She came so silently that Dion heard nothing till against the background
of the night he saw a shadow, her thin body, a faint whiteness, her
face, motionless at the opening of the pavilion; from this shadow and
this whiteness came a voice which said:
“Did you come under the influence of _Defetgamm_?”
“It’s impossible that you see me!” he said.
“I see you plainly with some part of me, not my eyes.”
He got up from the divan where he had been sitting in the dark and went
to the opening of the pavilion.
“Did you come under the influence of _Defetgamm_?” she repeated.
“You know I didn’t.”
He paused, then added:
“I nearly didn’t come to-night.”
“And I nearly went down, after I had come up here, without seeing you.
And yet--we are together again.”
“Why do you want to see me here? We agreed--”
“Yes, we agreed; but after to-day in the forest that agreement had to be
broken. When you left me under the trees you looked like a man who was
thinking of starting on a very long journey.”
She spoke with a peculiar significance which at once conveyed her full
meaning to him.
“No, I shall never do that,” he said. “If I had been capable of it, I
should have done it long ago.”
“Yes? Let me in.”
He moved. She slipped into the pavilion and sat down.
“How can you move without making any sound?” he asked somberly.
There had been in her movement a sort of perfection of surreptitiousness
that was animal. He noticed it, and thought that she must surely be
accustomed to moving with precaution lest she should be seen or heard.
Rosamund could not move like that. A life story seemed to him to be
faintly traced in Mrs. Clarke’s manner of entering the pavilion and of
sitting down on the divan.
He stood beside her in the dark. She returned no answer to his question.
“You spoke of a journey,” he said. “The only journey I have thought
of making is short enough--to Constantinople. I nearly started on it
to-night.”
“Why do you want to go to Constantinople?”
He was silent.
“What would you do there?”
“Ugly things, perhaps.”
“Why didn’t you go? What kept you?”
“I felt that I must ask you something.”
He sat down beside her and took both her hands roughly. They were dry
and burning as if with fever.
“You trick Jimmy,” he said. “You trick the Ingletons, Vane, all the
people here--”
“Trick!” she interrupted coldly, almost disdainfully. “What do you
mean?”
“That you deceive them, take them in.”
“What about?”
“You know quite well.”
After a pause, which was perhaps--he could not tell--a pause of
astonishment, she said:
“Do you really expect me to go about telling every one that I, a lonely
woman, separated from my husband, unable to marry again, have met a man
whom I care for, and that I’ve been weak enough--or wicked enough, if
you like--to let him know it?”
Dion felt his cheeks burn in the darkness. Nevertheless, something drove
him on, forced him to push his way hardily through a sort of quickset
hedge of reluctance and shame.
“No, I don’t expect absurdities. I am not such a fool. But--but you do
it so well!”
“Do what well?”
“Everything connected with deception. You are such a mistress of it.”
“Well?”
“Isn’t that rather strange?”
“Do you expect a woman like me, a woman who can’t pretend to stupidity,
and who has lived for years in the diplomatic world, to blunder in what
she undertakes?”
“No, I don’t. But you are too competent.”
He spoke with hard determination, but his cheeks were still burning.
“It’s impossible to be too competent. If I make up my mind that a thing
must be done I resolve to do it thoroughly and to do it well. I despise
blunderers and women who are afraid of what they do. I despise those who
give themselves and others away. I cared for you. I saw you needed me
and I gave myself to you. I am not sorry I did it, not a bit sorry. I
had counted the cost before I did it.”
“Counted the cost? But what cost is there? Neither of us loses
anything.”
“I risk losing almost everything a woman cares for. I don’t want to
dwell upon it. I detest women who indulge in reproaches, or who try
to make men value them by pointing out how much they stand to lose by
giving themselves. But you are so strange to-night. You have attacked
me. I don’t know why.”
“I’ve been walking on the quay and thinking.”
“What about?”
“You!”
“Go on.”
“I’ve been thinking that, as you take in Jimmy and all the people here
so easily, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be taking me in too.”
In the dark a feeling was steadily growing within him that his companion
was playing with him as he knew she had played with others.
“I’m forced to deceive the people here and my boy. My relation with you
obliges me to do that. But nothing forces me to deceive you. I have been
sincere with you. Ever since I met you in the street in Pera I’ve been
sincere, even blunt. I should think you must have noticed it.”
“I have. In some ways you are blunt, but in many you aren’t.”
“What is it exactly that you wish to know?”
For a moment Dion was silent. In the darkness of the pavilion he saw
Dumeny’s lips smiling faintly, Hadi Bey’s vivid, self-possessed eyes,
the weak mouth of Brayfield and his own double. Was he a member of an
ugly brotherhood, or did he stand alone? He wanted to know, yet he felt
that he could not put such a hideous question to his companion.
“Tell me exactly what it is,” she said. “Don’t be afraid. I wish to be
quite sincere with you, though you think I don’t. It is no pleasure
to me to deceive people. What I do in the way of deception I do in
self-defense. Circumstances often push us into doing what we don’t enjoy
doing. But you and I ought to be frank with one another.”
Her hands tightened on his.
“Go on. Tell me.”
“I’ve been wondering whether your husband ought to have won his case,”
said Dion, in a low voice.
“Is that all?” she said, very simply and without any emotion.
“All?”
“Yes. Do you suppose, when I gave myself to you, I didn’t realize that
my doing it was certain to make you doubt my virtue? Dion, you don’t
know how boyish you still are. You will always be in some ways a boy.
I knew you would doubt me after all that had happened. But what is the
good of asking questions of a women whom you doubt? If I am what you
suspect, of course I shall tell lies. If I am not, what is the good of
my telling you the truth? What is to make you believe it?”
He was silent. She moved slightly and he felt her thin body against his
side. What sort of weapon was she? That was the great question for
him. Since his struggle in the forest of _Defetgamm_ he had come to
the resolve to strike fierce and reiterated blows on that disabling and
surely contemptible love of his, that love which had confronted him like
a specter when he was in the pavilion with Jimmy. He was resolved at
last upon assassination, and he wanted a weapon that could slay, not a
weapon that would bend, or perhaps break, in his hand.
“I don’t want to believe I am only one among many,” he said at last.
The sound of his voice gave her the cue to his inmost feeling. She had
been puzzled in the forest, she had been half afraid, seeing that he
had arrived at an acute emotional crisis and not understanding what had
brought him to it. She did not understand that now, but she knew that he
was asking from her more than he had ever asked before. He had been
cast out and now he was knocking hard on her door. He was knocking, but
lingering remnants of the influence of the woman who had colored his
former life hung about him like torn rags, and his hands instinctively
felt for them, pulled at them, to cover his nakedness. Still, while he
knocked, he looked back to the other life. Nevertheless--she knew this
with all there was of woman in her--he wanted from her all that the good
woman had never given to him, was incapable of giving to him or to any
one. He wanted from her, perhaps, powers of the body which would suffice
finally for the killing of those powers of the soul by which he was
now tormented ceaselessly. The sound of his voice demanded from her
something no other man had ever demanded from her, the slaughter in him
of what he had lived by through all his years. Nevertheless he was still
looking back to all the old purities, was still trying to hear all the
old voices. He required of her, as it were, that she should be good in
her evil, gentle while she destroyed. Well, she would even be that. A
rare smile curved her thin lips, but he did not see it.
“Suppose I told you that you were one of many?” she said. “Would you
give it all up?”
“I don’t know. Am I?”
“No. Do you think, if you were, I should have kept my women friends,
Tippie Chetwinde, Delia Ingleton and all the rest?”
“I suppose not,” he said.
But he remembered tones in Mrs. Chetwinde’s voice when she had spoken of
“Cynthia Clarke,” and even tones in Lady Ingleton’s voice.
“They stuck to me because they believed in me. What other reason could
they have?”
“Unless they were very devoted to you.”
“Women aren’t much given to that sort of thing,” she said dryly.
“I think you have an unusual power of making people do what you wish.
It is like an emanation,” he said slowly. “And it seems not to be
interfered with by distance.”
She leaned till her cheek touched his.
“Dion, I wish to make you forget. I know how it is with you. You suffer
abominably because you can’t forget. I haven’t succeeded with you yet.
But wait, only wait, till Jimmy goes, till the summer is over and we can
leave the Bosporus. It’s all too intimate--the life here. We are all too
near together. But in Constantinople I know ways. I’ll stay there all
the winter for you. Even the Christmas holidays--I’ll give them up for
once. I want to show you that I do care. For no one else on earth would
I give up being with Jimmy in his holidays. For no one else I’d risk
what I’m risking to-night.”
“Jimmy was asleep when you came?”
“Yes, but he might wake. He never does, but he might wake just
to-night.”
“Suppose he did! Suppose he looked for you in your room and didn’t find
you! Suppose he came up here!”
“He won’t!”
She spoke obstinately, almost as if her assertion of the thing’s
impossibility must make it impossible.
“And yet there’s the risk of it,” said Dion--“the great risk.”
“There are always risks in connection with the big things in life. We
are worth very little if we won’t take them.”
“If it wasn’t for Jimmy would you come and live with me? Would you drop
all this deception? Would you let your husband divorce you? Would you
give up your place in society for me? I am an outcast. Would you come
and be an outcast with me?”
“Yes, if it wasn’t for Jimmy.”
“And for Jimmy you’d give me up for ever in a moment, wouldn’t you?”
“Why do you ask these questions?” she said, almost fiercely.
“I want something for myself, something that’s really mine. Then
perhaps----”
He stopped.
“Perhaps what?”
“Perhaps I could forget--sometimes.”
“And yet when you knew Jimmy was coming here you wanted to go away. You
were afraid then. And even to-day--”
“I want one thing or the other!” he interrupted desperately. “I’m sick
of mixing up good and bad. I’m sick of prevarications and deceptions.
They go against my whole nature. I hate struggling in a net. It saps all
my strength.”
“I know. I understand.”
She put her arm round his neck.
“Perhaps I ought to give you up, let you go. I’ve thought that. But I
haven’t the courage. Dion, I’m lonely, I’m lonely.”
He felt moisture on his cheek.
“About you I’m absolutely selfish,” she said, in a low, swift voice.
“Even if all this hypocrisy hurts you I can’t give you up. I’ve told you
a lie--even you.”
“When?”
“I said to you on _that_ night----”
She waited.
“I know,” he said.
“I said that I hadn’t cared for you till I met you in Pera, and saw
what _she_ had done to you. That was a lie. I cared for you in England.
Didn’t you know it?”
“Once or twice I wondered, but I was never at all sure.”
“It was because I cared that I wanted to make friends with your wife.
I had no evil reason. I knew you and she were perfectly happy together.
But I wanted just to see you sometimes. She guessed it. That was why she
avoided me--the real reason. It wasn’t only because I’d been involved
in a scandal, though I told you once it was. I’ve sometimes lied to you
because I didn’t want to feel myself humiliated in your eyes. But now
I don’t care. You can know all the truth if you want to. You pushed
me away--oh, very gently--because of her. Did you think I didn’t
understand? You were afraid of me. Perhaps you thought I was a nuisance.
When I came back from Paris on purpose for Tippie Chetwinde’s party
you were startled, almost horrified, when you saw me. I saw it all so
plainly. In the end, as you know, I gave it up. Only when you went to
the war I had to send that telegram. I thought you might be killed, and
I wanted you to know I was remembering you, and admiring you for what
you had done. Then you came with poor Brayfield’s letter----”
She broke off, then added, with a long, quivering sigh:
“You’ve made me suffer, Dion.”
“Have I?”
He turned till he was facing her in the darkness.
“Then at last you were overtaken by your tragedy, and she showed you her
cruelty and cast you out. From that moment I was resolved some day
to let you know how much I cared. I wanted you in your misery. But I
waited. I had a conviction that you would come to me, drawn, without
suspecting it, by what I felt for you. Well, you came at last. And now
you ask me whether you are one of many.”
“Forgive me!” he whispered.
“But of course I shall always forgive you for everything. Women who care
for men always do that. They can’t help themselves. And you--will you
forgive me for my lies?”
He took her in his arms.
“Life’s full of them. Only don’t tell me any more, and make me forget if
you can. You’ve got so much will. Try to have the power for that.”
“Then help me. Give yourself wholly to me. You have struggled against me
furtively. You thought I didn’t know it, but I did. You look back to the
old ways. And that is madness. Turn a new page, Dion. Have the courage
to hope.”
“To--hope!”
Her hot hands closed on him fiercely.
“You shall hope. I’ll make you. Cut out the cancer that is in you, and
cut away all that is round it. Then you’ll have health again. She never
knew how to feel in the great human way. She was too fond of God ever to
care for a man.”
Let that be the epitaph over the tomb in which all his happiness was
buried.
In silence he made his decision, and Cynthia Clarke knew it.
The darkness covered them.
* * * * *
Down below in the Villa Hafiz Jimmy was sleeping peacefully, tired by
the long ride to and from the forest in the heat. He had gone to bed
very early, almost directly after dinner. His mother had not advised
this. Perhaps indeed, if she had not been secretly concentrated on
herself and her own desires that evening, she would have made Jimmy stay
up till at least half-past ten, even though he was “jolly sleepy.”
He had slept for at least two hours in the forest. She ought to have
remembered that, but she had forgotten it, and when, at a quarter to
nine, on an enormous yawn, Jimmy had announced that he thought he would
“turn in and get between the sheets,” she had almost eagerly acquiesced.
She wanted her boy asleep, soundly asleep that night. When the clock had
struck nine he had already traveled beyond the land of dreams.
The night was intensely hot and airless. No breath of wind came from the
sea. Drops of perspiration stood on the boy’s forehead as he slept, with
nothing over him but a sheet. He lay on his side, with his face towards
the open window and one arm outside the sheet.
People easily fall into habits of sleeping. Jimmy was accustomed to
sleep for about eight hours “on end,” as he put it. When he had had his
eight hours he generally woke up. If he was not obliged to get up he
often went to sleep again after an interval of wakefulness, but he
seldom slept for as much as nine hours without waking.
On this night between two o’clock and three it seemed as if a layer of
sleep were gently lifted from him. He sighed, stirred, turned over and
began to dream.
He dreamed confusedly about Dion, and there were pain and apprehension
in his dream. In it Dion seemed to be himself and yet not himself, to be
near and at the same time remote, to be Jimmy’s friend and yet, in some
strange and horrible way, hostile to Jimmy. No doubt the boy was haunted
in his sleep by an obscure phantom bred of that painful impression of
the morning, when his friend had suddenly been changed in the pavilion,
changed into a tragic figure from which seemed to emanate impalpable
things very black and very cold.
In the dream Jimmy’s mother did not appear as an active figure; yet the
dreamer seemed somehow to be aware of her, to know faintly that she was
involved in unhappy circumstances, that she was the victim of distresses
he could not fathom. And these distresses weighed upon him like a
burden, as things weigh upon us in dreams, softly and heavily, and with
a sort of cloudy awfulness. He wanted to strive against them for his
mother, but he was held back from action, and Dion seemed to have
something to do with this. It was as if his friend and enemy, Dion
Leith, did not wish his mother to be released from unhappiness.
Jimmy moved, lay on his back and groaned. His eyelids fluttered.
Something from without, something from a distance, was pulling at him,
and the hands of sleep, too inert, perhaps, for any conflict, relaxed
their hold upon him. Thoughts from two minds in a dark pavilion were
stealing upon him, were touching him here and there, were whispering to
him.
Another layer of sleep was softly removed from him.
He clenched his large hands--he had already the hands and feet almost
of the man he would some day grow into--and his eyes opened wide for a
moment. But they closed again. He was not awake yet.
At three o’clock he woke. He had slept for six hours in the villa and
for two hours in the forest. He lay still in the dark for a few minutes.
A faint memory of his dream hung about him like a tattered mist. He felt
anxious, almost apprehensive, and strained his ears expectant of some
sound. But the silence of the airless night was deep and large all about
him. He began to think of his mother. What had been the matter with
her? Who, or what, had persecuted her? He realized now that he had been
dreaming, said to himself, with a boy’s exaggeration, that he had had “a
beastly nightmare!” Nevertheless his mother still appeared to him as the
victim of distresses. He could not absolutely detach himself from the
impressions communicated to him in his dream. He was obliged to think of
his mother as unhappy and of Dion Leith as not wholly friendly either to
her or to himself. And it was all quite beastly.
Presently, more fully awake, he began to wonder about the time and to
feel tremendously thirsty, as if he could “drink the jug.”
He stretched out a hand, found the matches and struck a light. It went
out with a sort of feeble determination.
“Damn!” he muttered.
He struck another match and lit the candle. His silver watch lay
beside it, and marked five minutes past three. Jimmy was almost angrily
astonished. Only that! He now felt painfully wide awake, as if his sleep
were absolutely finished. What was to be done? He remembered that he had
slept in the forest. He had had his eight hours. Perhaps that was the
reason of his present wakefulness. Anyhow, he must have a drink.
He thrust away the sheet, rolled out of bed, and went to the
washhand-stand. There was plenty of water in his bottle, but when he
poured it into the tumbler he found that it was quite warm. He was
certain warm water wouldn’t quench his ardent thirst. Besides, he
loathed it. Any chap would! How beastly everything was!
He put down the tumbler without drinking, went to the window and looked
out. The still hot darkness which greeted him made him feel again the
obscure distress of his dream. He was aware of apprehension. Dawn could
not be so very far off; yet he felt sunk to the lips in the heavy night.
If only he could have a good drink of something very cold! This wish
made him think again of his mother. He knew she did not require much
sleep, and sometimes read during part of the night; he also knew that
she kept some iced lemonade on the table beside her bed. Now the thought
of his mother’s lemonade enticed him.
He hesitated for a moment, then stuck his feet into a pair of red
Turkish slippers without heels, buttoned the jacket of his pyjamas,
which he had thrown open because of the heat, took his candle in
hand, and shuffled--he always shuffled when he had on the ridiculous
slippers--to the door.
There he paused.
The landing was fairly wide. It looked dreary and deserted in the
darkness defined by the light from his candle. He could see the head
of the staircase, the shallow wooden steps disappearing into the empty
blackness in which the ground floor of the house was shrouded; he could
see the door of his mother’s bedroom. As he stared at it, considering
whether his thirst justified him in waking her up--for, if she were
asleep, he felt pretty sure she would wake however softly he crept into
her room--he saw that the door was partly open. Perhaps his mother had
found the heat too great, and had tried to create a draught by opening
her door. There was darkness in the aperture. She wasn’t reading, then.
Probably she was asleep. He was infernally thirsty; the door was open;
the lemonade was almost within reach; he resolved to risk it. Carefully
shading the candle with one hand he crept across the landing, adroitly
abandoned his slippers outside the door, and on naked feet entered his
mother’s room.
His eyes immediately rested on the tall jug of lemonade, which stood on
a small table, with a glass and some books, beside the big, low bed.
He stole towards it, always shielding the candle with his hand, and not
looking at the bed lest his glance might, perhaps, disturb the sleeper
he supposed to be in it. He reached the table, and was about to lay a
desirous hand upon the jug, when it occurred to him that, in doing this,
he would expose the candle ray. Better blow the candle out! He located
the jug, and was on the edge of action--his lips were pursed for the
puff--when the dead silence of the room struck him. Could any one,
even his remarkably quiet mother, sleep without making even the tiniest
sound? He shot a glance at the bed. There was no one in it. He bent
down. It had not been slept in that night.
Jimmy stood, with his mouth open, staring at the large, neat, unruffled
bed. What the dickens could the mater be up to? She must, of course, be
sitting up in her small sitting-room next door to the bedroom. Evidently
the heat had made her sleepless.
He took a pull at the lemonade, went to the sitting-room door and softly
opened it, at the same time exclaiming, “I say, mater----”
Darkness and emptiness confronted him.
He shut the door rather hurriedly, and again stood considering.
Something cracked. He started, and the candle rattled in his hand. A
disagreeable sensation was stealing upon him. He would not, of course,
have acknowledged that an unpleasant feeling of loneliness, almost of
desertion. The servants slept in a small wing of the villa, shut off
from the main part of the house by double doors. Mrs. Clarke detested
hearing the servants at night, and had taken good care to make such
hearing impossible. Jimmy began to feel isolated.
Where could the mater be? And what could she be doing?
For a moment he thought of returning to his room, shutting himself in
and waiting for the dawn, which would change everything--would make
everything seem quite usual and reasonable. But something in the depths
of him, speaking in a disagreeably distinct voice, remarked, “That’s
right! Be a funk stick!” And his young cheeks flushed red, although he
was alone. Immediately he went out on to the landing, thrust his feet
again into the red slippers, and boldly started down the stairs into the
black depths below. Holding the candle tightly, and trying to shuffle
with manly decision, he explored the sitting-rooms and the dining-room.
All of them were empty and dark.
Now Jimmy began to feel “rotten.” Horrid fears for his mother bristled
up in his mind. His young imagination got to work and summoned up
ugly things before him. He saw his mother ravished away from him
by unspeakable men--Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Albanians--God knows
whom--and carried off to some unknown and frightful fate; he saw her
dead, murdered; he saw her dead, stricken by some sudden and horrible
illness. His heart thumped. He could hear it. It seemed to be beating
in his ears. And then he began to feel brave, to feel an intrepidity of
desperation. He must act. That was certain. It was his obvious business
to jolly well get to work and do something. His first thought was to
rush upstairs, to rouse the servants, to call up Sonia, his mother’s
confidential maid, to--the pavilion!
Suddenly he remembered the pavilion, and all the books on its shelves.
His mother might be there. She might have been sleepless, might have
felt sure she couldn’t sleep, and so have stayed up. She might be
reading in the darkness. She was afraid of nothing. Darkness and
solitude wouldn’t hinder her from wandering about if the fancy to wander
took her. She wouldn’t, of course, go outside the gates, but--he now
felt sure she was somewhere in the garden.
He looked round. He was standing by the grand piano in the drawing-room,
and he now noticed for the first time that the French window which gave
on to the rose garden was open. That settled it. He put the candle down,
hurried out into the garden and called, “Mater!”
No voice replied except the fountain’s voice. The purring water rose
in the darkness and fell among the lilies, rose and fell, active and
indifferent, like a living thing withdrawn from him, wrapped in its own
mystery.
“Mater!” he called again, in a louder, more resolute, voice. “Mater!
Mater!”
* * * * *
In an absolutely still night a voice can travel very far. On the highest
terrace of the garden in the blackness of the pavilion Mrs. Clarke moved
sharply. She sat straight up on the divan, rigid, with her hands pressed
palm downwards on the cushions. Dion had heard nothing, and did not
understand the reason for her abrupt, almost violent, movement.
“Why . . . ?” he began.
She caught his wrist and held it tightly, compressing her fingers on it
with a fierce force that amazed him.
“Mater!”
Had he really heard the word, or had he imagined it?
“Mater!”
He had heard it.
“It’s Jimmy!”
She had her thin lips close to his ear. She still held his wrist in a
grip of iron.
“He’s at the bottom of the garden. He’ll come up here. He won’t wait. Go
down and meet him.”
“But----”
“Go down! I’ll hide among the trees. Let him come up here, or bring him
up. He must come. Be sure he comes inside. While you go I’ll light the
lamp. I can do it in a moment. You couldn’t sleep. You came here to
read. Of course you know nothing about me. Keep him here for five or
ten minutes. You can come down then and help him to look for me. Go at
once.”
She took away her hand.
“My whole future depends upon you!”
Dion got up and went out. As he went he heard her strike a match.
Scarcely knowing for a moment what he was doing, acting mechanically,
in obedience to instinct, but always feeling a sort of terrible driving
force behind him, he traversed the terrace on which the pavilion stood,
passed the great plane tree and the wooden seat, and began to descend.
As he did so he heard again Jimmy’s voice crying:
“Mater!”
“Jimmy!” he called out, in a loud voice, hurrying on.
As the sound died away he knew it had been nonchalant. Surely she had
made it so!
“Jimmy!” he called again. “What’s up. What’s the matter?”
There was no immediate reply, but in the deep silence Dion heard
hurrying steps, and then:
“Mr. Leith!”
“Hallo!”
“Mr. Leith--it is you, is it?”
“Yes. What on earth’s the matter?”
“Stop a sec! I----”
The feet were pounding upward. Almost directly, in pyjamas and the
slippers, which somehow still remained with him, Jimmy stood by Dion in
the dark, breathing hard.
“Jimmy, what’s the matter? What has happened?”
“I say, why are you here?”
“I couldn’t sleep. The night was so hot. I had nothing to read in my
rooms. Besides they’re stuck down right against the quay. You know your
mother’s kind enough to let me have a key of the garden gate. I thought
I might get more air on the top terrace. I was reading in the pavilion
when I thought I heard a call.”
“Then the mater isn’t there?”
“Your mother?”
“Yes!”
“Of course not. Come on up!”
Dion took the boy by the arm with decision, and slowly led him upwards.
“What’s this about your mother? Do you mean she isn’t asleep?”
“Asleep? She isn’t in her bedroom! She hasn’t been there!”
“Hasn’t been there?”
“Hasn’t been to bed at all! I’ve been to her sitting-room--you know,
upstairs--she isn’t there. I’ve been in all the rooms. She isn’t
anywhere. She must be somewhere about here.”
They had arrived in front of the pavilion backed by trees. Looking in,
Dion saw a lighted lamp. The slide of jeweled glass had been removed
from it. A white ray fell on an open book laid on a table.
“I was reading here”--he looked--“a thing called ‘The Kasidah.’ Sit
down!” He pulled the boy down. “Now what is all this? Your mother must
be in the house.”
“But I tell you she isn’t!”
Dion had sat down between Jimmy and the opening on to the terrace. It
occurred to him that he ought to have induced the boy to sit with his
back to the terrace and his face turned towards the room. It was too
late to do that now.
“I tell you she isn’t!” Jimmy repeated, with a sort of almost fierce
defiance.
He was staring hard at Dion. His hair was almost wildly disordered, and
his face looked pale and angry in the ray of the lamp. Dion felt that
there was suspicion in his eyes. Surely those eyes were demanding of him
the woman who was hiding among the trees.
“Where have you looked?” he said.
“I tell you I’ve looked everywhere,” said Jimmy, doggedly.
“Did you mother go to bed when you did?”
“No. I went very early. I was so infernally sleepy.”
“Where did you leave her?”
“In the drawing-room. She was playing the piano. But what’s the good of
that? What time did you come here?”
“I! Oh, not till very late indeed.”
“Were there any lights showing when you came?”
“Lights! No! But it was ever so much too late for that.”
“Did you go on to the terrace by the drawing-room?”
“No. I came straight up here. It never occurred to me that any one
would be up at such an hour. Besides, I didn’t want to disturb any one,
especially your mother.”
“Well, just now I found the drawing-room window wide open, and mater’s
bed hasn’t been touched. What do you make of that?”
Before Dion could reply the boy abruptly started up.
“I heard something. I know I did.”
As naturally as he could Dion got between Jimmy and the opening on to
the terrace, and, forestalling the boy, looked out. He saw nothing; he
could not have said with truth that any definite sound reached his
ears; but he felt that at that exact moment Mrs. Clarke escaped from the
terrace, and began to glide down towards the house below.
“There’s nothing! Come and see for yourself,” he said casually.
Jimmy pushed by him, then stood perfectly still, staring at the darkness
and listening intently.
“I don’t hear it now!” he acknowledged gruffly.
“What did you think you heard?”
“I _did_ hear something. I couldn’t tell you what it was.”
“Have you looked all through the garden?”
“You know I haven’t. You heard me calling down at the bottom. You must
have, because you answered me.”
“We’d better have a good look now. Just wait one minute while I put out
the lamp. I’ll put away the book I was reading, too.”
“Right you are!” said the boy, still gruffly.
He waited on the terrace while Dion went into the pavilion. As Dion took
up “The Kasidah” he glanced down at the page at which Mrs. Clarke had
chanced to set the book open, and read:
“Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from
None but self expect applause----”
With a feeling of cold and abject soul-nausea he shut the book, put
it away on a bookshelf in which he saw a gap, and went to turn out the
lamp. As the flame flickered and died out he heard Jimmy’s foot shift on
the terrace.
“Do what thy manhood bids thee do----”
Dion stood for a moment in the dark. He was in a darkness greater than
any which reigned in the pavilion. His soul seemed to him to be pressing
against it, to be hemmed in by it as by towering walls of iron. For
an instant he shut his eyes. And when he did that he saw, low down, a
little boy’s figure, two small outstretched hands groping.
Robin!
“Aren’t you coming, Mr. Leith? What’s the matter?”
“I was just seeing that the lamp was thoroughly out.”
“Well----”
Dion came out.
“We’ll look all over the garden. But if your mother had been in it she
must have heard you calling her. I did, although I was inside there
reading.”
“I know. I thought of that too,” returned Jimmy.
And Dion fancied that the boy’s voice was very cold; Dion fancied this
but he was not sure. His conscience might be tricking him. He hoped that
it was tricking him.
“We’d better look among the trees,” he said. “And then we’ll go to the
terrace below.”
“It’s no use looking among the trees,” Jimmy returned. “If she was up
here she must have heard us talking all this time.”
Abruptly he led the way to the steps near the plane tree. Dion followed
him slowly. Was it possible that Jimmy had guessed? Was it possible that
Jimmy had caught a glimpse of his mother escaping? The boy’s manner was
surely almost hostile.
They searched the garden in silence, and at length found themselves by
the fountain close to the French window of the drawing-room.
“You mother must be in the house,” said Dion firmly.
“But I know she isn’t!” Jimmy retorted, with a sort of dull fixed
obstinacy.
“Did you rouse the servants?”
“No.”
“Where do they sleep?”
“Away from us, by themselves.”
“You’d better go and look again. If you can’t find your mother perhaps
you’d better wake the servants.”
“I know,” said Jimmy, in a voice that had suddenly changed, become
brighter, more eager--“I’ll go to Sonia.”
“Your mother’s maid? That’s it. She may know something. I’ll wait down
here at the window. Got a candle?”
“Yes. I left it in there by the piano.”
He felt his way in and, almost immediately, struck a light. The candle
flickered across his face and his disordered hair as he disappeared.
Dion waited by the fountain.
Where would Mrs. Clarke be? How would she explain matters? Would she
have had time to----? Oh yes! She would have had time to be ready with
some quite simple, yet quite satisfactory, piece of deception. Jimmy
would find her, and she would convince him of all that it was necessary
he should be convinced of.
Dion’s chin sank down and his head almost drooped. He felt mortally
tired as he waited here. Already a very faint grayness of the coming
dawn was beginning to filter in among the darknesses.
Another day to face! How could he face it? He had, he supposed, been
what is called “true” to the woman who had given herself to him, but how
damnably false he had been to himself that night!
Meanwhile Jimmy went upstairs, frowning and very pale. He went again to
his mother’s bedroom and found it empty. The big bed, turned down, had
held no sleeper. Nothing had been changed in the room since he had
been away in the garden. He did not trouble to look once more in the
adjoining sitting-room, but hurried towards the servants’ quarters. The
double doors were shut. Softly he opened them and passed through into
a wooden corridor. At the far end of it were two rooms sacred to Sonia,
the Russian maid. The first room she slept in; the second was a large
airy chamber lined with cupboards. In this she worked. She was a very
clever needlewoman, expert in the mysteries of dressmaking.
As Jimmy drew near to the door of Sonia’s workroom he heard a low murmur
of voices coming from within. Evidently Sonia was there, talking to some
one. He crept up and listened.
Very tranquil the voices sounded. They were talking in French. One was
his mother’s, and he heard her say:
“Another five minutes, Sonia, and perhaps I shall be ready for bed. At
last I’m beginning to feel as if I might be able to sleep. If only
I were like Jimmy! He doesn’t know anything about the torments of
insomnia.”
“Poor Madame!” returned Sonia, in her rather thick, but pleasantly soft,
voice. “Your head a little back. That’s better!”
Jimmy was aware of an odd, very faint, sound. He couldn’t make out what
it was.
“Mater!” he said.
And he tapped on the door.
“Who’s that?” said Sonia’s voice.
“It’s Jimmy!”
The door was opened by the maid, and he saw his mother in a long, very
thin white dressing-gown, seated in an arm-chair before a mirror. Her
colorless hair flowed over the back of the chair, against which her
little head was leaning, supported by a silk cushion. Her face looked
very white and tired, and the lids drooped over her usually wide-open
eyes, giving her a strange expression of languor, almost of drowsiness.
Sonia held a silver-backed brush in each hand.
“Monsieur Jimmy!” she said.
“Jimmy!” said Mrs. Clarke. “What’s the matter?”
She lifted her head from the cushion, and sat straight up. But she still
looked languid.
“What is it? Are you ill?”
“No, mater! But I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
There was a boyish reproach in his voice.
“Looking for me in the middle of the night! Why?”
Jimmy began to explain matters.
“At last I thought I’d look in the garden. I shouted out for you, and
who should answer but Mr. Leith?” he presently said.
His mother--he noticed it--woke up fully at this point in the narrative.
“Mr. Leith!” she said, with strong surprise. “How could he answer you?”
“He was up in the pavilion reading a book.”
Mrs. Clarke looked frankly astonished. Her eyes traveled to Sonia, whose
broad face was also full of amazement.
“At this hour!” said Mrs. Clarke.
“He couldn’t sleep either,” said Jimmy, quite simply. “He’s waiting out
there now to know whether I’ve found you.”
Mrs. Clarke smiled faintly.
“What a to do!” she said, with just a touch of gentle disdain. “And all
because I suffer from insomnia. Run down to him, Jimmy, and tell him
that as I felt it was useless to go to bed I sat by the fountain till I
was weary, then read in my sitting-room, and finally came to Sonia to be
brushed into sleep. Set his mind at rest about me if you can.”
She smiled again.
Somehow that smile made Jimmy feel very small.
“And go back to bed, dear boy.”
She put out one hand, drew him to her, and gave him a gentle kiss with
lips which felt very calm.
“I’m sorry you were worried about me.”
“Oh, that’s all right, mater!” said Jimmy, rather awkwardly. “I didn’t
know what to think. You see--”
“Of course you couldn’t guess that I was having my hair brushed. Now
go straight to bed, after you’ve told Mr. Leith. I’m coming too in a
minute.”
As Jimmy left the room Sonia was again at work with the two
hair-brushes.
A moment later Jimmy reappeared at the French window of the
drawing-room. Dion lifted his head, but did not move from the place
where he was standing close to the fountain.
“It’s all right, Mr. Leith,” said Jimmy. “I’ve found mater.”
“Where was she?”
“In Sonia’s room having her hair brushed.”
Dion stared towards him but said nothing.
“She told me I was to set your mind at rest.”
“Did she?”
“Yes. I believe she thought us a couple of fools for kicking us such a
dust about her.”
Dion said nothing.
“I don’t know, but I’ve an idea girls and women often think they can
laugh at us,” added Jimmy. “Anyhow, it’ll be a jolly long time before
I put myself in a sweat about the mater again. I thought--I don’t know
what I thought, and all the time she was half asleep and having her hair
brushed. She made me feel ass number one. Good night.”
“Good night.”
The boy shut the window, bent down and bolted it on the inside.
Dion looked at the gray coming of the new day.