that a man is a better
animal--"
He suddenly withdrew his hands from her with a sharp exclamation.
Milly's teeth were pearly white and rather small, but they were pointed,
and they had met in the flesh of the right hand which rested so firmly
on her shoulder. He fell back and put his hand to his mouth. A boat-hook
lay within her reach, and her end of the canoe had drifted near enough
to the river-bank for her to be able to catch hold with the hook and to
pull it farther in. Braced to the uttermost by rage and fear, she
bounded to her feet without upsetting the canoe. It lurched violently,
but righted itself, swinging out once more into the stream. Maxwell
looked up and saw her standing on the river-bank above him. She did not
stay to parley, but with lifted skirt hurried up the steep meadow,
through the sun-flecked shadows of the elm-trees, towards the path. When
she was half-way up a harsh, sardonic laugh sounded behind her, and
instinctively she looked back. Maxwell held up his wounded hand:
"Primitive woman at last, Mildred!" he shouted. "Don't apologize, I
sha'n't."