poor father, who was always the prey of women like Zinnia Lacrosse or
Sybil Lullmer. “She does pull herself together sometimes—especially
since that awful time with Buondelmonte. And so, when she met this other
gentleman, who is so much older, and very religious, and enormously
rich, and who only wants to influence her for good, Marguerite says it
made her feel how dreadfully she’d wasted her life, and what a different
woman she might have been if she’d known him years before. You see, he
doesn’t want to marry her, but only to be her friend and adviser. He
thinks she’s been married often enough. And so, in order not to leave
Gerald at a loose end, she’s kept him on as secretary till he can get
another job, and she and Gerald and the other gentleman have gone to
Paris together to see what had better be done. And the gentleman says
she ought to have us all with her; and he feels awfully fond of us
already, and knows mother will be ever so much happier if we’re with
her....”
“Oh, my God—then it’s all up with us,” Boyne groaned.
Judith made no answer, and he went on: “It only remains now to hear from
Lady Wrench and the Princess!”
“Or Grandma Mervin—there’s still grandma,” Judith rejoined, half
hopefully.
Boyne hesitated a moment; then he said to himself that there was no use
in any farther postponement. “No; I’ve heard from her,” he said.
Judith’s eyes were again illuminated. “You have? Oh, Martin! If she’d
only take us all, perhaps it would satisfy mother and the new gentleman.
Oh, Martin, she doesn’t say no?”
Silently—for no words came to him—he gave her the cable, and walked away
to the window to be out of sight of her face. For a while he stood
watching the gray curtain of failure that hung there between him and his
golden weeks; then he pulled himself together and turned back.
“Judy—”
She handed him the cable.
“After all, you expected it, didn’t you?” he said.
She nodded. “It doesn’t make so much difference, anyhow,” he continued,
in an unconvinced voice, “if Bun and Beechy have to go....”
She pondered on this for a few moments without answering. Then, with one
of her sudden changes of tone: “Martin,” she broke out impetuously, “do
you suppose she was right, after all—I mean the Princess—about our being
so dreadfully behind the times? Do you suppose, if we did all the things
she suggested: if we got new teachers and new books, and somebody for
Bun’s gymnastics, it would make any difference—do you think it would?”
Every line of her face, from lifted eyebrows to parted lips, was a
passionate demand for his assent. “After all, you know—perhaps she was
right about some things: that stupid old book of Scopy’s, for instance.
Of course we all know poor darling Scopy’s a back number. And about
Bun’s gymnastics too. Do you suppose if we took a villa at Meran we
could afford to fit up a room like the one she described, and get an
instructor—didn’t she call him an instructor? And then there’s fencing
and riding—I dare say she was right about that too! But after all—” she
paused, and her eyes looked as the rain did when the sun was trying to
break through it. “After all, Martin,” she began again, “the main thing
is that the children are so well, isn’t it? Look at our record—see what
the summer has done! You wouldn’t know Terry, would you, if you were to
see him now for the first time after meeting us on the boat at Algiers?
And Chip—isn’t Chip a miracle? Every one stops Nanny in the street to
admire him, and they always think he must be three years old. He was
just beginning to walk alone when he came here—now he runs like a hare!
Nanny gets worn out chasing him. And the tricks he’s learnt to do! He
can imitate everybody; I believe he’s going to be a movie star. Have you
seen him do the lion, with Bun as lion-tamer? Or the old man at the
market, all doubled up with sciatica, who leans on a stick, and holds
one hand behind his back? But it’s a wonder! Oh, Martin, wait, and I’ll
fetch him down now to do the old man for you—shall I?”
Once again her grown up cares had vanished in the childish pride of
recounting Chip’s achievements. Would it always be like this, Boyne
wondered, or would life gradually close the gates of the fairyland which
was still so close to her? He would have given most of his chances of
happiness to help her keep open that communication with her childhood.
And what if he were the one being who could do it? The question wound
itself through his thoughts like a persuasive hand insinuating itself
into his. This heart-break of separation that was upon her—what if he
alone had the power to ease it? He stood looking down at her
perplexedly.
“Judy—Chip’s a great man, and I’d love to see him do the old gentleman
with the sciatica. But first....”
“Yes—first?” she palpitated. But under his gaze her radiance gradually
faded, and her lips began to tremble a little. “Ah, then you don’t
think ... there’s any hope for us?”
“I think you’ve got to go to Paris and see your mother.”
“And take Chip? I’ll never take Chip! I won’t!”
“But listen, dear—.” He sat down, and drew her to the sofa beside him,
speaking as he might have to a child on a holiday who was fighting the
summons back to school.
“Listen, Judy. We’ve done our best; we all have. But the children are
not yours or mine. They belong to their parents, after all.” How dry and
flat his phrases sounded, compared with the words he longed to say to
her!
She drew back into the corner of the sofa. “That Buondelmonte woman’s
got at you—she’s talked you over! I knew she would.” She was grown up
again now, measuring him with angry suspicious eyes, and flinging out
her accusations in her mother’s shrillest voice.
“Why, child, what nonsense! You said just now that perhaps the Princess
was right....”
“I never did! I said, perhaps we ought to get a new Cyclopædia for
Scopy, and have Bun taught scientific gymnastics; and now you say....”
“I say that fate’s too much for us. It didn’t need the Princess
Buondelmonte to teach me that.”
She made no answer, and they sat in silence in their respective corners
of the sofa, each gazing desperately into a future of which nothing
could be divined except that it was the end of their hopes. Suddenly
Judith flung herself face down against the knobby cushions and broke
into weeping. Boyne, for a few minutes, remained numb and helpless; then
he moved closer, and bending over drew her into his arms. She seemed
hardly aware of his nearness; she simply went on crying, with hard
uneven sobs, pressing her face against his shoulder as if it were the
sofa-cushion. He held her in silence, not venturing to speak, or even to
brush back her tumbled hair, while he pictured, with the acuity of his
older and less articulate grief, what must be passing before her as the
fibres of her heart were torn away. “It’s too cruel—it’s too beastly
cruel,” he thought, wincing at the ugly details which must enter into
her vision of the future, details he could only guess at, while she saw
them with all the precision of experience. Yes, it was too cruel; but
what could he or she do? He continued to hold her in silence, listening
to the beat of the rain on the half-open window, and smelling the cold
grave-yard smell of the autumn earth, while her sobs ran through him in
shocks of anguish.
Gradually her weeping subsided, and Boyne took courage to lift his hand
and pass it once or twice over her hair. She lay in his hold as quietly
as a frightened bird, and presently he bent his head and whispered:
“Judy—.” Why not? he thought; his heart was beating with reckless
bounds. He was free, after all, if it came to that; free to chuck his
life away on any madness; and madness this was, he knew. Well, he’d had
enough of reason for the rest of his days; and a man is only as old as
he feels.... He bent so close that his lips brushed her ear. “Judy,
darling, listen.... Perhaps after all there’s a way—.”
In a flash she was out of his arms, and ecstatically facing him. “A
way—a way of keeping us all together?” Ah, how hard her questions were
to answer!
Boyne drew her down again beside him. Crying was a laborious and
disfiguring business to her, and her face was so drawn and tear-stained
that she looked almost old; but its misery was shot through with hope.
If he could have kept her there, not speaking, only answering her with
endearments, how easy, how exquisite it would have been! But her face
was tense with expectation, and he had to find words, for he knew that
his silence would have no meaning for her.
“Judith—” he began; but she interrupted: “Call me Judy, or I shall think
it’s more bad news.” He made no answer, and she flung herself against
him with a cry of alarm. “Martin! Martin! You’re not going to desert us
too?”
He held her hands, but his own had begun to tremble. “Darling, I’ll
never desert you; I’ll stay with you always if you’ll have me; if things
go wrong I’ll always be there to look after you and defend you; no
matter what happens, we’ll never be separated any more....” He broke
off, his voice failing before the sudden sunrise in her eyes.
“Oh, Martin—” She lifted his hands one by one to her wet cheeks, and
held them there in silent bliss. “Then you don’t belong any longer to
Mrs. Sellars?”
“I don’t belong to any one but you—for as long as ever you’ll have
me....”
Her eyes still bathed him in their radiance. “My darling, my darling.”
She leaned close as she said it, and he dared not move, in his new awe
of her nearness—so subtly had she changed from the child of his familiar
endearments to the woman he passionately longed for.... “Darling,” she
said again; then, with a face in which the bridal light seemed already
kindled, “Oh, Martin, do you really mean you’re going to adopt us all,
and we’re all going to stay with you forever?”
XXIX
Boyne felt like a man who has blundered along in the dark to the edge of
a precipice. He trembled inwardly with the effort of recovery, and the
shock of finding himself flung back into his old world. Judith, in a
rush of gratitude, had thrown her arms about him; and he shrank from her
touch, from the warm smell of her hair, from everything about her which
he had to think back into terms of childhood and comradeship, while
every vein in his body still ached for her. There was nothing he would
have dreaded as much as her detecting the least trace of what he was
feeling. His first care must be to hide the break in their perfect
communion—the fact that for a moment she had been for him the woman she
would some day be for another man, in a future he could never share. He
undid her hands and walked away to the window.
When he turned to her again he had struggled back to some sort of
composure. “Judy, child, I wish you wouldn’t take such terrible
life-leases on the future.” He tried to smile as he said it. “I’m always
afraid it will bring us bad luck. We’d much better live from hand to
mouth. I’m ready to promise all that a reasonable man can—that I’ll put
up another big fight for you, and that I don’t despair of winning it. At
any rate, I’ll be there; I’ll stand by you; I won’t desert you....” He
broke off, reading in her unsatisfied eyes the hopelessness of piling up
vague assurances....
“Yes,” she assented, in a voice grown as small and colourless as her
face.
He stood before her miserably. “You do understand, dear, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure....” She hesitated. “A little while ago I thought I did.”
His nerves began to twitch again. Could he bear to go into the question
with her once more—and what would be the use if he did? The immediate
future must somehow or other be dealt with; but the last few minutes had
deprived him of all will and energy. He had the desolate sense of her
knowing that he had failed her, and yet not being able to guess why.
“Of course I’ll do what I can,” he repeated.
She remained silent, constrained by his constraint; and he saw the
disappointment in her eyes.
“You don’t believe me?”
Still she looked at him perplexedly. “But you said.... I thought you
said just now that you’d found a way of keeping us all together. No
matter what happened; you had a plan, you said.”
His senseless irritation grew upon him. Could such total simplicity be
unfeigned? Could she have such a power of awaking passion without any
inkling of its meaning? He hated himself for doubting it. In time—a
short time, perhaps—her rich nature would come to its ripeness; but as
yet the only full-grown faculties in it were her love for her brothers
and sisters, and her faith in the few people who had shown her kindness
in a world unkindly.
“I’m sorry,” she continued, after pausing for an answer which did not
come. “I must have misunderstood you, I suppose.”
Boyne gave a nervous laugh. “You did, most thoroughly.”
“And—you won’t tell me what you really meant?”
He stood motionless, his hands in his pockets, staring down at the knots
in the wooden floor, as he had stared at them on the day when she had
owned to having taken her father’s money—but in a mental perturbation
how much deeper! A few minutes before, it had seemed like profanation to
brush her with the thought of his love; now, faced by her despair, by
her sense of being left alone to fight her battles, he asked himself
whether it might not be fairer, even kinder, to speak. At the thought
his heart again began to beat excitedly. Perhaps he had been too
impetuous, too inarticulate. What if, after all, a word from him could
wake the sleeping music?
The difficulty was to find a beginning. What would have been so simple
if kisses could have told it, seemed tortuous or brutal when put in
words. He shrank not so much from the possibility of hurting her as from
the sudden fear of her hurting him beyond endurance.
“Judith,” he began, “how old are you?”
“I shall be sixteen in three months—no, in five months, really,” she
said, with an obvious effort at truthfulness.
“As near as that! Well, sixteen is an age,” he laughed.
She continued to fix her bewildered eyes on him, as if seeking a clue.
“But I look a lot older, don’t I?” she added hopefully.
“Older? There are times when you look so old that you frighten me.” He
remembered then that she had spoken to him with perfect simplicity of
Gerald Ormerod’s desire to marry her, as of the most natural thing in
the world; and his own scruples began to seem absurd. “I’m always
forgetting what a liberal education she’s had,” he thought with a touch
of self-derision.
He cleared his throat, and continued: “So grown up that I suppose you’ll
soon be thinking of getting married.”
The word was out now; it went sounding on and on inside of his head
while he awaited her answer. When she spoke it was with an air of
indifference and disappointment.
“What’s the use of saying that? How can I ever marry, with all the
children to look after?” It was clear that she regarded the subject as
irrelevant; her tone seemed to remind him that he and she had long since
dealt with and disposed of it. “You might as well tell me that I ought
to be educated,” she grumbled.
He pressed on: “But it might turn out ... you might find....” He had to
pause to steady his voice. “If we can’t prevent the children being taken
away from you, you’ll be awfully lonely....”
“Taken away from me?” At the word her listlessness vanished. “Do you
suppose I’ll let them be taken like that? Without fighting to the very
last minute? Let Syb Lullmer get hold of Chip—and Bun and Beechy go to
that Buondelmonte man?”
“I know. It’s hateful. But supposing the very worst happens—oughtn’t you
to face that now?” He cleared his throat again. “If things went wrong,
and you were very lonely, and a fellow asked you to marry him—”
“Who asked me?”
He laughed again. “If I did.”
For a moment she looked at him perplexedly; then her eyes cleared, and
for the first time she joined in his laugh. Hers seemed to bubble up,
fresh and limpid, from the very depths of her little girlhood. “Well,
that would be funny!” she said.
There was a bottomless silence.
“Yes—wouldn’t it?” Boyne grinned. He stared at her without speaking;
then, like a blind man feeling his way, he picked up his hat and
mackintosh, said: “Where’s my umbrella? Oh, outside—” and walked out
stiffly into the passage. On the doorstep, still aware of her nearness,
he added a little dizzily: “No, please—I want a long tramp alone
first.... I’ll come in again this afternoon to settle what we’d better
do about Paris....”
He felt her little disconsolate figure standing alone behind him in the
rain, and hurried away as if to put himself out of its reach forever.
XXX
It was still raining when the Wheater colony left Cortina; it was
raining when the train in which Boyne and Judith were travelling reached
Paris. During the days intervening between the receipt of Mrs. Wheater’s
telegram and the clattering halt of the express in the gare de Lyon,
Boyne could not remember that the rain had ever stopped.
But he had not had time to do much remembering—not even of the havoc
within himself. After the struggle necessary to convince Judith that she
must go to Paris and take Chip with her—since disobedience to her
mother’s summons might put them irretrievably in the wrong—he had first
had to help her decide what should be done with the other children. Once
brought round to his view, she had immediately risen to the emergency,
as she always did when practical matters were at stake. She and Boyne
were agreed that it would be imprudent to leave the children at Cortina,
where the Princess, or even Lady Wrench, might take advantage of their
absence to effect a raid on the _pension_. It took a three days’ hunt to
find a villa in a remote suburb of Riva where they could be temporarily
installed without much risk of being run down by an outraged parent.
Boyne put the _Rosenglüh_ landlady off the scent by giving her the
address of Mrs. Wheater’s Paris banker, and letting it be understood
that Judith was off to Paris to prepare for the children’s arrival; and
Blanca and Terry, still deep in Conan Doyle, gleefully contributed
misleading details.
The excitement of departure, and the business of establishing the little
Wheaters in their new quarters, left no time, between Boyne and Judith,
for less pressing questions; and Boyne saw that, once their plan was
settled, Judith was almost as much amused as the twins by its secret and
adventurous side. “It will take a Dr. Watson to nose them out, won’t
it?” she chuckled, as she and Boyne, with Chip and Susan, scrambled into
the Paris express at Verona. It was not till they were in the train that
Boyne saw the cloud of apprehension descend on her again. But then
fatigue intervened, and she fell asleep against his shoulder as
peacefully as Chip, who was curled up opposite with his head in Susan’s
lap. As they sat there, Boyne remembered how, on the day of Mr. Dobree’s
picnic, he had watched her sleeping by the waterfall, a red glow in her
cheeks, velvet shadows under her lashes. Now her face was pinched and
sallow, the lids were swollen with goodbye tears; she seemed farther
from him than she had ever been, yet more in need of him; and at the
thought something new and tranquillizing entered into him. He had caught
a glimpse of a joy he would never reach, and he knew that his eyes would
always dazzle with it; but the obligation of giving Judith the help she
needed kept his pain in that deep part of the soul where the great
renunciations lie.
In Paris he left his companions at the door of the _Nouveau Luxe_, where
Mrs. Wheater was established, drove to his own modest hotel on the left
bank, and turned in for a hard tussle of thinking. He could no longer
put off dealing with his own case, for Mrs. Sellars was still in Paris.
He had not meant to let her know of his arrival till the next day; he
needed the interval to get the fatigue and confusion out of his brain.
But meanwhile he must map out some kind of a working plan; must clear up
his own mind, and consider how to make it clear to her. And after an
unprofitable attempt at rest and sleep, and a weary tramp in the rain
through the dusky glittering streets, he suddenly decided on immediate
action, and turned into a telephone booth to call up Mrs. Sellars. She
was at home and answered immediately. Aunt Julia was resting, she said;
if he would come at once they could talk without fear of interruption.
He caught the tremor of joy in her voice when he spoke her name—but how
like her, how perfect of her, to ask no questions, to waste no time in
exclamations; just quietly and simply to say “Come”! The healing touch
of her reasonableness again came to his rescue.
He would have liked to find her close at hand, on the very threshold of
the telephone booth; at the rate at which his thoughts were spinning he
knew he would have to go over the whole affair again in his transit to
her hotel. But there was no remedy for that; he could only trust to her
lucidity to help him out.
Aunt Julia’s apartment was in a hotel of the rue de Rivoli, with a row
of windows overhanging the silvery reaches of the Tuileries gardens and
the vista of domes and towers beyond. The room was large, airy, full of
flowers. A fire burned on the hearth; Rose Sellars’s touch was
everywhere. And a moment later she stood there before him, incredibly
slim and young-looking in her dark dress and close little hat. Slightly
paler, perhaps, and thinner—but as she moved forward with her easy step
the impression vanished. He felt only her mastery of life and of
herself, and thought how much less she needed him than did the
dishevelled child he had just left. The thought widened the distance
between them, and brought Judith abruptly closer.
“Well, here I am,” he said—“and I’ve failed!”
He had prepared a dozen opening phrases—but the sudden intrusion of
Judith’s face dashed them all from his lips. He was returning to ask
forgiveness of the woman to whom he still considered himself engaged,
and his first word, after an absence prolonged and unaccountable, was to
remind her of the cause of their breach. He saw the narrowing of her
lips, and then her victorious smile.
“Dear! Tell me about it—I want to hear everything,” she said, holding
out her hand.
But he was still struggling in the coil of his blunder. “Oh, never
mind—all that’s really got nothing to do with it,” he stammered.
She freed her hand, and turned on the electric switch of the nearest
lamp. As she bent to it he saw that the locks escaping on each temple
were streaked with gray. The sight seemed to lengthen the days of their
separation into months and years. He felt like a stranger coming back to
her. “You’ve forgiven me?” he began.
She looked at him gravely. “What is it I have to forgive?”
“A lot—you must think,” he said confusedly.
She shook her head. “You’re free, you know. We’re just two old friends
talking. Sit down over there—so.” She pointed to an armchair, sat down
herself, and took off her hat. In the lamplight, under the graying
temples, her face looked changed and aged, like her hair. But it was
varnished over by her undaunted smile.
“Let us go back to where you began. I want to hear all about the
children.” She leaned her head thoughtfully on her hand, in the attitude
he had loved in the little sitting-room at Cortina.
“I feel like a ghost—” he said.
“No; for I should be a little afraid of you if you were a ghost; and
now—”
“Well—now....” He looked about the pleasant firelit room, saw her
work-basket in its usual place near the hearth, her books heaped up on a
table, and a familiar litter of papers on a desk in the window. “A
ghost,” he repeated.
She waited a moment, and then said: “I wish you’d tell me exactly what’s
been happening.”
“Oh, everything’s collapsed. It was bound to. And now I—”
He got up, walked across the room, glanced half-curiously at the titles
of some of the books, and came back and leaned against the mantelpiece.
She sat looking up at him. “Yes?”
“No. I can’t.”
“You can’t—what?”
“Account for anything. Explain anything—” He dropped back into his chair
and threw his head back, staring at the ceiling. “I’ve been a fool—and
I’m tired; tired.”
“Then we’ll drop explanations. Tell me only what you want,” she said.
What he really wanted was not to tell her anything, but to get up again,
and resume his inarticulate wanderings about the room. With an effort of
the will he remained seated, and turned his eyes to hers. “You’ve been
perfect—and I do want to tell you ... to make you understand....” But
no; that sort of talk was useless. He had better try to do what she had
asked him. “About the children—well, the break up was bound to come. You
were right about it, of course. But I was so sorry for the poor little
devils that I tried to blind myself....”
His tongue was loosened, and he found it easier to go on. After all,
Mrs. Sellars was right; the story of the children must be disposed of
first. After that he might see more clearly into his own case and hers.
He went on with his halting narrative, and she listened in silence—that
rare silence of hers which was all alertness and sympathy. She smiled a
little over the Princess Buondelmonte’s invasion, and sighed and frowned
when he mentioned that Lady Wrench was also impending. When he came to
Mrs. Wheater’s summons, and his own insistence that Judith and Chip
should immediately obey it, she lifted her eyes, and said approvingly:
“But of course you were perfectly right.”
“Was I? I don’t know. When I left them just now at the door of that
Moloch of a hotel—”
She gave a little smile of reassurance. “No; I don’t think you need fear
even the _Nouveau Luxe_. I understand what you’re feeling; but I think I
can give you some encouragement.”
“Encouragement—?”
“About the future, I mean. Perhaps Mrs. Wheater’s news about herself is
not altogether misleading. At any rate, I know she’s taken the best
legal advice; and I hear she may be able to keep all the children—her
own, that is. For of course the poor little steps—”
Boyne listened with a sudden start of attention. He felt like some one
shaken out of a lethargy. “You’ve seen her, then? I didn’t know you knew
her.”
“No; I’ve not seen her, and I don’t know her. But a friend of mine does.
The fact is, she ran across Mr. Dobree at the Lido after he left
Cortina—”
“_Dobree?_” He stared, incredulous, as if he must have heard the wrong
name.
“Yes; hasn’t she mentioned it to the children? Ah, no—I remember she
never writes. Well, she had the good sense to ask him to take charge of
things for her, and though he doesn’t often accept new cases nowadays he
was so sorry for the children—and for her too, he says—that he agreed to
look after her interests. And he tells me that if she follows his
advice, and keeps out of new entanglements, he thinks she can divorce
Mr. Wheater on her own terms, and in that case of course the courts will
give her all the children. Isn’t that the very best news I could give
you?”
He tried to answer, but again found himself benumbed. Her eyes continued
to challenge him. “It’s more than you hoped?” she smiled.
“It’s not in the least what I expected.”
She waited for him to continue, but he was silent again, and she
questioned suddenly: “What _did_ you expect?”
He looked at her with a confused stare, as if her face had become that
of a stranger, as familiar faces do in a dream. “Dobree,” he said—“this
Dobree....”
She kindled. “You’re very unfair to Mr. Dobree, Martin; you always have
been. He’s not only a great lawyer, whose advice Mrs. Wheater is lucky
to have, but a kind and wise friend ... and a good man,” she added.
“Yes,” he said, hardly hearing her. All the torture of his hour of
madness about Mr. Dobree had returned to him. He would have liked to
leap up on the instant, and go and find him, and fight it out with his
fists....
“I can’t think,” she continued nervously, “what more you could have
hoped....”
He made a weary gesture. “God knows! But what does it matter?”
“Matter? Doesn’t it matter to you that the children should be safe—be
provided for? That in this new crash they should remain with their
mother, and not be tossed about again from pillar to post? If you didn’t
want that, what did you want?”
“I wanted—somehow—to get them all out of this hell.”
“I believe you exaggerate. It’s not going to be a hell if their mother
keeps them, as Mr. Dobree thinks she’ll be able to. You say yourself
that she’s fond of them.”
“Yes; intermittently.”
“And, after all, if the step-children are taken back by their own
parents, that’s only natural. You say the new Princess Buondelmonte
seems well-meaning, and kind in her way; and as for Zinnie—I suppose
Zinnie is the one of the party the best able to take care of herself.”
“I suppose so,” he acceded.
“Well, then—.” She paused, and then repeated, with a sharper stress: “I
don’t yet see what you want.”
He looked about him with the same estranged stare with which his eyes
had rested on her face. Something clear and impenetrable as a pane of
crystal seemed to cut him off from her, and from all that surrounded
her. He had been to the country from which travellers return with
another soul.
“What I want...?” Ah, he knew that well enough! What he wanted, at the
moment, was just some opiate to dull the dogged ache of body and soul—to
close his ears against that laugh of Judith’s, and all his senses to her
nearness. He was caught body and soul—that was it; and real loving was
not the delicate distraction, the food for dreams, he had imagined it
when he thought himself in love with Rose Sellars; it was this perpetual
obsession, this clinging nearness, this breaking on the rack of every
bone, and tearing apart of every fibre. And his apprenticeship to it was
just beginning....
Well, there was one thing certain; it was that he must get away, as soon
as he could, from the friendly room and Rose’s forgiving presence. He
tried to blunder into some sort of explanation. “I don’t suppose I’ve
any business to be here,” he began abruptly.
Mrs. Sellars was silent; but it was not one of her speaking silences. It
was like a great emptiness slowly widening between them. For a moment he
thought she meant to force on him the task of bridging it over; then he
saw that she was struggling with a pain as benumbing as his own. She
could not think of anything to say any more than he could, and her
helplessness moved him, and brought her nearer. “She wants to end it
decently, as I do,” he thought; but his pity for her did not help him to
find words.
At length he got up and held out his hand. “You’re the best friend I’ve
ever had—and the dearest. But I’m going off on a big job somewhere; I
must. At the other end of the world. For a time—”
“Yes,” she assented, very low. She did not take the hand he held
out—perhaps did not even see it. When two people part who have loved
each other it is as if what happens between them befell in a great
emptiness—as if the tearing asunder of the flesh must turn at last into
a disembodied anguish.
“You’ve forgotten your umbrella,” she said, as he reached the door. He
gave a little laugh as he came back to get it.
XXXI
The next day Boyne lunched at the _Nouveau Luxe_ alone with Mrs. Wheater
and Judith. He had wondered if it would occur to Joyce that it might be
preferable to lunch upstairs, in her own rooms; but it had not; and his
mind was too dulled with pain for him to care much for his surroundings.
No crowd could make him feel farther away from Judith than the unseeing
look in her own eyes.
Mrs. Wheater was dressed with a Quaker-like austerity which made her
look younger and handsomer than when he had last seen her, in the rakish
apparel of the Lido. She had acquired another new voice, as she did with
each new phase; this time it was subdued and somewhat melancholy, but
less studied than the fluty tones she had affected in Venice.
Altogether, Boyne had to admit that she had improved—that Mr. Dobree’s
influence had achieved what others had failed to do. After lunch they
went upstairs, and Joyce proposed to Judith that, as the rain had
stopped, she should take Chipstone and Susan to the Bois de Boulogne.
She herself wanted to have a quiet talk with dear Martin—Judith could
send the motor back to pick her up at four; no, at half-past three. She
had promised to go to a wonderful loan exhibition of Incunabula with Mr.
Dobree.... Judith nodded and disappeared, with a faint smile at Boyne.
Mr. Dobree had opened her eyes to so many marvels, Joyce continued when
they were alone. Incunabula, for instance—would Boyne believe that she
had never before heard of their existence? Mr. Dobree had thought she
must be joking when she asked him what they were. But Martin knew how
much chance she had had of cultivating herself in Cliffe’s society....
Yes, and she was beginning to collect books—first editions—and to form a
real library. Didn’t he think it would be a splendid thing for the
children—especially for Terry? She blushed to think that while the
family travelled over Europe in steam-yachts and Blue Trains and
Rolls-Royces, poor Terry had had to feed on the rubbish Scopy could pick
up for him in hotel libraries, or the _cabinets de lecture_ of frowsy
watering-places. Mr. Dobree had been horrified when he found that
Cliffe, with all his millions, had never owned a library! But then he
didn’t know Cliffe.
Joyce went on to unfold her plans for the future. She spoke, as usual,
as if they were fixed and immutable in every detail. She had decided to
buy a place in the country—near either Paris or Dinard, she wasn’t sure
which. Probably Dinard on account of Terry’s health. The climate was
mild; and it was said that there were educational advantages. If the sea
was too strong for him she could find a house somewhere inland. But they
must be near a town on account of the children’s education, and yet not
in it because of the demoralising influences, and the lack of good air.
In a few days she was going down to look about her at Dinard....
Boyne knew, she supposed, that she had begun divorce proceedings? Of
course she ought to have done it long ago—but in that _milieu_ one’s
moral sense got absolutely blunted. Evidence—? Heavens! She already had
more than enough to make her own terms. Horrors and horrors.... There
was no doubt, Mr. Dobree said, that the courts would give her the
custody of all the children. And from now on they would be the sole
object of her life. Didn’t Boyne agree that, at her age, there couldn’t
be a more perfect conclusion? Oh, yes, she knew—she looked younger than
she really was ... but there were gray streaks in her hair already;
hadn’t he noticed? And she wasn’t going to dye it; not she! She was
going to let herself turn frankly into an _old woman_. She didn’t mind
the idea a bit. Middle-age was so full of duties and interests of its
own; she had a perfect horror of the women who are always dyeing and
drugging themselves, in the hopeless attempt to keep young—like that
pitiable Syb Lullmer, for instance. She had learned, thank heaven, that
there were other things in life. And her first object, of course, was to
get the children away from hotels and hotel contacts—from all the
_Nouveaux Luxes_ and the “Palaces.” She was counting the minutes till
she could create a real home for them, and make them so happy that they
would never want to leave it.... She knew Boyne would approve.... The
monologue ended by her expressing her gratitude for all he had done for
the children, and her delight at being reunited to Judith and Chip—Chip,
oh, he was a wonder, so fat and tall, and walking and talking like a boy
of four. And Judith told her it was all thanks to Boyne....
Mrs. Wheater seemed genuinely sorry to think that Bun and Beechy would
probably have to return to their father. But perhaps, she added, if the
new Princess Buondelmonte was so full of good intentions, and so
determined to have her own way, the two children might get a fairly
decent bringing-up. Buondelmonte wasn’t as young as he had been, and
might be glad to settle down, if his wife made him comfortable, and let
him have enough money to gamble at his club. And as for Zinnie—Joyce
shrugged, and doubted if either her mother or Cliffe would really take
Zinnie on, when it came to the point. She was rather a handful, Zinnie
was; no one but Judy could control her. Still, grieved as Joyce would be
to give up the “steps,” poor little souls, she was too much used to
human ingratitude not to foresee that they might be taken from her at
any moment. But her own children—no! Never again. Of that Boyne might be
assured. She had learned her lesson, her eyes had been opened to her own
folly and imprudence; and Mr. Dobree had absolutely promised her—oh, by
the way, wasn’t Martin going to stay and see Mr. Dobree, who would be
turning up at any minute now to take her to see the Incunabula? She
thought he and Martin had met at Cortina, hadn’t they? Yes, she
remembered; Mr. Dobree had been so struck by Martin’s devotion to the
children. She hoped so much they might meet again and make friends....
Boyne thanked her, and thought perhaps another time ... but he was
leaving Paris, probably; he couldn’t wait then.... He got himself out of
the room in a confusion of excuses....
All day he wandered through the streets, inconsolably. His will-power
seemed paralysed. He was determined to get away from Paris at once, to
go to New York first, in quest of a job, and then to whatever end of the
world the job should call him. There was no object in his lingering
where he was for another hour. He and Rose Sellars had said their last
word to each other—and to Judith herself what more had he to say? Yet he
could not submit his mind to the idea that his happy unreal life of the
last weeks was over; that he would never again enter the _pension_ at
Cortina, and see the little Wheaters flocking about him in a tumult of
welcome, begging for a romp, a game, a story, clamouring to have their
quarrels arbitrated, demanding to be taken on a picnic—with Judith
serene above the tumult, or laughing and twittering with the rest....
When he grew too tired to walk farther he turned in at a post-office,
and wrote a cable which he had been revolving for some hours. It was
addressed to the New York contractors who had written to ask if he could
trace the young engineer who had been his assistant. Luckily he had not
been able to, and he cabled: “Should like for myself the job you wrote
about. Can I have it? Can start at once. Cable bankers.”
This message despatched, he turned to the telephone booth, rang up the
_Nouveau Luxe_, and asked to speak to Miss Wheater. Interminable minutes
passed after he had put in his call; Mrs. Wheater’s maid was found
first, who didn’t know where Judith was, or how to find her; then Susan,
who said Judith had come back, and gone out again, and that all she knew
was that the ladies were going to dine out that evening with Mr. Dobree,
and go to the theatre. Then, just as Boyne was turning away discouraged,
Judith’s own voice: “Hullo, Martin! Where are you? When can I see you?”
“Now, if you can come. I’m off tonight—to London.” He suddenly found he
had decided that without knowing it.
She exclaimed in astonishment, and asked where she was to meet him; and
he acquiesced in her suggestion that it should be at a tea-room near her
hotel, as it was so late that she would soon have to hurry back for
dinner. He jumped into a taxi, secured a table in a remote corner of the
tea-room, and met her on the threshold a moment later. It was already
long after six, and the rooms were emptying; in a few minutes they would
have the place to themselves.
Judith, a little flushed with the haste of her arrival, looked
gracefully grown up in her dark coat edged with fur, a pretty antelope
bag in her gloved hand. The bareheaded girl of the Dolomites, in sports’
frock and russet shoes, had been replaced by a demure young woman who
seemed to Boyne almost a stranger.
“Martin! You’re not really going away tonight?” she began at once, not
noticing his request that she should choose between tea-cakes and
_éclairs_.
He said he was, for a few days at any rate; the mere sound of her voice,
the look in her eyes, had nearly dissolved his plans again, and his own
voice was unsteady.
The fact that it was only for a few days seemed to reassure Judith. He’d
be back by the end of the week, she hoped, wouldn’t he? Yes—oh, yes, he
said—very probably.
“Because, you know, the children’ll be here by that time,” she
announced; and, turning her attention to the trays presented: “Oh, both,
I think—yes, I’ll take both.”
“The children?”
“Yes; mother’s just settled it. Mr. Dobree wrote the wire for her. If
Nanny gets it in time they’re to start to-morrow. Mr. Dobree thinks we
may be able to keep the steps too—he’s going to write himself to
Buondelmonte. And he doesn’t believe the Wrenches will ever bother us
about Zinnie ... at least not at present. He’s found out a lot of things
about Lord Wrench, and he thinks Zinnia’ll have her hands full with him,
without tackling Zinnie too.”
She spoke serenely, almost lightly, as if all her anxieties had been
dispelled. Could it be that the mere change of scene, the few hours
spent with her mother, had so completely reassured her? She, who had
always measured Joyce with such precocious insight, was it possible that
she was deluded by her now? Or had she too succumbed to Mr. Dobree’s
mysterious influence? Boyne looked at her careless face and wondered.
“But this Dobree—you didn’t fancy him much at Cortina? What makes you
believe in him now?”
She seemed a little puzzled, and wrinkled her brows in the effort to
find a reason. “I don’t know. He’s funny looking, of course; and rather
pompous. And I do like you heaps better, Martin. But he’s been most
awfully good about the children, and he can make mother do whatever he
tells her. And she says he’s a great lawyer, and his clients almost
always win their cases. Oh, Martin, wouldn’t it be heavenly if he could
really keep us together, steps and all? He’s sworn to me that he will.”
She turned her radiant eyes on Boyne. “Anyhow, the children will be here
the day after to-morrow, and that will be splendid, won’t it? You must
get back from London as soon as ever you can, and take us all off
somewhere for the day, just as if we were still at Cortina.”
Yes, of course he would, Boyne said; on Scopy’s book he would. She lit
up at that, asking where they’d better go, and finally settling that, if
the rain ever held up, a day at Versailles would be jollier than
anything.... But it must be soon, she reminded him; because in a few
days Mrs. Wheater was going to carry them all off to Dinard.
Yes, she pursued, she really did feel that Mr. Dobree, just in a few
weeks, had gained more influence over her mother than any one else ever
had. Judith had had a long talk with him that morning, and he had told
her frankly that he was doing it all out of interest in the children,
and because he wanted to help her—wasn’t that dear of him? Anyhow, they
were all going to stand together, grown ups and children, and put up a
last big fight. (“On Scopy’s book,” Boyne interpolated with a strained
smile.) And they were to have a big house in the country, with lots of
dogs and horses, she continued. And the children were never to go to
hotels any more. And Terry was to have a really first-rate tutor, and be
sent to school in Switzerland as soon as he was strong enough; in
another year, perhaps.
Boyne sat watching her with insatiable eyes. She looked so efficient, so
experienced—yet what could be surer proof of her childishness than this
suddenly revived faith in the future? He saw that whoever would promise
to keep the children together would gain a momentary hold over her—as he
once had, alas! And he saw also that the mere change of scene, the
excitement of the flight from Cortina, the encouragement which her
mother’s new attitude gave her, were so many balloons lifting her up
into the blue.... “It will be Versailles, don’t you think so?” she began
again. “Or, if it rains deluges, what about the circus, and a big tea
afterward, somewhere where Chip and Nanny could come too?” She looked at
him with her hesitating smile. “I thought, perhaps, if you didn’t
mind—but, no, darling,” she broke off decisively, “we won’t ask Mr.
Dobree!”
“Lord—I should hope not; not if I’m giving the party.” He found the
voice and laugh she expected, gave her back her banter, discussed and
fixed with her the day and hour of the party. And all the while there
echoed in his ears, more insistently than anything she was saying, a
line or two from the chorus of Lemures, in “Faust,” which Rose had read
aloud one evening at Cortina.
_Who made the room so mean and bare—
Where are the chairs, the tables where?
It was lent for a moment only—_
A moment only: not a bad title for the history of his last few months! A
moment only; and he had always known it. “An episode,” he thought, “it’s
been only an episode. One of those things that come up out of the sea,
on a full-moon night, playing the harp.... Yes; but sometimes the
episodes last, and the things one thought eternal wither like grass—and
only the gods know which it will be ... if _they_ do....
“_L’addition, mademoiselle?_ Good Lord, child; four _éclairs_? And a
Dobree dinner in the offing! Ah, thrice-happy infancy, as the poet
said.... Yes, here’s your umbrella. Take my arm, and we’ll nip round on
foot to the back door of the _Luxe_. You’ve eaten so much that I haven’t
got enough left to pay for a taxi....”
From the threshold of the hotel she called to him, rosy under her
shining umbrella: “Thursday morning, then, you’ll fetch us all at ten?”
And he called back: “On Scopy’s book, I will!” as the rain engulfed him.
On the day fixed for the children’s picnic Boyne lay half asleep on the
deck of a South American liner. It was better so—a lot better. The
morning after he had parted from Judith at the door of the _Nouveau
Luxe_ the summons had come: “Job yours please sail immediately for Rio
particulars on arrival”; and he had just had time to pitch his things
into his portmanteaux, catch the first train for London, and scramble on
board his boat at Liverpool.
A lot better so.... The busy man’s way of liquidating hopeless
situations. It reminded him of the old times when, at the receipt of
such a summons, cares and complications fell from him like dust from a
shaken garment. It would not be so now; his elasticity was gone. Yet
already, after four days at sea, he was beginning to feel a vague solace
in the empty present, and in the future packed with duties. No
hesitating, speculating, wavering to and fro—he was to be caught as soon
as he landed, and thrust into the stiff harness of his work. And
meanwhile, more and more miles of sea were slipping in between him and
the last months, making them already seem remote and vapoury compared
with the firm outline of the future.
The day was mild, with a last touch of summer on the lazy waves over
which they were gliding.... He closed his eyes and slept....
At Versailles too it was mild; there were yellow leaves still on the
beeches of the long walks; they formed golden tunnels, with hazy blueish
vistas where the park melted into the blur of the forest. But the
gardens were almost deserted; it was too late in the season for the
children chasing their hoops and balls down the alleys, the groups of
nurses knitting and gossiping on wooden chairs under the great stone
Dianas and Apollos.
Funny—he and the little Wheaters seemed to have the lordly
pleasure-grounds to themselves. The clipped walls of beech and hornbean
echoed with their shouts and laughter. What a handful the little
Wheaters were getting to be! Terry, now, could run and jump with the
rest; and as for Chip, rounder than ever in a white fur coat and
tasselled cap, his waddle was turning into a scamper....
In the sun, under a high protecting hedge, Miss Scope and Nanny sat and
beamed upon their children; and Susan flew down the vistas after
Chip....
Boyne and Judith were alone. They had wandered away into one of the
_bosquets_: solitary even in summer, with vacant-faced divinities niched
in green, broken arcades, toy temples deserted of their gods. On this
November day, when mist was everywhere, mist trailing through the
half-bare trees, lying in a faint bloom on the lichened statues, oozing
up from the layers of leaves underfoot, the place seemed the ghostly
setting of dead days. Boyne looked down at Judith, and even her face was
ghostly.... “Come,” he said with a shiver, “let’s get back into the
sun—.” Outside of the _bosquet_, down the alley, the children came
storming toward them, shouting, laughing and wrangling. Boyne, laughing
too, caught up the furry Chip, and swung him high in air. Bun, to
attract his attention, turned a new somersault at his feet, and Zinnie
and Beechy squealed: “Martin, now’s the time for presents!” For, since
the Princess Buondelmonte had been so shocked by their cupidity, it had
become a joke with the children to be always petitioning for presents.
“Little devils—as if I could ever leave them!” Boyne thought.
“Tea, sir?” said the steward. “Ham sandwiches?”
XXXII
Boyne was coming back from Brazil. His steamer was approaching Bordeaux,
moving up the estuary of the Gironde under a September sky as mild as
the one which had roofed his sleep when, nearly three years earlier, he
had dreamt he was at Versailles with the little Wheaters.
Three years of work and accomplishment lay behind him. And the job was
not over; that was the best of it. A touch of fever had disabled him,
and he was to take a few weeks’ holiday in Europe, and then return to
his task. His first idea had been to put in this interval of
convalescence in America; to take the opportunity to look up his people,
and see a few old friends in New York. But he was sure to find Rose
Sellars in New York, or near it; he could hardly go there without being
obliged to see her. And the time for that had not yet come—if it ever
would. He looked at his grizzled head, his sallow features with brown
fever-blotches under the skin, and put away the idea with a grimace. The
tropics seemed fairly to have burnt him out....
Rose Sellars had been kind; she had been perfect, as he had foreseen she
would be. He knew that, after a winter on the Nile with Aunt Julia, she
had returned to her own house in New York; for, once re-established
there, she had begun to write to him again. From her letters—which were
free from all recriminations, all returning to the past—he learned that
she had taken up her old life again: the reading, the social round, the
small preoccupations. But he saw her going through the old routine with
transparent hands and empty eyes, as he could picture the ghosts of good
women doing in the world of shadows.
His own case was more fortunate. His eyes were full of visions of work
to be, his hands of the strength of work done. Yet at times he too felt
tenuous and disembodied. Since the fever, particularly—it was always
disastrous to him to have to interrupt his work. And this flat soft
shore that gave him welcome—so safe, so familiar—how it frightened him!
He didn’t want to come in contact with life again, and life always wooed
him when he was not at work.
It was odd, how little, of late, he had thought of the Wheaters. At
first the memory of them had been a torture, an obsession. But luckily
he had not given his address to Judith, and so she had not been able to
write; and Mrs. Sellars had never once alluded to the children. His work
in Brazil lay up country, far from towns and post-offices; but bundles
of American newspapers straggled in at uncertain intervals, and from one
he had learned that the Wheater divorce had been pronounced in Mrs.
Wheater’s favour, from another, about a year later, that Cliffe had
married Mrs. Lullmer. There had been an end of the story ... and Boyne
had lived long enough to know that abrupt endings were best.
As his steamer pushed her way up the estuary he was still asking himself
how he should employ his holiday. All his thoughts were with his
interrupted work, with the man who had temporarily replaced him, and of
whose judgment and temper he was not quite sure. He could not as yet
bring himself to consider his own plans for the coming weeks, because,
till he could get back to Brazil, everything that might happen to him
seemed equally uninteresting and negligible.
At dinner that evening, at the famous _Chapeau Rouge_ of Bordeaux, the
fresh truffles cooked in white wine, and washed down with a bottle of
Château Margaux insensibly altered his mood. He had forgotten what good
food could be like. His view of life was softened, and even the faces of
the people at the other tables, commonplace as they were, gradually
began to interest him. At the steamer landing the walls were plastered
over with flamboyant advertisements of the watering-places of the Basque
coast: Cibour, Hendaye, St. Jean de Luz, Biarritz. A band of gay bathers
on a white beach, under striped umbrellas, was labelled Hendaye;
another, of slim ladies silhouetted on a terrace against a cobalt sea,
while their partners absorbed cocktails at little tables, stood for
Biarritz. The scene recalled to Boyne similar spectacles all the world
over: casinos, dancing, gambling, the monotonous rattle and glare of
cosmopolitan pleasure. And suddenly he felt that to be in such a crowd
was what he wanted—a crowd of idle insignificant people, not one of whom
he would ever care to see again. He fancied the idea of bands playing,
dancers undulating over polished floors, expensive food served on
flowery terraces, high play in crowded over-heated gaming-rooms. It was
the lonely man’s flight from himself, the common impulse of hard workers
on first coming out of the wilderness. He took the train for
Biarritz....
The place was in full season; but he found a room in a cheap hotel far
from the sea, and forthwith began to mix with the crowd. At first his
deep inner loneliness cut him off from them; that people should be
leading such lives seemed too absurd and inconsequent. But gradually the
glitter took him, as it often had before after a long bout of hard work
and isolation; he enjoyed the feeling of being lost in the throng, alone
and unnoticed, with no likelihood of being singled out, like Uncle
Edward, for some agreeable adventure.
Adventure! He had come to hate the very word. His one taste of the thing
had been too bitter. All he wanted now was to be amused; and he hugged
his anonymity. For three days he wandered about, in cafés, on terraces
above the sea, and in the gaming-rooms. He even made an excursion across
the Spanish border; but he came back from it tired and dispirited.
Solitude and scenery were not what he wanted; he plunged into the Medley
again.
On the fourth day he saw the announcement: “Gala Dinner and Dance
tonight at the _Mirasol_.” The _Mirasol_ was the newest and most
fashionable hotel in Biarritz—the “Palace” of the moment. The idea of
assisting at the gala dinner took Boyne’s fancy, and in the afternoon he
strolled up to the hotel to engage a table. But they were all bespoken,
and he sat down in the hall to glance over some illustrated papers. The
place, at that hour, was nearly empty; but presently he heard a pipe of
childish laughter coming from the corner where the lift was caged.
Several liveried lift-boys were hanging about in idleness, and among
them was a little girl with long legs, incredibly short skirts and a
fiery bush of hair. Boyne laid down his paper and looked at her; but her
back was turned to him. She was wrestling with the smallest of the
lift-boys, while the others looked on and grinned. Presently a stout
lady descended from a magnificent motor, entered the hotel and walked
across the hall to the lift. Instantly the boys stood to attention, and
the red-haired child, quiet as a mouse, slipped into the lift after the
stout lady, and shot up out of sight. When the lift came down again, she
sprang out, and instantly resumed her romp with the boys. This time her
face was turned toward Boyne, and he saw that she was Zinnie Wheater. He
got up from his chair to go toward her, but another passenger was
getting into the lift, and Zinnie followed, and disappeared again. The
next time it came down, two or three people were waiting for it; Zinnie
slipped in among them, flattening herself into a corner. Boyne sat and
watched her appearing and disappearing in this way for nearly an hour—it
was evidently her way of spending the afternoon. And not for the first
time, presumably; for several of the passengers recognised her, and
greeted her with a nod or a joke. One fat old gentleman in spats
produced a bag of sweets, and pinched her bare arm as he gave it to her;
and a lady in black with a little girl drew the latter close to her, and
looked past Zinnie as if she had not been there....
At last there came a lull in the traffic, the attendants relapsed into
lassitude, and Zinnie, after circling aimlessly about the hall, slipped
behind the porter’s desk, inspected the letters in the mahogany
pigeon-holes against the wall, and began to turn over the papers on the
desk. Then she caught sight of the porter approaching from a distance,
slid out from behind the desk, waltzed down the length of the hall and
back, and stopped with a yawn just in front of Boyne. For a moment she
did not seem to notice him; but presently she sidled up, leaned over his
shoulder, and said persuasively: “May I look at the pictures with you?”
He laid the paper aside and glanced up at her. She stared a moment or
two, perplexedly, and then flushed to the roots of her hair.
“Martin—why, I believe it’s old Martin!”
“Yes, it’s old Martin—but you’re a new Zinnie, aren’t you?” he rejoined.
Her eyes were riveted on him; he saw that she was half shy, half eager
to talk. She perched on the arm of his chair and took his neck in her
embrace, as Judith used to.
“Well, it’s a long time since I saw you. I’m lots older—and you are
too,” she added reflectively. “I don’t believe you’d have known me if I
hadn’t spoken to you, would you?”
“Not if you hadn’t had that burning bush,” he said, touching her hair.
His voice was trembling; he could hardly see her for the blur in his
eyes. If he closed his lids he might almost imagine that the thin arm
about his neck was Judith’s....
“Well, how’s everybody?” he asked, a little hoarsely.
“Oh, awfully well,” said Zinnie. “But you don’t look very well
yourself,” she added, turning a sidelong glance on him.
“Never mind about me. Are you here together, all of you—or have the
others stayed at Dinard?”
“Dinard?” She seemed to be puzzled by the question.
“Wasn’t your mother going to buy a house in the country near Dinard?”
“Was she? I dunno. We’ve never had a house of our own,” said Zinnie.
“Never anywhere?”
“No. I guess it would only bother mother to have a house. She likes
hotels better. She’s married again, you know; and she’s getting fat.”
“Married?”
“Didn’t you know about that either? How funny! She’s married to Mr.
Dobree,” said Zinnie, swinging her legs against Boyne’s chair.
Boyne sat silent, and she continued, her eyes wandering over him
critically: “I guess you’ve had a fever, haven’t you—or else something
bad with your liver?”
“Nothing of the sort. I was never better. But you’re all here, then, I
suppose?” His heart stood still as he made a dash at the question.
“Yes; we’re all here,” said Zinnie indifferently. “At least Terry’s at
school in Switzerland, you see; and Blanca’s at a convent in Paris, ’cos
she got engaged again to a lift-boy who was a worse rotter than the
first; and Bun and Beechy are in Rome, in their father’s palace. They
hate writing, so we don’t actually know how they are.”
“Ah—” Boyne commented. He looked away from her, staring across the
deserted hall. “But Chip’s here?” he asked.
Zinnie shook her red curls gravely. “No, he isn’t here either.” She
hesitated a moment, swinging her legs. “He’s buried,” she said.
“Buried—?”
“Didn’t you know that either? You’ve been ever so far away, I suppose.
Chip got menin—meningitis, isn’t it? We were at Chamonix, for Terry. The
doctors couldn’t do anything. It was last winter—no, the winter before.
We all cried awfully; we wore black for three months. And so after that
mother decided she’d better marry Mr. Dobree; because she was too
lonely, she said.”
“Ah, lonely—”
“Yes; and so after a while we came to Paris and she was married. It must
have been two years ago, because the steps were with us still; and
Beechy and I wore little pink dresses at the wedding, and Bun was page.
I wonder you didn’t see our photographs in the ‘Herald.’ Don’t you ever
read the ‘Herald’?”
“Not often,” Boyne had to admit.
Zinnie continued to swing her legs against the side of his chair. “And
it’s then we found out what Mr. Dobree’s Christian name is,” she rambled
on. “We had work doing it; but Terry managed to see the papers he had to
sign the day of the wedding, and so we found out. His name’s Azariah. We
never thought of that, did we? It’s the name of a man who made millions
in mines; so I s’pose when he died he left all his money to Mr. Dobree.”
“Made millions in mines?”
“Well, that’s what Scopy said. She said: ‘Not know that? You little
heathens! Why, of course, Azariah was a minor prophet.’”
“Oh, of course; naturally,” Boyne murmured, swept magically back to the
world of joyous incongruities in which he had lived enchanted with the
little Wheaters.
“So we think that’s why he’s so rich, and why mother married him,”
Zinnie concluded, with a final kick on the side of the chair; then she
slid down, put her hands on her hips, pirouetted in front of Boyne, and
held out the bag of pink glazed paper which the old gentleman who wore
spats had given her. “Have a chocolate? The ones in gold paper have got
liqueur in ’em,” she said. Boyne shook his head, and she continued to
look at him attentively. At last: “Martin, darling, aren’t those
_Abdullahs_ you’re smoking? Will you let me have one?” she said in a
coaxing voice.
“Let you have one? You don’t mean to say you smoke?”
“No; but I have a friend who does.” Boyne held out his cigarette-case
with a shrug, and she drew out a small handful, and flitted away to the
lift. When she came back her face was radiant. “It’s awfully sweet of
you,” she said. “You always were an old darling. Don’t you want to come
upstairs and see mother? She was a little tired after lunch, so I don’t
believe she’s gone out yet.”
Boyne got to his feet with a gesture of negation. “Sorry, my dear; but
I’m afraid I can’t. I—fact is, I’m just here for a few hours ... taking
the train back to Bordeaux presently,” he stammered.
“Oh, are you? That’s too bad. Mother will be awfully sorry—and so will
Judy.”
Boyne cleared his throat, and brought out abruptly: “Ah, she’s here
too—Judy?”
Zinnie stared at the question. “Course she is. Only just today she’s off
on an excursion with some P’ruvians. They’ve got an awfully long name—I
can’t remember it. They have two Rolls-Royces. She won’t be back not
till just before dinner. She’ll have to be back then, because she’s got
a new dress for the dance tonight. It’s a pity you can’t come back and
see her in it.”
“Yes—it’s a pity. But I can’t.” He held out his hand, and she put her
little bony claw into it. “Goodbye, child,” he said; then, abruptly, he
bent down to her. “Kiss me, Zinnie.” She held up her merry face, and he
laid his lips on her cheek. “Goodbye,” he repeated.
He had really meant, while he talked with her, to go back to his hotel
and pack up, and catch the next train for anywhere. The place was like a
tomb to him now; under all the noise and glitter his past was buried. He
walked away with hurried strides from the _Mirasol_; but when he got
back to his own hotel he sat down in his room and stared about him
without making any effort to pack. He sat there for a long time—for all
the rest of the afternoon—without moving. Once he caught himself saying
aloud: “She’s got a new dress for the dance.” He laughed a little at the
thought, and became immersed in his memories....
Boyne dined at a restaurant—he didn’t remember where—turned in at a
cinema for an hour, and then got into his evening clothes, and walked up
through the warm dark night to the _Mirasol_. The great building,
shining with lights, loomed above a tranquil sea; music drifted out from
it, and on the side toward the sea its wide terrace was thronged with
ladies in bright dresses, and their partners. Boyne walked up among
them; but as he reached the terrace a drizzling rain began to fall, and
laughing and crying out the dancers all hurried back into the hotel. He
stood alone on the damp flagging, and paced up and down slowly before
the uncurtained windows. The dinner was over—the restaurant was empty,
and through the windows he saw the waiters preparing the tables again
for supper. Farther on, he passed other tall windows, giving on a richly
upholstered drawing-room where groups of elderly people, at tables with
shaded lamps, were playing bridge and poker. Among them he noticed a
stout lady in a low-necked black dress. Her much-exposed back was turned
to him, and he recognised the shape of her head, the thatch of rippled
hair, silver-white now (she had kept her resolve of not dyeing it), and
the turn of her white arms as she handled her cards. Opposite her sat
her partner, also white-headed, in a perfectly cut dinner-jacket; the
lamplight seemed to linger appreciatively on his lustrous pearl studs
and sleeve-links. It was Mr. Dobree, grown stouter too, with a reddish
fold of flesh above his immaculate collar. The couple looked placid,
well fed, and perfectly satisfied with life and with each other.
Boyne continued his walk, and turning an angle of the building, found
himself facing the windows of the ballroom. The terrace on that side,
being away from the sea, was but faintly lit, and the spectacle within
seemed therefore more brilliantly illuminated.
At first he saw only a blur of light and colour; couples revolving
slowly under the spreading chandeliers, others streaming in and out of
the doorways, or grouped about the floor in splashes of brightness. The
music rose and fell in palpitating rhythms, paused awhile, and began
again in obedience to a rattle of hand-clapping. The floor was already
crowded, but Boyne’s eyes roved in vain from one slender bare-armed
shape to another; then he said to himself: “But it’s nearly three years
since I saw her. She’s grown up now—perhaps I’m looking at her without
knowing her....”
The thought that one of those swaying figures might be Judith’s, that at
that very instant she might be gazing out at him with unknown eyes, sent
such a pang through him that he moved away again into the darkness. The
rain had almost ceased, but a faint wind from the sea drove the wet air
against his face; he might almost have fancied he was crying. The pain
of not seeing her was unendurable. It seemed to empty his world....
He heard voices and steps approaching behind him on the terrace, and to
avoid being scrutinised he mechanically turned back to the window. And
there she was, close to him on the other side of the pane, moving across
the long reflections of the floor. And he had imagined that he might not
know her!
She had just stopped dancing; the arm of a very tall young man with a
head as glossy as his shirt-front detached itself from her waist. She
was facing Boyne now—she was joining a group near his window. Two or
three young girls greeted her gaily as she passed them. The centre of
the room was being cleared for a pair of professional dancers, and
Judith, waving away a gilt ballroom chair which somebody proffered,
remained standing, clustered about by other slender and glossy young
men. Boyne, from without, continued to gaze at her.
He had not even asked himself if she had changed—if she had grown up. He
had totally forgotten his fear that he might not recognise her. He knew
now that if she had appeared to him as a bent old woman he would have
known her.... He watched her with a passionate attentiveness. Her silk
dress was of that peculiar carnation-pink which takes a silver glaze
like the bloom on a nectarine. The rich stuff stood out from her in a
double tier of flounces, on which, as she stood motionless, her hands
seemed to float like birds on little sunlit waves. Her hair was moulded
to her head in close curves like the ripples of a brown stream. Instead
of being cut short in the nape it had been allowed to grow, and was
twisted into a figure eight, through which was thrust an old-fashioned
diamond arrow. Her throat and neck were bare, and so were her thin arms;
but a band of black velvet encircled one of her wrists, relieving the
tender rose-and-amber of her dress and complexion. Her eyes seemed to
Boyne to have grown larger and more remote, but her mouth was round and
red, as it always was when she was amused or happy. While he watched her
one of the young men behind her bent over to say something. As she
listened she lifted a big black fan to her lips, and her lids closed for
a second, as they did when she wanted to hold something sweet between
them. But when she furled the fan her expression changed, and her face
suddenly became as sad as an autumn twilight.
“_Judith!_” Boyne thought; as if her being Judith, her being herself,
were impossible to believe, yet too sweet for anything else in the world
to be true.... It was one of her moments of beauty—that fitful beauty
which is so much more enchanting and perilous than the kind that gets up
and lies down every day with its wearer. This might be—Boyne said to
himself—literally the only day, the only hour, in which the queer
quarrelling elements that composed her would ever join hands in a
celestial harmony. It did not matter what had brought the miracle about.
Perhaps she was in love with the young man who had bent over her, and
was going to marry him. Or perhaps she was still a child, pleased at her
new dress, and half proud, half frightened in the waking consciousness
of her beauty, and the power it exercised.... Whichever it was, Boyne
knew he would never know. He drew back into an unlit corner of the
terrace, and sat there a long time in the dark, his head thrown back and
his hands locked behind it. Then he got up and walked away into the
night.
Two days afterward, the ship which had brought him to Europe started on
her voyage back to Brazil. On her deck stood Boyne, a lonely man.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_By EDITH WHARTON_
THE CHILDREN
TWILIGHT SLEEP
HERE AND BEYOND
THE MOTHER’S RECOMPENSE
OLD NEW YORK
FALSE DAWN
THE OLD MAID
THE SPARK
NEW YEAR’S DAY
THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
SUMMER
THE REEF
THE MARNE
FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Added table of Contents.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.