Mrs. Delarayne, hatless and tearful with impatience, was at the gate
waiting for the sound that was to announce the arrival of Lord Henry.
Inside Cleopatra had just recovered from another fainting fit, and
Agatha, who was with her, had rendered valuable help. Mrs. Delarayne had
never considered her weeks at Brineweald as a source of joy; if this
continued, however, they would prove absolutely intolerable.
At last the familiar thumping sound became audible in the distance. Yes,
it was that dear boy Stephen, and someone was riding on the pillion-seat
of his cycle.
In a moment cyclist and passenger dismounted at Mrs. Delarayne's gate,
but the latter alone accompanied the lady into the house.
"Oh, Lord Henry," gasped the widow, "it is really very tiresome. Poor
Cleopatra has had another of her attacks, and I thought it would be best
if she saw you immediately afterwards. That's why I sent for you in all
that hurry."
"I'm afraid the attacks themselves can tell me little," observed Lord
Henry gravely. "It really didn't matter when I saw her. However, I
might just as well speak to her now."
"Half a minute," whispered Mrs. Delarayne, leaving him in the
drawing-room. "I'll go and prepare her." And so saying she vanished into
the adjoining apartment, which, as far as Lord Henry was able to tell
from a glimpse, appeared to be the billiard-room.
High words seemed to pass between the widow, her daughter, and Agatha;
for, although Mrs. Delarayne had closed the door behind her, Lord Henry
could distinctly catch snatches of their discussion. It was clear that
Cleopatra was resolutely objecting to see him, and that her mother and
Agatha were doing their utmost to induce her to alter her mind.
At last Mrs. Delarayne returned.
"Isn't it tiresome," she exclaimed, taking a chair, "now she absolutely
refuses to see you!"
"It's not surprising," observed Lord Henry, sitting down beside her.
"Yes, but she must see you; I insist," Mrs. Delarayne pursued.
"Her indisposition," muttered Lord Henry, "is probably a salutary
refuge. She imagines that she alone knows the cause of it, and that it
would therefore be utterly futile to be examined and worried by people
who cannot possibly trace it to its origin. She knows, moreover, that
even if it is traced to its origin, the discovery can only prove
humiliating to her pride."
"Yes, but----"
"We must manoeuvre."
The widow did not understand.
"I mean, if you and Agatha will only disappear, I'll walk into the room
and prevail upon her to make friends. That is to say," he added,
"provided she doesn't escape meanwhile."
Mrs. Delarayne fingered her necklace pensively, and jerked her head
forward once or twice in solemn silence.
"That's the only thing, I'm afraid," said Lord Henry.
The widow rose, still staring very thoughtfully before her.
"Don't make too heavy weather of it," continued Lord Henry. "It's not
serious. It will all be well in a day or two."
"Really?" she exclaimed brightening.
"Certainly," he said.
Mrs. Delarayne surveyed him a moment. She hadn't the faintest idea what
he was driving at, but such was her confidence in the soundness of his
judgment that she started on her way to fulfil his instructions. There
was but one circumstance that made her feel that Lord Henry was a trifle
unfamiliar to her on this visit, and that was his unusually well-groomed
appearance. In his present outfit he seemed just a little terrifying. It
was as if she divined that his more normal, his more fashionable
exterior on this occasion, made him accessible to other women besides
herself.
She smiled a little nervously and left the room, leaving the door ajar.
He rose as soon as she had gone, heard her say a few words to her
daughter and Agatha, and a second or two later, was given the signal
which announced that the ground was clear.
He entered the room as if by accident, glanced casually round, and in
doing so got a fleeting glimpse of Cleopatra.
She was lying back in a deep armchair, her chin resting in her hand. He
noticed that she raised her head, regarded him with an expression of
mingled interest, fear, and surprise, then slightly stirring in her
chair, looked about her for some means of escape. Her back was turned to
the light so that her face was in shadow, and with the object of leaving
her under the protection of the discreet lighting she had chosen, he sat
down facing her, with the whole glare of the sunlit garden upon him.
"Miss Delarayne," he began, "please don't move on my account. I don't
think I shall disturb you. I heard you would not see me. Quite right
too, perhaps. But surely there can be no harm in our talking, if it does
not annoy you."
The woman in Cleopatra now urged her to show more animation, beneath
this young man's gaze, than was compatible with her avowed condition of
extreme lassitude and feebleness.
"I only said I did not wish to see you," she declared, "because I felt
better alone."
He was a little staggered by the extraordinary beauty of this girl who
so far had not taken her eyes off him. He had expected that Mrs.
Delarayne's daughters would be beautiful,--and in Leonetta he had had
his expectations confirmed. In Cleopatra, however, as he surveyed her
then, he discerned a degree of nobility and pride, which were apparent
neither in her mother nor her sister, and which lent a singular
queenliness to her impelling charms.
"There, of course, you were wrong," he said with gentle persuasiveness,
blinking rapidly. "We are no longer wild beasts of prey who can creep
into caves to recover or die alone. We are human beings, social animals.
Two heads are better than one, even in the matter of getting well."
She frowned and her expression grew more solemn than ever. If this were
Lord Henry, the mental picture she had formed of him had evidently been
very far from the truth; nor had Denis Malster's description of him been
even fair. She wondered, as she examined his fine thoughtful head, and
handsome athletic figure, telling to such advantage in his impeccable
attire, what motive Denis could have had in saying what he had about the
young noblemen before her. She was deeply interested, and for the time
being this feeling overcame every other motive in her breast.
"If people don't understand you," she said, "it is surely better to be
alone."
He smiled in his roguish irresistible way. "If--" he repeated.
A slight flush sprang into Cleopatra's cheeks, and quickly vanished
again. He was distinctly attractive--almost bewildering. She was going
to expostulate: "Surely you don't imagine that," when something which
she read in his face, in his intelligent hands, and in his general
manner made her feel that the words would sound banal.
"I wish you wouldn't stay with me, Lord Henry," she pleaded. He rose.
Whatever she may have meant, the plea sounded sincere enough, and he did
not wish to harass her.
"Of course I won't," he said, "if it is unpleasant to you," and he moved
towards the door.
"You surely want to be out in the sun," she added quickly. "You don't
want to stay indoors. Besides I am better now."
"Yes," he said, with his fingers on the handle of the door leading to
the drawing-room. "One always feels a little stronger when one is
excited. That is only natural. The presence even of the meanest stranger
always causes a little excitement."
She sighed. She began to wish he would sit down again. "But I assure you
I feel quite well now." The conviction was gradually stealing over her
that it was ignominious to be ill in the neighbourhood of this young
man. She asked herself whether he had seen Leonetta, and what he thought
of her, and she was seized by an incontrollable shudder.
"You soon will be quite well," said Lord Henry gravely.
"How can you tell!" she exclaimed, smiling incredulously and with some
satisfaction too as she noticed that he left the door and returned to
his seat.
"Well, any way," he continued, "tell me just exactly what you feel. Try
to explain to me exactly how you feel just before you fall. I need
hardly tell you that it is of course not natural for a girl of your age
to have these sudden fits of collapse. Can you tell me about it?"
There was a pause, and then she replied, with a strain of defiance in
her voice: "I frankly don't know. It's something I can't explain."
"Is it something you frankly don't know, or something you can't
explain?" he demanded.
She looked up as she heard her reply repeated in that form, and was a
little discomfited.
"Will you try?" he added. "It is just possible, though, I admit, not
probable, that I may be able to help you when I know."
"Well--" she began, determined if possible that he at least should never
know the truth.
"Yes?" he interjected eagerly.
"Directly after lunch the day before yesterday," Cleopatra pursued, "--I
must tell you we had curried chicken for lunch,--I felt a heavy
sensation in the pit of my stomach. I felt sick and giddy, my hands grew
cold, and about tea-time, I was walking in this very room, and my knees
gave way."
He looked at her beneath lowered brows, as he tugged at his mesh of
hair. "So you think it is all a fit of indigestion," he said.
She wondered whether he knew that she was lying. "Yes," she said.
There was a pause, and he looked away from her.
"Remember, Miss Delarayne," he muttered after a while, "that it will be
difficult to start me off on a false scent, even if it is as savoury as
curried chicken."
Cleopatra started a little at this remark; she noticed his enigmatic
smile, and her brows twitched nervously.
"I don't see what you mean," she stammered.
"I mean," said Lord Henry, his head still bowed, and his free hand
picking imaginary atoms of fluff from his trousers, "that if you tell me
the truth, our two heads may make some progress. If you deliberately
mislead me, although the task will even then not be beyond the wit of
man, it will be a little more difficult."
"But I assure you, Lord Henry," she protested, "I am not trying to
mislead you."
"Come, Miss Delarayne, come!" he remonstrated. Then he added, after a
pause, "But perhaps I am wrong in assuming that you should feel any
confidence in me. After all, why should you?"
She had never yet been in the presence of a man who inspired such
complete confidence, or who made her desire so ardently to be up and
about, active and well in his presence. Nevertheless her indomitable
pride made her moderate the manner of her reply.
"What can I say?" she exclaimed, pretending to be at the end of her
resources.
He flicked an imaginary feather from his knee. "Shall I prompt you?" he
enquired.
His coolness at once mastered and terrified her.
"How can you!" she ejaculated, her resistance failing.
"Why haven't you told me, for instance," he began, "that you have
scarcely slept for five or six nights."
Her mouth fell. "Lord Henry!"
"Why haven't you said that last night, or perhaps for the last two
nights, you have tried a certain narcotic without much success? Sleep is
a very essential thing, Miss Delarayne. One cannot go without it with
impunity. You probably realise that."
She stammered the beginning of a denial, but the words died on her lips.
She was too stiff with alarm to be able to speak. After all, vanity is a
great power even in the noblest of us.
"Miss Delarayne," Lord Henry continued, "you and I can keep a secret. I
can at any rate. Let me see whether I cannot tell you why you have tried
to mislead me."
Her ears were hot, and she glanced involuntarily towards the garden
door. Had any one else than Lord Henry revealed a fraction of his
ability to pierce her secret she would have fled.
"A good suggestion," he exclaimed, following the direction of her eyes.
"Let's sit in the garden."
He opened the door, and she walked out in front of him,--stiff, proud,
and erect. He noticed a shadow running back into the house, and presumed
it was Mrs. Delarayne.
They reached the small marquee, two or three wicker chairs lay about the
lawn outside it, and they sat down. Now for the first time he could form
a just estimate of his companion's beauty, and he experienced some
difficulty in removing his glance from her. The stay at Brineweald had
tanned her face, and deepened the warm colour of her skin, and though
the recent vigils had somewhat deadened the brilliance of her eyes, they
still flashed with a dignity and independence that were a warning to any
one who might have thoughts of perpetrating an indiscretion in her
presence.
Lord Henry tugged at his mesh, and wondered whether he had better
proceed. This girl's secret, wrapped as it was in her pride and, worse
still, in her vanity, seemed a very sacred thing to penetrate. Never had
he felt that divination could lie so close to desecration as when he
watched this magnificent creature before him, making her last proud
stand in front of the humiliating cause of her breakdown. His heart went
out to her, however; he suddenly felt the impulse, not of the trained
psychologist to cure a patient, but of a gallant knight to save a
beautiful lady in distress. He was prepared to use every weapon in order
to defeat the dragon, and as his strongest weapons seemed to be his deep
knowledge of the human soul, and his long experience in curing it, he
proceeded on his old lines. But how different he was, notwithstanding,
from the Lord Henry of the Ashbury Sanatorium none knew better than
himself. He could no longer be cool and collected. He must fight with
the girl against the canker in her heart as if he himself also felt the
pain of it. He must tear it out and save her peace of mind, like the
therapeutist that he was; but he could not help also being the
fellow-sufferer, so deeply did he feel that he wished to share her woe
and her fears.
"Well," he said, "I was beginning to tell you why you wished to lead me
astray."
"I didn't wish to lead you astray," she cried, almost desperate lest he
should guess the truth.
"Very often," Lord Henry continued, "we can confide in a friend
concerning a blow directed at our hearts, in fact that is actually one
of the uses of friendship. But it is difficult sometimes to confess the
pain of a blow levelled at our self-esteem, at our vanity."
He looked discreetly away as he spoke, but he noticed that she stirred
at this point.
"Not only your heart and your womanly yearnings are at stake here, Miss
Delarayne," he pursued. "These when they are thwarted simply make one
sweetly miserable, languorously self-commiserating,--but it is your
pride and vanity that are concerned."
She regarded him now as one magnetised, hypnotised, petrified.
If every line of his face, and every sign in his whole person had not
convinced her of his exceptional character, she would have fled his
presence even now, never to confront him again.
"These are real savages when they are provoked," he went on suavely.
"What do they care for the destruction their anger brings upon your
body? They would devastate your whole beauty without scruple in order to
calm their tempestuous rage. They begin by undermining the trust you
feel in your own claims. They then proceed to keep you awake at night
and to toss you about in your bed, when you ought to be refreshing your
body with sleep; and, finally, when they have ravished your sleep, they
open your mind to all the hideous spectres and shapes that are always
waiting, like hungry unemployed, to get busy in a wakeful and anxious
brain."
"Lord Henry!" gasped the girl, starting as if to rise.
"I am saying these things for you, Miss Delarayne," he said quickly,
"because it is perhaps too much to expect you to say them yourself, and
because you will find that their expression will relieve you. Oh, if I
can only do that,--surely----"
She looked at him for a moment and noted the fervour in his face, the
energy in his hands, and the honest nobility of his eyes; and anxious as
she now felt to escape from his terrifying presence, she was riveted by
his personality and could not move.
"It was not only the prospect of having all your life to stroke the
cheeks of other people's children, Miss Delarayne, that you dreaded.
This is a natural, noble, splendid dread, it is true, which every woman
worthy of the name should feel when she reaches your age. But there is
something far more poisonous, far more harmful to your system in the
present situation, and that is the thought that you may have all your
life to stroke the cheeks of other people's children, thanks to a
creature who, delightful as she may be, you nevertheless rightly regard
not only as your subordinate, not only as your junior both in age and
claims, but also as one towards whom it is loathsome to you to feel any
such feelings as rivalry."
Cleopatra gripped the arms of her wicker chair, and turned eyes full of
horror upon her companion.
"It is this that is slowly causing your strength to ebb," he went on;
"it is this acid which is corroding your life."
She gasped. "But it is a very real and additional pain," she exclaimed
hoarsely.
"It is, of course," he assented. "It would be absurd to ignore it. Just
as it would be absurd to ignore the extra filip which your presence, or
your part in the business, adds to this, Leonetta's first affair. For
what is a man to her, after all? Another feather in her cap,--another
bauble! She has left school and her maiden's vanity,--we'll call it
self-esteem,--bids her at once try to confirm the high claims she
rightly thinks her beauty and her sex entitle her to make upon the
world. She wants to win her first crown as May Queen. No deeper passion
is involved. And should a man be induced, in his arrogance, to take
these first steps of hers seriously, she would regret all her life what
was merely a schoolgirl's whim. For society would take no pity on her,
and would compel her to spend her life with a creature of whom she had
only solicited the flattery of a season."
Cleopatra bowed her head, and toyed nervously with a bracelet. She was
breathing heavily, but was now showing no desire to escape.
"But there is a difference, a very deep difference," he continued,
"between the purchaser of a pearl necklet and the purchaser of a loaf of
bread. The first is acquiring merely another ornament, another set-off
to her beauty, another weapon in the fight for supremacy, and she
performs the act with a frivolous smile. The other is obtaining a
primitive and fundamental necessity, and she does it solemnly, aware as
she is of its real uses. The first is the schoolgirl receiving her first
attentions from a man; the second is the woman of passion who knows what
life has promised her."
"Lord Henry," Cleopatra ejaculated, "how wonderfully you understand!"
"What aggravates your pain a thousandfold is the thought you are being
robbed of a necessity, by one who uses it as a toy. You feel as a
starving child might feel who sees the loaf that has been snatched from
him being used as a football."
A tear trickled down Cleopatra's face. "That is wonderfully true," she
assented, and brushed the tear quickly away.
He paused and looked at her for a moment beneath lowered brows. A
wonderful serenity had come upon her, and her lips no longer seemed
tormented with words they did not dare to utter.
"What is so terrible, Lord Henry," she said at last, "what the world
does not seem to understand, and will not see, is that a girl with a
sister is placed in intimate, daily, and inevitable contact with the
very woman who is her most constant and most formidable rival. She sees
her grow up and gradually assume womanly shape. She watches the
development of every feature with eyes starting out of her head with
horror. While her sister is at the gawky age, she gets a short breathing
space, because a child at that time is so clumsy, so unattractive and
foolish. But all of a sudden this vanishes. The child becomes a woman,
startlingly beautiful and seductive. She realises it herself, and
naturally wants her successes, as Baby did."
"Who's Baby?" Lord Henry interrupted.
"My sister, Leonetta."
"Oh, I see--go on."
"Then you do everything you can to make her feel she is not grown up
yet. But it is hopeless. In vain you try to thrust her back into
childhood----"
"By calling her 'Baby' instead of 'Leonetta,' for instance," said Lord
Henry.
"Oh, of course!" Cleopatra cried. "I didn't think of that." Then she
continued after a while, "But of course they want to shine, and you can
do nothing. You are expected to love them, cherish them; you are even
expected to take an interest in their clothes, in their hair! You even
have to go and help put the finishing touches, when all the time you
dread seeing her dressed up. It is excruciating, it is brutal. It is
inhuman, Lord Henry! Shall I tell you the truth,--though it's dreadful,
wicked. Well, _I hate_ my sister. I loathe her with a deadly loathing.
My fingers itch to--oh, all through the night I think of some means of
disfiguring her. It is the most diabolical cruelty to put any woman into
the position I am in now. I long to fly away, where I shall never, never
see her again. It's that and nothing else that has given me these
fainting fits. I have controlled my loathing too long. One day, if only
fate is kind, I shall fall down and be killed."
She collapsed at the end of this tirade, and burst into a torrent of
tears. There was no affectation about that flood. It was the expression
of real anguish, of long-pent-up suffering, and Lord Henry knew what
infinite good it would do.
"Come, come, Miss Delarayne!" he exclaimed, still fearing that the
humiliation of the discovery, despite the relief it gave, would prove
too much for her immensely proud nature. "I share your secret now. I am
strong. You will feel my strength with you. You are no longer alone. You
will not have any more of these fainting fits."
She still sobbed, and it was heartrending to Lord Henry to watch her.
Unmoved as he was, as a rule, by women's tears, he felt that these,
coming as they did from such a proud spirit, were almost like blood
issuing from a wound.
"And now what will you think of me?" she said at last, lifting her head,
and drying her eyes. "Now that you have heard how unwomanly I am, how
wicked, how criminally wicked! Because, I suppose, morally speaking, to
lie awake and scheme out one's sister's disfigurement is as bad as to
accomplish it."
He smiled. "You don't imagine, do you," he said, "that I am so
thoroughly modern and romantic as to turn away from an eagle when I find
it has not only angel's wings but also claws?"
She laughed. "How did you manage to know so much about me?" she
demanded. "Ordinary men know and understand nothing. They would be
shocked and horrified, if I spoke to them about my sister as I have
spoken to you. How do you know these things?"
"There is much less difference between human beings than one thinks," he
replied. "To know one decent man and one decent woman well, is to be
intimately acquainted with the rest of the decent world, I can assure
you."
"How I dreaded that anybody should know!" she exclaimed, "and yet how
simple it all seems to me now that you should know!"
"And now why don't you go and lie down for a bit," he said.
She rose, and without looking back at him, walked towards the house. Her
gait was lighter, more assured, more self-confident. It was the gait of
one who had ceased to run the gauntlet.