[Page missing in original book.]
Since the death of Robin and Rosamund’s arrival in Liverpool, Father
Robertson had made acquaintance with her sister and with the mother of
Dion. And both these women had condemned Rosamund for what she had done,
and had begged him to try to bring about a change in her heart. Both of
them, too, had dwelt upon the exceptional quality of Dion’s love for
his wife. Mrs. Leith had been unable to conceal the bitterness of her
feeling against Rosamund. The mother in her way, was outraged. Beatrice
Daventry had shown no bitterness. She loved and understood her sister
too well to rage against her for anything that she did or left undone.
But this very love of her sister, so clearly shown, had made her
condemnation of Rosamund’s action the more impressive. And her pity
for Dion was supreme. Through Beatrice Father Robertson had gained an
insight into Dion’s love, and into another love, too; but of that he
scarcely allowed himself even to think. There are purities so intense
that, like fire, they burn those who would handle them, however
tenderly. About Beatrice Father Robertson felt that he knew something
he dared not know. Indeed, he was hardly sincere about that matter with
himself. Perhaps this was his only insincerity.
With his friend, Canon Wilton, too, he had spoken of Rosamund, and had
found himself in the presence of a sort of noble anger. Now, in his
little room, as he knelt in meditation, he remembered a saying of the
Canon’s, spoken in the paneled library at Welsley: “Leith has a great
heart. When will his wife understand its greatness?”
Father Robertson pressed his thin hands upon his closed eyes. He longed
for guidance and he felt almost distressed. Rosamund had submitted
herself to him, had given herself into his hands, but tacitly she had
kept something back. She had never permitted him to direct her in regard
to her relation with her husband. It was in regard to her relation with
God that she had submitted herself to him.
How grotesque that was!
Father Robertson’s face burned.
Before Rosamund had come to him she had closed the book of her married
life with a frantic hand. And Father Robertson had left the book closed.
He saw his delicacy now as cowardice. In his religious relation with
Rosamund he had been too much of a gentleman! When Mrs. Leith, Beatrice,
Canon Wilton had appealed to him, he had said that he would do what he
could some day, but that he felt time must be given to Rosamund, a long
time, to recover from the tremendous shock she had undergone. He had
waited. Something imperative had kept him back from ever going fully
with Rosamund into the question of her separation from her husband. He
had certainly spoken of it, but he had never discussed it, had never got
to the bottom of it, although he had felt that some day he must be quite
frank with her about it.
Some day! No doubt he had been waiting for a propitious moment, that
moment which never comes. Or had his instinct told him that anything he
could say upon that subject to Rosamund would be utterly impotent, that
there was a threshold his influence could not cross? Perhaps really his
instinct had told him to wait, and he was not a moral coward. For to
strive against a woman’s deep feeling is surely to beat against the
wind. When men do certain things all women look upon them with an
inevitable disdain, as children being foolish in the dark.
Had he secretly feared to seem foolish in Rosamund’s eyes?
He wondered, genuinely wondered.
On the following morning he wrote to Rosamund and asked her to come to
the vicarage at any hour when she was free. He had something important
to say to her. She answered, fixing three-thirty. Exactly at that time
she arrived in Manxby Street and was shown into Father Robertson’s
study.
Rosamund had changed, greatly changed, but in a subtle rather than a
fiercely definite way. She had not aged as many women age when overtaken
by sorrow. Her pale yellow hair was still bright. There was no gray in
it and it grew vigorously upon her classical head as if intensely alive.
She still looked physically strong. She was still a young and beautiful
woman. But all the radiance had gone out from her. She had been full of
it; now she was empty of it.
In the walled garden at Welsley, as she paced the narrow walks and
listened to the distant murmur of the organ, and the faint sound of the
Dresden Amen, in her joy she had looked sometimes almost like a nun.
She had looked as if she had the “vocation” for religion. Now, in her
“sister’s” dress, she had not that inner look of calm, of the spirit
lying still in Almighty arms, which so often marks out those who have
definitely abandoned the ordinary life of the world for the dedicated
life. Rosamund had taken no perpetual vows; she was free at any moment
to withdraw from the Sisterhood in which she was living with many
devoted women who labored among the poor, and who prayed, as some people
work, with an ardor which physically tired them. But nevertheless she
had definitely retired from all that means life to the average woman of
her type and class, with no intention of ever going back to it. She had
taken a step towards the mystery which many people think of casually on
appointed days, and which many people ignore, or try to ignore. Yet now
she did not look as if she had the vocation. When she had lived in the
world she had seemed, in spite of all her _joie de vivre_, of all her
animation and vitality, somehow apart from it. Now she seemed, somehow,
apart from the world of religion, from the calm and laborious world in
which she had chosen to dwell. She looked indeed almost strangely
pure, but there was in her face an expression of acute restlessness,
perpetually seen among those who are grasping at passing pleasures,
scarcely ever seen among those who have deliberately resigned them.
This was surely a woman who had sought and who had not found, who was
uneasy in self-sacrifice, who had striven, who was striving still, to
draw near to the gates of heaven, but who had not come upon the path
which led up the mountain-side to them. Sorrow was stamped on the face,
and something else, too--the seal of that corrosive disease of the soul,
dissatisfaction with self.
This was not Rosamund; this was a woman with Rosamund’s figure, face,
hair, eyes, voice, gestures, movements--one who would be Rosamund but
for some terrible flaw.
She was alone in the little study for a few minutes before Father
Robertson came. She did not sit down, but moved about, looking now at
this thing, now at that. In her white forehead there were two vertical
lines which were never smoothed out. An irreligious person, looking at
her just then, might have felt moved to say, with a horrible irony, “And
can God do no more than that for the woman who dedicates her life to His
service?”
The truth of the whole matter lay in this: that whereas once God had
seemed to stand between Rosamund and Dion, now Dion seemed to stand
between Rosamund and God.
But even Father Robertson did not know this.
Presently the door opened and the Father came in.
Instantly Rosamund noticed that he looked slightly ill at ease, almost,
indeed, embarrassed. He shook hands with her in his gentle way and made
a few ordinary remarks about little matters in which they were mutually
interested. Then he asked her to sit down, sat down near her and was
silent.
“What is it?” she said, at last.
He looked at her, and there was something almost piercing in his eyes
which she had never noticed in them before.
“Last night,” he said, “when I came home I found here a note from a
stranger, asking me to visit her at the Adelphi Hotel where she was
staying. She wrote that she had come to Liverpool on purpose to see
me. I went to the hotel and had an interview with her. This interview
concerned you.”
“Concerned me?” said Rosamund.
Her voice did not sound as if she were actively surprised. There was a
lack of tone in it. It sounded, indeed, almost dry.
“Yes. Did you ever hear of Lady Ingleton?”
After an instant of consideration Rosamund said:
“Yes. I believe I met her somewhere once. Isn’t she married to an
ambassador?”
“To our Ambassador at Constantinople.”
“I think I sang once at some house where she was, in the days when I
used to sing.”
“She has heard you sing.”
“That was it then. But what can she want with me?”
“Your husband is in Constantinople. She knows him there.”
Rosamund flushed to the roots of her yellow hair. When he saw that
painful wave of red go over her face Father Robertson looked away. All
the delicacy in him felt the agony of her outraged reserve. Her body had
stiffened.
“I must speak about this,” he said. “Forgive me if you can. But even if
you cannot, I must speak.”
She looked down. Her face was still burning.
“You have let me know a great deal about yourself,” he went on. “That
fact doesn’t give me any right to be curious. On the contrary! But I
think, perhaps, your confidence has given me a right to try to help you
spiritually even at the cost of giving you great mental pain. For a long
time I have felt that perhaps in my relation to you I have been morally
a coward.”
Rosamund looked up.
“You could never be a coward,” she said.
“You don’t know that. Nobody knows that, perhaps, except myself. However
that may be, I must not play the coward now. Lady Ingleton met your
husband in Turkey. She brings very painful news of him.”
Rosamund clasped her hands together and let them lie on her knees. She
was looking steadily at Father Robertson.
“His--his misery has made such an impression upon her that she felt
obliged to come here. She sent for me. But her real object in coming was
to see you, if possible. Will you see her?”
“No, no; I can’t do that. I don’t know her.”
“I think I ought to tell you what she said. She asked me if you had ever
understood how much your husband loves you. Her exact words were, ‘Does
his wife know how he loves her? Can she know it? Can she ever have known
it?’”
All the red had died away from Rosamund’s face. She had become very
pale. Her eyes were steady. She sat without moving, and seemed to be
listening with fixed, even with strained, attention.
“And then she went on to tell me something which might seem to a great
many people to be quite contradictory of what she had just said--and she
said it with the most profound conviction. She told me that your husband
has fallen very low.”
“Fallen----?” Rosamund said, in a dim voice.
“Just before she left Constantinople she saw him in Stamboul by chance.
She said that he had the dreadful appearance that men have when they are
entirely dominated by physical things.”
“Dion!” she said.
And there was sheer amazement in her voice now.
After an instant she added:
“I don’t believe it. It wasn’t Dion.”
“I must tell you something more,” said Father Robertson painfully. “Lady
Ingleton knows that your husband has been unfaithful to you; she
knows the woman with whom he has been unfaithful. That unfaithfulness
continues. So she affirms. And in spite of that, she asks me whether you
can know how much your husband loves you.”
While he had been speaking he had been looking down. Now he heard a
movement, a rustling. He looked up quickly. Rosamund was going towards
the door.
“Please--don’t--don’t!” she whispered, turning her face away.
And she went out.
Father Robertson did not follow her.
Early in the following morning he received this note:
“ST. MARY’S SISTERHOOD, LIVERPOOL, Thursday
“DEAR FATHER ROBERTSON,--I don’t think I can see Lady Ingleton. I am
almost sure I can’t. Perhaps she has gone already. If not, how long does
she intend to stay here?
“R. L.”
The Father communicated with Lady Ingleton, and that evening let
Rosamund know that Lady Ingleton would be in Liverpool for a few more
days.
When Rosamund read his letter she wished, or believed that she wished,
that Lady Ingleton had gone. Then this matter which tormented her would
be settled, finished with. There would be nothing to be done, and
she could take up her monotonous life again and forget this strange
intrusion from the outside world, forget this voice from the near East
which had told such ugly tidings. Till now she had not even known where
Dion was. She knew he had given up his business in London and had left
England; but that was all. She had refused to have any news of him. She
had made it plainly understood long ago, when the wound was fresh in her
soul, that Dion’s name was never to be mentioned in letters to her. She
had tried by every means to blot his memory out of her mind as she had
blotted his presence out of her life. In this effort she had totally
failed. Dion had never left her since he had killed Robin. In the flesh
he had pursued her in the walled garden at Welsley on that dark night
of November when for her the whole world had changed. In another
intangible, mysterious guise he had attended her ever since. He had been
about her path and about her bed. Even when she knelt at the altar in
the Supreme Service he had been there. She had felt his presence as she
touched the water, as she lifted the cup. Through all these months she
had learnt to know that there are those whom, once we have taken them
in, we cannot cast out of our lives.
Since the death of Robin, in absence Dion had assumed a place in
her life which he had never occupied in the days of their happiness.
Sometimes she had bitterly resented this; sometimes she had tried to
ignore it; sometimes, like a cross, she had taken it up and tried to
bear it with patience or with bravery. She had even prayed against it.
Never were prayers more vain than those which she put up against this
strange and terrible possession of herself by the man she had tried
to cast out of her life. Sometimes even it seemed to her that when
she prayed thus Dion’s power to affect her increased. It was as if
mysteriously he drew nearer to her, as if he enveloped her with an
influence from which she could not extricate herself. There were hours
in the night when she felt afraid of him. She knew that wherever he
was, however far off, his mind was concentrated upon her. She grew to
realize, as she had never realized before, what mental power is. She had
separated her body from Dion’s, but his mind would not leave her alone.
Often she was conscious of hostility. When she strove to give herself
absolutely and entirely to the life of religion and of charity she
was aware of a force holding her back. This force--so it seemed to
her--would not permit her to enter into the calm and the peace of the
dedicated life. She was like some one looking in at a doorway, desirous
of entering a room. She saw the room clearly; she saw others enjoying
its warmth and its shelter and its serene and guarded tranquillity; but
she was unable to cross the threshold.
That warm and sheltered room was not for her. And it was Dion’s force
which held her back from entering it and from dwelling in it.
She could not give herself wholly to God because of Dion.
Of her struggle, of her frustration, of her mental torment in this
connexion she had never spoken to Father Robertson. Even in confession
she had been silent. He knew of her mother-agony; he did not know of the
stranger, more subtle agony beneath it. He did not know that whereas the
one agony with the lapse of time was not passing away--it would never
do that--but was becoming more tender, more full of tears and of sweet
recollections, the other agony grew harsher, more menacing.
Rosamund had gradually come to feel that Robin had been taken out of her
arms for some great, though hidden, reason. And because of this feeling
she was learning to endure his loss with a sort of resignation. She
often thought that perhaps she had been allowed to have this consolation
because she had made an immense effort. When Robin died she had driven
Dion, who had killed her child, out of her life, but she had succeeded
in saying to God, “Thy will be done!” She had said it at first as a mere
formula, had repeated it obstinately again and again, without meaning
it at all, but trying to mean it, meaning to mean it. She had made a
prodigious, a truly heroic effort to conquer her powerfully rebellious
nature, and, in this effort, she had been helped by Father Robertson. He
knew of the anger which had overwhelmed her when her mother had died, of
how she had wished to hurt God. He knew that, with bloody sweat, she had
destroyed that enemy within her. She had wished to submit to the will of
God when Robin had been snatched from her, and at last she had actually
submitted. It was a great triumph of the spirit. But perhaps it had
left her exhausted. At any rate she had never been able to forgive God’s
instrument, her husband. And so she had never been able to know the
peace of God which many of these women by whom she was surrounded knew.
In her misery she contemplated their calm. To labor and to pray--that
seemed enough to many of them, to most of them. She had known calm in
the garden at Welsley; in the Sisterhood she knew it not.
The man who was always with her assassinated calm. She felt strangely
from a distance the turmoil of his spirit. She knew of his misery
occultly. She did not deduce it from her former knowledge of what he
was. And his suffering made her suffer in a terrible way. He was her
victim and she was his.
_Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder._
In the Sisterhood Rosamund had learnt, always against her will and
despite the utmost effort of her obstinacy, the uselessness of that
command; she had learnt that those whom God hath really joined together
cannot be put asunder by man--or by woman. Dion had killed her child,
but she had not been able to kill what she was to Dion and what Dion was
to her. Through the mingling of their two beings there had been born a
mystery which was, perhaps, eternal like the sound of the murmur in the
pine trees above the Valley of Olympia.
She could not trample it into nothingness.
At first, after the tragedy of which Robin had been the victim, Rosamund
had felt a horror of Dion which was partly animal. She had fled from him
because she had been physically afraid of him. He had been changed for
her from the man who loved her, and whom she loved in her different way,
into the slayer of her child. She knew, of course, quite well that Dion
was not a murderer, but nevertheless she thought of him as one thinks of
a murderer. The blood of her child was upon his hands. She trembled at
the thought of being near him. Nevertheless, because she was not mad,
in time reason asserted itself within her. Dion disappeared out of her
life. He did not put up the big fight for the big thing of which Lady
Ingleton had once spoken to her husband. His type of love was far too
sensitive to struggle and fight on its own behalf. When he had heard the
key of his house door turned against him, when, later, Mr. Darlington
with infinite precautions had very delicately explained to him why it
had been done, Rosamund had attained her freedom. He had waited on for
a time in England, but he had somehow never been able really to hope for
any change in his wife. His effort to make her see the tragedy in its
true light had exhausted itself in the garden at Welsley. Her frantic
evasion of him had brought it to an end. He could not renew it. Even if
he had been ready to renew it those about Rosamund would have dissuaded
him from doing so. Every one who was near her saw plainly that “for the
present”--as they put it--Dion must keep out of her life.
And gradually Rosamund had lost that half-animal fear of him, gradually
she had come to realize something of the tragedy of his situation. A
change had come about in her almost in despite of herself. And yet she
had never been able to forgive him for what he had done. Her reason knew
that she had nothing to forgive; her religious sense, her conception of
God, obliged her to believe that Dion had been God’s instrument when
he had killed his child; but something within her refused him pardon.
Perhaps she felt that pardon could only mean one thing--reconciliation.
And now had come Lady Ingleton’s revelation. Instinctively as Rosamund
left Father Robertson’s little room she had tried to hide her face. She
had received a blow, and the pain of it frightened her. She was startled
by her own suffering. What did it mean? What did it portend? She had no
right to feel as she did. Long ago she had abandoned the right to such a
feeling.
The information Lady Ingleton had brought outraged Rosamund. Anger and a
sort of corrosive shame struggled for the mastery within her.
She felt humiliated to the dust. She felt dirty, soiled.
Dion had been unfaithful to her.
With whom?
The white face of Mrs. Clarke came before Rosamund in the murky street,
two wide-open distressed and intent eyes started into hers.
The woman was Mrs. Clarke.
Mrs. Clarke--and Dion. Mrs. Clarke had succeeded in doing what long ago
she had designed to do. She had succeeded in taking possession of Dion.
“Because I threw him away! Because I threw him away!”
Rosamund found herself repeating those words again and again.
“I threw him away, I threw him away. Otherwise----”
She reached the Sisterhood and went to her little room. How she
got through the remaining duties of that day she never remembered
afterwards. The calmness of routine flagellated her nerves. She felt
undressed and feared the eyes of the sisters. After the evening service
in the little chapel attached to the Sisterhood she was unable either to
meditate, to praise, or to pray. During the long pause for silent prayer
she felt like one on a galloping horse. In the intense silence her ears
seemed to hear the beating of hoofs on an iron road. And the furious
horse was bearing her away into some region of darkness and terror.
There was a rustling movement. The sisters slowly rose from their knees.
Again Rosamund was conscious of feeling soiled, dirty, in the midst of
them. As they filed out, she with them, a burning hatred came to her.
She hated the woman who was the cause of her feeling dirty. She wanted
to use her hands, to tear something away from her body--the dirt, the
foulness. For she felt it actually on her body. Her physical purity was
desecrated by--she wouldn’t think of it.
When she was alone in her little sleeping-room, the door shut, one
candle burning, her eyes went to the wooden crucifix beneath which every
night before getting into her narrow bed she knelt in prayer, and she
began to cry. She sat down on the bed and cried and cried. All her flesh
seemed melting into tears.
“My poor life! My poor life!”
That was the interior cry of her being, again and again repeated--“My
poor life--stricken, soiled, crushed down in the ooze of a nameless
filth.”
Childless and now betrayed! How terrible had been her happiness on the
edge of the pit! The days in Greece--Robin--Dion’s return from the war!
And she had wished to live rightly; she had loved the noble things; she
had had ideals and she had tried to follow them. Purity before all she
had----
She sickened; her crying became violent. Afraid lest some of the sisters
should hear her, she pressed her hands over her face and sank down on
the bed.
Presently she saw Mrs. Clarke before her, the woman whom she had thought
to keep out of her life--the fringe of her life--and who had found the
way into the sacred places.
She cried for a long while, lying there on the bed, with her face
pressed against her hands, and her hands pressed against the pillow; but
at least she ceased from crying. She had poured out all the tears of her
body.
She sat up. It was long past midnight. The house was silent. Slowly she
began to undress, hating her body all the time. She bathed her face
and hands in cold water, and, when she felt the water, shivered at the
thought of the stain. When she was ready for bed she looked again at the
crucifix. She ought to pray, she must pray. She went to the crucifix and
stood in front of it, but her knees refused to bend. Her pride of woman
had received a terrific blow that day, and just because of that she felt
she could not humble herself.
“I cannot pray--I won’t pray,” she whispered.
And she turned away, put out the light and got into bed.
That Dion should have done that, should have been able to do that!
And she remembered what it was she had first loved in Dion, the thing
which had made him different from other men; she remembered the days and
the nights in Greece. She saw two lovers in a morning land descending
the path from the hill of Drouva, going down into the green recesses of
quiet Elis. She saw Hermes and the child.
All that night she lay awake. In the morning she sent the note to Father
Robertson.
She could not see Lady Ingleton and yet she dreaded her departure. She
wanted to know more, much more. A gnawing hunger of curiosity assailed
her. This woman had been with Dion--since. This woman knew of his
infidelity; yet she affirmed his love for his wife. But the one
knowledge surely gave the lie to the other.
Why did she care? Why did she care so much? Rosamund asked herself the
question almost with terror.
She found no answer.
But she could not pray. Whenever she tried to pray Mrs. Clarke came
before her, and a man--could it be Dion?--stamped with the hideous
imprint of physical lust.
* * * * *
Father Robertson was startled by the change in Rosamund’s appearance
when she visited him two days after she had sent him the note. She
looked physically ill. Her color had gone. Her eyes were feverish and
sunken, and the skin beneath them was stained with that darkness which
betokens nights without sleep. Her lips and hands twitched with a
nervousness that was painful. But that which distressed him more than
any other thing was the expression in her face--the look of shame and of
self-consciousness which altered her almost horribly. Even in her most
frantic moments of grief for Robin there had always been something
of directness, of fearlessness, in her beauty. Now something furtive
literally disfigured her, and she seemed trying to cover it with a
dogged obstinacy which suggested a will stretched to the uttermost,
vibrating like a string in danger of snapping.
“Has Lady Ingleton gone?” she asked, directly she was inside the room.
“No, not yet. You remember I wrote to you that she would stay on for a
few days.”
“But she might have gone unexpectedly.”
“She is still here.”
“I believe I shall have to see her,” Rosamund said, with a sort of hard
abruptness and determination.
“Go to see her,” said Father Robertson firmly. “Perhaps she was sent
here.”
“Sent here?” said Rosamund, with a sharpness of sudden suspicion.
“Oh, my child,”--he put his hand on her arm, and made her sit
down,--“not by a human being.”
Rosamund looked down and was silent.
“Before you go, if you are going,” Father Robertson continued, sitting
down by the deal table on which he wrote his letters, “I must do what I
ought to have done long ago; I must speak to you about your husband.”
Rosamund did not look up, but he saw her frown, and he saw a movement of
her lips; they trembled and then set together in a hard line.
“I know what he was, not from you but from others; from his mother,
from your sister, and from Canon Wilton. I’m going to tell you something
Wilton said to me about you and him after you had separated from him.”
Father Robertson stopped, and fidgeted for a moment with the papers
lying in disorder on his table. He hated the task he had set himself
to do. All the tenderness in him revolted against it. He knew what this
woman whom he cared for very much had suffered; he divined what she
was suffering now. And he was going to add to her accumulated misery by
striking a tremendous blow at the most sacred thing, her pride of woman.
Would she be his enemy after he had spoken? It was possible. Yet he must
speak.
“He said to me--‘Leith has a great heart. When will his wife understand
its greatness?’”
There was a long silence. Then, without changing her position or lifting
her head, Rosamund said in a hard, level voice:
“Canon Wilton was right about my husband.”
“He loved you. That’s a great deal. But he loved you in a very beautiful
way. And that’s much more.”
“Who told you--about the way he loved me?”
“Your sister, Beatrice.”
“Beattie! Yes, she knew--she understood.”
She bent her head a little lower, then added:
“Beattie is worth more than I am.”
“You are worth a great deal, but--but I want to see you rise to the
heights of your nature. I want to see you accomplish the greatest task
of all.”
“Yes?”
“Conquer the last citadel of your egoism. _Ego dormio et cor meum
vigilat_--Send the insistent I to sleep. I said it to you long ago
before I knew you. I say it to you now when I do know you, when I know
the deep waters you have passed through, and the darkness that has beset
you. Fetter your egoism. Release your heart and your spirit in one great
action. Don’t let him go down forever because of you. I believe
your misery has been as nothing in comparison with his. If he has
fallen--such a man--why is it?”
“I know why,” she almost whispered.
“You can never mount up while you are driving a soul downwards. Do you
remember those words in the Bible: ‘Where thou goest I will go’?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps they might be changed in respect of you and the man who loved
you so much and in such a beautiful way. You were linked; can the link
ever be broken? You have tried to break it, but have you succeeded? And
if not, wouldn’t it be true, drastically true, if you said--Where thou
goest I _must_ go? If he goes down because of you I think you’ll go down
with him.”
Rosamund sat absolutely still. When Father Robertson paused again there
was not a sound in the little room.
“And one thing more,” he said, not looking towards her. “There’s the
child, your child and his. Is it well with the child?”
Rosamund moved and looked up. Then she got up from her chair.
“But--but--Robin’s----”
She stopped. Her eyes were fixed on Father Robertson. He looked up and
met her eyes, and she saw plainly the mystic in him.
“What do we know?” he said. “What do we know of the effects of our
actions? Can we be certain that they are limited to this earth? Is it
well with the child? I say we don’t know. We dare not affirm that we
know. He loved his father, didn’t he?”
Rosamund looked stricken. He let her go. He could not say any more to
her.
That evening Lady Ingleton called in Manxby Street and asked for Father
Robertson. He happened to be in and received her at once.
“I’ve had a note from Mrs. Leith,” she said.
“I am not surprised,” said Father Robertson. “Indeed I expected it.”
“She wishes to see me to-morrow. She writes that she will come to the
hotel. How have you persuaded her to come?”
“I don’t think I have persuaded her though I wish her to see you. But I
have told her of her husband’s infidelity.”
“You have told her----!”
Lady Ingleton stopped short. She looked unusually discomposed, even
nervous and agitated.
“I said you might,” she murmured.
“It was essential.”
“If Cynthia knew!” said Lady Ingleton.
“I mentioned no name.”
“She must have guessed. It’s odd, when I told you I didn’t feel
treacherous--not really! But now I feel a brute. I’ve never done
anything like this before. It’s against all my code. I’ve come here,
done all this, and now I dread meeting Mrs. Leith. I wish you could be
there when she comes.”
She sent him a soft glance out of her Italian eyes.
“You make me feel so safe,” she added.
“You and she must be alone. Remember this! Mrs. Leith must go out to
Constantinople.”
“Leave the Sisterhood! Will she ever do that?”
“You came here with the hope of persuading her, didn’t you?”
“A hope was it? A forlorn hope, perhaps.”
“Bring it to fruition.”
“But Cynthia! If she ever knows!”
Suddenly Father Robertson looked stern.
“If what you told me is true----”
“It is true.”
“Then she is doing the devil’s work. Put away your fears. They aren’t
worthy of you.”
As she took his hand in the saying of good-by she said:
“Your code is so different from ours. We think the only possible thing
to do--where a friend is concerned--is to shut the eyes and the lips,
and to pretend, and to keep on always pretending. We call that being
honorable.”
“Poor things!” said Father Robertson.
But he pressed her hand as he said it, and there was an almost tender
smile on his lips.
“But your love of truth isn’t quite dead yet,” he added, on the
threshold of the door, as he let her out into the rain. “You haven’t
been able to kill it. It’s an indomitable thing, thank God.”
“I wish I--why do you live always in Liverpool?” she murmured.
She put up her little silk umbrella and was gone.
There was a fire in her sitting-room on the following-morning. The day
was windy and cold, for March was going out resentfully. Before the fire
lay Turkish Jane on a cushion, blinking placidly at the flames. Already
she had become reconciled to her new life in this unknown city. Her
ecstasy of the journey had not returned, but the surprise which had
succeeded to it was now merged in a stagnant calm, and she felt no
objection to passing the remainder of her life in the Adelphi Hotel. She
supposed that she was comfortably settled for the day when she heard her
mistress call for Annette and give the most objectionable order.
“Please take Jane away, Annette,” said Lady Ingleton.
“Miladi!”
“I don’t want her here this morning. I’m expecting a visitor, and Jane
might bark. I don’t wish to have a noise in the room.”
Annette, who looked decidedly sulky, approached the cushion, bent down,
and rather abruptly snatched the amazed doyenne of the Pekinese from her
voluptuous reveries.
“We shall probably leave here to-morrow,” Lady Ingleton added.
Annette’s expression changed.
“We’re going back to London, Miladi?”
“I think so. I’ll tell you this afternoon.”
She glanced at her watch.
“I don’t wish to be disturbed for an hour. Don’t leave Jane in my
bedroom. Take her away to yours.”
“Very well, Miladi.”
Annette went out looking inquisitive, with Turkish Jane on her arm.
When she was gone Lady Ingleton took up “The Liverpool Mercury” and
tried to read the news of the day. The March wind roared outside and
made the windows rattle. She listened to it and forgot the chronicle of
the passing hour. She was a women who cared to know the big things that
were happening in the big world. She had always lived among men who were
helping to make history, and she was intelligent enough to understand
their efforts and to join in their discussions. Her husband had often
consulted her when he was in a tight place, and sometimes he had told
her she had the brain of a man. But she had the nerves and the heart of
a woman, and at this moment public affairs and the news of the day did
not interest her at all. She was concentrated on woman’s business.
Into her hands she had taken a tangled love skein. And she was almost
frightened at what she had ventured to do. Could she hope to be of any
use, of any help, in getting it into order? Was there any chance for the
man she had last seen in Stamboul near Santa Sophia? She almost dreaded
Rosamund Leith’s arrival. She felt nervous, strung up. The roar of the
wind added to her uneasiness. It suggested turmoil, driven things, the
angry passions of nature. Beyond the Mersey the sea was raging. She had
a stupid feeling that nature and man were always in a ferment, that it
was utterly useless to wish for peace, or to try to bring about peace,
that destinies could only be worked out to their appointed ends in
darkness and in fury. She even forgot her own years of happiness for a
little while and saw herself as a woman always anxious, doubtful, and
envisaging untoward things. When a knock came on the door she started
and got up quickly from her chair. Her heart was beating fast. How
ridiculous!
“Come in!” she said.
A waiter opened the door and showed in Rosamund