In the hansom, glad to be alone, Sophy sat with her arms tight against
her breast as though she would keep something in her from bursting. She
felt singing from head to foot like a twanged bowstring. She sat gazing
at the rhythmic play of the horse's glossy quarters, and the soft blur
of the May night. There had been a slight shower. The pavements were
sleek and dark. There was a smell of soot and wet young leaves in the
air, as of town and country oddly mingled in a kiss.
As this idea occurred to her, she made a movement of irritation.
Kisses! Why should she think of kisses? They were nature's most banal
lures--nauseous. And moodily, her eyes still black from the spread
pupils, she recalled Cecil's first kiss and what it had meant to her.
Something golden, vague, wonderful, fulfilling, yet promising more--more
than fulfilment--an opening of new desires, new aspirations, future
fulfilments more splendid still. He had been a great lover. A line
flashed to her. It sparkled through her mind, searing and cynical:
As wolves love lambs--so lovers love their loves.
He was wolf, now--she, lamb. Ah, well; no! He was mistaken--she was
jaguar, leopard, catamount (he had called her a "silky catamount" in one
of his rages), anything but lamb. She could feel her fangs growing. They
were no longer little milk-teeth at which he laughed. Some day--if he
continued to treat her in this way--some day she would strike and strike
with them--deep into some vital part of that which still lived and which
had once been love. Yes; it would be better to drag a corpse between
them than this fierce, bloated, soulless body that had once been
inhabited by love.
But what was it? What had changed him? She had not been unhappy at
first, though shocked by a certain violence in his passion for her which
had verged on the brutal. In her own impassioned ignorance she had told
herself that this must be the man in him. Later, something finer, surer,
stronger than reason, convinced her that this was not so--that the
blazing bowels of a smelting furnace have nothing in common with the
star-sown flame of love. She mused on the origin of the word desire.
"_De sidera_"--a turning from the stars. Yes; his back was toward the
stars.
A waft of perfume from the rose-geraniums in the window-boxes of a house
near which they were passing overcame her with homesickness.
She saw the lawn at "Sweet-Waters," the ring of old acacia trees, the
little round, green wooden tables in their midst, covered with pots of
mignonette and rose-geranium--herself and Charlotte swinging in the
hammocks near-by--the peep of blue mountains through the hedge of box.
Oh! to feel Charlotte's arms around her!
She pinched the back of her hand sharply, feeling the tears start.
Virginia was far away, like her childhood, like her dead mother, like
all the other simple, lovely things that had made life joyous.
How strange it seemed to think that the old, familiar life was going on
there just the same! She had given her big chestnut, Hal, to Charlotte,
when she married Cecil. Charlotte wrote that she rode him every day. Oh,
for a ride through the Virginian fields and woods! Oh, to hear the soft
jargon of the darkies--to have if only twenty-four hours of the old,
free, simple life!
The cab stopped before a house in Bruton Street. This was London.
Perhaps there was no Virginia. Perhaps she had only dreamed it.
When she found that her hostess had not yet come down, she was startled.
"Am I too early? Isn't dinner at eight?" she asked the butler.
"At half-past eight, madam."
"Never mind. I will go up to Mrs. Arundel's room."
She went upstairs and knocked at Olive's door.
"Who is it?" said a sweet, slight voice.
"Sophy. I've come too early."
"Oh, you _darling_!" called the voice. "Come in. It isn't locked." Sophy
heard her add, "Open the door for Mrs. Chesney, Marie."
She opened the door herself before the maid could reach it, and entered.
The room was charming grey and pink. The dressing-table was as elaborate
as a lady-altar. Before it sat Olive, with her beautiful powdery brown
hair over her shoulders. Only one soft puff was in place at the back of
her head. The air was full of the scent of "Chypre," a perfume then very
fashionable and which Sophy disliked. She could not understand why Olive
used it. "Violet" or "Clover" would have suited her so much better.
She went up to Olive, and they kissed each other.
"You darling!" said Mrs. Arundel again. "How stunning you look! And what
luck! Did you think it was for eight?"
"I thought your note said eight o'clock."
"Then it was my beastly handwriting. But I'm awfully glad, all the same.
Now we can have a comfy talk."
Sophy sat in a little Louis XVI chair and watched the hair-dressing. She
thought, as she so often did, how much prettier it would look dressed
simply, without being frizzled so elaborately in front and puffed so
intricately behind. Mrs. Arundel's face had taken on the serious look
that women's faces wear when their hair is being dressed. Her eyes were
large and candid, of a soft Madonna-blue. Her small, prettily shaped
mouth was pastel pink. All her features were small and prettily shaped.
She was the type of woman who still looks girlish at thirty-five. As
Sophy watched her she was also thinking of how even her friends said
that "Olive was never happy unless she had a lover." Three years in
England had taught Sophy that a woman may be an excellent mother, a good
friend, an attentive wife, and yet have "lovers." How strange it seemed
to her! She could not imagine such a thing happening without an upheaval
of the universe--her universe, at least. She could understand a woman,
made desperate by unhappiness, "running away" from her husband with
another man--but to go on living with one man as his wife and having a
lover--lovers---- She had given up trying to solve it. She knew that
Olive's present flame was a Roman nobleman--Count Varesca--an attache of
the Italian Embassy. She seemed to bloom under it into a sort of
recrudescence of virginal charm.
"How you stare with your great eyes, you dear!" said Olive. "Don't I
look nice?"
"You look perfectly lovely."
"Wait till you see what a deevy frock Jean has sent me."
"Jean Worth?"
"Is there any other Jean?"
Sophy laughed.
Then Olive sent Marie away.
"You know, Sophy dear, I really have something to tell you."
"Is it nice?"
"No, it's nasty ... perfectly disgusting!"
"What is it about?"
"Your dear mother-in-law--Lady Wychcote."
Sophy stiffened.
"Well?" she said.
"Sophy dear! You mustn't take it too seriously. Only--I thought you
ought to know. She's saying it everywhere."
"Saying what?" asked Sophy quietly. "Please go on, Olive."
"She's saying perfectly beastly things about your influence on Cecil.
Trying to put it all on you."
"To put what on me?"
"All his--his queerness. She says you've alienated him from his family.
And...."
Even Olive's glib little tongue stuck here.
"Well?" said Sophy, as before.
"She's saying---- Oh, she's really a beast, that woman! She's saying
that you've given him drugs ... taught him how to take them."
"_Drugs?_" said Sophy. Her brows knitted together. She was very pale.
"_Drugs?_" she repeated.
"Yes--opium--morphine ... that kind of thing.... I consulted Jack before
telling you." (Jack was Mr. Arundel.) "And he said I _should_ by _all_
means. You aren't vexed with me for telling you, _are_ you?"
Olive's italics were very plaintive.
Sophy was looking down at the tip of her shoe, which she moved slightly
to and fro on the soft carpet. She said in a low voice, very gently:
"No; I thank you."
Then she turned and went to the window, pulling aside the curtains and
looking blindly out into the soft, pale night.
_Drugs!_ She had never thought of that in her inexperience. All
resentment at her mother-in-law's accusation was engulfed in that
appalling revelation.
Behind her back, Mrs. Arundel stole nervous peeps at the little ormolu
clock on the mantelpiece. That new frock had quantities of hooks and
eyes on it. She wished now that she had not sent Marie away, or that she
had waited to tell Sophy until the gown was on. It was unfortunate. One
_couldn't_ go up to a person who was overcome with righteous wrath and
say: "_Would_ you mind, dear, just hooking me up, before you give way
further to your feelings?"
But just here Sophy turned and came towards her.
"We'd better be getting on with your toilette, Olive," she said.
"What a darling you are!" cried Mrs. Arundel, quite melted. "You're so
_unselfish_.... It's perfectly touching."
Sophy couldn't help smiling.
"It isn't unselfishness," she said; "it's the instinct of
self-preservation. I can't give way to decent, moderate little angers."
She was talking to keep Olive from seeing how deep the thing had pierced
her. And she hooked deftly and lightly, with fingers that were icy cold
but nimble. After she had admired her friend and the new gown
sufficiently, she said: "Was there any more? What motive did she say I
had?"
Mrs. Arundel glanced slyly at the clock again. She had still a good
twenty minutes before her guests would arrive.
"Let's sit here cozily by the window--and I'll tell you _everything_!"
The homely yet amorous fragrance from the white carnations in the
window-box flowed gently over them. It drowned out the smell of
soot--the London smell. They might have been in a cottage-garden.
"My dear," Olive began, "the old cat hates you. That explains
evewything."
"She hates all Americans," said Sophy evenly.
"_So_ stupid of her! Yes; I believe she does. And she's wild with rage
because poor, dear Gerald is sickly--and won't marry. And Cecil has
married _you_ and flouted the family politics."
"Those liberal articles he wrote some years ago?"
"'Liberal'! You never read such radical stuff in your life! The
Wychcotes are the _Toriest_ Tories in England. Yes; he did that. That
was bad enough. Then he went exploring in Africa and got laurels from
the R. G. S. and chucked _that_. But you know it all----"
"Yes," said Sophy.
"He's really awfully able, Sophy--bwilliant----"
"Yes. I know."
Olive paused a moment.
"Can't you do _anything_ with him, Sophy?"
"No."
"Poor dear! Well, I suppose not. He was always as obstinate as--as ... a
Behemoth."
Sophy couldn't restrain a tired little laugh.
"Well, you know what I mean. But when one thinks of how...."
Sophy broke in on her firmly:
"Olive dear, this isn't telling me 'everything.' I want to know what
motives Lady Wychcote attributes to me."
"Really, dear--it's so disgusting of her!"
"What did she say?"
"You _will_ have it?"
"Yes ... please."
"She says you want to get rid of Cecil on account of Gerald."
Sophy was silent for some moments. Olive leaned forward and took her
hand, caressing it.
"Don't mind too much, dear," she coaxed. "Only--be on your guard."