AS Lady Holme had foreseen, the impertinent mimicry of Miss Schley
concentrated a great deal of attention upon the woman mimicked. Many
people, accepting the American’s cleverness as a fashionable fact, also
accepted her imitation as the imitation of a fact more surreptitious,
and credited Lady Holme with a secret leading towards the improper never
before suspected by them. They remembered the break between the Holmes
and Carey, the strange scene at the Arkell House ball, and began to
whisper many things of Lady Holme, and to turn a tide of pity and of
sympathy upon her husband. On this tide Lord Holme and the American
might be said to float merrily like corks, unabashed in the eye of the
sun. Their intimacy was condoned on all sides as a natural result of
Lady Holme’s conduct. Most of that which had been accomplished by
Lord and Lady Holme together after their reconciliation over the first
breakfast was undone. The silent tongue began to wag, and to murmur the
usual platitudes about the poor fellow who could not find sympathy at
home and so was obliged, against his will, to seek for it outside.
All this Lady Holme had foreseen as she sat in her box at the British
Theatre.
The wrong impression of her was enthroned. She had to reckon with it.
This fact, fully recognised by her, made her wish to walk warily where
otherwise her temper might have led her to walk heedlessly. She wanted
to do an unusual thing, to draw her husband’s attention to an intimacy
which was concealed from the world--the intimacy between herself and Leo
Ulford.
After her visit to the house in Half Moon Street she began to see a
great deal of Leo Ulford. Carey had been right when he said that they
would get on together. She understood him easily and thoroughly, and
for that very reason he was attracted by her. Men delight to feel that a
woman is understanding them; women that no man can ever understand them.
Under the subtle influence of Lady Holme’s complete comprehension of
him, Leo Ulford’s nature expanded, stretched itself as his long legs
stretched themselves when his mind was purring. There was not much in
him to reveal, but what there was he revealed, and Lady Holme seemed to
be profoundly interested in the contents of his soul.
But she was not interested in the contents of his soul in public places
on which the world’s eye is fixed. She refused to allow Leo to do what
he desired, and assumed an air of almost possessive friendship before
Society. His natural inclination for the blatant was firmly checked
by her. She cared nothing for him really, but her woman’s instinct had
divined that he was the type of man most likely to rouse the slumbering
passion of Fritz, if Fritz were led to suspect that she was attracted
to him. Men like Lord Holme are most easily jealous of the men who most
closely resemble them. Their conceit leads them to put an exaggerated
value upon their own qualities in others, upon the resemblance to their
own physique exhibited by others.
Leo Ulford was rather like a younger and coarser Lord Holme. In him Lady
Holme recognised an effective weapon for the chastisement, if not for
the eventual reclamation, of her husband. It was characteristic of her
that this was the weapon she chose, the weapon she still continued to
rely on even after her conversation with Robin Pierce. Her faith in
white angels was very small. Perpetual contact with the world of to-day,
with life as lived by women of her order, had created within her far
other faiths, faiths in false gods, a natural inclination to bow the
knee in the house of Rimmon rather than before the altars guarded by the
Eternities.
And then--she knew Lord Holme; knew what attracted him, what stirred
him, what moved him to excitement, what was likely to hold him. She felt
sure that he and such men as he yield the homage they would refuse to
the angel to the siren. Instead of seeking the angel within herself,
therefore, she sought the siren. Instead of striving to develope that
part of her which was spiritual, she fixed all her attention upon that
part of her which was fleshly, which was physical. She neglected the
flame and began to make pretty patterns with the ashes.
Robin came to bid her good-bye before leaving London for Rome. The
weeping woman was gone. He looked into the hard, white face of a woman
who smiled. They talked rather constrainedly for a few minutes. Then
suddenly he said:
“Once it was a painted window, now it’s an iron shutter.”
He got up from his chair and clasped his hands together behind his back.
“What on earth do you mean?” she asked, still smiling.
“Your face,” he answered. “One could see you obscurely before. One can
see nothing now.”
“You talk great nonsense, Robin. It’s a good thing you’re going back to
Rome.”
“At least I shall find the spirit of beauty there,” he said, almost with
bitterness. “Over here it is treated as if it were Jezebel. It’s trodden
down. It’s thrown to the dogs.”
“Poor spirit!”
She laughed lightly.
“Do you understand what they’re saying of you?” he went on.
“Where?”
“All over London.”
“Perhaps.”
“But--do you?”
“Perhaps I don’t care to.”
“They’re saying--‘Poor thing! But it’s her own fault.’”
There was a silence. In it he looked at her hard, mercilessly. She
returned his gaze, still smiling.
“And it is your own fault,” he went on after a moment. “If you had
been yourself she couldn’t have insulted you first and humiliated you
afterwards. Oh, how I hate it! And yet--yet there are moments when I am
like the others, when I feel--‘She has deserved it.’”
“When will you be in Rome?” she said.
“And even now,” he continued, ignoring her remark, “even now, what are
you doing? Oh, Viola, you’re a prey to the modern madness for crawling
in the dirt instead of walking upright in the sun. You might be a
goddess and you prefer to be an insect. Isn’t it mad of you? Isn’t it?”
He was really excited, really passionate. His face showed that. There
was fire in his eyes. His lips worked convulsively when he was not
speaking. And yet there was just a faint ring of the accomplished
orator’s music in his voice, a music which suggests a listening ear--and
that ear the orator’s own.
Perhaps she heard it. At any rate his passionate attack did not seem to
move her.
“I prefer to be what I am,” was all she said.
“What you are! But you don’t know what you are.”
“And how can you pretend to know?” she asked. “Is a man more subtle
about a woman than she is about herself?”
He did not answer for a moment. Then he said bluntly:
“Promise me one thing before I go away.”
“I don’t know. What is it?”
“Promise me not to--not to--”
He hesitated. The calm of her face seemed almost to confuse him.
“Well?” she said. “Go on.”
“Promise me not to justify anything people are saying, not to justify it
with--with that fellow Ulford.”
“Good-bye,” she answered, holding out her hand.
He recognised that the time for his advice had gone by, if it had ever
been.
“What a way--what a way for us to--” he almost stammered.
He recovered his self-possession with an effort and took her hand.
“At least,” he said in a low, quiet voice, “believe it is less jealousy
that speaks within me than love--love for you, for the woman you are
trampling in the dust.”
He looked into her eyes and went out. She did not see him again before
he left England. And she was glad. She did not want to see him. Perhaps
it was the first time in her life that the affection of a man whom she
really liked was distasteful to her. It made her uneasy, doubtful of
herself just then, to be loved as Robin loved her.
Carey had come back to town, but he went nowhere. He was in bad odour.
Sir Donald Ulford was almost the only person he saw anything of at this
time. It seemed that Sir Donald had taken a fancy to Carey. At any rate,
such friendly feeling as he had did not seem lessened after Carey’s
exhibition at Arkell House. When Carey returned to Stratton Street, Sir
Donald paid him a visit and stayed some time. No allusion was made to
the painful circumstances under which they had last seen each other
until Sir Donald was on the point of going away. Then he said:
“You have not forgotten that I expect you at Casa Felice towards the end
of August?”
Carey looked violently astonished.
“Still?” he said.
“Yes.”
Suddenly Carey shot out his hand and grasped Sir Donald’s.
“You aren’t afraid to have a drunken beast like me in Casa Felice! It’s
a damned dangerous experiment.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s your own lookout, you know. I absolve you from the invitation.”
“I repeat it, then.”
“I accept it, then--again.”
Sir Donald went away thoughtfully. When he reached the Albany he found
Mrs. Leo Ulford waiting for him in tears. They had a long interview.
Many people fancied that Sir Donald looked more ghostly, more faded even
than usual as the season wore on. They said he was getting too old to
go about so much as he did, and that it was a pity Society “got such a
hold” on men who ought to have had enough of it long ago. One night he
met Lady Holme at the Opera. She was in her box and he in the stalls.
After the second act she called him to her with a gay little nod of
invitation. Lady Cardington had been with her during the act, but left
the box when the curtain fell to see some friends close by. When
Sir Donald tapped at the door Lady Holme was quite alone. He came in
quietly--even his walk was rather ghostly--and sat down beside her.
“You don’t look well,” she said after they had greeted each other.
“I am quite well,” he answered, with evident constraint.
“I haven’t seen you to speak to since that little note of yours.”
A very faint colour rose in his faded cheeks.
“After Miss Schley’s first night?” he murmured.
His yellow fingers moved restlessly.
“Do you know that your son told me you would write?” she continued.
She was leaning back in her chair, half hidden by the curtain of the
box.
“Leo!”
Sir Donald’s voice was almost sharp and startling.
“How should he--you spoke about me then?”
There was a flash of light in his pale, almost colourless eyes.
“I wondered where you had gone, and he said you would write next day.”
“That was all?”
“Why, how suspicious you are!”
She spoke banteringly.
“Suspicious! No--but Leo does not understand me very well. I was rather
old when he was born, and I have never been able to be much with him. He
was educated in England, and my duties of course lay abroad.”
He paused, looking at her and moving his thin white moustache. Then, in
an uneasy voice, he added:
“You must not take my character altogether from Leo.”
“Nor you mine altogether from Miss Schley,” said Lady Holme.
She scarcely knew why she said it. She thought herself stupid,
ridiculous almost, for saying it. Yet she could not help speaking.
Perhaps she relied on Sir Donald’s age. Or perhaps--but who knows why
a woman is cautious or incautious in moments the least expected? God
guides her, perhaps, or the devil--or merely a bottle imp. Men never
know, and that is why they find her adorable.
Sir Donald said nothing for a moment, only made the familiar movement
with his hands that was a sign in him of concealed excitement or
emotion. His eyes were fixed upon the ledge of the box. Lady Holme was
puzzled by his silence and, at last, was on the point of making a remark
on some other subject--Plancon’s singing--when he spoke, like a man
who had made up his mind firmly to take an unusual, perhaps a difficult
course.
“I wish to take it from you,” he said. “Give me the right one, not an
imitation of an imitation.”
She knew at once what he meant and was surprised. Had Leo Ulford been
talking?
“Lady Holme,” he went on, “I am taking a liberty. I know that. It’s a
thing I have never done before, knowingly. Don’t think me unconscious
of what I am doing. But I am an old man, and old men can sometimes
venture--allowance is sometimes made for them. I want to claim that
allowance now for what I am going to say.”
“Well?” she said, neither hardly nor gently.
In truth she scarcely knew whether she wished him to speak or not.
“My son is--Leo is not a safe friend for you at this moment.”
Again the dull, brick-red flush rose in his cheeks. There was an odd,
flattened look just above his cheekbones near his eyes, and the eyes
themselves had a strange expression as of determination and guilt
mingled.
“Your son?” Lady Holme said. “But--”
“I do not wish to assume anything, but I--well, my daughter-in-law
sometimes comes to me.”
“Sometimes!” said Lady Holme.
“Leo is not a good husband,” Sir Donald said. “But that is not the
point. He is also a bad--friend.”
“Why don’t you say lover?” she almost whispered.
He grasped his knee with one hand and moved the hand rapidly to and fro.
“I must say of him to you that where his pleasure or his vanity is
concerned he is unscrupulous.”
“Why say all this to a woman?”
“You mean that you know as much as I?”
“Don’t you think it likely?”
“Henrietta--”
“Who is that?”
“My daughter-in-law has done everything for Leo--too much. She gets
nothing--not even gratitude. I am sorry to say he has no sense of
chivalry towards women. You know him, I daresay. But do you know him
thwarted?”
“Ah, you don’t think so badly of me after all?” she said quickly.
“I--I think of you that--that--”
He stopped.
“I think that I could not bear to see the whiteness of your wings
smirched by a child of mine.” he added.
“You too!” she said.
Suddenly tears started into her eyes.
“Another believer in the angel!” she thought.
“May I come in?”
It was Mr. Bry’s cold voice. His discontented, sleek face was peeping
round the door.
Sir Donald got up to go.
As Lady Holme drove away from Covent Garden that night she was haunted
by a feverish, embittering thought:
“Will everyone notice it but Fritz?”
Lord Holme indeed seemed scarcely the same man who had forbidden Carey
to come any more to his house, who had been jealous of Robin Pierce, who
had even once said that he almost wished his wife were an ugly woman.
The Grand Turk nature within him, if not actually dead, was certainly
in abeyance. He was so intent on his own affairs that he paid no heed
at all to his wife’s, even when they might be said to be also his. Leo
Ulford was becoming difficult to manage, and Lord Holme still gaily
went his way. As Lady Holme thought over Sir Donald’s words she felt a
crushing weight of depression sink down upon her. The brougham rolled
smoothly on through the lighted streets. She did not glance out of the
windows, or notice the passing crowds. In the silence and darkness of
her own soul she was trying not to feel, trying to think.
A longing to be incautious, to do something startling, desperate, came
to her.
It was evident that Mrs. Ulford had been complaining to Sir Donald about
his son’s conduct. With whom? Lady Holme could not doubt that it was
with herself. She had read, with one glance at the fluttering pink
eyelids, the story of the Leo Ulford’s _menage_. Now, she was not
preoccupied with any regret for her own cruelty or for another woman’s
misery. The egoism spoken of by Carey was not dead in her yet, but very
much alive. As she sat in the corner of the brougham, pressing herself
against the padded wall, she was angry for herself, pitiful for herself.
And she was jealous--horribly jealous. That woke up her imagination,
all the intensity of her. Where was Fritz to-night? She did not know.
Suddenly the dense ignorance in which every human being lives, and must
live to the end of time, towered above her like a figure in a nightmare.
What do we know, what can we ever know of each other? In each human
being dwells the most terrible, the most ruthless power that exists--the
power of silence.
Fritz had that power; stupid, blundering, self-contented Fritz.
She pulled the check-string and gave the order, “Home!”
In her present condition she felt unable to go into Society.
When she got to Cadogan Square she said to the footman who opened the
door:
“His lordship isn’t in yet?”
“No, my lady.”
“Did he say what time he would be in to-night?”
“No, my lady.”
The man paused, then added:
“His lordship told Mr. Lucas not to wait up.”
“Mr. Lucas” was Lord Holme’s valet.
It seemed to Lady Holme as if there were a significant, even a slightly
mocking, sound in the footman’s voice. She stared at him. He was a thin,
swarthy young man, with lantern jaws and a very long, pale chin. When
she looked at him he dropped his eyes.
“Bring me some lemonade to the drawing-room in ten minutes,” she said.
“Yes, my lady.”
“In ten minutes, not before. Turn on all the lights in the
drawing-room.”
“Yes, my lady.”
The man went before her up the staircase, turned on the lights, stood
aside to let her pass and then went softly down. Lady Holme rang for
Josephine.
“Take my cloak and then go to bed,” she said.
Josephine took the cloak and went out, shutting the door.
“Ten minutes!” Lady Holme said to herself.
She sat down on the sofa on which she had sat for a moment alone after
her song at the dinner-party, the song murdered by Miss Filberte. The
empty, brilliantly-lit rooms seemed unusually large. She glanced round
them with inward-looking eyes. Here she was at midnight sitting quite
alone in her own house. And she wished to do something decisive,
startling as the cannon shot sometimes fired from a ship to disperse a
fog wreath. That was the reason why she had told the footman to come in
ten minutes. She thought that in ten minutes she might make up her mind.
If she decided upon doing something that required an emissary the man
would be there.
She looked at the little silver box she had taken up that night when she
was angry, then at the grand piano in the further room. The two things
suggested to her two women--the woman of hot temper and the woman of
sweetness and romance. What was she to-night, and what was she going to
do? Nothing, probably. What could she do? Again she glanced round the
rooms. It seemed to her that she was like an actress in an intense,
passionate _role_, who is paralysed by what is called in the theatre “a
stage wait.” She ought to play a tremendous scene, now, at once, but the
person with whom she was to play it did not come on to the stage. She
had worked herself up for the scene. The emotion, the passion, the
force, the fury were alive, were red hot within her, and she could not
set them free. She remained alone upon the stage in a sort of horror of
dumbness, a horror of inaction.
The footman came in quietly with the lemonade on a tray. He put it down
on a table by Lady Holme.
“Is there anything else, my lady?”
She supposed that the question was meant as a very discreet hint to her
that the man would be glad to go to bed. For a moment she did not reply,
but kept him waiting. She was thinking rapidly, considering whether she
would do the desperate thing or not, whether she would summon one of
the actors for the violent scene her nature demanded persistently that
night.
After the opera she had been due at a ball to which Leo Ulford was
going. She had promised to go in to supper with him and to arrive by a
certain hour. He was wondering, waiting, now, at this moment. She knew
that. The house was in Eaton Square, not far off. Should she send the
footman with a note to Leo, saying that she was too tired to come to the
ball but that she was sitting up at home? That was what she was rapidly
considering while the footman stood waiting. Leo would come, and
then--presently--Lord Holme would come. And then? Then doubtless would
happen the scene she longed for, longed for with a sort of almost crazy
desire such as she had never felt before.
She glanced up and saw an astonished expression upon the footman’s pale
face. How long had she kept him there waiting? She had no idea.
“There is nothing else,” she said slowly.
She paused, then added, reluctantly:
“You can go to bed.”
The man went softly out of the room. As he shut the door she breathed
a deep sigh, that was almost a sob. So difficult had she found it to
govern herself, not to do the crazy thing.
She poured out the lemonade and put ice into it.
As she did so she made grimaces, absurd grimaces of pain and misery,
like those on the faces of the two women in Mantegna’s picture of Christ
and the Marys in the Brera at Milan. They are grotesque, yet wonderfully
moving in their pitiless realism. But tears fall from the eyes of
Mantegna’s women and no tears fell from Lady Holme’s eyes. Still making
grimaces, she sipped the lemonade. Then she put down the glass, leaned
back on the sofa and shut her eyes. Her face ceased to move, and became
beautiful again in its stillness. She remained motionless for a long
time, trying to obtain the mastery over herself. In act she had obtained
it already, but not in emotion. Indeed, the relinquishing of violence,
the sending of the footman to bed, seemed to have increased the passion
within her. And now she felt it rising till she was afraid of being
herself, afraid of being this solitary woman, feeling intensely and able
to do nothing. It seemed to her as if such a passion of jealousy, and
desire for immediate expression of it in action, as flamed within her,
must wreak disaster upon her like some fell disease, as if she were in
immediate danger, even in immediate physical danger. She lay still like
one determined to meet it bravely, without flinching, without a sign of
cowardice.
But suddenly she felt that she had made a mistake in dismissing the
footman, that the pain of inaction was too great for her to bear. She
could not just--do nothing. She could not, and she got up swiftly and
rang the bell. The man did not return. She pressed the bell again. After
three or four minutes he came in, looking rather flushed and put out.
“I want you to take a note to Eaton Square,” she said. “It will be ready
in five minutes.”
“Yes, my lady.”
She went to her writing table and wrote this note to Leo Ulford:
“DEAR MR. ULFORD,--I am grieved to play you false, but I am too
tired to-night to come on. Probably you are amusing yourself. I
am sitting here alone over such a dull book. One can’t go to bed
at twelve, somehow, even if one is tired. The habit of the season’s
against early hours and one couldn’t sleep. Be nice and come in for
five minutes on your way home, and tell me all about it. I know you
pass the end of the square, so it won’t be out of your way.--Yours
very sincerely, V. H.”
After writing this note Lady Holme hesitated for a moment, then she went
to a writing table, opened a drawer and took out a tiny, flat key. She
enclosed it in two sheets of thick note paper, folded the note also
round it, and put it into an envelope which she carefully closed.
After writing Leo Ulford’s name on the envelope she rang again for the
footman.
“Take this to Eaton Square,” she said, naming the number of the house.
“And give it to Mr. Ulford yourself. Go in a hansom. When you have given
Mr. Ulford the note come straight back in the hansom and let me know.
After that you can go to bed. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lady.”
The man went out.
Lady Holme stood up to give him the note. She remained standing after he
had gone. An extraordinary sensation of relief had come to her. Action
had lessened her pain, had removed much of the pressure of emotion upon
her heart. For a moment she felt almost happy.
She sat down again and took up a book. It was a book of poems written by
a very young girl whom she knew. There was a great deal about sorrow in
the poems, and sorrow was always alluded to as a person; now flitting
through a forest in the autumn among the dying leaves, now bending over
a bed, now walking by the sea at sunset watching departing ships, now
standing near the altar at a wedding. The poems were not good. On the
other hand, they were not very bad.
They had some grace, some delicacy here and there, now and then a touch
of real, if by no means exquisite, sentiment. At this moment Lady Holme
found them soothing. There was a certain music in them and very little
reality. They seemed to represent life as a pensive phantasmagoria
of bird songs, fading flowers, dying lights, soft winds and rains and
sighing echoes.
She read on and on. Sometimes a hard thought intruded itself upon her
mind--the thought of Leo Ulford with the latch-key of her husband’s
house in his hand. That thought made the poems seem to her remarkably
unlike life.
She looked at the clock. The footman had been away long enough to do his
errand. Just as she was thinking this he came into the room.
“Well?” she said.
“I gave Mr. Ulford the note, my lady.”
“Then you can go to bed. Good-night. I’ll put out the lights here.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
As he went away she turned again to the poems; but now she could not
read them. Her eyes rested upon them, but her mind took in nothing of
their meaning. Presently--very soon--she laid the book down and sat
listening. The footman had shut the drawing-room door. She got up and
opened it. She wanted to hear the sound of the latch-key being put into
the front door by Leo Ulford. It seemed to her as if that sound would
be like the _leit motif_ of her determination to govern, to take her own
way, to strike a blow against the selfish egoism of men. After opening
the door she sat down close to it and waited, listening.
Some minutes passed. Then she heard--not the key put into the hall
door; it had not occurred to her that she was much too far away to hear
that--but the bang of the door being shut.
Quickly she closed the drawing-room door, went back to the distant sofa,
sat down upon it and began to turn over the poems once more. She even
read one quite carefully. As she finished it the door was opened.
She looked up gaily to greet Leo and saw her husband coming into the
room.
She was greatly startled. It had never occurred to her that Fritz was
quite as likely to arrive before Leo Ulford as Leo Ulford to arrive
before Fritz. Why had she never thought of so obvious a possibility? She
could not imagine. The difference between the actuality and her intense
and angry conception of what it would be, benumbed her mind for an
instant. She was completely confused. She sat still with the book of
poems on her lap, and gazed at Lord Holme as he came towards her, taking
long steps and straddling his legs as if he imagined he had a horse
under him. The gay expression had abruptly died away from her face and
she looked almost stupid.
“Hulloa!” said Lord Holme, as he saw her.
She said nothing.
“Thought you were goin’ to the Blaxtons to-night,” he added.
She made a strong effort and smiled.
“I meant to, but I felt tired after the opera.”
“Why don’t you toddle off to bed then?”
“I feel tired, I don’t feel sleepy.”
Lord Holme stared at her, put his hand into his trousers pocket and
pulled out his cigarette-case. Lady Holme knew that he had been in a
good humour when he came home, and that the sight of her sitting up in
the drawing-room had displeased him. She had seen a change come into his
face. He had been looking gay. He began to look glum and turned his eyes
away from her.
“What have you been up to?” she asked, with a sudden light gaiety and
air of comradeship.
“Club--playin’ bridge,” he answered, lighting a cigarette.
He shot a glance at her sideways as he spoke, a glance that was meant
to be crafty. If she had not been excited and horribly jealous, such
a glance would probably have amused her, even made her laugh. Fritz’s
craft was very transparent. But she could not laugh now. She knew he was
telling her the first lie that had occurred to him.
“Lucky?” she asked, still preserving her light and casual manner.
“Middlin’,” he jerked out.
He sat down in an armchair and slowly stretched his legs, staring up at
the ceiling. Lady Holme began to think rapidly, feverishly.
Had he locked the front door when he came in? Very much depended upon
whether he had or had not. The servants had all gone to bed. Not one of
them would see that the house was closed for the night. Fritz was a
very casual person. He often forgot to do things he had promised to do,
things that ought to be done. On the other hand, there were moments
when his memory was excellent. If she only knew which mood had been his
to-night she thought she would feel calmer. The uncertainty in which she
was made mind and body tingle. If Fritz had remembered to lock the door,
Leo Ulford would try to get in, fail, and go away. But if he had
not remembered, at any moment Leo Ulford might walk into the room
triumphantly with the latch-key in his hand. And it was nearly half-past
twelve.
She wished intensely that she knew what Fritz had done.
“What’s up?” he said abruptly.
“Up?” she said with an uncontrollable start.
“Yes, with you?”
“Nothing. What d’you mean?”
“Why, you looked as if--don’t you b’lieve I’ve been playin’ bridge?”
“Of course I do. Really, Fritz, how absurd you are!”
It was evident that he, too, was not quite easy to-night. If he had a
conscience, surely it was pricking him. Fierce anger flamed up again
suddenly in Lady Holme, and the longing to lash her husband. Yet even
this anger did not take away the anxiety that beset her, the wish that
she had not done the crazy thing. The fact of her husband’s return
before Leo’s arrival seemed to have altered her action, made it far more
damning. To have been found with Leo would have been compromising, would
have roused Fritz’s anger. She wanted to rouse his anger. She had meant
to rouse it. But when she looked at Fritz she did not like the thought
of Leo walking in at this hour holding the latch-key in his hand. What
had Fritz done that night to Rupert Carey? What would he do to-night
if--?
“What the deuce is up with you?”
Lord Holme drew in his legs, sat up and stared with a sort of uneasy
inquiry which he tried to make hard. She laughed quickly, nervously.
“I’m tired, I tell you. It was awfully hot at the opera.”
She put some more ice into the lemonade, and added:
“By the way, Fritz, I suppose you locked up all right?”
“Locked up what?”
“The front door. All the servants have gone to bed, you know.”
No sooner had she spoken the last words than she regretted them. If Leo
did get in they took away all excuse. She might have pretended he had
been let in. He would have had to back her up. It would have been mean
of her, of course. Still, seeing her husband there, Leo would have
understood, would have forgiven her. Women are always forgiven such
subterfuges in unfortunate moments. What a fool she was to-night!
“That don’t matter,” said her husband, shortly.
“But--but it does. You know how many burglaries there are. Why, only
the other night Mrs. Arthur came home from a ball and met two men on the
stairs.”
“I pity any men I found on my stairs,” he returned composedly, touching
the muscle of his left arm with his right hand.
He chuckled.
“They’d be sorry for themselves, I’ll bet,” he added.
He put down his cigarette and took out another slowly, leisurely. Lady
Holme longed to strike him. His conceited composure added fuel to the
flame of her anxiety.
“Well, anyhow, I don’t care to run these risks in a place like London,
Fritz,” she said almost angrily. “Have you locked up or not?”
“Damned if I remember,” he drawled.
She did not know whether he was deliberately trying to irritate her or
whether he really had forgotten, but she felt it impossible to remain
any longer in uncertainty.
“Very well, then, I shall go down and see,” she said.
And she laid the book of poems on a table and prepared to get up from
the sofa.
“Rot!” said Lord Holme; “if you’re nervous, I’ll go.”
She leaned back.
“Very well.”
“In a minute.”
He struck a match and let it out.
“Do go now, there’s a good dog,” she said coaxingly.
He struck another match and held it head downwards.
“You needn’t hurry a feller.”
He tapped his cigarette gently on his knee, and applied the flame to it.
“That’s better.”
Lady Holme moved violently on the sofa. She had a pricking sensation all
over her body, and her face felt suddenly very hot, as if she had fever.
A ridiculous, but painful idea started up suddenly in her mind. Could
Fritz suspect anything? Was he playing with her? She dismissed it at
once as the distorted child of a guilty conscience. Fritz was not that
sort of man. He might be a brute sometimes, but he was never a subtle
brute. He blew two thin lines of smoke out through his nostrils, now
with a sort of sensuous, almost languid, deliberation, and watched them
fade away in the brilliantly-lit room. Lady Holme resolved to adopt
another manner, more in accord with her condition of tense nervousness.
“When I ask you to do a thing, Fritz, you might have the decency to
do it,” she said sharply. “You’re forgetting what’s due to me--to any
woman.”
“Don’t fuss at this time of night.”
“I want to go to bed, but I’m not going till I know the house is
properly shut up. Please go at once and see.”
“I never knew you were such a coward,” he rejoined without stirring.
“Who was at the opera?”
“I won’t talk to you till you do what I ask.”
“That’s a staggerin’ blow.”
She sprang up with an exclamation of anger. Her nerves were on edge and
she felt inclined to scream out.
“I never thought you could be so--such a cad to a woman, Fritz,” she
said.
She moved towards the door. As she did so she heard a cab in the square
outside, a rattle of wheels, then silence. It had stopped. Her heart
seemed to stand still too. She knew now that she was a coward, though
not in the way Fritz meant. She was a coward with regard to him.
Her jealousy had prompted her to do a mad thing. In doing it she had
actually meant to produce a violent scene. It had seemed to her that
such a scene would relieve the tension of her nerves, of her heart,
would clear the air. But now that the scene seemed imminent--if Fritz
had forgotten, and she was certain he had forgotten, to lock the
door--she felt heart and nerves were failing her. She felt that she
had risked too much, far too much. With almost incredible swiftness she
remembered her imprudence in speaking to Carey at Arkell House and how
it had only served to put a weapon into her husband’s hand, a weapon he
had not scrupled to use in his selfish way to further his own pleasure
and her distress. That stupid failure had not sufficiently warned her,
and now she was on the edge of some greater disaster. She was positive
that Leo Ulford was in the cab which had just stopped, and it was too
late now to prevent him from entering the house. Lord Holme had got
up from his chair and stood facing her. He looked quite pleasant. She
thought of the change that would come into his face in a moment and
turned cold.
“Don’t cut up so deuced rough,” he said; “I’ll go and lock up.”
So he had forgotten. He took a step towards the drawing-room door.
But now she felt that at all costs she must prevent him from going
downstairs, must gain a moment somehow. Suddenly she swayed slightly.
“I feel--awfully faint,” she said.
She went feebly, but quickly, to the window which looked on to the
Square, drew away the curtain, opened the window and leaned out. The cab
had stopped before their door, and she saw Leo Ulford standing on the
pavement with his back to the house. He was feeling in his pocket,
evidently for some money to give to the cabman. If she could only
attract his attention somehow and send him away! She glanced back. Fritz
was coming towards her with a look of surprise on his face.
“Leave me alone,” she said unevenly. “I only want some air.”
“But--”
“Leave me--oh, do leave me alone!”
He stopped, but stood staring at her in blank amazement. She dared not
do anything. Leo Ulford stretched out his arm towards the cabman, who
bent down from his perch. He took the money, looked at it, then bent
down again, showing it to Leo and muttering something. Doubtless he was
saying that it was not enough. She turned round again sharply to Fritz.
“Fritz,” she said, “be a good dog. Go upstairs to my room and fetch me
some eau de Cologne, will you?”
“But--”
“It’s on my dressing-table--the gold bottle on the right. You know. I
feel so bad. I’ll stay here. The air will bring me round perhaps.”
She caught hold of the curtain, like a person on the point of swooning.
“All right,” he said, and he went out of the room.
She watched till he was gone, then darted to the window and leaned out.
She was too late. The cab was driving off and Leo was gone. He must have
entered the house.