On that same Sunday morning, while Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave
contended with little Roger's boredom on the lawn before Matocton,
Patricia and Charteris met by accident on the seventh terrace of the
gardens. Patricia had mentioned casually at the breakfast-table that she
intended to spend the forenoon on this terrace unsabbatically making
notes for a paper on "The Symbolism of Dante," which she was to read
before the Lichfield Woman's Club in October; but Mr. Charteris had not
overheard her.
He was seated on the front porch, working out a somewhat difficult point
in his new book, when it had first occurred to him that this particular
terrace would be an inspiring and appropriate place in which to think
the matter over, undisturbed, he said. And it was impossible he should
have known that anyone was there, as the seventh terrace happens to be
the only one that, being planted with beech-trees, is completely
screened from observation. From the house, you cannot see anything that
happens there.
It was a curious accident, though. It really seemed, now that Patricia
had put an ending to their meetings in the maple-grove, Fate was
conspiring to bring them together.
However, as Mr. Charteris pointed out, there could be no possible
objection to this conspiracy, since they had decided that their
friendship was to be of a purely platonic nature. It was a severe trial
to him, he confessed, to be forced to put aside certain dreams he had
had of the future--mad dreams, perhaps, but such as had seemed very dear
and very plausible to his impractical artistic temperament.
Still, it heartened him to hope that their friendship--since it was to
be no more--might prove a survival, or rather a veritable renaissance,
of the beautiful old Greek spirit in such matters. And, though the blind
chance that mismanaged the world had chained them to uncongenial, though
certainly well-meaning, persons, this was no logical reason why he and
Patricia should be deprived of the pleasures of intellectual
intercourse. Their souls were too closely akin.
For Mr. Charteris admitted that his soul was Grecian to the core, and
out of place and puzzled and very lonely in a sordid, bustling world;
and he assured Patricia--she did not object if he called her
Patricia?--that her own soul possessed all the beauty and purity and
calm of an Aphrodite sculptured by Phidias. It was such a soul as Horace
might have loved, as Theocritus might have hymned in glad Greek song.
Patricia flushed, and dissented somewhat.
"Frankly, _mon ami_," she said, "you are far too attractive for your
company to be quite safe. You are such an adept in the nameless little
attentions that women love--so profuse with lesser sugar-plums of speech
and action--that after two weeks one's husband is really necessary as an
antidote. Sugar-plums are good, but, like all palatable things,
unwholesome. So I shall prescribe Rudolph's company for myself, to ward
off an attack of moral indigestion. I am very glad he has come
back--really glad," she added, conscientiously. "Poor old Rudolph! what
between his interminable antiquities and those demented sections of the
alphabet--What are those things, _mon ami_, that are always going up and
down in Wall Street?"
"Elevators?" Mr. Charteris suggested.
"Oh, you jay-bird! I mean those N.P.'s and N.Y.C.'s and those other
letters that are always having flurries and panics and passed dividends.
They keep him incredibly busy."
And she sighed, tolerantly. Patricia had come within the last two weeks
to believe that she was neglected, if not positively ill-treated, by her
husband; and she had no earthly objection to Mr. Charteris thinking
likewise. Her face expressed patient resignation now, as they walked
under the close-matted foliage of the beech-trees, which made a
pleasant, sun-flecked gloom about them.
Patricia removed her hat--the morning really was rather close--and
paused where a sunbeam fell upon her copper-colored hair, and glorified
her wistful countenance. She sighed once more, and added a finishing
touch to the portrait of a _femme incomprise_.
"Pray, don't think, _mon ami_," she said very earnestly, "that I am
blaming Rudolph! I suppose no wife can ever hope to have any part in her
husband's inner life."
"Not in her own husband's, of course," said Charteris, cryptically.
"No, for while a woman gives her heart all at once, men crumble theirs
away, as one feeds bread to birds--a crumb to this woman, a crumb to
that--and such a little crumb, sometimes! And his wife gets what is left
over."
"Pray, where did you read that?" said Charteris.
"I didn't read it anywhere. It was simply a thought that came to me,"
Patricia lied, gently. "But don't let's try to be clever. Cleverness is
always a tax, but before luncheon it is an extortion. Personally, it
makes me feel as if I had attended a welsh-rabbit supper the night
before. Your wife must be very patient."
"My wife," cried Charteris, in turn resolved to screen an unappreciative
mate, "is the most dear and most kind-hearted among the Philistines. And
yet, at times, I grant you--"
"Oh, but, of course!" Patricia said impatiently. "I don't for a moment
question that your wife is an angel."
"And why?" His eyebrows lifted, and he smiled.
"Why, wasn't it an angel," Patricia queried, all impishness now, "who
kept the first man and woman out of paradise?"
"If--if I thought you meant that----!" he cried; and then he shrugged
his shoulders. "My wife's virtues merit a better husband than Fate has
accorded her. Anne is the best woman I have ever known."
Patricia was not unnaturally irritated. After all, one does not take the
trouble to meet a man accidentally in a plantation of young beech-trees
in order to hear him discourse of his wife's good qualities; and
besides, Mr. Charteris was speaking in a disagreeably solemn manner,
rather as if he fancied himself in a cathedral.
Therefore Patricia cast down her eyes again, and said:
"Men of genius are so rarely understood by their wives."
"We will waive the question of genius." Mr. Charteris laughed heartily,
but he had flushed with pleasure.
"I suppose," he continued, pacing up and down with cat-like fervor,
"that matrimony is always more or less of a compromise--like two
convicts chained together trying to catch each other's gait. After a
while, they succeed to a certain extent; the chain is still heavy, of
course, but it does not gall them as poignantly as it used to do. And I
fear the artistic temperament is not suited to marriage; its capacity
for suffering is too great."
Mr. Charteris caught his breath in shuddering fashion, and he paused
before Patricia. After a moment he grasped her by both wrists.
"We are chained fast enough, my lady," he cried, bitterly, "and our
sentence is for life! There are green fields yonder, but our allotted
place is here in the prison-yard. There is laughter yonder in the
fields, and the scent of wild flowers floats in to us at times when we
are weary, and the whispering trees sway their branches over the
prison-wall, and their fruit is good to look on, and they hang within
reach--ah, we might reach them very easily! But this is forbidden fruit,
my lady; and it is not included in our wholesome prison-fare. And so
don't think of it! We have been happy, you and I, for a little. We
might--don't think of it! Don't dare think of it! Go back and help your
husband drag his chain; it galls him as sorely as it does you. It galls
us all. It is the heaviest chain was ever forged; but we do not dare
shake it off!"
"I--oh, Jack, Jack, don't you dare to talk to me like that! We must be
brave. We must be sensible." Patricia, regardless of her skirts, sat
down upon the ground, and produced a pocket-handkerchief. "I--oh, what
do you mean by making me so unhappy?" she demanded, indignantly.
"Ah, Patricia," he murmured, as he knelt beside her, "how can you hope
to have a man ever talk to you in a sane fashion? You shouldn't have
such eyes, Patricia! They are purple and fathomless like the ocean, and
when a man looks into them too long his sanity grows weak, and sinks
and drowns in their cool depths, and the man must babble out his foolish
heart to you. Oh, but indeed, you shouldn't have such eyes, Patricia!
They are dangerous, and to ask anybody to believe in their splendor is
an insult to his intelligence, and besides, they are much too bright to
wear in the morning. They are bad form, Patricia."
"We must be sensible," she babbled. "Your wife is here; my husband is
here. And we--we aren't children or madmen, Jack dear. So we really must
be sensible, I suppose. Oh, Jack," she cried, upon a sudden; "this isn't
honorable!"
"Why, no! Poor little Anne!"
Mr. Charteris's eyes grew tender for a moment, because his wife, in a
fashion, was dear to him. Then he laughed, very musically.
"And how can a man remember honor, Patricia, when the choice lies
between honor and you? You shouldn't have such hair, Patricia! It is a
net spun out of the raw stuff of fire and blood and of portentous
sunsets; and its tendrils have curled around what little honor I ever
boasted, and they hold it fast, Patricia. It is dishonorable to love
you, but I cannot think of that when I am with you and hear you speak.
And when I am not with you, just to remember that dear voice is enough
to set my pulses beating faster. Oh, Patricia, you shouldn't have such a
voice!"
Charteris broke off in speech. "'Scuse me for interruptin'," the old
mulattress Virginia was saying, "but Mis' Pilkins sen' me say lunch
raydy, Miss Patrisy."
Virginia seemed to notice nothing out-of-the-way. Having delivered her
message, she went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as
imperturbable as an idol's. But Patricia shivered.
"She frightens me, _mon ami_. Yes, that old woman always gives me
gooseflesh, and I don't know why--because she is as deaf as a post--and
I simply can't get rid of her. She is a sort of symbol--she, and how
many others, I wonder!... Oh, well, let's hurry."
So Mr. Charteris was never permitted to finish his complaint against
Patricia's voice.
It was absolutely imperative they should be on time for luncheon; for,
as Patricia pointed out, the majority of people are censorious and lose
no opportunity for saying nasty things. They are even capable of
sneering at a purely platonic friendship which is attempting to preserve
the beautiful old Greek spirit.
* * * * *
She was chattering either of her plans for the autumn, or of Dante and
the discovery of his missing cantos, or else of how abominably Bob
Townsend had treated Rosalind Jemmett, and they had almost reached the
upper terrace--little Roger, indeed, his red head blazing in the
sunlight, was already sidling by shy instalments toward them--when
Patricia moaned inconsequently and for no ascertainable cause fainted.
It was the first time for four years she had been guilty of such an
indiscretion, she was shortly afterward explaining to various members of
the Musgraves' house-party. It was the heat, no doubt. But since
everybody insisted upon it, she would very willingly toast them in
another bumper of aromatic spirits of ammonia.
"Just look at that, Rudolph! you've spilt it all over your coat sleeve.
I do wish you would try to be a little less clumsy. Oh, well, I'm spruce
as a new penny now. So let's all go to luncheon."
V
Patricia had not been in perfect health for a long while. It seemed to
her, in retrospect, that ever since the agonies of little Roger's birth
she had been the victim of what she described as "a sort of
all-overishness." Then, too, as has been previously recorded, Patricia
had been operated upon by surgeons, and more than once....
"Good Lord!" as she herself declared, "it has reached the point that
when I see a turkey coming to the dinner-table to be carved I can't help
treating it as an ingénue."
Yet for the last four years she had never fainted, until this. It
disquieted her. Then, too, awoke faint pricking memories of certain
symptoms ... which she had not talked about ...
Now they alarmed her; and in consequence she took the next morning's
train to Lichfield.