"I fear it is unlikely, Madame. I am very sorry." Dr Legrand put his
capable finger-tips together, looked sympathetically at the tall,
golden-haired Englishwoman who had come to consult him.
"The child died, then, Madame--that another is so important?" he asked
kindly.
Esme flushed scarlet. "It--yes--I lost it," she said bitterly, her eyes
filling with tears. "I lost him. And I am not likely to have another?"
"Frankly, no, Madame. But you are young. Madame is nervous, says she
cannot sleep without something. Give the something up, Madame; there is
a little death, a little madness, bottled in each innocent dose. Go to
the country, live in the open air. Get Madame's nerves well, then
perhaps your wish may be realized."
Esme sat silent, growing sullen, raging at fate. Why should this be?
Why had she been treated so cruelly?
If--oh, if! The word which makes our sorrow into madness--that word
"if." If she had known, had guessed, what the future would bring.
As she sat there fuming it did not come to her that the great scales of
the world weigh and adjust; that for sinning we are punished, either by
the bitterness of our own remorse, or by something withheld. Right
holds its steady poundage, while wrong flies upwards, light of weight
and false.
A mother had sold her child, carelessly, heartlessly, that she might
enjoy her life. What did it matter? Children were easy things to find
if one wanted them. And now she sat baffled, miserable, the price no
use to her, spent before it came, yet did not blame herself, but cruel
chance.
"Well"--Esme got up slowly, putting the great man's fee on the
table--"bon jour, Monsieur."
"Adieu, Madame." He took the dry hand kindly. "It was no doubt the loss
of the boy which has made Madame nervous, not well. It has preyed on
your mind, Madame."
"It has," she rasped out bitterly, "and always will. Well, adieu,
Monsieur."
Dr Legrand wrote an entry in his book: "Mrs Eva Smith of West
Kensington, London."
"And yet," he said to himself, "she looked more angry than sorrowful."
Pulling down her thick veils, Esme followed the man-servant across the
hall. She had dressed very plainly, hidden her face by thick black
gauze and net.
A little dark man was coming on to the steps, whistling cheerily.
Seeing him Esme started and jumped into her waiting taxi.
The little man passed her, went into the doctor's, as one who had an
appointment. For a moment he, too, had hurried, but the taxi had sped
past him.
"A cher Nonno," he cried, gripping the Frenchman's hand.
"A la bonne heure, Luigi."
"So Milady Blakeney comes to consult you," Luigi said. "She passed me."
"Milady Blakeney? No! A Meeses Smith, of Londres, a handsome creature,
but artificial, racked by late hours and chloral."
"It was so like Milady," Luigi said. The doctor's consulting hour was
over; the two were at leisure. "I attended her. A fine boy."
"Yes." The Frenchman appeared to be very interested in his
finger-nails. "Yes--there were no complications, were there?"
"H'm!" Luigi Frascatelle sighed. "She came through well. But--I did not
tell her--there is never likely to be another bambino." He dropped into
medical explanation, gave a few details.
"Never," said Luigi. "But why tell her?"
Legrand took up his book. "Mrs Eva Smith, of London," he said
thoughtfully. "H'm! She was dark, this milady?"
"Dark? No, but fair as the angels," exclaimed Luigi. "Golden-haired,
splendid. Each year the Sposo, Sir Blakeney, sends me a gift from the
boy. It is good of them to remember."
"Oh!" The French doctor closed his book. "Then it can't be," he said to
himself, "since the boy is alive. But"--he looked again at the
entry--"from what you tell me a second child would be a practical
impossibility," he said.
"Well, it is so," answered the Italian.
"And, in this case, also. Yet the boy is alive. Come, Luigi, out. I
shall be in London next week at the great Conference, but I leave
happily my patients to you, mon ami."
Esme, once again Mrs Carteret, lay sobbing on the high narrow bed in
her room at the Meurice. She would never be rich now; her heartache
never stilled. Wild schemes went drifting through her brain. Could she
do as Denise had done? No, for Denise was rich, and to cheat one must
have money. Half-maddened, she buried her hot face in the pillow; then
would spring up with clenched hands, railing against the world.
Her boy, her boy! who would have meant so much to her. Her baby,
ill-used, neglected!
There is no sorrow so bitter as that of a sin which has failed to
succeed; no remorse so biting as that which eats with decayed teeth,
which whispers as it grows painfully, "I come from your own fault."
Esme got up at last, powdered thickly and carelessly, put away her
plain gown and got into a blue velvet, pinned on a huge hat, and went
down to tea.
She could think no longer. A bunch of pale mauve violets tempted her.
With her fair hair, her done-up skin, her brilliant gown, men turned
and stared and drew their own conclusions.
Esme wanted new gowns. Denise owed her money. She drove to her
dressmaker's.
But Madame Lilie was cool, unenthusiastic. Madame Carteret's accounts
were over-difficult to get in.
"If Madame would pay cash, but certainly. But otherwise money was
scarce. English accounts so ver' difficult to get in. For cash there
were one or two gowns."
With deft hands Madame showed a model of emerald velvet, bizarre,
remarkable, but exquisite in its supple grace. Another of sapphire
cloth. An evening gown of chiffon and satin, clinging, opal-hued.
The three could be supplied--they would fit Esme easily--for one
hundred and twenty pounds for cash, with jupons to match thrown in.
Esme was going to the Holbrooks. She must wear her old clothes; and
Dollie Gresham would be there, and Denise.
"You know that I would pay you," Esme flashed out. "It is nonsense. I
could send you half in a month."
Madame grew cold again. After all, the blue was almost sold to a
customer, but as Madame had come all the way from Londres, bien! she
had showed it.
It was in Esme's mind to lose her temper, to call the woman insolent
and suspicious. But the three models lying together, green and blue and
shimmering opal, held her tongue.
She would come back to-morrow, buy the gowns; she had meant to leave
next morning, but she would not.
It was dusk outside, and cold; she hurried on to the Ritz.
A stout man, barring her path, swept his hat off to her, murmuring some
words.
"Monsieur!" Esme said haughtily.
"But, Madame"--the man's French halted. "If Madame would come to tea
with a humble admirer--"
"Monsieur!" she stormed, hurrying on across the open space in front of
the huge hotel. The man followed her, apparently unabashed, into the
lounge, his eyes fixed admiringly on her.
With a little gasp of relief Esme saw a man she knew, Sir Thomas
Adaire--a round-faced, jovial youth, with cunning blue beady eyes, and
a distorted imagination.
"Don't make a fuss," she said, "but that dreadful person is following
me."
The stranger sheered off rapidly, with a smile of understanding more
insulting than his pursuit.
Sir Thomas, ordering tea, first called the unknown an impossible
bounder, and then let his blue beads rest on Esme with some surprise in
them.
"Don't exactly wonder either," he said. "Dress very fine, ain't it?
Hubby over with you?"
"No," Esme answered, irritably.
"Oh!" A comprehensive pause. "Let me know when to sheer off then. I'm
doing nothing. Just over to look round. Lots of things to look at, eh?
over here. Same sort look like peaches in the apple-house over in
London."
Sir Thomas drank his tea. Esme knew that in his shrewdly lewd little
mind he quite believed that she had come to Paris to meet
someone--looked on it as merely natural. Sir Thomas knew one code of
life, and love had never come to make him wish he had not believed in
it thoroughly.
He talked on lightly; with him no wife was faithful, no man a keeper of
his marriage vow. He told of little scandals pleasantly; they were
nothing in his eyes.
"She was very nearly caught that time. Dicky Margrave rolled up quite
unexpectedly and milady had the forbidden fruit in her boudoir. She
told him to turn his back and take off his coat, and clean the windows.
'Horrible mess in here, Dicky,' she said. 'Man's just finishing the
windows. Come to the library.' The forbidden one walked out boldly two
minutes later."
"But the servants?" said Esme.
"Oh, if they tell, they go; also, they won't get other places; they
keep quiet all right. Betty Margrave told me that herself. She's got
Dicky in order now; he's afraid of reprisals about Caromeo."
So from story to story, a male Vivien carelessly blackening reputation.
Esme told him so, growing impatient.
"Bless you! who's got 'em nowadays? We only treasure visiting lists,"
he mocked.
After a time Esme talked herself, found herself enjoying the
ever-pleasant task of pulling our friends to pieces, added a new
whisper or two for Sir Thomas to elaborate.
"Just left the new Penelope, haven't you?" he said. "Denise
Blakeney--she's into the starch bag after several years in hot water.
No one but Cyrrie now, and he--well, he was always a gorgon husband.
Saw a parson gazing at Denise last month at her big garden-party.
'There is a model of English wifehood, of truth and purity,' he said to
something in brown muslin, whom I fancy was his wife."
"And if he knew," flashed Esme, indignantly, and stopped.
"Knew what?" Sir Thomas grew interested.
"A little secret." Esme's face grew grave. "Pah! if we all knew each
other's secrets. If you knew mine and I yours."
"Haven't got any," he said comfortably. "Secrets are the kind of things
you've to keep a flat for and a motor which they drive some other
fellow out in. A day's amusement is my sort. But--you--you're a bit of
a Penelope yourself, Mrs Carteret."
"Anything else is so stupid," said Esme, laughing.
Sir Thomas, falling into complete bewilderment, asked Esme to dinner
when he found she was really alone. To forget her misery she was
hilariously gay, telling smart little stories, flashing out sharp
speeches, amusing the little man immensely.
"Kind of woman you don't know what to make of," grumbled Sir Thomas.
"Lets you kiss her ear in the taxi, and gives yours a verbal boxing
when you suggest supper in a quiet room. Gets herself up to look like
what she's not, and is frightfully offended when she's taken for it.
Tires one's eyes, that class of cipher. We'll read plain print again
demain, thank the Lord."
Folly would never be Esme's refuge; she sat in her room, her sleeping
draught ready, wondering what life would be like if, for mere
amusement, she had been what Sir Thomas took her for. There was not
even a pretension of affection, but merely: "We are well met. You are
pretty, your skin is soft, your eyes are bright; let us see how much
joy we can steal from Time's storehouse."
"There must be crowds of people who are like that or he wouldn't think
it so natural," said Esme. "I believe Dollie wouldn't care--or Denise,
once--but I--I could never forget my miseries by becoming a beast."
Then, soothed by the drug, she slept soundly, to wake with a parched
mouth and heavy head, and lie tossing feverishly because her tea was
late.
There were the three dresses. Fretting for them--more because she
wanted to fret than because she really wanted them--Esme went to the
telephone.
"Is that Madame? No? Well, give her a message. Tell her I'll send over
a cheque for those dresses from London. To alter and keep them for
me--Mrs Carteret."
It was a weary journey back. When thoughts would come crowding in
bitter array. If there was never to be a child, then they would never
be rich. Only a week before Bertie had told her plainly that they could
not go on spending so much. Here again Esme blamed someone else. If
Denise would only pay her regularly, it was all Denise's fault. There
was two hundred owing now, since June. The thousand pounds vanished so
easily. Dresses, bridge, furs, so many things that Esme wanted, could
not do without. If Bertie knew that besides what he knew to be spent
she was using this other money, too.
If Denise would only pay up her debts for her, let her start fair
again! Esme looked sullenly at the calm sea. If not she would threaten
to take the boy--she would take him. He would forget it all in time.
Then, with a shiver, she thought of the telling, of the scandals, of
tongues wagging, of the proving and altering, and, she was not
pitiless, of Denise Blakeney's complete undoing.
Denise was still in Scotland. Rashly, pressed by her desire for the
dresses, Esme made up her mind to write.
Bertie met his wife at Charing Cross. With her irritable mood making
her observant, Esme noticed that his light overcoat was shabby, that he
lacked smartness.
"Oh! Bertie!" She kissed him, eagerly glad to see him, always hoping to
find comfort in his love. Then the barrier which her secret made rose,
drearily, between them. They had so little to talk about now, so little
in common.
"That coat's shabby, Bert. You must get a new one," she said
impatiently.
"Not just now," he answered; "it's all right."
"It's not right." Esme felt that he was hitting at her extravagances.
"You shall get one. I'll buy it for you, Bert."
"Millionaire," he mocked. "Have you got some secret fount of money, Es?
You never have enough to buy your own things, child. And--the doctor,
Es--Legrand?"
"Says I'm to drink milk and eat turnips and pray," she said bitterly,
"and live in the country, and sleep on ozone, and so forth."
"And--if you would?" His voice grew eager. "Oh! Esme, if you
would--just you and I together again."
The tenderness in his voice was forced there, stilling thoughts which
would not sleep; he assured himself that with a fresh start, without
perpetual extravagance and excitement, he would feel the old passion
for his wife wake in him. Fresh air and exercise would banish the
memory of the companion whose presence he longed for so much now.
"Come to Cliff End, Butterfly. Try it as a cure, with me as chief
physician."
London, huge and splendid, flitted by them as the taxi rushed to the
flats; the streets called to Esme; the restaurants were lighted up,
glowing golden behind their portals. She thought of the whimper of the
wind, the thunder of the surf against the rocks; the dreariness of the
country.
"I couldn't," she said at last; "the man doesn't understand. Town's my
life, Bertie; all my pals are here. No, I couldn't."
"It will have to be Town with a difference very soon," he said, sighing.
Economy again--money; he thought of nothing else. She was not back five
minutes and he was preaching at her. He could look up what he'd paid
for her clothes last year. It wasn't so much. "And I'm better dressed
than rich women," stormed Esme, hysterically. "You might be proud of me
instead of grumbling--always grumbling."
The taxi stopped at the door of the tall buildings. There was no home
in it to Bertie. The hall porter greeted them. The lift took them
upwards to their flat, past other flats, and then into the pretty rooms.
Marie was ready waiting, supplying the petit soins which Bertie had
forgotten.
"Pauvre Madame is tired." Marie had a cup of coffee with but just a
soupcon of eau de vie. The bath was prepared. She hovered round Esme,
getting a soft wrapper, soothing jangled nerves. Marie was a treasure!
Esme took up her letters. Bills, invitations, more bills, a scrawl from
Dollie asking them to dinner. Esme had forgotten her ill-humour.
"Bertie, we're dining out--telephone to Dollie. Yes, I said we'd go."
Dollie Gresham's was better than dinner in the restaurant, or brought
up by a flat-faced German to their dining-room. Bertie distrusted the
tinned soup, the besauced entrees and tasteless meat. He was glad to go
out. Esme had told him nothing; he was hurt and would not show it.
"Ring up the coupe people, Marie. Dollie may be going to a theatre,
Bert."
"We must owe them a fortune," was on Bertie's lips, but he stopped. To
even ask if a taxi would do might disturb peace.
Dollie wanted them for bridge. Her little dinners surpassed Esme's now.
They were a party of eight, Dollie's bitterly clever tongue keeping
away all fears of dullness.
"Cousin May was here to-night, Esme; she came from Paris to-day also.
She saw you there--at the Ritz, having a dinner with blue-eyed Tommy.
You heard some pretty tales before that evening was over, Esme. Let's
have them now."
"Am I to undermine the peace of this dinner-table?" Esme's wit was
fairly ready, and she watched with a smile as women flushed and men
looked uncomfortable.
"Unsavoury little dustman," said Bertie, sharply.
Esme had not told him of her dinner. His look at her made the table
know it, and gave them something to talk of afterwards.
"Sly Esme, setting up as such a model too. And Tommy of all men. She
was a friend of Jimmie Helmsley's once, too; _don't_ you remember he
dropped her for the Chauntsey girl?" people whispered. The teeth of
Society loves a bone of scandal to crunch.
After dinner Bertie cut in at Dollie's table, and as her partner found
himself absent, playing badly, losing tricks carelessly.
"I'm really sorry," he apologized, as their opponents went across for
sandwiches. "I'll wake up now."
"You're out of sorts," Dollie said kindly. "What is it?"
"Debts," he said wearily. "We're the old proverbial china crock, Mrs
Gresham, trying to swim with the brass one. What does it cost a woman
to dress, Mrs Gresham?"
"It costs Esme about fifteen hundred a year," said Dollie, shrewdly.
"Claire is ruinous now. Never an evening frock under sixty, and the
etceteras at so much an ounce. Then Esme's furs are all new. She's a
bad little lady going to Claire, and Lilie in Paris."
"Fifteen hundred!" Bertie laughed. "No, about three; and it's far more
than I can manage."
"Three--grandmothers!" observed Dollie, blandly. "You see Claire's
little bill and tell me then. You're very extravagant children. Esme
paid those electric people fifty pounds before you left London, and
taxis are just as good."
"Fifty pounds!" Bertie shuffled the cards silently. He had not given
Esme fifty pounds for the garage. He certainly did not pay Claire's
bill. His payments had been to big drapers, and to a tailor.
A sudden sickening doubt was assailing him. Was Esme getting money he
did not know of? Was he one among the hundreds of fooled husbands? He
flung the thought away, and turned to the game, and played carefully.
But on the way home the thought returned.
"Esme, we must pay these people," he said, trying to speak carelessly.
"Not let it get too high."
"Oh, I sent them a sop to Cerberus months ago--a big one."
"But--I never gave it to you."
"No." He saw her hand move impatiently. "No, it was bridge winnings, I
suppose. Or when Poeticus won the Hunt Cup. I forget."
Suspicion is a seed which, sown, grows, and will not be hoed up. Bertie
came into his wife's room as she lay asleep, and looked sadly at her
pale face. There was a small room next door, lined with cupboards; he
went to it, opened the doors, saw the shimmer of satins and silks, the
softness of chiffon and lace, the gleam of rich embroidery--dress upon
dress. He had loved to see her well dressed, and not dreamt of the
great cost of some of these mere wisps of evening gowns. Sixty pounds!
Bertie shut the doors, feeling mean, as if he had spied, but he was not
satisfied.
Had Esme some way of getting money? Instead of sleeping, he did
accounts; got up frowning, to go to sleep at last in the grey bleakness
of an autumn morning, to wake with the little parasite, suspicion,
gnawing at his heart.
He went into his wife's room after his breakfast; she did not come down
for hers now. Esme was up, her golden hair loose, waiting to have some
brightening stuff rubbed into it.
She was bending over her jewel-case, choosing a necklace and pendant to
wear.
"This clasp is loose, Marie; the clasp of these sapphires"--Esme held
up a thin chain holding together little clusters of sapphires and
diamond sparks. "It's--oh! you, Bertie!"
"That's new, isn't it, Esme?" He took the chain from her.
"New--if a year old is new."
"And this"--he snapped open two or three cases, holding glittering
toys. "I didn't give you any of these, did I?"
Esme moved impatiently. "Paste," she said suddenly. "Parisian! I can't
go about always wearing the same old things, so I am foolish, and get
these."
"Oh, paste!" He was putting back a pendant when he looked at the
setting. Surely paste had a backing, was not set clear.
"They're wonderfully done," he said gravely. The satin lining of the
case bore a Bond Street jeweller's name.
"Oh, wonderfully." Esme snapped the case to. "And I get the cases so as
to deceive my friends' maids. Run away, Bertie, you worry me standing
there."
He went slowly. Esme was lying to him. The things were real. Her
jewel-box was full of new toys and trifles; he began to realize that
her dresses were magnificent.
Her letters lay in a litter on her bureau, some half-opened, all tossed
about as if they had worried her. One long slip oozed from its
envelope, with a huge total at its foot. It was a bill for new furs.
Another thick envelope bore the word "Claire" on the back.
A man has a right to see his wife's bills. Bertie took out the letter.
Madame Claire begged immediately for a cheque on account. She really
must have a few--Bertie turned white--a few hundreds. A smaller slip of
paper was enclosed. Amount of account furnished, three hundred and ten
pounds. Yellow evening gown, lace overdress, seventy pounds. Blue tea
gown, forty pounds. The total was for five hundred pounds.
Bertie laid it down with a sick feeling of despair. He could not pay
this. It was impossible. Five hundred pounds to a dressmaker. Dollie
Gresham had been right in her estimate. He sat looking at the dull blue
of the drawing-room carpet, sat thinking hopelessly.
Then Esme, in dull blue-green, masses of black making a foil to her
fair skin, came back. A faint perfume clung about her, nothing
emphasized, but the memory of sachets or little pieces of perfumed skin
sewn into her dress.
The necklace of small sapphires and diamonds glistened at her throat.
She was humming gaily, ready to write to Denise.
"Esme!" Bertie raised his white face.
"Bertie! Have the Germans taken London, or is Lloyd George made Regent?
Or--you're not ill, Bertie?"
"We can't go on, Esme," he said. "I saw your account on your bureau
there. Esme, I can't pay it, unless we sell everything--go away."
He saw her hand clench, but she did not look at him.
"How dared you pry?" she began, then checked herself. "Paul Pry!" she
mocked. "Paul Pry! But I can pay it."
"You? How?" he asked, getting up.
"How? I've won a lot lately," she said, after a pause. "I got some
tips. I can pay it, Bertie."
"You've got money to your account, then?" he said, for he knew that she
was lying again.
"Not now."
"Bookmakers," said Bertie, "pay on Mondays. Who is your man?"
"Oh! _don't_ bother, Bertie." Her hands shook as she began to write.
"Denise did the bet for me. I'm writing to ask her to send it on now."
"Oh!" he said, more quietly still.
"I backed first one and then another," she said; "got it that way. So
don't fret, Boy."
"But if you had not won," he said softly. "The account is not new,
Esme."
"I chanced it! I let the winnings go on to other gees." He could hear
the anger rising in her voice. "I chanced it. Don't bother now, I'm
writing."
"But I must bother, Esme. We can't go on like this. We're getting
poorer every day. If we had a child things would be different, but as
it is Hugh Carteret will leave me Cliff End and what he allows me
now--four hundred a year."
"And you'll be Lord De Vinci," she said.
"With a title and two mortgaged places, and every penny left to the
girl. Esme, if you can't pull in we must give up London."
"Not until London gives me up," she flashed out. "Leave me my own
affairs, Bertie. If I make a bit it doesn't hurt you. You don't have to
pay then."
"You're mad, Butterfly," he answered, "to dream of living by backing
horses. Look here! Nothing's ever been the same since I went away that
time. Esme, we're young. Let's start again." He came nearer her.
If he had taken her in his arms she might have fought down the restless
demon of anger and resentment which was tearing at her. But he did not
touch her.
"Start in a sand castle by the sea," she mocked, "with limpets for
friends and neighbours." And then suddenly her self-control gave way.
She burst out hysterically and told him he wanted to make her
miserable, to imprison her in the country; cried tears of sheer peevish
temper; swore that all the world's luck was against her; that she had
no pleasure, no real fun; that even a few rags paid for by herself were
grudged to her.
After a little Bertie turned away, went out so quietly that she did not
hear him go, and left Esme raving in an empty room, until Marie with a
tabloid came to soothe and comfort.
Bertie walked swiftly across London, up through the roar of Piccadilly,
with its motor monsters, diving, stopping, rushing, with its endless
flight of taxis, its horse vans out of place in the turmoil. It was
cold, a thin rain falling; he walked on to narrower streets, and came
to the grey, dull square where Estelle lived with her aunt. It was
London at its dreariest; smoke-stained old houses, blinking out at a
smoke-grimed, railed-in square. A few messengers delivering meat at
area doors, a few tradesmen's carts standing about, now and then a taxi
gliding through, spurning the thin slime of the quiet street. Decorous,
old-fashioned carriages were drawn up at some of the doors, with large
horses poking miserably at their bearing reins, and getting their
mouths chucked as they did it by obese and self-satisfied coachmen. The
self-centred life of a colony of quiet people was making its monotonous
way from free lighting to lights out. People who lived next door and
never knew each other, who revolved in their own little circles and
called it living. Perhaps lived as happily as others, since to each
their own life and drawing of breath.
"Was Miss Reynolds in? Yes?"
Estelle was dusting the china in the big, brown-hued drawing-room, an
appalling museum of early Victorian atrocities, with efforts of the
newer arts which followed the cumbrous solidity; pieces of black and
gold, plush monkeys clinging to worked curtains, fret-work brackets and
tables covered with velvet sandwiched in here and there.
Estelle dusted an offensive bronze clock with positive loathing. It was
a gouty effigy of Time, clinging to his scythe because he must have
fallen without it, and mournfully accepting the hour-glass set in his
chest, which held a loudly-ticking clock of flighty opinions and
habits; evidently, judging by his soured expression, a cross to the
holder. Two large vases containing dyed pampas grass guarded each end
of the mantelpiece; two others held everlastings.
Estelle had once said that the room inspired her with a deep longing to
throw stones there, so as to break some of the monotony.
Mrs Martin, her aunt, padded softly in each morning, moving pieces of
furniture back to their exact places if they had been stirred by
visitors, patting the muslin antimacassars, pausing every time at the
doorway to remark, "Is it not a charming room?" and then padding out
again--she wore velvet slippers--to sit in the room at the back and
stitch for the poor. Mrs Martin had reduced dullness, skilfully touched
up with worthiness, to a fine art.
She gave Estelle complete liberty, because, behind her conventional
stupidity, she herself had a mind which imagined no harm, a child's
mind, crystal clear of evil thoughts. She had married, been widowed,
lived blamelessly. The swirl of London was part of the newspaper world,
"which everyone knows, my dear, the compositors make up as they go on,"
she told Estelle, "except of course the divorce cases, and no doubt
half of those are not true."
The most blameless daily which could be procured was taken together
with the Athenaeum and the Sunday Chronicle.
"Oh, I shall throw them some day," said Estelle aloud to the vases.
"Who is that, Magennis?" said Mrs Martin to the butler. "Captain
Carteret! I trust he has come to arrange an outing for Miss Reynolds."
"He does that often, 'e does," said Magennis, as he went back to his
pantry. Magennis had not a mind of crystal purity. When he was younger
he had been pantry-boy in a large country house.
"Bertie! What is it?" Estelle dropped one of the smaller vases. It
crashed on to the silver brightness of the polished fender, making a
litter of bright-flowered glass and crackling everlastings.
"It's broken," said Estelle.
"And so am I." Bertie crossed the room and took her hands. "And you
cannot ever mend the vase, Estelle, but I wonder if you can mend me."
Estelle turned very white.
"I'm tired," he said drearily. "I feel as if the fates had drubbed me
mentally, until my sore mind aches. We'll get another vase,
Estelle"--for she was picking up the pieces with shaking fingers. "And
I tell you, I have come to you to be mended," he went on, almost
pitifully.
"But I--what can I do?" she whispered.
The room faded; she saw the open sea shimmering blue and green and
opal; she felt again the love she had hoped she had fought down and put
away.
"You can stop pretending," he said. "You can give me a little comfort,
Estelle, a little love. I have lost faith in everything except you.
And--I love you, Estelle," he added gravely.
The rush of mingled joy and sorrow made the girl gasp.
"But Esme?" she whispered.
"Esme was a will-o'-the-wisp--a false light on a marsh. You are the
solid world. Estelle, I don't know where I am. Esme has made a fool of
me--and I can never care for her again. Will you help me--or see me go
to the dogs alone?"
The cunning of man, turning the mother-love in woman, which he knows is
stronger than passion, to his own ends. Man triumphant, merry, full of
strength and hope, she may resist; but man broken, pitiful, needing
her, is irresistible.
Bertie had sat down on the brown sofa; he was looking at her with dazed
eyes.
"I'll help you, Bertie. I'll be all I can ... as your friend ...
remember, only as your friend."
"Child, do you take me for a brute?" he said, as he drew her down
beside him.
Poor Friendship, lending his cloak once more, standing mournfully as
Love flings it over his pink shoulders; knowing so well how the god
liked to hide and mock beneath the solid folds.
"Oh! I am so tired, Estelle," said Bertie.
Friends only--the cloak held firmly. But friends' lips do not meet with
a thrill of joy; friends do not know the unrestful happiness which came
to these two as they sat hand-in-hand--their two years' sham fight over.