After the first few days of his arrival at Shotover time had threatened
to hang heavily on Mortimer's mottled hands. After the second day afield
he recognised that his shooting career was practically over; he had
become too bulky during the last year to endure the physical exertion;
his habits, too, had at length made traitors of his eyes; a half hour's
snipe-shooting in the sun, and the veins in his neck swelled ominously.
Panting, eyes inflamed, fat arms wobbly, he had scored miss after miss,
and laboured onward, sullenly persistent to the end. But it was the
end. That cup day finished him; he recognised that he was done for. And,
following the Law of Pleasure, which finishes us before we are finished
with it, he did not experience any particular sense of deprivation in
the prospect. Only the wholesome dread caging. But Mortimer, not yet
done with self-indulgence in more convenient forms, cast about him
within his new limits for occupation between those hours consecrated to
the rites of the table and the card-room.
He drove four, but found that it numbed his arms, and that the sea air
made him sleepy. Motor-cars agreed with him only when driving with a
pretty woman. Forced through ennui to fish off the rocks, he soon tired
of the sea-perch and rock-cod and the malodours of periwinkle and clam.
Then he frankly took to Major Belwether's sunny side of the gun-room,
with illustrated papers and apples and decanter. But Major Belwether,
always as careful of his digestion as of his financial secrets, blandly
dodged the pressing invitations to rum and confidence, until Mortimer
sulkily took up his headquarters in the reading-room, on the chance
of his wife's moving elsewhere. Which she did, unobtrusively carrying
Captain Voucher with her in a sudden zeal for billiard practice on rainy
mornings now too frequent along the coast.
Mortimer possessed that mysterious talent, so common among the
financially insolvent, for living lavishly on an invisible income. But,
plan as he would, he had never been able to increase that income
through confidential gossip with men like Quarrier or Belwether, or even
Ferrall. What information his pretty wife might have extracted he did
not know; her income had never visibly increased above the vanishing
point, although, like himself, she denied herself nothing. One short,
lively interview with her had been enough to drive all partnership ideas
out of his head. If he wanted to learn anything financially advantageous
to himself he must do it without her aid; and as he was perpetually in
hopes of the friendly hint that never came, he still moused about when
opportunity offered; and this also helped to kill time.
Besides, he was always studying women. Years before, Grace Ferrall had
snapped her slim fingers in his face; and here, at Shotover, the field
was limited. Mrs. Vendenning had left; Agatha Caithness was still a pale
and reticent puzzle; Rena, Katharyn, and Eileen tormented him; Marion
Page, coolly au fait, yawned in his face. There remained Sylvia, who,
knowing nothing about his species, met him half-way with the sweet and
sensitive deference due a somewhat battered and infirm gentleman
of forty-eight--until a sleek aside from Major Belwether spoiled
everything, as usual, for her, leaving her painfully conscious and
perplexed between doubt and disgust.
Meanwhile, the wealthy master of Black Fells, Beverly Plank, had found
encouragement enough at Shotover to venture on tentative informality.
There was no doubt that ultimately he must be counted on in New York;
but nobody except him was impatiently cordial for the event; and so, at
the little house party, he slipped and slid from every attempt at
closer quarters, until, rolling smoothly enough, he landed without much
discomfort somewhere between Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Mortimer. And it was not
a question as to “which would be good to him,” observed Major Belwether,
with his misleading and benevolent mirth; “it was, which would be
goodest quickest!”
And Mrs. Mortimer, abandoning Captain Voucher by the same token,
displayed certain warning notices perfectly comprehensive to her
husband. And at first he was inclined to recognise defeat.
But the general insuccess which had so faithfully attended him recently
had aroused the long-dormant desire for a general review of the
situation with his wife--perhaps even the furtive hope of some conjugal
arrangement tending toward an exchange of views concerning possible
alliance.
The evening previous, to his intense disgust, host, hostess, and guests
had retired early, in view of the point-shooting at dawn. For not only
was there to be no point-shooting for him, but he had risen from the
card-table heavily hit; and besides, for the first time his apples and
port had disagreed with him.
As he had not risen until mid-day he was not sleepy. Books were an
aversion equalled only by distaste for his own company. Irritated,
bored, he had perforce sulkily entered the elevator and passed to his
room, where there was nothing on earth for him to do except to thumb
over last week's sporting periodicals and smoke himself stupid.
But it required more than that to ensnare the goddess of slumber.
He walked about the room, haunted of slow thoughts; he stood at
the rain-smeared pane, fat fingers resting on the glass. The richly
flavoured cigar grew distasteful; and if he could not smoke, what, in
pity's name, was he to do?
Involuntarily his distended eyes wandered to his wife's locked and
bolted door; then he thought of Beverly Plank, and his own failure to
fasten himself upon that anxiously over-cordial individual with his
houses and his villas and his yachts and his investments!
He stepped to the switch and extinguished the lights in his room. Under
the door, along the sill, a glimmer came from his wife's bed-chamber.
He listened; the maid was still there; so he sat down in the darkness
to wait; and by-and-by he heard the outer bedroom door close, and the
subdued rustle of the departing maid.
Then, turning on his lights, he moved ponderously and jauntily to his
wife's door and knocked discreetly.
Leila Mortimer came to the door and opened it; her hair was coiled for
the night, her pretty figure outlined under a cascade of clinging lace.
“What is the matter?” she asked quietly.
“Are you point-shooting to-morrow?”
“I wanted to chat with you.”
“I'm sorry. I'm driving to Wenniston, after breakfast, with Beverly
Plank, and I need sleep.”
“I want to talk to you,” he repeated doggedly.
She regarded him for a moment in silence, then, with an assenting
gesture, turned away into her room; and he followed, heavily
apprehensive but resolved.
She had seated herself among a pile of cushions, one knee crossed over
the other, her slim white foot half concealed by the silken toe of her
slipper. And as he pulled a chair forward for himself, her pretty black
eyes, which slanted a little, took his measure and divined trouble.
“Leila,” he said, “why can't we have--”
“A cigarette?” she interrupted, indicating her dainty case on the table.
He took one, savagely aware of defiance somewhere. She lighted her
own from a candle and settled back, studying the sequence of blue
smoke-rings jetting upward to the ceiling.
“About this man Plank,” he began, louder than he had intended through
sheer self-mistrust; and his wife made a quick, disdainful sign of
caution, which subdued his voice instantly. “Why can't we take him
up--together, Leila?” he ended lamely, furious at his own uneasiness in
a matter which might concern him vitally.
“I see no necessity of your taking him up,” observed his wife serenely.
“I can do what may be useful to him in town.”
“So can I. There are clubs where he ought to be seen--”
“I can manage such matters much better.”
“You can't manage everything,” he insisted sullenly. “There are chances
of various sorts--”
“Investments?” asked Mrs. Mortimer, with bright malice.
“See here, Leila, you have your own way too much. I say little; I make
damned few observations; but I could, if I cared to. … It becomes you
to be civil at least. I want to talk over this Plank matter with you; I
want you to listen, too.”
A shade of faint disgust passed over her face. “I am listening,” she
said.
“Well, then, I can see several ways in which the man can be of use to
me. … I discovered him before you did, anyway. And what I want to do is
to have a frank, honourable--”
“A--what?”
“--An honourable understanding with you, I said,” he repeated,
reddening.
“Oh!” She snapped her cigarette into the grate. “Oh! I see. And what
then?”
“What then?”
“Yes; what then?”
“Why, you and I can arrange to stand behind him this winter in town,
can't we?”
“And then?”
“Then--damn it!--the beggar can show his gratitude, can't he?”
“How?” she asked listlessly.
“By making good. How else?” he retorted savagely. “He can't welch
because there's little to climb for beyond us; and even if he climbs, he
can't ignore us. I can do as many things for him in my way as you can
in yours. What is the use of being a pig, Leila? Anything he does for me
isn't going to cancel his obligations to you.”
“I know him better than you do,” she observed, bending her head and
pleating the lace on her knee. “There is Dutch blood in him.”
“Not good Hollander, but common Dutch,” sneered Mortimer. “And you mean
he'll squeeze a dollar till the eagle screams-don't you?”
She sat silent, pleating her lace with steady fingers.
“Well, that's all right, too,” laughed Mortimer easily; “let the
Audubon Society worry over the eagle. It's a perfectly plain business
proposition; we can do for him in a couple of winters what he can't do
for himself in ten. Figure it out for yourself, Leila,” he said, waving
a mottled fat hand at her.
“I--have,” she said under her breath.
“Then, is it settled?
“Settled--how?”
“That we form ourselves into a benevolent society of two in behalf of
Plank?”
“I--I don't want to, Roy,” she said slowly.
“Why not?”
She did not say why not, seated there nervously pleating the fragile
stuff clinging to her knee.
“Why not?” he repeated menacingly. Her unexpectedly quiescent attitude
had emboldened him to a bullying tone--something he had not lately
ventured on.
She raised her eyes to his: “I--rather like him,” she said quietly.
“Then, by God! he'll pay for that!” he burst out, mask off, every
inflamed feature shockingly congested.
“Roy! You dare not--”
“I tell you I--”
“You dare not!”
The palpitating silence lengthened; slowly the blood left the swollen
veins. Heavy pendulous lip hanging, he stared at her from distended
eyes, realising that he had forgotten himself. She was right. He dared
not. And she held the whip-hand as usual.
For every suspicion he could entertain, she had evidence of a certainty
to match it; for every chance that he might have to prove anything, she
had twenty proven facts. And he knew it. Why they had, during all these
years, made any outward pretence of conjugal unity they alone knew. The
modus vivendi suited them better than divorce: that was apparent, or had
been until recently. Recently Leila Mortimer had changed--become subdued
and softened to a degree that had perplexed her husband. Her attitude
toward him lacked a little of the bitterness and contempt she usually
reserved for him in private; she had become more prudent, almost
cautious at times.
“I'll tell you one thing,” he said with a sudden snarl: “You'd better be
careful there is no gossip about you and Plank.”
She reddened under the insult.
“Now we'll see,” he continued venomously, “how far you can go alone.”
“Do you suppose,” she asked calmly, “that I am afraid of a divorce
court?”
The question so frankly astonished him that he sat agape, unable to
reply. For years he had very naturally supposed her to be afraid of
it--afraid of not being qualified to obtain it. Indeed, he had taken
that for granted as the very corner-stone of their mutual toleration.
Had he been an ass to do so? A vague alarm took possession of him;
for, with that understanding, he had not been at all careful of his own
behaviour, neither had he been at any particular pains to conceal his
doings from her. His alarm increased. What had he against her, after
all, except ancient suspicions, now so confused and indefinite that
memory itself outlawed the case, if it ever really existed. What had she
against him? Facts--unless she was more stupid than any of her sex he
had ever encountered. And now, this defiance, this increasing prudence,
this subtle change in her, began to make him anxious for the permanency
of the small income she had allowed him during all these years--doled
out to him, as he believed, though her dormant fear of him.
“What are you talking about?” he said harshly.
“I believe I mentioned divorce.”
“Well, cut it out! D'ye see? Cut it, I say. You'd stand as much chance
before a referee as a snowball in hell.”
“There's no telling,” she said coolly, “until one tries.”
He glared at her, then burst into a laugh. “Rot!” he said thickly. “Talk
sense, Leila! And keep this hard-headed Dutchman for yourself, if you
feel that way about it. I don't want to butt in. I only thought--for old
times' sake--perhaps you'd--”
“Good night,” she managed to say, her disgust almost strangling her.
And he went, furtively, heavy-footed, perplexed, inwardly cursing his
blunder in stirring up a sleeping lioness whom he had so long mistaken
for a dozing cat.
For hours he sat in his room, or paced the four walls, doubtful,
chagrined, furious by turns. Once he drew out a memorandum-book and
stood under a lighted sconce, studying the figures. His losses at
Shotover staggered him, but he had looked to his wife heretofore in such
emergencies.
Certainly the time had come for him to do something. But what?--if his
wife was going to strike such attitudes in the very face of decency?
Certainly a husband in these days was without honour in his own
household.
His uneasiness had produced a raging thirst. He punched an electric
button with his fleshy thumb, and prowled around, waiting. Nobody came;
he punched again, and looked at his watch. It astonished him to find
the hour was three o'clock in the morning. That discovery, however, only
appeared to increase his thirst. He opened the hall door, prepared to
descend into the depths of the house and raid a sideboard; and as he
thrust his heavy head out into the lighted corridor his eyes fell upon
two figures standing at the open door of a bedroom. One was Siward; that
was plain. Who was the girl he had kissed? One of the maids? Somebody's
wife? Who?
Every dull pulse began to hammer in Mortimer's head. In his excitement
he stepped half-way into the corridor, then skipped nimbly back, closing
his door without a sound.
“Sylvia Landis, by all that's holy!” he breathed to himself, and sat
down rather suddenly on the edge of the bed.
After a while he rose and crept to the door, opened it, glued his eyes
to the crack, in time to catch a glimpse of Siward entering his own
corridor alone.
And that night, Mortimer, lying awake in bed, busy with schemes, became
conscious of a definite idea. It took shape and matured so suddenly that
it actually shocked his moral sense. Then it scared him.
“But--but that is blackmail!” he whispered aloud. “A man can't do that
sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? … And there
are men I know--women, too--scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that
information somehow; and make it pay, too. The scoundrels!”
He squirmed down among the bedclothes with a sudden shiver; but the
night had turned warm.
“Scoundrels!” he said, with milder emphasis. “Blackmailers! Contemptible
pups!”
He fell asleep an hour later, muttering something incoherent about
scoundrels and blackmail.
And meanwhile, in the darkened house, from all round came the noise
of knocking on doors, sounds of people stirring--a low voice here and
there, lights breaking out from transoms, the thud of rubber-shod heels,
the rattle of cartridges from the echoing gun-room. For the guests at
Shotover were awaking, lest the wet sky, whitening behind the east,
ring with the whimpering wedges of wild-fowl rushing seaward over empty
blinds.
The unusual stillness of the house in the late morning sunshine was
pleasant to Miss Landis. She had risen very late, unconscious of the
stir and movement before dawn; and it was only when a maid told her,
as she came from her bath, that she remembered the projected
point-shooting, and concluded, with an odd, happy sense of relief, that
she was almost alone in the house.
A little later, glancing from her bedroom window for a fulfilment of the
promise of the sun which a glimpse of blue sky heralded, she saw Leila
Mortimer settling herself in the forward seat of a Mercedes, and Beverly
Plank climbing in beside her; and she watched Plank steer the big
machine across the wet lawn, while the machinist swung himself into
the tonneau; and away they rolled, faster, faster, rushing out into the
misty hinterland, where the long streak of distant forest already began
to brighten, edged with the first rays of watery sunshine.
So she had the big house to herself--every bit of it and with it freedom
from obligation, from comment, from demand or exaction; freedom from
restraint; liberty to roam about, to read, to dream, to idle, to
remember! Ah, that was what she needed--a quiet interval in this
hurrying youth of hers to catch her breath once more, and stand still,
and look back a day or two and remember.
So, to breakfast all alone was delicious; to stroll, unhurried, to the
sideboard and leisurely choose among the fresh cool fruits; to loiter
over cream-jug and cereal; to saunter out into the freshness of the
world and breathe it, and feel the sun warming cheek and throat, and
the little breezes from a sunlit sea stirring the bright strands of her
hair.
In the increasing brilliancy of the sunshine she stretched out her
hands, warming them daintily as she might twist them before the fire on
the hearth. And here, at the fragrant hearth of the world, she stood,
sweet and fresh as the morning itself, untroubled gaze intensely blue
with the tint of the purple sea, sensitive lips scarcely parting in the
dreaming smile that made her eyes more wonderful.
As the warmth grew on land and water, penetrating her body, a faintly
delicious glow responded in her heart,--nothing at first wistful in the
serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in
the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively
unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her
to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers
uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young
figure straightened, confronting the sea.
Out over the rain-wet, odorous grass she picked her way, skirts swung
high above the delicate contour of ankle and limb, following a little
descending path she knew full of rocky angles, swept by pendant sprays
of blackberry, and then down under the jutting rock, south through
thickets of wild cherry along the crags, until, before her the way
opened downward again where a tiny crescent beach glimmered white hot in
the sun.
From his bedroom window Mortimer peeped forth, following her progress
with a leer.
As she descended, noticing the rifts of bronzing seaweed piled along
the tide mark, her foot dislodged a tiny triangle of rock, which rolled
clattering and ringing below; and as she sprang lightly to the sand,
a man, lying full length and motionless as the heaped seaweed, raised
himself on one arm, turning his sun-dazzled eyes on her.
The dull shock of surprise halted her as Siward rose to his feet, still
dazed, the sand running from his brown shooting-clothes over his tightly
strapped puttees.
“Have you the faintest idea that I supposed you were here?” she asked
briefly. Then, frank in her disappointment, she looked up at the cliffs
overhead, where her line of retreat lay.
“Why did you not go with the others?” she added, unsmiling.
“I--don't know. I will, if you wish.” He had coloured slowly, the frank
disappointment in her face penetrating his surprise; and now he turned
around, instinctively, also looking for the path of retreat.
“Wait,” she said, aware of her own crude attitude and confused by it;
“wait a moment, Mr. Siward. I don't mean to drive you away.”
“It's self-exile,” he said quietly; “quite voluntary, I assure you.”
“Mr. Siward!”
And, as he looked up coolly, “Have you nothing more friendly to say to
me? Is your friendship for me so limited that my first caprice oversteps
the bounds? Must I always be in dread of wounding you when I give you
the privilege of knowing me better than anybody ever knew me--of seeing
me as I am, with all my faults, my failings, my impulses, my real self?
… I don't know why the pleasure of being alone to-day should have meant
exclusion for you, too. It was the unwelcome shock of seeing anybody--a
selfish enjoyment of myself--that surprised me into rudeness. That is
all. … Can you not understand?”
“I think so. I meant no criticism--”
“Wait, Mr. Siward!” as he moved slowly toward the path. “You force me
to say other things, which you have no right to hear. … After last
night”--the vivid tint grew in her face--“after such a night, is it
not--natural--for a girl to creep off somewhere by herself and try to
think a little?”
He had turned full on her; the answering colour crept to his forehead.
“Is that why?” he asked slowly.
“Is it not a reason?”
“It was my reason--for being here.”
She bit her bright lip. This trend to the conversation was ominous, and
she had meant to do her drifting alone in still sun-dreams, fearing
no witness, no testimony, no judgment save her own self in court with
herself.
“I--I suppose you cannot go--now,” she reflected innocently.
“Indeed I can, and must.”
“And leave me here to dig in the sand with my heels? Merci!”
“Do you mean--”
“I certainly do, Mr. Siward. I don't want to dream, now; I don't care to
reflect. I did, but here you come blundering into my private world and
upset my calculations and change my intentions! It's a shame, especially
as you've been lying here doing what I wished to do for goodness knows
how long!”
“I'm going,” he said, looking at her curiously.
“Then you are very selfish, Mr. Siward.”
“We will call it that,” he said with an odd laugh.
“Very well.” She seated herself on the sand and calmly shook out her
skirts.
“About what time would you like to be called?” he asked smilingly.
“Thank you, I shall do no sun-dreaming.”
“Please. It is good for you.”
“No, it isn't good at all. And I am grateful to you for waking me,” she
retorted with a sudden gay malice that subdued him. And she, delicate
nose in the air, laughingly watching him, went on with her punishment:
“You see what you've done, don't you?--saved me from an entire morning
wasted in sentimental reverie over what might have been. Now you can
appreciate it, can't you?--your wisdom in appearing in the flesh to save
a silly girl the effort of evoking you in the spirit! Ah, Mr. Siward, I
am vastly obliged to you! Pray sit here beside me in the flesh, for fear
that in your absence I might commit the folly that tempted me here.”
His low running laughter accompanying her voice had stimulated her to a
gay audacity, which for the instant extinguished in her the little fear
of him she had been barely conscious of.
“Do you know,” he said, “that you also aroused me from my sun-dreams?”
“Did I? And can't you resume them?”
“You save me the necessity.”
“Oh, that is a second-hand compliment,” she said disdainfully--“a weak
plagiarism on what I conveyed very wittily. You were probably really
asleep, and dreaming of bird-murder.”
He waited for her to finish, then, amused eyes searching, he roamed
about until high on a little drifted sand dune he found a place for
himself; and while she watched him indignantly, he curled up in the
sunshine, and, dropping his head on the hot sand, calmly closed his
eyes.
“Upon--my word!” she breathed aloud.
He unclosed his eyes. “Now you may dream; you can't avoid it,” he
observed lazily, and closed his eyes; and neither taunts nor jeers nor
questions, nor fragments of shells flung with intent to hit, stirred him
from his immobility.
She tired of the attempt presently, and sat silent, elbows on her
thighs, hands propping her chin. Thoughts, vague as the fitful breeze,
arose, lingered, and, like the breeze, faded, dissolved into calm,
through which, cadenced by the far beat of the ebb tide, her heart
echoed, beating the steady intervals of time.
She had not meant to dream, but as she sat there, the fine-spun golden
threads flying from the whirling loom of dreams floated about her,
settling over her, entangling her in unseen meshes, so that she stirred,
groping amid the netted brightness, drawn onward along dim paths and
through corridors of thought where, always beyond, vague splendours
seemed to beckon.
Now lost, now restless, conscious of the perils of the shining path she
followed, the rhythm of an ocean soothing her to false security, she
dreamed on awake, unconscious of the tinted sea and sky which stained
her eyes to hues ineffable. A long while afterward a small cloud floated
across the sun; and, in the sudden shadow on the world, doubt sounded
its tiny voice, and her ears listened, and the enchantment faded and
died away.
Turning, she looked across the sand at the man lying there; her eyes
considered him--how long she did not know, she did not heed--until,
stirring, he looked up; and she paled a trifle and closed her eyes,
stunned by the sudden clamour of pulse and heart.
When he rose and walked over, she looked up gravely, pouring the last
handful of white sand through her stretched fingers.
“Did you dream?” he asked lightly.
“Yes.”
“Did you dream true?”
“Nothing of my dream can happen,” she said. “You know that, … don't
you?”
“I know that we love … and that we dare not ignore it.”
She suffered his arm about her, his eyes looking deeply into hers--a
close, sweet caress, a union of lips, and her dimmed eyes' response.
“Stephen,” she faltered, “how can you make it so hard for me? How can
you force me to this shame!”
“Shame?” he repeated vaguely.
“Yes--this treachery to myself--when I cannot hope to be more to
you--when I dare not love you too much!”
“You must dare, Sylvia!”
“No, no, no! I know myself, I tell you. I cannot give up what is
offered--for you!--dearly, dearly as I do love you!” She turned and
caught his hands in hers, flushed, trembling, unstrung. “I cannot--I
simply cannot! How can you love me and listen to such wickedness?
How can you still care for such a girl as I am--worse than mercenary,
because I have a heart--or had, until you took it! Keep it; it is the
only part of me not all ignoble.”
“I will keep it--in trust,” he said, “until you give yourself with it.”
But she only shook her head wearily, withdrawing her hands from his, and
for a time they sat silent, eyes apart.
Then--“There is another reason,” she said wistfully.
He looked up at her, hesitated, and--“My habits?” he asked simply.
“Yes.”
“I have them in check.”
“Are you--certain?”
“I think I may be--now.”
“Yet,” she said timidly, “you lost one fight--since you knew me.”
The dull red mantling his face wrung her heart. She turned impulsively
and laid both hands on his shoulders. “That chance I would take, with
all its uncertainty, all the dread inheritance you have come into. I
love you enough for that; and if it turned out that--that you could not
stem the tide, even with me to face it with you; and if the pity of it,
the grief of it, killed me, I would take that chance--if you loved me
through it all. … But there is something else. Hush; let me have my say
while I find the words--something else you do not understand. … Turn
your face a little; please don't look at me. This is what you do not
know--that, in three generations, every woman of my race has--gone
wrong. … Every one! and I am beginning--with such a marriage! …
deliberately, selfishly, shamelessly, perfectly conscious of the
frivolous, erratic blood in me, aware of the race record behind me.
“Once, when I knew nothing--before I--I met you--I believed such a
marriage would not only permit me mental tranquillity, but safely anchor
me in the harbour of convention, leaving me free to become what I am
fashioned to become--autocrat and arbiter in my own world. And now!
and now! I don't know--truly I don't know what I may become. Your
love forces my hand. I am displaying all the shallowness, falseness,
pettiness, all the mean, and cruel and callous character which must be
truly my real self. … Only I shall not marry you! You are not to run
the risk of what I might prove to be when I remember in bitterness all
I have renounced. If I married you I should remember, unreconciled, what
you cost me. Better for you and for me that I marry him, and let him
bear with me when I remember that he cost me you!”
She bent over, almost double, closing her eyes with small clenched
hands; and he saw the ring shimmering in the sunshine, and her hair,
heavily, densely gold, and the white nape of her neck, and the tiny
close-set ears, and the curved softness of cheek and chin; every smooth,
childlike contour and mould--rounded arms, slim, flowing lines of body
and limb--all valued at many millions by her as her own appraiser.
Suddenly, deep within him, something seemed to fail, die out--perhaps a
tiny newly lighted flame of unaccustomed purity, the dawning flicker of
aspiration to better things. Whatever it was, material, spiritual, was
gone now, and where it had glimmered for a night, the old accustomed
twilit doubt crept in--the same dull acquiescence--the same uncertainty
of self, the familiar lack of will, of incentive, the congenial tendency
to drift; and with it came weariness--perhaps reaction from the recent
skirmishes with that master-vice.
“I suppose,” he said in a dull voice, “you are right.”
“No, I am wrong--wrong!” she said, lifting her lovely face and heavy
eyes. “But I have chosen my path. … And you will forget.”
“I hope so,” he said simply.
“If you hope so, you will.”
He nodded, unconvinced, watching a flock of sand-pipers whirling into
the cove like a gray snow-squall and fearlessly settling on the beach.
After a while, with a long breath: “Then it is settled,” she concluded.
If she expected corroboration from him she received none; and perhaps
she was not awaiting it. She sat very still, her eyes lost in thought.
And Mortimer, peeping down at them over the thicket above, yawned
impatiently and glanced about him for the most convenient avenue of
self-effacement when the time arrived.