Cecily and Mrs. Summers had arrived at the coffee stage of lunch. They
were alone, Robert having left a message that he was going out.
Cecily had received the intimation with secret resentment. It struck
her as discourteous to their guest, that her husband, who had only
just returned, should not have arranged on that first day, which was
also the last of Rose’s visit, to spend some of his hours at home. As
the result of long reflection, she had met him cheerfully the previous
evening, and had been relieved to find that he showed no inclination
to allude again to the interrupted subject of their difference. She
determined to ignore the matter; to behave as though the discussion had
never arisen.
Rose glanced at her once or twice as she sat absently stirring her
coffee.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked at length, breaking the
silence abruptly.
The depth of Cecily’s reflection was indicated by her start.
“Robert,” she answered, laconically.
“What about him?”
“Lots of things. But chiefly how ill he looks.”
“He can’t have heard anything, can he?” suggested Rose after a moment.
Cecily made a little movement expressing ignorance. “She was here this
morning as usual,” she said.
“Yes,” Rose agreed. “It can’t be that. And,” she added, suddenly, “I
don’t believe he cares any more about her.”
“Some one else?” suggested Cecily, with a little laugh.
“Yes--you.”
Cecily raised her head, and looked full at her friend. There was in her
face a curious mixture of expression; a sort of pitying consternation
and a faint gleam of amusement. It was the glance with which a mother
might have heard of some unreasonable and rather troublesome caprice
on the part of her son. Rueful annoyance was coupled with a slight
admixture of tenderness.
“It would be so like Robert,” was all she said in reply to Rose.
“And if it’s true,” pursued Rose after a moment, “would you----?” She
paused.
“Oh, Rose!” said Cecily. “Rose----?” She drew her breath in suddenly.
“If you hit a live thing on the head often enough, you make it
insensible. What’s the good of caressing it then?”
Mrs. Summers was silent.
“Robert ought to go away,” Cecily continued, rising from the table.
“He’ll be ill if he doesn’t. I’d like him to go yachting with the
Daintons,” she went on, meditatively. “They are always asking him. I
wonder if it could be managed?”
“No doubt,” Rose assured her.
“If only he could get away before he hears anything--and stay away till
that young woman is safely married!”
Despite herself, Rose laughed. “That young woman” as designated by
Cecily was irresistible.
“You’ll never be a saint, my dear!”
“A saint?” she repeated, absently, her mind evidently still
preoccupied. “Why should I be? I’m only worried about Robert.” She
continued to discuss in detail plans for persuading her husband to take
a long holiday, and only roused from her musings upon the subject to
glance hurriedly at the clock.
“Dick will be here in a minute!” she exclaimed. “You’re sure you don’t
mind my leaving you? You know I wouldn’t under ordinary circumstances,
but business is business, and I must see Coombs to-day.” She hurried
away, and live minutes later looked in, putting on her gloves as she
spoke.
“You’re all ready except your hat, aren’t you, Rose? You needn’t start
before a quarter to three. It’s at the Court theatre, you know--quite
close. Good-bye; I dare say I sha’n’t be very much later than you. I’d
like to get a little rest before dinner to-night.”
She went out with a smiling nod, and left Rose meditating upon her
prettiness, till a ring at the bell startled her, and Mayne was
announced.
“You know Cecily’s not coming?” was her greeting as they shook hands.
“So she told me. Has to see her agent, or something.”
“Yes, a business matter. Sit down and have a cigarette; we’ve got half
an hour before the matinee.”
Mayne complied. As he settled himself in the easy-chair opposite to
her, Rose was conscious of very mixed emotions. She liked Mayne. She
had always liked him, even in his hobbledehoy stage, when she had first
discerned his boyish admiration for Cecily. She looked at him now, and
sighed at the perversity of fate. This man, with his unobtrusive air
of determination and quiet strength, was the man Cecily should have
married. Why could she not have cared for him?
Her heart misgave her, and the half-formed determination in her mind
for a moment melted. It was after all possibly a dangerous, certainly a
thankless, task to interfere. She found herself wishing, wishing with
all her strength, that she did not know Cecily so well; that she might
at least have the excuse that it was not for an outsider to forecast
the future. And in the midst of chaotic reflections, she found herself
speaking.
“Do you know,” she said, suddenly, “that Philippa Burton is going to
marry that young Nevern?”
Mayne started. It was the first time that Philippa’s name had been
mentioned between them with significance.
“No,” he said. “Who told you?”
“That queen of gossips, Lady Wilmot, of course.”
“Is she sure?”
“Yes. They’re keeping the engagement secret, but Nevern’s mother
discovered it, and went to Lady Wilmot in tears.”
Mayne inquiringly raised his head.
“Oh, merely because he’s the only son, and she’s jealous at the
thought of any daughter-in-law, I believe,” returned Mrs. Summers in
reply to his look. “Of course,” she added, with a shrug, “it would
be interesting to know what hints Lady Wilmot dropped during the
interview. She knows nothing actually, but she’s very curious about the
situation here.”
Mayne did not speak for a moment. “And--Kingslake?” he asked, presently.
“Doesn’t know--yet.”
Dick lifted his eyebrows. “Cecily?” he said, with some difficulty.
“Yes. Lady Wilmot called yesterday, and told both of us--in strict
confidence.”
Mayne’s rather set face relaxed into a quizzical smile. Rose answered
it calmly.
“Oh, yes!” she said. “But quite apart from the fact that by this time
she’s told half London, I meant you in any case to know.”
Mayne looked at her. “Why?” he asked.
“I leave that to your intelligence,” said Rose, meeting his eyes
steadily.
There was a long pause.
“How well Cecily looks!” she remarked presently in an ordinary tone.
“She’s wildly busy, but it seems to suit her.”
“It suits most of us, I imagine,” returned Mayne, slowly.
“Are you carrying out the doctrine?”
“No.”
“No? What are you doing, then?”
“Idling.”
“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
Mayne threw his cigarette end out of the window.
“You think I ought to be moving on?”
“Yes,” said Rose, abruptly, as though moved by a sudden determination.
“Why don’t you?”
He again met her eyes, this time doggedly.
“Why should I?”
Rose took her courage in both hands. There was something in the man’s
face which showed her she had need of it.
“Dick,” she said, quietly, “it hasn’t taken me long to discover that
people are talking.”
He smiled grimly. “But that is perennial.”
“And,” continued Rose, undaunted, “her husband is jealous.”
This time he laughed unpleasantly. “Of what? Her success?”
“Partly. But not only that. Of her--of you.” It was out now, and she
took breath a little uneasily.
He rose, and stood leaning against the window-frame.
“In the face of _that_?” he jerked his head in the direction of
Robert’s study, and laughed again. There was something in his tone,
a savage irony, mingled with a kind of appeal, that made it very
difficult for Rose to keep her head. Yet she managed to answer coolly.
“Oh, yes--quite. But, as I’ve often found, it takes one man to expect
logic from another.”
“There’s something more important than logic that the average man
surely _may_ expect,” returned Mayne. He had thrown off all
attempt at lightness of tone by now.
“What’s that?”
“Common decency.”
They looked at one another. “My dear Dick,” said Rose, slowly, “when
one comes down to the primitive emotions, one mustn’t expect even that.
Put love, jealousy, or hatred in one scale--and civilization will be a
feather in the other.”
He continued to look down at her. When he spoke it was under his breath.
“I agree. Hatred, you say? By God----” He checked himself, and turned
abruptly towards the window.
Rose watched him a moment. “Dick,” she said, “you have only one person
to consider--Cecily.”
He wheeled round. “And I _have_ considered her. Kingslake
overreached himself there. He knew I cared for her. What he
_didn’t_ know, was how much I cared.”
Rose hesitated before she made her appeal. “Listen to me, Dick,” she
began, very gently. “I see what you’ve done for Cecily. You’ve restored
her confidence in herself for one thing. You’ve given her back her
youth--even her beauty; all she was losing, in short. She herself says
so. She would never have had the courage to take up life again if it
hadn’t been for you.” She paused, and then said suddenly, “Now there’s
only one more thing you can do for her--go.”
She saw she had struck the right note, but she saw, too, the struggle
in his face before he broke out into speech.
“But why?” he urged. “Why, in heaven’s name? It isn’t as though there
had ever been a word--Cecily only wants my friendship. I know that well
enough, worse luck,” he added, with a hopeless want of logic which Rose
found pathetic. “I’ve never troubled her with anything else. Gossip,
you say? Very well. I’ll see less of her. But to go away----”
“It isn’t only that,” interrupted Rose, stemming his torrent of words.
“What, then?”
She lay back in her chair, and her eyes travelled to the blue sky,
and to the tall shaft of the campanile. “All sorts of things,” she
answered, slowly. “What an abominably penetrating book the Bible
is, when one doesn’t read it too often,” she added, after a moment,
with apparent irrelevance. “‘The heart is deceitful above all
things’--Robert has discovered that, if I mistake not.”
Mayne was silent.
“I believe he used to think himself rather a noble fellow at one time,”
she went on, “with his higher love and so forth--whatever that may
mean.”
Mayne uttered a contemptuous exclamation. “Well?” he demanded, “but how
does that illustrate my case?”
“You talk about Cecily’s friendship,” she returned, “but aren’t you,
unconsciously, perhaps, relying a little, just a very little, on that
patience from which you hoped so much before she married?”
Mayne said nothing. He had seated himself once more in the arm-chair,
and Rose was aware of the rigidity of his attitude. It was as though
his body had become suddenly frozen.
She went on, not quite steadily. “You hate me for saying it, of
course. So should I, if I were you. But, Dick--you and I are not by
nature self-deceivers. We think straight. And when one person loves,
even though the other does not, is it quite safe? There comes a weak
moment--a sense of the dreariness of life--gratitude on one side; on
the other a strong emotion. Oh, Dick, _you_ know as well as I do.”
Mayne raised himself slowly, and bent towards her. When he began to
speak it was slowly, also, as though he were feeling for the words.
“So now,” he said, “when I’ve helped her to be self-reliant; when she’s
found a life of her own, apart from his; now, when he’s thrown over by
the woman who has fooled him, _now_ I’m to disappear in order that
he may enslave her again!” He rose swiftly, with a bitter laugh, and
stood before her. “Oh, you good women! you good women!”
Rose watched him as he walked blindly towards the mantelpiece and stood
leaning his elbow upon it.
“You misunderstand me,” she said, at last; “I am not arguing from the
standpoint of the conventional ‘good woman’ at all. I--well, I have no
rigid views on the subject. I look upon each case as something to be
considered on its own merits, or demerits.”
“And on which side would you put mine?” He asked the question with
mockery.
“Viewed from the outside,” returned Rose, judicially, “I should say it
has merits. Cecily has been badly treated. You are a decent man, and
there are no children to be considered. But there are two drawbacks.
One is that she doesn’t love you--yet, at least. The other--and it is
the most important--is Cecily’s own nature.”
Mayne turned round. “Yes?” he said. “What about that?”
“You spoke of her husband enslaving her again,” she answered. “He will
never do so. All that made that possible is over. But Cecily happens
to be a very faithful woman. I’ve sometimes thought,” observed Mrs.
Summers, reflectively, “that to bestow this characteristic upon a
woman is the last refinement of cruelty on the part of the gods.” She
paused a moment, and shrugged her shoulders. “I may be wrong. In any
case Cecily _has_ the faithful temperament. She has loved her
husband. She will never really love again. But that is not saying
there’s no danger if you stay. Let us imagine that you stay. Cecily is
a woman--therefore all things are possible. But, Dick, can you look me
in the face and tell me that you don’t know the disaster of--of such
a possibility? Even now, though she doesn’t love him, she’s worrying
about Robert because he looks ill, because he’s unhappy,--heaven knows
what. Just the maternal instinct, you know. She will never cease to
worry about him. Suppose you gained your point; would you keep her
friendship? Would you get anything worth having in its place? Dick, you
_know_ you wouldn’t!”
He was silent, and after a moment she went on in a low tone.
“It’s because the really good things in life are so few, that I want
you not to run the risk of losing----”
Mayne faced her. “The best I’ve had?” he suggested, finishing the
sentence slowly.
Mrs. Summers nodded, and was annoyed to find her eyes filled with tears.
The room was quite still for what seemed a long time, and when a clock
struck they both started.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Mayne, with a glance at it. “We’ve missed
that show.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, mechanically.
He drew himself up as though with a sudden resolve. “Do you mind if I
go? I--I feel rather as though I’d like to walk a thousand miles or
so,” he added, with a forced laugh.
She put out her hand. “Yes, go,” she said, very kindly. “You don’t
forget you’re dining here to-night? Cecily told me to remind you that
dinner is at half-past eight.”
He nodded. “All right.” He was still holding her hand, and suddenly he
raised it to his lips, dropped it hurriedly, and went out without a
word.
Mrs. Summers stood looking at the back of her hand. “If I’d been in his
place, I should have cut you off instead,” she said, savagely under her
breath--“with a blunt knife, too!”