“What a sweet garden you have!” exclaimed Philippa, putting down her
coffee-cup. They had returned to the yew enclosure after lunch. She
had thrown aside her hat with one of the free sweeping movements which
Lady Wilmot characterized as Whitmanesque, and the breeze stirred the
ripples of her thick, dark hair.
“This is only a tiny piece of it. Would you like to see the rest?”
asked Cecily. “I could take you round before I go to see my dog. He’s
ill, and I must make sure that they’re looking after him properly in
the village. Will you come with me, or would you rather stay here and
rest?”
“May I stay here?” begged Philippa. “You see I’m silly enough not to be
very strong, and the walk here has tired me a little.”
“Certainly,” returned Cecily, rising, “if you don’t mind being left for
half an hour, perhaps. He’s in one of the cottages in the village,
near the vet, and I’m afraid it will take me all that time to get there
and back. Robert will look after you. Will you come, Dick?” she added,
turning to Mayne. “I’d like you to see how he is.”
He had already risen. “Of course. I meant to go,” he returned.
“Diana is cycling over to Silverleafe for me, if you want any letters
taken to the post, Robert,” she turned to say, as she passed through
the archway in the yew hedge.
Mayne followed her. She did not speak as they crossed the lawn. Her
crisp blue dress rustled softly over the grass. Glancing down at her,
he noticed her thin cheeks, the compression of her lips. She looked
ill--almost old. A tumult of thoughts and emotions filled his mind, as
he walked beside this woman from whom he had parted five years ago,
feeling that with her he had lost all that made life worth living;
its savour, its keenness, its delight. Five years had shown him that
in a man’s life, at least, risks, excitements, hard work, and some
hard fighting can so soften a woman’s image as to make it no longer
a thing of torture. On his first return to England, two years after
his departure, he had not seen Cecily. He could not trust himself to
meet her calmly, and he would not meet her otherwise. Ten days ago,
after a further absence of three years, he had accepted, with unfeigned
pleasure, her husband’s cordial invitation. Though he could think of
her now with equanimity as another man’s wife, nothing could alter
his affection for Cecily, and he had looked forward to seeing her,
undismayed by the prospect of witnessing domestic bliss.
To-day, as he walked in silence at her side, old emotions stirred. He
was glad of the safety-valve of anger. That Kingslake had met more than
once the woman they had just left with him, he had been pretty well
assured, even before he saw them together.
“Emotional fool,” indicated his summing-up of Robert’s attitude in
her presence. Did Cecily guess? Had she left them together in bitter
acquiescence? He glanced down at her again, but her quiet face baffled
him. One other question insistently pursued him. Had Kingslake’s
invitation to him been premeditated? Was it possible that---- A dark
flush rose to his face. Then, suddenly, as though recollecting herself,
Cecily began to talk. She talked recklessly, gayly, about anything,
about nothing. He did not listen; he was thinking of her as she had
appeared ever since he came to the house--desperately anxious to save
appearances--never once naturally, quietly happy as he had imagined
her, as he had come to be glad to think he would find her.
They went into the cottage and looked at the dog. All the time he
was feeling the chest and the limbs of the sick spaniel, Mayne was
determining to break down the barrier of convention which she had put
up between them. He would at least talk to her. She looked like a woman
drowning. He would not allow her to drown without a word. “Better; he’s
much better, poor little chap,” he said, getting up from his knees.
Cecily fondled and patted the silken head, which was eagerly stretched
out of the basket on her approach. The sound of her caressing voice
shook Mayne’s composure. He remembered the baby she had lost, and with
the memory came a flood of wild thoughts and wilder regrets. He moved
abruptly to the door, where, on escaping from the garrulous old woman
who owned the cottage, Cecily presently joined him.
She relapsed into silence again on the homeward way, and it was Mayne
who broke it.
“Let’s sit down here a minute, it’s so jolly!” he suggested, as they
came to an easy stile. “We needn’t gallop back for Miss Burton’s sake.
She’s a host in herself.”
Cecily laughed shortly. “Don’t you admire her? She’s very handsome.”
Mayne shrugged his shoulders, as he threw himself down on the grass
close to the low step on which she was seated. Cecily smiled. She felt
childishly comforted by the contemptuous action.
The long meadow-grass was starred with daisies, and jewelled with tall
spikes of rose-red sorrel. The field sloped to a full, slow stream,
which lazily stirred tufts of forget-me-nots in its passing. On the
farther bank, the cattle swished indolent tails as they crowded under
the shade of the willows, or stood knee-deep in the water.
“What a peaceful place!” said Mayne, suddenly. “It makes a funny sort
of contrast to one or two scenes I remember. May I smoke? It’s pretty,”
he went on, beginning to fill his pipe, “but somehow, as a setting, it
doesn’t suit you.”
Cecily started a little. There was nothing in the remark, but she knew
that Mayne meant to talk, in the sense of the word, and she did not
know whether she was glad or sorry. It was, perhaps, a tribute to his
personality that the idea of preventing him did not even occur to her.
One did not try to stop Mayne when he expressed the intention of doing
anything.
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” she returned, smiling. “Why
doesn’t a pretty place suit me?”
“No room for your wings.”
“My dear Dick, you’re _not_ going to tell me I’m an angel!” she
exclaimed, still clinging to the fringe of conventional repartee.
“Certainly not,” he replied, lighting the pipe, “the wings are not
angelic.”
“That’s right. Where would they carry me--if they had room to move?”
“Out into the wild places at the back of beyond--sometimes.”
Cecily dropped her light tone. “That’s true,” she said, slowly. “And at
others?”
“No farther than town. You’d fold them, for a time at least, quite
complacently in a London drawing-room, provided the other birds were of
the right flock.”
“That’s also true--or _was_ true.” The amendment was dreary.
“Sometimes when _I_ was at the back of beyond,” continued Mayne,
smoking stolidly, “I used to picture you as a celebrity, holding a
_salon_--like those French women, you know. The charming ones--not
the blue stockings. Madame Récamier--Madame de Sévigné--that sort of
thing.”
“Instead of which I ride down to the village on my bicycle, and order
the groceries. It’s Robert who’s the celebrity, you know.” She stooped
to pick a long-stalked buttercup as she spoke. Her voice was not
bitter, it was quite colorless.
“There was generally room for two in the _salons_, wasn’t there?”
asked Mayne.
“Possibly. There isn’t on the hearth-rug.” There was rather a long
pause. Mayne took out his pipe, and knocked its bowl against the stile.
“Do you know, I think you ought to have _made_ room,” he said at
last, decisively. Cecily turned her face slowly towards him.
“You are right, Dick,” she said. “I ought.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Oh, why didn’t I? Why didn’t I?” she repeated, a little wildly. Her
voice shook, and she threw the buttercup aside with a nervous movement.
“Why is one always a fool till it’s too late to be wise? Life’s such a
difficult thing to manage.”
“I agree.”
“Especially with love thrown in as a handicap.”
He glanced at her swiftly. “Is it a handicap?”
“For a woman--yes.” She was bitter enough now.
“Why?”
“Because the whole thing means so much more to her than it does to a
man.”
“Not in every case.”
She glanced at him hurriedly, and her voice softened. “Generally,”
she said, “it means so much to a woman that, like a fool, she throws
overboard all that reason, common-sense, judgment, urge her to keep.
And the ship sails splendidly at first----” She paused.
“And after a time?” suggested Mayne.
“Oh, it still sails splendidly!” she exclaimed, with a laugh. “But it
sails on without her. She’s left struggling in the sea--or stranded on
the first desert island.”
“And,” said Mayne in a business-like tone, “with proper management you
think there need never have been an island?”
“Not a _desert_ island.”
“But the desert island can be cultivated, Cis.”
“Yes--now,” said Cecily, drearily. “There’s no barrier now--except my
lack of heart to do it.”
Mayne was glad of the personal pronoun. They were coming to close
quarters.
“Was there ever a barrier?” he inquired.
“Yes,” she said, with unexpected suddenness. “Robert didn’t like it.”
Mayne slowly raised his head, and their eyes met. He was silent.
“Oh, I know what you’d like to say!” cried Cecily, hurriedly; “but
it’s no use arguing about it. Most men regard their wives, so long as
they’re in love with them, in an absolutely primitive way--there’s no
getting out of it--they _do_. For every other woman, freedom,
individuality, the ‘exercise of her own gifts,’ of course. For a man’s
wife, while he loves her, no life but his. She belongs to him, body and
soul. He is jealous of every interest in which he is not concerned. And
because his love means so much to her, because she _can’t_ realize
that one day it may go, a woman yields; she lets all her interests go
down the wind; she is what he wants her to be.”
She paused a moment in her rapid speech. Mayne made no sign, and she
went on in a voice that shook a little.
“And perhaps, if it lasted so, she would be content. But it
_doesn’t_ last. And it’s the woman who’s shipwrecked. Beautiful
new countries, full of interest, for him. For her--nothing but the
desert island.”
Mayne was still silent. He was following, with a stalk of grass, the
distracted movements of a ladybird.
Cecily laughed nervously. “My dear Dick,” she cried, springing to her
feet, “I beg your pardon. What a dose of the woman question I’ve given
you! It’s the first offence, kind gentleman. It shall not occur again.
Come along.”
Mayne had also risen, but he made no sign of moving. “Cecily,” he said,
suddenly, “we’re very good friends, aren’t we?”
She looked at him steadily. “Very good friends, Dick.”
“I want you to promise me something.”
“Yes?”
“Take up your work again. Go on writing.”
She hesitated. “Does it matter?” she asked, with a dreary smile.
“_That_ doesn’t matter. I want a definite promise.”
She was silent a moment. “Very well, I’ll try,” she answered at last,
steadily.
He nodded satisfaction. “That’s good enough for me. I’m not afraid,” he
returned, and moved from the stile.
They began to wade through the sea of grasses towards the garden, whose
belt of trees lay at no great distance.
“Look here, Cis!” he began, so suddenly that she started, and, glancing
up, saw him squaring his shoulders in the resolute way for which as a
girl she had often teased him. “There’s something I want to say to you.
All of us--all of us, at least, who _matter_--get a hard knock
from life some time or other, and if it’s hard enough most of us go to
pieces for a bit. _I_ went to pieces once.”
Cecily nervously pulled the rosy beads off a head of sorrel as she
passed it, but he went straight on. “_You_ have been going to
pieces for quite a considerable time. Oh, yes, I know,” as he saw her
shrink a little. “But this is a straight talk. Now what’s the good of
going to pieces, Cis? It doesn’t alter anything except oneself, and
one’s chance of getting _something_, if not the thing we want,
out of existence. Life gives hard blows. Very well, then, let us go
out to meet it, in armor. I want you to get a suit, Cis.” He paused
abruptly.
“The people who wear armor are not, as a rule, engaging,” she said,
with an attempt at a smile.
“It depends on the kind they wear.”
“It’s the getting it on, Dick.”
“Yes,” he allowed, “it’s a bit stiff at first; but with perseverance----”
“It’s a dull thing to fight in,” she urged, after a moment apparently
given to consideration.
“There are all sorts of suits, you know,” he went on in a lighter tone.
“A large assortment always in stock. There’s a neat little thing called
hard work, which is not to be despised, to begin with. Then there’s a
highly decorated one known in the trade as ambition--and so forth.”
Cecily laughed. “I’ll try some of them on. Do you think I shall ever
look as well in them as you do?” she added in a gentle voice.
“Better. There are joints in mine.” There was a touch of grimness in
his tone which appealed to her.
“I’m glad you’ve come home, Dick,” she said, gratefully. “You’re a
nice, strong person.”
“In spite of the joints?” he asked, with a suspicion of irony.
“Because of them,” she answered, gravely.
He was silent for a moment. When he spoke, it was half banteringly,
half in earnest.
“You’re going to be the most brilliant woman in London, Cis; do you
know that? In your scintillating _salon_, statesmen shall bow the
knee, journalists shall grovel. It shall be chock-full of fair ladies
loving you like poison----”
“But I shall only admit _one_ distinguished traveller,” said
Cecily, gayly.
His face changed. “Really?” he asked, softly, “that will be kind.” All
that he had been studiously keeping out of his voice, out of his face,
came suddenly to both.
Cecily hesitated. “And he will be in armor,” she said. It was almost
an appeal. She had been so glad to find a friend! His words had braced
her like strong wine. But if she must think of him as a would-be lover,
if she could not think of him as a friend? The pitiful look which, in
her unguarded moments, had often unnerved Mayne, came back, and now it
strengthened him.
“All right, Cis,” he said. “Don’t you bother. It’s a tight-fitting
suit.”
She smiled at him gratefully, as he held open for her the little gate
leading from the fields into the lower garden.