“I’m dying to go into the garden,” said Mrs. Summers. She slipped her
arm within Cecily’s, and while she talked volubly, felt its trembling
gradually lessen. “Tongue cannot tell what I’ve endured since I landed
on Tuesday,” she exclaimed. “The children’s _ayah_ has been ill,
relations have incessantly banged at the front door, Mother has had one
of her attacks--excitement, you know,--and I’ve been tearing my hair. I
daren’t write to tell you when to expect me because I didn’t know from
hour to hour when I could get away. At last to-day there was a lull;
so, _forbidding_ anything to happen in my absence, I just rushed
off to you.”
“And the babies?” asked Cecily.
“Splendid. They got horribly spoilt on board, and now Mother’s putting
the finishing touches.”
“And Jack?”
“Very fit when I left him, a month ago. But I’m not going to talk
babies, nor even husbands. I want to know about _you_.”
Cecily shrugged her shoulders. “There’s nothing to tell,” she said.
“You saw me a month before I came into this house; I’ve been here ever
since. This is rather a nice seat.”
They sat down on a bench under a beech tree, and for all her volubility
Rose felt herself nonplussed. She glanced at Cecily, her momentary
hesitation as to what to say next indicated by a little furrow between
the eyes.
Rose Summers was scarcely a pretty, but certainly a striking woman,
who, in spite of trying circumstances in the shape of an Eastern
climate, looked younger than her thirty-one years. Her figure, of the
athletic type, was good; she was exceedingly well dressed, and she wore
her clothes with distinction. Her slightly freckled face had a healthy
tint, and her eyes--gray, clear, and steady--were beautiful as well
as kindly. Their expression was contradicted, to some extent, by the
sarcasm indicated in a rather large and certainly humorous mouth. The
eyes she turned upon her friend now were troubled, almost incredulous.
Her mental picture of the Cecily of five years back had been so vivid
that, even with the witness before her, she could not realize the
change those years had brought.
Cecily was still graceful; nothing could rob her of the beautiful
movements which characterized every change of attitude; and as she
threw herself back against the cushions in the corner of the bench, for
the first time Mrs. Summers recognized the Cecily of the past.
But her beauty was wellnigh gone. It was a beauty that had always
largely depended on happiness, and now, with her blue eyes faded,
the delicate color gone from her cheeks, her hair still soft but
lustreless, she was almost a plain woman. Rose glanced furtively from
her face to her dress. It was of simple dark blue linen, quite neat,
quite serviceable. She thought of the dainty muslins, the ribbons, the
flowers of earlier summers--and the ludicrousness of even imagining
Cecily in a gown that could be characterized as serviceable!
“When you begin to neglect your frocks, Cis, I shall know the end
is near.” In the old days Mrs. Summers had often told her this. She
recalled it now, and made haste to break the silence.
“Where is Robert?” she asked. “Do I call him Robert? I forget.”
“Of course you do. He’s in town--reading at the British Museum.”
Rose raised her eyebrows with a laugh. “Since when has our Robert
become so studious?”
“He’s writing a historical novel, and has to study up the period.
Robert is getting quite famous, you know, Rose,” she added, after a
moment’s pause.
“Yes--but _you_, Cis? Why are _you_ not famous?”
“I? Oh, I’m married--instead,” she replied, with a little laugh.
“Tell me all about Robert,” demanded Mrs. Summers. “If you only knew
how horribly out of things I feel! I know nothing of what’s been going
on in the book world.”
“I should think not--with two babies to look after.”
“And the constant moving from one station to another. One loses touch
so quickly, and you know, Cis,” with a touch of reproach, “you haven’t
written. Why didn’t you write? For the last year or two I’ve scarcely
heard anything of you.”
For a moment her cousin was silent, and when she spoke her voice
trembled.
“I know. But after baby died, I hadn’t the heart. And then----” She
broke off abruptly.
Mrs. Summers’ voice was very gentle.
“Yes, dear, of course--I understand,” she said. “But tell me everything
now. Robert’s getting famous? That means that you’re getting rich, you
lucky little wretch!”
“Yes,” returned Cecily. “Yes, I suppose we shall be rich,” she added,
slowly.
“Bless the child! Aren’t you glad? Isn’t he glad?”
“Oh, yes, he’s very glad. We can get away now.” She spoke in a quiet,
unemotional tone, and Rose glanced at her sharply.
“Get away? But doesn’t he love this place?”
“No, he’s sick of it,” she said, still in the same indifferent voice.
“We’re going to sell it, and move to London in the autumn.”
“But Robert was so wild to take it!”
“That was five years ago.”
“It’s perfectly lovely, of course,” returned her friend, glancing round
her. “But _you_ never wanted to come, I remember. You wanted so
much to live in town. The discussion of town _versus_ country was
at its height when I left. So country won?”
“Yes, country won,” Cecily repeated.
“Well, it’s beautiful,” Rose repeated. “I never saw such flowers. What
a gardener you must have!”
Cecily laughed. “I am the gardener. I do it nearly all myself.”
Rose’s astonishment kept her silent. Cecily, who knew nothing of
country things! Cecily, who, in spite of her love for nature, belonged
first to the town--to its life, its thoughts, its opportunities! To
this meeting with the friend of her girlhood she had been looking
forward for months, and she had met a stranger. She had foolishly
expected to take up the thread of intimacy where she had dropped it,
and in the interval a whole new pattern had been woven,--a pattern in
faded colors, whose design she did not understand.
Cecily was obviously unhappy; obviously, also, she was keeping her at
arm’s length, and with such success that she had not the courage to
ask direct questions. With gratitude she hailed the appearance of a
maid who came with tea, as a relief to her embarrassment--that terrible
embarrassment one feels in the presence of a close friend to whose mind
one has lost the key.
While the cloth was being spread, and the maid was moving to and fro
from the house, they exchanged information on family matters.
“Diana is almost grown up,” said Cecily, speaking of her sister, whom
Mrs. Summers remembered as a child of twelve. “You know she’s been
living with Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary since father died?” The softening
of her voice, the hesitation with which she spoke his name, reminded
Rose of one great grief, at least, through which in her absence her
friend had passed. “You will like Diana,” Cecily added after a moment.
“Of course you’re going to stay to-night, Rose?”
Mrs. Summers admitted that she was open to an invitation. “When is
Robert coming back?” she inquired.
“This afternoon, I think. He was staying last night at his
godmother’s--Lady Wilmot, you know.”
The mention of her husband’s name did not, as Rose hoped, lead to
confidences. Cecily began at once to inquire the earliest date at which
her friend could leave the children long enough for a “proper visit,”
and Mrs. Summers was soon driven to make conversation.
“What a ridiculous little world it is!” she remarked, stirring her tea;
“I haven’t yet been home a week, and already I’ve run across people
I’d lost sight of for years before I left England. Now, on Monday, for
instance, I was going to the dressmaker’s when I met a girl I used to
know, a girl called Philippa Burton.”
“_Philippa Burton!_” echoed Cecily, with interest. “Why, I went to
school with her. A rather pretty dark girl?”
“Major Burton’s daughter? Yes? How strange!”
“Philippa Burton! How it brings all the schooldays back!” exclaimed
Cecily, with a retrospective laugh. “I had no idea you knew her, Rose.
When did you meet her?”
“That year I went to Leipzig to study music, you know. She was in the
same _pension_, studying something or other also; I forget what.
Affectation, I should think.”
“But she had brought that to a fine art even as a schoolgirl,” Cecily
remarked. “Tell me about her. We left school the same term, I remember.
Is she as pretty as ever?” She spoke with animation, obviously glad of
a topic which drew conversation away from personal matters.
“Pretty?--yes, in a floppy fashion.”
Cecily laughed. “Oh, she still flops? She used to be a most intense
young woman. When she asked you to pass the salt at dinner, you felt
inclined to burst into tears. She was High Church when I knew her, but
that was early in her career.”
“Oh, yes, there’s been Rationalism since then, and Socialism, and
Vegetarianism, and Theosophy, and what not. Just now it’s Sandals and
the Simple Life, whatever that may mean. It seems to cover a multitude
of complexities.”
“Does she still yearn?”
“Oh, horribly! She begins at breakfast-time, I’m sure. She’s doing
miniatures and mystic drawings now.”
“And mouse-traps, and moonshine, and everything else that begins with
an _M_? It sounds like _Alice in Wonderland_. Go on. I’m
awfully interested to hear of her again. Even as a schoolgirl Philippa
posed more than any other human being I’ve ever met.”
“She has a studio in Fulham somewhere,” Mrs. Summers continued. “I
happened to be quite close to it when I met her, and she asked me to
come in to tea. _She_ had grape-nuts and plasmon. It’s astonishing
what lurid views of life can be nourished upon this apparently mild
diet,” she added, reflectively.
“Are Philippa’s views lurid?” asked Cecily.
“Oh, my uninstructed married ignorance is to blame, of course!”
declared Mrs. Summers, with a meek expression.
“What did she say?”
“A great many things--most of them quite unfit for publication. But the
latest and simplest gospel, according to Burton, appears to be, ‘Down
with the proprietary view of marriage.’”
Cecily leaned back against her cushions. “Ah!” she said.
“Yes,” continued Mrs. Summers, meditatively, “there should be room in
life for frank, free comradeship--_camaraderie_ was, I think, the
word--between husbands and ladies who are living the Simple Life. Room
for beautiful, breezy, ennobling friendships, untrammelled by vulgar
jealousy on the part of the wife.”
“I see,” returned Cecily. “And is the wife to have beautiful, breezy
friendships too?”
“Oh, yes! Liberty, Fraternity (presumably), and Equality, of course.”
Cecily was silent a moment. “And you don’t believe in that kind of
thing?” she asked.
Mrs. Summers shrugged her shoulders.
“My dear, I haven’t lived the Simple Life,” she returned, dryly.
“Some more tea?” Cecily suggested. “Well, a complicated biscuit, then?
I’m afraid I haven’t any plasmon in the house. I wonder now whether a
woman like Philippa Burton is more of a hypocrite or a self-deceiver?”
she added, thoughtfully, after a few moments.
“About her theories, you mean?”
“Or her practices. A woman seldom has a theory without a concrete
example to illustrate it. Philippa has a concrete example, of course?”
“Oh, yes, one of the husbands who comes to be ennobled.”
“Isn’t his wife suited to the task?”
“Apparently not. He is a great genius, warped, stifled, suffocated by
the atmosphere of domesticity.”
“Poor man,” said Cecily.
“The wife’s crime, as far as I can understand,” pursued Mrs. Summers,
“is her existence, and from Philippa’s point of view I admit it’s
enough. No doubt when a man’s tired of his wife it _is_ awfully
annoying and stultifying to his genius. But somehow, while Philippa
talked, I felt rather sorry for the poor little woman whose mind is so
ill-balanced that she can’t turn off her emotions to order.”
“Is the man in love with Philippa, do you think?”
“Well, as he generally spends several hours a day with her, I should
say he was--speaking of the human man as I know him.”
“And Philippa?” asked Cecily.
“Philippa, my dear, has sandals and an exalted mind. I also suspect her
of a certain amount of concealed _jaeger_,--and she thinks him
very noble. He always speaks ‘quite nicely’ of his wife.” Mrs. Summers
paused, the ironical smile deepening upon her lips. “Under these
circumstances,” she continued, “the _dénouement_ may be a little
delayed.”
“Ah well!” observed Cecily, rising. “It’s a very common little story,
no doubt.” There was an underlying ring of bitterness in her words
which did not escape her friend’s notice, as she too got up from the
bench. “You’d like to come to your room, Rose? Dinner’s at half-past
seven.”
“Oh, common enough, of course,” returned Rose, in answer to her first
remark. “There’s nothing particularly remarkable about Mr. Fergus
Macdonald, I should imagine----”
She was stooping to pick up her handkerchief as she spoke, when a
half-articulate exclamation made her sharply raise her head.
Cecily was standing looking at her. “Mr.----? I didn’t catch the name,”
she said, in an odd voice.
“Fergus Macdonald,” repeated Rose. “She didn’t tell me his name, but I
couldn’t help seeing a very soulful inscription in a book. Why, Cecily,
do you know him?” She stammered over the last words, for while she
spoke, every drop of color had ebbed away from the other woman’s face.
“Cecily!” she urged.
Cecily sank into the seat she had just left. There was silence for a
moment, and then she began to laugh.
“Cecily!” said Mrs. Summers again. “Don’t, Cecily! Do you know him?”
“A little,” she replied. “He’s my husband.”
There was quite a long silence. Rose noticed the long shadows on the
grass, was conscious of the brilliance of a bed of flowers in the
sunset light.
“_Robert!_” she whispered at last. “But how----”
“It’s his writing name,” said Cecily, wearily. She had left off
laughing now. “Oh, of course, you didn’t know, dear. As you say, you
have been out of things----” Her voice trailed off without finishing
the sentence.
Mrs. Summers mentally reviewed the preceding conversation. “O Cis,”
she murmured, “I could kill myself for it. What a fool I am!--what a
_fool_!”