Lady Dover put into instant execution her promise to ask Madge and her
husband to come and stay, and half an hour later set off with Mr.
Dennison up the glen to the scene of his picture; the "original," as she
called it. As usual, in her interview with Lady Ellington she had
behaved quite straightforwardly, and had expressed and acted on the view
which she believed to be right, and though she could not help feeling
that Lady Ellington had referred to her rather as an oracle, whose
slightest word was a thing to be treasured up and reverently commented
on, she was not naturally at all self-conscious, and did not dwell on
the fact with any elation. Elation indeed she could not possibly have
felt, since, had she been pressed to say how highly she valued Lady
Ellington's opinion, she would have been forced to confess that, without
wishing to be unkind, she did not value it at all. Secretly, indeed, her
estimate was that poor Margaret wanted very much to be a woman of the
world, and only succeeded in being a worldly woman; she schemed (she had
no doubt schemed in the matter of Madge's marriage) and span threads in
all directions, with the unfortunate result that she only succeeded in
getting entangled in them herself. Lady Dover, on the other hand, never
schemed at all; she walked calmly along a broad highroad and admired the
flowers by the wayside. Consequently she was invariably free from
preoccupations, and could talk with the artist about the exquisite
lights and shadows on the hillside and the wonderful contrast of the
purple heather against the golden gorse with sincerity and attention. It
was quite possible also that they might see an eagle; one had been seen
at the top of the glen several times that year.
Lady Ellington as she went down with Gladys to the river felt more
herself than she had felt ever since that stormy interview with Madge in
the New Forest. A sense of imperfect mastery had begun then,
terminating, on Madge's visit to the studio, in a terribly certain
conviction that she had no mastery at all. Madge, in fact, had made a
fool of her, and her resentment at it was impotent. She felt, too, that
the world very likely regarded her with a sort of amused pity, which was
hard to bear. But she felt sure now after this interview that the world
was going to forgive Madge and her husband, and welcome them to its
midst. Her own course of conduct therefore was clear, she must quite
certainly do the same, and if possible let it be understood that she
had, though sorry for Philip, realised that this marriage was
inevitable. Lady Dover had put this so plainly; how much better that
their mutual love should be discovered before the irremediable mistake
of Madge's marriage with Philip had been made. And since she was a woman
who never wasted time or anything else, she began immediately to lay the
foundations of this remarkably imaginative structure before Gladys.
"Poor Mr. Dennison," she said, "I was so sorry for him at breakfast when
he said he thought we had heard the last of Evelyn. I am always sorry
for people who put their foot in it. But I suppose that would be the
middle-class view of poor Madge's marriage. It is easy to see that Mr.
Dennison is not quite a gentleman."
This was so calm and glorious a disregard of all that she had previously
said, thought, and felt, that the very completeness of it roused
Gladys's admiration. Lady Ellington took her previous attitude off, like
a pair of gloves, just threw it into the gutter, and walked on. Gladys
knew it must have been Lady Dover's pronouncement that had caused this
change, for she too was aware that the social Greenwich time was largely
taken from Glen Callan, and had made a mental note, just as Madge's
mother had done, that she must also alter her own time by this. It
clearly would be too ridiculous if all London welcomed them back with
open arms, and only Madge's family turned their backs on her. But she
had a certain Puck-like sense of malice, particularly when she could
exercise it on Lady Ellington, and she could not resist a little tap or
two now.
"I am so glad you take it like that," she said, "and see it as Lady
Dover does. At first, you know, I thought you were being too bitter
about it, and really, to tell you the truth, I had no idea that you
were taking Madge's part. Dear Madge; I hope they will ask her soon,
while I am still here."
"Of course I was bitter about it at first," said Lady Ellington. "Who
could help being, when all my plans were upset, and poor Philip Home was
suffering too? I was more sorry for him than for anybody else. I had to
tell him, you know, and had a terrible interview with him. But I soon
saw that since Madge was not in love with him, but with Evelyn, it was a
thousand times better that we should all suffer that purely temporary
disturbance and worry than that she should be in the dreadfully false
position of being married to one man while she was in love with
another."
Gladys purred a rather feline approval.
"How glad dear Madge must have been when you told her how you felt," she
said. "I wish I had been there when you made it up with her. Who is it
who says something about the 'blessings on the falling out which all the
more endears'; it must have been quite like that."
Lady Ellington met this as well as she could, though it was rather
awkward.
"Yes, I think Madge will be perfectly happy," she said, "now she finds
that everyone is quite as nice as ever to her."
"Dear Madge, I never felt different to her," said Gladys rather
imprudently.
Lady Ellington jumped on to this with extraordinary quickness and
precision.
"Ah, I am glad to know that," she said, "because I now also know that
Lady Taverner must have simply invented a quantity of things that she
said you had said to her about it. I felt sure you could not have been
so unkind."
So the honours on the whole were pretty well divided; each of them saw
through the other, and since each determined to write to Madge that
night, it was highly likely that Madge would see through them both.
Mr. Osborne proved to be a true prophet, and it was indeed Lady Salmon
and Lady Grilse who came back from the river about tea-time. He had the
good luck to be in the hall when they returned, and preceded Lady
Ellington to the drawing-room, where he threw open the door for her to
enter in the manner of a butler, and announced loudly--
"Lady Salmon Ellington, my lady."
Lady Grilse also had vindicated her name again, and when after tea they
played the game at which one person goes out of the room, and on return
has to guess by mere "Yes" or "No" what has been thought of, Mr.
Osborne, on learning that they had thought of fish, instantly guessed
"Salmon," which proved to be right. Satisfactory reports also came from
the grouse shooters; the two ladies had had a charming drive; Mr.
Dennison had caught an effect of a highly pleasing kind, and though Lord
Ellington had missed his stag, it was felt that Mr. Osborne was in tune
with the general cheerfulness when he said that after all that was next
best to hitting it. Indeed Mr. Osborne was in extremely fine form
altogether, and Lady Dover, as she went upstairs with his wife at about
half-past six, as it was refreshing after the day in the air to lie down
for an hour or so before dinner, said that she knew no one so
entertaining as her husband. Then, since Mrs. Dennison was with them,
she added:
"And Mr. Dennison has promised to show us a new conjuring trick this
evening. I can't think how he does them. So very clever. And what a
resource in the evening; I am sure I should never be dull if he would
conjure for me always after dinner."
It was during this last week of August, which saw this party at Glen
Callan, that in point of chronology Philip broke down as recorded, and
went to the Hermit in the New Forest. Madge and Evelyn, however, less
lucky in the matter of locality, had to remain all the month in London,
without any immediate prospect of getting away. That week at Le Touquet,
with its motor-car, its suite of rooms, and Evelyn's serene and complete
disregard of all questions connected however remotely with finance, had
been somewhat alarmingly expensive, and his ill-judged selling out of
his Metiekull shares when things were absolutely at their worst had not
mended matters. He had taken Madge completely into his confidence, and
as it was evidently likely that there would soon be an embarrassing lack
of funds, she had insisted on their immediate return to London, where
they would be anyhow rent free in Evelyn's house in the King's Road, and
could, as he cheerfully suggested, live on lentils like the Hermit. But
on arrival in London the hall table was discovered to be literally
smothered in bills, chiefly "to account rendered," for Evelyn in the
_insouciance_ of the comfortable bachelor income which his pictures
brought him in, had certainly for a year past thrown into the fire
anything of a bill-nature. Nothing had ever been further from his
thoughts than not to pay, but the knowledge that he could, by a strange
but almost universal trait in human nature, had made him not bother to
do so. But, now, however, by the converse of this law, which holds
equally true, as soon as it was doubtful whether he could stand debt
free, it became quite essential to his interior peace of mind that he
should do so. This instinct appealed also to Madge, and after a dismal
morning of adding up, the whole position was revealed. Every penny could
be paid with the jetsam of Metiekull, and there was left over--his total
assets except his hand and his eye--the sum of forty-three pounds. It
was clearly necessary, therefore, to stop in London, to be extremely
economical, and to hope that the autumn would bring sitters. Lady
Taverner, at any rate, was assured, and Evelyn found himself thinking of
that pink face and butter-coloured hair with almost affection.
The month was extremely hot, but of the stifling air, of the emptiness
of town, of the economy that Madge insisted on being observed, what a
game their love made! They were stranded on a desert island, so ran the
silly tale that was made up from day to day, in the midst of the
tropics. A huge town was (unexplainedly) there, in which they dwelt; but
though cabs jingled about it, it was forbidden, as in an allegory, to
get into a cab. A mile away there were restaurants, which both in a
dreamlike fashion seemed to know; in these, too, it was forbidden to set
foot, for a lion called Ellesdee guarded the doors. Ellesdee, who
gradually grew more elaborate, also crouched on the tops of the cabs
they would otherwise have driven in, and lay in wait at the main
terminuses which would have taken them out of town. Ellesdee could
assume various forms; sometimes he became quite little, and crouched
behind a box of hot-house peaches, which would have been pleasant for
dinner; at other times he was an apparently bland attendant at the door
of theatres. He even, this was Madge's contribution, nearly prevented
Evelyn buying a couple of very expensive brushes which he wanted, but
impassioned argument on his part convinced her that it was not Ellesdee
at all who had taken the form of the shopman, and consequently the
brushes were bought. He certainly guarded the furniture shops, where
Evelyn was inclined to linger, and though he had an eye on what came in
at the area gate, into the house itself he never penetrated. Nor was he
to be found in Battersea Park, nor on the Embankment, where they used to
walk in the cool of the evening.
But the Ellesdee who had been responsible for the disaster in Metiekull
never showed his face. That had been a big and a dead loss, but Evelyn
had shaken it off from his mind, just as some retriever puppy shakes off
the water after a swim, dispersing it over yards of grass in a halo. And
if Madge on the day when they sat on the sands at Paris-plage had had
disquieting thoughts as to whether it was a man she had married or a
mere boy, here at any rate was some consolation if it proved to be the
latter. For Evelyn had certainly that divinest gift of youth in being
able to utterly expunge from the present and from his view of the future
all that had been unpleasant in the past. The moment a thing was done,
if the result was not satisfactory, it ceased to be; if consequences
called, as now they called, in the shape of rigid economies, he was
simply not at home to them. The results he accepted with cheerful
blandness, but he never went back to the cause. Whether it might or
might not have been avoided no longer mattered, since it had not been
avoided. The cause, however, was done with; it belonged to the mistlike
texture of the past. Meantime his exuberant spirits made the very most
of the present.
One afternoon some business had taken him towards the city, and he
returned hot, dusty, but irresistibly buoyant shortly before dinner.
Madge was sitting in the studio, where, with its north aspect, coolness
was never wholly absent, and though her heart went out to meet even his
step on the stairs, she looked suspiciously at a small parcel under his
arm as he entered.
"Yes, champagne," he said. "One bottle, half for you and half for me.
Oh, let me explain. I got a dividend this morning of eight shillings and
sixpence from twenty-five shares in something which I had forgotten, and
which had therefore ceased to exist. Oh, Madge, don't scream! What use
is eight shillings? But we both want champagne, so its equivalent in
champagne is of use. No, it's no use trying to make me feel sorry,
because I'm not. I just had to. Oh, you darling!"
He sat down on the sofa by her.
"I'm hot, I know," he said, "but you might kiss just the end of my nose.
I haven't seen you for five hours."
She kissed him.
"But you are simply abominable," she said.
"Yes, that probably is so. Another thing happened to-day, too. I saw
Philip. He was driving to Waterloo. In a hansom. Luggage was behind with
his servant in a cab. He didn't see me; at least if he did, he appeared
not to."
Evelyn paused a moment.
"Poor devil!" he said. "I don't know how you feel, but I am awfully
sorry for him. But how could I help it? Are you a fatalist, Madge?"
"If I am, what then?"
"Nothing; but you've got to listen to a little sermon, whether you are
or not. It's dreadful about Philip; you see, he was my friend. But what
else was to be done? Wasn't the whole thing inevitable? How could it
have been otherwise but that you and I should be here?"
"Otherwise?" she said, "what otherwise was there? Yet--yet, oh, Evelyn,
on what little accidents it all depended. The thunderstorm down in the
New Forest, your atrocious----"
"What?"
"Your atrocious behaviour. And then that it was he who asked me to give
you one more sitting, and that my mother should have opened my letter!
Is life all accidents? Are you and I the prey of any future accidents?
May we be marred and maimed by what is as fortuitous as all this?"
Evelyn shifted slightly in his seat. This summing up of the past was a
thing he was not inclined to. It was summed up and finished with, except
in so far as the present was the finished past. Why go over the accounts
again? There was no doubt as to their correctness.
"I don't know whether it was all accidents," he said, "but if you begin
to call things accidents, there is no stopping. If one thing is an
accident, everything is. That I stayed at his house at Pangbourne when
you were there you may call an accident. That we made friends there you
will call an accident also, if you call the first an accident. And if
you are consistent you will call the fact that we loved each other an
accident. Only, if you call that an accident, you are using the word in
a different sense to that which I use it in."
"Then nothing is an accident?" she asked.
"Yes, my buying this bottle of champagne was an accident, because I
didn't mean to. But as it has happened, we may as well drink it."
But a sudden stab of disappointment somehow pierced Madge. She had been
serious, and so to a certain point had he. But now, when their talk
seemed to be becoming fruit-bearing, he could dismiss it all with a
jest. Her wifehood, for a month or two ago she would have done likewise,
had developed her in a way that marriage had not developed him. He was
still the bright-eyed boy. She, on the other hand, was no longer a girl
but a woman. All the sub-consciousness of this twanged in her answer.
"You are so undeveloped," she said suddenly.
But to his ears there was no reproach in this; it concerned the future,
not the past. And his bright eyes but grew brighter.
"Surely," he said, "but the development is in your hands. And I lay
it--whatever it is--at your feet."
That, too, Madge felt was so extraordinarily genuine; small as was the
tribute, it could not be but graceful. Everywhere he was that, in no
relation of life was he otherwise--the beautiful, undeveloped manhood
put out buds everywhere, yet at present no bud was expanded into a
flower. There was brilliant promise, no promise could be fairer or more
sincere, for he was incapable of insincerity, yet it was the
"imperishable child" with whose fate she had bound herself up.
Everything was there, except one, and that was the man. His talent was
brilliant, and she could not have parted with the constant companionship
any more than she could have parted with the light of day, yet something
was missing.
It was not less definite, this sense or quality which was missing in
Evelyn, because it was indefinable; one could not know another person,
whether man or woman, without knowing whether it was there or not, and
indeed almost everybody was possessed of it. Philip had it to a notable
degree--indeed it was that which, if she searched her heart, had in its
extraordinary abundance in him made her originally accept the
possibility of her becoming his wife. It had nothing to do with the
ardour of love, since the man for whom she alone had experienced that
had nothing of it. Nor was it brilliant in any way, since all that was
his also. Only it was bed-rock; it was something quite secure and
responsible, and willing to take all responsibility, and human. It
co-existed with dulness, it existed in people who were frankly
intolerable. It was probably bourgeois, but she felt the possibility, as
yet far off, so far off that she would only strain her eyes if she tried
to focus them on it, of its being necessary, just as food and drink were
necessary. The little ghost at Le Touquet, in fact, had apparently
begged its way across, and had established itself in the King's Road.
But ghosts of this kind do not mind prosaic surroundings; the discerning
reader will perceive they have no need of tapestry or panels, for they
are concerned in no way with what is past and ancestral, but with what
is alive and knitted into the fabric of the present.
But after thus dismissing the question of the accidents and essentials
of life with this ill-timed little jest about the champagne, Evelyn
quite suddenly returned to a matter as serious.
"You called me undeveloped just now," he said, "and I expect you are
right in a way that you did not think. Tom Merivale told me once that I
had not the rudiments of a conscience, and I have often thought of that,
and believe it is quite true. That is where I am really undeveloped, and
I expect it is that"--and his face lit up even more with this piece of
intuition--"I expect it is that which you miss in me. He also said I had
no depth. You miss that too, probably."
Evelyn announced these discoveries with a perfectly serene and unclouded
air; perturbation that he was lacking in so large a piece of moral
equipment as a conscience would do no manner of good; nor, because his
wife missed it, would it help matters that he should mourn with her over
his deficiency. But the unshadowed brightness of his face, his frank
acceptance of this so genially and generously made, was something of a
reproach to her. All the sunshine of his beautiful nature was hers, all
the brilliance of his talent, his extraordinary personal charm, his
blithe acquiescence in all that happened was hers, and yet she was
discontent. And with a pang of self-reproach she contrasted all he gave
her with what she had herself thought good enough to give to Philip when
she promised to be his wife, affection, respect, esteem, just a platter
of frigid odds and ends, compared to this great feast and glorious
banquet of love.
But there was no doubt as to the accuracy of the diagnosis which Evelyn
had made as to what she missed in him. He had risen from the sofa, and
was standing in front of her, and at this she rose too, and laid her
hands on his shoulder.
"Ah, I'm an ungrateful little brute," she said; "but I believe that is a
woman's way. Whatever you give a woman, she always wants more, and
you--you, dear, whatever I give you, you always say you did not know so
much was possible. So I confess, and am sorry."
He looked at her still smiling, but without speaking, and the warmth of
her contrition cooled a little. He ought to have known, so she told
herself, that what she had said was not very easy to say; he ought to
have met the warmth of her _amende_ with welcome and acceptation, and
even acknowledgment of her generosity, for she had been generous.
"Well," she said at length, "have you nothing to say to that?"
He put his head a little on one side, as he did so often when he was
painting.
"Yes, I was just arranging it in my head in beautiful language," he
said, "but the beautiful language won't come, so you will have to hear
it plain, not coloured. It's just this. I don't think one does any good
by pulling oneself open to see what's inside--oh, yes, rosebud, that's
part of the beautiful language--like a rosebud. One flowers best, I
expect, by leaving oneself alone, by just living. Surely life is good
enough! I suppose some people are naturally analytical, people who write
books, for instance, about other people's moral insides. But I'm quite
certain that I'm not like that. I paint pictures, you see, of other
people's outsides. And if I went on painting your face for years, Madge,
I should never get to the end of all it is, or all it is to me. Well,
that's Evelyn Dundas: I beg to introduce him. And you are Evelyn Dundas,
let me tell you. You are me; you can't get away from that. So don't make
either the best or the worst of me; don't let us regard our relations
like that. They are what they are, and want no interpretation or
examination. Let them just burn, and not examine their light under a
spectroscope. Dear me, there's more beautiful language. I apologise."
She could not help laughing at this conclusion; his earnestness, for he
was absolutely earnest, was all of one piece with utter flippancy, and
from one he passed to the other without break or transition. How that
could be she did not know, only it was all he. And as far as any one
person can convince any other, she was convinced. Indeed, it was tearing
flowers open to behave and to think as she had been doing, and she
answered him in his own manner.
"Take care of the habit of beautiful language, dear," she said. "It
grows on you without your knowing it. And surely it's dinner time."
Evelyn cast a tragic glance round.
"Ah, there it is," he cried. "I really had completely forgotten--you
needn't believe it unless you like--about the dividend we are going to
drink. I suppose a little ice now wouldn't be possible? I would go and
get it."
"Yes, but I don't officially know about it," said she.
* * * * *
Storms in the physical and material sense are variously supposed to have
two diametrically opposite effects; they may be regarded as likely to
clear the air, or, on the other hand, to cause a general unsettlement in
the weather. And mental or spiritual storms can in the same way either
be the precursors and causes of serene blue weather, or they can produce
a disturbance of equilibria which is not easily or immediately adjusted
again; the violent agitation sets everything shaking and jarring. And
the worst of it is that there is no barometer known which will reliably
predict which of these effects is likely to be produced. To speak of a
thing, "to have it out" as the phrase goes, may get rid of it
altogether; it may be pricked like a puff-ball and vanish in a little
dust and smoke, leaving an empty bladder, and again "to have it out" may
but emphasise and make its existence more real. The "having it out," in
fact, is but a sort of preliminary examination, which proves whether
there is something there or whether there is nothing.
This talk between Evelyn and his wife had its distinct analogy to a
storm. Things had been gathering up--indeed they were clouds--in Madge's
mind ever since Le Touquet, and though their bursting had been
unaccompanied by rain or explosions, yet to-night they had been
undeniably discharged, and it remained only to see whether the air
should prove to have been cleared, or whether the disturbance had upset
the moral atmosphere. Again, they had "had it out," she had indicated
where her trouble lay, or rather he had laid an unerring finger on it,
and as physician had said "Leave it alone; that is my suggestion. Don't
let us hear any more about it." She fully intended to follow his advice,
but half-consciously she made a reservation, for she knew that some
time--next week, next month, next year--she must know that either he had
been right, and that the trouble had vanished, or that he had been wrong
and the trouble had grown worse. And so some secret sense of uncertainty
and unsatisfiedness sat somewhere deep in the shadows of her heart. It
did not often obtrude its presence, but she knew it was there.
On Evelyn, however, this same scene appeared to leave no trace of any
kind--and, indeed, there was no reason why it should, because it had
contained nothing that was new to him, and also because it had ended so
thoroughly satisfactorily. Madge had agreed with him about the
advisability of letting analysis alone for the future. He had, indeed,
this evening indulged in a little, and he found that there was nothing
in their mutual relations which he wanted altering, nothing which
alteration would not have spoiled. Not for a moment did he say that
there were not things in himself which he should have preferred vastly
different, but with a certain good sense he considered that in shaping
one's course in life one had to accept certain tendencies and
limitations in oneself, and, having granted them, to do one's best. And
he did not see that any perseverance or thought or pains on his part
could create in him what Merivale had called a conscience. His life was
honest, sober, and clean, not, it must be confessed, because morality
indicated that it should be, but because his artistic sense would be
hurt by its being other than that. It was sheer waste of time for him to
sit down and think about duty, because it really meant nothing to him;
he might as well have sat down and thought about Hebrew. But from the
kindliness and warmth of his nature his conclusions as regards conduct
were extraordinarily like those which the very finest sense of duty
would have dictated. Yet now and then, as when he had said that he was
sorry for Philip, but that nothing could have happened differently,
though Madge in word agreed with him, yet she, with her fine feminine
sense, knew that she agreed with him, but agreed somehow on a plane
quite different from his. That nothing could have happened differently
she knew in another way than his: deeply, fiercely, and whole-heartedly
as he loved her. For all her life up till now, her whole nature had lain
dormant; it had awoke all at once, and awoke to find that one person
only was there, even as Brunnhilde woke on the mountain top and saw
Siegfried. That awakening had been long delayed, but when it came it was
complete, like that thunder-clap when he had declared his love for her,
it deafened and paralysed all other senses; there was only one thing in
the world for her, and that was her love.
But to him--she could not help knowing this--his love for her had not
been the blinding flash that awoke all his nature. He had loved before
that, keen sensibilities had been his, the sensibilities that inspired
his art and made it so extraordinarily vital. All his life a huge joy of
life had inspired him; he had waved in the winds of human emotions, he
brought to her a love which was new indeed, but one which was driven by
an engine that drove other machines as well, his art, his joy of life,
for instance. But all that she was, was this one thing; she had lain
like a chrysalis hitherto, and the moth beautiful that came out with
wings at first crumpled and quivering, but momentarily expanding in the
sun, had till then lived in darkness, and the light it saw when it
emerged from its cracked husk was the only light it had ever known. She
did not compare the respective dimensions, so to speak, of the love of
each of them for a moment--she believed that Evelyn loved her as
completely as she loved him. But he loved other things as well; his art
was a vital part of his life, while she had nothing but him. This was
why, though he was so much more developed than she, she had spoken a
sort of truth when she said he was undeveloped, for he did not love her
to the exclusion of all else. She was not, and could not be, the only
thing the world held for him.
In the same way also his sorrow for Philip's suffering was different
from hers, for he, so it seemed to her, was sorry for Philip, as his
nature would make it necessary for him to be sorry for anyone who had
suffered great loss, for an artist who went blind, for a musician who
went deaf, but had yet the other joys of life, with, in course of time,
an increase in his other sensibilities as compensation to make his loss
good. But she who had emerged from nothingness into the full blaze of
this unconjectured noonday rated Philip's loss at what her own would
have been. All had been taken from him, he was left in the original
outer darkness which can only be estimated by those who have seen light,
and not by the purblind creatures that have never left it. Philip, what
must Philip's sufferings have been! Poor Philip, who was so kind, so
likeable, so everything but loved by her. And it was she who had done
this; she had brought a misery on him which she honestly gauged by the
knowledge of what her misery would be if something happened which made
Evelyn no longer love her.
She had carried the skeleton of these thoughts with her to bed that
night, and she woke early to find that, as in the dry bones of Ezekiel's
vision, they were beginning to knit themselves together, bone coming to
his bone, and the flesh covering them. The pale dawn was beginning to
peer into the windows, and the birds to tune up in broken chirrupings
for the songs of the day. Had Philip woke like this, she wondered,
during this hot August month that he, too, had spent in London? If so,
what mitigation of his misery had he found? Not in his business, she
could not believe that; surely he must have taken to work as another
man, unhappy but less manly, takes to a drug that deadens the power of
sense. Surely that must be the explanation of his tireless industry in
the city all this month, when others now went for holiday to moor and
mountain. Oh, poor Philip! She had brought all this on him, too; she
could have made him happy, she felt sure of that, had not soft,
irresistible love made that gracious task impossible for her.
The room in spite of its open window was very hot, and she turned back
the blanket quietly so as not to disturb Evelyn. He lay with his face
turned towards her, in deep sleep, not dreamless, perhaps, because he
smiled. Even in this wan morning light, when all vitality burns low, his
face was radiant; no scruple, no pale doubt troubled his rest. He would
wake to another day with the same welcome of "Good morning" for it as
that with which he had said "Good night" to the last. His lips were
closed, he breathed evenly and slowly through his nostrils, no sleep
could have been more tranquil. It was just the sleep of a child tired
with play, who would be recuperated on the morrow for another day of
play.
Then she rose very quietly, and, opening the door with precaution, went
into the bath-room. She was afraid that the splash of the water might
rouse him, and put her sponge underneath the tap so that the sound was
muffled, for she had the same womanly tenderness with regard to breaking
his sleep as she had towards Philip. All suffering was sacred; even a
broken hour of rest was a thing to be avoided. Then with infinite care
she tip-toed back into their bedroom and dressed, but before she left it
she looked at him once more. No, she had not aroused him, and no play of
sub-conscious cerebration told him that she had gone; he slept on with
the same tranquil sleep.