It was about this time that Belinda came to a momentous resolution. She
said to herself: "I've made Morry feel that he wants me. Now I've got to
show him _how much_ he wants me. I'll just clear out and let him see
what it feels like to miss me."
The process of "clearing out" was accomplished by the acceptance of an
invitation to cruise for a week with an aunt of May Van Raalt. There was
to be a gay party of young people aboard. It was the most natural thing
in the world for Belinda to wish to go.
When, however, she told Morris, during their afternoon ride, that Sophy
had consented to this outing, he seemed to regard it as not only a
highly absurd idea but as a personal affront. In fact he was so
outrageously ill-tempered about it that Belinda was in inner ecstasies
at the sureness of her "inspiration." "If he's like this before I even
start, what _will_ he be like by the time I come back?" she thought
gleefully.
She set off on the day appointed, in high spirits, all the higher
because Morris had refused to shake hands at parting and called her a
"shallow gad-about."
But he was shortly to rest in amazement before the fact of how
excessively he cared. Everything seemed strangely flat without her. He
missed her provocative teasing ... the singing of his blood at her look
and touch. The constant, thrilling struggle with temptation. One
certainly "lived" every atom of the time that one spent near Linda. She
kept existence at high-pressure. One could almost _see_ the little
"nigger squat on the safety-valve" of her pleasure-craft, by George! But
then, too, she was such bully fun to ride with and romp with. Nothing
highbrow about Linda. All the same he wasn't going to let her make a
fool of him. But, by George! she was the sort one missed--confound
her!----
The day after Belinda's departure he was again in the full swing of his
old tippling habit. To do without the stimulants both of drink and
Belinda he found beyond him. But even this remedy proved vain. The
flatness left by her absence was not to be dispelled so easily. The
thought of her dogged him night and day.
With Sophy his intercourse was very restricted. On the occasions that
the conventional exigencies of their life brought them together he
treated her with an aloof and ceremonious politeness. But this manner
was not now so much the result of displeasure as of a growing
indifference.
The thought of Belinda was such an obsessing flame that all other facts
of his existence had become like shadows, Sophy among them. He craved
the girl's return so fiercely that he had no coolness of imagination
left with which to regard anything but that desired and immediate
future. What was to be the result of their reckless, hot-blooded drawing
each to each did not seem to him to matter much just then. All that
mattered was that this hateful, gnawing emptiness should be filled. He
was not used to that hungry cramp of "wanting." Even his want for
Sophy--which had for a time given him the wholesome discipline of the
seemingly unattainable--had been only too soon assuaged. In some way,
somehow ... he was lordly in his vagueness ... this horrid vacuum
created by Belinda must be filled by her.
He rushed into the day's pleasures like one hag-ridden. His play at polo
was maniacal rather than brilliant.
Belinda came back one afternoon towards twilight. She was on tiptoe with
delicious anticipation and curiosity. There was in her mood, also, an
exasperated craving, for in disciplining Morris she had subjected her
own heart to the rod.
The butler said that "Mrs. Loring was out, but Mr. Loring had just come
in." Where was Mr. Grey? Mr. Grey was having tea in his private study
with Master Bobby. Belinda's heart sent up a glad little tongue of
flame. The coast was clear, then. She pulled off her gloves carelessly.
No. She wouldn't have any tea. Did Simms know where Mr. Loring was?
Simms thought that Mr. Loring was in the library. He would go and see.
"Never mind," Belinda said indifferently. "I want a book to take
upstairs anyway. Just see after my trunks, Simms. They'll be here in a
few minutes...."
She went lightly towards the library, through the long drawing-room that
opened into it. Her soft, quick steps in her yachting shoes made no
sound. She stopped mid-way the long room and leaned forward from her
supple waist, peering between the folds of tapestry that veiled the
communicating doorway. Yes. He was there. The lights had not yet been
turned on. He was slouched in an armchair smoking moodily. Whiskey and
soda stood on a tray beside him.
Belinda thought she knew well what he was brooding on as he lounged
there in the deep chair, with the cigarette burning out in his dropped
hand. If she had really known all that he was thinking, her triumph
would have been complete.
She stole up behind him--leaned over. Close to his ear, so that her
warm, musky breath flowed with the words, she murmured: "Have you missed
me?"
Ah ... it was worth that week and many more away from him--this crushing
clasp of all herself against him. She had not known he was so
beautifully strong. It assuaged the fever of her breast to be so
bruised. And that kiss--that endless kiss--she had dreamed of kisses
such as this through a hundred wakeful nights....
Sophy had returned within ten minutes of Belinda's coming. She, too, had
asked Simms where Mr. Loring was, and to her also Simms had replied that
Mr. Loring was in the library, he believed--that Miss Horton had just
arrived and joined him there.
Sophy, too, had gone down the long room towards the library. It was
barely dusk. She could see into the further apartment as plainly as
Belinda had done. What she saw was the girl in Loring's arms, and his
head just lifting from that prolonged kiss. She stopped, transfixed, her
breath inheld.
"You imp ... you witch...." Loring was muttering unsteadily.
"But a '_white_ witch'?" cooed the girl.
Sophy heard him laugh low--that exultant, soft laugh which had once so
charmed and disturbed her in the days of their love. "No, by God! ... a
red witch ... colour of blood ... colour of my heart ... flame-colour
... little devil's colour...."
The passion-broken words fell about Sophy like drifting sparks, as she
hurried away from them in an anguish of panic lest she should be
glimpsed by one or the other of those oblivious, hot lovers.
When she reached her bedroom she was breathless mentally and physically.
Reality had fallen upon her like some clumsy, overtaking Titaness. Its
great bulk, heavy and hot and panting, weighed her down. She felt that
she must drag herself from under that dense weight, or suffocate. She
turned the key in the lock--went and stood by the open window--took off
her hat, her cloak, her gloves, mechanically, with quiet deliberation.
Her movements were all quiet and deliberate. She was saying to herself,
"Let me think.... Let me think ..." as though some one were keeping back
thought from her.
It is one thing to suspect--to surmise. It is quite another to see with
bodily vision. Seeing is believing, they say, yet Sophy felt herself,
her inmost self, refusing to believe what she had seen--and heard. This
was just at first, before she succeeded in freeing herself from that
leaden smothering sense of stupefaction.
Within ten minutes her mind was working with lightning speed and
clarity. Now in contrast to her former state, she had a sense of being
giddily light and uplifted above the situation. It was as if her part in
it did not count at all, as if she were nowhere. Or as if being
somewhere, she was conscious on another plane. She had the mental poise
of a Sylphide, surveying from the cool balcony of a cloud the doings of
two Salamanders in their grotto of flames. This feeling also passed
quickly. She found herself realising that she was Sophy Loring--just
simply and painfully a woman who had seen her husband holding another
woman in his arms.
As she faced this realisation, all of pride in her rose to announce, "I
do not care." But no sooner had one part of her said this, than another
part cried out that she did care--intensely, vehemently. She struggled
to clear her mood. She asked herself harshly whether she had any love
left for Morris. The reply came with mortifying promptness. Whether she
loved him or not, she passionately resented another woman's loving him
and being loved by him. She felt humiliated by the crass, primitive
fibres that this wound had exposed in the substance of her nature. Was
she then capable of a blind, instinctive, mean jealousy, when there was
no real love left to excuse it? She did not know that the jealousy for
what has been is sometimes even more bitter if less keen than that for
what actually exists. She was jealous for all the beautiful, unsullied
past that this present act of his defaced beyond retrieval. But then
there was also the angry fire of wounded pride--of hurt womanly vanity
in her flame of resentment against Belinda. She knew this. It humiliated
her to the core. Then her feeling veered again. She experienced a throe
of such scorn for Loring as sickened her. This in turn reacted into a
sort of wild, impersonal regret for the whole thing--for all concerned
in it--Morris, the girl, herself. It was Othello's cry of unspeakable,
confused anguish that echoed in her heart: "But yet the pity of it,
Iago! O Iago--the pity of it, Iago!"...
She rose suddenly with a quick, determined movement and looked at her
watch. Seven o'clock. She and Loring were dining out at half-past eight.
She must have time to think, to reflect. There must not be a sign of
what she knew in face or voice or manner, until she had thoroughly
determined how to act. She must go to this dinner as if nothing had
happened. She must meet Belinda as she had parted from her. She was
deeply thankful that she and the girl were not in the habit of
exchanging kisses. Sophy had strength of will, but not enough to have
allowed her to kiss Belinda or receive her kiss that evening. And as she
thought of the girl's brilliant, sensual mouth, and of that other mouth
to which it had lately clung--she blushed hot, then cold--for that icy
tingle through all her blood was like a cold and bitter blush.
She spent unusual thought in selecting her toilette for that evening.
She desired to look the antithesis of Belinda, so she chose a gown of
dead white embroidered in crystal. She wished to sign herself to
herself, as no longer belonging to Morris--so she wore with it a circlet
of little diamond flames, one of Gerald's gifts to her.
But little by little her mood of lofty disdain passed finally into
still, hot anger. This flashed its fire into her eyes and cheeks. As
Louise set the diadem of frosty-flames in place, she remarked with
conviction:
"_Madame n'a pas ete aussi en beaute depuis longtemps_...."
Sophy had the strangest sense of triumph in defeat, of dark exultation
as she went slowly downstairs towards the drawing-room--the age-old
exultation of the deposed queen who feels that her beauty is greater
than that of her supplanter.