CONFIDENCES
Muriel Lancing, having partaken of breakfast in her own room, was now
lying in luxurious and dainty _négligé_ among a pile of extremely snowy
pillows. Anne, who had breakfasted in the dining-room some half hour
previously, was sitting by the open window talking to her.
"Anne," said Muriel suddenly, glancing at her from beneath lowered
eyelashes, "I believe I owe you a confession and an apology."
"Yes?" queried Anne, smiling. "And for what?"
"I wasn't," confessed Muriel, "one bit ill when I wrote to you. I was
only mentally sick because I wanted Tommy, and he had to go away on
horrid business where I couldn't accompany him--at least, he said I
couldn't; and that comes to the same thing--with Tommy." Muriel heaved
a prodigious sigh.
"Darling!" laughed Anne.
Muriel wrinkled her porcelain-like brows. "Oh, Anne, life is heavenly!
There's only just one long big beautiful moment with me and love and
Tommy. But there are ten million years of purgatory to get through when
he is away from me, and then I'm soul-sick. And I tell myself I'm a
sentimental little fool, but it doesn't do one bit of good. So I wrote
to you to come to me till Patricia, who is a cheerful soul, can join
me. And I didn't want to tell you it was sheer silly loneliness, so I
told you a little white lie," she ended tragically.
"Of course," said Anne serenely. "I knew."
"Did you?" Muriel was half incredulous.
"Yes; your letter just breathed 'I want Tommy' all through it. And as
a kind of postscript it added, 'But you're better than nothing to this
poor moping person, so for Heaven's sake come.'"
"And I," murmured Muriel pathetically, "thought my letter the height of
diplomatic lying."
"On the contrary," Anne assured her, "it was as transparent as a
crystal bowl."
For a few moments there was a silence. The warm sun was pouring
through the open window, falling across the bed and the slightly
tumbled bedclothes, and glinting on the fair hair of the woman who lay
among the pillows. Strictly speaking, Muriel Lancing was not beautiful,
she was not even pretty. But there was an odd charm about her thin
little face, her great grey-green eyes, and her wide mouth. She had
a curious, almost elfin-like appearance. She was not at all unlike
Arthur Rackham's pictures of Undine as she lay there in some flimsy
and diaphanous garment suggestive of sea-foam. Herself--her whole
surroundings--held a suggestion of elusiveness, a kind of cobwebby
grace and charm. Tommy--adored of Muriel--once said that the house
was like an oyster-shell, rough and ugly on the outside, but inside
all soft and shimmery with a pearl in it. It was his most brilliantly
poetical effusion, and never likely to be surpassed by him. The only
single thing in the room that struck an incongruous note was a large--a
very large--photograph frame on a table by Muriel's bed. It was a
rough wooden frame, distinctly crooked, and with the glue showing
somewhat in the corners. It held a full-length photograph of an ugly,
snub-nosed, but quite delightful-faced young man with a wide mouth and
an appearance that rightly suggested red hair and freckles. This was
the adored Tommy, and the frame was his own manufacture. Next to the
man himself they were Muriel's most treasured possessions.
Anne looked across at it. She had often seen it before, but finding it
difficult to discover the most tactful observation to make regarding
it, had refrained from making any. This time, however, Muriel seemed to
notice the direction of Anne's eyes.
"Tommy made it himself," she said, stretching out one white arm, from
which a flimsy covering of lace and gauze-like material fell away,
disclosing its slender roundness. She moved the frame to an angle
better calculated to show off its superior qualities.
"Really!" said Anne, politely incredulous, but understanding. It
explained what had hitherto been a cause for wonderment, namely,
why Muriel should choose to disfigure her room with such a piece of
furniture. Its size almost calls for the designation.
"Yes," said Muriel proudly, "himself. I think," she continued,
contemplating the picture with her head at as one-sided an angle as her
recumbent position would allow, "that it is a beautiful frame." There
was the faintest suspicion of a challenge in her voice.
"I am quite sure," said Anne in a perfectly grave voice, "that you
could not possibly have a frame which you would value more. I know I
couldn't if I happened to be you."
Muriel laughed like a contented child. "Anne, you're several kinds of
angels, and you have the heavenliest way of saying the right thing and
yet speaking the truth. Of course I know that its sides are crooked,
and that there are little mountains of glue in the corners. But you
should have seen Tommy's face when he brought it to me. The darling was
so afraid it was not of quite the most finished workmanship. Oh, Anne,
between the comicality of his face and the lop-sided expression of the
sticky frame--the glue wasn't quite dry--and the little lump in my own
throat for the darlingness of the thought, I very nearly had hysterics.
But I hid them on Tommy's waistcoat, and I adore the frame."
"Of course," said Anne, smiling.
Again there was a little pause. Then Muriel spoke suddenly.
"What do you think of General Carden? He monopolized you in the most
disgraceful way last night."
"I liked him," returned Anne, calmly ignoring the question of monopoly.
"It is delightfully refreshing to meet a man so entirely of the old
school of thought and manners."
"I think he's quite a dear," returned Muriel comfortably. "I've known
him since I was in short frocks and a pigtail. He was a friend of my
father's. They were at Harrow together and afterwards in the same
regiment in India. He thinks me--well, just a little flighty, but he
doesn't altogether hate me; and he's quite paternally fond of Tommy,"
she ended with a gay little laugh.
"By the way," asked Anne, curious, "why does he so dislike Millicent
Sheldon? It is quite obvious he does dislike her."
Muriel gave a little start. Then she looked at Anne, doubtful,
hesitating. "Oh, my dear Anne, don't you know? Somehow I fancied that
every one--" She stopped.
"Know what?" queried Anne idly, but interested.
"It's really gossip--if true things are gossip," said Muriel half
apologetically; "still, some one is sure to tell you sooner or later
since you've met General Carden." Again she stopped.
"But tell me what!" demanded Anne. "Since you've said so much, had you
not better give me the rest? Besides, since you say some one is sure
to tell me, why not let me hear the story from you? You can sweeten
it, add sugar and cream, if you will, or vinegar and spice, if those
ingredients will flavour it better."
Muriel laughed. "I'll omit the garnishings; you shall have the facts
plain and simple. Millicent was once upon a time engaged to General
Carden's son. Then--for certain reasons--she threw him over, and
married the highly respectable and bald-headed Theobald Horatio
Sheldon, whose money--of which he has a very considerable quantity--was
made by inventing those little brush things that are fixed on behind
carts and sweep up the dirt in the roads."
"I see," mused Anne, comprehending. "But of course, as I had never met
General Carden before, I naturally did not know that he possessed a
son. He did not, either, happen to mention him to me."
"But of course not," said Muriel tragically. "That's exactly where the
reasons and the real gossip come in. He spent three years in Portland
prison for forgery, or embezzlement, or something of the kind. He's out
now, but he was in."
"Oh!" said Anne seriously.
"And," ended Muriel, still more tragically, "General Carden has never
seen his son again nor forgiven Millicent for throwing him over. It's
rather contradictory, isn't it?"
Anne looked down into the street where a flower-girl was standing on
the pavement with a basket full of great white lilies. She contemplated
her for a few moments in silence, and seemingly drew conclusions from
the flowers. She looked round again at Muriel.
"I think I understand," she said quietly.
Muriel looked at her curiously. "Then it's quite remarkably intelligent
of you."
"No," said Anne calmly. "He loves his son and has never forgotten him.
She has forgotten him and probably never loved him. That's why he
can't forgive her."
"Oh!" said Muriel. "I'm sure you're right that he has not forgotten.
He's eating his heart out for him, or I'm much mistaken, and he's too
proud to own it by the quiver of an eyelash. We women have the easier
time. It's our rôle to keep our arms and hearts open to sinners, and
thank Heaven for it."
Anne was again looking at the flowers. She had said she understood,
but in reality it was only partly. She did understand General Carden,
but Millicent with her serious speeches on nobility and bigness of
character was another matter. She voiced her perplexity to Muriel.
"Oh, but Millicent!" said Muriel in a tone that quite disposed of the
question.
"Yet," said Anne, "Millicent has always talked as if she would help any
one re-make his life, as if it were the one thing she would do, and--"
She broke off.
Muriel gurgled. "Oh, Anne darling, you're so big-minded and
truthful--in spite of your occasional woman-of-the-world airs, which
are only a veneer--that you accept people at their own valuation.
The things that people say they will do are the very things that at
a crucial moment they do not do. I think crucial moments are a kind
of revolution which turns the other side of the person completely to
the fore." And then her tone changed to one of solemn warning. "You,
Anne, doubtless consider yourself a luxury-loving woman, to whom the
bare prospect of coarse underclothes, cold rooms, ill-cooked food, and
commonplace surroundings would be appalling. Yet I firmly believe that
if the crucial moment came you would tramp the roads with your man."
"Mmm!" said Anne. And that rose colour stole into the ivory of her
face, a colour not unnoticed by the watchful eyes of Muriel. "Perhaps,
the roads; but do you think it would carry me to a suburban house with
a glass fanlight over the front door? It would be the bigger test. But,
and there I think you've omitted a point, how about the second moment,
the moment when the crucial moment is passed?"
Muriel raised herself on one arm and spoke firmly. "Love--real love--is
one long crucial moment. I speak from experience because I love
Tommy." She tumbled flat again among her pillows, and looked across at
Anne to challenge her experience if she dared.
Anne, being of course an unmarried woman with no experience of the
kind, merely smiled, a tiny smile which ended in a half sigh.