Robin's rooms, charming as they were, with their wide windows opening
on to tossing sea and the sharp bend of the grey cliffs stretching to
distant horizons, suffered from overcrowding.
His sitting-room, with its dark red wallpaper and several good prints
framed in dark oak--Burne-Jones' "Study for Cupid's Masque," Hunt's
"Hireling Shepherd," and Whistler's "Battersea Bridge" were the
best--might have been delightful had he learned to select; but at the
present stage in his development he hated rejecting anything as long as
it reached a certain standard. His appreciations were wide and
generous, and his knowledge was just now too superficial to permit of
discerning criticism. The room, again, suffered from a rather
effeminate prettiness. There were too many essentially trivial
knick-knacks--some fans, silver ornaments, a charming little ebony
clock, and a generous assortment of gay, elegantly worked cushions.
The books, too, were all in handsome editions--Meredith in green
leather with a gold-worked monogram, Pater in red half-morocco,
Swinburne in light-blue with red and gold tooling--rich and to some
extent unobtrusive, but reiterating unmistakably the first impression
that the room had given, the mark of something superficial.
Robin was there now, dressing for dinner. He often dressed in his
sitting-room, because his books were there. He liked to open a book
for a moment before fitting his studs into his shirt, and how charming
to read a verse of Swinburne before brushing his hair--not so much
because of the Swinburne, but rather because one went down to dinner
with a pleasant feeling of culture and education. To-night he was in a
hurry. People had stayed so late for tea (it was still the day after
his father's arrival), and he had to be at the other end of the town by
half-past seven. What a nuisance going out to dinner was, and how he
wished he wasn't going to-night.
The fact that the dinner promised, in all probability, to afford
something of a situation did not, as was often the case, give him very
much satisfaction. Indeed it was the reverse. The situation was going
to be extremely unpleasant, and there was every likelihood that Robin
would look a fool. Robin's education had been a continuous insistence
on the importance of superficiality. It had been enforced while he was
still in the cradle, when a desire to kick and fight had been always
checked by the quiet reiteration that it was not a thing that a Trojan
did. Temper was not a fault of itself, but an exhibition of it was;
simply because self-control was a Trojan virtue. At his private school
he was taught the great code of brushing one's hair and leaving the
bottom button of one's waistcoat undone. Robbery, murder, rape--well,
they had all played their part in the Trojan history; but the art of
shaking hands and the correct method of snubbing a poor relation, if
properly acquired, covered the crimes of the Decalogue.
It was not that Robin, either then or afterwards, was a snob. He
thought no more of a duke or a viscount than of a plain commoner, but
he learnt at once the lesson of "Us--and the Others." If you were one
of the others--if there was a hesitation about your aspirates, if you
wore a tail-coat and brown boots--then you were non-existent, you
simply did not count.
When he left Eton for Cambridge, this Code of the Quite Correct Thing
advanced beyond the art of Perfect Manners; it extended to literature
and politics, and, in fact, everything of any importance. He soon
discovered what were the things for "Us" to read, whom were the
painters for "Us" to admire, and what were the politics for "Us" to
applaud. He read Pater and Swinburne and Meredith, Bernard Shaw and
Galsworthy and Joseph Conrad, and had quite definite ideas about all of
them. He admired Rickett's stage effects, and thought Sholto Douglas's
portraits awfully clever, and, of course, Max's Caricatures were
masterly. I'm not saying that he did not really admire these
things--in many things his appreciation was genuine enough--but if it
should happen that he cared for "The Christian" or "God's Good Man," he
speedily smothered his admiration and wondered how he could be such a
fool. To do him justice, he never had any doubt that those whose
judgment he followed were absolutely right; but he followed them
blindly, often praising books or pictures that he had never read or
seen because it was the thing to do. He read quite clever papers to
"The Gracchi" at Cambridge, but the most successful of all, "The
Philosophy of Nine-pins according to Bernard Shaw," was written before
he had either seen or read any of that gentleman's plays. He was, in
fact, in great danger of developing into a kind of walking _Rapid
Review_ of other people's judgments and opinions. He examined nothing
for himself; his standard of the things to be attained in this world
was fixed and unalterable; to have an unalterable standard at
twenty-one is to condemn oneself to folly for life.
And now, as he was dressing for dinner, two things occupied his mind:
firstly, his father; in the second place, the situation that he was to
face in half-an-hour's time.
With regard to his father, Robin was terribly afraid that he was one of
the Others. He had had his suspicions from the first--that violent
entry, the loud voice and the hearty laugh, the bad-fitting clothes,
and the perpetual chatter at dinner; it had all been noisy, unusual,
even a little vulgar. But his behaviour at tea that afternoon had
grieved Robin very much. How could he be so rude to the light and
leading of Fallacy Street? It could only have been through ignorance;
it could only have been because he really did not know how truly great
the Miss Ponsonbys were. But then, to spend all his time with the
Bethels, strange, odd people, with the queerest manners and an
uncertain history, whom Fallacy Street had decided to cut!
No, Robin was very much afraid that his father must be ranked with the
Others. He had not expected very much after all; New Zealand must be a
strange place on all accounts; but his father seemed to show no desire
to improve, he seemed quite happy and contented, and scarcely realised,
apparently, the seriousness of his mistakes.
But, after all, the question of his father was a very minor affair as
compared with the real problem that he must answer that evening. Robin
had met Dahlia Feverel in the summer of the preceding year at
Cambridge. He had thought her extremely beautiful and very
fascinating. Most of his college friends had ladies whom they adored;
it was considered quite a thing to do--and so Robin adored Dahlia.
No one knew anything about the Feverels. The mother was kept in the
background and the father was dead--there was really only Dahlia; and
when Robin was with her he never thought of questioning her as to
antecedents of earlier history. For two months he loved her
passionately, chiefly because he saw her very seldom. When he went
down at the end of the summer term he felt that she was the only thing
in the world worth living for. He became Byronic, scowled at Aunt
Clare, and treated Garrett's cynicism with contempt. He wrote letters
to her every day full of the deepest sentiments and a great deal of
amazingly bad poetry. Clare wondered what was the matter, but asked no
questions, and was indeed far too firmly convinced of the efficacy of
the Trojan system to have any fears of mental or moral danger.
Then Miss Feverel made a mistake; she came with her mother to stay at
Pendragon. For the first week Robin was blissfully happy--then he
began to wonder. The best people in Pendragon would have nothing to do
with the Feverels. Aunt Clare, unaware that they were friends of
Robin's, pronounced them "commonly vulgar." The mother was more in
evidence than she had been at Cambridge, and Robin passed from dislike
to horror and from horror to hatred. Dahlia, too, seemed to have
changed. Robin had loved her too passionately hitherto to think of the
great Division. But soon he began to wonder. There were certain
things--little unimportant trifles, of course--that made him rather
uneasy; he began to have a horrible suspicion that she was one of the
Others; and then, once the suspicion was admitted, proof after proof
came forward to turn it into certainty.
How horrible, and what an escape! His visits to the little
lodging-house overlooking the sea where Dahlia played the piano so
enchantingly, and Mrs. Feverel, a solemn, rather menacing figure,
played silently and mournfully continuous Patience, were less and less
frequent. He was determined to break the matter off; it haunted his
dreams, it troubled him all day; he was forced to keep his
acquaintanceship with them secret, and was in perpetual terror lest
Aunt Clare should discover it. He had that most depressing of
unwished-for possessions, a skeleton; its cupboard-door swung
creakingly in the wind, and its bones rattled in his ears.
No, the thing must come to an end at once, and completely. They had
invited him to dinner and he had accepted, meaning to use the occasion
for the contemplated separation. He had thought often enough of what
he would say--words that had served others many times before in similar
situations. He would refer to their youth, the affair should be a
midsummer episode, pleasant to look back upon when they were both older
and married to more worthy partners; he would be a brother to her and
she should be a sister to him--but, thank God for his escape!
He believed that the Trojan traditions would carry him through. He was
not quite sure what she would do--cry probably, and remonstrate; but it
would soon be over and he would be at peace once more.
He dressed slowly and with his usual care. It would be easier to speak
with authority if there was no doubt about his appearance. He decided
to walk, and he passed through the garden into the town, his head a
buzzing repetition of the words that he meant to say. It was a
beautiful evening; a soft mist hid the moon's sharper outline, but she
shone, a vague circlet of light through a little fleet of fleecy white
cloud. Although it was early in September, some of the trees were
beginning to change their dark green into faint gold, and the sharp
outline of their leaves stood out against the grey pearl light of the
sky. As he passed into the principal street of Pendragon, Robin drew
his coat closer about him, like some ancient conspirator. He had no
wish to be stopped by an inquisitive friend; his destination demanded
secrecy. Soon the lights and asphalt of the High Street gave place to
dark, twisting paths and cobbled stones. These obscure and narrow ways
were rather pathetic survivals of the old Pendragon. At night they had
an almost sinister appearance; the lamps were at very long intervals
and the old houses leaned over the road with a certain crazy
picturesqueness that was, at the same time, exceedingly dangerous.
There were few lights in the windows and very few pedestrians on the
cobbles; the muffled roar of the sea sounded close at hand. And,
indeed, it sprang upon you quite magnificently at a turn of the road.
To-night it scarcely moved; a ripple as the waves licked the sand, a
gentle rustle as of trees in the wind when the pebbles were dragged
back with the ebb--that was all. It seemed strangely mysterious under
the misty, uncertain light of the moon.
The houses facing the sea loomed up darkly against the horizon--a black
contrast with the grey of sea and sky. It was No. 4 where the Feverels
lived. There was a light in the upper window and some one was playing
the piano. Robin hesitated for some minutes before ringing the bell.
When it had rung he heard the piano stop. For a few seconds there was
no sound; then there were steps in the passage and the door was opened
by the very dowdy little maid-of-all-work whose hands were always dirty
and whose eyes were always red, as though with perpetual weeping.
With what different eyes he saw the house now! On his first visit, the
sun had dazzled his eyes; there had been flowers in the drawing-room
and she had come to meet him in some charming dress; he had stood
enraptured at the foot of the stairs, deeming it Paradise. Now the
lamp in the hall flared with the wind from the door, and he was acutely
conscious of a large rent in the dirty, faded carpet. The house was
perfectly still--it might have been a place of ghosts, with the moon
shining mistily through the window on the stairs and the strange,
insistent murmur of the sea beating mysteriously through the closed
doors!
There was no one in the drawing-room, and its appalling bad taste
struck him as it had never done before. How could he have been blind
to it? The glaring yellow carpet, the bright purple lamp-shades, the
gilt looking-glass over the fireplace, and, above all, dusty, drooping
paper flowers in bright china vases ranged in a row by the window. Of
course, it might be merely the lodgings. Lodgings always were like
that--but to live with them for months! To attempt no change, to leave
the flowers, and the terrible oil-painting "Lost in the Snow"--an
obvious British Public appeal to a pathos that simply shrieked at you,
with its hideous colours and very material snow-storm. No, Robin could
only repeat once more, What an escape!
But had he, after all, escaped? He was not quite sure, as he stood by
the window waiting. It might be difficult, and he was unmistakably
nervous.
Dahlia closed the door, and stood there for a moment before coming
forward.
"Robin--at last!" and she held out both hands to him. They were the
same words that his aunt had used to his father last night, he
remembered foolishly, and at once they seemed strained, false,
ridiculous!
He took her hand and said something about being in time; then, as she
seemed to expect it, he bent down and kissed her.
She was pretty in a rather obvious way. If there had been less
artificiality there would have been more charm; of middle height, she
was slim and dark, and her hair, parted in the middle, fell in waves
over her temples. She affected a rather simple, aesthetic manner that
suited her dark eyes and rather pale complexion. You said that she was
intense until you knew her. To-night she wore a rather pretty dress of
some dark-brown stuff, cut low at the neck, and with her long white
arms bare. She had obviously taken a good deal of trouble this
evening, and had undoubtedly succeeded.
"And so Sir Robert has deigned to come and see his humble dependants at
last!" she said, laughing. "A whole fortnight, Robin, and you've not
been near us."
"I'm dreadfully sorry," he said, "but I've really been too terribly
busy. The Governor coming home and one thing and another----"
He felt gauche and awkward, the consciousness of what he must say after
dinner weighed on him heavily. He could hardly believe that there had
ever been a time when he had talked eagerly, passionately--he cursed
himself for a fool.
"Yes, we've been very lonely and you're a naughty boy," said Dahlia.
"But now you are here I won't scold you if you promise to tell me
everything you've done since last time----"
"Oh! done?" said Robin vaguely; "I really don't know--the usual sort of
thing, I suppose--not much to do in Pendragon at any time."
She had been looking at him curiously while he was speaking. Now she
suddenly changed her voice. "I've been so lonely without you, dear,"
she said, speaking almost in a whisper; "I fancied--of course it was
silly of me--that perhaps there was some one else--that you were
getting a little tired of me. I was--very unhappy. I nearly wrote,
but I was afraid that--some one might see it. Letters are always
dangerous. But it's very lonely here all day--with only mother. If
you could come a little oftener, dear--it means everything to me."
Her voice was a little husky as though tears were not far away, and she
spoke in little short sentences--she seemed to find it hard to say the
words.
Robin suddenly felt a brute. How could he ever tell her of what was in
his mind? If it was really so much to her he could never leave
her--not at once like that; he must do it gradually.
She was sitting by him on the sofa and looked rather delightful. She
had the pathetic expression that always attracted him, and he felt very
sorry indeed. How blank her days would be without him! Part of the
romance had always been his rôle of King Cophetua, and tears sprang to
his eyes as he thought of the poor beggar-maid, alone, forlornly
weeping, when he had finally withdrawn his presence.
"I think it is partly the sea," she said, putting her hand gently on
his sleeve. "When one is sitting quite alone here in the evening with
nothing to do and no one to talk to, one hears it so plainly--it is
almost frightening. You know, Robin, old boy, I don't care for
Pendragon very much. I only came here because of you--and now--if you
never come to see us----"
She stopped with a little catch in her voice. Her hand fastened on his
sleeve; their heads were very close together and her hair almost
brushed his cheek.
He really was an awful brute, but at the same time it was rather
nice--that she should care so much. It would be terrible for her when
he told her what was in his mind. She might even get very ill--he had
read of broken hearts often enough; and she was extraordinarily nice
just now--he didn't want to hurt her. But still a fellow must think of
his career, his future, and that sort of thing.
Mrs. Feverel entered--ponderous, solemn, dressed in a black silk that
trails behind her in funereal folds. Her hands were clammy to the
touch and her voice was a deep bass. She said very little, but sat
down silently by the window, forming, as she always did, a dark and
extremely solid background. Robin hated and feared her. There was
something sinister in her silence--something ominous in her perpetual
black. He had never heard her laugh.
Dahlia was laughing now. "I'm a selfish brute, Bobby," she said, "to
bother you with my silly little complaints when we want to be cheerful.
We'll have a good time this evening, won't we? We'll sing some of
those Rubinstein's duets after dinner, and I've got a new song that
I've been learning especially for you. And then there's your father; I
do want to hear all about him so much--he must be so interesting,
coming from New Zealand. Mother and I saw a gentleman in the town this
morning that we thought must be him. Tall and brown, with a light
brown moustache and a dark blue suit. It must be splendid to have a
father again after twenty years without him."
Her voice dropped a little, as though to refer gently to her own
fatherless condition.
Mrs. Feverel, a dark shadow in the window, sighed heavily.
"Oh! the Governor!" said Robin, a little irritably. "No! It's rather
difficult--he doesn't seem to know what to do and say. I suppose it's
being in New Zealand so long! It makes it rather difficult for me."
He spoke as one suffering under an unjust accusation. It was bad luck,
and he wondered vaguely why Dahlia had been so interested; why should
she care, unless, and the idea struck him with horror, she already
regarded him as a prospective father-in-law?
Dinner was announced by the grimy little maid. Robin took the dark
figure of Mrs. Feverel on his arm and made some hesitating remark about
the weather--but he had the curious and unpleasant sensation of her
seeing through him most thoroughly and clearly. He felt ridiculously
like a captive, and his doubts as to his immediate escape increased.
The gaudy drawing-room, the dingy stairs, the gas hissing in the hall,
had been, in all conscience, depressing enough, but now this heavy,
mute, ominous woman, trailing her black robes so funereally behind her,
seemed, to his excited fancy, some implacable Frankenstein created by
his own thrice-cursed folly.
The dinner was not a success. The food was bad, but that Robin had
expected. As he faced the depression of it, he was more than ever
determined to end it, conclusively, that evening, but Mrs. Feverel's
gloom and Dahlia's little attempts at coquettish gaiety frightened him.
The conversation, supported mainly by Dahlia, fell into terrible
lapses, and the attempts to start it again had the unhappy air of
desperate remedies doomed to failure. Dahlia's pathetic glances failed
of their intent. Robin was too deeply engaged in his own gloomy
reflections to notice them, but her eyes filled with tears, and at last
her efforts ceased and a horrible, gloomy silence fell like a choking
fog upon them.
"Will you smoke, Robin?" she said, when at last the dessert, in the
shape of some melancholy oranges and one very attenuated banana, was on
the table. "Egyptian or Turkish--or will you have a pipe?"
He took a cigarette clumsily from the box and his fingers trembled as
he lit first hers and then his own--he was so terribly afraid of
cutting a ridiculous figure. He sat down again and beat a tattoo on
the tablecloth. Mrs. Feverel, with some grimly muttered excuse, left
the room. She watched him a moment from the other side of the table
and then she came over to him. She bent over his chair, leaning her
hands on his shoulders.
"Robin, what is it?" she said. "What's happened?"
"Nothing," he said gloomily. "It's all right----"
"Oh! do you suppose I haven't seen?" She bent closer to him and
pressed her cheek against his. "Robin, old boy--you're not getting
tired of me? You're tired or cross to-night--I don't know. I've been
very patient all this time--waiting for you--hoping that you would
come--longing for you--and you never came--all these many weeks. Then
I thought that, perhaps, you were too busy or were afraid of people
talking--but, at last, there was to be to-night; and I've looked
forward to it--oh! so much!--and now you're like this!"
She was nearly crying, and there was that miserable little catch in her
voice. He did feel an awful cad--he hadn't thought that she would
really care so much as this; but still it had to be done some time, and
this seemed a very good opportunity.
He cleared his throat, and, beating the carpet with his foot, tried to
speak with dignity as well as feeling--but he only succeeded in being
patronising.
"You know," he said quickly, and without daring to look at her, "one's
had time to think. I don't mean that I'm sorry it's all been as it
has--we've had a ripping time--but I'm not sure--one can't be
certain--that it's best for it to go on--quite like this. You see, old
girl, it's so damned serious. Of course my people have ideas about my
marrying--of course the Trojans have always had to be careful. People
expect it of them----"
He stopped for a moment.
"You mean that I'm not good enough?"
She had stepped back from his chair and was standing with her back to
the wall. He got up from his chair and turned round and faced her,
leaning with his hands on the table. But he could not face her for
long; his eyes dropped before the fury in hers.
"No, no, Dahlia--how stupid of you!--of course it's not that. It's
really rather unkind of you to make it harder for me. It's difficult
enough to explain. You're good enough for any one, but I'm not quite
sure, dear, whether we'd be quite the people to marry! We'd be
splendid friends, of course--we'll always be that--but we're both very
young, and, after all, it's rather hard for one to know. It was
splendid at Cambridge, but I don't think we quite realised----"
"You mean you didn't," she broke in quickly. "I know well enough.
Some one's been speaking to you, Robin."
"No--nobody." He looked at her fiercely. She had hurt his pride. "As
if I'd be weak enough to let that make any difference. No one has said
a word--only----"
"Only--you've been thinking that we're not quite good enough for
you--that we'd soil your Trojan carpets and chairs--that we'd stain
your Trojan relations. I--I know--I----"
And then she broke down altogether. She was kneeling by the table with
her head in her arms, sobbing as though her heart would break.
"Oh, I say, Dahlia, don't! I can't bear to see you cry--it will be all
right, old girl, to-morrow--it will really--and then you will see that
it was wiser. You will thank me for speaking about it. Of course
we'll always be good friends. I----"
"Robin, you don't mean it. You can't!" She had risen from her knees
and now stood by him, timidly, with one hand on his arm. "You have
forgotten all those splendid times at Cambridge. Don't you remember
that evening on the Backs? Just you and I alone when there was that
man singing on the other side of the water, when you said that we would
be like that always--together. Oh, Robin dear, it can't have been all
nothing to you."
She looked very charming with her eyes a little wet and her hair a
little dishevelled. But his resolution must not weaken--now that he
had progressed so far, he must not go back. But he put his arm round
her.
"Really, old girl, it is better--for both of us. We can wait. Perhaps
in a few years' time it will seem different again. We can think about
it then. I don't want to seem selfish, but you must think about me a
little. You must see how hard it has been for me to say this, and that
it has only been with the greatest difficulty that I've been strong
enough. Believe me, dear, it is harder for me than it is for you--much
harder."
He was really getting on very well. He had had no idea that he would
do it so nicely. Poor girl! it was hard luck--perhaps he had led her
to expect rather too much--those letters of his had been rather too
warm, a little indiscreet. But no doubt she would marry some excellent
man of her own class--in a few years she would look back and wonder how
she had ever had the fortune to know so intimately a man of Robin's
rank! Meanwhile, the scene had better end as soon as possible.
She had let him keep his arm round her waist, and now she suddenly
leant back and looked up in his face.
"Robin, darling," she whispered, "you can't mean it--not that we should
part like this. Why, think of the times that we have had--the
splendid, glorious times--and all that we're going to have. Think of
all that you've said to me, over and over again----"
She crept closer to him. "You love me really, dear, all the same.
It's only that some one's been talking to you and telling you that it's
foolish. But that mustn't make any difference. We're strong enough to
face all the world. You know that you said you were in the summer, and
I'm sure that you are now. Wait till to-morrow, dear, and you'll see
it all differently."
"I tell you nobody's been talking," he said, drawing his arm away.
"Besides, if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. No, Dahlia,
it's got to stop. We're too young to know, and besides, it would be
absurd anyway. I know it's bad luck on you. Perhaps I said rather too
much in the summer. But of course we'll always be good friends. I
know you'll see it as I do in a little time. We've both been
indiscreet, and it's better to draw back now than later--really it is."
"Do you mean it, Robin?"
She stood facing him with her hands clenched; her face was white and
her eyes were blazing with fury.
"Yes, of course," he said. "I think it's time this ended----"
"Not before I've told you what I think of you," she cried. "You're a
thief and a coward--you've stolen a girl's love and then you're afraid
to face the world--you're afraid of what people will say. If you don't
love me, you're tied to me, over and over again. You've made me
promises--you made me love you--and now when your summer amusement is
over you fling me aside--you and your fine relations! Oh! you
gentlemen! It would be a good thing for the world if we were rid of
the whole lot of you! You coward! You coward!"
He was taken aback by her fury.
"I say--Dahlia--" he stammered, "it's unfair----"
"Oh! yes!" she broke in, "unfair, of course, to you! but nothing to
me--nothing to me that you stole my love--robbed me of it like a common
thief--pretended to love me, promised to marry me, and now--now--Oh!
unfair! yes, always for the man, never for the girl--she doesn't count!
She doesn't matter at all. Break her heart and fling it away and
nobody minds--it's as good as a play!"
She burst into tears, and stood with her head in her hands, sobbing as
though her heart would break. It was a most distressing scene!
"Really, really, Dahlia," said Robin, feeling extremely uncomfortable
(it was such a very good thing, he thought, that none of his friends
could see him), "it's no use your taking it like this. I had better
go--we can't do any good by talking about it now. To-morrow, when we
can look at it calmly, it will seem different."
He moved to the door, but she made another attempt and put her hand
timidly on his arm to stop him.
"No, no, Robin, I didn't mean what I said--not like that. I didn't
know what I was saying. Oh, I love you, dear, I love you! I can't let
you go like that. You don't know what it means to me. You are taking
everything from me--when you rob a girl of her love, of her heart, you
leave her nothing. If you go now, I don't care what happens to
me--death--or worse, That's how you make a bad woman, Robin. Taking
her love from her and then letting her go. You are taking her soul!"
But he placed her gently aside. "Nonsense, Dahlia," he said. "You are
excited to-night. You exaggerate. You will meet a man much worthier
than myself, and then you will see that I was right."
He opened the door and was gone.
She sat down at the table. She heard him open and shut the hall door,
and then his steps echoed down the street, and at last there was
silence. She sat at the table with her head bent, her eyes gazing at
the oranges and the bananas. The house was perfectly silent, and her
very heart seemed to have ceased to beat. Of course she did not
realise it; it seemed to her still as though he would come back in a
moment and put his arms round her and tell her that it was all a
game--just to see if she had really cared. But the silence of the
street and the house was terrible. It choked her, and she pulled at
her frock to loosen the tightness about her throat. It was cruel of
him to have gone away like that--but of course he would come back.
Only why was that cold misery at her heart? Why did she feel as if
some one had placed a hand on her and drawn all her life away, and left
her with no emotion or feeling--only a dull, blank, despair, like a
cold fog through which no sun shone?
For she was beginning to realise it slowly. He had gone away, after
telling her, brutally, frankly, that he was tired of her--that he had,
indeed, never really cared for her. That was it--he had never cared
for her--all those things that he had promised in the summer had been
false, words without any meaning. All that idyll had been hollow, a
sham, and she had made it the centre of her world.
She got up from the table and swayed a little as she stood. She
pressed her hands against her forehead as though she would drive into
her brain the fact that there would be no one now--no one at all--it
was all a lie, a lie, a lie!
The door opened softly and Mrs. Feverel stole in. "Dahlia--what has he
done?"
She looked at her as though she could not see her.
"Oh, nothing," she said slowly. "He did nothing. Only it's all
over--there is not going to be any more."
And then, as though the full realisation of it had only just been borne
in upon her, she sat down at the table again and burst into passionate
crying.
Mrs. Feverel watched her. "I knew it was coming, my dear--weeks ago.
You know I told you, only you wouldn't listen. Lord! it was plain
enough. He'd only been playing the same game as all the rest of them."
Dahlia dried her eyes fiercely. "I'm a fool to make so much of it,"
she said. "I wasn't good enough--he said--not good enough. His people
wouldn't like it and the rest--Oh! I've been a fool, a fool!"
Her mood changed to anger again. Even now she did not grasp it fully,
but he had insulted her. He had flung back in her face all that she
had given him. Injured pride was at work now, and for a moment she
hated him so that she could have killed him gladly had he been there.
But it was no good--she could not think about it clearly; she was
tired, terribly tired.
"I'm tired to death, mother," she said. "I can't think to-night."
She stumbled a little as she turned to the door.
"At least," said Mrs. Feverel, "there are the letters."
But Dahlia had scarcely heard.
"The letters?" she said.
"That he wrote in the summer. You have them safe enough?"
But the girl did not reply. She only climbed heavily up the dark
stairs.