The weeks that followed were difficult weeks for Robert. Cecily’s book
was a success in so far that from the artist’s standpoint it attracted
just the right sort of attention. It was praised by just the half-dozen
critics whose opinion Robert held to be valuable; the critics whose
good opinion he had secretly never ceased to covet, even while he
consciously strayed into the broad path which leads to popular success
and literary destruction.
But in her own immediate circle, comprising as it did many people
whose chief interests were connected with the world of books, Cecily’s
success was immediate and strikingly apparent. Already popular as
a charming as well as a pretty woman, it needed only the added
distinction of having written a novel that was discussed at length
in the Quarterlies to make her openly courted. Robert never saw her
nowadays. It had come to be tacitly understood that “the Kingslakes
went their separate ways,” and invitations in which he was not
included were showered upon his wife. The first party for several weeks
to which they went together was one given in June by Lady Wilmot.
At half-past nine, Robert stood waiting in the hall for his wife. In
a few minutes her bedroom door opened and she came out, followed by a
maid who held her evening cloak ready.
Robert regarded her critically. She wore a white gown, which he, a
connoisseur of women’s dress, thoroughly approved. Moreover, as he
could not fail to see, it was extraordinarily becoming. Her dark hair
looked very soft and cloudy, the color in her cheeks was faint and
delicate as a wild rose. He looked at her, and saw she was a beautiful
woman.
“Do I look nice?” she asked, smiling. Oddly enough Robert felt
depressed that the smile was so cordial.
“Very,” he returned, and did not speak again till they were in the
hansom that the hall porter had called. Even then it was she who broke
the silence.
“You look rather tired,” she said, glancing at him. “Are you?”
“Not tired. Beastly depressed.” He spoke in the tone of a child who
needs comfort, a tone which Cecily knew well. It never failed to move
her.
“Things aren’t going very well just now?” she asked, gently. “It’s
frightfully worrying while it lasts, isn’t it? But it won’t last.
Nothing lasts. Why, next year, I shall be down _there_”--she
indicated infinite depth,--“and you, towering on pinnacles above me!”
“Oh, no!” returned Robert, bitterly. “You’ve come to stay.”
Cecily shrank back a little into the corner of the cab. When she
replied, her voice trembled.
“You speak almost as though you were sorry,” she said. “And that makes
me miserable. There’s no comparison between your best work and mine,
Robert--but there’s also no accounting for what will succeed.”
Robert felt a violent increase of the irritation that possessed him--an
irritation which had its source in many complex, undefined emotions.
“Oh, as to that,” he began, with a contemptuous laugh, “that’s quite
immaterial. Surely, my dear Cecily, you can’t imagine that I’m jealous
of this little boom of yours? I don’t take _that_ seriously.”
She was stung by his tone. “Am I to understand that there’s something
you _do?_”
“Yes,” returned Robert, suddenly. “I object to your intimacy with
Mayne.” The words broke from him, apparently without his own volition.
He was startled at their sound.
For a long moment there was silence.
“On what grounds?” inquired Cecily at last, in the same icy tone.
“On the grounds that people are talking--and that you are my wife.”
She looked full at him and he felt, rather than saw, the scorn in her
face. “Do you remember,” she said at last, “my surprise when, without
consulting me, you asked Dick Mayne to the house?”
“When I trusted my wife,” he began, feeling that the confidence was
fading out of his voice. “I thought she would have sufficient regard
for my----”
His words were cut short by her bitter laugh.
“Oh, Robert! Are you really going to talk about your honor? That will
be very funny.”
A fury, fanned to white heat by the mockery of her tone, seized Robert.
While he was struggling for words the hansom drew up before Lady
Wilmot’s door, and without his aid Cecily alighted and moved before him
up the steps and into the house.
* * * * *
Lady Wilmot’s big drawing-room was filled to overflowing when the
Kingslakes entered. Their hostess pounced at once upon Cecily, and
extended a casual hand to her husband.
“Here you are, my dear! I thought you were never coming! There
are a hundred people languishing for a sight of you. Here’s Mr.
Fairholt-Graeme. I introduce him first, because his is a bad case, but
he mustn’t monopolize you long.”
Cecily smiled as a tall, grave-looking man took her hand with an air of
homage, and in a few moments she was surrounded by a little knot of men
and women, all eager for a word with her.
Robert glanced round the room in search of Philippa. He caught a
glimpse of her at last, on the broad landing outside the drawing-room.
Some man was bending over her. Impatiently Robert struggled towards
the door to see who it was, and presently discovered, as he suspected,
Nevern.
He clenched his hands. How he hated this kind of thing; hated the
glaring lights, the parrot chatter, the crush, the heat, the sight of
familiar faces. Some of them were smiling invitations, and he had to
go and exchange _badinage_; to listen to repeated congratulations
on Cecily’s success; to invent fresh sentences to express his rapture.
Above the heads of the crowd, presently, he saw Mayne, and with
the recognition of his face, came an intolerable stab of anger, of
jealousy. He watched; saw him steadily draw near to Cecily, saw him
wait quietly, without impatience, till he could speak to her; saw
him move aside with her to an open window, where they stood together
talking.
In the meantime, unnoticed by him, Philippa was casting uneasy glances
in his direction. From her seat on the landing, she could watch his
face as he leaned in the doorway of the drawing-room, carrying on a
desultory conversation with a pretty, fluffy-haired woman, who looked
more than a little bored.
Robert’s moods, as indicated by his expression, were too well known to
Philippa to prevent her from misreading danger signals. She knew that
she must get rid of Nevern.
“I think you ought to go, Nigel,” she murmured, caressingly. “Yes,
dear, please, I wish it. You have been talking to me too long.”
Nevern was restive. “Why?” he whispered. “Why shouldn’t every one know?
I’m so tired of all this----”
“I do so want to keep our exquisite secret a little longer,” she
interrupted, hurriedly. “It’s always a profanation when it is shared by
the vulgar world. Besides, you promised, Nigel!”
He drew himself up with a sigh. “Yes, I know. But how long is it to go
on like this?”
She smiled at him. “Be patient a little longer. Now let’s go into the
room, then I’ll stop and speak to some one I know, and you can leave
me.”
“When may I come?” urged Nevern in the same low tone as she rose.
“I don’t know. I’ll write,” she told him, hurriedly, with Robert’s eyes
upon her.
They took the few steps towards the drawing-room together, and taking
care to make her dismissal of Nevern as casual as possible, as well
as to be in full view of Robert when it was achieved, she gave both
hands to Mrs. Stanley Garth, the distinguished theosophist. Philippa’s
attitude, as well as her rapid glance in passing, suggested that his
moment had come. Robert allowed it to pass. Five minutes later she saw
him shake hands with their hostess, and overheard the beginning of his
excuses for leavetaking.
“But you _can’t_ go!” exclaimed Lady Wilmot. “All nonsense about
a sick friend. I don’t believe in him. Besides, you’re not going to
desert your wife?”
“Lady Luton has very kindly offered to drive her home,” said Robert.
“She lives almost next door, you know.”
“I believe it’s nothing but temper!” declared his hostess, jovially.
“You’re rather out of it nowadays, aren’t you? When a man has a
brilliant wife he must look to his laurels, eh? ’Pon my word, Robert,
she’s quite cut you out. Every one’s talking about her book. Look at
them now,” she jerked her head back towards the room--“all swinging
incense. Why, you wicked creature, you never even told me she wrote. I
believe you were jealous!”
She was walking with him towards the head of the stairs while she
chattered. She was hitting a little at random, but it amused her to
discover when the blows were felt. To do Lady Wilmot justice, her
malice was not exclusively directed against her own sex. To exasperate
a man afforded her on the whole more entertainment than she would have
derived had her victim been feminine. “A man’s colossal vanity is so
tempting,” she frequently observed. “I long to overthrow it. But then,
I always had a taste for the impossible.”
Despite his utmost endeavors Robert could not make his rejoinders sound
other than a trifle constrained.
“I admit I never took Cecily’s work very seriously,” he said. “That was
my mistake. She never talked about it much herself, and--well, somehow
one never thinks of one’s wife as a literary woman. But, my dear lady!
jealous of her? What an idea!”
“Rather a good idea, eh? I didn’t know her well before she married,
and you managed to give me quite a wrong impression of her, anyhow.
I always pictured her a demure little country mouse, with scarcely a
squeak in her. Look at her now!”
She put up her lorgnette. The rooms had thinned a little, and through
the archway of the door they could both see Cecily, who, in the midst
of a group of people, was talking animatedly.
“That’s La Roche leaning over the sofa,” said Lady Wilmot. “You know
La Roche? He’s the latest dramatic critic in Paris. Supposed to be
very brilliant, I hear. Graeme introduced him, I imagine. Graeme’s a
tremendous admirer. You see he doesn’t leave the field to La Roche, in
spite of the introduction. And there’s Mayne, of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?” inquired Robert, quickly. Lady Wilmot assumed an
innocent expression.
“Why not? Isn’t he your great friend, as well as Cecily’s?”
“Certainly,” was Robert’s immediate reply.
“He seems to be exploring London drawing-rooms instead of jungles,
nowadays,” she continued. “Well, it’s a fine field, and the animals are
even more dangerous!”
“Good-bye, I must really go,” said Robert again, putting out his hand.
“Must you? Nonsense,” she returned, ignoring it. “I’m so enjoying this
little chat. I scarcely ever see you now. How does Philippa Burton
answer as a secretary?” There was a gleam of interested amusement in
her eyes as she put the question.
“Excellently, thank you.”
Lady Wilmot put her head on one side and levelled her lorgnette at
Philippa. “Doesn’t look much like a secretary, does she? Her hair
always reminds me of a crimped hearth-rug. And how on earth does she
manage never to forget that stricken-deer expression about the eyes?
It’s very effective, though. I don’t wonder that when she thinks of her
son poor old Mrs----” She checked herself abruptly. “Oh, I forgot. I
promised not to say a word about that.”
“About what?” asked Robert, trying to conceal his anxiety.
“Never mind, my dear. Sometimes I think I talk too much. But Philippa’s
a precious little humbug, you know. Only you men are such gabies.” Her
bright eyes sought his face inquisitively. “Did you see her doing the
high and noble with Sam Nevern to-night? I didn’t know how to contain
myself!”
“I thought his name was Nigel?”
“Samuel, my dear. Nigel for poetic purposes. I’ve known his family for
years. Most respectable. Old Nevern made a lot of money in soap or
candles, I forget which--both, perhaps. Sammy will come in for a nice
little fortune, so he can afford to write bad poetry. Not really going?
How tiresome of you.”
Robert escaped into the sweet night air with a sense of unutterable
relief. The Park gates were still open, and he turned into the broad
walk, and, lighting a cigarette, walked on between the trees which hung
motionless above his head. His brain was whirling, but by an effort of
will he retraced the events of the evening, beginning with his drive to
Lancaster Gate with Cecily. His pride shrank from admitting that he had
been wrong, while his sense of justice accused him. Cecily’s words came
back to him.
“Do you remember my surprise when you asked Dick Mayne to the house?”
It was true,--that, and more than that. He winced as he thought of all
that had been at least tacitly included in his invitation to the man
whose presence he now resented. He looked back upon it as one recalls a
fit of half-remembered delirium.
How madly, in those days, he had loved Philippa! How she had filled for
him heaven and earth, so that he would have risked anything, stooped
to any baseness, to make her as fully his as he longed to make her!
And now? He scarcely knew whether he loved her at all. He had been
enraged at the sight of Nevern, certainly, but was it because he
loved her? Wasn’t it rather blind resentment against the suspicion of
betrayal, by Philippa at least, since Cecily no longer cared; a mad
determination not to be abandoned, cast off by both women? He felt like
a gambler who always loses, while his fellow-gamblers have all the
luck. Lady Wilmot’s chatter beat through his brain incessantly. “Mayne,
of course.” So people were really talking! He raged to know with how
much truth. Then came the remembrance of her incessant harping upon his
wife’s success, and its effect upon his vanity. Shame at his own lack
of generosity struggled in vain with the knowledge that Lady Wilmot
was right. With whatever injustice, with whatever lack of generosity,
he _did_ resent it, even though the resentment was touched
with admiration and an odd sort of pride. Robert had never achieved
self-analysis quite so free from self-deception, as during that short
walk under the dreaming trees.
The keeper on the other side of the Park was waiting to shut the gate
as he reached Hyde Park Corner, and a glance at the clock showed him
that it wanted a minute to twelve. Mechanically, seeing nothing, he
walked down Grosvenor Road, and on into Victoria Street, where, though
the omnibuses had ceased to run, cabs still wandered, or passed one
another at full speed, while an occasional motor-car shot amongst
them. As he turned out of the street into the stillness of Carlisle
Place, his eyes fell upon the Cathedral tower, majestic against the
night sky sown with stars. Like Cecily, he felt its quietude, but only
as something which accentuated the restless, uneasy tumult of his
thoughts. Upstairs, when he reached the flat, the light was burning in
the hall. Cecily had not returned. He felt vaguely relieved as he went
straight to his room and shut the door.