That evening, when the children, weary but still jubilant, had been
dropped at the _Pension Rosenglüh_, and Boyne had joined Mrs. Sellars
for a late dinner at the _châlet_, the first thing that struck him was
that his sapphire had reappeared on her hand.
He wondered afterward how it was that he, in general so unobservant of
such details, had noticed that she had resumed the modest stone; and
concluded that it was because of Judith’s ridiculous cross-examination
about the date of his marriage. He almost suspected that, baffled by his
evasiveness, the pertinacious child had ended by addressing herself to
Mrs. Sellars, and that the latter, thus challenged, had put on her ring.
But no—though Judith was sometimes lacking in tact (as she herself
acknowledged) this indiscretion could not be imputed to her, for the
reason that Mrs. Sellars—Boyne remembered it only now—had not reappeared
on the scene till it was time to pack the sleepy picnickers into the
motors. She and Mr. Dobree had been a long time away. They had
apparently prolonged their walk, and, incidentally, had failed to find
the promised strawberries—or else had consumed them on the spot. And on
the way home Judith and Mrs. Sellars had not been in the same car. Why,
then, had Mrs. Sellars suddenly put on her ring? Boyne would only
suppose that she had decided, for reasons unknown to him, to announce
their engagement that night to Mr. Dobree, who was no doubt going to
join them at dinner.
The idea obscurely irritated Boyne; he felt bored in advance by the neat
and obvious things Mr. Dobree would consider it becoming to say. Boyne’s
whole view of Mrs. Sellars’s friend had been changed by his sudden
glimpse of the man who had looked out of Mr. Dobree’s eyes at Judith.
Before that, Boyne had pigeon-holed him as the successful lawyer, able
in his profession, third-rate in other capacities, with a methodically
planned existence of which professional affairs filled the larger part,
and the rest was divided up like a carefully-weighed vitamin diet (Mr.
Dobree was strong on vitamins) between exercise, society, philanthropy
and travel. Now, a long way off down this fair perspective, a small, an
almost invisible Dobree, lurked and prowled, staring as he had stared at
Judith. A sudden irritation filled Boyne at the thought of what, unknown
to Mrs. Sellars, peered and grimaced behind her legal counsellor. It was
as if Mr. Dobree had unconsciously evoked for him some tragic allegory
of Judith’s future....
“Where’s your friend? Are we waiting for him?” Boyne’s question sounded
abrupt in his own ears, but was received by Mrs. Sellars with her usual
equanimity.
“Mr. Dobree? No, we’re not waiting for him. He’s not coming.”
Boyne felt relieved, yet vaguely baffled. If Dobree wasn’t coming (he
immediately thought), why the devil wasn’t he? And what was he up to
instead?
“Chucked you for a party at the ‘Palace,’ I suppose? I’m glad he didn’t
drag you up there to dine with him.”
“No; I don’t think he’s giving a party—or going to one. He had letters
to write; and he said he was tired.”
This seemed to dispose of the matter, and Boyne, still faintly
disturbed, followed his betrothed to the dining-table, at which of late
he had so seldom sat alone with her.
“Don’t you like it better like this?” she asked, smiling at him across
the bowl of wild roses which stood between them.
It was indeed uncommonly pleasant to be alone with her again. She
gratified him, at the outset, by praising the behaviour of the children
on the picnic; and as they talked he began to think that his growing
irritability, and his odd reluctance to look forward to their future
together, had been caused only by the intrusion of irrelevant problems
and people. “When we’re alone together everything’s always all right,”
he thought, reassured.
Dinner over, they drifted out onto the balcony in the old way, and he
lit his cigar, and yielded to the sense of immediate wellbeing. He saw
that Rose Sellars knew he was glad to be alone with her, and that the
knowledge put her at her ease, and made her want to say and do whatever
would maintain that mood in him. There was something pathetic in the
proud creature’s eagerness to be exactly what he wished her to be.
“Judith was looking her very prettiest today, wasn’t she? Mr. Dobree was
so much struck by her,” she said softly, after a silence.
It was as if she had flung a boulder into the very middle of the
garden-plot she had just been at such pains to lay out. Boyne met the
remark with an exasperated laugh.
“I should say he _was_ struck. That was fairly obvious.”
“Well—she is striking, at times,” Mrs. Sellars conceded, still more
gently.
“As any lovely child is. That’s what she is—a lovely child. Dobree looks
at her like a dog licking his jaws over a bone.”
“Martin—!”
“Sorry. I never could stand your elderly men who look at little girls.
If your friend is so dotty about Judith, he’d better ask her to marry
him. He’s rich, isn’t he? His money might be an inducement—who knows?”
“Marry her? Marry Judith? Mr. Dobree?” Mrs. Sellars gave way to a mild
mirth. His words certainly sounded absurd enough when she echoed them;
but Boyne, for the moment, was beyond heeding anything but the tumult in
his own veins.
“Why not?” he continued. “As the poor child is situated, money is a big
consideration. What’s the use of being a hypocrite about it? If she’s to
fight her parents, and keep the children together, she’ll need cash, and
a big pile of it; and a clever lawyer to manœuvre for her, too. I call
it an ideal arrangement.”
Mrs. Sellars waited a little before answering; then she said: “I don’t
see how the biggest fortune, and the cleverest lawyer in the world,
could keep the Wheaters from ordering their children home the day they
choose to. But I’m sure that if Judith wanted help and advice no one
would be more happy to give it to her than Mr. Dobree.”
“Ah, there you’re right,” Boyne agreed with an ironic shrug.
“Well, and don’t you think perhaps it might be a good thing if she did
consult him—or at least if you did, for her?”
“If I intervened in any way between Dobree and Judith I don’t think he’d
thank you for putting me up to it.”
“Why—what do you mean?”
“If you don’t know what I mean I can only suppose you didn’t notice how
he was looking at the child this afternoon, before you carried him off
for a walk.”
Mrs. Sellars fell silent again. He saw the faint lines of perplexity
weaving their net over her face, and reflected that when a woman is no
longer young she can preserve her air of freshness only in the intervals
of feeling. “It’s too bad,” he thought, vexed with himself for having
upset the delicate balance of her serenity. But now she was smiling
again, a little painfully.
“Looking at her—looking at her how?”
“Well—as I’ve told you.”
The smile persisted. “I certainly didn’t see anything like that. And
neither did I carry him off for a walk; as it happens, it was he who
carried _me_—”
“Oh, well,” Boyne murmured at this touch of feminine vanity.
Mrs. Sellars continued: “And I don’t think he’s thinking of Judith in
the way you imagine—or that he can have looked at her in that way. I
hope he didn’t; because, as it happens, he took me off on that walk to
ask me to marry him.”
The words dropped from her with a serene detachment, as if they had been
her luminous little smile made audible. “I don’t know that it’s quite
fair to him to tell you,” she added, with one of her old-fashioned
impulses of reserve.
It was Boyne’s turn to find no answer. For some time he sat gazing into
the summer darkness without speaking. “Marry him? Marry Dobree—you?”
“You see you were right: he does want to get married,” she softly
bantered. “It was what he came for—to ask me. I’d no idea.... And now
he’s going away ... he leaves to-morrow,” she added, with a faint sigh
in which deprecation and satisfaction were perceptibly mingled. If it
was her little triumph she took it meekly, even generously—but
nevertheless, he saw, with a complete consciousness of what it meant.
Boyne laughed again, this time at himself.
“I don’t know what you see in it that is so absurd,” Mrs. Sellars
murmured, a faint note of vexation in her voice. Again he found no
reply, and she continued, with the distant air she assumed when echoing
axioms current in her youth: “After all, it’s the highest honour a man
can—”
“Oh, quite,” Boyne agreed good-humouredly. He rubbed his hand across his
forehead, as if to brush away some inner confusion. But it was no use;
he couldn’t straighten his thoughts out. He couldn’t shake off the fact
that his surprise and derision had not concerned Rose Sellars at
all—that his laugh had simply mocked his own power of self-deception,
and uttered his relief at finding himself so deceived. “So _that_ was
all!” The words escaped him unawares. In the dusk he felt the shadowy
figure at his side stiffen and withdraw from him.
“Shall we go in? It’s getting chilly,” said Mrs. Sellars, turning back
toward the lamplight.
Boyne, still in the bewilderment of his own thoughts, followed her into
the room. He noticed that she had grown unusually pale. She sat down
beside the table, and began turning over the letters and papers which
the evening post had brought. Boyne stood in front of the fireplace, his
hands in his pockets, watching her movements as one letter after another
slipped through her fingers. But all he could see was the sapphire ring,
re-established, enthroned, proclaiming his own destiny to all concerned
and unconcerned.
“So you told him you were already engaged?”
She looked up at him. “It was only fair, wasn’t it?”
“Certainly—that is, if being engaged was the only obstacle.”
“The only obstacle?”
“If you were prepared to marry Dobree, supposing you’d still been free.”
She weighed this, and then laughed a little, but without much gaiety.
“How do I know what I should have done if I’d been free?”
He continued to look at her. “Do you want to try?”
The colour rose to her forehead. She dropped the letters, and composed
her hands on them as if in the effort to control a secret agitation. “Is
this a way of telling me you’re vexed because I announced our engagement
to Mr. Dobree?”
He hesitated, feeling (and now he hated himself for feeling) that it was
a moment for going warily. “Not vexed; that’s not the word. Only I did
agree with you that, as long as—as nothing about our future was
definitely settled—it was ever so much pleasanter keeping our private
affairs to ourselves. It was your own idea, you know; you proposed it,”
he reminded her, as she remained silent.
“Yes; it was my idea.” She pondered. “But you needn’t be afraid that Mr.
Dobree will betray us.”
“It’s not a question of betraying. It’s just the feeling—”
“The feeling that some one else is in our secret? But all the Wheater
children have been—for a long time.” She spoke the words ever so
lightly, as if she had barely pencilled them on a smooth page.
Boyne was startled. He could see no analogy, but did not know how to
explain that there was none. “Oh, the children; but the children don’t
count. Besides, that wasn’t my fault. Judith guessed.” He smiled a
little at the reminiscence. “But perhaps Mr. Dobree guessed,” he added,
with a return of ease. After all, he was carrying it off very well, he
thought—though what he meant by “it” he would have been put to it to
say.
Mrs. Sellars gave another little laugh. “Oh, no; Mr. Dobree didn’t
guess. I had to dot the _i_’s for him. The fact is”—she paused a
moment—“he was convinced that you were in love with Judith Wheater.”
Instantly all the resentments and suspicions which Boyne had dismissed
rushed back on him. He had been right, then—he had not mistaken the
signs and portents. As if they were ever mistakable! “How rotten,” he
said in a low voice.
Mrs. Sellars dropped one of the letters which she had absently taken up
again.
“Martin—”
“Rotten. The mere thinking of such a thing—much less insinuating it to
any one else. But it just shows—” He broke off, and then began again, on
a fresh wave of indignation: “Shows what kind of a mind he must have.
Thinking in that way about a child—a mere child—and about any man, any
_decent_ man; regarding it as possible, perhaps as natural ... worst of
all, suggesting it of some one standing in my position toward these
children; as if I might take advantage of my opportunities to—to fall in
love with a child in the schoolroom!”
Boyne’s words sounded in his own ears as if they were being megaphoned
at him across the width of the room. He dropped down into the nearest
chair, hot, angry, ashamed, with a throat as dry as if he had been
haranguing an open-air meeting on a dusty day.
Opposite him, Mrs. Sellars remained with her hands suspended above the
letters. The sapphire burned at him across the interval. “Martin ... but
you _are_ in love with her!” she exclaimed. She paused a moment, and
then added in a quieter voice: “I believe I’ve always known it.” They
sat and looked at each other without speaking.
At length Boyne rose, and started to move around the table to where she
was sitting.
“This is ridiculous—” he began.
She held up her hand, and the gesture, though evidently meant only to
check the words on his lips, had the effect also of arresting his
advance. He felt self-conscious and clumsy, and dimly resented her
making him feel so. He was sure it was she who had been ridiculous, not
he; yet, curiously enough, the conviction brought him no solace. Again
they faced each other, guardedly, apprehensively, as if something
fragile and precious, which they had been carrying together, had slipped
between their fingers and been broken. He felt that, if he glanced at
the floor, he might see the glittering fragments....
Mrs. Sellars was the first to recover her self-possession. She rose in
her turn, and going up to Boyne laid her hand on his arm.
“I wonder why we’re trying to hurt each other?” She looked at him
through moist lashes, and he felt himself a brute for not instantly
taking her in his arms and obliterating their discussion with a kiss.
But there lay the glittering fragments, and he could not seem to reach
to her across them.
“Now I know what she thinks of Judith,” he reflected savagely.
“It’s all my fault, Martin; I know I’m nervous and stupid.” She was
clasping his arm, pleading with lifted eyes and lips. Her self-abasement
humiliated him. “If she really thinks what she says, why doesn’t she
kick me out?” he wondered.
“I suppose I walked too far today, and got over-tired; and what Mr.
Dobree said startled me, upset me....”
He smiled. “His asking you to marry him?”
She smiled back a little wearily. “No. But what he said about—about your
interest in Judith. You must understand, dear, that sometimes your
attitude about those children is a little surprising to people who don’t
know all the circumstances.”
Boyne felt himself hardening again. “What business is it of people who
don’t know all the circumstances? _You_ do; that’s enough.”
She seized at this with a distressing humility. “Of course I do,
dearest; of course it is. And you’ll try to forget my stupid nerves,
won’t you? Try to think of me as I am when there’s nobody in the world
but you and me?” Her arms stole up to his shoulders, her hands met
behind his neck, and she drew his head down softly. “If only it could
always be like that!”
As their lips touched he shut his eyes, and tried, with a violent effort
of the will, to recall what her kiss would have meant to him on the
far-off day when the news of Sellars’s death had overtaken him somewhere
in the Nubian desert, and in the middle of the night he had started
awake, still clutching the letter, and crying out to himself: “At
last....”
XXII
Next day, when Boyne thought over the scene of the previous night, he
found for it all the excuses which occur to a sensible man in the glow
of his morning bath.
It was all the result of idling and lack of hard exercise; when a
working man has had too long a holiday, and resting has become dawdling,
Satan proverbially intervenes. But though at first Boyne assumed all the
blame, by the time he began to shave he had handed over a part to Mrs.
Sellars. After all, it was because of her old-fashioned scruples, her
unwillingness to marry him at once, and let him get back to work, that
they were still loitering in the Dolomites. It probably wasn’t safe for
middle-aged people to have too much leisure in which to weigh each
other’s faults and merits.
But then, again, suddenly he thought: “If we’d been married, and gone
home when I wanted to, what would have become of the children?” It was
undoubtedly because Mrs. Sellars had insisted on prolonging their
engagement that Boyne had become involved in the Wheater problem; but
when he reached this point in his retrospect he found he could not
preserve his impartiality. It was impossible to face the thought of what
might have happened to the little Wheaters if chance had not put him in
their way....
After all, then, everything was for the best. All he had to do was to
persuade Mrs. Sellars of it (which ought not to be difficult, since it
was a “best” of her own devising), and to banish from his mind the
disturbing figure of Mr. Dobree. Perhaps—on second thoughts—his
irritability of the previous evening had been partly due to the
suspicion that Mrs. Sellars, for all her affected indifference, was
flattered by Mr. Dobree’s proposal. “You never can tell—” Boyne
concluded, and shrugged that possibility away too. The thought that he
might have had to desert his young friends in their hour of distress,
and had been able, instead, to stay and help them, effaced all other
considerations. So successfully did he talk himself over to this view
that only one cloud remained on his horizon. Mrs. Sellars had said: “I
don’t see how the biggest fortune, and the cleverest lawyer in the
world, could keep the Wheaters from ordering their children home the day
they choose to”; and in saying it she had put her finger on Boyne’s
inmost apprehension. He had told himself the same thing a hundred times;
but to hear it from any one else made the danger seem more pressing. It
reminded him that the little Wheaters’ hold on him was not half as frail
as his own on them, and that it was folly to indulge the illusion that
he could really direct or control their fate.
And meanwhile—?
Well, he could only mark time; thank heaven it was still his to mark!
The Lido season had not yet reached its climax, and till it declined and
fell he was free to suppose that its devotees would linger on,
hypnotized. As between taking steps for an immediate divorce, and
figuring to the last in the daily round of entertainment, Boyne felt
sure that not one of the persons concerned would hesitate. They could
settle questions of business afterward; and it was purely as business
that they regarded a matter in which the extent of the alimony was
always the chief point of debate. And what could replace the excitement
of a Longhi ball at the Fenice, or of a Marriage of the Doge to the
Adriatic, mimed in a reconstituted Bucentaur by the rank and fashion of
half Europe? No one would be leaving Venice yet.
But, all the same, the days were flying. The increasing number of
arrivals at Cortina, the growing throng of motors on all the mountain
ways, showed that before long fashion would be moving from the seashore
to the mountains; and when the Lido broke up, what might not break up
with it? Boyne felt that the question must at last be faced; that he
must have a talk about it that very day with Judith.
It was more than a month since Judith and her flock had appeared at
Cortina; and the various parents concerned had promised Boyne that the
children should be left in the Dolomites till the summer was over. But
what was such a promise worth, and what did the phrase mean on lips so
regardless of the seasons? Nothing—Boyne knew it. He was conscious now
that, during the last four weeks, he had never gone down to the _Pension
Rosenglüh_ without expecting to be told that a summons or a command had
come from the Lido. But so far there had been none. The children were
protected by the fact that there was no telephone at the _pension_, and
that none of their parents was capable—except under the most extreme
pressure—of writing a letter.
When it was impossible to telephone they could, indeed, telegraph; but
even the inditing of a telegram required a concentration of mind which,
Boyne knew, would become increasingly difficult as the Lido season
culminated. Telegrams did, of course, come, especially in the first
days, both to Boyne and to Judith: long messages from Joyce about
clothes and diet, rambling communications from Lady Wrench, setting
forth her rights and grievances in terms which, by the time they had
passed through two Italian telegraph-offices, were as confused as the
thoughts in her own mind; and lastly, a curt wire from Cliffe Wheater to
Boyne: “Wish it definitely understood relinquish no rights whatever how
is Chipstone reply paid.”
To all these communications Boyne returned a comprehensive “All right,”
and, acting on his advice, Judith did the same, merely adding
particulars as to the children’s health and happiness. “On the whole,
you know,” she explained to Boyne, “it’s a relief to them all, now the
thing’s settled—I always knew it would be.” She and Terry still
cherished the hope that in the autumn she would be permitted to take the
children out to Grandma Mervin, in America; or that, failing permission,
she would be encouraged by Boyne to carry them off secretly. With this
in view, she and Miss Scope saved up every penny they could of the
allowance which Cliffe Wheater had agreed to make, and which Boyne dealt
out to them once a week. But all these arrangements were so precarious,
so dependent on the moods of unreasonable and uncertain people, that it
seemed a miracle that the little party at the _Pension Rosenglüh_ was
still undisturbed. Certainly, if it had been possible to reach them by
telephone they would have been scattered long ago. “As soon as they
break up at the Lido they’ll be after you,” Boyne had warned Judith from
the first; but she had always answered hopefully: “Oh, no: not till
after Cowes, if they still go there; and if they don’t, after Venice
there’s Biarritz. You’ll see. And before Biarritz there’s a fortnight in
Paris for autumn clothes.”
Cowes, in due course, had been relinquished, the Lido exerting too
strong a counter-attraction; but after a few more weeks that show also
would be packed away in the lumber-room of spent follies.
The fact of having these questions always on his mind kept Boyne from
being unduly disturbed by his discussion of the previous evening with
Mrs. Sellars. In the wholesome light of morning a sentimental flurry
between two sensible people who were deeply attached to each other
seemed as nothing compared to the ugly reality perpetually hanging over
the little Wheaters; and he felt sure that Mrs. Sellars would take the
same view.
She did not disappoint him. When he presented himself at the luncheon
hour the very air of the little sitting-room breathed a new serenity; it
was as if she had been out early to fill it with flowers. Boyne was not
used to delicate readjustments in his sentimental relations. For so many
years now his feeling for Rose Sellars had been something apart, like a
beautiful picture on the wall of a quiet room; and his other amorous
episodes had been too brief and simple for any great amount of
manœuvring. He was therefore completely reassured by the gaiety and
simplicity of her welcome, and thought to himself once again that there
was everything to be said in favour of a long social acquiescence. “A
stupid woman, now, would insist on going over the whole thing again,
like a blue-bottle that starts in banging about the room after you’re
sure you’ve driven it out of the window.”
There was nothing of the blue-bottle about Mrs. Sellars; and she was
timorously anxious that Boyne should know it. But her timidity was not
base; if she submitted, she submitted proudly. The only sign she gave of
a latent embarrassment was in her too great ease, her too blithe
determination to deny it. But even this was minimised by the happy fact
that she had a piece of news for him.
She did not tell him what it was till lunch was over, and they were
finishing their coffee in the sitting-room: she knew the importance of
not disturbing a man’s train of thought—even agreeably—while he is in
the act of enjoying good food. Boyne had lit his cigar, and was
meditating on the uniform excellence of the coffee she managed to give
him, when she said, with a little laugh: “Only imagine—Aunt Julia’s on
the Atlantic! I had a radio this morning. She says she’s coming over to
Paris to see you.”
Boyne had pictured Aunt Julia—when he could spare the time for such an
evocation—as something solid, ponderous, essentially immovable. She
represented for him the obstinate stability of old New York in the flux
of new experiments. It was like being told that Trinity Church, for
instance, was taking a Loretto-flight across the Atlantic to see him.
Mrs. Sellars laughed at his incredulous stare. “Are you surprised? I’m
not. You see, Aunt Julia was always the delicate sister, the one who had
to be nursed. Aunt Gertrude, the strong one, who did the nursing, died
last winter—and since then Aunt Julia’s been perfectly well.”
They agreed that such resurrections were not uncommon, and Mrs. Sellars
went so far as to declare that, if she didn’t get to Paris in time to
meet Aunt Julia, she was prepared to have the latter charter an
aeroplane and descend on Cortina. “Indeed we’re only protected by the
fact that I don’t believe there’s any landing-field in the Dolomites.”
She went on to say that she would have to leave in a day or two, as Aunt
Julia, who was accustomed to having her path smoothed for her, had
requested that hotel rooms fulfilling all her somewhat complicated
requirements should be made ready for her arrival, a six-cylinder motor
with balloon tires and an irreproachable chauffeur engaged to meet her
at the station, and a doctor and a masseuse be found in attendance when
she arrived—as a result of which precautions she hoped, after an
interval of repose, to be well enough to occupy herself with her niece’s
plans.
Boyne gasped. “Good Lord—what that cable must have cost her!”
“Oh, it’s not the cost that ever bothers Aunt Julia,” said Aunt Julia’s
niece with a certain deference.
Boyne laughed, and agreed that Mrs. Sellars could not prudently refuse
such a summons. Somehow it no longer offended him that she should obey
it from motives so obviously interested. He could not have said why, but
it now seemed to him natural enough that she should hold herself at the
disposal of a rich old aunt. He wondered whether it was because her
departure would serve to relieve a passing tension; but he dismissed
this as a bit of idle casuistry. “The point is that she’s going—and that
she and I will probably be awfully glad to see each other when she gets
back.”
Mrs. Sellars cast a wistful look about her. After a pause she said: “You
don’t know how I hate to think that our good evenings in this dear
little room are so nearly over,” in a tone suggesting that she had
rather expected Boyne to say it for her, and that he had somehow missed
a cue.
“But why over? Not for more than a week, I hope? You’re not going to let
yourself be permanently annexed by Aunt Julia?”
She smiled a little perplexedly: evidently other plans were in her mind,
plans she had pictured him as instinctively divining. “Not permanently;
but I don’t quite know when I shall be able to leave her—”
“Oh, I say, my dear!”
The perplexity lifted from her smile: it seemed to reach out to him like
a promise. “But then I expect you to join me very soon. As soon as Aunt
Julia’s blood-pressure has been taken, and the doctor and the masseuse
and the chauffeur have been tested and passed upon.”
Boyne listened in astonishment. It had never seriously occurred to him
that he was to be involved in the ceremony of establishing Aunt Julia on
European soil. “Oh, but look here—what earthly use should I be? Why
should I be butchered to make Aunt Julia’s holiday?”
“You won’t be. It will be—almost the other way round. I’m going to do
everything I possibly can for Aunt Julia; everything to start her
successfully on her European adventure. And then I’m going to present
the bill.”
“The bill?”
She nodded gaily. “You’re the bill. I’m going to present you, and say:
‘Now you’ve seen him, can you wonder that I mean to marry him at once,
whether you like it or not?’”
The words fell on a silence which Boyne, for the moment, found it
impossible to break. Mrs. Sellars stood by her writing-table, her
slender body leaning to him, her face lit with one of those gleams of
lost youth which he had once found so exquisite and poignant. He found
it so now, but with another poignancy.
“You mean—you mean—you’ve changed your mind about the date?” He broke
off, the words “of our marriage” choking on his lips. Through a mist of
bewilderment he saw the tender mockery of her smile, and knew how much
courage it disguised. (“I stand here like a stock—what a brute she’ll
think me!”)
“Did you imagine I was one of the dreadful women who never change their
minds?” She came close, clasped her hands about his arm, lifted her
delicate face, still alight with expectation. The face said: “Here I am:
to be cherished or shattered—” and he thought again of the glittering
fragments he had seen at his feet the night before. He detached her
hands, and lifted them, one after another, to his kiss. If only some
word—if only the right word—would come to him!
“Martin—don’t you _want_ me to change my mind?” she suddenly challenged
him. He held her hands against his breast, caressing them.
“Dear, first of all, I don’t want to be the cause of you doing anything
that might offend your aunt ... that might interfere ... in any way ...
with her views....” No; he couldn’t go on; the words strangled him. He
was too sure that she was aware they did not express what he was
thinking, were spoken only to gain time.
But with a gentle tenacity she pursued: “It’s awfully generous of you to
think of that. But don’t you suppose, dear, I’ve been miserable at
asking you to linger on here when I’ve always known that what you wanted
was to be married at once, and get back to work? I’ve been imprisoned in
my past—I see it now; I had become the slave of all those years of
conformity you used to reproach me with. For a long time I couldn’t get
out of their shadow. But you’ve opened my eyes—you’ve set me free. How
monstrous to have waited so long for happiness, and then to be afraid to
seize it when it comes!” Her arms stole up and drew him. “I’m not afraid
now, Martin. You’ve taught me not to be. Henceforth I mean to think of
you first, not of Aunt Julia. I mean to marry you as soon as it can be
done. I don’t suppose the formalities take very long in Paris, do they?
Then, as soon as we’re married, we’ll sail for home.”
He listened in a kind of stupor, saying inwardly: “It’s not that I love
her less; it can’t be that I love her less. It’s only that everything
that happens between us always seems to happen at the wrong time.”
The silence prolonged itself, on her side stretched and straining, on
his built up like a wall, opaque, impenetrable. From beyond it came her
little far-off laugh. “Dear, I’m utterly in your hands, you see!”
Evidently there had to be an answer to that. “Rose—” he began. Pretty as
her name was, he hardly ever called her by it; he had always felt her
too close to him to need a name. She looked up in surprise.
He made a fresh start. “But you see, darling, how things are—”
A little tremor ran across her face. “What things?”
“You know that, after you’d refused to consider the possibility of our
getting married at once, I pledged myself....”
The tremor ceased, and her face once more became smooth and
impenetrable. He found himself repeating to vacancy: “I pledged
myself....”
She drew quietly away, and sat down at a little distance from him.
“You’re talking about your odd experiment with the Wheater children?”
“It’s more than an experiment. When I saw the parents in Venice I told
them, as you know, that I’d be responsible for the welfare of the
children as long as they were left with me.”
“As long as they were left with you! For life, perhaps, then?” She
leaned forward, her face drawn with the valiant effort of her smile.
“Martin! Is all this serious? It can’t be! You can’t really be asking me
to understand that all our plans—our whole future, yours and mine—are to
depend, for an indefinite length of time, on the whim of two or three
chance acquaintances of yours who are too heartless and self-engrossed
to look after their own children!”
Boyne paused a moment; then he said: “We had no plans—I mean, no
immediate plans—when I entered into the arrangement. It was by your own
choice that—”
“My own choice! Well, then, my own choice, now, is that we should have
plans, immediately.” She stood up, trembling a little. She was very
pale, and her thin eyebrows drew a straight black bar across her
forehead. “Martin—I ask you to come with me at once to Paris.”
“At once? But just now you said in a week or two—”
“And now I say at once: to-morrow.”
He stood leaning against the chimney, as far from her as the little room
allowed. A tide of resistance rose in him. “I can’t come to-morrow.”
He was conscious that she was making an intense effort to steady her
quivering nerves. “Martin ... I don’t want to be unreasonable....”
“You’re never unreasonable,” he said patiently.
“You mean it might have been better if I were!” she flashed back,
crimsoning.
“Don’t be—now,” he pleaded.
“No.” She paused. “Very well. Come to Paris in a few days, then.”
“Look here, dear—all this is of no use. No earthly use. I can’t come in
a few days, any more than I can come to-morrow. I can’t desert these
children till their future is settled in one way or another. I’ve said
I’d stick to them, and I mean to. If I turned my back on them now they’d
lose their last chance of being able to stay together.”
She received this with bent head and hands clasped stiffly across her
knee; but suddenly her self-control broke down. “But, Martin, are you
mad? What business is it of yours, anyhow, what becomes of these
children?”
“I don’t know,” he said simply.
“You don’t know—you don’t know?”
“No; I only feel it’s got to be. I’m pledged. I can’t get round it.”
“You can’t get round it because you don’t want to. You’re pledged
because you want to be. You want to be because Mr. Dobree was right ...
because....”
“Rose, take care,” he interrupted, very low.
“Take care? At this hour? Of what? For whom? All I care for is to know
the truth....”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“You may think you are. But the truth is something very
different—something you’re not conscious of yourself, perhaps ... not
clearly....”
“I believe I’m telling you the whole truth.”
“That when I ask you to choose between me and the Wheater children, you
choose the Wheater children—out of philanthropy?”
“I didn’t say out of philanthropy. I said I didn’t know....”
“If you don’t know, I do. You’re in love with Judith Wheater, and you’re
trying to persuade yourself that you’re still in love with me.”
He lifted his hands to his face, and covered his eyes, as if from some
intolerable vision she had summoned to them. “Don’t Rose, for the Lord’s
sake.... Don’t let’s say stupid things—”
“But, dear, I must.” She got up and came close to him again; he felt her
hands on his arm. “Listen, Martin. I love you too much not to want to
help you. Try to feel that about me, won’t you? Then everything will be
so much easier.”
“Yes.”
“Try to understand your own feelings—that’s the best way of sparing
mine. I want the truth, that’s all. Try to see the truth, and face it
with me—it’s all I ask.”
He dropped his hands, and turned his discouraged eyes on her. But he
could only feel that he and she were farther apart than when he had last
looked at her; all the rest was confusion and obscurity.
“I don’t know what the truth, as you call it, is; I swear I don’t; but I
know it’s not what you think. Judith’s as much a child to me as the
others—that I swear to you.”
“Then, dear—”
“Then, I’ve got to stick to them all the same,” he repeated doggedly.
For a time the two continued to stand in silence, with eyes averted,
like people straining to catch some far-off sound which will signal
relief from a pressing peril. Then, slowly, Boyne turned to Mrs.
Sellars. His eyes rested on her profile, so thin, drawn, bloodless, that
a fresh pang shot through him. He had often mocked at himself as a man
who, in spite of all his wanderings, had never had a real adventure; but
now he saw that he himself had been one, had been Rose Sellars’s Great
Adventure, the risk and the enchantment of her life. While she had
continued, during the weary years of her marriage, to be blameless,
exemplary, patient and heroically gay, the thought of Boyne was storing
up treasures for her which she would one day put out her hand and
take—no matter how long she might have to wait. Her patience, Boyne
knew, was endless—it was as long as her hair. She had trained herself to
go on waiting for happiness, day after day, month after month, year
after year, with the same air of bright unruffled vigilance, like a
tireless animal waiting for its prey. One day her prey, her happiness,
would appear, and she would snap it up; and on that day there would be
no escape from her....
It was terrible, it was hideous, to be picturing her distress as
something grasping and predatory; it was more painful still to be
entering so acutely into her feelings while a central numbness paralysed
his own. All around this numbness there was a great margin of pity and
of comprehension; but he knew this was not the region by way of which he
could reach her. She who had always lived the life of reason would never
forgive him if he called upon her reason now....
“Rose—” he appealed to her.
She turned and he saw her face, composed, remodelled, suffused with a
brilliancy like winter starlight. Her lips formed a smiling: “Dear?”
“Rose—”
She took his hand with the lightest pressure. “Dearest, what utter
nonsense we’ve both been talking! Of course I don’t mean that you’re to
desert the Wheater children for me—and of course you don’t mean that
you’re to desert me for them; do you? I believe I understand all you
feel; all your fondness for the poor little things. I should shiver at
you if you hadn’t grown to love them! But you and I have managed to get
each other all on edge, I don’t know how. Don’t you feel what a mistake
it would be to go in and out of this question any longer? I have an idea
I could find a solution almost at once, if only I weren’t trying to so
hard. And so could you, no doubt.” She paused, a little breathlessly,
and then resumed her eager monologue. “Let’s say goodbye till to-morrow,
shall we?—and produce our respective plans of action when we meet again.
And don’t forget that the problem may solve itself without regard to us,
and at any minute.”
She had caught at the last splinter of the rock of Reason still visible
above the flood; and there she clung, dauntless, unbeaten, uttering the
right, the impartial word with lips that pined and withered for his
kiss....
“Oh, my dear,” he murmured.
“To-morrow?”
“Yes—to-morrow.”
Before he could take her in his arms she had slipped out of reach, and
softly, adroitly closed the door on him. Alone on the landing he was
left with the sense that that deft gesture had shut him up with her
forever.
XXIII
It was growing more and more evident to Boyne that he could recover his
old vision of Mrs. Sellars only when they were apart. He began to think
this must be due to his having loved her so long from a distance, having
somehow, in consequence of their separation, established with her an
ideal relation to which her slightest misapprehension, her least failure
to say just what he expected, was a recurring menace.
At first the surprise of finding her, after his long absence, so much
younger and more vivid than his remembrance, the glow of long-imagined
caresses, the whole enchanting harmony of her presence, had hushed the
inner discord. But though she was dearer to him than ever, all free
communication seemed to have ceased between them—he could regain it only
during those imaginary conversations in which it was he who sustained
both sides of the dialogue.
This was what happened when he had walked off the pain and bewilderment
of their last talk. For two hours he tramped the heights, unhappy,
confused, struggling between the sense of her unreasonableness and of
his own predicament; then gradually there stole back on him the serenity
always associated with the silent sessions of his thought and hers. On
what seemed to him the fundamental issues—questions of fairness,
kindness, human charity in the widest meaning—when had she ever failed
him in these wordless talks? His position with regard to the Wheater
children (hadn’t he admitted it to her?) was unreasonable, indefensible,
was whatever else she chose to call it; yes, but it was also human, and
that would touch her in the end. He had no doubt that when they met the
next day she would have her little solution ready, and be prepared to
smile with him over their needless perturbation.
The thought of her deep submissive passion, which contrasted so sharply
with his own uneasy self-assertiveness, was the only anxiety that
remained with him. He knew now how much she loved him—but did he know
how much he loved her? Supposing, for instance, that on getting back to
his hotel, now, this very evening, he should find a line telling him
that she had decided for both their sakes to break their engagement:
well, could he honestly say that it would darken earth and heaven for
him? Mortified, hurt, at a loose end—all this he would be; already the
tender flesh of his vanity was shrinking, and under it he felt the
thrust of wounded affection. But that was all—in the balance how little!
He got back late to the hotel, and walked unheedingly past the
letter-rack toward which, at that hour, it was usual to glance for the
evening mail. The porter called to him, waving a letter. The envelope
bore the New York post-mark, and in the upper corner Boyne recognised
the name of the big firm of contracting engineers to whom he had owed
some of his most important jobs. They still wrote now and then to
consult him: no doubt this letter, which had been forwarded by his
London bankers, was of that nature. He pushed it into his pocket,
deciding to read it after he had dined. And then he proceeded to dine,
alone in a corner of the unfashionable restaurant of his hotel, of which
the tables with their thick crockery and clumsy water-carafes seemed
like homely fragments of a recently-disjoined _table d’hôte_, the long
old-fashioned hotel table at which travellers used to be seated in his
parents’ day. A coarse roll lay by his plate, the table bore a bunch of
half-faded purply-pink cosmos in an opaque blue vase: everything about
him was ugly and impersonal, yet he hugged himself for not being at the
_châlet_ table, with its air of exquisite rusticity, its bowl of
cunningly-disposed wild flowers, the shaded candles, the amusing food.
Yes; and he was glad, too, not to be sharing the little Wheaters’
pudding at the _Pension Rosenglüh_; he was suddenly aware of an intense
unexpected satisfaction in being for once alone, his own master, with no
one that he need be on his guard against or at his best before; no one
to be tormented or enchanted by, no one to listen to and answer.
“Decidedly, I’m a savage,” he thought, emptying his plateful of
savourless soup with an appetite he was almost ashamed of. The moral of
it, obviously, was that he had been idle too long, that what he was
thirsting for at this very moment was not more rest but more work, and
that the idea of giving up his life of rough and toilsome activity for
the security of an office in New York, as he had aspired to do a few
short months ago, now seemed intolerable. Too old for the fatigue and
hardships of an engineer’s life? Why, it was the fatigues and the
hardships which, physically speaking, had given the work its zest, just
as the delicate mathematical calculations had provided its intellectual
stimulus. The combination of two such sources of interest, so rare in
other professions, was apparently what he needed to keep him straight,
curb his excitable imagination, discipline his nerves, and make him wake
up every morning to a steady imperturbable view of life. After dinner,
sitting in the dreary little lounge, as he lit his pipe and pulled the
letter from his pocket he thought: “I wish to God it was an order to
start for Tierra del Fuego!”
It was nothing of the sort, of course: merely an inquiry for the address
of a young engineer who had been Boyne’s assistant a few years earlier,
and whom the firm in question had lost sight of. They had been struck
with Boyne’s estimate of the young man’s ability, and thought they might
have an interesting piece of work for him, if he happened to be
available, and was not scared by hardships and responsibility. Boyne put
the letter into his pocket, leaned back in his chair, and thought: “God!
I wish I was his age and just starting—for anywhere.”
His mind turned round and round this thought for the rest of the
evening. Perhaps he could make Mrs. Sellars understand that, after all,
he had made a mistake in supposing he had reached the age for sedentary
labours. Once they were married she would surely see that, for his
soul’s sake, and until the remainder of his youth was used up, she must
let him go off on these remote exciting expeditions which seemed the
only cure for—for what? Well, for the creeping grayness of age, no
doubt. The fear of that must be what ailed him. At any rate he must get
away; he must. As soon as the fate of the little Wheaters was decided,
and he and Rose were married, and he had established her in New York, he
must get back into the glorious soul-releasing world of girders and
abutments, of working stresses, curvatures and grades.
She had talked of having her little plan ready for him the next day.
Well, he would have one for her, at any rate; this big comprehensive
one. First, the Wheater tribe transplanted (he didn’t yet see how) to
the safe shelter of Grandma Mervin’s wing; then his own marriage;
then—flight! He worked himself into a glow of eloquence, as he always
did in these one-sided talks, which never failed to end in convincing
Mrs. Sellars because he unconsciously eliminated from them all the
objections she might possibly have raised.... He went to bed with a
sense of fresh air in his soul, as if the mere vision of escape had
freed him....
Mrs. Sellars had not said at what hour she expected him the next day; so
he decided to wait till lunch, and drop in on her then, as his habit was
when they had no particular expedition in view. In the morning he
usually strolled down to see how the _Rosenglüh_ refugees were getting
on; but on this occasion he left them to themselves, and did not go out
till he made for the _châlet_. As he approached it he was startled by a
queer sense of something impending. Oh, not another “scene”; Rose was
much too intelligent for that. What he felt was just an uneasy qualm, as
if the new air in his soul’s lungs were being gradually pumped out of
them again. He glanced up at the balcony, lifting his hand to signal to
her; but she was not there. He pushed open the hall door and ran up the
short flight of stairs. The little sitting-room was empty: it looked
speckless and orderly as a tomb. He noticed at once that the littered
writing-table was swept and garnished, and that no scent of viands
greeted him through the dining-room door.
She had gone—he became suddenly sure that she had gone. But why? But
when? Above all, why without a word? It was so unlike her to do anything
abrupt and unaccountable that his vague sense of apprehension returned.
He sat down in the armchair he always occupied, as if the familiar act
must re-evoke her, call her back into the seat opposite, in the spirit
if not in the flesh. But the room remained disconcertingly, remained
even spiritually empty. He had the sense that she had gone indeed, and
had taken her soul with her; and the discovery made a queer unexpected
void in him. “This is—absurd!” he heard himself exclaiming.
“Rose!” he called out; there was no answer. He stood up, and his
wandering eye travelled from the table to the mantelpiece. On its shelf
he saw a letter addressed to himself. He seized it and tore it open; and
all at once the accents of the writer’s reasonableness floated out into
the jangled air of the little room.
“Dearest—After you left yesterday I had a radio from Aunt Julia,
asking me to get to Paris as soon as I could, so I decided to motor
over to Padua this morning, and catch the Orient Express. And I mean
to slip off like this, without seeing you, or even letting you know
that I’m going, because, on second thoughts, I believe my little plan
(you know I promised you one) will be all the better for a day or two
more of quiet thought; so I’ll simply write it to you from Paris
instead of talking it to you hurriedly this morning.
“Besides (I’ll confess) I want to keep the picture of our happiness
here intact, not frayed and rubbed by more discussion, even the
friendliest. You’ll understand, I know. This being together has been
something so complete, so exquisite, that I want to carry it away with
me in its perfection.... I’ll write in a few days. Till then, if you
can, think of me as I think of you. No heart could ask more of
another. Rose.”
He sat down again, and read the letter over two or three times. It was
sweet and reasonable—but it was also desperately sad. Yes; she had
understood that for a time it was best for both that they should be
apart. And this was her way of putting it to him. His eyes filled, and
he wondered how he could have thought, the night before, that if he
suddenly heard she was leaving it would be a relief....
But presently he began to visualise what the day would have been if he
had found her there, and they had now been sitting over the lunch-table,
“fraying and rubbing” their happiness, as she had put it, by more
discussion—useless discussion. How intelligent of her to go—how
merciful! Yes; he would think of her as she thought of him; he could
now, without a shadow of reserve. He would bless her in all honesty for
this respite....
He took a fading mountain-pink from one of the vases on the mantelpiece,
put it in his pocket-book with her letter, and started to walk down to
the village to send her a telegram. As he walked, he composed it,
affectionately, lingeringly. He moved fast through the brisk air, and by
the time he had reached the foot of the hill a pang of wholesome hunger
reminded him that he had not lunched. Straight ahead, the _Pension
Rosenglüh_ lay in his path, and he knew that, even if the little
Wheaters had finished their midday meal, Miss Scope would persuade the
cook to conjure up an omelette for him....
Instantly he felt a sort of boyish excitement at the idea of surprising
the party; and finding the front door unlatched, he crossed the hall and
entered the private dining-room which had been assigned to them since
the arrival of adult boarders less partial than himself to what Judith
called the children’s “dinner-roar.”
His appearance was welcomed with a vocal vigour which must have made the
crockery dance even in the grown-up _Speise-saal_ across the hall. “Have
the wild animals left a morsel for me?” he asked, and gaily wedged
himself in between Judith and Blanca.
XXIV
Uninterrupted communion with the little Wheaters always gave Boyne the
same feeling of liberation. It was like getting back from a constrained
bodily position into a natural one. This sense of being himself, being
simply and utterly at his ease, which the children’s companionship had
given him during the Mediterranean voyage, but which he had enjoyed only
in uncertain snatches since their arrival at Cortina, came back to him
as soon as he had slipped his chair between Judith’s and Blanca’s at the
lunch-table. He would not ascribe it to her having gone, but preferred
to think it was because her going left him free to dispose of himself as
he chose. And what he chose was, on the spot, to resume his
half-fatherly attitude toward the group, and devote every moment of his
time to them.
Being with them again was like getting home after a long and precarious
journey during which he had been without news of the people he loved. A
great many things must have happened in the interval, and not a moment
must be lost in gathering up the threads. There were, in fact, many
threads to be gathered. He got a general outline of the situation that
very evening from Miss Scope—learned that Terry’s health was steadily
improving, that the young Swiss tutor whom Boyne had unearthed at Botzen
was conscientious and kind, and got on well with Terry, but found Bun
hopelessly unmanageable (“And nothing new in that,” Miss Scope
commented); that on the whole the three little girls, Blanca, Zinnie and
Beechy, though trying at times, were behaving better than could have
been hoped, considering the unusual length of their holiday; and lastly
that Chipstone, even in the process of cutting a new tooth, retained his
rosy serenity, and had added a pound or more to his weight.
All this was as absorbing to Boyne as if every one concerned had been of
the highest interest and consequence. He had a long talk with the tutor,
went carefully into the question of Terry’s studies, suggested a few
changes, and encouraged and counselled the young man. As to luring or
coercing Bun up the steep way of knowledge, a stronger hand would be
needed; and while Bun ranged unchecked there was not much to be done
with the little girls. Even Blanca, though she felt herself so superior
in age and culture, found the company of her juniors tolerable, and
their bad example irresistible, when there was nothing better going.
But, as against these drawbacks, there was the happy fact that the high
air, which had done all the children good, had transformed Terry from a
partial invalid into a joyous active boy who laughed at temperatures and
clamoured for second helpings. And so far the Lido had refrained from
interfering. On the whole, therefore, as the weeks passed, Boyne had
more and more reason to be satisfied with his achievement. To give the
children a couple of months of security, with the growing hope of
keeping them all together under old Mrs. Mervin’s roof, had assuredly
been worth trying for. The evening after Mrs. Sellars’s departure he
wrote a long letter to Grandma Mervin.
Boyne, once more alone with the children, found that his confused
feeling about Judith had given way to the frank elder-brotherly
affection he had felt for her on the cruise. Perhaps because she herself
had become natural and simple, now that there were no older people to
put her on the defensive, she seemed again the buoyant child who had
first captivated him. Or perhaps his thinking so was just a part of his
satisfaction at being with his flock again, unobserved and uncriticised
by the grown up. He and they understood each other; he suspected that,
even had their plight not roused his pity, his own restlessness and
impulsiveness would have fraternized with theirs. “The fact is, we’re
none of us grown up,” he reflected, hugging himself for being on the
children’s side of the eternal barrier.
His talks with Judith turned, as usual, on the future of the children.
He sometimes tried to draw from her the expression of a personal
preference; but she seemed to want nothing for herself; she could not
detach herself, even in imagination, from the others. For them she had
fabulous dreams and ambitions. If only they could keep together till
they were grown up! She had a quaint vision of their all living in a
house somewhere in the country (perhaps her father would buy them one
when she came of age); a house which should be always full of pets and
birds; and leading there a life in which the amusements of the nursery
were delightfully combined with grown up pursuits. And for each of the
children she had thought out a definite career. Blanca, of course, was
to be “lovely”: to Judith loveliness was a vocation. Terry was to be a
great scholar, the guide and counsellor of the others—she had a savage
reverence for the wisdom and authority to be acquired from books. Bun
was manifestly meant to drive racing-motors, and carry off championships
in games and athletics; Beechy would marry and have heaps of children,
yet somehow be always able to look after Bun; and Zinnie—well, Zinnie
was undoubtedly predestined to be “clever”; a fate of dubious import.
But Judith hoped it would not be with the sharp cunning of little Pixie
Lullmer, who seemed so childish and simple, and was really an abyss of
precocious knowledge, initiated into all the secrets of hotel life; a
toad of a child, Judith summed it up, whereas her poor half-sister, Doll
Westway, had hated it all so much that she had taken the shortest way
out by shooting herself....
Ah—and Chipstone! Well, there was no hurry about Chipstone, was there?
But he was so large and calm, and so certain to get what he wanted, that
Judith thought perhaps he would be a banker—and own a big yacht, and
take them all on wonderful cruises. And Nanny and Susan would of course
always stay with them, to look after Beechy’s children....
Boyne had decided to write to old Mrs. Mervin without mentioning the
fact to Judith. He had meant to consult her, had even intended to have a
talk with her on the day when Mrs. Sellars’s abrupt departure had
momentarily unsettled his plans; but when the idea recurred to him
Judith was already re-established in his mind as the blithe creature of
their first encounter, and he had a superstitious dread of doing
anything to change the harmony of their relation. After all, he could
plead the children’s cause with their grandmother as well as Judith
could; and if his appeal were doomed to failure she need never know it
had been made. He found himself insisting rather elaborately, in his own
mind, on the childishness he was fond of ascribing to her when he talked
of her to others; and now he feared lest anything should break through
that necessary illusion. In his letter to Mrs. Mervin he tried to
combine the maximum of conciseness and of eloquence, and ended by
reminding her that the various parents might intervene at any moment,
and begging her to cable at once if, as he earnestly hoped, she could
give her assent to the plan. The sending off of the letter was like
handing in an essay at school; with its completion he seemed entering
with the children on a new holiday. “Two or three weeks’ respite,
anyhow; and then,” he thought, “who knows? I may be able to carry them
all back to New York with me.” Incredible as it was, he clung to the
hope with a faith as childish as Judith’s.
Mrs. Sellars had said that she would write in a few days. Instead, she
telegraphed to announce her arrival in Paris, and again, a little later,
to inform Boyne of Aunt Julia’s. To each message she added a few words
of tender greeting; but ten days or more elapsed before the telegrams
were followed by a letter.
Boyne found it one evening, on his return from a long expedition with
the children. He had ceased, after a day or two, to speculate on Mrs.
Sellars’s silence, had gradually, as the days passed, become unconscious
of their flight, and was almost surprised, when he saw her handwriting,
that a letter from Paris should have reached Cortina so quickly. He
waited till after dinner to read it, secretly wishing to keep the
flavour of the present on his lips. Then, when the task could no longer
be postponed, he withdrew to the melancholy lounge, and settled himself
in the same slippery chair in which he had sat when he read the letter
of the engineers asking if he could trace the whereabouts of the young
man to whom they wanted to offer a job. “It’s to say she’s coming back,”
he muttered to himself as he broke the seal. But Mrs. Sellars did not
say that.
The letter was one of her best—tender, gay and amusing. The description
of Aunt Julia’s arrival was a little masterpiece. The writer dwelt at
length on the arts she had exercised—was still exercising—to persuade
the family tyrant that he, Boyne, was justified in wishing for an
immediate marriage, and she added, on a note of modest triumph, that
success was already in sight. “But even if it were not, dear,” the
letter pursued, “I shouldn’t allow that to alter my plans—our plans—and
I’m prepared to have you carry me off under Aunt Julia’s nose
(formidable though that feature is), if she should refuse her sanction.
But she won’t; and the important question is what we intend to do, and
not what she may think about it.”
At this stage Boyne laid the letter aside, took out a cigar, cut it, and
put it down without remembering to light it. He took up the letter
again.
“But it’s more important still that we should come to a clear
understanding about our future—isn’t it, dearest? I feel that I made
such an understanding impossible the other day by my unreasonableness,
my impatience, my apparent inability to see your point of view. But I
did see it, even then; and I see it much more clearly now that I have
studied the question at a sufficient distance to focus it properly. Of
course we both know that, whatever decision we reach, some of the
numerous papas and mammas of your little friends may upset it at a
moment’s notice; but meanwhile I have a plan to propose. What you
want—isn’t it?—is to guard these poor children as long as possible from
the unsettling and demoralising influence of continual change. I quite
see your idea; and it seems to me that those most exposed to such risks
are the ones we ought to try to help. By your own showing, Mr. Wheater
will never give up Chipstone for long; Zinnie, and Prince Buondelmonte’s
funny little pair, are bound to be claimed by their respective parents
now that they have settled down to wealth and domesticity. As for the
enchanting Judith, though you persist in not seeing it, she will be
grown up and married in a year or two; and meanwhile, if the Wheaters do
divorce, she will probably choose to remain with her mother, as she did
before. The twins, in fact, seem to me the chief victims. They are old
enough to understand what is going on, and not old enough to make
themselves lives of their own; and above all they are at an age when
disintegrating influences are likely to do the most harm. You have often
told me that poor Terry’s health has been an obstacle between him and
his father (what a horrible idea that it should be so!), and that the
bouncing Chip has cut him out. Terry needs care and sympathy more than
any of them; and I am sure you will feel, as I do, that it would be
unthinkable to separate dear little Blanca from the brother she adores.
What I propose, then, is that you should ask Mr. and Mrs. Wheater to
give up the twins—regarding us in any capacity you like, either as their
friends, or as their legal guardians, if that is better—till they come
of age. I will gladly take a share in looking after them, and I believe
that between us we can turn them into happy useful members of society.
If you agree, I am ready to—”
Boyne stopped reading, folded up the letter and thrust it into his
pocket. There rushed over him a wave of disappointment and disgust.
“Dear little Blanca indeed!” he muttered furiously. “Useful members of
society!” That Mrs. Sellars should calmly propose to separate the
children was bad enough; but that, of the lot, she should choose to
foist on him the only one he could feel no affection for, and hardly any
interest in—that to the woman he was going to marry Blanca should alone
seem worthy of compassion among the four little girls who had been cast
upon his mercy, this was to Boyne hatefully significant of the side of
Mrs. Sellars’s character to which, from the moment of their reunion, he
had been trying to close his eyes. “She chooses her because she knows
she need never be jealous of her,” was his inmost thought.
Well, and supposing it were so—how womanly, how human, after all! Loving
Boyne as she did, was it not natural that she should prefer to have
under her roof the two children least likely to come between herself and
him, to interfere in any way with their happiness? Yes—but was that
loving him at all? If she had really loved him would she not have
entered into his feeling about the little group, and recognised the
cruelty of separating them? He paused a moment over this, and tried
conscientiously to imagine what, in a similar case, his love for her
would have inspired him to do. Would it, for instance, ever induce him
to live with Aunt Julia as a dependent nephew-in-law? A million times
no! But why propound such useless riddles? No one could pretend that the
cases were similar. Rose Sellars would simply be asking him to gratify a
whim; what he was asking of her was vital, inevitable. She knew that it
lay with him, and with no one else, to save these children; she knew
that, little by little, his whole heart had gone into the task. Yet
coolly, deliberately, with that infernal air she had of thinking away
whatever it was inconvenient to admit, she had affected to sympathise
with his purpose while in reality her proposal ignored it. Send back the
younger children to their parents—to such parents as Zinnia Lacrosse and
Buondelmonte!—return Judith to her mother, to a mother about to marry
Gerald Ormerod, who, by Judith’s own showing, would have preferred
herself? Boyne recoiled from the thought as from the sight of some
physical cruelty he could not prevent. He got up, threw away his cigar,
and went out hatless, indignant, into the night.
The air was warm, the sky full of clouds tunnelled by shifting vistas of
a remote blue sprinkled with stars. Boyne groped his way down the
obscure wood-path from his hotel, and walked across the fields to the
slopes which Judith and he had climbed on the day of his return from the
Lido. It was from that day—he recalled it now—that Rose Sellars’s
jealousy of Judith had dated; he had seen it flash across her fixed
attentive face when, the next morning, Judith had blurted out an
allusion to their ramble. Boyne—he also remembered—had given Mrs.
Sellars to understand that on that occasion he had gone off for a walk
by himself, “to get the Lido out of his lungs”; very likely his
prevarication had first excited her suspicion. For why should he
dissemble the fact that he had been with Judith, if Judith was only a
child to him, as he said? Why indeed? It seemed as though, in concealing
so significant a fact, he had simply, unconsciously, been on his guard
against this long-suspected jealousy; as if he had always guessed that
the most passionate and irrational of sentiments lurked under Mrs.
Sellars’s calm and reasonable exterior. If it were so, it certainly made
her more interesting—but also less easy to deal with. For jealousy, to
excite sympathy, must be felt by some one who also inspires it. Shared,
it was a part of love; unshared, it made love impossible. And Boyne, in
his fatuous security, could not imagine feeling jealous of Mrs. Sellars.
“Though of course I should hate it like anything, I suppose....” But the
problem was one that he could only apprehend intellectually.
He tramped on through the summer night, his mind full of tormented
thoughts; and as he groped upward among the pines he remembered that
other night, not many weeks since, when he had climbed the same path,
and his feet had seemed winged, and the air elixir, because a girl’s
shoulder brushed his own, and he listened to unpremeditated laughter.
It was so late when he got back to the hotel that the porter,
unwillingly roused, looked at him with a sulky astonishment.
“There was a lady here—she left a parcel for you.”
“A lady? Where’s the parcel?”
“Up in your room. I had to help her to carry it up. It was awkward
getting it round the turn of the stairs. She left a letter for you too.”
Awkward round the turn of the stairs? What on earth could the object be,
and who the lady? Boyne, without farther questions, sprang up to his
room. Rose had come back—there could be no doubt of it. She had decided,
adroitly enough, to follow up her letter by the persuasion of her
presence. At the thought he felt flurried, unsettled, as if she had come
too soon, before he had set his mind in order to receive her.
And what could she possibly have brought him that had to be manœuvred up
the hotel stairs? Whatever it was, he could not, try as he would, figure
her labouring up to his room with it, even with the assistance of the
porter. Why, she had never even been to his room, the room with every
chair and table of which Judith and the other children were so
carelessly familiar! It was utterly unlike Rose—and yet Rose of course
it must be....
He flung open his door, and saw a large shrouded object in the middle of
the floor; an object of odd uncertain shape, imperfectly wrapped in torn
newspapers tied with string. The wrappings yielded to a pull, and an
ancient walnut cradle with primitive carven ornaments revealed itself to
his petrified gaze. A cradle! He threw himself into a chair and stared
at it incredulously, as if he knew it must be an hallucination. At
length he remembered the porter’s having mentioned a letter, and his
glance strayed to his chest of drawers. There, perched on the
pincushion, was an envelope addressed in a precise familiar hand—the
hand of Terry Wheater, always the scribe of the other children when
their letters were to be subjected to grown up criticism. Boyne tore the
envelope open and read:
“Darling Martin,
“We are all of us sending you this lovely cradle for your wedding
present because we suppose you are going to be married very soon, as
we think Mrs. Sellars has gone to Paris to order her trousseau. And
because you have been like a father to us we hope and pray you will
soon be a real father to a lot of lovely little children of your own,
and they will all sleep in this cradle, and then you will think of
Your loving Judith, Terry, Blanca—”
Under the last of the rudimentary signatures, Chipstone had scrawled his
mark; and below it was a scribbled postscript from Judith: “Darling, I
open this while Terry’s not looking to say he said we oughternt to call
the craidle lovely, but it is lovely and we wanted you to know it was.
Judith.”
In the midnight silence Boyne sat and laughed and laughed until a
nervous spinster in the next room banged on the wall and called out
venomously: “I can hear every word you’re both saying.”