Vera was walking up and down her drawing-room at twenty minutes past
eight, dressed in one of those filmy white evening gowns with which her
wardrobe was always supplied, one of her mermaid frocks, as Lady Susan
called them. This one was all gauzy whiteness, with something green and
glittering that flashed out of the whiteness now and then, to match the
emerald circlet in her cloudy hair.
The tender carnation that had come from her walk was still in her
cheeks, still giving unusual brightness to her eyes.
She had been happy; she had put away dark thoughts. Life was gay and
glad once again, glad and gay as it had always been when she and Claude
were together. A load had been lifted from her heart, the vulgar terror
of the conventional wife, who could not imagine friendship without sin.
The things that she had heard that afternoon had given a new meaning to
life, had lifted her thoughts and feelings from the commonplace to the
transcendental; to the sphere in which there was no such thing as sin,
where there were only darkness and light, where the senses had no power
over the soul that dwelt in communion with souls released from earth.
She no longer feared a lover in the friend she had chosen out of the
common herd.
Lady Okehampton sailed into the drawing-room as the silvery chime of an
Italian clock told the half-hour. Her expansive person, clad in amber
satin, glowed like the setting sun, and her smiling face radiated good
nature.
She put up her long glass to look at Vera, being somewhat short-sighted
physically as well as morally.
"My dear child, you are looking worlds better than when I last saw you.
You were such a wreck at Lady Mohun's ball; looked as if you ought to
have been in bed, doing a rest cure--a ghost in a diamond tiara. I find
that when a woman is looking ill diamonds always make her look worse;
but to-night you are charming. That emerald bandeau suits you better
than the thing you wore at the ball. You haven't the aquiline profile
that can carry off an all-round crown."
Claude and Lady Susan came in together.
"My car nearly collided with his taxi," said Lady Susie, when she had
embraced her friend; "but I was very glad to see a man at your door.
From what you said this morning, I expected a hen-party. Now a big
hen-party is capital fun; but for three women to sit at meat alone! The
idea opens an immeasurable vista of boredom. I always feel as if I must
draw the butler into the conversation, and bandy an occasional joke
with the footmen. No doubt they could be immensely funny if one would
let them."
"It was an after-thought," said Claude. "Vera took fright at the
eleventh hour, and admitted the serpent into her paradise."
"No doubt Adam and Eve were dull--a perpetual _tête-à-tête_, tempered
by tame lions, must soon have palled; but at least it was better than
three women, yawning in each other's faces, after exhausting the latest
scandal."
"I think the early dinner in 'Paradise Lost' quite the dullest meal
on record," said Claude. "To begin with, it was vegetarian and
non-alcoholic. A man and his wife--the wife waiting at table--and one
prosy guest monologuing from the eggs to the apples."
"There is no mention of eggs. I don't think they had anything so
comfortable as a poultry yard in Eden; no buff Orpingtons, or white
Wyandottes, only eagles and nightingales," said Susie, and at this
moment the butler announced dinner in a confidential murmur, as if it
were a State secret. He was neither stout nor elderly; but in his tall
slimness and grave countenance there was a dignity that would have
reduced the most emancipated of matrons to good behaviour.
"I should never dare to draw _him_ into the conversation," whispered
Susie, as Claude offered his arm to Lady Okehampton. "Nothing would
tempt that perfect creature to a breach of etiquette."
The hen-dinner, relieved by one man, was charming. Not too long a
dinner; for one of the discoveries of this easy-going century is that
people don't want to sit for an hour and a half steeping themselves
in the savour of expensive food, while solemn men in plush and silk
stockings stalk behind their back in an endless procession, carrying
dishes whose contents are coldly glanced at and coldly refused. The
dinner was short, but perfect: too short for the talk, which was gay
and animated from start to finish.
Lady Susan and Mr. Rutherford were the talkers, Vera and her aunt only
coming in occasionally: Lady Okehampton with a comfortable common-sense
that was meant to keep the rodomontade within bounds.
Claude was an omnivorous reader, and had always a new set of anecdotes
and epigrams with which to keep the talk alive, anecdotes so brief and
sparkling that he seemed to flash them across the table like pistol
shots. French, German, or Italian, his accent was faultless, and his
enunciation clear as that of the most finished comedian; while in the
give and take of friendly chaff with such an interlocutor as Lady
Susan, he was a past master.
Vera did not talk much, but she looked radiant, the lovely embodiment
of youth and gladness. Her light laughter rang clear above Susan's,
after Claude's most successful stories. Once only during that gay
repast was a graver note sounded, and it came from the most frivolous
of the party, from Susie Amphlett, who had one particular aversion,
which she sometimes enlarged upon with a morbid interest.
Age was Susan's bugbear.
"I think of it when I wake in the night, like Camilla, in 'Great
Expectations,'" she said, looking round the table with frightened eyes,
as if she were seeing ghosts.
The grapes and peaches had been handed, and it was the confidential
quarter of an hour after the servants had gone.
"I don't like to give myself away before a butler," Susie said, as
the door closed on the last of the silk stockings. "Footmen are
non-existent: one doesn't stop to consider whether they are matter, or
only electricity; but a butler is a person and can think--perhaps a
socialistic satirist, seething with silent scorn for his mistress and
her friends."
"And no doubt an esteemed contributor to one of the Society Papers,"
said Claude.
"I am not afraid of Democracy, nor the English adaptation of the
French Revolution, though I feel sure it is coming," continued Lady
Susan, planting her elbow on the table in an expansive mood. "I am
afraid of nothing except growing old. That one terror swallows up all
trivial fears. They might take my money, they might steep me in poverty
to the lips, and if I could keep youth and good looks, I should hardly
mind."
Again she looked at the others appealingly, like a child that is afraid
of Red Riding-hood's wolf.
"Age is such a hideous disease--the one incurable malady. And we must
all have it. We are all growing old; even you, Vera, though you have
not begun to think about it. I didn't till I was thirty. As we sit
at this table and laugh and amuse ourselves, the sands are falling,
falling, falling--they never stop! Glad or sorry, that horrible disease
goes on, till the symptoms suddenly become acute--grey hair, wrinkles,
gout."
"But are there not some mild pleasures left in the years that bring the
philosophic mind?" asked Claude.
"Does that mean when one is eighty? At eighty one might easily be
philosophic. Everything would be over and done with. One would be like
old Lord Tyrawly, who said he was dead, though people did not know it."
"Some of the most delightful people I have known were old, and even
very old," said Claude, "but they didn't mind. That's the secret of
eternal youth, my dear Susie--not to mind: to wear the best wig you can
buy, and not to pretend it is your own hair: to wear pretty clothes,
especially suited to your years, sumptuous velvet and more sumptuous
fur, like a portrait of an old lady by Velasquez: never to brag of your
age, but never to be ashamed of it. The last phase may be the best
phase, if one has the philosophic mind."
"Oh, you," exclaimed Susan scornfully, "you are like Chesterfield. You
will have your good manners till your last death-bed visitor has been
given a chair. A fine manner is the only thing that time can't touch."
Vera saw her aunt looking bored, and smiled the signal for moving.
"Half a cigarette, and I shall follow," said Claude, as he opened the
door for the trio, "unless I am distinctly forbidden."
"Why should we forbid you? You are an artist, and you know more about
frocks and hats than we do, after years of laborious study," said Lady
Susan, and then, with her arm through Vera's as they went slowly up the
broad staircase, with steps so shallow that people accustomed to small
houses were in danger of falling over them, "Isn't he incomparable?"
she exclaimed. "There never was such a delightful failure."
"Poor Claude," sighed Lady Okehampton. "I suppose it is only the men
who fail in everything who have time to be agreeable. If a young man
has a great ambition, and is thinking of his career, he is generally
a bear. Claude has wasted all his chances in life, and can afford to
waste his time."
"It was a pity he left the Army," said Susan. "He looked lovely in his
uniform. I remember him as he flashed past me in a hansom, one summer
morning after a levée, a vision of beauty."
"It was a pity he got himself entrapped by a bad woman," said Lady
Okehampton with a sigh.
"His Colonel's second wife," put in Lady Susan. "Isn't it always the
elderly Colonel's second wife?"
Lady Okehampton gave another sigh.
"It was a disgraceful story," she murmured. "Let us try to forget all
about it."
Vera had flushed and paled while they were talking.
"But tell me about it, Aunt Mildred," she said, with a kind of angry
eagerness. "Where was the disgrace, more than in all such cases? A
wicked woman, a foolish young man--very young, wasn't he?"
"Not five and twenty."
"Where was the disgrace?"
"Don't excite yourself, child. Duplicity--an old man's heart
broken--Isn't that enough? An elopement or not an elopement; something
horrid that happened after a regimental ball. I know nothing of the
details, for it all took place while the regiment was in India, which
only shows that Kipling's stories are true to life. The husband would
not divorce her--which was a blessing--or Claude would have had to
marry her. He spoilt his career by the intrigue; but marriage would
have been worse."
Vera's heart was beating violently when Claude sauntered into the room
presently, and made his leisurely way to the sofa where she was sitting
aloof from the other two, who had just entered upon an animated
discussion of the last fashionable nerve-specialist and his methods.
"What has made you so pale?" Claude asked, as he seated himself by
Vera's side. "Was our walk through the streets too much for you? I
should never forgive myself if----"
"You have nothing to be sorry for. The walk was delightful. My aunt and
Susie have been talking of unpleasant things."
"What kind of things?"
"Of your leaving the Army. You have never told me why you threw up your
career."
"My career! There was not much to lose. The Boer War was over; my
regiment was in India all the time, and I never had a look in. Oh, they
have been telling you an ugly story about your poor friend; and it will
be 'The door is shut' again, I suppose."
"Why did not you tell me of your past life? I have told you everything
about mine."
"Because you had only nice innocent things to tell. My story would not
bear telling--and why should you want to know?"
"There should not be a wall between friends--such friends as we have
been--like brother and sister."
"Do brothers tell old love stories? Stale, barren stories of loves that
are dead?"
"Perhaps not. I oughtn't to have spoken about it. Come and talk to Aunt
Mildred. Her carriage has been announced, and she'll be huffed if we
don't go to her."
Claude followed meekly, and in five minutes Lady Okehampton had
forgotten that it was eleven o'clock, and that her horses had been
waiting half an hour. He had a curious power of making women pleased
with themselves, and with him. He always flattered them; but his
flattery was so discreet and subtle as to be imperceptible. It was
rather his evident delight in being with them and talking to them that
pleased, than anything that he said.
"Come to River Mead for next Sunday. It will be my last week-end party
before we go to Scotland," Lady Okehampton said to him before she bade
good night. "Vera and Susan are coming. We shall be a small party, and
there will be plenty of bridge."
Claude accepted the invitation as he took Lady Okehampton to her
carriage.
"I wish Provana were not so much away from his wife," she said. "It is
a very difficult position for Vera."
"Vera is not _la première venue_. She knows how to take care of
herself."
"That's what they always say about women; but is it true in her case?
She is very young, and rather simple, and knows very little of the
world."
"Not after six years as the wife of a financial Croesus?" murmured
Claude, while he arranged the matron's voluminous mantle over her
shoulders as carefully as if the outside atmosphere had been arctic.
He knew that the drift of her speech had been by way of warning for
him. Dear, inconsistent soul! It was so like her to invite him to spend
three days with her niece in the _sans gêne_ of a riverside villa, and
five minutes afterwards to sound a note of warning.
He walked along the lamp-lit streets with the light foot of triumphant
love. Vera's pale distress and unwise questioning had set his heart
beating with the presage of victory. Poor child! For his acute
perceptions, the heart of a woman had seldom been a mystery, and this
woman's heart was easier to read than most. Poor child! She had been
trying to live without him. She had fought her poor little battle,
with more of resolution and of courage than he would have expected
from a creature so tender. She had kept him out of her life for a long
time--time that had seemed an eternity for him, in his longing for
her; and then, at a word, at a smile, at the touch of his hand, she
had yielded, and had let him see that to be with him was to be happy,
and that nothing else mattered. Light love had been his portion in the
light years of youth; but this was no light love. He had sacrificed
his career for the sake of a woman; but the sacrifice had been forced
upon him, and it had killed his love. But now he was prepared for any
sacrifice--for the sacrifice of life-long exile, and strained means.
He thought of a home in a summer isle of the great southern ocean,
like Stevenson's; or, if gaiety were better, in some romantic city of
Spanish America. There were paradises enough in the world, there would
be no one to point the finger of scorn, where "Society" was a word of
no meaning.
He would carry his love to the world's end, beyond the reach of shame.
Nothing mattered but Vera. Yes, there was one who mattered. His mother!
But to-night he could not even think of her, or if he thought of her
it was to tell himself that if Provana divorced his wife, and he and
Vera were married, his mother would be reconciled to the inevitable.
Her religion would be a stumbling block. To her mind such a marriage
would be no marriage. To-night he could not reason, he would not see
obstacles in his path. Vera's pale looks and anxious questions had been
a confession of love, a forecast of surrender; and in the tumult of his
thoughts there was no room for hesitation or for fear.
He thought of his love now as duty. It was his duty to rescue this dear
girl from a loveless union with a hard man of business, old enough to
be her father, from splendours and luxuries that had become as dust and
ashes. He had known for a long time that she cared for him; but he had
never reckoned the strength of her attachment. Only this afternoon, in
her radiant happiness, as they walked through the unromantic streets;
only in her pale distress to-night, as she questioned him, had he
discovered his power: and now there seemed to be but one possible
issue--a new life for them both.
His mother's absence from London was an inexpressible relief to him.
How could he have met the tender questioning of the eyes that watched
over his life, and had learned how to read his mind from the time
when thought began? How could he have hidden the leaping, passionate
thoughts, the sense of a crisis in his fate, the ardent expectation,
the dream of joy, the fever and excitement in the mind of a man who is
making his plan of a new life, a life of exquisite happiness?