Dodo was up again in London at the end of the week, as she had told the
Prince. Jack was also staying in town, and they often spent most of the
day together; riding occasionally in the deserted Row, or sitting, as
they were now, in Dodo's room in the Eaton Square house. They were both
leaving for the country in a few days' time, where they had arranged
to come across one another at various houses, and Dodo, at least, was
finding these few days rather trying. She and Jack had arranged to have
them together, quite alone, while they were in Switzerland, and Dodo
had overlooked the fact that they might be rather hard to fill up. Not
that she was disappointed in Jack. He was exactly what she had always
supposed him to be. She never thought that he was very stimulating,
though never dull, and she was quite conscious of enough stimulus in
herself for that. For the rest he was quite satisfactory. But she was
distinctly disappointed in herself. She felt as if her taste had been
vitiated by drinking brandy. Mild flavours and very good bouquets of
vintages that had pleased her before, sent no message from her palate
to her brain. It was like the effect produced by the touch of hot
iron on the skin, that forms a hard numb surface, which is curiously
insensitive to touch. Dodo felt as if her powers of sensation had been
seared in this way. Her perceptions no longer answered quickly to the
causes that excited them; a layer of dull, unresponsive material lay
between her and her world. She thought that her nerves and tissues were
sound enough below. This numbness was only superficial, the burn would
heal, and her skin would become pliant and soft again; and if she was
conscious of all this and its corresponding causes, it could hardly be
expected that Jack would be unconscious of it and its corresponding
effects.
On this particular morning Dodo was particularly aware of it. It was
raining dismally outside, and the sky was heavy and grey. The road was
being repaired, and a traction engine was performing its dismal office
in little aimless runs backwards and forwards. The official with a red
flag had found there were no vehicles for him to warn and he had sat
down on a heap of stones, and was smoking. There was a general air of
stagnation, a sense of the futility of doing anything, and no one was
more conscious of it than Dodo. She felt that there was only one event
that was likely to interest her, and yet, in a way, she shrank from
that. It was the searing process over again.
She wondered whether it would do any good to tell Jack of the fact that
the Prince was down at Wokingham. She found the burden of an unshared
secret exceptionally trying. Dodo had been so accustomed to be before
the footlights all her life, that anything of the nature of a secret
was oppressive. Her conduct to her first husband she did not regard as
such. It was only an admirable piece of by-play, which the audience
fully appreciated. Did Dodo then never think of her late husband with
tenderness? Well, not often.
A thought seldom remained long in Dodo's mind without finding
expression. She turned round suddenly.
"Jack, Prince Waldenech was at Wokingham."
"What was he there for?" asked Jack quickly.
"I think he came to see me," remarked Dodo serenely.
"I hope you didn't see him," he replied.
Dodo felt a slight stimulus in this subject.
"I saw him," she said, "because he came to see me, as they say in the
French exercise books. I couldn't hide my head under the hearthrug like
an ostrich--hot that they hide their heads under hearth-rugs, but the
principle is the same. He walked in as cool as a cucumber, and said,
'Howdy?' So we talked, and he said he'd be glad to call you out, and
you'd be glad to call him out, and we generally chattered, and then I
made him angry."
"Why did he propose to call me out?" asked Jack coldly.
"Oh, he said he wouldn't call you out," remarked Dodo. "He said nothing
would induce him to. I never said he proposed to call you out. You're
stupid this morning, Jack."
"That man is an unutterable cad."
Dodo opened her eyes.
"Oh, he's nothing of the kind," she said. "Besides, he's a great friend
of mine, so even if he was a cad it wouldn't matter."
"How did you make him angry?" demanded Jack.
"I told him I was going away to write some letters. It was rather
damping, wasn't it? I hadn't got any letters to write, and he knew it,
and I knew he knew it, and so on."
Jack was silent. He had been puzzled by Dodo's comparative reserve
during the last few days. He felt as if he had missed a scene in a
play, that there were certain things unexplained. He had even gone so
far as to ask Dodo if anything was the matter, an inquiry which she
detested profoundly. She laid down a universal rule on this occasion.
"Nothing is ever the matter," she had said, "and if it was, my not
telling you would show that I didn't wish for sympathy, or help, or
anything else. I tell you all I want you to know."
"You mean something is the matter, and you don't want me to know it,"
said Jack, rather unwisely.
They had been riding together when this occurred, and at that point
Dodo had struck her horse savagely with her whip, and put an end to
the conversation by galloping furiously off. When Jack caught her up
she was herself again, and described how a selection of Edith's dogs
had kept the postman at bay one morning, until the unusual absence of
barking and howling had led their mistress to further investigations,
which were rewarded by finding the postman sitting in the boat-house,
and defending himself with the punt pole.
Jack was singularly easy-going, and very trustful, and he did not
bother his head any more about it at the time. But we have to attain
an almost unattainable dominion over our minds to prevent thoughts
suddenly starting up in front of us. When a thought has occurred
to one, it is a matter of training and practice to encourage or
dismiss it, but the other is beyond the reach of the general. And as
Dodo finished these last words, Jack found himself suddenly face to
face with a new thought. It was so new that it startled him, and he
looked at it again. At moments like these two people have an almost
supernatural power of intuition towards each other. Dodo was standing
in the window, and Jack was sitting in a very low chair, looking
straight towards her, with the light from the window full on his face,
and at that moment she read his thought as clearly as if he had spoken
it, for it was familiar already to her.
She felt a sudden impulse of anger.
"How dare you think that?" she said.
Jack needed no explanation, and he behaved well.
"Dodo," he said gently, "you have no right to say that, but you have
said it now. If there is not anything I had better know, just tell
me so, for your own sake and for mine. I can only plead for your
forgiveness. It was by no will of mine that such a thought crossed my
mind. You can afford to be generous, Dodo."
Something in his speech made Dodo even angrier.
"You are simply forcing my confidence," she said. "If it was something
you had better know, do you suppose that----"
She stopped abruptly.
Jack rose from his chair and stood by her in the window.
"You are not very generous to me," he said. "We are old friends though
we are lovers."
"Take care you don't lose my friendship, then," said Dodo fiercely. "It
is no use saying 'auld lang syne' when 'auld lang syne' is in danger.
It would be like singing 'God save the Queen' when she was dying. You
should never recall old memories when they are strained."
Jack was getting a little impatient, though he was not frightened yet.
"Dodo, you really are rather unreasonable," he said. "To begin with,
you quarrel with an unspoken thought, and you haven't even given me a
definite accusation."
"That is because it is unnecessary, and you know it," said Dodo.
"However, as you like. You think you have cause to be jealous or
foolish or melodramatic about Prince Waldenech. Dear me, it is quite
like old times."
Jack turned on her angrily.
"If you propose to treat me as you treated that poor man, who was the
best man I ever knew," he said, "the sooner you learn your mistake the
better for us both. It would have been in better taste not to have
referred to that."
"At present that is beside the point," said Dodo. "Was that your
unspoken thought, or was it not?"
"If I would not insult you by speaking my thought whether you are
right or not," said Jack, "I shall not insult you by answering that
question. My answer shall take another form. Listen, Dodo. The Prince
is in love with you. He proposed to you at Zermatt. That passionless
inhuman piece of mechanism, his sister, told me how much he was in love
with you. She meant it as a compliment. He is a dangerous, bad man.
He forces himself on you. He went down to Wokingham to see you; you
told me so yourself. He is dangerous and strong. For God's sake keep
away from him. I don't distrust you; but I am afraid you may get to
distrust yourself. He will make you afraid of crossing his will. Dodo,
will you do this for me? It is quite unreasonable probably, but I am
unreasonable when I think of you."
"Oh, my dear Jack," said Dodo impatiently, "you really make me angry.
It is dreadfully bad form to be angry, and it is absurd that you and I
should quarrel. You've got such a low opinion of me; though I suppose
that's as much my fault as yours. Your opinion is fiction, but I am the
fact on which it is founded, and what do you take me for? The Prince
telegraphed from Dover to ask if I would see him, and I deliberately
sent no answer. How he found out where I was I don't know. I suppose he
got hold of the telegram I sent here to say my address was uncertain.
Does that look as if I wanted to see him so dreadfully?"
"I never said you did want to see him," said Jack. "I said he very much
wanted to see you, and what you say proves it."
"Well, what then?" said Dodo. "You wanted to see me very much when I
was married. Would you have thought it reasonable if Chesterford had
entreated me never to see you--to keep away for God's sake, as you said
just now?"
"I am not the Prince," said Jack, "neither am I going to be treated as
you treated your husband. Do not let us refer to him again; it is a
desecration."
"You mean that in the light of subsequent events it would have been
reasonable in him to ask me to keep away from you?"
"Yes," said he.
Jack looked Dodo full in the face, in the noble shame of a confessed
sin: In that moment he was greater, perhaps, and had risen higher above
his vague self-satisfied indifference than ever before. Dodo felt it,
and it irritated her, it seemed positively unpardonable.
"Perhaps you do not see that you involve me in your confession," she
said with cold scorn. "I decline to be judged by your standards,
thanks."
Jack felt a sudden immense pity and anger for her. She would not, or
could not, accept the existence of other points of view than her own.
"Apparently you decline to consider the fact of other standards at all."
"I don't accept views which seem to me unreasonable," she said.
"I only ask you to consider this particular view. The story you have
just told me shows that he is anxious to see you, which was my point.
That he is dangerous and strong I ask you to accept."
"What if I don't?" she asked.
"This," said he. "When a man of that sort desires anything, as he
evidently desires you, there is danger. If you are alive to it, and as
strong as he is, you are safe. That you are not alive to it you show by
your present position; that you are as strong as he, I doubt."
"You assume far too much," said Dodo. "What you mean by my present
position I don't care to know. But I am perfectly alive to the whole
state of the case. Wait. I will speak. I entirely decline to be
dictated to. I shall do as I choose in this matter."
"Do you quite realise what that means?" said Jack, rising.
Dodo had risen too; she was standing before him with a great anger
burning in her eyes. Her face was very pale, and she moved towards the
bell.
When a boat is in the rapids the cataract is inevitable.
"It means this," she said. "He will be here in a minute or two; I told
him I should be in at twelve. I am going to ring the bell and tell the
man to show him up. You will stay here, and treat him as one man should
treat another. If you are insolent to him, understand that you include
me. You will imply that you distrust me. Perhaps you would ring the
bell for me, as you are closer to it."
She sat down by her writing-table and waited.
Jack paused with his hand on the bell.
"I will be perfectly explicit with you," he said. "If you see him, you
see him alone. I do not wish to hear what he has to say to you. As he
enters the door I leave it. That is all. You may choose."
He rang the bell.
"There is no reason for you to wait till then," said Dodo. "I am going
to see him as soon as he comes. Tell Prince Waldenech that I am in,"
she said to the footman. "Show him up as soon as he comes."
Jack leant against the chimney-piece.
"Well?" said Dodo.
"I am making up my mind."
There was a dead silence. "What on earth are we quarrelling about?"
thought Jack to himself. "Is it simply whether I stop here and talk to
that cad? I wonder if all women are as obstinate as this."
It did seem a little ridiculous, but he felt that his dignity forbade
him to yield. He had told her he did not distrust her; that was enough.
No, he would go away, and when he came back to-morrow Dodo would be
more reasonable.
"I think I am going," remarked he. "I sha'n't see you again till
to-morrow afternoon. I am away to-night."
Dodo was turning over the pages of a magazine and did not answer. Jack
became a little impatient.
"Really, this is extraordinarily childish," he said. "I sha'n't stop to
see the Prince because he is a detestable cad. Think it over, Dodo."
At the mention of the Prince, if Jack had been watching Dodo more
closely, he might have seen a sudden colour rush to her face, faint but
perceptible. But he was devoting his attention to keeping his temper,
and stifling a vague dread and distrust, which he was too loyal to
admit.
At the door he paused a moment.
"Ah, Dodo," he said, with entreaty in his voice.
Dodo did not move nor look at him.
He left the room without more words, and on the stair he met the
Prince. He bowed silently to his greeting, and stood aside for him to
pass.
The Prince glanced back at him with amusement.
"His lordship does me the honour to be jealous of me," he said to
himself.
* * * * *
Next day Jack called at Dodo's house. The door was opened by a servant,
whose face he thought he ought to know; that he was not one of Dodo's
men he felt certain. In another moment it had flashed across him that
the man had been with the Prince at Zermatt.
"Is Lady Chesterford in?" he asked.
The man looked at him a moment, and then, like all well-bred servants,
dropped his eyes before he answered,--
"Her Serene Highness left for Paris this morning."