A week later Kingslake was sitting in his study, before a table
littered with papers, doing nothing. It was nearly twelve o’clock. At
half-past one Philippa Burton was coming to lunch.
He had not seen her now for eight days, a period which, he impatiently
admitted to himself, had seemed more like eight weeks, and the morning
had appeared interminable.
She was to have gone to the rooms his wife had taken for her in the
village, the day after Mayne’s arrival, but she had written to Cecily
that a piece of work--a commission--must keep her longer in town.
He thought of her incessantly--and confusedly. She was the most
wonderful woman he had ever met; the cleverest, the most elusive,
the purest-minded. That was so touching, so adorable in Philippa,
yet at unguarded moments he wondered if it could be cured. Philippa
as a friend, an inspirer, a twin soul! How exquisite she had
been--_would_ be. But Philippa as a mistress? The thought
would obtrude. He took it from its depths, and caressed it at
furtive moments, thinking with rapture of her eyes, her mysterious
hair--then thrust it hastily back, piling lilies of thought above its
hiding-place. It would have surprised him to know he was thinking at
second hand, but Robert seldom dug to the depths. It was characteristic
of him that he never saw the roots of his own motives and actions,--it
was merely their interlacing leaves and flowers to which he directed
his attention.
A voice outside in the garden broke in upon his musing--his wife’s
voice, followed by a man’s laugh. He got up, and glanced under the
sun-blind which shielded the window. Cecily was picking the flowers for
the lunch-table, and Mayne, seated on a bench before a rustic table,
was tying flies for fishing. For a moment Robert experienced a curious,
uneasy sensation. It was almost like shame, and he dismissed it with a
decided recognition of its idiocy. Mayne had settled down very well.
It was a splendid thing for Cecily to have some one fresh to talk to.
It was pitiful to think how selfish most men were to their wives--how
jealous.... It was only ten minutes past twelve. The morning seemed
endless, and he was unable to do a stroke of work. It was dreadful to
have days like that. Somewhere in the distance he heard Diana calling.
“Coming,” answered Cecily in response, and presently he saw her moving
towards the house.
Mayne continued to occupy himself with his fishing-tackle, as, during
his restless pacing to and fro in his study, Kingslake could see.
Presently he opened the French window and stepped out onto the grass.
Mayne looked up from his work. The bench on which he was sitting was
flanked by a wall of yew, which made part of a formal enclosure framed
on three sides by yew hedges, and open, on the fourth, to the rest of
the garden only by a narrow archway cut out of the living green. It
was a charming, sheltered little spot, where Cecily’s white lilies
flourished; a sort of dedication, she said, to the larger garden
outside.
“Holloa!” observed Mayne, as Kingslake came nearer. “Knocked off for
the day? Is the muse coy?”
“Yes,” returned Robert, rather irritably. “I’m not getting on. Change
of place, I suppose. Anything like that affects me.” He took out his
cigarette-case.
“Delicate machinery you writing people must have. Something’s always
going wrong with the works, isn’t it?”
“Oh, more or less,” Robert returned, passing his hand through his hair
with a gesture habitual to him.
“You’ve been working in town lately, haven’t you?”
“Yes, getting up stuff for this book. But that’s finished. Now there’s
only the writing.”
“Good Lord!” ejaculated Mayne, with a groan. “Only the writing! The
mere thought of it makes me gasp.”
Robert smiled. “_I_ can’t tie flies,” he said, jerking his head in
the direction of Mayne’s litter of silk and tinsel.
“No, but you land your fish with the best of us.... That last book of
yours caught on, didn’t it?”
“Oh, it brought me in something, I’m glad to say.”
Mayne leaned back against the yew hedge, stretching out his long
legs contentedly. He tilted up his face towards the serene blue sky,
then glanced round him, his look taking in the flowers, the dancing
butterflies above them, the delicate shadows on the grass.
“What do you want money for in Arcadia?” he asked.
“To get out of it,” returned Robert, with a sort of impatient
bitterness.
Mayne glanced sharply at him as he half turned away to light the
cigarette he held.
“You are really going to town in the autumn? But I thought you were so
keen on this?” He waved his hand comprehensively.
“Oh, my dear fellow!” exclaimed Kingslake, irritably. “It’s all right,
but one can’t live on lilies and roses, you know.” He broke off
abruptly. “Listen! Was that the bell?”
“I don’t think so,” returned Dick, composedly. “Why? Expecting any one?”
“Oh, no--no!” There was quite an elaborate unconcern in his tone. “That
is, a friend of Cecily’s--a Miss Burton--is coming to lunch, I believe.”
Mayne had resumed his work. For the fraction of a second his deft
fingers stopped in their movement. Robert was walking backwards and
forwards across the little strip of turf in front of the seat. When he
spoke again, it was abruptly.
“You don’t think Cecily’s looking well, do you?”
“Not at all well,” returned Mayne, quietly.
“No--no,” said her husband, the second negation indicating that he was
giving the matter his full attention. “I don’t think she is. She took
the baby’s death to heart.” He threw a quick glance at his companion.
“She--she wants rousing. I think you’ll do her a lot of good, Mayne.
I’m glad you’re able to stay a little while; it’s what she wants--an
interest for her. An old friend, and that sort of thing. You must come
and look us up when we’re in town.”
“Thanks,” returned Mayne, laconically. There was a pause. Robert took
out his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead.
“Doesn’t get any cooler, does it?” he remarked.
“I’m glad on your wife’s account that you’re going to live in town,”
Mayne said presently.
Robert looked, as he felt, genuinely surprised. “For Cecily? Why?”
“Don’t you think she’s rather thrown away here?” The quietness of his
tone irritated Robert. He reminded himself that he had never really
liked Mayne. He was rather an unfriendly brute.
“Thrown away?” he repeated; “oh, I don’t know. Why? A woman has her
house--and the neighbors; and she’s very fond of the garden, and that
sort of thing.”
“That sort of thing used not to be very much in her line.”
“Oh, yes, I know!” exclaimed Kingslake, impatiently, as he balanced
himself on the arm of the bench. “All girls--especially the rather
spoilt sort of girl that Cecily was--get ideas into their heads. But,
my dear fellow, a woman nearly always settles down after she’s married.”
“Some of your most striking novels are founded on a contrary opinion,”
observed Mayne, with a laugh. “You see you are read--even in the wilds.”
“You flatter me,” said Robert, dryly. He moved again, and began his
restless pacing. “Cecily, I suppose, has been complaining--telling you
that it was my wish to come into the country, and so forth?” he broke
out at last with some resentment.
Mayne lifted his head. “She has never mentioned the subject to me,” he
answered, shortly. “I was only thinking of her as I knew her, five or
six years ago. She was considered--well--rather brilliant, in those
days. Does she write now?” The question was put suddenly.
“Not that I know of,” Kingslake answered, absently. Mayne glanced at
him with a curious expression. He wondered whether he was aware of
the illuminating quality of his indifferent reply. Did he know what a
milestone he had pointed out in the matrimonial road?
“Women don’t really care a snap of the fingers about art,” Robert
went on, with confidential fluency. “Matrimony is the goal of their
ambition; that once attained, they sit ever afterwards serenely on the
shore, watching the struggles of the rest of their sex towards the same
haven.”
A magazine was lying on the bench--one of the Quarterlies. Mayne
fluttered the leaves with a smile.
“Mrs. Kingslake left this here,” he said. “I envy you your power of
detachment when you write articles, Kingslake. _A Vindication of
Woman’s Claim in Art_, by Fergus Macdonald. That’s your writing
name, isn’t it? I seem to be turning your own weapons against you with
horrid frequency. I’m sorry,” he laughed again.
“You misunderstand me!” protested Robert. “Didn’t I say ‘the women who
marry’? I meant to. What I said doesn’t apply to the women nowadays
who don’t marry--have no wish to marry. That such women may be artists,
actual or potential, I have no doubt. When a woman is not preoccupied
with the affairs of sex----”
“She’s generally wanting to be.”
Kingslake stopped short in his harangue, and looked at the other man
doubtfully. “You take a cynical view,” he said.
“No. Merely a natural one.”
“You don’t believe that some women deliberately put love out of their
lives?” asked Robert, tentatively.
“My dear chap, love never gives some women a chance to be so rude.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean the sort of woman who _has_ a chance.”
“She’d take it.”
Kingslake regarded him with a curious expression for a moment; there
was a look of dawning hope in his face, a half smile of pleased
expectancy. Then it faded, and he resumed his former slightly
sententious manner. “My dear Mayne,” he replied, “you’ve been out in
the wilds for some years. You can’t be expected to know the spirit of
the times. You don’t understand the modern woman.”
“My dear Kingslake,” returned Mayne, with great deliberation, “if I’d
been out in the wilds, as you say, for fifty instead of five years, I
should still disbelieve in her existence. There’s no such thing as a
modern woman. She’s exactly as old as Eve. She doesn’t shake her curls
nowadays, nor have hysterics. She writes for the _Daily Mail_, and
plays hockey. But do you seriously think these trifling differences
affect the eternal feminine? Not a bit of it.”
Robert looked at his watch. “I say, I’ve stopped, surely. It must be
more than half-past twelve. What do you make it?”
Dick slowly drew out his watch. “Five-and-twenty past.” Kingslake threw
away his half-smoked cigarette, and began to light another one. Mayne
watched him.
“Do you know this lady who is coming to lunch?” he asked, carelessly.
The match burnt Kingslake’s fingers as he raised his head, and he
uttered a hasty observation.
“I met her the other day in town,” he added, as a pendant.
“Is _she_ a modern woman?” asked Mayne. The casualness of his tone
reassured Robert.
“Yes,” he returned, emphatically. “At least I should imagine so. She’s
an artist. Has a studio of her own, and so forth. She’s had a hard
time of it, poor girl....” He looked meditatively at the glowing end of
his cigarette. “_There’s_ a woman now,” he broke out, “who has an
absolute, a perfectly disinterested love of art for its own sake. She’s
a case in point.”
“Did she tell you so?”
“Yes,” returned Robert, unguardedly, warming to his subject. “She
doesn’t think of love; she doesn’t want it. She looks upon it as
unnecessary--a hindrance--a barrier to her intellectual life.”
“Rather a communicative young lady, eh?” was Mayne’s comment.
Robert flushed. “Oh, in the course of conversation....” he began,
hurriedly. He was cut short by Diana, who emerged from the porch with a
tray of cut flowers.
“I’m going to do them out here,” she began. “It’s too boiling for
anything in the house. Robert!” as her eyes fell upon him, “why are
you idling here? Out for five minutes’ play, I suppose. That’s right.
Get back to your work like a good little fellow, and see what an
industrious boy you can be. It’s not nearly lunch-time yet.”
Robert smiled indulgently. “Quite right. I’m frightfully slack to-day
somehow,” he said, as he turned towards the study. “This beastly heat,
I suppose.”
Diana gave a mischievous chuckle as he disappeared.
“I do love to watch the celebrity at home,” she said in a low voice,
choked with laughter. “Robert’s not done a _stroke_ of work this
morning. He’s been looking out of the window with a yearning gaze, like
this.” She made one of her inimitable faces.
Mayne grinned. “As a sister-in-law, Diana, you are a treasure.”
“There’s the bell!” exclaimed the girl. “That means the History-Book,
I expect. I wonder whether Cecily’s ready. I hope she’s putting on
her blue muslin. I told her to. Come along! We must go and see her, I
suppose.”
Within, Cecily was going forward to meet her guest.
The women exchanged a swift glance of mutual interest, while Philippa
impulsively put out both hands. Cecily took one of them, and ignored
the inclination of Philippa’s face towards hers.
“How do you do? I hope you are not very tired?” she began.
“Cecily!” cried Philippa, rapturously. “After all these years!”
“Yes, but they had to pass, did they not?” returned her hostess in a
matter-of-fact tone. “I’m so sorry you’ve been ill. But you are better,
surely? If you hate looking ill as much as I do, I’m sure you’ll like
to be told that it doesn’t show.”
Philippa smiled, a little sadly. “Oh, it’s nothing. I’m not very
robust, that’s all,” she returned, patiently. “Is this Diana--the baby
Diana I used to hear about when we were schoolgirls?”
Diana, who had entered the hall with Mayne, shook hands with the
brusqueness which characterizes the young girl when she is at the same
time shy and aggressive. “Affected fool,” was her brief mental verdict,
as she glared at Philippa’s artless, unfashionable hat and brown
sandals.
“Mr. Mayne--Miss Burton,” murmured Cecily.
“We have met before--at Lady Wilmot’s, haven’t we?” smiled Philippa, as
they shook hands.
The door opened at the moment to admit Robert.
“Ah, I thought I heard voices!” he exclaimed, genially. “How do you
do, Miss Burton?”
Diana giggled as she retired with Mayne to the window-seat.
“Robert’s up and down like a dog in a fair,” she whispered,
irreverently. “He’ll get on splendidly with the History-Book. What
an idiot she looks in that Twopenny Tube dress, doesn’t she? ... and
then you and I and Cis can play about and amuse ourselves, and have a
lovely time. What are you staring at, Dick? Don’t. She’ll think you’re
admiring her; and she’s just as conceited as a peacock already.”