When Kingston Darnley woke, the clouds had broken. Overhead was
the clear vault of stars; beneath, a vast flocculent sea of milky
whiteness. Already the eastern air was lightening with the first green
tremors of dawn, and the warm calm of the night was giving place to the
keen freshness of a new day.
Kingston could rest no longer. He rose, and wandered to and fro across
the summit, thinking out the situation in which he had become involved.
A force too great for his resistance had swept him into its dominion;
so much was certain. The force was hateful, paradoxical, inexplicable.
But its grip was at his throat, and no struggles could extricate him.
The whole face of the world had suddenly changed; hidden things had
been made clear, and things which had once been thought precious and
sufficient were now shown in the light of this strange sunrise to be
altogether false and valueless. No reluctance, no blinking of facts,
no well-meant pretences, could alter the fact that life had suddenly
opened out before him, enormous, passionate, in all its scope, and
that, in the revelation the mountains of bygone days were dwarfed to
molehills.
But these changes ruled only in the secret places of the heart. There
remained the practical aspect of things. In the depths of his soul he
now carried with him a knowledge of what was highest and most glorious
in life, but that knowledge must for ever be buried in the depths. His
own rash action, in the days before he had understood, before he had
been awaked, had put it eternally beyond his power to stretch out his
hands openly, and seize the happiness that his soul had found. Chains
of diamond might bind him now and for ever to this second self that he
had discovered; but chains of his own making, of his own riveting, made
him prisoner to another life, in the lower world of daily existence.
In the clear cold of the dawn the heats and tempests of his brain
seemed to grow calm; he saw more and more clearly into the future and
its possibilities; passion and its stress had given way to a cooler
appraisement of circumstances. His nature, emotional rather than
sensual, helped him to regain his balance. It was on the spiritual,
transcendental side of his feelings that he dwelt.
This love of his for Isabel, this love which came from outside, which
had nothing to do with moral or æsthetic approval--it should be a
thing altogether high and holy. To keep it clear of contamination, to
sanctify it by restricting it to the loftiest regions of life--this
was the task that lay before him. The task might be difficult. Isabel
might try to increase the difficulty of it. But he would gather
strength from the very difficulty of his position, the very intensity
of his passion, which, by the sheer weight of it, must lay so great a
responsibility upon him as his soul must needs rise to bear. For the
heavier the weight, the easier it is to endure; the soul braces itself
sternly, deliberately, to the labour, and carries off the burden of a
crushing load more triumphantly than the straws which daily life and
little desires impose--the straws which seem of no account, and for
which, therefore, the soul makes no preparation, stiffens no muscles to
sustain. Against a lapse Kingston felt himself defended as much by the
solemn ecstasy with which he had come to accept the fact of his passion
as by his sense of the redoubled duty which it made him owe to the
other life that he had innocently involved.
Tragic affection possessed him as he thought of Gundred;--Gundred,
giving her all--that all which now appeared so little; Gundred, whose
greatest gift had now become inadequate, yet must never be slighted
or discarded. In a moment he saw the vast distance that now separated
him from his wife. Had they ever, in reality, been close together?
Now, without conscious treachery on either hand, time had removed
them very far away from each other. He understood what impulse it was
that had lately been making him try to pull her back into his life,
and realized how completely she had passed out of it. There was no
fault in her--at least, no other fault than a limitation of nature.
How he himself could have escaped the penalty of his own character he
could not see. The crisis of remorse was passing. He had committed no
deliberate sin against his wife. What had come about had come about
through no volition of his. If he loved Isabel that love was something
outside himself--something that he could not kill, though he might
duly cage it and control it. To cage it and control it accordingly
was all that remained for him to do. Infidelity, treachery, adultery
of the flesh would be an unpardonable treason to his love and his
loyalty; the adultery of the heart is a thing instinctive, inevitable,
committed sooner or later by many blameless men and women. This, the
most important of human treasons, stands for ever beyond the reach of
human restraint. No judge can analyze it, no jury weigh it; it can be
valued by no damages, absolved by no divorce. The marriage of heart
with heart is a matter outside the reach of law; the world and its laws
are only concerned with external and visible manifestations. Let the
outward life be clean and seemly; but nothing can govern the impulses
of the inner secret life. Its movements can only be prevented from
reacting shamefully on daily demeanour; they can never be measured,
foretold, forbidden. Kingston knew that his heart was faithless to his
wife--knew that, in reality, it had never been pledged to her at all.
Her heart to his, perhaps; but he had pledged her nothing, he found,
but his approval, his affection, his respect. All the more reason,
then, that, having bought so much of her, and for coin so innocently
false, he should pay his debt to the uttermost farthing in the only
money he had to pay. Respect, affection, approval, all that he had
pledged and promised--these should be paid without grudge or chicane,
and the very completeness and honesty of these tributes must atone as
far as possible for the cruel fact that he had no more to give her.
In the fullness of his tribute to Gundred he must find at once the
redemption of his own self-respect, the safeguarding of her happiness,
and the glorification of this love of his, that might sink so low, and
might be made to rise so high.
The whole air, vibrating with cold intensity, was now of a poignant
emerald. In the East it grew keener and keener from moment to moment.
Beneath, at his feet, through the milky sea of cloud, the heavy
presence of the lowlands began to pierce, and grew from mere darkness
into dim husky purples. Against the fierce green of the dawn a few
clouds stood out fiercely black against the pure sky. The deep abysmal
blue of the night was flying westward, retreating, fading, passing.
Now it looked wan and worn; the faint stars staled and grew sickly as
morning lamps. Slowly, very slowly, the world began to stir, to reveal
itself far down in the valleys and distances. Detail had not yet been
delivered of chaos, but gradually the separate existence of hill and
hollow showed itself in flat masses of obscurity. And then the tones
began to change, to grow sharper, more real. In the first dawn outlines
had been clear and hard, the blackness dense and without modification.
Against the pale horizon moorland and mountain had stood out hard and
stark, as if cut from cardboard. Now the haze of atmosphere began to
clothe the new-born world in glamour, faint, mysterious, phantasmal.
Along the eastern rim of the darkness stretched the swooping profile
of Ravensber, like a lion couchant, flushing now, from a thing grey,
cold, and dead, to a living mass of opal. Diaphanous, vague, uniform in
colour against the pulsing vividness behind, the far-off mountain came
nearer, its azure and amethyst grew every moment keener. At its feet
the lower hills still lay dim and indistinguishable, but to them also
life was returning; and as the great leonine shape above took warmer
and warmer shades, from the first vaporous dimness of opaque blue to
the splendours of a transparent jewel, so the intervening fells grew
deeper in their tones of violet, more solid, more easily discernible
among the faint mists in which the dawn had vested them, and from which
they now began to separate themselves, while out of the vaporous films
of the sky long trails and volumes of cloud were beginning to condense.
Emerald was now passing into topaz, and the rolling masses of distance
seemed every moment a shallower, greener blue. For the oldest and
most primeval of all colours is blue--that vast, profound sapphire of
midnight. But as darkness dies before the advance of dawn, each colour
recedes westward as its successor presses hard upon it out of the
East. Blue gives place insensibly to green--to green, faint at first
and tremulous, then growing swiftly more sharp to its note of greatest
pungency. And so, when the lucence of emerald is at its height, it
rises abruptly into yellow--a yellow very pure and thin, and coldly
pale. Blue has faded out altogether. The air has the vivid transparency
of a topaz. Quickly the clear light intensifies itself, and passes on
into richer, angrier tones of saffron and flame. Then, last of all,
crimson and scarlet appear, final heralds of the approaching day.
Already, very far up in the shrill green of the zenith, a few feathered
clouds were growing pink. The Ravensber, now, was of a rosy blue,
and the sky behind it thrilled with gold. The air rippled cool with
increasing keenness, and the awakening earth seemed to await an
imminent summons. Gradually the details of the earth below could be
discerned in blocks of uncertain light and shadow. It seemed as if
the day were pausing on its road. The golden east grew increasingly
golden, and the green overhead grew pale and melted; but to eyes that
had watched the swift advance of the earlier stages this tantalizing
moment of suspense seemed interminable. The world now was purple and
azure; the Ravensber stood out no longer the phantom of a dream. Life
was growing plain and plainer. But still the poignant moment hovered
indecisively on its way. The path of the sun was barred with streaks of
cloud. Ashen grey and violet in the beginning, they had kindled at last
through wine colour to an ardent amethyst, and their lower surfaces
were edged with rose. As their fluffy masses mounted the sky, their
surfaces grew brighter, their purple warmer, till, high overhead, their
last faint drifts were now of a uniform glowing pink. Everything was
ready for the sun: the earth was clean and fresh from its sleep, the
air was vivid and clean and sparkling.
When the last change came, it came with a blinding abruptness after its
delay. The fire of the clouds grew swiftly fiercer, their purple turned
to molten bronze, their edges broadened, became red, scarlet, flaming.
Kingston saw now the exact spot where the sun was to rise. Down in a
cleft of the hills, where far-off Ravensber tailed away into the first
slopes of Fell End, there lay the heart of the cloud-drift, and there
through its sombre curtains, the sun would have to break his way.
Crimson and scarlet dominated the world now, throbbing from horizon
to horizon. Splashes of infernal sanguine began to streak themselves
across the East, growing every moment in number and in violence. The
day was hurrying up in a leaping fury of splendour, and the path of the
sun was a ladder of flame, leading upwards from the ravelled veil of
darkness between the hills. And then, in a moment, the curtain of the
clouded East was gashed suddenly and rent asunder: the earth seemed
swept by a blast of blood and fire. The sun was up. Another instant,
and his awful globe had leapt free of the broken masses of bronze
beneath, and was mounting on its tyrannous way through heaven.
Instantly before his glory all rival splendours faded. Scarlet,
crimson, gold, and orange paled and died in the glare of his presence.
The magical moment was passed. Clouds, mountains, and valleys were mere
clouds and mountains and valleys again; the transfiguring radiance was
dead. Only the air was still pervaded by the red glow. The world was
torn from dreams to reality again. Calm, clear, definite, it lay below,
stripped of mystery, a world of men and women, fears and desires,
eating and drinking.
Kingston walked round to where the western edge of the mountain dropped
away to the fells far below. Beneath those, again, lay the narrow glen
where Ivescar stood. Between the Simonstone and Carnmor it cut its
way southward and then sloped down into the great valley beyond. The
Vale of Strathclyde stretched softly through the distance, very broad
and fertile, to the remote low hills that bounded it on the farther
side. From where he stood Kingston could see its whole course mapped
out before him, far away, clear and rosy in the fresh daylight. In
a swooping curve it flowed westward under the wall of the mountain
country, westward from its source away in the east, in the heart
of Yorkshire, out to where its last placid ripples passed into the
indistinguishable golden glory of the western sea. And there, beyond
the low cleft in the woodlands, where a faint smoky haze betrayed the
town of Lunemouth, the vast, flat glitter of the bay ran farther and
farther out, till it was merged in the bright opalescence of the sky,
against whose gleaming softness rolled northward, in dim sapphire,
the jutting ranges that passed up into the tangled mountain chaos of
Cumberland and Westmoreland.
Trees, steeples, villages, stood up clear and vivid everywhere in the
valley beneath, remote and tiny in the depths; but where each river
coiled and writhed through woodland, there coiled and writhed across
the face of the earth a monstrous sleepy dragon of white vapour. Higher
up, again, in the narrower mountain valleys, wherever water flowed,
the runnels of its course were filled with a dense bellying mass like
pale smoke. From the hills behind, too, from the stern, deep-channelled
country of fell and moor, rolled down towards the lowlands of
Strathclyde great sluggish remoras of mist, blotting out each hollow in
a snowy void, and leaving only here and there a little islet of dark
rock or heather in the white swirling sea of their tide, as they lapped
and curled round the lesser hills below. As the sun grew stronger,
their volume momentarily ebbed and melted, but in the first moments
of day the glen of Ivescar brimmed over with their confused currents,
beneath the brow of the Simonstone, and as Kingston gazed down over the
edge, he looked into a blank and woolly vacancy.
While he stood there Isabel approached. There was no more battle, no
more challenge in her air. Knowledge of the truth was enough for the
hour. In the cold clear purity of dawn the ardours and agonies of
passion could have no place. Kingston and she had found the great
secret of their common life; no more words were needed.
Kingston turned to her.
‘We may as well be starting down,’ he said. ‘It will be easy enough
now. I only hope Gundred has not been in a great state of anxiety. Did
you get any sleep?’
‘It was a bony bed,’ replied Isabel, ‘but I managed to rest quite
fairly. But I feel utterly tired and squashed. Do let us go home, and
get fed and cleaned and decent again.’
‘In a few minutes,’ said he, ‘we shall hardly be able to believe we
have ever been up here. This night will seem like fancy.’
‘Or else we shall feel that we have been up here all our lives, since
the very beginning of things. Kingston, I was angry with you, but you
have taken me up on to a mountain, and showed me more beautiful things
than I ever thought there were in the world. I have been thinking.
Perhaps I understand a little better now.’
He studied the calm radiance of her face. The sun fell full upon it,
gilded and glorifying.
‘Yes, Isabel,’ he said, ‘we must do what we can. We must try to--to
honour ourselves. I am glad you begin to understand. After all, nothing
can take away the thought of what we have found together up here,
you and I. And we must not let that thought get spoiled, Isabel. How
pompous I sound, though!’
She sighed. ‘I am always running my head up against the walls of
life,’ she answered. ‘I think I do see now what a mistake I made. I
hurt myself and you. Oh, I shall never pretend to have conventional
morals like you, but I am beginning to understand that self-denial is
sometimes a splendid form of self-indulgence.’
The thrill of the new day, the glowing serenity of everything around
him had their influence on Kingston. His emotions reached calmer,
greater heights than before, above the reach of storms. His tongue was
loosened for a moment.
‘We are above the world, Isabel,’ he said; ‘let us try to stay there.’
She looked at him, her smile touched with irony.
‘And yet,’ she answered, ‘you are going to lead me down into the
valleys. Do you think one could always stay on the heights?’
‘At least we have been there once in our lives,’ he replied. ‘How many
people can honestly say that?’
‘The valley is full of clouds and mists,’ said Isabel, peering down.
‘Death and horrors may lie below us.’
‘We are going there together, Isabel. We shall always be together now.
We cannot help it, even if we wanted to. Nothing can release us from
each other.’
‘Not even the deaths and horrors?’ asked Isabel slowly.
‘Why suppose that there will ever be any?’
‘Oh, I am cold and cramped, perhaps; I am frightened of things all of
a sudden. Even you and I will have each to go alone into the Valley of
the Shadow, Kingston. You will not be able to go with me there, not
even if we are to meet again on the other side. I am dreadfully afraid
of death and dying. Life has suddenly become more lovely than ever. I
love it and worship it. Come with me into life. But, even with you,
I don’t like passing out of this warmth down into the mists and cold
damps below there.’
‘They will have disappeared by the time we get on to the lower flats,’
he answered. ‘Let us set off. They are thinning every minute.’
With a last look round the radiant plain of the hill-top, Isabel
followed him over the edge, and down the first steep slope. Instantly
they were out of the sunlight and the glow, in chill shadow as yet
untouched by the influences of day. Down and down they plunged towards
the mists beneath, while, far overhead now, the rosy beams of the
day shot out across the world, cut off from them as they went by the
intervening bulk of the mountain, sombre and stark. So they came
at last to the pavement of white limestone below, and stood on its
last, lowest ridge. Beneath them, grey, barren, inhospitable, lay
suddenly revealed the topmost end of the little valley, hemmed in by
its amphitheatre of cliffs. The mists were scattering now in desolate
wisps of vapour, and the air was cold and dank in the shadow of the
mountain behind. Through the torn veils of the white fog they could
see clearly down upon every detail of the glen--the shape of each poor
profitless field of brownish grass, enclosed by intersecting lines
of stone wall, with here and there an ash-tree or a hawthorn, weird,
tormented, witch-like, crouching eternally beneath the lash of the
wind, and shivering in its sparse, blighted garment of leaves. Just
below them rose the struggling stream, out of a stone slope thick
with nettles that dropped away steeply from the foot of the cliff;
it wandered homelessly through two or three grim meadows, where wiry
herbage battled with the white outcrop of stone, then passed through a
grated barrier into the domain of Ivescar. From the height of the cliff
Ivescar itself, house and plantation, seemed more impudently vulgar
than ever. The plantation filled the valley, glaringly artificial,
glaringly unsuccessful, a serried army of wretched dwarfish little
pines. And in the middle shone, steely and cold, the square expanse of
the lake, and by its side, isolated on the desert of lawn, the house
itself, dome, tower, pinnacles and all, raw, yellow, brutal in its
contented ugliness.
Kingston and Isabel gazed down at it with distaste; then they
turned from the mournful glen, filled with chill shadow and sterile
discomfort, to look back at the mountain from which they had
descended. Very high overhead towered the imperious western face of
the Simonstone, and the whole mass was glowing now like a thing alive,
flushed with pulsing blood and vitality. From crown to base it was
kindled to an ardent and luminous crimson, at once sombre and gorgeous,
at once brilliant and terrible. Kingston and Isabel looked up at it
in silence for a moment, then plunged, without a word, down into the
bleakness of the stony valley. Another moment, and the mountain had
vanished from their sight. They were in the cold shade of the cliffs,
and the upper glories were hidden. So, still silent, they made their
way through the fields, through the elaborate iron gates of the park,
and into the pretentious deserts of Ivescar.
Gundred had a quiet, practical spirit. When her husband and her cousin
had failed to reappear in time for dinner, she wasted no energy in
grief or anxiety, but came to the conclusion that they must have lost
their way, and either found some other haven, or, at all events, taken
the most prudent steps possible in the circumstances. It was never
in her calm nature to be harassed without good cause; she always
expected the best till she heard the worst, and gave everybody round
her credit for coolness and imperturbable sagacity equal to her own.
Accordingly on this occasion she made her husband’s apologies to Mrs.
Mimburn, dined without agitation, and slept the night through in
placid confidence that the wanderers would return with the morning.
Her perfect trust in Kingston’s sense precluded all anxiety as to his
welfare, and her perfect trust in his affection all anxiety as to his
absence. When at last Kingston and Isabel returned, Gundred received
them with a complete lack of fuss or excitement, but with proper
attention suited to their state. Warmed, washed, fed, they soon fell
again into the orderly course of the life that she had arranged. She
condoled with them on the misadventure that had kept them prisoners on
the hill-top, and troubled no more about the matter, as soon as she had
made certain that neither of them had contracted chills or colds. Very
tiresome she felt the misfortune to have been, but a thing that might
have happened to anyone, of no real lasting importance.
Not so, however, moved the keen mind of Minne-Adélaïde. That astute
woman, ruffled by the inexplicable absence of her host, depressed by
the barbarism of the view from her window, and at all times prone to
the more passionate interpretation of life’s problems, set herself to
the careful watching of Kingston in his relations with this strange new
cousin of his wife’s. Mrs. Mimburn from the beginning was no friend to
Gundred. She could not but suspect that Gundred disapproved of her. No
persuasions could induce Gundred to call her ‘Minne.’ To Mrs. Mimburn’s
complete disgust, the new niece persisted in calling her ‘Aunt Minna.’
Thus predisposed against her hostess, Minne-Adélaïde unfavourably
noted all Gundred’s limitations, her apparent coldness, her lack of
appetizing brilliancy, of appeal, of all the many attractions with
which a wise wife arms herself against the inevitable satiety of
marriage. In an evening’s space, Mrs. Mimburn became convinced that
Kingston must be dreadfully bored by this unsalted wife of his, with
her frigid little excellencies. She kept a sparkling eye wide open
for complications. When she heard that Kingston was on the hills
with a female cousin, she smiled in one corner of her mouth; when
time went by, and he was discovered to be spending the night with
her on a mountain, she smiled in both, and licked her lips with a
delightful foreboding of catastrophe. She welcomed her nephew with
perfunctory joy when he at last appeared, and devoted her keenest
attention to the examination of Isabel. And at once her experienced
glance discerned what it had taken Kingston weeks to discover, what
Gundred was still a long way from discovering. She saw that Isabel
was attractive--illogically, unreasonably so, but attractive all the
same--even unusually so. And Minne-Adélaïde knew that it is just these
illogically fascinating people who do the most harm, and establish
the most devastating tyranny over men’s roving tastes. ‘Aha!’ thought
Minne-Adélaïde. Time began to hang heavy on her hands, and she fell to
scanning the future with a hopeful anticipation.
The days passed by in their usual lethargic orderliness. Nothing
happened, nothing seemed likely to happen. Kingston and Isabel were
rather better friends than before, perhaps, but Gundred was so clearly
satisfied with the situation that no perils appeared to threaten.
Minne-Adélaïde began to grow a little disappointed. Neither Kingston,
Isabel, nor Gundred gave her anything to be interested in. Their
behaviour continued merely amiable and ordinary. Perhaps Kingston had
grown more ardent in his treatment of Gundred, but Mrs. Mimburn was not
in a position to realize the fact. Certainly he grew daily more and
more affectionate; he pulled her perforce into every conversation, he
devoted himself to her comfort, he never allowed himself to be happy
out of her sight.
As for Isabel, he and she had very little to say to each other in these
few ensuing days. What had happened had happened; it had given them a
blessed consciousness; there was no need to be putting it into words.
Exhausted by emotions, they were content to let themselves drift.
That the situation was terribly unsafe and precarious Kingston knew in
his heart. He realized that it could not long be continued. But for
the moment he acquiesced, and trusted that, before the strain broke in
catastrophe, Fate might provide some solution; and, meanwhile, there
was nothing for Minne-Adélaïde to get hold of.
Mrs. Mimburn had made herself into one of those women who belong to the
town, and are quite out of place in the country. Her dress, her voice,
her every movement suggested the perpetual neighbourhood of shops, and
an habitual dependence on their resources. Paris and London spoke in
her, and she looked garish and inappropriate whenever she carried her
elaborate boots or her silk petticoats into the country. Her rustic
clothes and hats were never genuine. They overdid their effects, and
only succeeded in looking like those of an actress at a garden-party
on the stage. Mrs. Mimburn’s soul was as urbane as her body and its
appointments. She could not live or breathe for long in the country. A
nice suburban corner like Surrey might be all very well for a week-end
or so. It had a saving artificiality--motors and bridge-parties and
all kinds of gaieties seemed quite in place. One could wear decent
clothes, and yet be in the picture. A civilized landscape like that was
nothing more than a good _mise-en-scène_ for an added last act to the
“Drama of the Season.” Mrs. Mimburn could tolerate such an atmosphere
without beginning to sigh for Bond Street. But Ivescar, dumped in its
desolation, was nothing short of appalling. Minne-Adélaïde withered
and shrank. She bitterly regretted that curiosity had brought her
there. Nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to say: only clouds
and rocks to look at, and the rain for ever spotting one’s hat, and
midges biting one awfully through the openwork of one’s stockings, if
ever one went out on the lawn in a presentable shoe! Minne-Adélaïde
looked restlessly round for any possibilities of amusement. She felt
completely _dépaysée_, out of her world, an exile in a desert that made
her most brilliant gowns seem blatant and tawdry. She grew homesick,
feverish, overexcited by sheer weight of dullness. She would not go
away till she had well spied out the land. But in the meantime she must
have something to do--or die.
‘So fascinating, your cousin,’ said Minne-Adélaïde one afternoon,
suddenly wearied of counting the raindrops on the window-pane.
Gundred looked up from her needlework.
‘Isabel is quite attractive,’ she replied, her tone implying, ever so
faintly, that it was a presumption of Mrs. Mimburn even to praise a
Mortimer.
The two women sat alone in the picture-gallery, Kingston being gone on
some errand to his mother, and Isabel writing letters upstairs. Of late
days Gundred had begun to notice the increasing warmth of her husband’s
nature, and in some strange way his affection seemed to set her at a
distance from him instead of bringing him nearer. Though she had never
thought twice of his night on the mountain, yet the faint chill that
she had felt that evening had never since quite left her. She could
find no fault in their relations, could guess no limitation in himself
or her; yet now his love seemed to leave her outside his life. She
felt cold and lonely--quite without reason, she knew, but yet cold and
lonely she felt. Therefore she was more than usually on the defensive
against the impertinences of Minne-Adélaïde.
Mrs. Mimburn noticed the implied snub.
‘Dear Kingston has a lot to say to her,’ she went on viciously. ‘He
always has such a lively mind. He likes people with plenty of _élan_.’
‘Doesn’t he--yes?’ replied Gundred quietly, yet feeling the stab as
she would certainly not have felt it a fortnight ago. The skin of
her self-contentment was wearing thin. But she saw the other woman’s
intention to hurt, and brought all the resources of her pride to repel
the attack. ‘Isabel and my husband are the greatest friends,’ she went
on. ‘I am so glad of it. She can talk to him about so many things.
Sometimes she can amuse him better than I.’
Her whole splendid pride shone in the calm with which she made these
admissions. It was her crowning confession of faith in her husband. And
yet, as she made it, the confession hurt her. Deep down in some secret
place of her heart it touched a little hidden wound.
Minne-Adélaïde saw only the rebuffing self-complacency of the speech,
and was spurred to angry indiscretion by her niece’s arrogant
tranquillity. ‘So wise you are, dear Gundred,’ she said, ‘to let them
go about so much together. Now so many young women ride their husbands
on the curb, and end by boring them to death. Not that your system has
not got its dangers, dear. I wonder you are never anxious. Men are men,
when all is said and done, and at your age you cannot be expected to
know the horrors they are capable of.’
Gundred gazed across at her husband’s aunt with cold grey eyes.
‘You have probably been unfortunate in your experiences, Aunt Minna,’
she replied. ‘Everything depends on the set in which one lives--yes?’
Mrs. Mimburn laughed--a high, giggling laugh, with a clever upward run
at the end.
‘Nothing, my child--nothing,’ she replied. ‘All men are alike under the
skin.’
Gundred had a flash of cleverness.
‘But the skin may be clean or dirty,’ she answered, ‘and that is what
makes the difference--yes?’
‘Life, my dear,’ said Minne-Adélaïde sententiously, ‘is a garden of
roses growing in manure. You cannot play about in that garden without
getting dirty. And men like the gardening work, and they don’t trouble
to put on gloves for it either. Life is a dirty affair, _ma petite_.’
Minne-Adélaïde honestly thought so, though her own life had been
plain and clean in the most uninteresting degree, so far as its facts
went. Gundred looked at her with chilly distaste. She misunderstood
Mrs. Mimburn, thought her attitude genuine, instead of mere pose, and
disliked her accordingly.
‘We shall never agree,’ she answered. ‘We see things very differently,
Aunt Minna. We have always known different sorts of people.’
Mrs. Mimburn bit her enamelled lip. ‘Well,’ she answered, ‘I am sure
I hope you will make a success of your life, dear Gundred. I do think
the experiment is a little risky, though. Isabel is really a little
dangerous, you know.’
‘Are you talking about my cousin?’ asked Gundred loftily. ‘Oh, please
don’t trouble. I think we understand each other.’
‘No woman understands any other woman when there is a man in the case,’
replied Minne-Adélaïde. ‘Only misunderstandings happen _then_. We are
all cats together. One always has to be careful of other women.’
‘How kind of you--yes?’ said Gundred; ‘but there is really nothing to
warn us against.’
‘Oh, _ma chère_, of course not. Dear Kingston is the best husband in
the world. It is a pity, perhaps, he was not--well, a little more
_noceur_ before he married. That would make one feel so much more
secure of him as a husband. One has to remember, you see, that
marriage is not only a matter of--obvious things. It’s not a case of
having a man, but of holding him. A woman should always have reserves
and spices in her nature to keep her husband on the alert--ordinary
women, I mean. But you are so brave. You are trying to run a _ménage à
trois_ on quite original lines----’
‘My dear Aunt Minna, there isn’t any need to give me so much good
advice. I have no wish to interfere with my husband’s amusements.’
‘Not even to have any share in them? Now, that is so courageous. Of
course you don’t seem able to amuse Kingston as much as Isabel can. I
suppose you see that. He makes it plainer and plainer every day. Or
perhaps you simply don’t care for the trouble, and so you give him a
lively pretty creature to fill up the time with? So sweet of you. I
only trust he won’t fill up the time so well that he won’t have any
left for you. Men are so uncertain.’
This time Mrs. Mimburn had pierced Gundred’s armour. Her colour
deepened. ‘I should think it a silly insult to have any doubts of my
husband,’ she answered. ‘And--and--well, it’s not as if Isabel were
very extraordinarily beautiful.’ She regretted the lapse as soon as she
had committed it. But Minne-Adélaïde pounced mercilessly.
‘Let me tell you,’ she said, ‘if Isabel is not exactly beautiful, she
is something much worse: _elle est pire_. She is fascinating. Now, mere
prettiness is apt to get very _fade_ and insipid after a time--the
monotony of marriage, you know. And if there is anyone so attractive
as Isabel anywhere near, a man is terribly ready to forget mere
prettiness.’
‘Perhaps, but a gentleman does not forget his duty,’ answered Gundred,
losing command of the situation for a moment.
Minne-Adélaïde pursued her advantages accordingly. ‘Oh, well,’ she
laughed, ‘if one only wants to hold one’s husband by his duty! And even
a gentleman--what else is he but a man, as soon as his clothes are off?
And they do show the strangest forgetfulness at times. _I_ could tell
you stories.’
Gundred hated herself for permitting such a dialogue. Mrs. Mimburn
seemed to have entrapped her.
‘Please don’t,’ she answered. ‘These things are not interesting.’
‘You see,’ went on Minne-Adélaïde, ‘if one lets one’s self slide out
of a man’s life, one is encouraging him to forget one--and to remember
other people, which is worse. Now you--of course one can’t always fill
one’s husband’s life, one can’t always talk to him, can one? Between
ourselves, now, one can’t always understand him. And she does, this
cousin of yours. And that may be all right, or, again, it may be all
wrong.’
Thus baited, Gundred grew furious. Her colour came and went, her
manner became neater, cooler, blander than ever. And yet she could say
so little. Mrs. Mimburn’s darts had found the weak spot that she was
hiding even from herself. Through all her anger at Minne-Adélaïde’s
insolence, the dialogue had for her a fearful, poignant interest that
forbade her to follow her own first angry instincts, and cut it off
with a snub.
‘I think you are quite mistaken,’ she replied. ‘And, anyhow, I should
always be glad to see my husband being amused--no matter who it was by.’
‘Ah, you have the reckless unselfishness of the very young,’ answered
Minne-Adélaïde intolerably. ‘That has wrecked so many marriages. “Trust
nothing and nobody” ought to be one’s motto, and do all the amusing
that may be necessary one’s self. It is safest in the long run--if
one can do it, that is. However, you seem content to let someone else
do it, and all I say is that I hope no harm will come of it. But when
you want to take up your own position in your husband’s life again, you
may find that someone else has filled it while you were ordering dinner
and talking about the weather. It is even better, my dear, to bore your
husband than to let him find that he can be kept amused all day and
every day by someone else. I should get rid of the cousin, if I were
you.’
‘Yes?’ answered Gundred, gelid with wrath, yet, despite herself,
enthralled in Mrs. Mimburn’s dreadful foreshadowings. She began to have
some notion what it was that she had been finding unsatisfactory in
her relations with Kingston. He petted her more and more, but more and
more did he talk to Isabel, and his recent efforts to include Gundred
only revealed his inability to do so. This it was, this situation of
her own making, that had been giving her secret, unacknowledged qualms,
and feelings of vague hunger. The more proudly, then, did she revolt
against Mrs. Mimburn’s insinuations, and the vigour of her anger was
the measure of her inward conviction that the insinuations held some
truth.
Minne-Adélaïde thought that she held Gundred helpless. She presumed on
her power, made reckless at once by boredom and by gratified spite.
‘Oh, well,’ she pursued, ‘it may pay to leave your husband for ever
alone with Isabel. I can’t say. It wouldn’t pay with any other man or
any other woman. But, of course, your husband _may_ be an exception.
Most husbands are--to their wives--until the catastrophe. Now, if I
were you, I should want to know a great deal more about that night they
got lost on the hill together--or said they did. That sort of thing
isn’t done, you know. It wants a good deal of explaining.’
Confronted with the final insult, all Gundred’s pride, the best side of
her courage rallied to her aid. Her manner betrayed no agitation, paid
Mrs. Mimburn no compliment of excitement. Perfectly cool and level was
her voice as she looked up and answered:
‘You seem to forget that we are not living in one of that dreadful
man’s plays,’ she said. ‘I should despise myself if ever I were capable
of having such thoughts of my husband or my cousin. As you said just
now, such things are not done--in the class I know, at all events.’ She
fixed a cool, contemptuous, grey stare on the astounded Minne-Adélaïde,
who suddenly had an unaccustomed feeling of getting the worst of it.
Fluttered by this sudden revolt, Mrs. Mimburn made an effort to recover
lost ground.
‘I am sorry you take it like that,’ she began. ‘Of course one does not
mean to accuse----’
‘We will talk of something else--yes?’ said Gundred very coolly, but
with complete decision.
Minne-Adélaïde gasped. She considered her attitude towards life all
that was _chic_, up-to-date, and sound. She imagined that no man or
woman could ever spend the dark hours in each other’s neighbourhood
without the ultimate disaster, and piqued herself on the smart
knowledge of the world that discerned adultery in the most casual
compliments. Gundred’s sudden revolt was preposterous in its ignorance
of human nature, as well as supremely insolent in its offhand
condemnation of her own views. She completely lost her temper.
‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘one has to remember how little you know of
things, poor dear! Your innocence is really beautiful--if it weren’t so
pathetic. You will have a rude awakening one of these days. I am afraid
there can be no doubt that your husband has already----’
She broke off, daunted by the look in Gundred’s eyes. The immemorial
pride of the Mortimers gleamed and flashed in them. Gundred might have
been brought up to be calm, unemotional, well mannered, but she came
of a race that had never allowed itself to be baited by inferiors. And
almost everyone else in the world was an inferior. Gundred fixed a
chilling stare on Mrs. Mimburn’s excited face. ‘Be quiet, please,’ she
said; ‘I am afraid you are a very vulgar woman.’
All was over; Mrs. Mimburn was summed up and condemned in that one
placid sentence, so judicially delivered. She could make no appeal; for
the life of her, she could not even finish her remark. For the moment
she was dominated by the force that came from her rigidly decorous
enemy.
Then in the silence, the door opened, and Kingston entered. Gundred
turned towards him with a happy smile.
‘Isn’t it a pity,’ she said in pleasant, gentle tones. ‘Aunt Minna says
she must go back to London to-morrow. Nothing can persuade her to stay,
I find.’
Minne-Adélaïde stuttered and choked with wrath at this defeat. ‘Yes,’
she said, purple through her powder--‘yes--yes, I must positively go
back to town--positively go back to town to-morrow.’
Gundred quietly resumed her work.