When Cecily returned, it was about six o’clock. She was tired, and
after asking for Rose, and hearing that she was in her room, she
decided to dress at once, and afterwards rest on the sofa in the
drawing-room, till the arrival of her guests.
As she walked into the room some time later, the surface of her mind
was full of little preoccupations and interests. She had invited
pleasant people for Rose’s farewell dinner, and she hoped the evening
was going to be a success.
She had already been into the dining-room to see and approve the table
decoration, and she now looked critically about the drawing-room,
altering the position now of a bowl of roses, now of one of the lights.
It all looked very charming, she thought, as she arranged a cushion
behind her head on the pale-colored empire sofa, and lay back watching
the fire with wide, preoccupied eyes.
Beneath the trivialities were stirring graver thoughts, deeper
speculations. They were insistent, if scarcely defined, and when she
heard behind her the sound of an opening door, and her husband entered,
the sight of him brought them into sudden definite form.
As she looked up, she was shocked by the strained, nervous expression
of his face. He came forward with a sort of groping movement, regarding
first the lighted room, and then his wife’s evening gown, with
irritable surprise.
“Is any one coming?” he began.
“We have a dinner to-night, you know,” she answered, surprised, for
earlier in the day he had discussed the subject.
He uttered an impatient exclamation. “The house is always full of
people,” he declared. “It’s sickening! Can’t you have a quiet evening
now and then? Who’s coming?”
Cecily glanced at him, and controlling herself with an effort, spoke
gently.
“We talked about all of them only this morning,” she said. “The
Eversleighs, Lady Ashford, Colonel Ferguson, Miss Devereux, Dick
Mayne----”
“Oh--naturally!” he interrupted, with a sneer.
The color rushed to her cheeks. There was a little pause.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, looking at him steadily.
“My reasons must be fairly obvious.”
“They escape me,” returned Cecily. “Surely, Robert,” she added, after a
breathless pause, “we need not continue the conversation you began the
other evening?”
“There is every need,” he declared. “The last time we discussed this
subject, you thought my attitude towards it ‘very funny,’ I remember.
I’m sorry I haven’t your sense of humor. Funny as you may consider it,
I intend to talk about what you find so ridiculous--my honor. It’s
time, I think, since you seem to have forgotten yours.”
Cecily got up slowly from the sofa, and leaning against the
mantelpiece, faced him with dangerously bright eyes.
“That is not true,” she said, deliberately. “But that it doesn’t happen
to be true is no thanks to you.”
Kingslake, his nerves strained to the uttermost, had lost all
self-control, and was letting himself go, but he recoiled a step before
his wife’s gaze.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“You really want me to tell you?” Her voice came to him icily. “Very
well, then, I will. Two years ago, I was a wretched, unhappy woman
because you had ceased to care for me, and I had therefore ceased to
care for--anything. But I never suspected there was a reason--I thought
it had just happened so--I thought I had somehow failed to keep your
love. Then, quite by chance, I heard of Philippa Burton.”
Robert’s face changed. “But till that day at the Priory----” he began.
Cecily’s eyes suddenly fell. She turned her head aside, with a sort of
unbearable shame. “Robert!” she urged in a low voice, “don’t try to
deceive me any more. Before that day at the Priory you had seen her
constantly--every day, in fact, for months.”
He looked at her uncertainly. “And you knew this--all the time?”
“Not all the time. Not till a few days before you took rooms for her in
the village, and then only by the strangest chance.”
There was a silence. Robert broke it in a curious, shamed voice.
“Cecily, I swear to you that Miss Burton and I were only friends.”
She stood tracing figures on the shelf of the mantelpiece with her
forefinger. When she spoke it was very quietly.
“You should be careful where you make love to your friends, Robert. The
garden is a more or less public place.”
He started, then began to pace the room.
“Cecily!” he urged. “Listen----”
She interrupted him with a sound that was half a sob.
“Ah, Robert!--please don’t. What does it matter now? It hurts me so
to hear you--and you see I _know_.... What does it matter when
it first----” Her voice sank almost to a whisper, but she recovered
herself. “Under the circumstances,” she added, “what was I to think of
your invitation to Dick?”
There was another silence.
“Cecily,” he began again at last, clearing his throat, “do you--do you
really imagine----?”
She turned once more and looked him full in the face, and again
his eyes fell before hers. “What I try to imagine, is that you
_didn’t_ think,” she said, slowly. “You were so engrossed that you
had forgotten--much. But sometimes, Robert--to be truthful--I find it
hard to accept even that explanation.”
He continued to walk restlessly about the room. “So you--you impute to
me vile motives like that?” he asked, uneasily.
“You _do_ think them vile? I’m glad of that,” she answered,
slowly. “In any case you didn’t know Dick. He loves me as you have
never loved me.”
He turned sharply and gazed at her. “You dare to tell me that!”
“Yes,” said Cecily, quietly, “I dare. I owe it to Dick that I’m
no longer the miserable, helpless woman I was when he came home.
_Then_, I was dependent for all that makes life upon the love of
one man--who had failed me. Now, I have a life of my own, friends of my
own, work of my own. And it was Dick who showed me how to trust myself,
and shake myself free!”
He stood looking at her. In the midst of the whirl of emotions within
him, jealousy, resentment, humiliation, and a childish longing for
comfort, he thought how beautiful she was. He realized every detail of
her gleaming dress; he saw the whiteness of her breast, the curve of
her lips, the droop of her cloudy hair.
“In the intervals of love-making, no doubt?” he suggested.
Her eyes grew hard. “Is it necessary to be insulting? Dick has never
made love to me since I have been your wife.”
For a long moment he looked at her. He believed what she said. Cecily
had never lied to him. If she said so, he told himself, it was true,
and with the assurance came an almost terrible sense of relief. He
was still thinking chaotically; the wound inflicted by Philippa to
his pride still rankled with an intolerable smart. Cecily’s attitude
towards him was a further humiliation--but the last evil had not
descended. His wife was still his.
He paused in his restless pacing and stood before her.
“Cecily,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “won’t you be friends? I have behaved
badly. I admit it.” He felt a sort of pleasure in this self-abasement,
but Cecily did not move. “I give you my word it’s all over,” he went
on, desperately. “Miss Burton will never come here again. I shall never
see her again. I love you. Really, I love you. I can’t see you drifting
away from me----”
She did not speak, and with her silence waves of growing resentment,
of unreasonable anger, began to gather. “But you must give up this
intimacy with Mayne,” he added, with a change of voice. He waited.
“After all, you are my wife. I have a right to demand that.” He took
an impatient step towards her and put out his hand to draw her to him.
Suddenly she recoiled from him and began to speak in a low, rapid
voice, vehemently, passionately.
“Did you love me when I was wretched--longing for you--eating my heart
out with misery? No! You never even noticed that I was miserable. But
now--_now_, when I’ve got back my looks, when I’m rather admired,
rather sought after--now, when your love affair is over because the
woman has deceived you--now you come to me and profess love! To me
such love is an insult, whether it’s offered by a woman’s husband or
any other man!” She paused and with a great effort added, with quiet
deliberation, “I refuse to give up my friendship with Dick. It’s no
more, it will never be anything more than a friendship, but”--she
paused--“it’s the best thing I’ve had in my life.”
For a second’s space they looked at each other silently.
“Mr. Mayne,” said the maid at the door.
Mayne entered. There was a moment’s embarrassing silence while his look
travelled, scarcely perceptibly, from one to the other. Then he spoke
coolly, without haste, as usual.
“I’m at least half an hour too early. I don’t deserve my hostess to be
ready.”
Robert glanced at his watch. “You _are_ very early,” he said,
significantly, “but I will go and dress.”
His face was white with anger as he passed Mayne on the way to the door.
When it closed upon him, Mayne went up to the mantelpiece and stood
opposite Cecily.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, gravely.
She tried to keep her voice steady, and smiled. “Nothing--nothing that
matters. A silly little argument, that’s all.”
“Your husband is suspicious of our friendship?”
Cecily glanced at him appealingly, then suddenly dropped her head on
her clasped hands.
“Oh, don’t, Dick! Don’t!” she whispered. “I can’t go through it all
again.”
Mayne stood looking at her down-bent head. All at once he leaned over
her.
“I wish to God you loved me,” he said, in a low, passionate voice.
She raised her face and looked at him steadily.
“I wish to God I did,” she answered, very slowly.
He made a sudden movement towards her and checked himself.
“Could you----?... No! That isn’t what I’ve got to say.” He passed his
hand over his face and went on, doggedly, “Cis, I’m going away.”
Cecily started.
“That’s why I came early,” he went on, in the same unemotional tone. “I
hoped to find you alone.... I must go, Cis. For a long time I’ve known
it, but I’ve kept it at the back of my mind and wouldn’t look. And now,
at last, Mrs. Summers has made me drag it out, and so----” He finished
the sentence with a gesture.
“Rose?” repeated Cecily, vaguely.
“She’s quite right,” he said. “It’s not fair to you----” She made a
protesting movement, but he intercepted it and drew himself up. “It’s
not fair to _me_ to stay,” he added, firmly.
Her hand dropped at her side. “Not fair to you?” she echoed, as if a
new light had broken. “No; it isn’t--it isn’t.” She moved to the sofa
and let herself drop against the cushions as though exhausted. “I’ve
been selfish, Dick,” she went on, still in the same dazed voice.
“I’ve been so thankful for your help. So glad of you--you can’t think
how glad. And all the time I never realized what it must have meant
to you.” She put up her hand to her head with a touchingly childish
gesture. “I’ve been horribly selfish.”
He stood looking at her--looking as though by his intense gaze he
would print her face upon his memory forever. Only vaguely he heard
what she was saying. His senses were too full of her to heed. The
faint fragrance of her dress, the sweet blue of her troubled eyes, the
quivering of her lips, were making his heart beat to suffocation.
“No, dear,” he murmured, absently, “no.”
“Yes,” she insisted. “Oh, Dick! it has been hateful of me, but do you
know what helped me to pull myself together? It was knowing you--you
loved me ... and admired me. It was such a long time since I had known
that any man felt that.... It was mean of me, contemptible--but somehow
it helped me awfully. It gave me back my self-esteem. It flattered my
vanity.... Dick, don’t you _hate_ me?”
He laughed gently. “Did you think I didn’t know it?” he said. “Did you
think I wasn’t glad?”
With a sudden movement she rose, and, facing him, spoke urgently,
almost imperatively.
“Dick,” she said, “I’m going to say to you what you said to me two
years ago. Don’t waste your life over one human being. The world is
wide, and it’s before you. And you’re a strong man. Go, and forget me.”
“I shall go,” said Mayne, briefly.
“When?” She faltered a little over the word.
“To-morrow.”
She was silent, looking at him; trying to realize life without him.
“The sooner the better,” he said, at last, drawing a long breath. “I’m
used to setting out for nowhere at a moment’s notice, you see. So this
will be our farewell feast, Cis. You’ll drink to my--to my success?”
“To your happiness, Dick,” she whispered, in a shaking voice.
Mayne looked at her again with such a long gaze that her eyes sank.
“Cecily,” he said at last, huskily, “we’ve known each other for a long
time. Do you know the years I’ve loved you?... And perhaps I shall not
come back.... May I kiss you once--just to remember all my life?”
She looked at him gravely. “Yes, Dick,” she answered.
With a half cry, Mayne drew her into his arms, and put his lips to
hers. It was the kiss he had dreamed of for years; a kiss that in a
rapture of mingled torture and delight expressed all that for years
he had felt for the woman he held for one brief moment like a lover.
A colored mist swam before him as he raised his head. He felt Cecily
gently disengage herself, and it was the silence in the room that
cleared his brain, and then his sight.
Kingslake was standing just inside the door.
For a moment the stillness seemed to press upon the air like a visible,
tangible weight before it was broken by Robert’s savage laugh.
“What liars you women are,” he said, slowly, under his breath, his eyes
upon his wife. “Aren’t you? All of you! All alike!”
Mayne made a menacing step towards him.
“Be careful what you say!” he began, in as low a voice. “We’d better be
alone. Cecily,”--he turned to her--“will you go?”
“No,” she said, quietly. “I prefer to stay.” She looked past Mayne at
her husband.
“All I said to you just now is true----”
He laughed again.
“You take a low view of my intelligence, my dear child.”
“If it were only your intelligence!” broke in Mayne in a tone low
still, but vibrating with passion scarcely controlled, “that wouldn’t
matter.” Suddenly he went towards him, standing close, and speaking
in a rapid tone, almost in his ear. “Listen!” he said. “This once, at
least, you shall see yourself as I see you--as any fairly decent man
sees you. You knew all about me. You knew how for years--ever since I
was a boy at Oxford--I loved her and hoped to make her love me--till
_you_ came on the scene. Then I saw it was all up. Well, I took it
pretty decently, didn’t I? I went away. I stayed away. I didn’t come
home till I felt myself cured of all but affection for your wife. Then
I met you, and you pressed me--_begged_ me to come to your house.
And I came to you--in all good faith, God knows--as your friend, as
well as your wife’s. Before I’d been in the house an hour I saw you
were neglecting her. Then you brought that woman down, and I wondered.
It was only by degrees that I saw what you wanted, you----” He checked
himself before the word was out. “How does it strike you?” he went on,
falling back a step. “Tell me! You knew I _had_ loved her. In
the old days you were jealous enough of our friendship. What do you
think of a husband who neglects his wife, insults her by bringing his
mistress to her house, and then calls an old lover upon the scene? That
I cared for her too much to insult her--that she is the woman you know
her to be, is no thanks to you. If----”
Robert’s face was white, but he broke in upon the other man’s torrent
of words with a voice of ice.
“And you really expect me to believe this--this eloquent--what shall I
call it? It is certainly no explanation.”
Cecily, who had been standing motionless at the head of the sofa, now
came swiftly to her husband.
“Please listen to me,” she said, breathlessly. “You have lived seven
years with me. You know whether I speak the truth. Do you or do you not
believe me when I tell you that Dick has never kissed me before? He is
going away at once--to-morrow, and----” She hesitated a moment. Before
she could recover, Robert spoke.
“Very ingenious,” he said. “Do I believe you? With my experience of
your sex, my dear Cecily--certainly not.”
There was a silence. Then, as though coming to a decision, Mayne turned
deliberately towards Cecily.
“I shall not go to-morrow,” he said. “You know you can rely upon me.”
“Yes,” returned Cecily, slowly, “I will remember it.”
He took her hand a moment, then released it, and went to the door. When
it closed after him, Cecily found herself wondering whether she had or
had not heard the hall door-bell a few moments before. She glanced at
Robert, who was moving with slow, blind steps towards the window.
It was then that a sudden vision of the rose-garden at the Priory
flashed upon her mental sight. Once more she saw Philippa in her
husband’s arms. History, she reflected, with an impulse to break
into dreadful laughter--history had repeated itself, with a slight
difference. How ludicrous, how futile, how _awful_, life was with
its senseless blending of the grotesque and tragic; materials for a
heartrending farce, to be played before what monstrous spectators!
She stood in the middle of the room, her hands clenched and clasped
tightly to her breast, in an agonized struggle with her laughter and
her tears.
Had she really heard the hall bell or not?
The question, a vital one, as for some reason it seemed to her, was
answered a moment later, when the door opened, and the maid announced,
“Lady Ashford and Miss Devereux.”
They came in smiling, suave, unconscious, with outstretched hands.
Cecily, smiling also, went forward with composure to receive her
guests.