By the next morning Robert had determined to leave town for a week
or two, and take a holiday. He felt ill and nervous; his work was
suffering; he would take advantage of a standing invitation from some
friends at Maidenhead. A fortnight’s idling on the river would do him
no harm, and relieve him from the necessity of meeting either his wife
or Philippa. Quite early, he despatched two telegrams, and leaving a
note for Cecily, he was on his way to Paddington before eleven o’clock.
Cecily received the curt intimation of his departure with a sense of
great relief. She was bitterly angry. Through a sleepless night she
had followed again and again, with growing contempt, all the links
in the chain of events which had preceded Robert’s outburst of the
previous evening. Her anger burned the more fiercely with the memory
of the impulse of tenderness which her husband’s words had quenched.
She had thought herself so indifferent, she had so trained herself to
forget, to ignore him, that it was with a sort of wonder she had felt
her heart stirred lately by the sight of his obvious depression. Often
she had longed to try to comfort him, and had found herself scornfully
wondering what Philippa was about, to be unable to render this first
aid to the wounded. She had been by no means displeased to find that
Philippa did not understand him.
Now all her pity for him was forgotten in indignation. All night she
had been anticipating their meeting and the inevitable renewal of their
broken conversation. What would be its result? And now, for the present
at least, she might leave that consideration. Rose Summers was coming
for a fortnight’s visit. There was comfort in the thought that she
should have her to herself.
* * * * *
“Well, lioness!” was her friend’s greeting when she arrived at the
well-chosen tea-hour. She kissed Cecily and held her at arm’s length,
nodding approval. “A very well-favored animal,” she remarked. “I
congratulate you, my dear.”
Cecily laughed. “I’ve taken great pains with the grooming,” she said.
“Do you groom lionesses, by the way?”
“For drawing-room use, certainly. In your case with admirable result.
Now, for heaven’s sake, give me some tea and tell me things.”
Cecily complied with both requests, though to the latter she did not
respond as thoroughly as her cousin wished. Except for an occasional
half-hour now and then, they had not met for a year, and Rose was
amazed at the change in Cecily. She struck her as looking prettier than
she had been even in her early girlhood, but so different from that
girlish Cecily that it was difficult to think of the two individuals
as in any way related. Cecily was one of those women who develop late,
in intellect, in all that makes personality, even, under favorable
circumstances, in beauty. At twenty-five she had been still immature.
Now, at thirty-two, she gave the impression of a woman self-possessed,
if gracious and charming in manner; a woman who had looked close at
life, and was under no illusions with regard to it.
As Rose listened to her, she gained the impression of a full and
varied existence, full of interest, at least, if not of happiness. Of
Mayne, Cecily spoke quite frankly. She saw much of him. She owed him
much--“almost everything, in fact.” Of her husband, though Rose waited,
she spoke not at all, beyond a mention of the fact that he had gone
into the country for a week or two.
“I didn’t ask any one to dinner,” Cecily said. “I thought we’d be alone
the first evening--and not go out anywhere.”
“It’s a change for you to be quiet, I see,” remarked Rose.
Cecily laughed. “Yes,” she admitted. “There’s always some one here--or
else I’m out.”
“A great change from Sheepcote?”
“Thank God! yes--in every way.”
The immediate reply was fervent, and Rose wondered, though at the
time she said nothing. It was only after dinner, when they sat by the
open window in the drawing-room, that she deliberately introduced the
subject of her speculations.
“Do you remember the last time we sat by the window and talked?” she
said.
Cecily was smoking. She broke off the ash of her cigarette against the
window-sill before she replied.
“Yes,” she said. “I was in hell then.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m out of it.”
Rose paused a moment. There was no mistaking the quiet thankfulness of
the tone.
“And Robert?” she ventured.
“I know nothing about Robert--or rather, to be strictly truthful, I
didn’t till last night.” She laughed a little. “And then I made a
discovery.”
“Yes?”
“I find that Robert is, or pretends to be, jealous of Dick Mayne.”
Almost imperceptibly, Rose started.
“Does that mean that----?”
Cecily shrugged her shoulders.
“Is she still his secretary?”
“Oh, yes.”
“But----?”
“I don’t know,” returned Cecily. “I don’t think it matters.”
Mrs. Summers waited a few moments.
“Cecily,” she said at last, “are you sincere? Are you as indifferent as
that?”
“If you mean with regard to that, or any other woman--yes.”
“You don’t care for him? not any more at all?”
Cecily hesitated, then sighed rather wearily. “Oh, I don’t know. I
thought not--but--I don’t know. He’s made me despise him; he’s robbed
me of every illusion about him; I see him, and have long seen him--just
as he is. Now he has insulted me in a way that’s so ludicrously unjust
that I----” She laughed again. “That’s all one can do--laugh. And
yet----” She stopped.
“Yes?” said Rose again.
“Yet I feel bound to him,” declared Cecily, slowly. “Not in any sort
of legal way, of course, but just so that I can’t help myself. When he
looks tired, or worried, or disappointed--and he so often looks all of
them--my heart aches. I want to comfort him. It’s just as though he
were my child, you know, my silly, naughty little boy.” She smiled to
herself, quietly.
“Cis!” exclaimed Rose, involuntarily. “How you have grown up!”
“Grown up? I have grown old. Hundreds of years old.” The last words
were uttered as though to herself. For some time neither of them spoke.
“What are you going to do about Dick?” asked Rose at last.
Cecily turned her head in surprise. “Do about him?”
“People are talking, you know. I heard it last year when I was in town,
and, indirectly, once or twice since.”
“Are you thinking of Robert?” There was a note of contemptuous
amusement in her voice.
“Not at all. Of you.”
“Then don’t trouble, dear. People will continue to talk. But as long as
I don’t fizzle out, they’ll also continue to ask me to their parties.”
“And is there no danger--of anything else?” persisted Rose.
“Of my falling in love with Dick, you mean? Not the slightest.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind if he went off exploring again?”
Cecily started. “Yes, I should,” she returned, quickly. “I couldn’t
_bear_ it.”
“Why?”
“Why?” She looked at her friend in bewilderment. “Because of
everything. Because of---- Why, he’s made everything possible. My
book--all the people I’ve got to know. I was all to pieces when Dick
came home. He put me together again, and stood me on my two feet,
and----”
“And yet you are in no danger.”
Cecily looked at her a full moment without speaking, and it was Rose
who again broke the silence.
“My dear, when a woman relies on a man like that, when she can’t
picture life without him, there is always danger.”
“If you only knew,” began Cecily, leaning forward and speaking
impressively, “if you only knew how thankful I am to be _out_
of love. To have peace, to have freedom, to have found myself again.
It’s just what I said. It’s just as though I had stepped out of hell,
to find the blue sky over my head, and the grass underfoot, and the
flowers everywhere, all the dear, beautiful, natural things--that never
hurt one.”
“I know,” said Rose. “But that’s just a phase, Cis--a reaction. Don’t
think you’re done with love because you dread it. You’re young. You
have tremendous vitality. Look at yourself now in the glass, and think
what you were two years ago. You’re not the sort of woman for whom
things are very easily over.”
“And even so,” interrupted Cecily, passionately, “granted that what you
say is true, would you have me give up Dick’s friendship?--a friendship
which was forced upon me by my husband, for a reason which he has since
made sufficiently obvious?”
“I would have you completely realize the situation, that’s all,”
returned Rose, calmly. “After that, I’m quite content to leave it
with you. What I can’t stand, is the silly way in which people deceive
themselves, and then stand in amazement, or rend heaven with their
cries, when their celestial palaces, whose foundation a fool might have
seen to be rotten, come tumbling about their ears. Do what you choose
as long as you know you’re doing it, is what I would say to any but the
congenital idiot.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Cecily laughed.
“I like you when you turn on the vinegar and vitriol,” she said. “Have
another cigarette?”