PART ONE — CHAPTER ONE: THE STUDIO — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi
THE THREE LOVERS
It was a suddenly cold evening towards the end of
September. The streets were very dark, because the
sky was filled with heavy clouds; and from time to time,
carried by an assertive wind, there were little gusts of
fine rain. Everybody who walked along the London
pavements shivered slightly, for the summer had disappeared
in a few hours and had been buried in this abrupt
darkness; and the wind seemed to come flying from all
corners of the earth with a venom that was entirely unexpected.
The street-lamps were sharp brightnesses in
the black night, wickedly revealing the naked rain-swept
paving-stones. It was an evening to make one think with
joy of succulent crumpets and rampant fires and warm
slippers and noggins of whisky; but it was not an evening
for cats or timid people. The cats were racing
about the houses, drunken with primeval savagery; the
timid people were shuddering and looking in distress
over feebly hoisted shoulders, dreadfully prepared for
disaster of any kind, afraid of sounds and shadows and
their own forgotten sins. Sensitive folk cast thoughts at
the sea, and pitied those sailors whose work kept them
stationary upon the decks of reeling vessels already
weather-beset. The more energetic breathed deep if they
were out-of-doors, or more comfortably stretched towards
their fires if they were within. Poor people huddled
into old overcoats or sat on their nipped fingers in
close unheated rooms. The parsimonious who by settled
ritual forswore fires until the first of October watched
the calendars and found an odd delight in obedience to
rule. The wind shook the window-panes; soot fell down
all the chimneys; trees continuously rustled as if they
were trying to keep warm by constant friction and movement.
In the main streets the chain of assembled traffic went
restlessly on, with crowded omnibuses and tramcars, with
hurrying cabs, and belated carts and drays, as though the
day would never cease. The footways were thick with
those who walked, bent this way and that to meet and
baffle the sweeping breezes. The noises mingled together
in one absorbing sound, heard at a distance of many
miles, a far undersong to the vehement voice of the
country. Apart from the main streets, so crowded and
busy, London was peculiarly quiet. If a door banged
it was like a gun; and such a rumble provoked only a
sudden start, and no constriction of the cardiac muscles,
for Londoners were no longer accustomed to the sound
of guns breaking night silences with their drum-like rollings.
Passengers in every direction instinctively hurried,
making for shelter from the rainy draughts and the
promise of storm. It was a subtly dismal evening, chilled
and, obscure. It was the real beginning, however premature,
of a long hard winter. Those who had joys were
sobered: those who had griefs were suddenly over-powered
by them, depressed and made miserable by the
consciousness of unending sorrow. Nobody could remain
unaffected by so startling a change in the atmosphere.
All craved light and warmth and society. In a
few hours the aspect of life had altered and winter forebodings
were upon the land.
Out in South Hampstead the big old houses stood
black in the common murk. Few of the windows were
lighted. The only illumination came from the street
lamps, which seemed crushed by the overmastering
clouds, and from occasional passing cabs, whirring
swiftly out of the main roads and losing themselves once
again within an instant's space. The wide roads were
clear, the noises subdued: one would have thought it
midnight and the shuttered city at rest. But within these
comfortable houses the scene was changed. Fires
brightly burned and gas or electric light gave an enviable
brightness even to rooms the furniture of which was
stale with irremediable ugliness. Warmth and comfort
was in every house. It was a whole district of warmth
and comfort. And in one house especially there was a
gently pervasive heat, a subdued brightness, a curiously
wanton elegance, in strong contrast with the outside
chill. It was a long two-storeyed house lying back from
the broad road. One reached it by means of a wide
gravel sweep, and the solid old door supported a heavy
knocker of iron. The house stood quite alone, as silent
as its fellows; but its furnishing, although sparse in the
modern manner, was dazzling. It was like the house of
a suddenly transported Pasha, and colours dashed themselves
upon the eye with a lustre that commanded surrender.
To meet such colours without a trembling of
the eyelids would have been impossible to normal men.
They were rich to a point of extravagance. They all
sang together like the morning stars, clashing and commingling
like the notes of barbaric music. They made a
very beautiful scene, intoxicating and superb. And cunningly,
as though some arch genie had brought the furnishings
hither, they merged into voluptuous comfort.
One sat in chairs that rose caressingly about one like the
waters of a river. The lights were so shaded that nothing
harsh or strident offended the eye. The taste of the
whole, although extraordinarily courageous, was unquestionable.
The owner of this house, whatever one might
think of his paintings, was obviously a connoisseur. He
knew. He was upon the point of entertaining friends in
his studio. His hospitality richly ignored and dominated
the weather. He defied the outer world, as though he
had been a magician. It was his nature to ignore every
discomfort as he ignored his correspondence; and this
house, the home of a sybarite, was the symbol of his
arrogant disregard.
Monty Rosenberg was a sublimely and ruthlessly
selfish man, who gave joy to others by accident, pursuing
all the while his own luxurious aims. From the
day of his birth until this lamentable evening in September
he had never wished to benefit anybody but himself.
He lived to and for himself, and this beautiful
home had been made for his own delight; and yet the
inscrutable ways of life had performed a seeming
miracle, and Monty was to-night a mere voiceless child
obeying the decrees of circumstance. He was preparing
to entertain his guests in a mood of solemn and magistral
calm. He thought nothing at all of their pleasure or
their envy. He was as much above snobbery as he was
below compassion. But he had created an atmosphere
of gorgeous appropriateness to the marvels of the human
heart, and the gloomy night furnished a contrast as violent
as the most emotional person in the world could
have desired. He had prepared a stir of colour which
must affect all those who were to be present upon this
occasion.
Monty was walking about his studio in a state as nearly
approaching self-satisfaction as his sleek pride would
permit. He relished the studio's warmth, its beauty.
He sufficiently perceived his own beauty, for although he
was fat for his thirty-seven years, and although in a
short time he would be subsiding into a grossly apparent
middle-age, Monty carried his heaviness with an air of
distinction. His manner was such that the least sycophantic
accorded him the usual tokens of respect. He
was well-built; his clothes were well-cut; his rather sensual
face retained in its aquiline nose a delicacy and in its
soft eyes a suggestion of smouldering fire which saved it
from anything like dulness. He was still graceful in all
his movements. His long black hair was beautifully
worn; the single ring upon his little finger was small and
in keeping with his fastidious hands. A slight vanity
gave him unfailing carriage and address. Oxford,
money, talent, all combined to make him agreeable. He
had no friends. There was no essential kindness in his
nature. He was an artist and a connoisseur, a viveur
and a solitary, a quick and shrewd calculator who would
have been a good business man if circumstances had not
legitimised his air of general unconcern with petty economies.
He was still a stranger, a polished and foreign
stranger, to all his acquaintance; and no man knew his
secrets. That he had secrets was evident. There was
talk, of course, about Monty as there is about every man
of personality in the world of chatter. He was too discreet
in his relations with all—though never so furtive as
to hint at mysterious understandings—to avoid altogether
the belief that he managed his "affairs" (which were
supposed to be many) with skill and gentlemanly coolness,
and his manner towards women was a little assured.
At least one of his prospective guests had seen him angry,
when a kind of thick toughness of savagery had flung
breeding to the ends of the earth. He was not a gentleman
through and through; but he was a tolerable enough
imitation of one—an imitation that was not all counterfeit.
The tough will which lay behind his usually suave
manner was what made his imperiousness weigh in the
minds of social inferiors. These inferiors could not
avoid reading and fearing danger to themselves behind
that steady assumption of their obedience. Others also
were aware of a menace, and they gave place rather uncomfortably
to Monty. Some of them, bidden to his
parties, came with reluctance; and revenged themselves
for their fears by sarcasms uttered at a safe distance.
So upon this September evening, fastidiously aware of
every detail in the studio, of every detail in the proceedings
(so far as these could be planned in advance),
Monty stood looking at his finger-nails or smoking an
aromatic cigarette or reading carelessly from book or
paper, waiting for his guests to arrive. He was ready
well in advance of the appointed hour; but he was not
restless or impatient, but gave the impression of being
imperturbably in harmony with the quiet tickings of his
handsome clock. Outside in South Hampstead the whirling
wind sank, and the rain which had come earlier in
gusts began to fall in a spiteful steady downpour. The
clouds hung lower and more threateningly over London.
Everything became sodden with shivering wet, and gulleys
and drains were full of singing water. The rain
hissed; running footsteps were sometimes heard; the
lamps were streaming with rillets formed by helter-skelter
raindrops.
As the hour of eight o'clock approached, Monty drew
from his pocket a hunter watch and snapped open the
case, observing the motion of the seconds hand with a kind
of absorbed interest. In reality his brain was slowly
working and he was hardly aware of the movement under
his eyes. He was recalling the preparations which he
had made and calculating the numbers of his guests.
Twenty people were coming—people of all sorts; but
mostly people belonging to that type to which an American
writer has given the name of troubadours.
That is to say, few among them were what would be
called men of action; for men of action, who had nothing
to say for themselves or whose view of life was philistine,
had no interest for Monty. Men of action were men
who could dance and kill and plan utilitarian works, but
who could not think of anything that required an original
and creative gift. Their interests were at best
mechanical; and at the worst they had no vital interests
at all apart from the consumption of time. To Monty,
whose consumption of time was lordly and individualistic,
who could do nothing without a clear aim, such
men were outside the pale. He was no sentimentalist. His
mind shrank from nothing. Applied to men and women
it was almost purely corrosive and therefore destructive;
and his self-sufficiency was so great that no affection
ever made him yield his judgment to a warmer feeling.
He never acted upon impulse, never caught beauty or
inspiration flying; but always deliberately and mathematically
laid foundations and with skill built up his
structure with an eye to the final effect. He never loved
anything or anybody enough to lose his head. He could
always, at any moment, draw up and dismiss an inconvenience
or a line of conduct, so that nothing and nobody
ever had a claim upon him that he could not repudiate.
He was a wise man in a world of impulsive fools
running after their own tails and dashing emotionally
into hysteria.
Eight o'clock chimed by the gentle bell of the clock
which stood upon a table in the far corner of the studio.
The strokes pinged and hung like scent upon the air.
Monty sat unmoved, fingering his watch, slowly passing
his thumb backwards and forwards across the golden
case. He was lost in a reverie. His eyes were narrowed
as though he were scrutinising a memory and paring
it down to its essential traits. With such an expression
his face lost vitality and became heavy—not ugly
or sinister, but unpleasing. The coldness of his nature
was revealed, with its adjunct of unplanned but deliberate
cruelty. The secret of Monty's self-command and his
power to deal with every event was no longer a secret,
but a calculable fact. It lay plain to see in that disregard
of others which marks the esprit fort, the strong man
of our weak ideal. He was a secret man, captain of his
own nature, and capable through insensibility to their
conflicting aims of dominating the actions of others.
Eight o'clock, and silence in this gorgeous house upon
the miserable September night. Monty sat in luxurious
quiet, waiting for his first guests. The moments dropped
quietly away as the softly-ticking clock marked their
passage. At last a short peal sounded at the door-bell.
Monty rose, his steps noiseless upon the heavy rugs, and
moved to greet the early arrivals. He advanced into
the wide and tapestried hall.
And then for half-an-hour came successive rings at
the bell, and loud-speaking people arrived in a general
flurry of raindrops and shiverings. Some of them had
walked through the rain, others had come in taxicabs,
one or two in their own cars. The hall, with additional
mats and two or three long jars to hold umbrellas, was
quickly sprinkled from the overcoats and furs of the
visitors; two rooms adjoining were made into cloak-rooms;
and then the studio was invaded. Here all the
visitors, talking, laughing, cigarette-smoking, sat upon
chairs or divans or cushions, and scattered the ash from
their cigarettes in every direction, as motley and restless
as the furnishings, and still by great fortune harmonious.
There were women in short frocks, with bobbed hair,
and women with long gowns and long hair decorated
with combs, one or two in evening-dress, one in plain
black; and men in all varieties of costume from dinner-jackets
to tweeds. Above their heads, towards the
studio's glass roof, rain-bespattered, rose tobacco-smoke;
from their lips came an endless spume of words, often
enough in loud voices which from the hall itself made
the guests sound like a distant multitude. The studio
was dwarfed by the presence of so many people and so
much noise. To Edgar Mayne, who alone of all those
invited stood slightly aloof, as one to whom the others
were strangers, it seemed that never had he heard people
with such loud voices, except at performances given by
the Stage Society. He was one of the sober ones—a
man of nearly forty, undistinguished in appearance and
dressed in an ordinary lounge suit. His association with
Monty was that of business only, and he was here experimentally,
quite lost in the crowd, and so unsympathetic
with it as at times to be almost hostile. So he
stood away from the fire, back from the rest, and surveyed
them with an unreadable air of interest. He received
stares of appraisal from all; no greeting, but also no
coolness, had been vouchsafed; and he knew that he could
without fear of a snub have entered any one of the several
deafening conversations which were in progress in
his neighbourhood. He preferred to look on, for this
society was to such a worker as himself something so
novel as to be nearly incredible. He was half-dazed by
the noise and the colour and the rising smoke. The
general relation of the men and women baffled him.
The women had not ceased to be women, but their professionalism
and slanginess made them exceptional in his
eyes. That he liked them, Edgar could not have said;
but he was not yet summing-up. They were merely different
from the suburban young women whom he met at
tennis or in the drawing-room. For one thing, Edgar
had never yet been at a mixed party where conversation
was regarded as a sufficient form of entertainment. He
had never met women who talked as freely as these did.
So his eyes wandered from face to face—from a man
with long hair who spoke in a rather strained high voice
to a sturdy young woman in a cretonne frock which appeared
barely to reach her knees, who lolled back against
the leg of a table and held a cigarette so dangling from
her lips that its smoke straggled up into her eyes. He
could hear nothing but odd words from all the conversations;
but the tones, the gestures, and the glances of the
talkers were all new and puzzling to such a stranger.
His eyes were never at rest. Purple, gold, crimson,
scarlet, green, terracotta, black; faces that were long and
thin, surmounted by straight fringes of hair, or round
and plump and white, with full lips and heavy eyes; a fluttering
hand, a startling costume—all caught his gaze and
helped to bewilder him. The types were strange, the
voices and the assumptions; and Edgar was from Respectability
and Commerce, and too old to be merely
excited. He was critical, as well. He was especially
critical of the girls, although upon the whole he preferred
the girls to the men.
One young man with high spirits and a quick laugh
several times drew his attention. He studied him—a
tall, fair type, very handsome, and with large white teeth
which showed when he laughed. The young man was
big and well-made. He carried himself with an ease
that suggested athletics, and he had evidently a great
deal of self-assurance. He was talking to a short, and
rather plump, girl whose black hair, bobbed, and milk-white
complexion made her one of the most attractive of
them all. That he was amusing her there could be no
doubt. Her eyes were raised delightedly, so that it was
the young man who sometimes looked away and returned
and occasionally flickered a little glance at others in the
room. Edgar's consciousness registered a definite impression.
He liked the fair, and rather sparkling, young
man with the white teeth; but he at once made purely masculine
reservations. They might only be jealousies, for
we are all alert to see the limitations of others; but they
were valid for Edgar. As he was engaged in judgment
he discovered for the first time that the young man,
through all his sportive talk, was demonstrating a similarly
observant interest in himself, and no doubt docketing complementary
reservations. A half-smile crept to Edgar's
face. The left hand, resting in his trousers pocket, involuntarily
clenched. His chin hardened. With his lids
lowered he looked straight back at the boy, and the
smile vanished.
The studio by now was well-filled; and from Monty's
engagement in the general hubbub Edgar supposed that
the total number of expected guests had arrived and had
taken their places in the crowd. But he was wrong, for
in spite of the fact that he could no longer hear the bell
he could see the door opening again to admit further
newcomers. His attention was being given to those
nearest, and for an instant he did not do more than glance
towards the door. Most of those about him were self-absorbed,
or intent upon what they were talking about,
which amounted to the same thing. The smoke and the
chatter, in fact, allowed Edgar no free activity of the
mind. He was as one drowning. It was only a sense
that his young friend of the flashing teeth had ceased
talking that gave Edgar an opportunity for this instant's
new interest. He looked up and towards the door.
There stood within the studio an old man—a tall old
man with a long white moustache and a rather bald head,
erect but markedly obsequious to Monty, dressed in such
a way that all must recognise him as a painter. A slight
pucker showed in Edgar's forehead. The face was familiar,
the bearing.... He knew the man. He was conscious
of displeasure at seeing him. But he could not
immediately remember what had given rise to this distaste.
Then, he looked beyond the old man, and his attentiveness
quickened. In the doorway stood a young
girl. She was very slight, very fair, and her dress was
both beautiful and striking. Her hair was worn so that a
rolled curl was above each ear, and it was brushed high
from her neck. Clear blue eyes, a delicate nose, an impetuous
mouth, a peculiar stillness in her attitude; and
Edgar could no longer record detail in his general admiration.
He was filled with interest. Not even the
green dress which she wore and which startled the eye
could rob Edgar of the sudden impression that she was
somebody alone—alone in the world, alone in herself,
alone here this evening. She was the first person who
had struck him in all this party as belonging to life as he
imagined it to be. There was a fresh vitality about the
girl that he found in none of the others. In none?
Edgar looked from the girl to Monty, who had taken
her hand and was smiling. Monty, with his rather
heavy, rather oriental face and figure, smooth and impossible
to be hurt, a man of determination and of personality.
Edgar knew very quickly what Monty's nature
was. He was not unpractised in the art of understanding
his fellows. The experience by which this skill had
been gained had been a part of the training which had
led to his business success. The contrast, then, to Edgar,
between Monty and the girl who had come as his guest
was as unmistakable as was the difference in their complexions.
There was no likeness here. Edgar would
have made no further comment; but some instinct made
him look from Monty's possessive figure to another,
which stood nearer. It was that of the young man whom
he had noticed before. The teeth were to be seen at this
moment, for the young man was standing, as fair and
as full of vitality as the girl herself, with his lips parted
and his eyes intent. There was no mistaking the significance
of his attitude and his tense regard. Edgar
looked again from the girl to Monty, as they stood together
by the door; and he saw the sparkle of the girl's
eyes and the quick flight of her smile. Again he looked
from Monty to the young man, and so back to the girl.
And as he returned to his observation of the young man
Edgar saw him take a quick breath, and saw his lips
meet.
It was in this single instant that the young man, urged
no doubt by an impulse as incalculable as Edgar's, drew
his eyes from the girl. He turned sharply and looked
at Edgar. Their glances crossed. Both smiled.
CHAPTER TWO: NEW FRIENDS — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi
Harry Greenlees, the young man with the
flashing teeth, had been given his Rugby blue ten
or eleven years before, and had helped Oxford to beat
Cambridge in a memorable year. Since leaving the University
he had played for two seasons with the Harlequins;
but his footballing days were over now as he could
no longer endure the strain of ninety-minutes' incessant
conflict. During the rather aimless experiments which
followed in the art of earning a living without exertion,
Harry had revived an undergraduate habit of writing
sporting descriptive articles, and to fellow-journalists
his competence for this work was known. It was not,
however, celebrated among his friends or the general
public, and as he had fallen in quite by accident with a
semi-literary and artistic set, the members of which took
him for granted as a cheerful companion with enough
money to live on, Harry enjoyed a most agreeable sort
of life. His work was slangy and vigorous, and if it
did not produce an income upon which a man of his type
could exist, it made sufficient the small private means
which were already at Harry's command. He was able
to support himself in comfort and to go about the world
very much at his ease.
Abroad, Harry walked, with a knapsack on his shoulders,
and saw the countries of Europe from the road.
It was for papers chiefly concerned with out-of-door life
and sport that he worked, and accordingly he found
material ready for his eye and his fountain-pen wherever
he turned for diversion. His was a life of varied pleasure,
and for as long as he remained fit he would find it
inexhaustible in possibilities. He was a lively companion
and a good sort. He was full of zest, making
friends lightly and as lightly letting them go. Everybody
felt his honesty and his energy, and he had neither
the mannerisms of the unduly famous nor the menacing
air of those who are intellectually better than their company.
He was happy, impulsive, handsome, agreeable,
and charming. It needed an Edgar Mayne to detect his
faults, and Harry was too unsuspecting and satisfied to
suppose that others were more subtle than himself.
He had been talking to Rhoda Flower, the dark girl
with the milk-white face, when he first observed Edgar.
And Edgar had been so little remarkable in appearance
that this was the first fact about him which Harry had
noticed. Harry, however, had found himself looking
back at Edgar, unable to account for the interest he felt
in the unknown. Rhoda, whom he had asked, knew no
more about the man than he did, and had been indifferent;
but Harry was definitely curious. If Edgar had
been nearer he would have found himself directly addressed;
but as it was the exchanged glance already
mentioned was the only communication to pass between
the two men. The glance had originated in a most singular
impression which formed in Harry's mind.
When Monty had moved forward to great old Dalrymple,
who was some sort of artist, Harry had felt his
usual dislike of the man, based upon the feeling that
Dalrymple carried with him an air of stale drink and
unsuccess. But he had looked past the old man to the
unknown girl who seemed to be his companion; and instantly
there shot through him that strong sexual interest
which Harry was in the habit of calling "love." He was
a strong young man, very sufficiently sensual, and his
notions of love were made accordingly. It was a quick
impulse, and his first thought after receiving it and deciding
that he must know the stranger was the realisation
that what he had desired Monty also would desire. And
then, ignoring all the others present, he had sharply
sensed danger. The glance at Edgar had been quite
three-quarters of a challenge. The flashing teeth had
been bared, and the blue eyes had been hard. But there
was something about Edgar which disarmed him. Hence
the smile.
This was not the first time Harry had been in love.
He was attractive, and he was quickly attracted. He
had self-assurance, and he knew how to give pleasure.
To Rhoda Flower he was certainly the most attractive
person in the world. It was to her that he continued
quietly to talk while the stranger was being brought forward
to the group round the fireplace. He was teasing
Rhoda, and gave no further sign of interest in the other
girl; but he knew when she was near. He turned his
head and looked at her. He looked from near at hand
at the soft, beautifully moulded cheeks and the impetuous
mouth and the clear blue eyes; and a very faint additional
colour came into his face. Not knowing that
Edgar was watching him, he was perfectly aware of the
girl's grace and beauty. The curve of her neck and
breast and shoulder seemed always to have been known
and entrancing to him. With Harry it was love at first
sight.
"... Greenlees—Miss Quin," said Monty, leading the
stranger from one to the other of his older friends, and
making her acquainted with them all.
The smoke-filled atmosphere seemed to come down
like a cloud against which she stood fresh and lovely.
All the vehemences of colour about him were softened.
For that instant Harry saw nothing but the stranger,
felt nothing but her hand. He found Miss Quin adorable.
She was a reality, a sweet and wayward reality,
like a flash of scarlet; and his one desire was to feel her
soft hair against his cheek, her cool shoulder, her surrendered
lips. The imagination of these contacts was
intense. Into Harry's expression of light spirits crept
something ever so slightly heavier. He was serious.
To him the senses were a cause of seriousness, a cause
of the complete oblivion of all that was comic or whimsical.
From behind him came the voice of the young artist,
Amy Roberts.
"Hullo, Patricia," she said in greeting.
Patricia! Patricia Quin. So that was the stranger's
name. Harry's faint flush subsided. He cooled. The
vision had passed. The quick physical imagining was for
the present gone, no longer an eager craving. He must
talk to her, see her, be with her; but in a few minutes,
quite easily and simply. What lay in the future was
something which stretched much farther than his immediate
vision. To Harry it beckoned as irresistible adventure.
The party swayed and engulfed Patricia. She was
among all the others, and talking or listening, extraordinarily
delighted with all this sound and colour. To
her, whose first party of the kind it was, such a brimming
claim to the senses had no shortcomings. It was all
new and glorious and intoxicating. She felt herself a
queen. Wherever she looked she found the strong
colour and sensation for which she had pined. It was the
first party, and a landmark. Compared with her days
and the unattractive dinginess of her own rooms, Monty's
home was all that was rich and desirable. At two-and-twenty,
when one is starving for colour, a glut of it is
like a feast. She was so happy, like a child at its first
theatre, that she sat there spell-bound. It could not have
occurred to her to think these people sophisticated; they
were all so kind, she thought to herself, so kind and generous
and interesting. Her heart went out to them all.
It was as though she cast her own warm affectionateness
upon the party. Her radiance increased with
each instant. The corners of her mouth went up; her
sweet, child-like laugh melted into the general laughter.
All this light and colour and sound was superb. It was
vivacity and richness, music and poetry, an unequalled
stimulant to gaiety and the senses. It was life as she
had dreamt of it. There was a spice of daring in such
contact with the unknown and the exciting, and daring
was her ideal. It was lovely.... She was in a beautiful
dream of delight.
Even Patricia at last began to look, beaming in her
happiness, from one face to the other. They were all
faces that interested her. They all had a cast—not of
dignity or wisdom, but of something which she thought
of as enlightenment. There was a quality about them
to which she was unaccustomed, and she exalted it.
She was prepared to find all knowledge and emotion in
the faces, and she found it. The tones of the voices
charmed her; the little jokes which she did not understand,
and the fragments of criticism which belonged to
another world of interests and consciousness, were all a
part of the magic and delight of the evening. She set
herself to look round the studio, sitting close to Amy
Roberts, as a child might have done, while Amy, to whom
all this sort of thing was becoming almost as commonplace
as she pretended to Patricia that it already was,
preserved an air of most distinguished semi-boredom.
Amy, herself an artist, told her the names of those present,
and sometimes, if she knew it, something about the
people. Patricia from time to time glanced aside at Amy's
fair bobbed hair and her white face and light lashes
and eyebrows and dissatisfied mouth; and thought how
nice Amy was, and how clever, and how she wished Amy
had a sense of humour of the same kind as her own.
"That's Rhoda Flower—that dark girl. She's a dress-designer.
Not much good, as you can see from her
dress. And those two over on the right, who're so fond
of each other and think each other perfect...."
"I know. They're engaged," guessed Patricia, laughing.
"More than that. They're married. And happy.
The only married people I know who are happy. And
how it is that Olivia has brought herself to leave the
babies this evening I can't understand. They must have
got a nurse. So I suppose Peter's been making some
money, for a change. Olivia and Peter Stephens, they
are. They've been married three years, and they've got
two babies. They're still devoted to each other."
"Odd!" joked Patricia, with archly raised brows. She
had no notion of the truth of her comment in the present
company, or of the underlying cynicism which an unfriendly
hearer might read into it. Amy looked side-ways
at her friend. She was puzzled, as the sophisticated
always are puzzled by a remark made with nonsensical
humour and without consciousness of its implications.
"It is," she agreed drily. "Then there's somebody
who isn't devoted to her husband—Blanche Tallentyre.
And with good reason. That white woman with the
salmon lips."
"Is she unhappy?" Patricia's face clouded. She
imagined a tragedy, and she still passionately desired
happy endings to all stories. She scanned Mrs. Tallentyre's
face, and saw the hard lines at the lips, and the
thin cheeks, and how tight her skin was across the cheek
bones; and her heart felt soft towards one to whom love
had been cruel. Now that she knew this of Blanche
Tallentyre she could notice the hunger in Blanche's face,
and the thinness of her bare arms, and the cup at the
base of her throat. She could imagine sleepless, tearless
sorrow. So there was one at least here who, in spite of
all the thrill of it, was unhappy.
"Not too unhappy," said Amy. "Hush. I'll tell you
later. Not now."
They paused, Patricia looking childishly wise in an
effort to disguise her faint distaste for this hint at an
only dimly-realised form of ugliness; and both stared
valiantly round at the others, so mysterious to Patricia,
and so fascinating in their mysteriousness.
"Jack Penton's here," proceeded Amy. "Somewhere.
Of course, not when he's.... Oh, there you are, Jack.
You know Patricia, don't you? Who's that man at the
back? Behind Charlotte Hastings. That quiet man."
Patricia looked quickly at Jack Penton, whom she had
met before. He was a dark, clean-shaven, commonplace-looking
young man with a rasping voice; but he was
a good dancer, and she thought him, if not clever, at
least intelligent and worthy of some other girl's love.
There was cameraderie, but no love, in Amy's manner
to the boy; and something very similar, upon the surface,
in his manner to Amy; but to Patricia it was agreeable
to see their faces near together. But then Patricia was
a sentimentalist, and saw and imagined all sorts of things
that never existed.
Jack wrinkled his brow in the effort to recall a name
half-forgotten.
"Er—I think his name's Rayne, or Mayne," he huskily
reported. "That's it: Edgar Mayne. He's something
in the city. Rather an old bird, don't you think? He's
a friend of Monty's. Somebody told me he was clever,
but you never know with that sort of chap."
"He looks very nice," whispered Patricia. "But
rather stern. I don't think he likes this kind of thing.
He looks disapproving. Oh, I wish he liked it."
Again came that incredulous stare from Amy which
convicted Patricia of a naïveté. Patricia stiffened a little,
and became more guarded. Some vanity in her cried
out against criticism. It was the one thing she could
not bear.
"Just there, on the right, is Felix Brow," proceeded
Amy.
"Not ..." Patricia began in amazement.
Suddenly, as they sat thus absorbed, there came an
interruption.
"Can't I help?" breathed an eager voice. "I can tell
you all sorts of things you don't know—about everybody.
Who they married, and why they separated, and who
they're living with. I'm really an expert guide."
They all looked up, and saw Harry Greenlees, whose
face was so lowered to Patricia's that it was almost level
with her own. It was so close, too, that she could see the
warm colour under his skin, and the crisp hairs of his
moustache, and the curl of his lips as they parted in a
smile of entreaty. Seen near at hand, Harry's face had
all the additional attractiveness which health gives to
good featured. His vigour was manifest. There was a
pleading in his eyes that was almost irresistible. It was
the pleading of an ideally masterful lover who would not
understand a refusal and so would not accept it. Patricia
looked, and held back her own head until the curve
of her cheek was lengthened and made even more beautiful
than before. She was smiling, and when she smiled
one beheld such a picture of happiness that one became
quite naturally intrigued and marvelling. To Harry the
picture was an intoxication.
"You may tell me everything," said Patricia, with
assurance equal to his own. "But first of all tell me
who you are."
He took a seat upon the floor by her side, clasping his
knees, and fixing his attention upon the two plump little
hands which were clasped in Patricia's lap.
"I am the most marvellous and unfortunate of men,"
he said. "Unfortunate, at least, until this very minute.
My name is Harry Greenlees...."
To Patricia it was all as delicious as a fairy tale. She
was not unused to admiration, for her beauty was of the
kind to draw men; but the admiration of the men she
had known had been too easily won to possess any lasting
value. She had become regal and fastidious, accepting
homage even while she despised those by whom it
was offered. And who were these men, after all? They
were men she had met at local dances, or in the office
in which she had not very competently or devotedly
worked. A few she had met at the homes of acquaintances,
a few at the seaside hotels at which she and her
uncle had stayed from summer holiday to summer holiday.
They had been clerks or young school-masters or
inferior stragglers in one or other of the professions.
All, apart from the admiration they offered and the fact
that they were more or less organically sound males, had
failed to interest a lively intelligence and an impatient
spirit. But now that her uncle, like her father and
mother, was dead; and now that, having lost her situation
and determined upon a Career for Herself, Patricia
was in new lodgings and facing life upon a new footing,
the case was altered. Old Dalrymple, whom she had met
several times, and who had pleased her with his rather
stale compliments and the still-unpricked bubble of his
exaggerated tales of acquaintance with the great, had
brought her to Monty's. He had been proud to do it.
Partly he had an old man's rather morbid sentimental
feeling towards her, which played with the pretence that
it was paternal; and partly he had the knowledge that
Patricia was a creditable companion. So he had brought
her here on this occasion, and Patricia, revelling in the
newness of her delight, had forgotten him. She was
already in a hitherto-untasted heaven. And this ardent
young man at her feet, who shone with admiration so
confident and encroaching as almost to excite her, was a
new type to Patricia. She had always been so much
quicker-witted than her followers that she had discouraged
them in turn. She was still engaged in battling with
Harry's wit, and thinking it exceedingly nimble and daring
and charming. She was more and more charmed
each minute, partly with Harry, partly with herself for
so charming him.
He told her about all the different men and women
who were before her, what they did in order to live, and
why they were present; and as she skipped quickly with
her eyes and brain from one to the other he made up a
great deal of nonsense about their private lives which
diverted Patricia extraordinarily, while Amy listened
with disapproval to the whole catalogue.
"Stuff!" she at last interrupted. "There's not a word
of truth in it, Patricia."
"I know!" bubbled Patricia. "Don't you see, that's
what's so nice!" Her whole face was alight as she spoke.
Amy's objection seemed to Patricia to show her so very
pedestrian in standard and judgment.
"Patricia understands me," said Harry, unchecked in
his use of her Christian name. "She's the first person
to understand me. Do you know, I've been looking all
over the world for you—for thirty weary years." He
beamed whimsically, handsomer in Patricia's eyes each
instant.
"I wonder how many times you've said that," snapped
Amy, who was impervious.
"A million times, and never meant it until now."
Harry's smile showed his big white teeth, and long
lashes shaded his eyes; and his big frame was so firm
and manifest that Patricia, in laughing as she did with
an exultancy that almost held tears, was full also of happiness
in the enjoyment of his manly graces.
"I understand everything," she announced, confidingly;
and mystically believed it.
"Yes, but he doesn't think so," warned Amy, in grave
alarm. "Or he wouldn't be telling lies at such a rate.
It isn't true that Dolly Fletcher's the daughter of a Russian
prince and a charwoman."
"Oh, but wouldn't it be nice if she was!" cried Patricia.
"Exactly," agreed Harry, and proceeded to embroider
his legend. "You see the short nose of the Russian of
high caste, and hear the accent of the London back street.
Notice the powder, the scent, the gold chain; the fur
edging to her frock. You can imagine snow on her
shoes and a pail in her hand. You can imagine waves of
dirty water slopping just under the edge of the bed, and
silk underclothing, and cosmetics, and a bath on the first
Sunday of the Month—as a rarefied sensual indulgence."
"She does look dirty," admitted Amy, scrutinizing
Dolly. "It's her skin. But she's a very decent sort."
This was said defiantly, while Patricia wondered.
How strange! It was the first flaw that she had found in
her handsome new friend, and it was unwelcome. She
wished he had not spoken in that way. It troubled her.
"Tell us what you know about Mr. Mayne," said Patricia,
to change this topic and to conceal her distress.
It continued for a moment or two, nevertheless, as an
undercurrent to her thoughts, and was still unpleasant.
Personal uncleanliness was abhorrent to her; but the joking
suggestion of it was equally abhorrent. It was an
ugliness.
"Mayne? Who's he? Oh, is that Mayne? Really!"
Harry seemed for a moment to be lost in thought.
"How astonishing. Edgar Mayne. I didn't know who
it was. Well, Mayne's a peculiar fellow, as I don't mind
telling you."
"Is he married?" demanded Amy impatiently. "If
you don't know anything about him, say so. Don't
make it up. If you play any tricks on us about the man
I shall go across and ask him myself."
"No, this is true," said Harry, reflectively. As he
spoke he looked again at Edgar, who was talking to
Rhoda Flower and listening calmly to her chatter. "He's
a man who started as a bootblack or something...."
"Lie number one," commented Amy. "Take care!"
"Well, an office boy. And he got to be a ledger clerk.
And he became an accountant. And then manager.
And then partner. No, Amy, he's not married, as far as
I know. And instead of marrying he's stuck to work
and he's just bought a newspaper of some sort. So I
suppose he's presently going into Parliament, and intends
to be in the Cabinet in five years. He'll attack the Government
in his paper until he's offered a job; and then
they'll give him an Under-Secretaryship. Then he'll
push out the old chap above him, and become a Minister.
And there you are."
"Very nice. He's rich, then?" Amy was as sharp and
persistent as the claws of a playing kitten.
"I s'pose so. I don't know. He's the industrious
apprentice."
Unperceived by his hearers, Harry was sneering a little,
as one always does at industriousness, with the suggestion
that it is a common vice, whereas it is a chimera.
"What's the paper he's bought?" asked Jack Penton.
"If it's a daily he'll burn his fingers. I thought he was
in the City."
"I don't know what the paper is." Harry's motion
towards Jack, however graceful and even consciously
charming, showed that he was busy with his more honest
thoughts. They became vocal, and his voice, hitherto so
ingratiatingly warm, had lost all quality. It was merely
cautious and speculative. "I wonder if he'd give me the
job of Sports Editor on it," Harry said.
"Take it," jeered Amy. "Take it. That's the sort of
thing you do, isn't it?"
Harry smiled again, altogether recovered, and once
again the teasing comrade he had been. It was a most
welcome return.
"I will," he assured them. "You may regard it as
taken. I'll just tell Mayne about it before he goes."
Patricia listened still, the colour deeper in her cheeks
as the result of so much excitement and new knowledge.
She was quite fascinated by Harry, as she was fascinated
by this whole unfamiliar scene. She could hardly keep
still, so delighted was she to be in this realm of men and
women who "did" things, whose names and qualities and
actions were known and public. Such gossip as she had
heard was quite new to her. Such assurance as Harry
had shown in sketching the possible future of Mr. Mayne
argued an inside knowledge of the world of politics and
affairs and finance and wide-reaching action involving
the fortunes of other people which no man whom she
had hitherto known had possessed or pretended to possess.
A gentle glance of encouragement, almost shy, but
wholly attractive, passed between Patricia and Harry.
Upon his side it was prolonged. He gave a little laugh.
"Oh, it's a great life!" he ejaculated, as though he had
known her thoughts.
How Patricia agreed with him!
"It's a great life!" she emphatically repeated, kindled
to enthusiasm at having her vaguer thoughts crystallised.
And she felt how she and Harry appreciated it in common
as a great life, and was again pleased and excited, so
that she wanted to clap her hands with joy. The little
group of four, of which Patricia and Harry were the
centre, was observed by all; and if Patricia was in any
degree aware of this the knowledge can only have added
to her conviction of the general splendid entertainingness
of life. She was quite carried out of herself and into the
spirit of the hour.
By this time the first half of the evening was coming
to an end. Monty, who had talked to all his guests, had
observed that it was ten o'clock; and it was now that a
screen at one end of the studio was removed, allowing
the buffet for the first time to reveal its attractions. The
visitors spread—all except our party of four;—and the
most remarkable collection of drinks and foodstuffs was
being relished by all. For some moments Patricia and her
friends knew nothing of what was going forward; but
at last Harry and Jack rose abruptly from their places to
secure refreshment for their charmers. No sooner had
they joined the group at the buffet than Monty and
Edgar approached the two girls, the former bearing a
tray upon which were glasses large and small, and the
latter a couple of piled plates. It was Monty's habit to
make his guests serve themselves, and he had only relaxed
his rule because he was interested in Patricia and
her youthful delight. Upon his heels as he thus approached
hung Dalrymple, who saw an opportunity of
reclaiming his charge. Patricia had forgotten Dalrymple—characteristically,—although
but for him she would
never have known the joys of the evening at all.
She was charmed at being thus waited upon, and accepted
champagne cup and some of Edgar's more nourishing
products with the most urbane pleasure. To Edgar,
who came second in the procession, she was especially
friendly, for she had been absorbed by Harry's
tale of his history. She had time only to thank him and
to catch his grave smile, and then Dalrymple, rather officiously,
brought himself to her notice.
"Is Patricia having a good time?" the old man asked,
with his smirking air of hints and mystery. "That's
right. That's right. Is there room here for an old
man?"
Amy looked at him with aversion as he squeezed into
their seat beside Patricia, and her expression was suspicious
and scornful. But Patricia had no criticism. It
was nothing to her that his eyes were protruding and
gooseberry-like, and the fringe of his moustache above
the mouth browned with the stains of food and much
drink. She was in a mood to welcome all who contributed
to this party. She felt in a curious psychic way
that it was peculiarly her party; and the atmosphere of the
place would have led her, in any case, to frank friendliness
with all comers. She was transported, and hardly
conscious of her own actions. The barbaric colours
seemed to have mingled into a glorious harmony, and she
was as much intoxicated by these colours and the sounds
and associations of the evening as she could have been
made by deep potations. The glass in her hand was
only half-empty; but she was drunk with happiness, her
cheeks flushed, her eyes brimming with laughter, her
lips parted in eager sportiveness. Danger she could not
foresee. She lived in the moment, and knew that for her
it was good. She was unaware of Dalrymple's singular
glance, with its old man's ugliness and preoccupation.
She could not read the expression upon Monty's face
when he looked at her over the glass-laden tray. She
knew nothing of Amy's grave distrust and even suspicion.
She only felt that she had never been so happy.
Upon an impulse she thrust her glass into Dalrymple's
hand, and rose and went straight to Edgar. It was extraordinary
that she should feel no embarrassment; but
Patricia did not reflect. She was acting upon impulse,
and she exalted impulse, as modern young women are
in the habit of doing. Moreover, all who knew Edgar
trusted him.
"I wanted to ask you ..." began Patricia, and then
faltered. Edgar's face was blurred to her vision by
the tears that suddenly filled her eyes. She blinked
them away, and took new courage from his expression.
This man, so different from the others there, was
one of those, she felt, who could always be reached by
the truth. He was so controlled, so grave, that he might
have terrified her in other circumstances; but in this
mood of exaltation Patricia was carried beyond fear.
"I wanted to ask you ..." she stammered again. "They
say ... Mr. Greenlees says you've just bought a newspaper....
And will you please make him Sports Editor!
I don't think he means really to ask you; but he
said he would; and I think he wants to be.... If only
you could, it would be so awfully nice.... He's
really ..."
And then Patricia faltered. She was at the end of
her knowledge. Her cheeks flushed. For the first time
she was conscious of grave discomfort. She would have
cancelled all she had said if it had been possible; but it
was too late, and her trembling smile of anxiety was the
most beautiful thing Edgar had seen for many days.
Nevertheless, he shook his head.
"Such an advocate would secure a man any position,"
he said. "But only if it were available. It is quite true
that I've bought a paper; but what a paper! Miss Quin—I
hardly like to tell you what paper it is. I have only
bought it because the Editor is a man I love and admire,
and because the paper would otherwise die. It is called
'The Antiquarian's Gazette,' You see, we could only
have some very antique sports in such a paper."
"Couldn't you ... couldn't you ... bring it up-to-date?"
begged Patricia.
Edgar shook his head with so concerned an expression
that she could hardly detect his lurking smile.
"I'm afraid ..." he said.
"No." Patricia was rueful. "No, I see it wouldn't
do. I'm sorry, though." Her thoughts ran on apace.
"Did you mean," she asked suddenly, "that the
editor would have ... he wouldn't have had anything
to live on?"
"Well, he's a very proud old gentleman," admitted
Edgar.
"And then you've bought it to ..."
"More or less," he agreed. "It's a very special case,
of course."
"Well, I think you're splendid," Patricia cried. "But
then, everything ..." She paused, almost overcome.
"To-night, everything's splendid."
And with that she began quite suddenly to cry, large
tears rolling down her cheeks, while Edgar took one of
her half-raised hands and held it in his own until she
should have regained self-control. It came in a moment,
and her friendly smile, so almost roguish, pierced the
tears and obliterated them. Edgar smiled also, in relief
and friendship.
"All right?" he questioned, very quietly.
Patricia's other hand was for the lightest instant upon
his, and she was free. She nodded reassuringly, and
with her handkerchief caused two tears which stood upon
her cheeks to vanish. She was like a little girl; but she
had made another friend, for nobody could have withstood
behaviour as free from artifice and so full of
naïve emotion. The episode was finished; but its consequences
could never be finished, for a human relation
had been established, and these things are undying.
With the arrival and circulation of the drinks, Monty's
party took a new turn. The noise at first increased,
into such a sustained and stentorian buzzing that the
sounds would have stunned a newcomer unprepared for
such celebrations; but presently the noise so died that the
steady downpour of rain could be heard upon the studio's
glass roof. The cup was a strong one, mixed by a cunning
hand; liqueurs followed; tinklings and small clashes
were audible. The party grew quieter. A heaviness
began to show in its members. The pallor of some of
the guests increased, and with the now great heat of
the poorly-ventilated room there came closeness and some
discomfort. Only Dalrymple and Frederick Tallentyre
(the husband of Blanche—a swarthy man with a mass
of dark hair) remained at the buffet; and Dalrymple began
to laugh quietly, showing his old yellow teeth.
Patricia looked once at her escort, and if she also had
not had the first Benedictine of her life she would have
been shocked. As it was she sat still beside Amy, her
lips a little swollen and her eyes glowing; almost noisy,
but no longer happy as she had been. Any outbreak of
noise and dancing would have carried her with it; but
these people, with their increasingly white puffy faces
and the seriousness which began to overtake most of
those present, were no longer adorable. They fell into
a monotony of familiar dummies. Even Harry, eager
though he was, she saw with less intensity of vision.
He was still delightful and gay; but she was surfeited
with emotion. Not at all intoxicated, but over-tired,
she was now ready for the end of the evening. She even
observed the first departure with some gladness. Departures
began and continued.
"I say ... I'm sorry ..." Harry was murmuring
in Patricia's ear. His hand was upon her wrist. "I
say ... we must meet again, you know."
"Of course," she agreed, her face clear and open and
full of the sweet candour she was feeling.
"How ... when can I see you?" He was hot and
urgent. "I'm awfully sorry, but I promised to see
young Rhoda home. But ... I ... er.... When, I
mean ... when can I see you. I must.... It's got to
be soon, you know." Oh, they were of one mind upon
that!
Dalrymple was now alone at the buffet, a benign smile
upon his aged face, and his attitude that of one by the
world forgotten.
"Any time. Let me know," said Patricia, very
gravely, and without coquetry.
"But how can I find you?"
"Amy.... Any way, it's ..."
She was giving him her address when Rhoda appeared
against the doorway, all muffled in furs, with her expression
one of impatience ill-concealed. Harry shook
Patricia's wrist, and made off to the door. He turned
as he reached it, and kissed his hand. Patricia, with
her head back and her eyes suddenly sombre, waved in
return. He was gone. She turned to Amy, who was
frowning at Jack Penton. Amy sharply whispered:
"How are you going to get home?"
As if in answer, Dalrymple approached rather lurchingly
from the buffet. He smiled ingratiatingly upon
the reduced company.
"Where's ... where's my lit ... little ... companion?"
he said, coming towards them. It was clear
that although he could control his movements he was
no longer quite sober.
"No," said Amy, in Patricia's ear.
"I wonder if I might give you a lift in my car, Miss
Quin."
The voice was that of Edgar. It was so quiet as to
be almost an undertone.
"Oh, do." Amy was the one to answer, for Patricia
was dazed.
"Get your coat, then. Will you take her?" Edgar
supplemented his instruction with the request to Amy;
and the two girls moved quickly away. They saw no
more of Dalrymple. By the time they were dressed
Edgar was waiting in the hall; and they stood in the
doorway together while he started the engine of his car.
Two great lights illumined the gravel sweep in front of
Monty's house. Then Patricia was in a warm, soft-lighted
vehicle, and they were in motion. She pressed
back in her place, her head throbbing and her mouth still
nervously smiling. It was as though she were flying
from all unpleasantness, very tired and happy, with one
she trusted and would have trusted with her life.
"And now ..." said Edgar. "Where do we go?"
Patricia was looking back at the doorway. In it she
could no longer see Amy and Jack Penton. There remained,
silhouetted against the light of the hall, only
the figure of Monty; and Monty, so still that he might
have been without pulses, stood watching the departure
of Patricia and her escort. For her thereafter there
was nothing but the soft purring of the engine and
the sense of security and safe harbourage against all the
elements.
In the studio, Monty stood alone. His last guest had
gone. He was in the midst of that stale atmosphere and
the wreck of a past entertainment. Smoke hung about
in the air, the faint pungent smells of the drinks and of
drying dampness combined with it. All was hot and
vitiated. Monty stood with perspiration faintly upon
his cheeks and under his heavy eyes. He had mixed
himself a glass of whisky and soda, and rested it now
upon the mantelpiece. The soft front of his dress shirt
was crumpled, and his hair was less thickly smooth than
it had been; but he was otherwise immaculate, from his
beautifully-cut dinner jacket to his patent-leather shoes.
He looked round the studio, and listened to the pattering
of rain above his head.
Slowly Monty sank into one of his soft armchairs, and
set his glass upon the floor. Around him was an indescribable
mess of cigarette ash. The ghost of the party
was risen. It was everywhere about him, in the now-silent
chatter and the remembered scents and interests
of the evening. Monty's thoughts were not mournful or
stagnant, as those of one more sensitive might have been.
He was entirely collected, and satisfied with his party.
There had been no hitch at all; and even Dalrymple had
at last been persuaded to go by the arrival of a taxi and
the loan of his fare. Monty was alone, well content.
All the same, Dalrymple must never again come to one
of his parties. Monty had no use for a man such as he
had shown himself to be. This was for Monty the end
of Dalrymple. Far otherwise was the case with Dalrymple's
companion. Far otherwise.... The exclusion
of Dalrymple must not affect the little Quin girl.
She could be reached through Amy Roberts ... possibly
through Harry Greenlees....
Monty almost smiled as he had this last thought.
Then he became serious again. He had other matters
to think of. There were many other things....
Half-an-hour later he still sat in the studio, and at last,
as his man-servant came into the doorway to ask if there
were any further instructions, he roused himself from his
reverie.
"No. Good-night, Jacobs," said Monty.
It was quite remarkable how long that little girl's face
had remained in his memory, he thought. Fresh....
She was fresh. Attractive little thing ... Greenlees
seemed to like her...."
Monty laughed quietly to himself.
CHAPTER THREE: PATRICIA — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi
Patricia was indoors. She lived in two rooms in
an old house near the King's Road, and her rooms
were at the top of the house. As the door snapped behind
her she saw her little bedroom lamp as the only illumination
of a narrow passage leading to the stairs; and instinctively
she paused, her shadow thrown solid and leaping
against the door, while the muffled sound of Edgar's
car died away in the distance. The house was dark and
silent, and Patricia's heart sank. A sigh of regret escaped
her. It was hard to come so abruptly from the
glowing scene she had left, with her brain in a ferment of
all its new memories and wonderings, to this dingy home
in which all was so tasteless. She slowly mounted the
stairs, smoke from the lamp's flame smirching the glass
chimney and rising acrid to her nostrils. Her bedroom
was cold; and a damp shivering breath came from the
open window, across which the curtains were yet undrawn.
Outside the window everything was black. No
lights came even from the houses that backed on to the
one in which she lived. She could hear the rustling of
the rain. A shudder shook Patricia. Deeply chilled,
she moved away from the window.
Even when she was in bed, and slow warmth had returned
to her body, she was conscious of unhappiness.
It was not that she was normally discontented: she suffered
now only from a sense of the acute contrast between
this sullen room with the steady rain without and
the warmth and peacock brilliance of the studio she had
left. And the journey had been so rapid, and for the
most part so silent, that she was plunged sharply back
from her dreaming joy to sombre consciousness of every-day
reality. Had there been a gay party homeward, had
friendly voices shouted jocular farewells from the pavement,
the happiness might have continued; but she was
shaken at this sharp transition. For the first time Patricia
girded at her loneliness, which until now—as independence—had
made her feel so proud. To the sense
of loneliness was added a memory of her poverty. To
be alone and poor, young and eager, was to struggle with
gloom itself. She did not cry; but a sob rose in her
throat. It was such unmistakable anti-climax to be made
to face the fact that she did not rightfully belong to this
sparkling world of noise and light and colour in which
she had spent the wonderful evening.
"Oh, dear!" cried Patricia to herself, suddenly desperate
and at war with her lot, as other debutantes have
been. "It's too bad. It's too bad!"
And then, fortunately, some little recollection from
the multitude of recollections which would presently disengage
themselves, made her smile. A soft little sound,
such as a baby might have made, came from her throat,
the lips being once again closed. Her hands were
bunched at her breast. It was the reaction caused by
the bed's cosiness and her sweet exhaustion. An instant
later she was fast asleep, and in her sleep she smiled as
she dreamed of a party of beautiful gaiety, in which she
was supreme and unchallenged, ... the admired and
the adored of all ... Patricia!
In the morning she awoke to ambitious determination.
At first waking she knew it was late, and sighed, very
drowsy and comfortable. Happy thoughts began to
float into her consciousness, and she smiled again to herself
like a little girl. But when Lucy, the maid of the
house, tramped up to her door and knocked there with
knuckles of iron, Patricia no longer lay in reverie. She
instantly arose, took her primitive bath, and was in her
sitting-room long before the breakfast arrived.
There were no letters. There were never any letters
for Patricia. Letters never come, she believed, to the truly
deserving. She had a hunger for letters. She longed
intensely to be like those young men in demodé books
who opened uncountable bills and billets doux at the
breakfast-table and stuck all their cards of invitation
round the edges of the mirror upon the mantelpiece.
The mirror was there; but no cards adorned it. The
mirror had a gilded frame, and was no longer very fresh.
It was flanked by vases intended to represent perfectly
incredible marble. In the fireplace was a gas-fire, alight.
The floor was covered with green and red oilcloth, and
a woolly rug of yellow and magenta lay before the
hearth. There was a sofa against the opposite wall, and
at the window stood a sturdy table bearing a typewriter.
In the middle of the room was another table upon which
the first signs of breakfast were laid. Here, too, was
Patricia's own little bowl of flowers. That bowl, the
flowers, and the typewriter, were here her sole possessions.
The rest belonged to the landlady who lived
somewhere far below stairs, and it received daily a severe
banging from Lucy, whose speed and energy exceeded
her competence by about as much as the salary of a competent
staff would have exceeded Lucy's wages.
Patricia went to the flowers and raised the bowl so that
she could still detect the ghost of their waning fragrance.
In her morning dress of blue serge, the collar high and
the shape quite simple, she seemed perhaps taller and
slimmer than she had been on the previous night. But
she was quite as pretty, and the fresh pink of her rounded
cheeks betokened good health. Her hair, which was not
long, was arranged to-day as it had been arranged at
Monty's party. She was the same girl, but she was
graver, because this morning her thoughts were more
active and she was therefore more sad.
She remembered old Dalrymple, whom she had met
through the agency of Amy, asking her to go to the party
with him, and calling for her; she remembered their
journey, her entry of the mysteriously charming house,
of the studio, her first sight of Monty and instinctive
interest in that dark and impenetrable face. And then
the noise and brilliance, and Amy, and all the gay talk,
and Mr. Mayne.... For a long time she was shy of
permitting any thought of Harry, as one sometimes
leaves the finest peach to the last; and it was delicious
to be always almost returning and arriving at Harry,
to feel him perpetually there, summonable at impulse,
and wilfully to hold thought of him in reserve. Yet in
reality it was most often of Harry that she was aware
in every wayward turn of memory.
Breakfast was another blow for Patricia. There
were bacon and eggs, and both were depressingly cold.
The tea was strong and cold. Not so would breakfast
be, she decided, in any home truly her own; though if,
as she had long ago assumed, her future home were to
be one in which servants played a leading part, she had
no notion of the way in which cold breakfasts were to
be avoided. Were there not such things as spirit lamps?
Patricia had not stayed often enough in large houses to
know that cold breakfasts are inevitable there unless the
meal is eaten in the kitchen. She merely felt sure that
Monty had hot breakfasts. But she did not associate
her confident belief with the fact that he was an autocrat
with a man-servant. It is the woman's lot to be ill-served
wherever she goes. One has only to lunch at a
woman's club in London to have this truth emphasised.
So breakfast this morning was a disappointment.
Only good digestion—which she fortunately possessed—could
have dealt with it effectively. And with breakfast
finished, and the dish with solid streaks of grease
upon it mercifully concealed by the cracked dish-cover,
Patricia wondered what she would do next. She was
at leisure, which meant that she was not in a situation;
and her ambition exceeded her powers of performance.
Her father and mother had both died long ago, and
Patricia had lived the greater part of her life with Uncle
Roly until his death a year since. He had been a casual
man, subsisting from week to week upon a large salary
which his habits converted into a small one. What he
had done, except to go to an office every day, Patricia
had never known; but while she had been with him there
had always been plenty to eat, idleness and chocolates
for herself, and drinks for Uncle Roly; and a holiday
each year at the seaside or in the country. And then he
had died, to Patricia's great but quite short-lived grief,
and with his death ended the salary from which nothing
had been saved. Patricia had exactly two hundred
pounds, and the world to face. No relatives barred her
path with offers of homes or advice. There followed a
situation as typist at a time when even young girls were
able to find remunerative situations. Dancing, suburban
gaiety, restlessness, and boredom lasted as long as the
situation. That too had ended; and Patricia, with only
one hundred pounds of inheritance and savings left (for
she had not been thrifty, any more than her fellow-workers
and -players had been), was confronted with a
new problem.
The alternatives were another situation, which was
difficult to find, and a life of vague splendour derived from
her talent. Search for the situation being tiresome, and
therefore not very sedulously pursued, she was inclined
to stake everything upon her talent, as yet unproved. A
novel was undertaken—a very autobiographical novel,
in which the heroine was extraordinarily charming; and
short stories, small poems, little sketches and essays,
were all produced from her brain and typed by her busy
fingers. When one or two of the stories were accepted
and paid for, she had no real fear for the future. She
was sanguine with youthful confidence; and her remaining
hundred pounds seemed an inexhaustible sum. As
she thought of these things Patricia could not help feeling
rather conceited. Sometimes, when she dreamed of her
ultimate fame, she could almost suppose that those who
passed her in the street were already conscious of it.
It was after a day of wasted literary effort, when
nothing would come right, that Patricia swept aside all
sign of her work, and sought comfort from a visit to
Amy. Amy—at least, the adult, as opposed to the child
of other days—had first been encountered by accident
about a month previously, when she and Patricia had
both been shopping. They had stared at each other for
a couple of minutes, both half-recognising and half-recognised,
and had then pronounced each other's names,
reviving a school friendship. Amy, who was alone in
the world of London æstheticism by her own choice,
and in receipt of an allowance from parents who had
plenty of money, was embarked upon an artistic career,
and was trapesing about from publisher to publisher with
a large portfolio containing pen-and-ink sketches depicting
scenes in "The Vicar of Wakefield" and other
classic novels. She thus sought employment as a designer
and illustrator. She also made drawings of her
friends in water-colour and experimented with oils; but
as far as Patricia could see (with the candid eye of a
true friend) she spent much of her time in dress-making
and in drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. She wore
her hair bobbed, and dressed in loose cretonne frocks
and brilliant stockings and shoes that were as much like
sandals as anything could be. She had a casual and dissatisfied
air, and was developing extreme untidiness
under the impression that untidiness was distinguished.
That she was happy in her chosen life nobody to whom
it was unfamiliar could have supposed; for it held
neither security nor romance. On the contrary, it resulted
in an aimless see-saw between gregariousness with
others equally ego-ridden and amateurishly opinionated
about the arts, and solitary days of labour at work which
might have been done more competently by those of
smaller æsthetic pretensions. Still, this was the sort of
society to which Patricia felt herself at this time drawn;
and bohemianism in any guise was fascinating for both
of them. They became good friends once more. Patricia
made her way to the chintz-adorned studio in Fitzroy
Street.
Amy, very professional in a long overall with sleeves,
carried a brush between her teeth, and a palette over her
left thumb, as she opened the studio door in answer to
Patricia's mock-peremptory knock.
"Good!" she heartily cried. "Just the one I want.
Don't take your hat off for a minute, and turn round. I
want to see just exactly how the hair grows."
"All over the place, mostly," said Patricia, as she
obediently turned. The picture in progress stood upon
the easel, and represented nothing upon earth. A bloated
something without form carried an eye upon its cheekbone.
The miracle had been achieved of showing a head
upon three sides of its common aspect. Patricia observed
it with respect, although she might have been
moved to great laughter if she had found it in a child's
painting book. She looked crampedly from her stance,
as she waited, upon such part of the room as was to be
seen. It was not a large studio, but it was lofty, and
although a bed stood in the farther corner it was the
best combined room she had ever seen. It would be possible,
she thought, to be quite happy here. The stained
floor was bare except for rugs at the fire and beside the
bed, and a large easel stood right under the glass roof.
The studio was warm, and so lighted that it appeared to
stretch indefinitely into the dusky corners. The only
comfortable seats were a big deep armchair and a
"podger" which lay against the wall by the side of the
fire. Patricia continued to beam upon it as a home for
one such as herself. She coveted the studio with a pure
and humane covetousness.
"Ye-es," presently came her friend's comment. "All
right, thanks. Sit down. Have a cigarette? Well,
and you got home all right, did you? With your gay
companion."
"He was gay!" jeered Patricia. "He hardly said a
word."
Amy clucked her tongue. "Too bad!" she observed.
"However, you'd have got soaked otherwise. Anyway,
it was better than having Dalrymple. Did you ever see
such an old toper? It was amazing. Monty won't have
him again."
"Oh!" It was a cry of disappointment.
"Oh, that won't matter." Amy was laying down her
palette and searching for matches as she spoke. There
was cigarette ash all over the hearth in front of her little
gas fire, and ash was scattered across the floor. The
bed, covered with bright chintz, showed that she had lain
upon it during the afternoon. "You'll be invited without
him another time."
"Shall I?" It sent a spark of joy through Patricia
to hear this. She looked gratefully at Amy's white face
and smooth hair. "Really?"
Amy shrugged with a conceited air of boredom.
"You made an impression last night," she announced.
Patricia laughed gaily, and Amy continued: "It's easy
enough, and it comes naturally to you. Of course,
Monty's parties aren't what they were. He used to have
a lot of decent people; but he's peculiar, you know. He
gets tired of people, and drops them. It's the privilege
you enjoy when you've got money. Only of course
you've got to keep on making fresh friends, and he's
not as bright as he used to be. He used to be able to
talk. Now it isn't worth his while; so he says nothing
at all. He thinks it. He's sardonic."
"He looks that," agreed Patricia, trying to seem as
expert and as patronising as her friend. "But he looks
interesting, as well; and that's a great deal."
"Oho! I should think he was. And as clever as the
devil. But he's a beast."
"I don't mind that, so long as he isn't beastly to me,"
said Patricia. "I don't mind what anybody does, so
long as they are nice to me."
Amy laughed, and professionally flicked the ash from
her cigarette with a little finger. It was a laugh that
held dryness.
"Oh, they'll all be nice to you," she observed. "No
reason why they should be anything else."
Patricia pondered upon that suggestion, and upon the
strange gleam in Amy's eye. She had so much affection
to give, she thought, and she had met so much kindness
in others, that there really did not seem to be anything
but kindness in her whole life. Even Lucy, in her rough
way, was kind. Amy, of course, did not know that, and
had not meant to suggest it; but there were things which
Patricia still did not understand at sight, in spite of her
self-confidence in that direction.
"No," she said. "There isn't, is there. Except that
I'm poor; but people don't notice that. Of course, Mr.
Mayne was really very kind. But he's rather unbending,
I think. He's ... well, he seemed to me to be
rather out of place at Monty's."
So soon had she caught the trick of calling all persons
by a Christian name! Amy, from a greater experience,
noticed the more naïve satisfaction of Patricia at the
habit, and was amused by it.
"Yes. And then there's Harry Greenlees, of course,"
she prompted, a little inquisitively.
"Yes, Harry. He's awfully nice and amusing," said
Patricia. She was instinctively guarded.
"Quite," replied Amy, now very dry. She shot a
glance at her friend that hinted suspicion. "You see
in that one evening you made three new friends...."
There was a pause; and then Patricia, who knew
nothing of suspicion, went on:
"Amy ... do you know Rhoda Flower?"
"In a way. Not well. Just from seeing her at that
sort of thing—and hearing about her. She isn't any
good."
"What sort of things do you hear?" Patricia had
caught that note, at least, and was stung by it to a question.
Amy shrugged, since she had no fact to communicate.
"Oh, nothing ... Nothing really. But of course
they're always together."
Patricia started slightly. They? Rhoda and Harry.
"Oh, yes," she said, as if merely in acquiescence. "I
thought she was pretty, and looked all right."
"Rhoda?" Amy laughed scornfully. "Yes, she's
pretty. But she's a fool."
"How d'you mean? Not got any brains?"
"With Harry."
Patricia was puzzled. She just prevented herself from
saying "But I thought one did as one liked, without
question, in Bohemia."
"What, ... what, is she in love with him?" she
stammered, her eyes wide open.
Amy shrugged, blowing cigarette smoke from her
nostrils.
"Oho, I don't know," she said, in a particularly measured
voice. "Who knows? It's not the sort of thing
one woman tells another unless she is a friend. But
she'll burn her fingers with him, you can see. She's not
experienced enough at the game. You've only got to
look at him to see he's after every fresh face."
It came like a flash to Patricia: Amy's jealous of me!
She was aghast and amused in the same instant.
"Oh, well," she cried, with masterly skill. "Who
isn't?"
And then Amy and Patricia looked at each other, both
smiling, but in conflict as they had not hitherto been.
Amy's face was sickly, and there was an extraordinary
glitter in Patricia's eyes. Patricia's thoughts leapt
quickly forward, skipping all reasons and shades of interpretation.
It was not merely of the impression
which Patricia had made upon Harry Greenlees that
Amy was jealous: it was of Patricia herself, of her
power to attract, her intelligence, her freshness. Patricia,
even under her horror and her inclination to ridicule
such an attitude, was conscious of a sharp accession of
complacency. She had entered this new world; she had
seen it to be good; she had triumphed with the ease of
mastery. It was her fate. She was confirmed in her
belief that there was a genuine irresistible something in
the world called Patricia. Nothing was impossible to
her. The chagrins of the morning were obliterated.
Presently the two girls busied themselves in preparing
a meal in the small kitchen attached to the studio. It
was not a feast; but it satisfied them, and Patricia loved
the sense of camping out. They ate it off a small round
table with a large coloured napkin used as a tablecloth.
The crockery was all odd, as Amy had purchased it from
a former tenant, and one plate bore upon it the name of
a famous hotel. They had an egg dish and some potted
meat and some thin claret, with an apple apiece to complete
the meal and some coffee which was rather the
worse for wear. Amy smoked cigarettes continuously
throughout, laying them upon the edge of her plate during
mastication. Her consumption of cigarettes during
the day was considerable, and she even smoked and read
in bed. Patricia made a note of this, as it seemed to be
a part of the bohemian life.
"I never noticed this plate before," she suddenly cried,
alluding to the one which had upon it the name of the
hotel. "D'you suppose it was stolen, or what?"
Amy shrugged, and wiped a small piece of clinging
tobacco from her lip with a forefinger.
"May have been," she said. "Or else its a throw-out.
You get them cheap in markets, I believe."
"I hope it was stolen," breathed Patricia. "Fancy
eating off a stolen plate! But you'd wonder how any
body smuggled anything so large out of an hotel. Awful
if it fell!"
"You're perfectly ridiculous, Patricia," said Amy.
What strange eyes Amy had, thought Patricia. They
were like big blue-green marbles. They stood out a little.
Or perhaps it was only that her eyelashes were
fair. Harry had beautiful eyelashes—long and dark;
and they made his eyes look charming. She hadn't
noticed Edgar Mayne's eyes.... Oh, yes, she had.
They were kind and brown. Funny! The thought of
him made her smile; but she had at the same time a
curious warming of the heart.
"Isn't it strange," she remarked, thoughtfully, "that
you can feel perfectly——"
But what Patricia had been about to commend to
Amy's notice was lost; for at that moment there came
a tapping at the studio door. Instantly Patricia had one
of those celebrated intuitions to which all young women
at times are liable. She felt sure that the person knocking
was Harry. It proved to be Jack Penton, who came
in as though the place were familiar to him, and stood
frowning at the signs of their feast. He was as smooth
and insignificant as ever.
"Oh," he said, in his rasping voice. "You've had
your meal."
"Nothing left for you," answered Amy, brusquely.
Jack's manner in reply was protestingly sullen, as if
he had been detected in a fault.
"I was going to ask you to come out to dinner," he
grumbled.
"I don't think I could eat anything more," smiled Patricia.
"It's so nice of you." That was her solace for
him, a contribution to what she felt might be a disappointment
to so worthy a young man.
"Well...." He hesitated. "I've just got along.
Erm.... Look here, I'll go and get something to eat,
and come back, if I may."
Amy agreed, and Jack was letting himself out when a
notion occurred to her.
"If you meet anybody, bring them with you," she
called after him. And when the door had clicked she
turned to Patricia. "Don't go, whatever you do...."
She put her hand to her brow. "That young man....
He's beginning to be a nuisance."
"What, Jack?" Patricia was full of sympathy for
the absent. "But he's most agreeable. I like him."
"Yes," responded Amy, with rather a morose air.
"You don't have to put up with him. He's moody.
He's got a fearful temper, and he sulks. It's the temperament
that goes with that complexion. He's dark
and sulky. He hasn't got any notion of.... He's old-fashioned...."
"Do you mean he's in love with you?" asked Patricia.
"That seems to be what's the matter."
"Oho, it takes two to be in love," scornfully cried
Amy. "And I'm not in love with him."
"But he's your friend."
"That's just it. He won't recognise that men and
women can be friends. He's a very decent fellow; but
he's full of this sulky jealousy, and he glowers and sulks
whenever any other man comes near me. Well, that's
not my idea of friendship."
"Nor mine," echoed Patricia, trying to reconstruct
her puzzled estimate of their relations. "But couldn't
you stop that? Surely, if you put it clearly to him...."
Amy interrupted with a laugh that was almost shrill.
Her manner was coldly contemptuous.
"You are priceless!" she cried. "You say the most
wonderful things."
"Well, I should."
"I wonder." Amy moved about, collecting the plates.
"You see ... some day I shall marry. And in a weak
moment I said probably I'd marry him."
"Oh, Amy! Of course he's jealous!" Swiftly, Patricia
did the young man justice.
"It didn't give him any right to be. I told him I'd
changed my mind. I've told him lots of times that probably
I shan't marry him."
"But you keep him. Amy! You do encourage him."
Patricia was stricken afresh with a generous impulse of
emotion on Jack's behalf. "I mean, by not telling him
straight out. Surely you can't keep a man waiting like
that? I wonder he doesn't insist."
"Jack insist!" Amy was again scornful. "Not he!"
There was a moment's pause. Innocently, Patricia
ventured upon a charitable interpretation.
"He must love you very much. But Amy, if you
don't love him."
"What's love got to do with marriage?" asked Amy,
with a sourly cynical air.
"Hasn't it—everything?" Patricia was full of sincerity.
She was too absorbed in this study to help Amy
to clear the table; but on finding herself alone in the
studio while the crockery was carried away to the kitchen
she mechanically shook the crumbs behind the gas-fire
and folded the napkin. This was the most astonishing
moment of her day.
Presently Amy returned, and sat in the big armchair,
while, seated upon the podger and leaning back against
the wall, Patricia smoked a cigarette.
"You see, the sort of man one falls in love with doesn't
make a good husband," announced Amy, as patiently as
if Patricia had been in fact a child. She persisted in
her attitude of superior wisdom in the world's ways.
"It's all very well; but a girl ought to be able to live with
any man she fancies, and then in the end marry the safe
man for a ... well, for life, if she likes."
Patricia's eyes were opened wide.
"I shouldn't like that," she said. "I don't think the
man would, either."
"Bless you, the men all do it," cried Amy, contemptuously.
"Don't make any mistake about that."
"I don't believe it," said Patricia. "Do you mean that
my father—or your father...?"
"Oh, I don't know. I meant, nowadays. Most of the
people you saw last night are living together or living
with other people."
Patricia was aware of a chill.
"But you've never," she urged. "I've never."
"No." Amy was obviously irritated by the personal
application. "That's just it. I say we ought to be free
to do what we like. Men do what they like."
"D'you think Jack has lived with other girls?"
"My dear child, how do I know? I should hope he
has."
"Hope! Amy, you do make me feel a prig."
"Perhaps you are one. Oh, I don't know. I'm sick
of thinking, thinking, thinking about it all. I never get
any peace."
"Is there somebody you want to live with?"
"No. I wish there was. Then I should know."
"I wonder if you would know," said Patricia, in a low
voice. "Amy, do you really know what love is? Because
I don't. I've sometimes let men kiss me, and it
doesn't seem to matter in the least. I don't particularly
want to kiss them, or be kissed. I've never seen anything
in all the flirtation that goes on in dark corners.
It's amusing once or twice; but it becomes an awful bore.
The men don't interest you. The thought of living with
any of them just turns me sick."
Amy listened with attention. Her eyes protruded.
She tapped her foot upon the floor.
"Yes, but you're not sensual," she said. "You're not
an artist. Experience is a thing every artist must have.
Not a humdrum marriage, and children, and washing
books ... I must have experience—to do great
work...."
Patricia's eyes flew to the canvas, now covered, which
stood upon the easel.
"But ..." she began.
"You drive me perfectly mad!" cried Amy, suddenly
beside herself with impatience. "You ask questions.
You're like a child. You don't know what torment is.
You don't know what it is to be bothered the whole time
with all this ... never to get away from it."
"It can't be very healthy," said Patricia. Amy
showed her teeth in an angry smile. She did not answer
for several minutes, during which her face became set
in an expression of discontented egotism.
"Sometimes I think I'll marry Jack just to find out
what marriage is like," she said at last. "I could always
leave him and go off on my own."
"Poor Jack!" thought Patricia. She said aloud: "He
wouldn't like that."
"Oho, he wouldn't be any worse off than he is now."
"He'd be prevented from marrying anybody else."
"If I left him I shouldn't mind what he did," explained
Amy. "Of course, he could divorce me."
Patricia thought she had never heard such confident
expression of selfishness. It was one thing, she felt, for
her to be selfish, because she really was wonderful; but
to hear Amy speaking as though she had no need to consider
others struck Patricia as almost abominable. She
was pleased with the word—it was almost abominable.
There was a long silence, while their thoughts ranged.
"I certainly don't think you ought to marry him," remarked
Patricia. "It wouldn't be fair. You must consider
him a little. His feelings, I mean."
Amy stretched her legs out in front of her and nestled
her head in the corner of the chair. She lighted one
cigarette from another, and slowly took two or three
puffs.
"You'll find that it's best not to consider other people,"
she said at length. "They only become a nuisance.
I'm kind to Jack, and he's a nuisance. I've told him he
can go; but he won't go unless I definitely say I won't
marry him."
"He's very weak!" exclaimed Patricia, fiercely. "I'm
ashamed of him."
"He's not at all weak. He wants something, and he's
waiting for it, that's all."
"If you feel like that, surely it shows that you mean
to marry him in the end."
"I wonder if I shall," murmured Amy. "Perhaps.
Perhaps not...."
"I could give you a good shaking!" cried Patricia.
To herself, she thought: "She thinks she's immoral,
when she's only conceited. How silly!" And with that
she had her first glimpse of Amy's soul. The rapid
judgment of others which children possess was still a
faculty of Patricia's. Her self-knowledge was rather
less. This that Amy indicated was to her an unknown
world; but after all she had preserved her own liberty
through a number of episodes common to the period in
which she lived. The superficial excitements of dancing
partners were not unknown to her, and she had the modern
girl's knowledge of things which of old were hidden.
Only a quick intelligence had saved her in the past, and
she had been made exceptionally confident by experience
in her power to deal with whatever situations might arise
in her own life. Amy, who looked upon Patricia as a
babe, continued to brood upon her trials.
"The men I like," she presently admitted, with candour,
"don't seem to like me. The men who attract me.
They go for the pretty, dolly woman."
"You're pretty," urged Patricia.
"They don't think so. What's left to me? People like
Jack."
"But Amy.... It can't be so...." The word Patricia
sought was "casual." "I mean, I thought one knew—that
one either loved a man or didn't." She was
pathetically bewildered.
"That's in days when a girl only knew the man she
married, and one or two others. It's different now.
You know a hundred men—who's to know which is the
best of them?"
"Is that how the men feel?" asked Patricia.
Amy stirred in discomfort. She was ill at ease.
"My dear girl, you don't understand," she said.
"There's physical attraction; and there's ... well,
there's being pals with a man. But the old ideas of such
things are gone."
Patricia shook her head. She was hearing of something
she did not understand.
"I wish they weren't," was all she could find to say.
"They are!" fiercely cried Amy. "If I were a good
girl, living at home, I should marry Jack and be told I'd
made a 'suitable match.' But I'm not. I'm on my own.
I'm going to have a life of my own. I'm going—I'm
not going to be any man's property. That's finished."
A blank misery seized Patricia.
"I wish you were happy," she murmured. "Oh, I do
wish you were." It was the only thing she could say,
for she was not learned enough to arrive at any truer
explanation than her own unutterable thought of a few
minutes earlier.
Sombre dissatisfaction continued to cloud Amy's face.
"Yes," she said. "Of course, you don't understand.
You couldn't. You've got one of those simple little
natures. You're content. You don't know what suffering
or temptation is. If a man says he loves you,
you're ready to believe him. You're ready to fall in his
arms."
"Am I?" inquired Patricia, dangerously. Her indignation
was rising.
Amy looked suspiciously at her, too self-absorbed to
give more than passing attention.
"You'll see. You're younger than I am. Perhaps
you'll learn. Perhaps you'll find out for yourself what
suffering is," she admonished, almost with a grim hopefulness.
There came again a sharp tapping at the studio door,
and, as if bored almost to lethargy, Amy slowly moved
to answer the call. Patricia, instantly alert to recall the
injunction under which Jack Penton had departed,
imagined hastily that he might have brought another
visitor. And for Patricia at this time "another visitor"
meant one only. She started at the second voice.
Surely it was Harry's. Standing now, she faced the
door, and could see beyond Amy to the figures of the
two men who entered. First came Jack. There followed
Monty Rosenberg.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE REACTION — i — ii — iii — iv
Monty came into the small studio very much as
a tall man enters the saloon of a yacht. His head
was lowered, and he produced the impression that all
about him was very small. Patricia's first thought of
Monty was a disappointed: "Oh, he's fat!" But
when his overcoat was laid aside, and he was nearer, she
saw that whatever he might become in the future he was
still on the slim side of corpulence.
"What a pleasant surprise," murmured Monty. His
air caused Jack Penton to appear callow. He was almost
mocking to Amy. There was something in the way
he held his shoulders, and stood quite still, that made
him seem nearly as well-bred as a servant; and yet there
was such ease in his manner that Patricia felt he could
never in all his life be for an instant discomposed. She
envied Monty. She was silent with envy, and her slight
shyness, which was expressed by such graceful unconscious
shrinking, was an added charm.
"What happened to Dalrymple, Monty?" demanded
Amy, as her new guest took the armchair, and smiled
down upon Patricia.
"Oh, he went home." Monty had a soft voice, perfectly
quiet and smooth; and he almost always raised
his inflexion at the end of the sentence, as if he were inviting
a response.
"He was drunk," said Amy.
"My dear Amy!" Monty cast a glance of pretended
protest which included Patricia, but seemed also to associate
her in his protest. "There are so many stages of
drunkenness."
"A lot of the people were drunk last night. And not
jollily drunk, either. They were all white and puffily
drunk." Amy was persistent. She was determined—as
ever—to speak the truth which was in her.
"How unpleasant," remarked Monty. "But you enjoyed
yourself, didn't you, Miss Quin? I hope you'll
come again when there is a sober party."
"I'd love to," cried Patricia, sparkling. She was
happy again, the perplexities arising from her talk with
Amy forgotten. "I thought it was a wonderful party."
Monty ran his eye over her, with the quick certainty of
a connoisseur. She was fair, fresh, volatile, beautifully
shaped; vain, and therefore to be reached by flattery;
over-confident, perhaps, of her power to please; but unspoilt
and capable of affording him interest and amusement.
He had no interest at all in Amy. She was too
crudely egotistical, and she was, besides, too set. Monty
could have foretold her expressed opinion (not necessarily
her true opinion, since she was often, as he knew,
unaware of what she really thought) upon every matter
that was likely to come up between them. Neither
did she interest him physically: for that she was too hard,
and although he supposed her to be sensual she appeared
to Monty to lack both mystery and abandon. So, although
he knew that he could more easily create an artificially-emotional
situation with Amy, he gave all his
interest to Patricia. There was more in the fresh little
new girl, he decided, than in anybody he had recently
met. He eyed her appreciatively, as a gourmet may
eye a dainty dish. She was interesting. All she did,
even if she did nothing but sit quite still upon that enormous
cushion beside the gas fire, had grace and personality
in it. Especially he noticed that impetuous
mouth, which might betray weakness or instability or
reckless bravado, but which could never, he was sure, be
associated with tedium. He resolved upon a quick
stroke. He saw that Amy and Jack were debating something
which removed their attention from his own activities,
and so he bent towards Patricia.
"I'm so glad you enjoyed the party. Look here ...."
He appeared to consider. "I've got a small party on
Friday ... I wonder if you'd like to come to that.
I'm afraid ... Let me see, there are only about half-a-dozen
people...." He was thinking as he spoke, and
recollecting the names of his guests. "I think the only
one you know who is coming is Mayne. You met him,
didn't you? Yes, I remember, you went home in his
car. Would you like to come?"
Patricia could have jumped for joy. How lovely!
"I should like to come very much," she made herself
say very sedately; but Monty was not so inexperienced
in these matters as she might have wished him; and she
was not altogether sure that her eagerness had escaped
his notice.
"That's delightful," he said in his gentle way. "So
nice." He was extraordinarily polite and agreeable.
And in an instant it was as though that matter were
settled and forgotten. Monty rose and went casually
to the easel, Patricia watching him in curiosity as he contemplated
the monstrous botch. "Yes," he said at last.
"I like that. That bit's awfully well-done, Amy." He
indicated with a slowly sweeping hand. Amy was by
his side, her expression greedily changed. She was avid
of this expert flattery, and eagerly receptive. Jack
Penton hung behind. He came over to Patricia, stooping
to her.
"Do you like it?" He jerked his head at the painting.
"Very much." Patricia was doing her best. She had
not had much experience in catching the true note of art
criticism; but a rush of sympathy made her cordial to
him, and anxious to say what she imagined he might find
in some degree reassuring. Jack shrugged, and took a
cigarette-case from his hip-pocket.
"I can't understand it," he said bluntly. "I see an
eye, and a blob and a swish; and I can't make it into a
picture." He was clearly puzzled and undecided. "I
wish I could understand it," he went on. "Suppose I'm
dull, or something."
"Perhaps it isn't everybody's idea of painting," agreed
Patricia, guardedly. "I'm afraid I don't know much
about it."
Jack lowered himself to the floor at her side.
"I wish I did," he said. "You know, I'm interested,
and all that; and I want to like it, because it's Amy's.
But I can't, and that's all about it. When a chap like
Rosenberg comes along.... He's so damned fluent
with it all.... You see, this is what worries me.
He's pulling her leg. He thinks her work's awful."
"Oh! Oh!" came in protest from Patricia.
"It's true," said Jack, gloomily. "They all do. To
her face they say this sort of stuff; and when they're
away they make fun of it. They just laugh. I wish
she'd give it up."
"I can't believe ..." began Patricia, greatly distressed.
"No, you don't want to." Jack's dark face, already
thin, seemed to grow haggard. "Imagine what I feel
about it. They shut up a bit when I'm there; but nobody
thinks she's really any good. And what's to be
the end of it? Can you see? Can't you imagine her
going on, fiddling with this and that—water colours and
oils—all drunk with her conceit. And then, what? When
she's soured and disappointed she'll...." He shrugged.
During the speech his temper had risen, and his tone held
a stabbing savageness. "They won't care. They never
care about human beings, as we do. They'll laugh, and
she'll never know it, but she'll think there's a conspiracy
against her. She may go all to pieces; she may pull
through. Anything may happen. Sometimes I feel inclined
to leave her to it; but I've been in love with her
for years—since she was a kid; and I feel I just can't
let her drop. She hasn't got a friend in the world except
me. Not one that cares if she sinks or swims. Look at
her purring, and Monty ladling out the lies. Look at
it!"
He checked himself as with venom in his urgent tone
he drew attention to the two by the easel. Patricia had
paled under the fury of his quiet disclosure. The husky
voice, which she had previously disliked, was in keeping
with his mood and his words, and it therefore assumed
new meaning, and her dislike was gone immediately.
She saw him as a young man deeply—almost passionately—in
earnest, but she was saddened by the picture
of such unhappiness as his must be. Her vision of this
whole affair became horrible, beyond bearing.
"If her work isn't any good," said Patricia, "surely
she'll realise it? She is wise. At any rate, she's shrewd
enough to find out the truth, isn't she? If it is the
truth."
"Never. You don't understand what ... all this
rot"—he waved vaguely—"means to her. When did a
dud—a second-rate person—ever realise his second-rateness?
Why, all the really able people I know, or that
I've ever heard of, are humble—not that they aren't conceited,
too; but it's in a different way. They're humble
as well. They've got a sense of their own limitations.
They're not like Amy. She's mad about her own cleverness.
She calls herself an artist, when it's for other
people to do that. And it's only because she guesses
there's a catch somewhere. She feels she's failing, and
won't face the reason. There's nothing like success for
lowering a person's conceit. She's never had any success—not
real success. She's got to make it all up inside.
Her vanity's all out of control; and if you try to
warn her she just flies into a passion and calls you a fool
for your pains. She'll never have any success. It's impossible,
with her temperament."
"Well, then, you mean she's worthless," whispered
Patricia, with indignation.
"I'm in love with her," answered Jack, in the same low
tone of doggedness. "That's all."
"Isn't it a funny sort of love that decries ... as
you've been doing?" She was still warm with loyalty,
to hide the dreadful convincingness of his words.
"You're just a dear little girl, as kind as anything,"
Jack said. "And you think I'm a cantankerous fool."
"No ... never that. Oh, no." Patricia made a
gesture of uneasiness, her hand almost upon his hand in
consolation. "No, I think you're unhappy and bitter,
looking at the dark side ... exaggerating...."
Jack Penton gave a little bitter laugh.
"Exaggerating!" he said. "I wish I was!"
"Then leave her. Let her learn. You're only driving
her deeper...."
"I can't leave her," he answered, doggedly. "I'm in
love with her. I'd go, and she'd call to me, and I'd
come running back. See, I'm not a strong chap. Some
men could do it. I can't."
"No, no. It's dreadful. Dreadful. I feel helpless.
I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry. So really
sorry."
Patricia was as vehement as he. She was carried
right out of her young ignorance, as she often was, by
emotion; and she sat looking at him with a glowing face,
her eyes melting in their sympathy. The lines upon that
poor grey forehead and round those troubled eyes hurt
her, and the bitter droop of Jack's thin dark lips made
its direct appeal to her heart, even while that heart sank
inevitably at the prospect of unhappiness in life which
lay for all to see in front of this bewildered lover. It
was at this moment that Amy and Monty, both aware
of tension in that other corner of the studio, turned and
contemplated their companions. Very strange impressions
were recorded by each at such manifest intimacy
between the two who were sitting absorbed by the fire.
Upon Monty's side there was a considerable increase
of interest in Patricia. It was as though he addressed
to himself an appreciative "Ah!" at the sight of a young
woman less simple than she appeared. The ideal sport,
for him, was to be obtained from freshness that had
savoir faire behind it. He began to relish this girl. As
he scrutinised her his lids were low, and he watched for
some betraying gesture of crude sophistication as only
an expert could watch. None came. He was the more
intrigued. His companion was less passive.
"Well, you two," cried Amy. "Jack's the perfect
philistine, of course." She came to the fire, resting her
hand upon the mantelpiece, and holding a cigarette forward
in her lips for Monty to light. She spoke thereafter
with the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and
the smoke drifting up into her eyes. "You can explain
a thing to him in words of one syllable for hours on end,
and at the end he just says, 'Well, I know what I like!'
Doesn't turn a hair. Not a swerve. Isn't it marvellous?"
"Why pretend?" suavely demanded Monty. "A great
deal of talk about the arts is humbug. It's created by
the apparent necessity for saying something."
"I agree with you," snorted Jack, who was still ruffled
by the recent exploration of his inexhaustible troubles,
and who therefore was in danger of being rather less than
polite.
"I felt sure you would, my dear Penton," lazily responded
Monty. "What we need is standardised criticism.
Unfortunately, people are so perverse. They insist
on having their own views."
"It's only a pretence," said Jack. "They're all other
people's. Unless they're made up for the occasion, in
which case they're nobody's."
"When you say one thing, and somebody else says the
opposite, what happens?" asked Patricia, directly interrogating
Monty, and feeling bold in the action.
"I? Oh, the other person's wrong, of course," rejoined
Monty, easily.
"Is there no argument?"
"Oh, no!" Monty's "Oh" was merely a quick intaking
of the breath.
"It's ill-bred," sneered Jack. "In the æsthetic world
there's no argument at all. One just slangs everybody
else behind their backs."
"Are you quite well, Penton?" archly inquired Monty.
His question made Jack grin, but not altogether with
amiability. "I thought you might be ailing."
"Why is it that anybody who speaks the truth is always
suspect?" asked Jack, vigorously. "It's extraordinary
to me."
"It's because you live in the material world of unreality,
my dear Penton. Once you realise that art is the
fundamental principle of life, you'll take yourself less
seriously."
Patricia thought: one for Master Jack. Is it that he
does that? Does he take himself—everything—too
seriously? I think so. And what is the material world
of unreality? That was the question which Jack was
asking aloud.
"The world of phenomena," explained Monty, "is the
unreal world."
"The world of seeing and hearing? Well, in that
case what tests have we left to us?" Jack was puzzled.
"Nothing," whispered Monty, and began good-naturedly
to laugh. "None of these set measures. Only
the intrinsic value of everything will stand revealed."
"Pooh!" said Jack. "I wonder what your intrinsic
value is, or mine."
"It lies in terms of character, dear boy."
Patricia saw upon Monty's lips the shadow of contempt.
She saw that, imitatively, Amy was reflecting
just such an expression. She sighed. In terms of
character! Well, why should Monty be so confident
that the superiority lay with him? And why Amy?
She almost laughed in their faces—not as a token of
amusement, but as a protest. The word "booh!"—with
its immediate implications—would have expressed her
feeling. They were only complacent because they had
quicker brains than Jack. As though quickness of brain
mattered! She had it herself, by starts, and was quite
abreast of their comments.
"What's character?" demanded Patricia.
"My dear child!" expostulated Amy, screwing her face
under the smarting onset of cigarette smoke.
"Well, what is it?" This time it was Jack, dangerously
bellicose.
"It's what everybody thinks they've got," said Patricia.
"When they haven't got it," added Jack.
"Oh, not nowadays," urged Monty, correcting that
assumption with a quite lordly indifference. "We're all
so self-conscious."
"I mean...." Jack was at a loss. Patricia's brain
supplemented his deficiency; but she had not the courage
to say her thoughts aloud. He meant that it was not of
character that people were vain. It was of accomplishments;
of quickness, skill, beauty. And yet....
"It all goes much deeper than you think," she announced;
and by provoking sharp laughter from them
all by this profundity, Patricia saved the argument about
reality from becoming a real argument. It was a lively
contribution to the evening.
"A philosopher!" cried Monty, in his slow, rather
jeering way, very easily and as if all views were one to
him.
"Very well: we'll see," thought Patricia. Rebelliously,
she was aware of power within herself transcending
all quickness and all agility. It was the power in
virtue of which she was peculiarly Patricia. She had
not caught more than the faintest glimpse of the fact that
Monty had been playing with them all, and that his interest
during the whole of the discussion had been concentrated
upon the changes of expression to be noted in
rapid progress across Patricia's very readable face.
"You must have honesty," grumbled Jack. "It's all
so simple. If a chap's honest and decent, his cleverness
doesn't matter. That's what you mean by character,
I take it."
"That's what you mean," suggested Monty.
"If a man's a liar...."
It was here that Patricia interrupted Jack for his salvation.
"Jack: don't be logical," she pleaded. "You couldn't
convince anybody by logic."
He gave a gesture of despair.
"That's just it," he sighed. "That's what I complain
of, nowadays. There's all this damned affected cant
against sense. People first find out what they ought to
do, and then do something else, in case they should be
suspected of sense."
Amy and Monty were no longer listening. Patricia
gave Jack a warning glance. What he said, so far as
she understood it at all, appeared to be ridiculous.
"I must go." Monty rose. He bent over Patricia.
"You'll come on Friday. At eight o'clock? Splendid."
Neither of the others heard him. Swarthy and regal, he
moved slowly into his overcoat and swept them a slight
bow upon leaving. With his going, there went from the
studio, for Patricia, all vividness of interest. She was
prepared to look with distaste at both of her remaining
companions. To them the inevitable squabble might be—must
be—of importance, but she felt she was tired of
them. They bored her. They took themselves too
seriously. It was all thoroughly ugly and absurd. People
with only one idea!
She waited, enduring the opening stages of a wrangle.
"My dear Jack. Why you must make a fool of yourself...."
began Amy, as soon as the door had closed.
The trouble continued. Saying nothing, Patricia put on
her coat.
"I'm going," she announced, curtly; and left them to
their self-important disagreement.
On the way home, Patricia thought much of what she
had heard during the evening from both Amy and Jack.
By a strange chance, she had heard in the same hour
both sides of an unhappy conflict; and this must always
be a depressing experience. It set a weight upon her
heart during the whole of her journey. She saw Jack,
incapable of measuring his words with tact; honest,
puzzled, commonplace; she saw Amy selfish and
short-sighted; without talent, sure of her own rightness
and cleverness. Patricia did not know that in each estimate
her mind was quite naturally registering the adverse
statements which had been made to her by the prejudiced
parties.
She turned into the street in which her home lay, and
for the first time knew that the hour must be late. The
houses were all dark. In her own house, above the door,
she could see only the faintest of lights, which must be
that of her little bedroom lamp. Patricia shrank, laughing
to herself, at the thought of her landlady's views on
successive late nights. Disapproval! Well, she must
get used to that sort of thing. In future there might be
many late nights. Parties of every kind danced before
her. Patricia, living for herself, and venturing forth
into this new world of vivid personality and adventure,
was above fear of what any landlady might think. The
lure of anti-conventionality was before her. She
laughed quietly in enjoyment of its charm.
Nevertheless, she opened the front door with stealth.
Her expectation as to the scene which was to meet her
eyes was fulfilled. Before her, upon the hall-table, stood
the little lamp, turned very low in case it should smoke.
Cavernous blackness lay along the passage, towards the
kitchen stairs; and above, where she must herself go,
was a drab shadow towards which she must not, for
courage's sake, look too sensitively, lest it be peopled
with imagined horrors. Grey ceilings receded into the
dimmest of distances. Patricia closed the door, feeling
upon her cheeks a little warmth from the atmosphere of
the house and its most recent meal. Something very
small and white lay upon the table immediately beside
the lamp; and with the thought that it must concern
herself she picked it up at once. Her heart gave a sudden
throb. Almost, her lips trembled. She gazed at the
card over which she was bending; and the mood of unhappiness
swept again upon a heart that had already
been deeply troubled in the course of the evening.
Then, slowly, Patricia took her lamp and went up the
stairs, Harry's card between her fingers.
CHAPTER FIVE: EDGAR MOVES — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — CHAPTER SIX: EVENING WITH HARRY — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii
But however miserable Patricia may have felt at
night, she rose rewarded in the morning; for upon
her breakfast-table she found a letter in an unknown
handwriting. She pounced upon it with a lifting of the
heart. "Miss Patricia Quin," she read. The handwriting
was small and flowing, firm and curly. All the
capital letters were large and beautifully formed; and
yet there was a carelessness and grace in the general
style which charmed her. The post mark she could not
decipher. With sudden resolution, Patricia tore open
the envelope, her intuition for once the infallible intuition
of every woman's dream.
"Dear Patricia. Sorry you were not in when I called.
What about coming out to dinner and to dance afterwards
on Saturday? I suggest the Marnier, seven-thirty
sharp; and then on to either Topping's or the
Queensford. Yours ever, Harry."
Patricia gave a low laugh, and read the letter through
a second time. How lucky that she would have a new
dress! She sat down at once, with her note-paper and
pen, biting the end of the pen as she planned the reply.
"Dear Harry," she wrote. "Splendid. Marnier,
seven-thirty. Then which ever you like. I've never
been to either. Yours ever, Patricia."
She carefully sealed the envelope, and wrote the address
in a handwriting as near that of Harry as her natural
penmanship allowed. She was still contemplating the
letter and re-reading her invitation when Lucy kicked
the door open and stamped into the room, kicking the
door back again with her heel. Both sides of the door
showed signs of Lucy's regular methods. With raw
and dirty hands Lucy dumped down the meal.
"Cole," she remarked agreeably. "Young man come
for you larce night, tole me to say he's sorry to miss you."
"Yes, thank you."
"Gotcher letter, then," said Lucy.
"Yes, thank you, Lucy." Patricia was trying to be
sedate; but the sharp grey eyes of Lucy, which shone
from above red cheeks and a snub nose and a grimy neck,
were inexorable.
"Thought he'd write," said Lucy. "I ses, 'Can I take
any message?'—you know, sweet as sugar. He gimme
a card. Wouldn't leave no message. Fine lookin'
young man, he was."
"I expect you were very excited," said Patricia, dryly—even,
she hoped, quellingly. Lucy stood looking down
at her, very sturdy and determined.
"What say?" she asked. Patricia repeated her remark.
Lucy turned abruptly. "No," she said, over a
raised shoulder. "But I thought you would be."
She was gone, leaving Patricia faintly pink.
Although cold, it was a fresh morning. The clouds
had gone, and the sky was blue. Patricia—having eaten
her breakfast and hurried exultingly out of doors—felt
a strong temptation to run along one of the streets leading
riverwards. She could imagine herself standing
upon the Albert Bridge and looking down at the swiftly-moving
Thames. A fine breeze would be sweeping
there. She would be able to pretend that she was at
sea. How stern Patricia must be with herself! She
vigorously maintained her course along the King's Road,
towards Sloane Square, and there made her purchases.
She thought: "I'm not like these other women. I
know what I want. They stand fingering stockings for
half-an-hour. I suppose it's a hobby. I simply ask for
what I want. And get it."
This made her seem to the assistant who served her
somewhat peremptory. Patricia took no interest in
shop-assistants when she bought material for a dress for
herself. She thought she did; but although she became
indignant—vicariously—at thought of shop-assistants'
wages, she did not really acknowledge that in relation to
herself they had any existence. She retired from the
shop with approximately what she had entered for the
purpose of buying; and the assistant watched her go
with an air of some preoccupation. As another assistant
near her was doing the same thing, the two gathered
together in order to discuss Patricia. They appeared
to rub noses, as kittens might have done; mournfully and
confidingly, holding conversation in a whisper, and
separated only at the entrance of another customer.
"Yes, moddam?" inquired Patricia's shop-assistant,
with mechanical address.
Patricia was far down the King's Road, carrying her
parcel.
"I should hate to be a shop-assistant," she impulsively
thought. "It must be a rotten life, attending to people
who don't know what they want, and stand fingering
stockings for half-an-hour, and then buy a reel of cotton.
They like me, because I know what I want."
She could not help being rather pleased with herself.
Now, while Patricia was busy making her dress, and
forgetting altogether that she was going to meet him on
the Friday night, Edgar Mayne, who did not even know
that the meeting was to occur, was working quietly in
his office, transacting business in which he had only a
material interest. Edgar was one of those men, of whom
there are many, who made money without deliberately
intending to do so. It was true, as Harry had announced
at the party, that Edgar had begun life as an office boy.
He had left school at the age of fourteen, and had answered
advertisements until one of them brought a
favourable reply. He had begun life by copying letters
by means of damp sheets and a press; and he had been
promoted a year later to a junior clerkship. He had no
interest in figures beyond that which natural aptitude
could supply. He had none of the born accountant's
delight in their possibilities. Solely, he brought to his
accounts a character naturally precise, and with similar
ease he could at this time have directed his intelligence
to many other matters. If Edgar's parents had been
wealthy, he would have had a complete education, and
his gifts would have promised a great career; but they
were poor, and themselves ill-educated, and so it became
necessary that Edgar should early add something to the
weekly budget. He did so.
From one competence he advanced to another. By
the time he was thirty, Edgar was manager of the business,
which dealt in the importation of those goods which
English people require from abroad, and the exportation
of goods produced in England for which there was a
foreign market. He never saw the goods in bulk; but
he saw samples of them and was furnished with myriads
of catalogues specifying their quality and the current
market rates at which they were to be bought and at which
they were being sold. By means of occasional visits
abroad, by more frequent interviews and excursions in
England, Edgar grew to considerable knowledge of
prices and conditions of manufacture. His advice was
thus demanded by those directing the firm, who presently
invited him to become one of their number. With
increase of business came increase of income and power;
and as Edgar's interests extended he found himself at
thirty-seven a man of some wealth, who had at the same
time a considerable standing among those able to appreciate
his commercial acumen.
During this time his family had shared his progress.
His father no longer worked; his mother directed the
household, but no longer laboured upon her knees to
keep it clean and neat. His younger brother, if he had
not been killed in the War, would have benefited equally;
while his young sister Claudia stayed at home and amused
herself and everybody else very much by a display of
housewifely virtues for which many others girls of her
period, even if they have the inclination, can find nowadays
no opportunity. The family, having spent miserable
years in a place called West Hampstead, had moved
seven years before the opening of this story to Kensington,
where they occupied a small house and spent an
agreeable, if aimless, existence. The elders, who were
proud of Edgar, feared him a little; his sister, proud also,
feared him not at all. It was she, in fact, who had kept
Edgar human; for without her he might either have
become lost in his business or have married some tepid
young woman who herself had cast the die.
The household consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Mayne,
Claudia, Edgar, Pulcinella (a small but irrepressible
Cocker Spaniel), Percy (a cat with a character), and a
cook and maids who were both respectfully spoiled by
Mrs. Mayne. The servants despised Mrs. Mayne, and
idolised her children. There was nothing which Claudia
might not do without fault; and Edgar was so unobtrusively
tended that he was almost unaware of the devotion
which breathed firmly from the kitchen. He went
his way, liking very simple things and dealing with them
as they arose; and none knew the secret chagrin which
lay always in his solitary heart.
This chagrin was nothing less than loneliness. He
did not easily make friends. His office work had so
occupied his time and energy that Edgar had become
rather shy in company. And so, while Claudia had a
few friends, he had none. Claudia's friends seemed to
him to be dull little boys and girls, for Claudia was a
good deal younger than himself; and although he was
amused when one or other of them was timidly pert to
him they combined together to make him feel old. He
had the reputation of a born celibate. Work, therefore,
and more work, kept him rather staid. Edgar's fear
was that he might dry up altogether before he had ever
had time to live. With a warm heart, an eager sympathy,
and a manner so reserved and shy that it gave
the appearance of coldness, he was in danger—not, as
he thought, of drying up, but of making some ridiculous
plunge into emotionalism which might wreck his life.
Since the night of Monty's party, Edgar had thought
much of Patricia. It did not please him to think of her
in the rather sophisticated company of those who had
gathered at Monty's. She was clearly delighted with
these people, and they were a danger to her purity. Edgar
thought more of Patricia during that week than of
any other person. He liked her. He would have liked
to help her—oh, always unobtrusively, so that she could
not be embarrassed by his help;—but also not perhaps
quite as impersonally as he supposed.
It was therefore with a start of delight and surprise
that Edgar, upon arriving at Monty's house, found that
Patricia was to be his neighbour at dinner.
His car had been behaving erratically en route, which is
a way cars behave when they ought to be in perfect order;
and therefore Edgar strode into the house with grimy
hands, and kept the party waiting for several minutes
while he washed. At last, hot and irritated, he joined
the others, to find only Patricia, Monty, some people
called Quellan, and Blanche Tallentyre. All were sitting
or standing in a small drawing room, and dinner was
immediately announced. Upon his left Edgar found
Mrs. Quellan, a fair, large woman, originally thin and
raw-boned, who was accumulating undesired and undesirable
plumpness; and who wrote books for boys under
a masculine pseudonym. Upon his right was Patricia,
from whose dress all except one tiny white thread had
been removed at exactly the moment when she should
have begun her journey. The thread caught her eye as
they sat down. It also caught Edgar's eye, which was
not unused to such sights.
"I might have called for you if I had known you were
coming," he said, unfolding his napkin.
"If you had, I should have kept you waiting," responded
Patricia, with a small grimace.
"Were you busy up to the last minute, then?"
"Beyond that!" They laughed together.
Then Edgar glanced round the handsome room with
its high and painted ceiling and its curiously severe walls
of luminous grey. It was not a warm-looking room.
There were no pictures; but the furniture was old and
good. The table at which they sat was circular, and the
light above caught all the brilliances of glass and silver
ware, while it increased the cold darkness of the walls.
"Do you know these people?" he next asked.
"Mrs. Tallentyre was at the party. Isn't she unhappy-looking?"
"Perhaps it's only her manner." Edgar strove to
make his tone light; for his assumptions were otherwise.
"No. It's real." They both verified the impression.
To Edgar it appeared that Mrs. Tallentyre made adroit
use of cosmetics; but they heightened the hard glitter
of her eyes, and the markedly anxious vivacity of her
manner. Patricia resumed: "Her husband was at the
party. A horrid man."
Well: Edgar wondered what she was doing here at
all, sitting at Monty's left hand and talking to Quellan
as if she had something to gain from him. Mrs. Quellan,
fortunately, was engaged with Monty. Jacobs, having
served the soup, was at the sideboard with the
decanters under his eye.
"I wish I'd known you were coming," Edgar said,
rather lamely.
"I was told you'd be here." Patricia was perhaps
roguish. "I've been feeling that I must have been rather
silly.... I didn't thank you...."
"Oh, no.... I'd been thinking...." Edgar broke
off.
"I met ... Mr. Rosenberg at Amy Roberts's the
night after the party, and he asked me then. Amy Roberts
was at school with me."
"Is she ... some sort of artist? Forgive me...."
He saw that Patricia was laughing; but it was at a swift
association of his stumbling enquiry with the monstrosity
which stood upon Amy's easel. "I'm altogether ignorant
of painting and reputations." Edgar could not
have expressed the curious happiness which pervaded
him at the sight of Patricia's laughing face. The new
curve of her cheeks in laughter, and the poise of her
head, were all delicious to him. Some reflection of his
feeling must have appeared in his eyes; for she sobered
almost responsive to his admiration.
"I don't think anybody knows her work," explained
Patricia. Something like sorrow transformed her face.
She was recalling Jack and his miserable confessions.
"Mr. Rosenberg was praising a picture she's now painting
when he was at the studio."
"You like it yourself?"
Patricia looked frankly back at him. There was
something in Edgar which invited the truth. She felt
strongly tempted to tell him the whole story of Jack.
How strange that she should feel at once so intimately
friendly!
"I don't know," she admitted. Then, quite astonished
at herself, she went breathlessly on: "You see, I don't
know anything about pictures; and I want to seem to
know. It isn't pretence ... or not altogether. I want
to understand. But Amy's so difficult, and you can't
ask her to tell you why something that's very ugly, from
one point of view, is really good from another. I don't
mean that I like sentimental pictures. I hate them. But
you need educating to appreciate the sort of things Amy
does."
Unconsciously, Patricia had drawn the attention of
Monty, at the other side of the round table. He had
missed the opening words of her speech; but he had
heard the conclusion.
"You need no education, Miss Quin," he cried. "She
simply isn't an artist."
Patricia flushed deeply.
"I thought you were ... were praising her the other
evening," she said, indignant and breathless, her face
alight with vivacity. She was obviously loyal, obviously
in earnest, and in such company demanding to be teased.
Monty's wicked smile made the others laugh.
"One must be polite, of course," he said.
"You think she's bad?" demanded Patricia. "I mean,
you think her work is bad?"
"Terrible." They laughed again.
"But you praised her. Why do you let her go on?"
"One lets everybody go on. You can't stop a runaway
car or a deluded woman."
Patricia glanced aside at Edgar.
"You think that?" she asked him before them all.
"It would hurt her to be told the truth. She wouldn't
believe it, I suppose," he said. "If it would do any
good, certainly tell her; but only a close friend whose
judgment she valued would do good."
"Nobody, my dear Mayne. Amy Roberts couldn't
understand." This was from Monty, who had his dark
eyes fixed upon Patricia's every change of expression
with a concentration not to be misread.
"She's my friend, you see," urged Patricia. "I hate
to think of her being...."
"It'll do her good to find out for herself," said Blanche
Tallentyre, with a snap.
Across the table Patricia stared a little at Blanche.
"I wonder," she answered, ruthlessly. "Aren't there
quite enough unhappy women in the world, who've found
out too late?"
It was strange that this was the first sign of temper
she had shown. Blanche's eyes, as filled with miserable
sophistication as a monkey's, glittered at the thrust. Her
haggard cheeks showed no sign of emotion; but her lips
were tightly pressed together. They parted to make
retort, but were again sealed. Patricia hardly guessed,
because she did not care, that she had made an enemy.
While Patricia ignored the outcome of her remark,
Edgar was not unaware of it. He had felt the electric
silence which followed the speech, had seen Blanche's
glitter, and had not been unprepared for the look of slow
and comfortable malicious enjoyment which crossed
Monty's face. To Edgar the truth was apparent. There
was danger in the air. Dalrymple was not the only possible
danger. Nor Harry Greenlees. Edgar was quietly
alarmed. There was always danger; but in Patricia's
case it was acute. She had done herself no good by that
instant's admission of the power to hurt. She had roused
Blanche's animosity, and had heightened Monty's interest
in herself. With what assurance he could master,
Edgar withdrew her from the general circle and demanded
her personal interest.
"I have a sister rather younger than you," he said.
"I should like you to meet her."
Patricia turned to him, her darkening obliterated.
"Is she very nice? And pretty?" she begged.
"Both," asserted Edgar. "She's very spirited, and
slangy, and good-tempered. She's a great tease. And
she's clever."
"And alarming!" cried Patricia, ruefully.
"Then I've been unjust to her. She's alarming, because
she's unexpected. But I think you'd like her."
"Would she like me?" The question was not all coquettish.
Edgar smiled; and thereby caused Patricia to smile
in return.
"I should like you to meet her," he said.
He was not wholly absorbed, even now, in Patricia.
He could see Mrs. Quellan, growing slightly plump, but
struggling against middle-age and natural gracelessness
with all the energy of those whose youth has been lost
in work and anxiety. He could see her husband, thin-haired,
pale, and elaborately cheerful over suppressed
care. He could see Blanche, so obviously what she was
at that table, aged beyond her years, her spirit tired and
malignant. And Monty, full of well-being and will and
calculation, relentless and immovable in his design. The
one fresh and unwarped spirit was Patricia. She was
youth incarnate. She had vitality denied to all the others.
And she was helpless through inexperience. She
was over-confident, warm-hearted, blind.
Edgar shrugged slightly. He also was not without
will.
"Yes," he said, quietly. "You must certainly meet
Claudia."
At the end of the evening, when they were in the car
together, Patricia said:
"I feel sorry for Blanche Tallentyre; but I hate her."
"Well," replied Edgar. "Don't you think she may
hate you, as well?"
Patricia did not speak. She was puzzled. She
thought for some time before she answered him.
"I meant, I don't think Blanche Tallentyre can ever
really have been ..." She paused.
"Young? Oh, I think ... I think perhaps you were
more right about her than you knew," said Edgar.
"I found myself saying that," naïvely admitted Patricia.
"I didn't mean to hurt her at all."
"No," answered Edgar. "That was the devil of it.
You never do mean to hurt or to do wrong, do you?"
He laughed, which showed Patricia that he was not finding
fault with her. "But I pity anybody who tries to
make you do right."
"Well, you see, I'm ... I'm Patricia Quin," said
Patricia, as though that were an all-sufficient justification
of any idiosyncrasy.
"Quite so." Edgar was silent in his turn. Yet he
was shot through and through with an impulse either
to kiss her or to strike her; and he continued methodically
to drive his car through the after-theatre traffic
as though no such possibilities could ever have occurred
to him. Patricia, wholly unconscious that he was anything
but the quiet and composed creature whom she
saw, basked in her delusion.
"I should think you must be an awfully good friend,"
she impulsively said.
"Should you?" Edgar's tone was expressionless.
He did not relax his attention to the traffic.
No more was said between them upon that subject.
div class="chapter">
Half-past seven, and the appointed restaurant.
A revolving door, brilliant lights, warmth
a general air of opulence; and Patricia found herself in
a small entrance hall, at one side of which attendants
wrested their outer garments from all men. She had
noticed before that no man may enter a restaurant with
his hat and coat, although a woman may sit in her furs
all the evening; but she had never understood the meaning
of this differentiation between the sexes. Before
her, several people were sitting, as if waiting for others;
and in a fireplace glowed what she at first took to be a
real fire. A sandy young man was perched upon the
edge of a chair, gnawing his under-lip, and ever and
again flirting his wrist out of his sleeve as he checked
the lateness of a friend. Two highly refined women
talked in loud voices about their private affairs, extraordinarily
self-conscious in face of the sandy young man.
They broke off in order to stare at Patricia in a well-bred
manner, and resumed their conversation in a slightly
lower key. The young man looked again at his wristwatch.
Patricia, for her part, was frowning. She was punctual,
because she was always punctual. And she expected
any host to be punctual also. Harry's lateness, when she
had arrived so eager, chilled her. She stood hesitating,
only half-aware of those others who were in the small
room with her. She had imagined something very different—an
arrival, and Harry's greeting as eager as her
own. When she had so carefully refrained from the
coquetry of lateness it was only right that he should
have done the same. She was chagrined. There came
back into her mind—by what connection she could not
have said, since she was only half-conscious of her own
flying sensations—memory of her distaste for his jokes
about personal cleanliness.
And while she stood there, a little wavering, all her
doubts were dispersed. There was drawn across every
unpleasant thought an oblivion so complete as to be annihilating.
Patricia had seen the half-filled restaurant
through the bevelled glass panes of another door, and
had been aware of a muffled noise of conversation and
the sounds common to all restaurants; and as she waited
she saw a quick movement of black and white. The
door was burst open. The black and white, so tall as
to be unmistakable, gave place in her eyes to Harry's
sparkling countenance. He was at her side, as full of
verve as he had ever been in the football field, delightfully
impetuous.
"Hul-lo!" he cried in greeting. "I say, I'm so sorry!
I was just ordering the dinner. It's only just half-past,
isn't it?"
Patricia was electrically happy. The life in her responded
to the life in him. They were two vital creatures,
meeting and delighted; and as she went with him
into the restaurant those diners who were conveniently
placed were all moved to attentiveness at the sight of
such health and radiance. With her spirits mounting
to expectation itself, Patricia suffered the waiters to
wedge her behind a small table which Harry had reserved
in the corner of the shining golden restaurant.
She was dazzled by a thousand lights and reflections, her
heart dancing, and her eyes so dangerously tender that
she instinctively withheld them from Harry's inspection.
"I say!" exclaimed Harry. "This is superb, you
know!" He was looking at her brilliant dress, upon
which nobody had thought to make any comment on the
previous evening. "I've never seen anything to beat it."
The dress was quite plain; but the taste which had
planned it was manifest. Both the material from which
it was made and the delicate silk with which its adornments
had been fashioned were sun-coloured. Every
light made it richer, more simple, more effective. He
was full of admiration. Patricia was rewarded. She
knew now that she had thought of Harry all the time
she had been employed in the long task of preparing the
dress. She made no reply. He resumed impetuously:
"I could have murdered that girl of yours the other
night. Somehow I'd reckoned on finding you at home."
"I was at Amy's."
"Oh!" He was astonished. "I almost went on to
her."
"Monty and Jack Penton were there, too. They came
in after dinner."
Harry frowned. It was his turn to do so. But it
was not a very serious frown, as Patricia, glancing side-ways,
could see.
"Oh, the old fat man!" he lightly commented. "I
don't know Penton. I mean, I've met him, but I can't
remember him."
"Did you go and see Mr. Mayne?"
Harry shook his head.
"No. I wasn't serious. One can't push one's self."
His teeth showed, not in a smile, but as if in some habitual
expression. "He's not my sort."
"He's very kind."
Harry laughed.
"Exactly," he said. His eyes were upon her, so eager
as to be devouring. "You know, I'm most awfully glad
you could come to-night. I've got all sorts of things
to tell you."
"I wish," murmured Patricia, "I wish you'd tell me
why men have to leave their overcoats at the door of a
restaurant."
His voice was lowered. His eyes roved for an instant.
"It's so that they can cut a figure," he explained. "A
man in his overcoat—oh, a sorry sight. A woman—it's
so different. She's got to keep her shoulders warm.
She's got to show her furs to everybody. By the way,
where are yours?"
Patricia regretfully shook her head.
"You have to imagine them," she ventured.
"They're the finest here," Harry assured her. "It's all
simply a question of decoration. And also, no doubt,
of tips. You see, a woman is entertained."
"I never understand why that is," cried Patricia. "I'd
far rather always pay for myself. I do, as a rule."
"Not with me," said Harry, with a sudden firmness
which she admired. "You don't want to with me, do
you?" He was confident; but he spoke truly. She had
no will to flout him.
A shyness fell upon them. They ate for a moment
in silence. After all, they did not know each other very
well; and it may have occurred to each that part of the
lightness of the conversation was due to a kind of defiance
of constraint. Their moods, however, were in
harmony; as was testified by the exchanged smile which
succeeded the silence.
"Are you a good dancer?" demanded Patricia. Harry
laughed again.
"I didn't bring my testimonials," he answered. "Did
you?"
"I brought my shoes." She was quite ready for him.
"If you're a bad dancer I shall be shocked."
"You needn't worry," said Harry, calmly. "The
question is, can you dance?"
Patricia thought: How splendid! How splendid!
Her glance was roguish and evasive, so perfect did the
understanding between them appear to be. Aloud, she
very demurely responded:
"We'd better both hope for the best, hadn't we? It's
no good meeting trouble half-way."
They found themselves autobiographical in a very
short time. Patricia was made to give a sketch of Uncle
Roly and others; and Harry detailed some of the more
amusing episodes of his youth. He had been born in
the country, it seemed, and had lived in the country until
he was sent away to school. Patricia rejoiced. Some
of her own early memories were of the country, and
with her fancy quickened by the occasion she followed
Harry's narrative with what she felt sure he must recognise
as perfect understanding. He pictured the district
in which he had lived, making little strokes in the tablecloth
with his dessert knife in order to give her a rough
notion of the scenes amid which he had played.
"That's the hut," he said. "The ditch was along
here. Trees, you know ... and the road here. That
hut was a real treasure. One never gets tired of that
sort of place. It suits every game, and every weather.
We slept there sometimes in the summer, in hammocks
slung across. It's a queer thing to sleep out of doors
in the midst of all the night noises."
"Is it alarming?" asked Patricia. She was thinking
of things inexplicable.
Harry's eyes opened. He did not understand her.
"Oh, no," he said. "I only meant, queer to listen to
the jolly old owls, and things."
"Had you got a river near you?" She resented his
misunderstanding; but for an instant only.
"You mean, boating? No, not near. There were
streams, and bits of water; but nothing big enough for
boating. We used to bathe. Jove, they were days! Of
course, I get some of the old pleasures now by tramping.
I started it before the war, and went back to it directly
I got out of uniform. There's nothing to beat the road,
if one doesn't mind roughing it. You go along and
along, and haven't anything to tie you to a place or a bed.
You get meals where you can, and tumble in for a rest
where you can, and come home when you like, and go
where you like. Even now it's quite decent, so long as
your passport is all right and you don't mind taking
what you can get."
"And when you were a little boy, were you naughty?"
"Yes. And were you a naughty little girl?"
"No. I was a good little girl."
"What, never naughty?" His face was full of incredulity.
And so the meal progressed, and the friendship was
enhanced by every piece of observation which either of
them directed at the other. Seen close at hand, as Patricia
knew already, Harry had all the attractiveness
which belongs to good health and physical vigour. All
his movements were definite, his eyes were clear and his
glances assured. His hair was crisp, his colour good,
his frame large and impressively well-knit. He had
played forward for the Harlequins, in a pack that was
both heavy and quick, a team that owed its triumphs
not only to great generalship but also to the speedy
adroitness of its individual members. And in spite of
his years Harry was still a man of sure and rapid action.
At all points he charmed Patricia.
Patricia charmed him no less. That which in him
was quick and vivid found its counterpart in her. If
they had had nothing intellectually in common, still their
proximity would have brought happiness to both. But
in addition Patricia was nimble of wit, and intrigued
Harry's interest in that respect also. She was as quick
as he was, and sometimes she was quicker than he.
Harry could see the play of expression upon her face
during the whole time that he was talking, and the play
showed that she had no mental inertia, and no single inability
to comprehend the meaning of all he said. Harry
was quite used to the skill with which a more ignorant
girl would manifest understanding of which she was incapable.
He knew that in Patricia's case it was the real
thing. So speaking a face could not deceive. And perhaps
he did moreover "receive fair speechless messages"
which increased his ardour and his already dominating
confidence. He was very happy. They both were very
happy, and their happiness added lustre to the beauty of
both.
"Where are we going after dinner?" Patricia demanded
suddenly. She had declined a liqueur, and was
finishing her last cigarette. Already the restaurant was
half-empty of those diners who had proceeded to theatres.
The remainder sat on, talking. She could see
the two highly bred women of the lounge in the company
of two glossy-haired men in evening dress. Neither
man, she recognised with satisfaction, could compare
with her own escort. And so the manner of her inquiry
had been complaisant as well as calm.
"It's for you." Harry set down his liqueur glass.
"The Queensford's the more genteel; and there's a better
band at Topping's. Floor's about the same at both.
The Queensford's larger."
"Is Topping's low?" she sparkled. "Let's be low."
"Right." He called the waiter.
"If it's not far, let's walk there," said Patricia. "It's
such a beautiful night."
The mirror at her side gave back a reflection of what
she knew to be an excited and even slightly flushed face.
But she could not fail to be charmed by her own prettiness
as she rose and went towards the door with Harry.
The refined ladies and their escorts abandoned conversation
as Patricia passed, which gave her further satisfaction.
She knew that they could none of them withhold
curiosity and perhaps admiration. Well, wasn't
that quite pleasant to Patricia? She had no fault to
find with her situation.
They were in the street, and in the piercing whiteness
of electric light. The air was very crisp, and she welcomed
its cold touch upon her cheeks. There were
taxicabs and newspaper sellers and loitering people; and
a huge omnibus went heavily by. Crowds were thinner
than they had been early in the evening, but every face
was whitened by the light, bleached to the colourless
gravity of a kinema film. Above, very distant in the
most lovely of blue night skies, was the moon, silver to
the eye, very pure and remote. Patricia looked up at
the moon, smiling her love for it, so much did that silent
shape draw wonder from her heart; and in doing this
she unconsciously moved into Harry's path. He took
her arm for an instant's guidance, and, as they approached
the crossing of Piccadilly, he retained his hold.
It was all nothing, and she was free again when they
reached the other side of the street; but the protection
had been so natural that it gave her pleasure. She
walked by Harry's side with a thousand beautiful little
memories and emotions and imaginings making what
she knew to be happiness in her heart.
And then they were at Topping's; and she could hear
the band. Other young people stood about on the broad
stairs—fluffy-haired girls and well-groomed young men,
all with that curious excited expression in their eyes
which went with late hours and noise and nervous exhaustion.
Patricia felt her feet begin to catch the
strongly marked rhythm, and went quickly to change her
shoes and leave her coat. She was out again upon the
stairs before Harry had returned; and stood there listening,
her breast rising and falling rather fast, a piquant
figure, both light and graceful, so fresh in that brilliant
light that she drew the attention of all who were near.
She was still waiting when two people came down the
stairs from the street towards her, both cloaked and
muffled against the cold. For an instant she did not
recognise them; but as Monty took off his hat and
moved away to the men's cloak-room Patricia was recalled
to memory with a start. Evidently Monty had
not seen her. Swiftly she looked at the on-coming figure
of his companion. A cold greeting was exchanged,
surprise rather than pleasure being obviously the emotion
upon both sides. Patricia followed the newcomer with
her eyes until she was hidden; and her brain was engaged
with a problem.
Monty. Monty ... and Blanche Tallentyre. How
strange.
Patricia was not allowed further time to ponder this
singular meeting, for Harry was once again at her elbow.
He had not seen Monty, but was eager to be dancing.
They descended the remaining stairs. There was a good
deal of noise, not only from the band, but from the
dancers and, even more, from those who were still dining
in that part of the very large room which was set
apart for the purpose. Patricia could see that girls and
men were at many of the small tables, smoking and
drinking, and that it was the custom for them to leave
their places in order to dance and to resume them when
the music stopped. She had a few moments to examine
the throng; for exactly at the instant of their arrival
the band quickened its pace for the end of the dance
which she had heard in progress. Couples dispersed,
and there was a crowded and dishevelled scene which
took her breath away. All sorts of girls in all sorts of
dresses and coiffures filled her eyes; all sorts of—no,
there was not such variety in the young men. They
did not surprise her, for they seemed to be men such as
she might have known all her life. The uniformity of
costume, also, made many of them indistinguishable.
Everywhere there was an atmosphere of excitement such
as she herself was feeling. She was dazzled and delighted.
A new ichor seemed to run in her veins. It
was some weeks since she had danced, and this place
was so much more attractive than the suburban halls
and rooms she had known that the surroundings appeared
to Patricia ideal. For a moment she was almost
timid in the face of such terrific energy, such fizz and
glitter; but as soon as the band began to blare out a
favourite fox-trot Patricia lost all timidity. New elasticity
ran through her body: she was thrilling to the
finger-tips. She was aware of Harry's hands—one
clasping her own, the other lightly and firmly at her
waist; of the ease of his step, the certainty of his command;
and she yielded herself completely to the dance.
"It's all right," Harry murmured in Patricia's ear.
"Perfect. Knew it would be."
He was able at last to hold Patricia within his arm,
to be conscious of her dangerously charming proximity,
to speak close to her radiant eyes, to employ the tone and
glance which could no longer mar or frighten away the
prospect of this manœuvred evening. He was in a familiar
land, dealing with familiar emotions and opportunities,
supremely content.
Patricia's face lighted up with a mischievous and
unsuspecting smile. She could not read his more
sophisticated satisfaction, but she was wholly spirited
in her own.
"You're not such a bad dancer," she impudently informed
him. "Considering."
A slightly increased pressure of the hand was Harry's
only response. He had rapidly fallen into that mood
of enjoyment which gave his nature its fullest play.
His energy was being employed; he was being charmed
and gratified; his senses were all being titillated. Half a
hundred women would have given him most of his present
pleasure, but the novelty no less than the beauty of
Patricia supplied just that added spice which any indulged
appetite presently demands in its exercise.
They danced three times, and then sat down, watching
the other dancers and comparing their styles. Here
they could see a pair pedantically apart, correctness itself;
there a couple buried in each other, the young man's
face lost to view in his partner's hair. Every degree
of absorption in the dance or in physical sensation was
to be observed. The one thing absent from all faces
was love; but since Harry and Patricia were not looking
for this rare emotion in others they did not observe its
absence.
Patricia was the first to catch sight of Monty, for
whose figure she had been searching in the crowd. As
she could have foretold, he was dancing perfectly.
Blanche was rather stiff, she was pleased to notice.
Monty's expression was that of one who was bored: a
line of white showed beneath the iris of his eyes. His
manner was almost too easy, as though his thoughts
were engaged otherwise than with his partner or the
dance. Nevertheless, he was obviously at home. His
clothes fitted and suited him. He was far beyond most
of his neighbours in appearance; for in too many of
these Patricia cruelly discerned mediocrity. She shook
her head at the spectacle of so much that was to her
fresh eye uninspired and uninspiring.
"You see Monty?" she said to Harry.
He was about to answer when a swarm of people
seemed to rise up about them. All greeted Harry. It
was a large party, newly arrived, all the members of
which appeared to be his friends. Young men, some of
them fair, with toothbrush moustaches and curly hair,
some of them dark and clean-shaven and very like Jack
Penton in appearance; young women of all colours and
all varieties of noisiness, clamoured for his attention.
All the young men were combed and brushed to resemble
tailors' dummies; all the young women were freshly
powdered and freshly adorned with rouge and belladonna
and those aids to lashes and brows and hair which
heighten the attractiveness of women already attractive.
Patricia listened laughingly while each was introduced
to her; but she heard none of their names, and only knew
that she was in the midst of a lively party. She could
not analyse them, although she tried to do so in a hurry;
and so she accepted them simply as Harry's perhaps
ever so slightly peculiar friends. Only when it became
clear that they proposed to settle in this place and
spoil her evening with Harry did Patricia take alarm.
She was moving very quietly, preparing for the first
notes of the next dance, when she saw the liveliest of
the girls—a brunette who was beautiful enough to be
dangerous, and obviously adept at this practice—seize
Harry, pull him in step towards the dancing space, and
thus forcibly kidnap him.
"Well!" ejaculated Patricia, wholly to herself. Harry
cast a laughing, appealing glance at her. He was captured,
and by a ruthless and rather boisterous victor.
Patricia followed the two indignantly with her eyes.
Swift anger gripped her. She had never been so angry
as at this trifling folly. It was a direct challenge to her.
It was a thing she could not have done herself—this
impudent appropriation of a man who was confessedly
present as the escort of another girl. She disliked the
interloper. She was instantly suspicious of her. Although
impulsive herself, Patricia had no interest in the
impulsiveness of others, especially if the others were
girls. Her anger blazed silently for a full minute.
Slowly it diminished. She found herself almost deserted
by the party of intruders, all of whom, with great
freedom of gesture, were now dancing. Only one rueful
young man remained; a young man with unoccupied
blue eyes and flaxen hair, who looked painfully surprised
at everything, and was in appearance so almost excessively
juvenile as to make Patricia suppose him fresh
from school.
"Er ..." said the young man, with great feebleness
of intellect.
"Yes!" cried Patricia. "I never saw anything like
it. It's shameful. It's cradle-snatching. Was she
your partner? Never mind; come along!" She swept
him into the arena, as indomitably unmoved in appearance
as she could have desired. Though her heart was
burning, Patricia's pride was beyond reproach. Nevertheless,
she was desperately wounded.
She was still aching from the injury to her pride when
the dance came to an end. By that time the anonymous
young man with the sheep-like blue eyes had exchanged
an expression of helpless vacancy for one of helpless
admiration. Once, during the dance, he had stammered:
"I ... I say, ... you do ... d-dance well";
but Patricia had ignored his speech. She could
not compliment him in return. Her one curiosity was
to know the name of the girl who had stolen Harry from
her. Several times during the dance they had encountered
the other pair; and Patricia had not failed to observe
the voluptuous abandonment of the girl to a posture
more nearly approaching immodesty than anything to
be seen elsewhere.
"What was that girl's name?" she asked, as the young
man proudly led her back.
"Bella?" he queried. "That's ... that's Bella Verreker.
That's not her name really: it's her stage
name."
Stage! Generations of puritanism caused a shiver to
run through Patricia. She was instantly apprehensive.
Bella was dangerous to Harry, to the evening, to ...
her own happiness. Stricken with horror as she was,
Patricia's distress was poignant. She was really afraid.
This was something beyond her depth and her understanding.
Her mood of fear was thereafter succeeded
by one in which this curbing of spontaneous enjoyment
was resented by her vanity. She was elaborately indifferent.
At that moment they met Monty, who had come towards
her through the pressing crowd, with a politeness
oriental in its quality, in its subtly encroaching familiarity
towards herself.
"Hullo!" cried Patricia, in joyous greeting. She was
all unconscious of anything but her own feelings. At
this juncture the appearance of Monty was welcome,
not for her interest in him, but for his opportuneness as a
diversion. "I caught sight of you before."
"Come and dance," demanded Monty.
"Where's ... Mrs. Tallentyre?"
"Resting, and talking to a friend."
Patricia's teeth were firmly together. That impetuous
mouth had become hard. Monty could read her as
though she had spoken aloud. He knew she had been
hurt, that she was in reaction. He knew that he had
presented himself to Patricia as an opportunity. She
was tempted; she was falling. He smiled comfortably.
"No you don't, Monty!" came Harry's voice: "No
bagging my partner!"
There was a singular little scene; the three of them
standing together, all ruffled and all good-humouredly
smiling. Monty was not as tall as Harry, who accordingly
towered over both of the others. He was very much
the well-groomed man of the world in this place, and yet
his smile was faintly ugly. It had changed within an
instant, had deepened and become set. Not a wrinkle
showed upon his unreadable face. Harry's cheerful
grin, which displayed all his big white teeth, held combativeness.
Patricia, thoroughly exasperated at the general
bad manners, and not least at her own impulse to
naughtiness, resented the feeling that she was a mere
partner to be claimed by either. She was both exasperated
and wisely alarmed.
"I saw you dancing with Bella," suavely explained
Monty.
"She's with a party here ...." Harry was grim.
There was definite conflict between the two men, spoiling,
but controlled, so that while all three of them knew
the conflict to be there no others near by could have
guessed its presence. "But Patricia's with me."
Something—she did not realise what it was—cleared
Patricia's vision. It was necessary that she should act
with decision. She turned to Harry, no longer ill-tempered,
but paler and almost deliberately patient in her
manner to him.
"I'll dance once with Monty," she said. "And then
come back to you."
And as the music began, she fell into step with Monty,
leaving Harry chagrined and reddening. There was
still a little temper in her emotion; but her chief thought
as she danced was: "Two great babies!"
Patricia might have considered herself a third; but
she did not do this.
During the rest of the evening the relation between
Harry and Patricia, although it was gay and friendly,
never quite recovered the fluency it had attained during
dinner. They danced together; but Patricia, warned by
what she had seen, shunned anything more cordial than
the merest partnership in the dance. Harry tried to
hold her more closely, but he found that it was at the
cost of enjoyable dancing, and he therefore abandoned
the attempt. He discovered that Patricia, while she was
as agreeable as ever, had no intention of letting him
make love to her. It was contrary to his practice to
explain or to apologise, and he did not refer to Bella.
Patricia, upon her side, showed no disposition to forsake
or despise the interloping party; and so gradually the
two of them drifted apart. She danced with two or
three of the other men, and he with Bella and another
girl. The noise of the room, and the crowd of people,
seemed to increase. It became late. The party showed
signs of an inclination for the evening's end. Drinks
had long been done with; new arrivals, fresher and more
eager than those who had been dancing for some time,
took the floor. The evening was collapsing. Quite
definitely it was petering out. At a quarter-to-twelve
there was a signal for closing the place; and then, as
part of a general shoal of departing merry-makers, a
very sleepy party pressed out into the night air. Monty
and Blanche had left long before.
As they thus emerged, Patricia, in evading Harry's
attempt at segregation, found herself with two of the
other girls, who both said they lived at Chelsea. The
journey homeward was therefore made in a crowd, which
separated Harry and Patricia. They all came to the
end of the street in which Patricia lived, and then to the
house itself; so that she was not for an instant alone
with Harry. Even at the parting, he was but the last
of the group to bid farewell, and she walked slowly upstairs
to her rooms with cheery voices still ringing in
her ears.
CHAPTER SEVEN: SECOND EVENING — i — ii — iii — iv
From that evening Patricia had no lack of companionship.
She had fallen into a whole group of
new friends and new Christian names. There was no
end to the Dorises, the Bills, the Owens, the Hildas, and
the Normans whom she met at every dance and every
party. She sat on floors and talked with assurance; she
danced with a score of men. During the daytime she
did more dress-making than bread-work. In the evenings,
carried away by the sense of new experience and
new power, she added a veneer of alluring sophistication
to her nature. Never had the face of life been so
quickly altered.
At first it seemed to Patricia that these young men
and women whom she now so constantly met belonged
to a different species from herself. She had been
brought up in a suburban atmosphere in which anything
not perfectly respectable was done in secret. It had
been a disagreeable atmosphere to her, because she was
both impetuous and innocent, a combination of characteristics
which always raises trouble for the owner. Regarding
herself as a free spirit, she had received rebuffs
from those more strict; and her candour had given rise
to wrong impressions about herself in her own mind as
well as in the minds of others. She had supposed that
Patricia alone was in a state of rebellion against suburban
laws. She had even exaggerated her own importance
as a rebel. Now she found that these laws did
not apply; and that in fact defiance of them was unnecessary.
The young people of her fresh pleasure did
not defy: they had forgotten. She became aware of a
whole new code. A free spirit she still felt herself;
but one in a world of free spirits. Along with the exaggerated
sense of her own personality common to clever
girls of our day she had also the good sense to realise
the improvement in her own circumstances. Patricia
rejoiced. She delighted in the feeling of wide acquaintance,
of new liberty. It pleased her to meet cordial
young people who were no cleverer and no more concerned
with strait-laced morals than herself and whom
she did not despise. She began at last to feel at home.
They were young, free-and-easy, less mentally ingenious
than she was, admiring, unaffected. It was as though
she belonged to the same family as themselves, but was
of a naturally brighter plumage. Her vanity was sensibly
fortified.
And through all this new experimenting with her own
strength there ran for Patricia something more precious
still. The added significance which had been given to
her days was due only in small part to this increased
circle. The friends she made were a background; they
filled in the picture; but no more. Every day was coloured
and moulded for Patricia by happiness, the happiness
of young half-love. It warmed her heart through
the gloomy winter days; made her laugh, sparkle, sigh,
with a new tenderness; and gave fresh life to all her
perceptions and understandings. Occasionally she even
glimpsed her own happiness, when the excitement of it
was past and she sat more thoughtfully alone. And
then the precariousness of it, the sense of insecurity, of
withheld culmination, gave to the vision a fresh colour
and zest of danger.
That one evening with Harry, which had begun so
splendidly and ended in such dissonance, was but the
beginning. The mixed crowd of people had resolved
itself into two separate portions—the theatrical and the
non-theatrical; and even the theatrical portion proved
shortly to be a welcoming band. Bella Verreker was
appearing in musical comedy, and she did not again
encroach. Only the less aggressive girls continued to
join the parties; and Patricia found that several of these,
and some of the young men, were so far without regular
paying engagements. They appeared in private or semi-private
shows, for experience and reputation; and she
had the first consciousness of forming a part of her generation.
All were lively people to know slightly, and
the non-theatricals, some of whom were Civil Servants
and others of moderately independent means or of various
artistic or semi-artistic occupations, were immense
talkers and eager, but not expert, dancers. Beside them
all, Harry was as distinguished in his way as was
Patricia in hers. They were both welcomed, even
sought.
Patricia felt herself alive at last. Letters came for
her in the mornings and at night. Harry called for her.
She herself gave a little party in her small rooms at the
top of the house. It was fun to have seven or eight guests
sitting with difficulty in the crowded space, and talking
to their hearts' content. But more than that she enjoyed
going to yet larger parties in more capacious studios,
where the floor was sometimes cleared for impromptu
dancing, where there was dressing-up, and where the
games made them all laugh and talk nonsense together.
She loved to swing into one of the brasseries of West
End restaurants, to meet other talkative youngsters, to
smoke cigarettes and sip little strange drinks. It made
her feel very bold and modern and authoritative. And
most of all did she enjoy the evenings which she and
Harry spent together, dining at Paggolino's or some
smaller Italian restaurant, and going together to a theatre
or to Topping's or the Queensford or even to more
popular halls where the bands were good and the floors
better.
"If only," breathed Patricia. "If only one could
never grow up! Always, always this beautiful...."
And then sometimes she longed to grow up. As the
variety began to stir her blood, and an odd unoccupied
evening became a restless horror, she knew that one day
she would want to be different—to do different things.
She tried to tell Harry how she felt. They were sitting
at dinner together one evening, when she had telephoned
to him in fear of a solitary time, and they had gone to
the Chat Blanc. Patricia was smoking one of her own
cigarettes over coffee, and was blowing the smoke slowly
from between pursed lips. She was fully conscious of
the extraordinary intimacy between them, and at the
same time of the constraint that underlay the intimacy
and gave it an attractive excitement. Harry was so
very much her friend, and yet her feeling for him was
so entirely different from that which she had for the
other young men of her acquaintance. He was cleverer
than they—with his constant sparkle of lively expression,—and
more handsome. He was himself, where the
others were almost indistinguishable both in themselves
in their rather immature and shallow and admiringly
friendly attitude to herself. His admiration was that
of a man. She responded to it.
Around Patricia rose the white walls of the restaurant,
daubed with the strange sick fancies of eccentric
artists; and from their table she could command the
whole of the long narrow room filled with other, similar
tables, all with orange and white check tablecloths and
black cruet stands and pewter knives and forks and
spoons. Patricia could see other guests departing at the
approach of theatre times, and waiters bowing and flicking
the tables clear of crumbs, and folding fresh napkins
and standing the menus upright again. In a few moments
they would be the only people left in the restaurant,
except for one suburban couple who had strayed into
Soho under the impression that theirs was a very bold
experiment in night life, and who were waiting for the
sensations to begin. It was just then that Patricia had
this notion, which was new, and therefore irrepressibly
vehement, about the desirability of growing up.
Harry sat opposite, a little leaning back from the
table, dabbing a finished cigarette into the plate which
they were using as an ash-tray. He was in brown
tweeds, which made his beautiful fairness appear to
dominate and penetrate even his clothes. The fresh
brown of his face, the strength of his shoulders, the
gold at his temples and in his neat moustache, the cleanness
of his lips and chin, and the general magnetism of
his air of disciplined vigour, were all apparent. But in
addition she was most singularly moved by the fine
moulding of his cheeks and that air of confident good-humour
with which the popular man is so peculiarly
endowed. His smile, so ready, so consciously agreeable
and charming, was a part of Harry himself. Patricia,
equally fair, with her piquant little head, and the blue
expressive eyes and mobile lips, was his delicious counterpart.
She was her age, and a child, and a witch, with
much greater unconsciousness than he, because with Patricia,
whose thoughts were quick and fleeting, every
thought had a reflection in her face. And at this moment,
from happiness, she had turned to a sudden grave
discovery, far more quickly than most men could have
done; and her gravity had given way before resolution,
desire, uncertainty, and again conviction.
"I'd like to have a big house," she said. "A country
house, with lots of servants, and a lake, and peacocks,
and a ballroom, and a wood, and lawns. I'd like to
manage an estate."
"Good God!" cried Harry, pretending to be startled,
and sharply dropping his cigarette stump into the plate.
"What for?"
"I'd like it. You see, all this running about—it's
great fun, and I love it. But it won't last."
"Why not?" Harry's tone was a little flat, as though
his surprise had only been exaggerated, as though he
had been disturbed by a definite assumption. "I don't
see why it shouldn't. After all...."
"I shall get tired of it."
Harry laughed, showing his big white teeth. Patricia
wondered if he knew that when he laughed she had
a sudden almost aching thrill of affection for something
boyish and lovable in him. Did he know?
"You won't," he assured her, the laugh remaining and
fixing in his cheeks for a moment deep lines of untroubled
good humour. "Not for a century."
"I might. I might get tired of it in a month," she
said. "Sometimes I'm tired of it already." Patricia
hardly knew what she was saying. The words came
easily; but the conviction was lagging behind somewhere
in another thought. "You see, Tom Perry and
Daphne and Woods—they're all right, but they've got
no brains. If I want to talk to anybody—really talk,
I mean,—there's nobody but you."
"Well?" His grin reappeared. "Aren't I enough?"
"You're splendid, of course."
"You're not so sure?" Harry's question was teasing:
he was not taking her seriously, was being indulgent,
deliberately winning: but a shock ran through
Patricia even as she responded to his charm. The hesitation
which he had detected—had it really been there?
Quick emotion moved her. She turned away her head
for an instant. For that fraction of time her doubt
had become a reality. She was pitiably uncertain of
herself. Surely if one were—say, even half-in-love—one
never had such a doubt of the beloved? And yet
Harry—he was older than herself, a man, fixed perhaps
in his present state of life.... If she grew out of
him! What then? In such a life as they led....
Patricia still clung to the theory of constancy, of common
growth, of happiness for ever after. With all her
arrogance, she did not want to lead. To be led was a
necessity to her.
"Don't you see I'm not sure?" she asked. "How can
you be sure? How can you ever know what you'll
think in a week, or a month, or a year?"
"Of course you can't," Harry agreed jocularly. "The
best way is not to think of it—not to look forward at
all." His words were light, his face untroubled. Did
he not understand? Was he reassuring her, or did his
words truly represent the limitations of his insight?
"But I've got to!" She was urgent. Tears were in
her eyes. "I was just thinking...."
"I'm not going to get tired of it," Harry said, his jaw
set and his laughter gone.
"Aren't you?" asked Patricia, her heart sinking. Her
doubt of an instant before seemed to be confirmed. A
heavy sigh escaped her. For a moment she was silent.
Then, with an abrupt rally, she shook her head. "No,"
she continued. "You're not going to get tired of it.
Nor am I!"
But as soon as she had spoken the words, she knew
they were not true. She could not tell whether she
would tire now or later; but she was sure that one day
she would tire. Her capacity for growth already flew
a warning, and she could not for ever be blind to the
signal. Well, and what then? A shadow darkened
her eyes. She looked across at Harry's clear and happy
face, at his crisp hair, and felt the strength and
energy that was in him. How resist that boyish charm,
the laughter that seemed so constant? Could one ever
tire of laughter? Surely it was impossible. Her heart
softened. The little impetuous mouth drooped ever so
little. At sight of that, Harry's smile broadened.
"You've got a quaint mind," he said. "It doesn't
matter in the least."
"It does." Patricia frowned. Then as suddenly she
smiled in return. "No, it doesn't. You're quite right.
And yet it does, you know."
"Well, which?"
"I don't know. I don't know. I'll never know."
"As for these young cubs and cublets, let 'em rip.
They'll never be any different. Where you're wrong is
in worrying about it. If you think, you wobble. Therefore,
don't think."
"It's easy to say." Patricia regarded herself for a
moment with solemnity. She had a clear sense of herself
refusing to be content with something less than the
best. She wanted to live to the fullest capacity. She
was quite intensely in earnest about that, about her responsibility
to Patricia Quin. It was a sacred trust.
He stretched a big hand across the table and caught
her wrist, pressing it. Their exchanged glance was of
joy, almost, it seemed, of understanding.
"Cheer up!" Harry urged. "Let's clear out of this."
Within two minutes they were out in the black street.
A stormy wind rushed along towards and past them,
leaving Patricia shivering a little. Harry put out an
arm and caught her suddenly to him. She was immediately
free again, but she was breathless with something
other than loss of breath, and her heart was beating.
"We'll go and dance somewhere," he suggested.
Patricia shrank from his tenderness at this moment.
The wind, the hint of rain, her hidden conflict of perplexity,
all discomposed her. She wanted to be alone,
to think. And yet, on the contrary, most passionately
to be with him, and not to think—never to think, never
to wake.... At last:
"No," said she. "I'm not in the mood. I'd spoil it.
I'll go home. Let's go by Tube."
They came out into Shaftesbury Avenue, which was
half deserted now that the omnibuses and the theatres
had engulfed so many of those who crowd the street;
and then that deluge which had been on the tail of the
wind was suddenly released, and poured down so sharply
that the two of them had to run to the Piccadilly Circus
station. Warmed and laughing, they stood close together
in the crowded lift, and plunged down into the
earth. Echoing passages, vehement advertisements of
concerts and theatres, some stairs in a blaze of baffling
light; and they were listening to the distant rumblings
of Underground trains.
"On Saturday," resumed Harry, "we'll go to the Ireland
match at Twickenham. It's always the best Rugger
of the season. If you'd like to? And in the evening
Puffer's got a party in his cellars. Sweaty but jolly, the
cry is, I believe."
"No, I'm going to Monty Rosenberg's."
"The devil! Monty?" He pulled up quickly. His
head was shaken. "No, don't go there. Puffer's a decent
old sort."
"So's Monty." Patricia was suddenly defiant, as at
some assumption of right. Harry grimaced at her.
"First I've heard of it," he said. "Don't go there,
there's a dear!"
"I've promised. I'm going with Jacky Dean."
"Good Lord!" Harry was amazed. He would have
protested further; but their train at this moment burst
from the tunnel. They were crushed into it by eager
fellow passengers, and sat blinking in that strained artificial
light which is so much more trying to the eyes than
the light of the sun. Extraordinary roaring filled their
ears. With the crowd and the dazzle and the subterranean
re-echoings of violent noise they were dazed and
helpless. Impossible to converse. Impossible to think
clearly. When they wished to communicate with one
another it was only by means of raised voices at each
other's ears. At last Harry could stand it no longer.
At a shout, he proceeded: "Jack's ... a decent little
... owl. But he's an awful ... fool!" Patricia
nodded. The train ran into a station, and there was an
instant's silence. In it, Harry resumed: "Why not
come with me? Don't you want to come?" No answer.
He bent nearer, and Patricia could not look up.
"You'd rather go to Monty's? Well, look here, come to
the match, any way. I've got to go there—on business.
I'm doing a special on it. Will you? That all right?
Good."
The train started again. They were lost in that fearsome
jungle of uproar. Patricia was struggling with
herself. The noise seemed to have destroyed all her
wit, all her confidence. She could not understand the
sensation she had—as though she were stifling, as though
the blood were filling her cheeks.
"I'd rather come to Puffer's," she managed to shout.
"Well?"
"I can't."
Harry turned away grimly, staring at an advertisement.
Their wills were in conflict. Patricia's eyes
closed. Her brain was full of tormenting thoughts. He
was cruel. Then, no ... it was she who had been....
Uncontrollably, her hand swiftly moved, and was
tucked lightly between his arm and his body. Harry's
hand came as swiftly to press hers, and although the
two hands drew apart again Patricia's remained within
the crook of his elbow for the rest of the short journey.
By the time they reached South Kensington station
the rain had ceased. Big clouds were passing overhead
at high speed, and the wind remained fierce. Somehow
it appeared to Patricia that when one had looked upwards
and seen the clouds, and behind them that lighter
darkness the sky, all that stood upon the surface of the
earth was dwarfed. The people, the lamps, the trees,
the houses, were all shrunk to insignificance, as the pain
and bewilderment of poor humans must seem to those
steady eyes of pity, the stars. She could not see any
stars, but the gusts of wind made for the impression of
great spaces, and presently the few trees by the side of
the road, and the dark houses which lay beyond, took
on the air of a mysterious wood. She felt that she
and Harry were wandering alone in a wood at night,
beneath the stars, listening to the endless torment of the
anguished leaves; and all her love of beauty made her
heart soft, so that she was moved beyond tears, and
wished only to rest her head and prolong the ecstatic
moment.
But she could not speak to Harry. She could have
taken his hand and walked onward in silence; but that
was impossible, because this vision that she had was
unsubstantial, and Harry, whose laughter was so delightful,
would not understand anything that was so intangible,
so unrelated to his normal life. She was conscious
in him of a thick stream of emotion, of the power
of serious preoccupation with sensual things, amounting
to obsession; and sometimes she had that same thickness
of emotion when she was with him or longing for him,
but never with obsession;—always with a shyness, a flying
away, as of some will o' the wisp. But she more
often had only a light playing of fancy, which made love
a beautiful game; and now she had only a childish desire
for happiness and mystical beauty. This her instinct
told her was not shared. If Harry laughed, it was because
there were whole realms of which he knew nothing.
She had a swift certainty; there was no poetry in
his nature. He was all the time absorbed in the tangible.
Oh! What treason! She would not allow such thoughts.
They were wicked, unjust, treacherous.... How the
wind thrust and blustered among the trees! She could
feel it upon her face and in her hair, and in her eyes.
Harry said:
"Your friend Amy Roberts has been making a fool
of herself."
Patricia, withdrawn from her wonderings by so incongruous
a speech, could hardly understand him for a
moment. Amy ... Amy.... It was an instant before
she could bring herself to recognition.
"Oh." At last, vaguely, Patricia groped for his
meaning. "What's she been doing?"
"It seems she ran into Felix Brow somewhere, and
taxed him with saying she couldn't paint. Of course,
poor Felix muffed the thing. Or perhaps, after all, he
didn't. He said he didn't know she painted at all. Yes,
I expect that wasn't so much of a muff as I thought it
was at first. Damned insulting," Harry laughed appreciatively,
thinking the speech over to himself before
he continued: "He begged her not to betray him.
That made Amy angry. Somebody had told her he'd
said she painted with a besom. She'd prefer even that
to being ignored. After all, she's no good as an artist.
She's too stupid. And she makes these ridiculous scenes.
There's some itch in her that makes her precipitate a
row."
"I think she's conceited."
"Of course she is. Did you ever know a fool who
wasn't? But she's worse, because she quarrels with
people who mean kindly by her."
"I know." Rather despairingly, Patricia shook her
head. "Did Felix really say that?"
"My dear! Poor old Felix wouldn't say anything so
dull. After all, he is a wit. He'd say something worth
saying, and worth repeating, or he wouldn't open his
mouth."
"These witty things, though. Are they really said?"
Patricia's cynicism was too much for Harry. He
laughed, looking down at her with an almost proprietary
air of delight.
"I've heard a few of them. They're not always spontaneous,
of course. But it's so absurd of Amy to quarrel
with a man like Felix. It can only do her harm.
He will say something about her now. I mean, he's a
man to stand in with, not quarrel with."
Patricia was struck by this point.
"Do you really think that?" she asked. "That one
ought to 'stand in' with people."
"Of course!" Harry's tone was severe.
"You think it's right? You do it yourself?" Patricia's
tone was sad. She could not see his face; but
then neither could he see hers. For Patricia the question
was of vital importance. Yet Harry was not conscious
of the meaning of her question.
"You've got to do everything in this world," he assured
her confidently.
"How base!" Patricia's protest was so low that it
escaped Harry. "But surely, Harry, if you're any
good...."
"All the more reason. Of course, it doesn't matter
in Amy's case...."
"I must go and see her."
Patricia spoke mechanically. She was not thinking
of Amy. She was thinking of Harry, and of herself.
"She'll probably tell you about Felix—with embellishments
of her own. A few of the withering replies
she's thought of since. I will say that for Amy: she
improves her speeches a lot in revision." He laughed
with some dryness.
"Harry!" protested Patricia. "I believe you're spiteful!"
"As a nun!" he agreed. "Didn't you know?"
Again Patricia shrank into herself. They were nearing
her home now, and the road was very dark, and
Harry's nearness gave her a sense of happiness and
security. And yet she was neither happy nor secure.
It seemed as though the stormy evening had reawakened
all her sensitiveness. No, she was not happy. Intermingled
with her own mood was the strange jumble of
problems which had been raised by their talk and the
memories it evoked. Now she wanted to leave him, now
to stay—and at each turn she was exasperated anew at
her own waywardness. The shallowness of Harry's
conviction that one ought to cultivate those who might
be useful hurt her (as similar remarks had done several
times before). She remembered several of her distastes
for things he had said. She remembered, too,
their talk over dinner on the subject of growing up; and
it made her shiver. And yet she continued to walk by
Harry's side, feeling in his proximity the same joy, the
same warm affection as she had done all the evening.
It surprised her to know that one's love for a person
could fluctuate so, and so persist; that it could come and
go almost as if with breathing. She was undecided.
Did she perhaps not love him at all? It was as though
some reality greater than inclination, or else some very
strong illusion, was always interrupting her love and
making it ineffective. He was the only man she had
ever wanted to kiss her, the only man to whom she could
physically have yielded herself; and yet....
She fell into a series of fresh ponderings, about Amy
and Jack Penton, about Harry and Amy, about Harry
and Rhoda, Harry and Bella, about Harry's spitefulness;
and with each variation of the theme it became less and
less possible to disclose the nature of her thoughts to
Harry. How could one love a person, and yet sometimes
dislike what they said, and resent what they did,
and hate what they thought? And yet, as her heart
told her, he was the man she loved, so beautiful, so
strong, so much her true love. What were thoughts
and speeches compared with that instinctive certainty?
She was torn. It was a puzzle to Patricia that this hesitation
should arise. She was unhappy under her happiness.
Suddenly she became aware that they were outside her
home, and that the house was dark, and that Harry had
spoken to her without receiving a reply.
"Hey!" he cried sharply, to attract her attention.
Patricia, startled, looked up at him as if she were
dreaming. The little hushing wind in the slim and bare
branches of small trees was accompanied by the pattering
drops of a fresh shower. Cold splashes touched
her cheeks. She could see Harry standing like a giant
above her, could feel the radiance of his strength and
beauty and love for her. She was deeply moved.
Harry, amused and laughing at her abstracted silence,
put his arm round her. As if naturally, but in reality
because she was only half-attentive, Patricia stopped,
standing there within his arm. She was quite happy,
quite at ease, but dreaming.
"What is it?" she asked, in a very hushed way, hardly
to be heard.
"Only that you're a darling!" Harry stooped and
kissed her, holding her tightly but gently within his arm,
and with his free hand raising her hand to his lips. She
felt his rough cheek against her own, his warm lips, and
against her hair the brim of his hat. How strange that
for a moment, held so firmly, Patricia felt nothing at all
except that it was delicious to be there, delicious to be
so encircled, so loved. Harry kissed her a second time,
but not her averted mouth. She felt his lips encroaching,
his hold more urgent. Patricia's heart beat faster.
So she might yield herself to love. He would kiss her
lips, and she would kiss him, and then for ever—for ever....
She was half-yielding. She was yielding. Faster
and faster ran her heart, and the wind and rain and
darkness were blotted out in this sweet stupor. And
then some electrical revolt shocked her into resistance.
"No!" she said, very quietly, and sought to disengage
herself.
"Kiss me!" demanded Harry. "My dearest!"
"No!" said Patricia, again. But she was not really
unwilling or afraid. She was happy and at ease and full
of almost luxurious reassurance. And at the same time
she was inexorable. When Harry would have kept her
and again would have kissed her he was unable to
do so. Her body seemed to be steel, her will
greater than his impetuousness. In the struggle between
domination and the instinct for liberty this new strength
of Patricia's was in no way to be gainsaid. She continued,
despite his effort, unquestionably to belong to
herself. The impulse to submit was vanquished by
something yet more insistent.
"Patricia!" commanded Harry. He was warm, was
masterful. Such a tone had never hitherto failed him,
and was now both ardent and sincere. Patricia was
quite aware of the physical agitation which he thus expressed.
He was bent upon victory, forcing the issue.
And with each fleeting second his will strengthened her
own. Harry was urgent. Patricia's nerve was steadied.
He followed her, determined, very nearly irresistible.
"No. I'm not sure that I want you to." Her tone
was cold and without feeling; but her eyes were shining
and her heart was full.
"My dear, you can't...."
She held his hand, and pressed it, all the time evading
his renewed embrace. The wind came sweeping along
the street, and around them was blackness and silence.
Moved and troubled, but as one in a dream, Patricia
freed herself, made no answer to his entreaty, and left
him listening to the sound of a closing door, and feeling
the smart tingle of raindrops upon his face and the backs
of his bare hands.
CHAPTER EIGHT: A DAY IN PATRICIA'S LIFE — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii — ix
Patricia undressed, still trembling, still with a
set face and a false air of coolness. Only when
she was in bed was she hysterically filled with anger
for herself, and contempt, almost with self-horror. She
could not comprehend herself or her own stupidity, so
great was her longing for love and understanding.
"Love—yes; but understanding!" He could understand
her in happiness—now, at dinner, at the dance.
But as she grew older, as she needed guidance and wisdom?
Never! That was her thought of Harry, the
first wild sweep of anger at his deficiency. "He'd never
understand me—never!" And then again she demanded
of the silence, striking the pillow with her vehemence:
"Why—why—why?" Why had she so shrunk from
love? Excuses poured into her mind, the more vehement
because she felt them to be invalid. It had been a
mood, this rejection of his love. She wasn't accountable
for her moods. She said definite things without
knowing them to be definite—without meaning them to
be definite. It wasn't final. It wasn't. Then self-anger
again grew uppermost. "You fool! You little
fool!" she cried aloud. Then again: "I'm not ready.
I don't know what love is. I only want to be loved. I
don't want to love and be loved—not finally, like this;
not give myself up to it. Only like a little girl. I
don't love him. I felt it. I've just been playing ...
I can't love him! If I did, I should be sure. I shouldn't
think ... of all this ... of his not ... of my growing
out of him.... I should be proud—overwhelmed.
I'm not proud. Not overwhelmed. He's only selfish.
I could tell. Anybody could have told. The feeling was
all wrong. It was.... He's kissed other girls. They
were proud—willing.... He wants love in his way—not
mine. He can't have it. I'm not sure. I've got
to be sure. It's for life. He must give me time. I
felt he wouldn't.... And yet I do love him so....
Harry! My dear!" She pressed her lips to her own
fingers, kissing them sweetly. "I wanted him to kiss
me. I liked it. I wanted it. I wouldn't let him....
How could I be so beastly—so beastly! I couldn't have
kissed him. I've thought of it—liked the idea of it.
It's the reality—cowardice. Oh, I'm afraid of life. It's
all very well to play and dream—lovesick girl. When
a man really.... It wouldn't have been right. It
wouldn't have been true. It can't be right to feel like
this! I'm sophisticated. I want love, and not love,—love
and friendship and wisdom and understanding—somebody
to understand me; somebody delicate and wise
... beautiful.... I want too much. You can't
ask...."
With a mind distraught, she turned upon the pillow,
until it grew hot and seemed to rasp her cheeks; and her
head ached and her eyes and lips burned and the room
seemed overpoweringly full of stale air. She could see
the darkness out of doors, and hear the wind tearing and
pressing in wild gusts out of doors, and soot whispering
down the chimney, like mice foraging in a newspaper.
The wooden rod at the foot of the hanging linen blind
knocked against the casement until she was frenzied;
and she rose passionately to draw the blind to its full
height, out of the draught. Standing there in the darkness
she could feel the cold air upon her raised arm and
her breast, and in a moment through her thin nightgown.
And all the time her lips were drawn back and down in
this great distress and self-blame which had come suddenly
into her blithe days. And she realised that it had all
been implicit in her blitheness, that only a young girl
could have supposed that the postponement could go on
for as long as her delight in it was maintained.
"If only I had something to drink I should feel better!"
cried Patricia, on an impulse. She went to the
washstand, and the carafe was empty. The water-jug
was empty. Lucy had forgotten to fill it. Even here
the catastrophe was a futility, a humiliation, a further
exasperation. She was maddened. She was shaken
and jangled. Rage swept her. "Oh, damn!" she cried.
"Everything! It's awful!"
With her hands in her mouth, Patricia turned back
towards the bed, and leant against the foot of it; and
sobs shook her body, so bitterly that she was afraid her
crying would be overheard, and crept back to bed to
cover herself and stifle the noise. It was the great
strong dreadful crying of a little girl who had been disappointed
of some dearest wish. It was not a woman's
crying at all. It was the result of shock and self-contempt;
but it was not the heartbreaking sorrow of the
hopeless woman. Patricia would yet laugh again—would
laugh, perhaps even at herself. But now she
could see only her own cowardice, and she was in
despair.
Presently the crying ceased, and Patricia began to
talk to herself, very softly, as a little girl who has been
desperately unhappy will sometimes do; and because
there was nobody in the world to comfort her she began
to try and comfort herself, speaking between small spasmodic
sobs, and explaining and cheering, as the mother
she could not remember might have done. It was poor
cheer; but it gradually began to soothe her. And at
last, lingeringly, in pity for herself at having nobody to
console her for ignorance and uncertainty, Patricia began
refreshingly to cry. Long afterwards, while it was
still dark, she fell asleep.
When Lucy banged into the room in the morning
Patricia still slept, her little pale face deep in the pillow,
and her hair tumbled; and she would have continued to
sleep if Lucy, in stumping across to the window, had not
been reminded of her failure to fill the carafe and water-jug.
"Gawd love a duck!" exclaimed Lucy, at which Patricia
awoke.
She could vaguely see a pink dress, very soiled, and a
big dirty apron surrounding a stumpy body, and a little
cap, and the dirty red smudge which she knew to be
Lucy's face.
"Good morning," said Patricia drowsily, still hardly
conscious of the day.
"I've said it once," cried Lucy, emphasising the sibilants
until she appeared to hiss. "I said it as I come
in. And now I've got to traipse all the way downstairs
again to get you some cole water! What a life!"
"Well, Lucy," said Patricia, putting her head out of
bed. "I don't think you can blame me for that. In
fact I was very annoyed last night, when I was thirsty,
to find there wasn't any. I might have parched to
death."
"You didden brush your teeth larce night, I can see,"
retorted Lucy. "Got 'ome too late, I s'pose, and frightened
of the beetles." She clucked her tongue in reproof.
"Your young man wouldn' like to know that about you!"
"Don't be coarse, Lucy. I did forget to brush my
teeth. But it's the first time for months."
"Gawd. Some people wants a nursie always after
them! I got no time for it. Not myself, I 'aven't. I
s'pose I got to get your water now. Don't want to
scald yourself. 'E wouldn' like that, neither!"
An idea shot into Patricia's head. She had a sudden
cowardice about getting up. What if Harry had written?
She felt she simply could not face all the possible
sequels to last night's scene. It was terrifying! As
she lay there she definitely feared the day, and its outcome.
All the time Lucy was away, Patricia was
trembling with apprehensiveness. She would run away—she
would burn a letter—she would.... Ghastly
possibilities flew through her mind. Lucy had hardly
re-entered, panting and noisy, before the inquiry was
launched alarmingly at her.
"Lucy, is there a letter for me?" demanded Patricia,
in a betrayingly self-conscious and unsteady voice.
"No!" said the smudge, rather severely. "There
ain't! But there's some nice cole kipper, if you 'urry."
She disappeared, while Patricia, half-relieved and half
tearful, with a sinking heart, put her head back under the
clothes, feeling ill and doleful and heavy with trepidation.
There was a long silence. It was not that Patricia
was asleep, although she was so tired. She was malingering.
A fond mother would have been misled. She
almost, in that rôle, convinced herself. But she knew
that Lucy would never be a willing dupe, and something
about Lucy's wholly unsentimental attitude towards ill-health
alarmed Patricia. It was not, however, until she
was stung by a bitter thought that she rolled back the
bedclothes and paddled her bare feet upon the floor.
"I'm just like Amy, with Jack Penton!" was the
thought. "How horrible!"
That thought stayed with Patricia during the whole
of her bathing and washing. She was appalled by it.
No criticism could have been more withering.
"But Harry would never be like Jack!" she exclaimed,
with certainty. "He'd never stay on the chance that
I'd change my mind. With him it's one thing or the
other. I wonder...."
It was a possibility. Perhaps it was the solution.
Patricia felt brighter. Of course! Why had she not
thought of it before? She would say to Harry, and it
would be an extremely reasonable speech: "Harry, I
do think I love you. But I want to make sure. Can we
go on as we are—just being friends—for the present?"
"Of course, old girl," Harry would say. "I don't want
to hurry you, if you're not sure. Just try me for a little
while." Patricia laughed, as she imagined him saying
that. Harry would laugh, too. She would.... Her
eyes sparkled. She became demure.
Suddenly, in her imagining, Harry turned sharply to
her. "By the way," he said. "How long am I to wait?"
Patricia answered very quickly. "Well, I couldn't
marry you until I got a trousseau, could I?"
She had awakened in a very different state of mind
from that in which she had slept. Far from the danger,
she had become quite bold. It seemed at this moment
as though she had almost made up her mind.
"But I haven't ... really," said Patricia. "I'm only
brave in the morning, because the danger isn't urgent."
It was true. She had floated back into her dream of
love. The reality no longer disturbed her. Slowly her
mind returned to the bitter thought which had driven
her out of bed. Supposing Harry said: "Now
or never!" What then? Immediately her courage
oozed away. She shook her head, and became very
grave. Even in her drowsy state of unreality she still
knew that she must play the game. "I can't give him
up!" she thought. Then she laughed without glee.
"I'm like Amy. I know it. Why am I like her? Are
all girls like her? Impossible! I shall go and see Amy.
It'll be good for me. I'll go this very afternoon!"
Over breakfast, the nature and temperature of which
was as Lucy had prophesied, and of which she could
therefore eat little, Patricia had a cunning insight. Harry
was not in the habit of accepting refusals. If he wanted
a thing he went for it. Therefore, supposing his work
did not prevent, he might call for her at any time during
the day. He would come.... She was seized with
panic. No message would send him away, and she was
not in a state to see him.
"You silly!" cried Patricia.
All the same, she could not see Harry until she was
more composed. It would be impossible. Consent won
from her in such circumstances, she knew, would be disastrous.
Instinct was sound there! She knew herself
well enough to realise that coercion of her impulses
would result—not in submission, as it might do in the case
of girls less neurotic, but in inhibitions. Therefore she
must not see Harry until she was calmer, until she could
freely give him the love he demanded. To know this,
and to foresee his possible arrival, was to take instant
action. She looked out of the window. Last night's
storm had been appropriately followed by morning calm.
The few clouds in the sky immediately visible from her
room were white, and they were racing ferociously to
the east. That meant more rain. She would go prepared;
but she could not stay at home another minute
without increasing her danger.
Quick! Her mackintosh, her waterproof cap! Her
handbag, gloves.... In fresh panic, Patricia gathered
these necessary things and hurried down the stairs.
"Lucy!" she called to the kitchen. "I'm going out.
All day. If anybody comes, say you don't know when
I'll be back."
"Righto, miss!" came a faint call in response.
The gusty wind slammed the front door behind her.
A hasty glance along the street showed that the path was
still clear. With lowered head and beating heart Patricia
made her escape, laughing a little at her own fears.
Some exultation showed itself also in her inner consciousness—a
vanity, a something of the heart. After
all, it was something to have a lover of whose determination
one could be happily afraid! Panic had its
core of delight!
An omnibus carried Patricia to Charing Cross, and
she walked over to the National Gallery. It was not
open yet. The beginning of her day was inauspicious.
It became necessary that she should wander about the
streets, looking in shops, unless she could think of some
alternative to her first improvised plan. She glanced up
at the sky, and the rapid movement of the clouds gave
her inspiration. The sky was brilliantly blue, and a
draughty day in London might well be delightful in the
country. But where, cheaply, could she go? The nearest
open space would be the best. It required but a
moment's reflection to decide what to do. Another omnibus
would take her to Hampstead. And so she was
once again in movement, and, looking over the side of
the vehicle with a curled lip of distaste and a sharp wonder
at the people who could bear to live in such districts,
she passed through the dinginess of Camden Town and
Gospel Oak. From the point of arrival, where the omnibuses
rested awhile before they returned once again
on their unsteady journey, she quickly reached the Heath.
It was very windy, and the ground beneath her feet
was soggy with the rain; but Patricia trudged on valiantly,
looking back from the height over that grey fog
of rising smoke which marked the daily life of nearer
London. All about her was a wide stretch of green,
rising and falling from one round height to a lowland
where several large ponds spread their black waters.
The Heath, and the Parliament Hill Fields, were deserted.
It was not the time of year, nor the day of the
week, for this enormous and house-bound green to be
peopled. Even children were at school. Only an occasional
old gentleman or loitering out-of-work passed her,
with hastily averted eyes of resentment and fear, and
occasionally a girl or nurse with young children in a
perambulator ambled by, munching fruit or studying a
novelette as she trusted to the rim of grass to keep her
path true. The paths yielded to Patricia's feet; the
grass concealed mud, and was treacherous. But the
fresh air was most sweet, and the exercise improved her
morale, and every trouble in the world seemed to have
drifted to a convenient distance. Patricia was breathing
deeply with relief.
She walked upon the Heath for a couple of hours, and
sat awhile upon a seat, exposed to every wind, until the
cold began to make her uncomfortable; and then, with
a plunge, she returned to the point from which the omnibuses
start. Within half-an-hour Patricia was back in
the West End, very much better, very much more able
to enjoy the crowds in Regent Street and Oxford Street.
A short tour brought her to the end of the shops, and
she found it was lunchtime. Still further refreshed by
a light meal at a neighbouring teashop, she returned to
the National Gallery; and stared at pictures until the
extremely tiring pastime made her begin to yawn. Patricia
knew that it was now—if she was going to keep
to the schedule of her planned day—her duty to call upon
Amy, and to Amy's studio in Fitzroy Street she accordingly
went on foot.
Arrival at Amy's found her weary and depressed. She
had begun once more to take a pessimistic view of her
own affairs. When she had rung the bell Patricia had
a momentary inclination to run away. To endure a talk
here was the last thing for which she was prepared. It
had been a ridiculous proposal. She wavered, feeling
demoralised. The impulse to flight, however, was frustrated
by the appearance at the door of Amy herself,
very white and very puffy about the eyes, with a cigarette
between her discoloured fingers, and her dress
crumpled as though she had been lying down. Her
short light-coloured hair was also rough, which strengthened
the first quick impression. She looked ill and discontented.
"Oh, it's you," said Amy, not very agreeably. "I
thought you'd forgotten I existed."
"Oh, how unkind, Amy. When I've come to see
you!" cried Patricia, in rebuke.
"It's about time." Amy, after this laconic protest
against neglect, led the way to the studio, and closed the
door. Her gas-fire was fully alight, and a book lay
face downwards upon a table which bore the remains of
a meagre lunch. The bed had been made, and the brilliantly
coloured spread was over it, but the studio was
untidy and unswept. The early dusk was darkening it,
and the whole place had a dispirited air which chilled the
visitor to the heart.
"I'm not going to excuse myself," continued Patricia,
briskly, to cover her shrinking. "I'm a beast, and I
know it, and I'm sorry. Don't be hard on me. I've
been having a rushing time. How are you?"
Amy looked at her sourly, and Patricia was shocked
to see how thoroughly ill she seemed. There was increased
discontent in her expression, and the unkempt
air she wore showed that Amy was taking no care of
herself or of her person.
"I've seen you; and I've heard about you," Amy said.
"I hope I looked nice." Patricia was being painfully
cheeky, because she was afraid. She had never been so
afraid as she had been since her parting with Harry.
"Are you all right?" The question was not merely perfunctory:
it was drawn from her by real pity.
"No. I'm not. Patricia, I feel perfectly awful. Not
with you—everything. I can't work, I can't do anything.
I don't know what I shall do. I feel desperate."
"What's been happening?" Full of concern, Patricia
turned from throwing her mackintosh over a chair, and
regarded Amy with eyes in which contempt and dread
mingled with her sympathy.
"Nothing's been happening. That's just it. I can't
paint. I never could paint. It's all ridiculous. Ridiculous!"
The words were blurted out in a breathless
voice of pain. "I'm in hell!"
And with that Amy began to cry. Patricia put an
arm round her, and felt the poor creature sobbing. But
no tears came; the sobs were long drawn and agonised;
and Amy could not weep.
"And nobody's come near you!" murmured Patricia,
stricken with conscience. "Oh, you poor thing. You poor
thing!" Amy jerked herself free, dabbing her eyes with
a handkerchief that had been soiled with paint. She
stood there all puckered, terribly hostile to consolation.
"Don't!" she choked. "I can't stand being pawed!
All the damned fools in the world have come. Damn
them! Grinning and ... Damn!" She began to
blow her nose and to wipe her eyes, looking inexpressibly
forlorn in her little linen dress without a waist. It was
a piteous sight. An old woman stood there, facing bitter
knowledge. Patricia could see that Amy's face was
swollen with crying. She was evidently in a state of
wretched misery, and yet what could be done? Nothing!
Desiring pity, comfort, sympathy, Amy could
yield herself to none of these, and her hysterical scorn
for them was devastating. There was a long silence,
awkward and increasingly embarrassed. Patricia stared
downward, biting her lip, oppressed with the knowledge
of her helplessness. When she spoke she could
hear her own words, and her false voice, and the emptiness
of her emotion.
"You'd better go away for a holiday," she suggested.
"Go down to Cornwall."
"No." Amy jerked with impatient unhappiness. She
was like a desperate animal that snarls at a rescuer. "I
don't want to do anything. I don't want to see anybody."
She controlled herself with a fierce effort, moving
a few steps this way and that, and smoking furiously,
until the cigarette was glowing and burning her lips.
For a time during this paroxysm of fury there was
silence; and then Amy went on in a curious dry disinterested
voice: "Sit down, Patricia. Tell me what
you've been doing. No, I'm all right. I'll stand up.
I can't bear to keep still. Got a cigarette?" She lighted
the fresh one from her burning stump, in the same
grievous way leaning against the mantelpiece and again
starting erect with nervous lack of self-control; and
every now and then she was shaken by a sob. Without
waiting for Patricia's narrative, Amy went on viciously:
"That brute Felix has been spiteful about me—and I
don't care. I don't care! I'd like to kill him—all of
them. All these grinning apes.... I know I can't
paint. I'm no good at it. I never shall be any good.
Well? What's it to do with them? They're all as
glad ... because I'm a woman. That's what it is.
What it comes down to is naked sex jealousy. I know.
I've known it all the time. And I've gone on, pretending
to believe it, pretending I was taken in. I wasn't.
They thought I didn't know they laughed at me. Well,
I did. And it's I who laugh at them. I despise them.
I'm no good; but they're no good, either! And I've
told them so. There's that...."
Her voice had grown louder and more hysterical as
she progressed. Patricia stood rooted, quite overcome
by this torrential violence of anger and chagrin and revelation.
But Amy's voice changed again. Almost beseechingly,
she turned to her friend.
"But what am I to do, Patricia? I've spent all this
money—pounds and pounds of it—and worked and
worked and worked; and kept on and on, hoping ...
refusing to see." Then, suddenly again out of all control,
she shouted. "And it's no good! D'you see? It's
no good!" The suppressed rage in her voice was as if
saturated with the bitter tears which she could not shed.
The tears started to Patricia's eyes in sympathy. She
was suffused with conscience-stricken loyalty.
"Where's Jack?" she demanded, fiercely. "What's
he doing?"
"Jack!" It was almost a scream. "God! I hate the
sight of him. Hate the sound of his rusty voice."
"D'you see him?"
"Do I not!" Amy was concentrated scorn. "Every
evening! He comes to cheer me up; and I could kill
him, I'm so bored! He's driving me mad!"
Patricia made a little sound with her tongue. Here,
if ever, was the occasion for Jack to be strong, to control
matters. He must be stupid—stupid! She shook
her head, frowning.
"Amy, dear; it's such a pity for you to be making
yourself ill like this. Couldn't you...."
"I'm gloating in it!" came Amy's shrill interruption.
"I'm enjoying it. It's not often a woman comes up
against the sex war as clearly as this. If it had been a
man—oh, very different. They'd have stopped me.
They'd have criticised me sick. They'd have had no
more consideration for my feelings than for a dog's
feelings. But I'm a woman—to be teased and lured and
flattered and laughed at. What d'you suppose all the
praise of woman is? You see us praised. Yes, and
why? To keep us quiet. Like giving sweets to a baby.
Praise is our comforter. It's not meant. A man's
given a chance to learn that he's a fool. We're not.
We're up against honeyed lies. It's cotton-wool everywhere,
for us, until we're broken by it. And all the
time they're laughing—sniggering at us behind our
backs. They don't care. They fool us to the top of
our bent. They praise our daubs and our abortions of
books; and to themselves they're doubled up with laughter.
That's what woman's freedom means. That's
what equality of the sexes means. It means broken
hearts for women. Broken hearts for bloody failures!
Oh, my God, my God, my heart will break!"
She began once more convulsively to sob; and Patricia,
who was now herself white and shaken as the result
of this tirade, was stricken with fear for her reason.
These ghastly, tearing sobs were unbearable. They
echoed in the lofty studio, rising, sometimes almost to
the pitch of screams. For ten minutes they lasted, and
then, gradually, with returns and relaxations of violence,
Amy became quiet, and lay on her bed, drying her eyes.
Long afterwards she began to talk in what was very
nearly her ordinary voice.
"There, that's enough," she said. "I'm a fool.
You're bad for me, Patricia. You make me lose my
head. You look so kind and pretty, and as if you understood,
which of course you don't in the least. No, if
Jack was any good to me, I'd marry him at once just to
get out of it. But a man who bores you is no good. I
should leave him on the train somewhere, poor fool that
he is. It's no good. We're all alone, Patricia. Each
of us. You think you're not——"
"I know I am," swiftly corrected Patricia.
"Oho! So you're getting it, too. We all do, sooner
or later; and you're the sort of pretty little fool who gets
caught by her vanity. I've done it. You'll have a bad
time before you're done. Yes, now I look at you I see
you're a bit peaky. I suppose it's Harry Greenlees.
Harry Greenlees, Good God!" Amy laughed with a
strained satirical note. "Well, I warned you. I could
have told you about all sorts of girls he's treated the
same——"
Patricia's heart stopped beating for an instant.
"All sorts of girls?" she cried. "What d'you mean?"
Amy looked at her sharply, her face transformed, almost
venomous. "Well, little Jean Cowley went away
with him. It was all over in a month. They hardly
notice each other now. She's through it. He's been
the lover of half-a-dozen girls I know——"
"I don't believe you!" cried Patricia, perfectly white
with anger.
Amy looked back with a superciliousness as great as
her own.
"Jean Cowley told me all about it herself. I'm not a
liar. Penelope Gorran ... Phyllis Mickle...."
"Amy!"
"I know what I'm talking about."
"Not whom you're talking to, though!" cried Patricia.
Amy became for the first time really intense. She
rose from the bed and came across the studio, and Patricia
could see her red eyes and the terrible white face
all disfigured with angry grief.
"You're not his mistress, are you?" demanded Amy.
"You poor fool!"
How far Patricia had travelled since their previous
talk about girls and their lovers. She was not now
stricken with shame at such a suggestion. She was
merely indignant.
"Be quiet, Amy!" she cried. "You can't talk like that!"
Amy gave a short laugh, raising her arms in the air
in a gesture of offensive marvel.
"Beautiful!" she said. "Beautiful!"
As they faced each other, both desperately angry, with
opposed glances of hostility, breathing quickly in their
common agitation, there came a ringing at the bell of
Amy's studio. Slowly the blood rose and flooded Patricia's
cheeks. She knew who was without. All her
anger died. Its place was taken by fear. She was
paralysed, knowing that the moment she had dreaded was
upon her.
Harry entered the studio with impetuosity, and his
height and energy made it a normal-sized room.
He made no pretence of having come to see Amy, but
as soon as he caught sight of Patricia he addressed
her.
"I thought I might find you here," he said, and
stopped. His eyes embraced her, and Patricia's heart
leapt. Then, uncontrollably, she turned away while
Harry looked at Amy. "Sorry to be unceremonious;
but I'd been to Patricia's," he said cheerfully. "Found
she was out. How are you, Amy? I hear you've been
having a fracas with old Felix. Poor old Felix! I
wonder how he's feeling now, eh? Jolly rough on him—what?
Now I want to get hold of Patricia, because
we're going to a football match on Saturday, and didn't
fix up a time of meeting. You don't mind, do you?"
"Not at all!" said Amy, sarcastically. "Ignore me.
Use my studio as your own. Interrupt a conversation
with the greatest assurance——"
"Thanks," answered Harry, not troubling to be polite.
"I will." His blue eyes had their steel; and his cheerful
face its grimness. "Now, Patricia...."
"Now, Harry." Patricia was recovering her nerve.
At his insincerity, his rudeness to Amy, her spirits had
risen. Whatever secret weaknesses her will might hint,
she was sparkling with temper. He had entered a bully;
well, she would not be bullied. She saw the difference
of his demeanour to Amy, whom he disliked, and to herself,
whom he loved. For how long would his behaviour
remain different? In Jean Cowley's case it had been a
month. "Now, Harry," said Patricia.
Harry's manner softened. His tone was lowered.
His possessiveness was subtly mingled with appeal. He
took a step forward, a big figure with bared teeth and
that ready smile. There was no doubt of the effect he
had on Patricia. She felt herself small, weak, laughing....
And yet not now yielding. A day ago she
would have been yielding, tasting all the sweetness of
surrender to such masterful treatment.
"Put your coat on," pleaded Harry. He wore none
himself. "I want you to come and have a meal with
me."
"It's barely tea-time," objected Patricia.
"All the better. We'll have tea and dinner as well."
They both ignored Amy, who stood angrily staring at
them.
"Why should she?" cried Amy. "What cheek!"
Harry turned upon Amy, and laughed at her.
"Hullo, Amy!" he answered. "You there? Sorry.
Look here, I know it's cheek; and I apologise. But I
must talk to Patricia, d'you see. Our last talk was interrupted."
"Patricia's talks seem to be subject to interruption.
Her talk with me was interrupted."
"I know. By me," Harry said, charmingly. "It's
too bad."
Patricia was mechanically putting on her mackintosh
as they squabbled. She smoothed her hair; and a
curious excitement which had risen in her was transformed
into intrepidity. So may a man in danger become
aware of new alert vitality. She heard the remarks
without observing their content, so engrossed was
she with thoughts of her own.
"How's Rhoda?" asked Amy suddenly. It came like
a stab, and like a stab was Patricia's glance at Harry.
His own glance towards her was as sharp, as keen.
"Very well, I think," said Harry, in a patient voice.
"She's away, isn't she?"
"I really don't know."
Amy again gave that strained laugh of sarcasm.
"Oho!" she laughed. "Harry!"
Harry held out his hand to Amy, seeing that Patricia
was ready. Amy ignored the hand. She never shook
hands with anybody. It had always seemed to her more
masculine and professional not to do so.
"You ready?" Harry asked Patricia.
"Awkward questions," murmured Amy, almost unheard.
"Well, cheerio, Patricia. Perhaps one day we
shall meet again. I shall be here, I expect."
"Do try to go away," whispered Patricia. "Really
try. It's so bad for you to be alone." Harry was outside
the door by now, and the parting was solitary.
"Try to go away—just for change of thought and
scene."
Amy shook her head—almost with a shudder.
"Now go," she said. "Harry's waiting. And Patricia—what
I told you was true. D'you see? Not
spiteful."
"I know. I know." Patricia pressed her hand and
was gone.
Outside, in the street, Harry was waiting.
"What a sight that woman is! Silly little fool!" he
explained. "She's a cat, too. Did you notice that?"
"Look here, Harry," said Patricia, abruptly. "I don't
want to listen to abuse of Amy. I'm sorry for her."
"Oh, God, so am I!" cried Harry, lightly.
"No, I'm really sorry. You don't understand." With
sudden indignation, she concluded: "You couldn't ever
understand. You don't know enough."
"Well?" He was quite cool. "I see you're in a rage
about something."
"I'm not in a rage about anything; but I do resent your
coming to the studio as if I belonged to you. You've
got no right to do that. I came out because I didn't
want a row before Amy."
"Oh! A row!" Harry turned a laughing, coaxing
face to her, very sure of himself. His hand was at her
arm; but Patricia was completely mistress of herself.
"Yes, a row," she cried, her eyes sparkling afresh.
"Let's go and have tea somewhere."
Harry's face was also alight. If Patricia had temper,
so, it appeared, had he. They were matched.
"That was exactly my idea," he said impudently.
"Let's!"
They walked through into Oxford Street and joined
the crowd there. Such teashops as the one at which
Patricia had lunched were unsuitable. They were at
this hour too crowded for conversation. As a result the
journey was for a time without result; but at last they
came to a big restaurant at which few visitors to the
West End imagined that such a thing as tea would be
served. Here it was that, surrounded by innumerable
empty tables, and at a distance from half-a-dozen pensive
waiters, amid gilded mouldings and huge mirrors and
imposing candelabra, Harry and Patricia seated themselves
for their talk.
"Now!" cried Harry. "Tea, crumpets, cakes. No
crumpets? Toast." He instructed the waiter with the
assurance of one who has entertained since the days of
undergraduate life. Having seen the waiter depart upon
his errand, he then cleared a vase of flowers from the
table, and moved a dish which stood in his way. Then,
with wrists upon the table, he stared at Patricia. "Darling!"
he said. "I seem to feel most at home with you
when you're in a rage. There's a little nick ...
see...."
"Never mind the little nick," said Patricia, sternly.
Her heart had begun to sink again. "I wasn't going to
talk to you like this; but I must." Harry waved his
hand, as if giving her free permission to change her mind
without restraint. "I want to ask you several things.
You needn't answer if you don't want to...."
"You want to ask me about Rhoda!" suggested Harry,
his smile deepening. There was no quelling his easy
confidence.
"That was one thing," admitted Patricia, also in no
way superficially discomposed, although her heart was
struggling.
"I thought so. Well, now, Rhoda—mind, I'm very
fond of her—is nothing at all to me."
"Has she been?"
"Oh! Oh!" He protested at such a demand. "No,
she hasn't been. I admit that she may think ... I'd
better put it like this: she thinks she's in love with me."
"I see. Then, the other thing I wanted to ask is this.
You see, I'm not sure if I'm in love with you or not."
"You soon would be," he interrupted. "Sure, I mean.
I'm in love with you."
"That was just it. You've been in love before."
"Lots of times. Never as much as this, Patricia!"
He stretched his hands towards her. Patricia hesitated.
Then she shook her head.
"You mustn't joggle me," she said. "I've got to find
out for myself."
"Well, was that all you wanted to ask me? If so, I'll
tell you something. You've got the most beautiful eyes,
Patricia; and your little mouth changes every——"
"That wasn't all," cried Patricia, and stammered, the
warmth rising to her cheeks. She could see him so near,
and his ardent glance and air of conscious and indulgent
charm were intoxicating to her; and she was shot through
and through with the knowledge that Harry could be
brutal and harsh and tyrannical, that he could be brusque
and unfeeling; that the thick stream of emotion which
she was conscious of recognising in him made for satiety
and not for the delicate, whimsical, pervasive love she
craved. She had been going to ask him other things—things
which it was essential to her peace of mind both
now and in the future that she should know; and she
could not do so. They, whether she had a right to them
or not, were all of no account beside her certainty. He
was a stranger at heart, who should have been master
of her finest and truest consciousness. Patricia paled,
her hands sharply together. "No!" she cried. "I can't
marry you. It's too great a risk. I can't do it!"
"And who on earth," said Harry, "who on earth asked
you to marry me?"
Patricia felt her heart jump and then turn cold. She
stared at him.
"Oh," she stammered. "Oh ... then ... then,
that's all right, isn't it? I thought you wanted me to.
I...." She gave a small nervous laugh. "What do
you mean, then?"
"Look here," said Harry. "I'm in love with you, and
you're in love with me."
"No," said Patricia. "I'm clear about that now."
"You're not. You're in love with me." Harry was
overbearing in his confidence. His face had not lost
its beaming affection and good nature, but the power to
charm her was vanished. "And so you think of marriage.
Well, there's no question of that, because I know
something about myself and about you. It wouldn't
last. How could it? Love's a rapture."
"We don't mean the same thing," replied Patricia,
steadily, meeting his eyes frankly, and with defiance.
The coldness which had possessed her on the previous
evening was reinforced by a pride that was insane in
its egotism.
"When people say 'Love and Marriage' they're not
thinking of us. Marriage belongs to the days of
women's economic dependence," he asserted.
"It belongs to the idea of constancy."
"When a woman was economically dependent," pursued
Harry, ignoring the interruption, "she said 'what
will you give for my love? Will you support me for
life?' That's altered now. She gives love for love."
"And when she's broken?" Patricia's anger began
to manifest itself. "Do you think other men think as
you do? I mean, when they're offered something
soiled?"
"Soiled?" Harry's astonishment was marked. "That
doesn't arise."
Patricia controlled herself.
"To me it does," she said, gravely. "Not to you."
"Good Lord! I'd no idea you were such a little ...
puritan!" cried Harry. Into his air of unconquerable
charm came the faintest sneer; but it was not strong
enough to wound. He was genuinely perturbed and unable
to fathom her objection to something which for
himself was a standard of conduct.
"Yes, you were mistaken, weren't you?" said Patricia.
"You didn't know I was a ... prig!"
"No, no!" He was handsome in his protest. "It's
a question of truth—of sense. Patricia, it's a question
of purity. The delight of love doesn't last. What is
the good of pretending that it does? My dear, I love
you. I'm not trying to seduce you. Never!"
"My dear Harry," exclaimed Patricia, "you're talking
to the wrong person. You think that love is just self-indulgence.
Perhaps you're right. You may be right.
I can't tell. But you see I don't think like that. I admit
that I...." She could not proceed. "I'm not
even thinking of sacrifices. I'm thinking of happiness."
"You're refusing it, my dear," said Harry.
"Then it's not worth having."
He turned aside with brusqueness. He even
shrugged. It was in his case not viciousness, not deliberate
sophistry. He had merely mistaken Patricia's
readiness to accept his standards. To Harry these were
the common sense of love. He was not at all unclean.
It was astonishment at a question that made him thus
obtuse. The waiter came to their table and began to
spread the cups and plates with absorbed deftness. Patricia,
her mind elsewhere, watched him with constraint.
When once the waiter had gone, she said breathlessly to
Harry:
"Look here, Harry. I can't eat any of this. It would
make me sick. I'm going. I'm sorry to...." She
rose to her feet, trembling. Harry rose too, masterfully.
"Shut up, Patricia. Sit down, and don't.... Look
here, we'll talk about it. I'll make you see my point of
view. I'm not trying to...."
"I'm going. You eat it. I'm ... I don't
want...."
Patricia stood there, her eyes stern but loving; reproachful
and contemptuous. There was still a moment;
and it passed. She turned swiftly, and left Harry standing
by the table. He called once; but his fear of attracting
attention in a public place held him there. It was
the one thing which would have restrained him. Sick
at heart, but with her head erect, Patricia walked quickly
out of the restaurant and into the street. She felt that
her heart was breaking.
CHAPTER NINE: MISCHIEF — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi
For two days Patricia kept within doors. She was
broken and weary. For a time it was as though
she had lost all the pride which had sustained her at
the parting with Harry. She longed to see him, longed
to beg for anything at all at his hands; and was restrained
only by some timid delicacy, some fear, some
paralysis of the will. The days were spent in sitting in
her little front room, staring apathetically before her,
or without seeing them at the fire and the murky sky.
The nights were even more torturing, for if Patricia
slept at all it was to dream hideously; while her wakeful
tossings were almost unendurable. Harry, of course,
came to the house; but Lucy was staunch, and he had been
sent away with elaborate lies. Never until this moment
had Patricia understood how much warmth and generosity
lay behind the pink smudge of Lucy's face. She
had been forced into half-confidence; and Lucy had understood
the whole. At first, shrewdly, she had taken
a consoling view. "Expect it'll come right," she had
said, out of a deep knowledge of feminine psychology.
"You feel queer now. You're all of a twitter. Then
you'll want 'im, and go out and meet 'im somewhere on
the sly. And—" But she had very quickly discovered
that the break was serious. "Ah!" she had said. "All
for the best, you and 'im bein' so fair, with blue eyes
and all. I expect the babies would have been little niggers."
She had sworn, refusing Harry's tips, that Patricia
had gone into the country, leaving no address. Her
pink face had glowed with the most righteous honesty.
A letter had followed, a long letter full of explanations;
and Patricia, although it had deeply moved her, had left it
without acknowledgment. A further letter, asking for
at least an interview, had been similarly ignored.
She was quite at a loss. Harry had meant so much
to her, both in fact and in her happy dreams of love, that
she was miserable without him. She knew that her
silence was inexcusable; that it would make him think
her merely the little suburban prig of his supposition.
But the facts which were turned over and over in her
mind—the sudden intuitions which had been the occasion
of the crisis, his own attitude to marriage, the
illuminations provided by Amy—were devastating.
Patricia could not deal with them. They were too much
for her. At times she tried to reason with herself. Fear
sprang to her heart, and reduced her to panic. She made
an attempt even to analyse her own sense of shock, to
say that it was stupid, that it was squeamish, old-fashioned,
babyish. Useless! The truth was more bitter
than any merely cowardly flinching. Whatever might
be her feeling in the future, she was almost hysterically
determined at this moment. Her mind leapt on to
blacker thoughts of Harry, and recoiled from them. All
the curious exaggerations of wickedness which will arise
in the most virgin minds tempted her own. They were
repulsed. She was not yet sophisticated enough to be
ready to believe the alarmist suggestions of her imagination.
At last she wrote to Harry:
"Dear Harry: I was silly to leave you under a wrong
impression. I had been thinking I was in love with you;
and then I had suddenly realised that I couldn't marry
you. I wasn't shocked at the thought that you only
wanted to have an affair with me. I had just felt that
you weren't any use to me, and that I wasn't any use
to you. I am very fond of you. I have never been so
attracted to any one. It isn't enough for me. I want
lots more. Sorry, Harry. Patricia."
To this letter there had been no answer. Harry, evidently,
was lying low.
So the matter stood, and Patricia was drowned in bewilderment
and shame for as long as her first mood
lasted. But then young buoyancy revived. On the
third night she slept, and her dreams were sweeter. On
awakening she was still unhappy; but as she lay in bed
and her little thoughts darted about like shadows of
birds she had suddenly an overwhelming fit of arrogance.
"Pooh!" cried Patricia, violently throwing back the
bedclothes. She stepped out of bed and stood there,
yawning, with her hands clasped behind her head, and
her cheeks resting lightly against her raised arm. Downstairs
Lucy had begun her strong clouting of the furniture.
The morning was still grey. And as she stood
there Patricia caught a movement in the mirror by the
window, and was drawn across the room to it. In the
mirror's depths she saw her own sleepy face; her little
fall of hair, her soft cheeks, "two witch's eyes above a
cherub's mouth," and the beautiful line of her neck.
"I'm pretty!" she said to herself. "I'm pretty, and I
know it. I've got taste. I've got brains. Pooh!"
And with that she went back to bed, to await the arrival
of Lucy with the hot water. Wave after wave of
arrogance passed through her in healthy reaction to her
earlier despair. "I'm better off than Amy," she thought.
"I'm cleverer than she is—not such an idiot. Rhoda
... poor thing! Poor thing to be known to be in love,
and by a man who doesn't care for you at all. Unless
he made it up! I wonder!" Did men pretend sometimes,
as girls did, that they were loved? She expected
so. She had known a girl who thought all men were in
love with her, who thought a man must either love her
or dislike her. Well, Patricia did not believe in that
assumption. She admitted candidly that, although they
seemed to like her, all the men she knew were not in
love with herself. "It's very funny," she said, ruminating.
"People in love.... I suppose there are all
sorts of ways of being in love. There's Harry's way,
which is just self-indulgence. There's Jack Penton's
way, which is silly devotion to somebody who doesn't
care that! There's ... oh, there's lots of ways. And
my way—or my thought of way.... Perhaps it's
only.... Pooh! If I don't love a man I needn't
marry him. You can do all sorts of things, if you
aren't one of these silly little creatures who give in. I'd
live with him—if I loved him. I don't love Harry:
that's why I wouldn't...." This, however, was bravado;
and she passed on, ignoring the gross lapse into
indelicate falsehood. "But he'd have to love me better
than himself. That's it! I've got to be loved; not
just wanted. I've got to be needed, and adored, and
passionately wanted, and respected, and understood.
Then I should be sure, and then I'd give back love for
love—full measure. I'm too good for this ordinary
love—this sort of 'affair' that Harry likes; or the marriage
that's like taking a situation—'permanency.' I'm
too good for it. I need half-a-dozen husbands to do me
justice. I don't have to take what I can get. I'm ...
I'm Patricia Quin!"
She was filled with supreme egotism.
When little Jacky Dean called for her on the Saturday
evening, Patricia was still full of her healing arrogance.
She greeted Jacky rather sweepingly, because he was
a young man who invited disdain; and in two minutes
had received fresh reassurance as to her superiority to
all other girls. Jacky was, in fact, the open-mouthed
fair young man with whom she had found herself left
at Topping's. He was always perfectly dressed, because
he was wealthy and without occupation; and he was by
way of being infatuated with Patricia. He was always
at her service, always eager to stand a dinner or a dance,
or a revue or musical play. Conversation beyond the
"top-hole" stage he was incapable of reaching; but he
was very dog-like, and looked sweetly pink and golden;
and his dancing had improved; and he was never any
strain, as he made no demands at all, but merely sought
to be useful and obliging. He had two thousand
pounds a year, with the prospect of more when an elderly
aunt died; and he would proudly have married Patricia
on the morrow. No wonder, therefore, that she was
kind to him in a disdainful way, and refrained from
hurting his feelings. Nothing would have made her
marry him—the thought of doing so had never entered
her mind; but she found his devotion rather pathetic at
times, and always, in spite of the discipline Jacky received,
most timidly fervent.
Jacky was subservient by nature. He had attached
himself to the purlieus of the stage door as soon as he
had become a man; he was a feature of river parties in
the summer and every other sort of party for the remainder
of the year. In physique he was a weed; but
there was nothing noticeably the matter with him, beyond
an amiable lack of brain. He was everybody's
pet, as one who would never grow up and who never
minded paying. Pleasure, in Jacky's case, was no feverishly-sought
goal, but a state of being so customary
as to limit his interests. His wan little face, with its
air of constant innocence, was still that of a child.
Whatever adventures he might have had in connection
with the stage door had left him unscarred. He was
still the delicious babe of his unripe years. Patricia
found him easily manageable; he had never even dared to
put his arm round her in a taxicab, although obviously
he would have liked to venture this exploit. She had
a considerable sense of power when she was in his company,
and nothing had ever occurred to weaken it.
Jacky's idea of the evening was dinner in the West
End, salted with cocktails in plenty, with champagne,
and with old brandy. Then a taxi would carry them
from Regent Street to South Hampstead in a fit state
to enjoy a rowdy dance, during which Jacky, laughing
with joy, would assist the band. But Patricia checked
his enthusiasm. On no account could she risk a meeting
with Harry—she even dreaded that he might appear
at Monty's,—and her own plan was less ambitious. It
was she who named the restaurant—an obscure place
to which she knew Harry would never think of going;
and Jacky was too mild of spirit to resist. They went
therefore to this shabby place—the Axminster—where
all was faded cream and gold, with rusty palms and
magenta lamp-shades and artificial flowers and vulgar
mirrors and English waiters. It is true that Jacky's
face fell at sight of the bill of fare, and still more at the
meagre printed wine list (with alterations in a crabbed
handwriting), but in the midst of his furtive glance
round preparatory to suggestion of flight he was diverted
by the sound of a popular one-step as played to applause
by the restaurant orchestra. He subsided, looking with
shallow-pated amusement at all the respectable men and
women of middle age who sat around them. If Jacky's
simple-minded ingenuity in the matter of painting the
restaurant red came to nothing, at least, as Patricia
could tell, he was perfectly happy to be dining alone with
his goddess; and the meal was carried through, upon
his part, with a silence as complete as lack of ideas for
conversation could make it.
Patricia liked Jacky. Although silly and lacking in
brains, he was very honest and very good-natured. When
she said to him that she was out of sorts, and wanted to
be quiet, he did not become fussy, and he did not sulk.
He did naturally what was the best thing to do in
the circumstances. When he thought of anything to
say he said it, in his queer unlettered English; and when
he had nothing at all to say, he cheerfully allowed himself
to be silent. There was no difficulty at all. Patricia,
although she was in such a state of advanced conceit,
had one sweep of comprehension; and she was
touched to the point of moist eyes and an ejaculation.
"You are a sport, Jacky!" she said, impetuously.
Jacky glowed. The colour came creeping up from
behind his tall collar, and he jerked his neck out of the
collar with a nervous movement, as of one whose throat
has suddenly become swollen.
"Er ... Quite all right," he said, in his jargon.
"Cheers; and all that...."
No more was said. They ploughed a way unsuccessfully
through an ill-cooked meal, of which the major
part was encased in thicknesses of flour and water which
had been very severely fried.
"Er ... saw old Harry," presently said Jacky.
"Last night—yesterday—I forget. He ... thought
you were away, or something. Thought you'd forgotten
our evening. Jolly glad you turned up. Er....
Must have been your...."
"He's not coming, is he?" Patricia's head was down.
She was struggling to remain composed. That was
what this meant: wherever she went she would see
Harry, would hear of him. And she knew she wanted
to see him, wanted to hear of him. It was the strangest
sensation. Harry to her was become a stranger; she
realised that she knew nothing and always had known
nothing of his heart. But all the time she was deeply
concerned with him. He was a stranger; but he was
the only stranger she knew in that vast crowd of strangers.
Patricia awaited Jacky's answer with dread.
"I forget what he said," answered Jacky, slowly and
vaguely. "No, I don't think he could come. The old
fellow was ... er ... some jolly old thing or other.
I quite forget."
Patricia nodded. She must accustom herself to all
this sort of thing. She had only to be firm when they
met—firm and friendly (ah! how easy to contemplate;
how hard to execute!), and all would settle itself. It
was not like.... Oh, how silly life was! thought Patricia.
Her eyelids fluttered. How alone she felt!
Sometimes it seemed to her that with all these friends
she had no friend. What was the cause? Was it in herself?
Impossible! She said that last word aloud.
"Pardon?" asked Jacky, only half hearing Patricia's
exclamation.
Patricia laughed at his surprised face.
"Only talking to myself," she assured him. "What's
the time?"
"Have a Kümmel," urged Jacky. "Cures anything."
His own face was irradiated with a cheerful and meaningless
smile. Patricia's heart sank. He was one of
her friends. She was torn between shame for him,
shame of herself for thinking shame of him, and a sense
of superiority to her contemporaries.
They reached Monty's by half-past nine; and Patricia
was struck by the difference between her sensations now
and upon her first visit. Then, it had been fairyland.
But she saw the studio with changed eyes. It was not
so large or so beautiful; the people were not so handsome
or remarkable. She looked round upon them with interest,
but it was not as an astonishing body. It was
with curiosity as to the composition of the gathering.
Fully half of them were now known to her as acquaintances.
The noise they made was familiar; she had no
longer the feeling of fresh enthusiasm. She was restless
and dissatisfied.
Only Monty still attracted her. She thought him
easily more distinguished than any of his guests. Where
they all appeared to say the same thing over and over
again, he, by his silence, his inscrutable air of seeing
everything and knowing everything, soothed and charmed
her. When Monty danced with her she was happy. He
was unlike the rest. Patricia could dance a whole evening
with Jacky, and be unaware that there was any
current between them of more than common enjoyment
of moderate proficiency in dancing. But she could not
dance once with Monty without feeling his magnetism.
There was something amazing in his dexterity, in his
immovable calm. To be with him was to be as one
hypnotised. Monty's low, soft tones, with that singular
rise at the end of each sentence; his certainty of resource;
his extreme delicacy of movement and his fastidious
politeness—these were the instruments of his
hypnotic power. But the feeling she had that he was so
wise in the affairs of life, so bored by them, so expert
in handling them, went with a corresponding feeling that
he was greatly attracted to herself. Monty's almost
exaggerated respect, and the incessant flattery of his conciliatory
manner, all moved Patricia to happiness. And
her happiness was the whole time salted by the feeling
that she did not trust him, that she must never be off
her guard with him. It made Monty the more flattering,
the more attractive. He moved her. He made her
forget Harry.
There was something in Monty's manner which caused
Patricia to feel that he knew all about Harry and herself—all
about everything Harry had ever done; and that
she would never know how much he knew of herself.
She felt that nothing would ever surprise him, or move
him; and yet at the same time she knew that he was a
refined voluptuary, and that the soothing calm of Monty
affected her own senses as even Harry's beauty and
vitality and eager affection for herself had not done.
She danced three or four times with Monty; and each
time she danced with him it was as though she received
from his touch a subtle current that made her, if not
wiser, at least more experienced in the art of living dangerously
and with relish.
To Jacky, afterwards, she said:
"Monty's an epicure. An epicure in sensation."
"Er ... yes," said Jacky, agreeably. Patricia
thought her cliche enlightening. Jacky's vacant face
was not. She had the feeling that she towered above
Jacky.
"Nobody could say that of you," she remarked. But
her tone was less offensive than her words. "You're
just a nice little boy. You don't know anything."
Jacky shot her a look of infantile cunning.
"Ha, ha!" he laughed, with a small feeble simulation of
heartiness. It roused Patricia's affection for him. She
felt he really was a nice little boy, clean and unpretentious,
not at all baffling or sophisticated or exciting.
They danced together again; and Patricia felt how pleasant
and uneventful it was to dance with Jacky.
Patricia did not dance again that evening with Monty;
but he spoke to her before she left. He had been bidding
good-bye to some guests as Patricia was leaving;
and Jacky was farther away, struggling with his overcoat.
Monty, in the tapestried hall, subdued to dimness
by the method by which it was lighted, looked like a
Pasha. He was swarthy and impassive and alluring.
Patricia had that quick feeling—of loose robes and a
turban; and sherbet and willing slaves who came obediently
in response to a clapping of hands. She imagined
heavy incense, and the plashing of fountains and all the
delights of those stories she had read of the East, and
Monty was the Pasha of these stories.... He came
to Patricia as she emerged cloaked and hooded and ready
for the road.
"I'm sorry you're going," he said in his low voice.
"We must dance again soon."
There was flattery in his manner; he made Patricia
feel that he thought her beautiful and marvellous and
charming and full of grace and tenderness. She stood
beside him, as tall as Monty, but very slender and youthful,
a complete contrast in her fairness.
"Yes, we must dance again soon," agreed Patricia.
"But how soon?" asked Monty. "Next week? To-morrow?—Monday?"
He was not at all urgent: his tone was gentle, almost
caressing.
"Tuesday," suggested Patricia.
He bowed his head. Jacky had approached; and they
both ignored him. He was the unnecessary third to
their conversation. And Patricia had the feeling of danger.
She was charmed and flattered. She suddenly
felt that Monty was not the Pasha of her moment's invention,
but that he was as sleek and perhaps as treacherous
as a collie; and a recklessness seized her at the
knowledge that behind his charm there might lie something
that threatened all peace. If Harry had not been
dismissed the charm might have been neutralised. Harry
was gone. She had nothing but her own pleasure to
think of, nothing but sensation and the confusion of the
future.
Their farewells were said. With Jacky, Patricia was
upon the way from the house. She still carried with her
the sensation of having been enveloped by something as
light as a mist. She was pleased and excited.
PART TWO — CHAPTER TEN: EDGAR HEARS A WISEACRE — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi
The Windmill Club lies in one of the streets on the
north side of Piccadilly. It is a tedious grey
building, quite unimpressive in its exterior, and to those
who pass along the street it appears to be no more than
a couple of large houses to which entry is obtained by a
single central doorway. Once the door has been passed,
however, the club has every air of sober comfort. To
come into its basking warmth from a cold London breeze,
to pass up the steps beyond the glass-enclosed office of
the guardian porter, and to walk into an enormous dining
room marred only by outrageous portraits of the
undying great, is to encounter a different world from the
world of every day. It is not a political club, but will
be found mentioned in Whitaker's Almanac with the
description "Social and the Arts." The members are
of all ages, and they include lawyers, writers, artists, and
business men. They do not play high, and they do not
drink heavily; yet the club's cellar is famous, and there
are both card and billiard rooms of some dimensions.
It was to this club that Edgar Mayne belonged, although
he seldom visited it. He had found the Windmill after
depressing experience of most of the other West End
clubs, and he had now been a member of it since just
before the beginning of the War. Its comfort, to Edgar,
lay in its silence, its freedom from aggressively-opinionated
politicians of the envious rank, and its well-controlled
hospitality. The Windmill possessed an efficient
committee. More need not be said in order to distinguish
it precisely from its fellows; although as comfort
is a common feature of clubs the distinction lay rather
in the fact that the Windmill was solvent and self-supporting.
One night about a week later than the events last described
Edgar, who had been on the Continent during the
whole of the preceding six weeks, was dining at his club
in company with a man called Gaythorpe. His companion
was one of those hard-working city men who
look as though they live wholly out-of-doors. Gaythorpe,
in fact, was a keen golfer; but he was not among
those golfers who weary with anecdote or the description
of links. He was a tall thin fellow of sixty, with
a face that was ruddy yet lean, with eyes almost black
and melting enough to have been those of a Jew, and a
small mouth which never gave any indication of his
thoughts. Naturally grave, Gaythorpe had a pervasive
sense of humour which was a substitute for imagination,
as it sometimes is in those of low vitality and broad experience.
He was white-haired and spectacled, long-sighted
and unemotional; and he had been knighted before
the War on account of expert financial services to a
dead government. His directorial connection with a
large bank had been founded upon his skill in finance,
and he was one of those older business men who had the
greatest belief in Edgar's sagacity, both private and commercial.
Sagacity, Gaythorpe was in the habit of saying,
was one of the rarest qualities to be possessed by a
man. He rated it above brilliance and above patience.
Edgar's sagacity was with Gaythorpe unquestionable.
It was the corner-stone of Gaythorpe's pleasure in their
association.
The two men were at a small table with a shaded light
which stood right in a corner of the big dark room.
Both were in evening dress, and their faces were obscured
by the dim light, except that the gold rims of
Gaythorpe's spectacles occasionally gleamed. They
were alone, for no other diners sat near, and they had
eaten a small but highly agreeable meal. A bottle of
still Moselle stood between them, nearly empty; and the
extraordinary faint fragrance of its contents hung in
the air. Edgar, whose information at the moment was
coloured by the dominant wishes and prejudices of those
Frenchmen and Germans with whom he had talked while
abroad, was moderately expressing his view of the attitude
of foreign traders in general. He was not cheerful,
because he had found in all the centres which he had
visited a uniformity of depression which he could not
gainsay. But neither was he hopeless. He sat very
quietly, still the undistinguished man of Patricia's first
glimpse, but obviously more in keeping with his surroundings
here than he had been at either of Monty's
parties. When one looked at him a second time one
perceived that the outward sign of Edgar's quality lay
in one peculiarity of carriage. He did not, as Monty
always did, convey a sense of threat, of sleeping cruelty;
there was not in Edgar, as there was in Harry, a buoyant
masterfulness. Very quiet, very brown in hair and eyes
and skin, he commanded from those who waited here,
as from those who dealt otherwise with him, a willing
respect in which there was no fear of menace. The
quality which marked him was a sureness that belongs
exclusively to dignity, which comes from a tranquil
heart. He could be ignored at a distance, but never
ignored in the personal relation, because it is there that
character tells most surely. Gaythorpe had spoken little
during the meal. He had listened soberly throughout,
never at any point relaxing his own judgment of the
facts and of the speaker.
"All you say confirms my own view," Gaythorpe was
commenting thoughtfully. "It confirms the reports
we've been getting. It's no good being bold, you
think?"
Edgar smiled, shaking his head.
"I wonder what you mean by 'bold,'" he said. Gaythorpe,
watching him, caught the lightness behind his
friend's gravity, but he did not smile. He waited. He
was not the only one of those older men who had this
strange warming of the heart towards Edgar. Although
trustworthiness may generally command respect, it is
only truly valued in terms of affection by those to whom
it is not a reproach.
"Exactly 'bold,'" he remarked at last. "Just 'bold.'"
"It's always worth while to be generous," answered
Edgar.
"Personally, perhaps." Gaythorpe hesitated. "But
in business—my dear boy!"
"Well, you've had conferences and committees sitting
for years, and discussing things all over the world. They
cut a figure in the press. Does any one believe in them
as productive of solutions? They're like letters, or any
other form of imitation dignity. It's quite easy to hit
on a formula; but the formula isn't a reality. Once get
a group of men together with conflicting interests——"
"A common interest," supplemented Gaythorpe. "It's
come to that when the world's in danger of bankruptcy."
"Conflicting self-interest. Any number of people can
agree on a principle; but bring them into relation with
others dominated by a rival self-interest, and you're
helpless."
"Pool your self-interest. Face it," Gaythorpe suggested.
"Use it as the basis of agreement."
Edgar smiled slightly, his hands clasped upon the
table.
"You'll never do that in international finance," he said.
"At any rate, as long as nationalism's a gospel."
"Oh, I agree. But that's precisely what we've got to
kill." Gaythorpe was so eager that he raised a finger.
Edgar leaned forward, his face no longer at all grave.
He looked at the old man with compassion.
"Travel, my friend. You'll become a defeatist," he
said. "Nationalism's such an easy thing to teach. Besides,
selfishness is the gospel of the day. You really
must take human beings into account. How are you
going to move them? Not by altruism. There are
good men, who think in good-will; but they can't imagine
other men in bulk. They talk about Germans, or
wages, or exports; but they don't feel reality when they
do that. I mean, not the reality of wine upset or a train
to catch or a toothache. It's all like casting a column of
figures. They don't feel themselves personally affected.
Any more than they do when they talk of stabilising the
world. No. The only thing is to work for some defined
clash, to formulate an altruistic policy and give it
a selfish aim. Then embark on a campaign of propaganda,
showing that it pays to be good and do right—that
it's going to reduce income tax or the cost of petrol.
Enlarge your group. Make it first English—Anglo-Saxon—European—then
World-wide. But you've got
to make it a party policy, an issue. Have a scrap—a
scrap of ideas and convictions. Divide England into
two fierce political camps, and restore political life in
England. Then carry your policy into action. You
could sweep the world in a generation."
Gaythorpe good-humouredly shook his head.
"It's an altruistic resolution in itself," he objected.
"You'd be bankrupt long before you succeeded. You'd
have burnt your house to roast your pig. But I'm glad
to find you such an idealist. If you carry such principles
into your private life it must be exciting. All the same,
rather Quixotic."
Edgar laughed slightly.
"Oh," he said. "As to private life, I'm a sentimentalist
like yourself."
"I wonder." Gaythorpe pondered.
"On the surface. It's self interest at bottom, I expect.
If I try to do good it's to gratify myself. I want
other people to do what I think is good for them."
Gaythorpe was pleased at the turn which Edgar's
remarks had taken, because Edgar too seldom spoke about
himself, and this was a subject which interested Gaythorpe,
who was really human, more than most others.
Further, this was a side of Edgar which he did not know,
and it had its attractiveness upon that score also.
"If you try to help them," Gaythorpe suggested, "it
must be from disinterested good-will."
"Not always," replied Edgar, very promptly. "It's
a complex question. But why do I—why does anybody
else do the same?—help willingly those I like—those who
are young and attractive, or those who move my
affection? Why don't I help those I dislike? Why
do I feel, at any rate, extremely unwilling to help those
I dislike?"
"Because it would be morbid self-mortification to help
anybody you dislike."
"No, no. I'm thinking of a state of mind. If I can
help somebody I like, it's a perfectly instinctive thing.
But just remember how many objections and difficulties
rush to your mind when you're asked to help somebody
who is disagreeable to you."
Gaythorpe answered shrewdly enough:
"You're thinking of somebody in particular?"
Edgar started.
"In both instances," he agreed. "No, in one only."
Gaythorpe gave a snort of pretended annoyance. His
keen old face was benevolent.
"That's the worst of these damned generalisations,"
he cried. "One sees them exploded each instant. You
see fifty people abroad, and you put their views into a
general statement of the actual position of millions.
You come back. You find, perhaps, a letter—two
letters——"
"One letter," corrected Edgar.
"Exactly. And they say women have the monopoly
of that form of inflation!"
"I'm not going into details," calmly warned Edgar.
"My generalisations were quite—quite general. The
fact that I had a letter is an accident. It doesn't affect
the generalisation."
Gaythorpe was a cunning man. He was sixty, and
he knew something of the world. He said, in a tone
which was altogether respectful:
"As you know, I'm not ... not exactly given to sentimental
questioning; but was your letter from a
woman?"
"From a man," explained Edgar, with a touch of
malice. "About his own financial affairs. It had no
relation whatever to a woman."
"Hm," grunted Gaythorpe. "I think you said he was
the unattractive person?"
"The attractive person was hypothetical," said Edgar.
"Oh, yes," agreed Gaythorpe. "Quite so. Quite so.
Well, after all, you've been away over a month; and
much may happen in that time. I didn't, of course, suppose
that you had any specially young and attractive
beneficiary in mind. It would not have occurred to me."
He was silent for an instant after this somewhat dry
protest. "Nevertheless, I ... I must own to considerable
interest in your correspondent, since he ... ah
... affects you——"
"No." Edgar smilingly shook his head. "You're a
very inquisitive old man; and you have a great gift for
wheedling information. But you won't get any more.
Come and smoke now."
He rose from the table.
"I was so interested," grumbled Gaythorpe; and stood
up to his lean height of six feet. He followed Edgar
across the room, and there waited. His thin face was
unreadable; but he was consumed with curiosity.
When the two men were in the smoking room, and
deep down in comfortable armchairs, with large and
delicious cigars, they spoke no more of business or the
world at large. Gaythorpe had been married for a quarter
of a century, and he had three boys in whose progress
he took deep interest. It was of the boys that he
spoke—Cyril, who had left Oxford and was devoting
himself to archæology; Roland, who was still at the
University; and Alistair, who was at Marlborough. Of
Mrs. Gaythorpe he for some time said nothing. But at
last he mentioned her.
"D'you know we've been married twenty-five years?"
he demanded. "I was thirty-five, and now I'm sixty.
You're thirty-seven, and unmarried. You ought to
marry soon—before you're forty, because otherwise you
won't enjoy your children as I've done. It's a point to
bear in mind."
Edgar slightly frowned.
"I shan't marry now," he said. Gaythorpe laughed, a
sudden chuckling old man's full laugh.
"By Jove, that's a dangerous thing to say!" he protested.
"It's the most dangerous and suspicious remark
in the world. I don't think you'll escape marriage.
Some young fly-away will make up her mind to settle
down; and you'll be pleasantly surprised to find yourself
happily married."
"A fly-away?" Edgar raised his brows. "That
sounds alarming. I suppose on the principle of the reformed
rake. However, I've got an open mind. I admit
that I want children; but as far as I can see the
people I know don't have them."
"What a sterile crew you must know."
"No. Just platonic."
Gaythorpe smiled at the sarcasm.
"What is the general length of the childless marriage?"
he asked. "The average."
"I haven't noticed. I don't know. A couple of years?
Five years? At any rate, I see no point in the ceremony.
But the thing arises from excessive individualism
among women; and I don't see any way out of it.
The only justification of the man who insists on children
is his wife's love; and if the wives are fuller of self-love
I can't see why they should be forced to undergo the
pains of childbirth."
"My dear Edgar," said Gaythorpe. "Don't be sentimental.
The people who most acutely feel the pains of
childbirth are sentimental men. That a woman should
suffer great physical pain for twenty-four hours, and
a good deal of nervous distress for some time before her
delivery, perhaps two or three times in the course of
her life, is no reason why (if she's reasonably robust)
she shouldn't have children. If there's an exaggerated
fear of physical pain, or a great deal of egotism, in the
woman you want to marry, call the whole thing off at
once."
Edgar was faintly irritated.
"You can't dictate nowadays," he said. "That's past.
Women have got to be treated—the women that one
could marry, I mean—as equals. They've got to have
an opportunity of living to the full extent of their
powers."
"Well," said Gaythorpe, very deliberately. "I'm going
to say something you'll dislike. I'm going to say
that no woman who has any inclination to love you will
thank you for treating her as an equal. She'll think it
a weakness in you. She won't understand it. Women
are so constituted that they associate consideration with
indifference."
"You were talking a little while ago about generalisations,"
murmured Edgar.
"Perhaps I was. But what I say is true."
"You leave out of account," said Edgar, "in your old-fashioned
conceptions,—the fact than an individual
woman is always—in spite of her sex—exactly what
an individual man is. She's always first of all a human
being."
"Sometimes," responded Gaythorpe, with an excessively
benevolent air; "sometimes, do you know, I'm
very strongly disposed to question whether a woman can
properly be regarded as a human being at all."
"And now," continued Gaythorpe, towards the end
of their conversation, "to revert to your unattractive
correspondent."
Edgar gave a short laugh. He turned upon his friend
in rebuke.
"He's never been far away from your thoughts. I've
felt him there the whole evening. You have two or
three facts—that he's antipathetic to me, that he's in a
financial difficulty, and that he's written me a letter.
That ought to be enough for you."
"Financial difficulty. H'm ... yes...." Gaythorpe
reflected. "He wants a loan, presumably. A substantial
loan?"
"No, he doesn't want a loan."
"Advice." Gaythorpe was inquisitively silent. "I'm
interested in him, you know."
"You're worse. You're inquisitive." Both smiled
with a kind of determination. Gaythorpe grunted, conning
afresh the points of his information.
"As you know," he presently resumed, "my interest
is largely in you. It's by way of being paternal. Before
this evening I should have said that you were a bit
on the hard side. But there's nothing a sentimental
idealist might not do; and I see now that you're a sentimental
idealist. I'm filled with fear. I see you Quixotically
ruining your family for the sake of self-mortification.
You want to help this man because you dislike
him. I tell you what's the matter with you, Edgar.
Your particular kind of egotism leads you to make a
fetish of magnanimity."
"Oh!" laughed Edgar.
"It isn't cowardice. It's indifference. The only
thing that will save you is to fall deeply in love with
Miss Fly-away. She will tempt you to imprudence, perhaps;
but she will vitalise you, and harden you."
"If you remember, she was to marry me only when
she was reformed," parried Edgar. "You seem to have
forgotten that."
"On the contrary, you misjudge me. Any man, marrying
the most reformed character, will find that he has
domesticated a tigress," replied Gaythorpe. "Marriage
is an illuminating experiment. And now to revert to
your unsympathetic correspondent...."
They parted well before midnight, Gaythorpe to travel
by taxicab to Waterloo and thence to his home at Hindhead,
and Edgar to walk home through the deserted
streets. Gaythorpe went his way still ignorant of the
identity of Edgar's correspondent; but by his adroit
questioning he had increased Edgar's preoccupation with
the subject of that letter. It had been a perfectly simple
letter, containing an account of various Stock-buying experiments
which had come to disaster, a list of securities
held, a statement of immediate need, and a request for
advice. The writer of the letter had need of several
thousand pounds, and if he were to sell the stock he held
it would involve him in still further loss. Therefore,
although Edgar had been technically truthful in saying
that there had been no request for a loan, he had no
doubt at all that the fitting reply to the letter would be
an offer of assistance.
But why a bank had not been asked to advance money
on the securities, which would have been the normal
course to adopt, Edgar did not understand. Had the
writer been a close personal friend, he could have seen
the whole thing clearly, and his offer would have been
immediate. But the letter was from Monty Rosenberg.
Edgar was deeply perplexed. What was Monty's object
in applying to him? That there must be some definite
object he did not question. He could not suppose that
Monty ever did anything without purpose; and in addition,
he felt sure that Monty was a man to conceal from
his acquaintances any hint that he was embarrassed.
Something, Edgar felt sure, was afoot. He walked
home in a brown study.
Only once did he smile; and that was when he recollected
Gaythorpe's curiosity. Gaythorpe, he remembered,
had been curious not only about Monty, but also
about the hypothetical attractive person whom it would
have been a pleasure to help. Strange that he should
have made so much of this point. Working, Edgar supposed,
from the words "young and attractive," Gaythorpe
had taken it for granted that this person was a
woman—no doubt the fly-away girl who was to marry
Edgar against his will. For an instant it seemed that
Gaythorpe must have been hinting at some story, because
in general he was not one of those arch sentimentalists
who wink and curvet about the subject of marriage.
Edgar gave a little laughing grunt as he walked.
"Silly old man," he thought. "I wonder what put all
that nonsense into his head."
Perhaps Edgar was not quite as candid with himself
as he should have been and as he generally was. He
strode at a rapid pace along the ringing pavements; and
the fresh wind that met him came deliciously cordial to
his cheeks and lungs. Although he was not tall—about
five feet eight—Edgar was sturdily built, and he loved
walking. And in London the night hours are the best
for that exercise. He was refreshed and invigorated.
By the time he was half way down the Brompton Road
Edgar had dismissed the subjects of Monty and the unknown
from his mind; and thereafter all his thoughts
were of business affairs until he reached home. All of
them? Very nearly all. Some few, perhaps, he spared
for Patricia; but he hardly was conscious when he
thought of her, so familiar was he with the subject.
It was not until he was indoors, and sitting rather
moodily by a waning fire, that Edgar returned to some of
Gaythorpe's remarks. He did this in an instinctive effort
to explain the moodiness of which he felt suddenly
conscious. True, he had felt moments of melancholy
while abroad; but those had been explicable by the fact
that he was friendless in strange cities. Now the case
was different. Somewhere within his heart there was
an almost bitter resentment of Gaythorpe's cynicism
on the subjects of women and marriage. At the
moment he had accepted them as he would normally
have done. They returned with added venom to his
memory. The first thought—that perhaps Gaythorpe
had been unhappy in his marriage—Edgar dismissed as
sentimentality. The truer explanation was probably
that the old man was expressing a fundamental cynicism,
due to the fact that his own happiness had left him occasion
to view the miseries of others. Edgar, too, had
witnessed those miseries. He was still unable to explain
them except in individual cases. He was thoughtful
and none too happy. There had been menace—the
deeper because he had concluded it to be unconscious—in
Gaythorpe's insistence on the reality of a young
woman towards whom Edgar felt a helpful eagerness.
"What a fool I was to give him such an opening!" he
thought.
Slowly it was as though Edgar fell asleep. He saw
two clear eyes, which he thought to hold all the truth
and beauty in the world. He heard spoken words—words
that were almost all that Patricia had ever said
to him. The sense of her presence was extraordinarily
strong ... a presence that was more than presence, for
Edgar was quite poignantly imagining a real Patricia,
so much more beautiful than she would seem with others
present. His lips moved in unspoken words. His
hands were gently raised from the arms of his chair,
and extended. If desire and imagination had the power
to call those we love to our sides, then surely Edgar
would have awakened with Patricia in his arms. He
was experiencing a reality of communion which only
those who love deeply can conceive. The emotion he
then felt transcended anything he had ever known.
And then his eyes opened, and he saw the extended
arms with something like shame. The lips so lately
parted were again firmly set, and he coloured faintly.
Not thus was a woman to be won, he knew. And yet
the vision had served to make his heart clear to him.
He had seen Patricia as she had been at their first meeting,
in all the smoke and din and brilliance of Monty's
party. Again he had glimpsed Dalrymple and Monty;
again he had exchanged with Harry Greenlees that measuring
glance. He rose from the chair, and went across
to the fireplace, his face lighted by a sudden flicker of
flame. Now he knew why he had been so sensitive to
Gaythorpe's allusions and his bitterness. Now, too, he
realised what had been hidden from him. Never would
he have been divided by the sharp impulse to strike or to
kiss Patricia if she had not been the only person in the
world capable of causing him pain. He loved deeply.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: CHANGE — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi
The following evening Edgar found on reaching
home that some old friends of his parents had so
protracted an afternoon call that they had been asked
to stay for dinner. Both were old ladies from a small
country town, of substantial wealth and position, whose
perspective had become grotesque as the result of long
life in a restricted circle; and as companions Edgar found
them insupportable. The airs of the schoolmistress, the
independence of the housemaids, and the general superiority
of the Misses Wickford to the whole of their
world were incessantly discussed; and all these topics
combined to make Edgar restlessly unhappy throughout
the meal. Claudia was absent, at the home of friends;
and he had neither solace nor variety. Because of this
trouble Edgar decided upon a plan which was already
half-formed in his mind. It was to run up and see
Monty Rosenberg, and thus to learn the truth about
Monty's financial straits and to discover the real nature
of the help which Monty required from him.
Having correctly taken leave of the Misses Wickford,
who thereupon discussed his bachelor state with those
who remained and advanced the claims of a really nice
girl living in their district, Edgar was quickly upon the
road. Within half-an-hour he was at Monty's door.
He had not made up his mind what to say; but he had
Monty's letter in his pocket, and was ready to be helpful
and businesslike. And as the door was opened Edgar
heard such a din that he recoiled. From the studio
was a huge and brazen noise, as of kettles and fire-irons
in competition with piano and banjo.
"Oh," he cried, electrically reconsidering his plan for
the evening. "A party?" Coming as he had done with
the object of advising a man financially embarrassed,
Edgar felt as Mother Hubbard must have done when
she found her dog dancing. He hesitated, quick comments
darting through his mind. This was not the suitable
setting for a financial talk. Was Monty mad?
His recoil subsided. After all, Nero fiddled....
"Then perhaps I'd better——"
But the door of the studio had opened, shedding fresh
light and redoubled din from within; and Monty was
already aware of his arrival. The shutting of the door
made the noise comparatively negligible again. Monty
hastened forward.
"Hullo, Mayne. I'm glad to see you. Don't go.
Come in here." He indicated the big drawing room to
the left of the hall. It was empty, but a fire was alight
there, and the room was warm. From the amber walls
and rich golden brown of the furnishings the soft illumination
evoked glowing beauty. "It's just a few people
dancing. Are you a dancing man?"
Edgar explained the object of his visit. He was all the
time acutely conscious of the room and its air of impenetrable
richness, contrasting it without being aware
that he did so with the less exquisite plainness of his own
home, which represented so much more love and enterprise
and so much less finished taste. It stiffened him
a little.
"That had better be postponed," he said. "We can't
discuss it now."
"I'd like to. Come and dance—and then we'll talk
later on."
Monty's manner was cordial—friendly; and yet Edgar
felt that it held perhaps a slight uneasiness. The
beautifully-groomed air which always masked Monty
was unchanged; but in those dark eyes and behind the
assured manner lay something that was almost an appeal.
Edgar shrank; but he accepted the invitation, and
he was led into the studio.
It had been cleared so as to provide ample floor-space
for the guests. At the piano sat one man and by his side
another who played upon a banjo. Both were in evening
dress. A sportive young fellow had been adding
to the noise by clashing tongs and fire-shovel together.
About twenty people were in the studio altogether, of
whom only a few of the men wore dinner jackets; and
the dancing had not long been in progress. It was not
yet a rowdy party, although it might later develop into
one when the character of the music and the stimulation
of the common movement should have had their effect.
The studio walls rose high above the moving figures;
and the place was quite different from what it had been
when Edgar had seen it before. All that æsthetic blending
of colour which he had noticed was now reduced.
It was a large bare place, the chairs and divans withdrawn
to the walls, and the decoration subdued. Hangings
and rugs were gone: the walls were adorned only
with casually hung or pinned sketches. The place seemed
lighter and more airy, but it was wholly out of key with
Edgar's recollection. Nor were the guests recognisable
to him in that first glimpse. Edgar smiled as he turned
aside to Monty, and then he heard the music cease.
There came a babble from all round him. It was now
that Edgar's heart gave a slight stir, for he saw that
Patricia, who sat with her late partner at the farther
end of the studio, was looking in his direction. She
wore a plain dark dress which emphasised her fairness
and the whiteness of her skin; but he could not tell at
that distance of what material the dress was made nor
how Patricia looked, so strong was the light. Instantly
Edgar was delighted that he had come. He felt nothing
more intense than delight—nothing more possessive;
but he was engrossed, and could hardly attend to what
Monty was saying.
"I'll introduce you to one or two of the girls. The
others won't interest you. And we'll get away presently
and have a talk. That suit you?"
Again Edgar was aware of that appeal. It revived
his sense of stiffness, for he could never have pleaded
for himself as this man was doing. In distaste for
Monty's suppleness, Edgar found also something which
gave him sudden personal interest in the man. He saw
him very truly in that instant, in a quick glimpse. Monty
was without pride. Therefore he was to be watched.
Not merely treachery might arise, but insensitiveness,
which upsets standards by unconsciousness that they
exist. It was with a faint shrug that Edgar turned to
be introduced to Rhoda Flower. Strange how instinctively
contemptuous of suppleness an Englishman often
is! Edgar did not under-rate Monty; but he despised
him. Deep down, far below his awareness of judgment,
lay the snorting epithet "Foreigner!" All his experience
of life and his tolerance of moral defects could not
annul that instinctive hostility to alien civilisation.
Even while he was dancing with Rhoda, he was preoccupied
with other perceptions. He did not speak; he
hardly felt her there; but mechanically followed the
rhythm of the dance.
Something awakened him. He could not dance with
Rhoda without recognising her as a voluptuary; and he
was interested in her from the knowledge that Rhoda's
personality was, in spite of its mobility, surprisingly
fixed for so young a girl as he supposed her to be. He
looked sharply at his partner—at her black bobbed hair
and her beautifully clear cheeks and eyes. There was
something vaguely familiar about her face, and about the
life which gave it constant vivacity of expression.
"I've seen you before, haven't I?" he said, frowning
in the effort to remember.
"How clever of you!" cried Rhoda. A slow and delicious
smile drew her lips apart, and revealed teeth yet
whiter. In the plump but beautifully-moulded cheeks
appeared dimples. Rhoda was languorously arch. "I
wish I was clever!"
"Have you seen me before?" demanded Edgar. He
could not resist the attraction to her, and he was smiling
responsively; but he was still puzzled, thinking her
face so familiar and yet so unfamiliar.
"How gallant you are!" teased Rhoda. "Isn't this
a good tune?"
"Were you here at a party about six weeks ago?"
Rhoda laughed outright. Patricia, at that moment
passing, opened her eyes wide. She had not hitherto
recognised Edgar as a wit, and she took a peculiar interest
in Rhoda Flower, so that her observation in this
instance was made the more alert.
His doubts resolved, Edgar was at ease with Rhoda.
He now recognised her as the girl who had been with
Harry Greenlees at the first party, and who had left in
his company at the end of the evening. He remembered
her air of attentiveness to the young man who smiled
so broadly. It was pleasant to recall this picture, because
it was related to his first sight of Patricia. He
looked round for Harry, who, however, was not present.
Nor could he see Blanche Tallentyre; but some of the
other faces were those of guests at the earlier gathering.
The majority were unknown to him, and while their
spirits seemed to be good, Edgar thought the company
as a whole was a little inclined to be rakish. He was
glad to be dancing with Rhoda, who, apart from Patricia,
was the freshest among the girls. The men struck
him as a poor lot. Now that he was used to the band
Edgar no longer found it deafening. He was only a
moderately-good dancer, because although he had a good
ear and sufficient physical elasticity he was not especially
interested in the exercise; but he could tell that
his partner was both accurate and enthusiastic. She
moved beautifully, with complete absorption in the dance.
Moreover, he found her impudent cheerfulness delightful.
He would have preferred only one other companion;
and it was to this other that his glance flew whenever
she was near. The flying glimpse was all Edgar
had for a long time, for Rhoda was busily engaged during
intervals between dances in trying to learn something
about him by means of adroit questioning, while
Patricia herself seemed to be quite content with her
partners and to be elated by their obvious admiration.
Edgar was happy in Patricia's presence. He did not
feel any immediate need to speak to her, and he was in
some curious way too shy to wrest her from these other
men. But into his glances there came presently a
slightly anxious gravity, for he noticed differences in
her, wrought by the month during which he had been
absent from London, and these differences were unwelcome.
An eye less keen would not have discerned
them: Edgar himself could not have said wherein they
were shown. At last, when Rhoda was momentarily
engaged with somebody else, he went across the room to
Patricia's side.
Even in her greeting he found Patricia changed, yet
he was at the same time puzzled at his sense of the
change. She was as unaffected as ever, and almost as
fresh. Ah! almost—that was the difference he felt. It
was a restlessness in her expression that made Edgar
frown, a strain in the eyes, a small and perhaps momentary
diminution in the bloom of her cheek. To another
there would have seemed no change at all.
"I saw you as soon as I arrived," Edgar said; "but
you seemed to have partners for each dance. I've been
abroad for a month."
"I wish I had been," answered Patricia.
Again the mark of slight change! And a leaping impulse
in Edgar to respond that she had but to be constant
in such a wish to make him altogether happy.
"It wasn't really very cheerful," he assured her. "I
was very lonely."
"But you were doing something the whole time."
"And what have you been doing? Amusing yourself?"
"Trying to. Oh, yes ... I suppose so." Patricia
was listless and unresponsive. Her vivacity had died
down. He was seeing her in a moment of discouragement.
But even as Edgar received this impression, she
brightened, and went on: "That man there—" she indicated
a medium-sized man of about thirty, who was
describing something to a companion and raising his
hands with a grace which suggested that he was not
English—"That one ... dances better than anybody
I've ever met. If I could dance as well as he does I
should be happy."
"Is he happy?" asked Edgar. "I thought you looked
as though you were happy and as though you danced
about as well as anybody could."
She shook her head.
"What did you see abroad?" she demanded.
"Poverty and glitter; cabs in the streets and jewels at
the opera; and everybody wondering how on earth to
make both ends meet. Money that didn't buy what it
ought to buy. Plenty of misery going on in each corner,
and plenty of noise and fuss. The same old contradictions
everywhere."
Patricia frowned.
"Worse than here?"
"I couldn't tell. I was busy, and depressed. The
men I met were wretched; and I saw the gaiety only in
passing. Very much the same, I expect."
"Hm." She made no comment; but she had become
grave. "D'you think everybody's mad? I do."
"Perhaps they always are. Perhaps we are."
"Sometimes I feel I shall go mad." There was a discouraged
note in Patricia's voice which confirmed Edgar's
intuition. She was obviously not in a normal
mood; although he had seen her laughing with her partners
earlier in the evening.
"Let's dance," he suggested. "Postpone the madness."
"I think," said Patricia, slowly, and as if she were
being strangled by some unexpressed emotion, "that ...
you're only afraid because ... you think I'm a child
to be petted out of...."
She allowed him to make her dance; but she did not
respond to him, and there were tears in Patricia's eyes.
Edgar did not speak while they danced. Almost, he
did not look at her. He was too much disconcerted,
too preoccupied with an effort to explain Patricia's
mood. Yet to Patricia he appeared immovable.
Once during their partnership Edgar was conscious
of a long deep glance from her. When at last he looked
to meet it the glance was withdrawn, but the gravity of
Patricia's face was unchanged. He, too, frowned, made
thoughtful by her expression; and when they were once
more seated together, since he felt that their degree
of intimacy was not great enough for an invited confidence,
he tried to divert her attention from her own
thoughts.
"You remember that before I went away you promised
to come and make the acquaintance of Claudia?" he
said. "What would you say to coming one evening
this week? Would that be possible?"
"I'm not sure," said Patricia, coldly. "I'm rather
busy this week."
The devil you are! thought Edgar. He grew equally
cold for an instant, until his patience conquered his irritation.
"I'll ask my mother to write and suggest an evening,"
he went on, as if unconcernedly. "You could come to
dinner, and you could meet Claudia. Also Pulcinella
and Percy."
Patricia inclined her head; she was not listening. A
moment later she was claimed by the dancer for whom
she had expressed admiration; and Edgar saw her moving
about the room as if she were entirely happy. He
was bewildered. Was it to himself that she had become
hostile? His impulse was to withdraw, to see her no
more; but dudgeon is a preserve of the very young man,
so he dismissed it. Nevertheless he was resentful of
her listlessness in his own company, her inattention.
What could account for it?
While Edgar sat thus absorbed in a single problem,
he found that Monty had drawn near. Monty made a
motion towards the door.
"Could you come now?" he asked. The two men
left the studio and went into the room to which Edgar
had first been introduced on arrival.
As the door was closed Edgar could not forbear the
comment which had been in his mind from the moment
of discovery that a party was in progress.
"I thought from your letter that you were in some
urgent difficulty," he said.
Monty was quite suave. He stood before his companion
with the utmost nonchalance, a faint smile upon
his lips.
"Do sit down," he answered, in that gentle voice with
the rising note. "I am in a difficulty, and it's most kind
of you to ... give me your advice. Now, in detail
that is quite impossible this evening. This ... this
affair prevents my being away long. But perhaps if I
tell you a little more the whole matter will be ...
plainer." When Edgar was settled, Monty supported
himself by the table, and continued. "Well, now ...
as I told you, there's about twenty thousand invested in
those different ... concerns. In every case the prices
are seriously down. Most of them will go up again."
"Quite," agreed Edgar.
"Normally, then, I should hang on. And of course
I could borrow from the bank."
"I wondered why you hadn't done that."
Monty lowered his voice still further, until the thick
vibration which underlay its ordinary softness was emphasised.
Edgar had the sense that Monty always spoke
of business in this lazy and confidential way, that he
had the large loose meanness of those born opulent, that
even in dealing with himself Monty was conscious of
a sort of explanatory patience.
"I don't want to go to the bank for a reason which
... I wonder if you'll appreciate its strength ... because
... well, the local manager is ... an acquaintance
... a very social man ... rather indiscreet; and
his wife might possibly be more indiscreet; and I'm a
little morbid about...."
"Do they—I understand perfectly. Do you keep your
securities at the bank, or do you keep them yourself?"
"At the bank. That's the trouble. I can get them,
of course. I could transfer them from this branch and
deposit them elsewhere without question or inconvenience;
but I have a very definite personal reason for
making no change at all in my present allocations. And,
my dear Mayne, the money I need is ... I need
hardly say, this is in great confidence.... The money
I need will have to be paid quickly, and ... in fact,
the whole thing is difficult."
"What's the sum?"
"Two-thousand five-hundred. You understand, I
don't...."
"Who are your bankers? Could it be done with the
Head Office? No, I suppose not."
"Not.... Look here, Mayne, I don't want to be
mysterious at all...."
"No: that's quite all right. I'm only thinking...."
"It's the Great Central Bank, just up here. I particularly
don't want to do anything whatever in relation
to the bank. But for that I shouldn't have troubled
you. I want to raise the money outside. I don't want
to alter my deposits. Let me make that perfectly clear."
Edgar interrupted him.
"You'd like me to suggest lending you the money myself?"
he asked directly.
There was a moment's pause—as if for the passage
of a shiver of distaste for such brusque ill-breeding.
Then Monty, as if nothing in the world could have
ruffled him, nodded slowly.
"That would be most kind," he replied. "Most
kind."
"I wonder how long it would be for?" pondered Edgar,
aloud.
"Five hundred in a month's time. The whole of the
rest within six months. That I think I could promise
definitely. Could you do it yourself without inconvenience?
You're most generous."
I wonder if I'm generous? thought Edgar, recalling
Gaythorpe's jeer at his morbidity. And secretly he
knew that it was not generosity but a sort of contempt
which had prompted his leading question, and that Monty
himself, placed similarly, would have avoided the issue
and evaded the loan.
"Well, I'm not a money-lender; and it's quite true
that the thing presents difficulties. But I could certainly
arrange to let you have the money."
"My dear Mayne...."
"Not at all. When do you want it? And how?"
He was impatient.
Monty shrugged. His orientalism was more marked
than ever.
"This instant," he admitted. "Or ... as soon as
possible." Edgar nodded. "And I should like it," continued
Monty, with his singular smile, "I should like it—if
that happened quite perfectly to suit you—as an
open cheque, payable to bearer...."
"Oh!" cried Edgar, as if in surprise.
"I'm perfectly ready to sign any acknowledgment,"
insisted Monty. "But this will be of peculiar service."
There was a silence between them. The cheque was to
be open, and the matter was pressing: therefore the payment
was to be a secret payment. If Monty's investments
were as he stated them to be, and his relations
with the bank and its branch manager amicable, what
purpose was there in such concealment? Edgar
frowned slightly. He was being used as a friend—as
a convenience—by one who was not his friend and who
did not trust him with an explanation. As if he felt
what was in Edgar's mind, Monty interrupted. "I feel
I must emphasise the point that my reason for wanting
this money privately is personal, and not financial," he
said.
A sudden smile lighted Edgar's face.
"I perfectly understand that," he answered. "There's
no more to be said."
Together the two men went back to the studio. In
two minutes they had so mingled with the noise and
rising spirits of the dancers that their absence, if it had
been noticed at all, was forgotten. Edgar sought Rhoda
Flower, and was amused to find her interest in himself
shown without concealment. But even as he talked to
her he was from time to time seeking in that crowd for
Patricia, and seeking among his impressions for something
which would explain the change in her. As far
as Edgar could tell, Patricia did not concern herself at
all with him. It was strange how this wound that she
had inflicted outstayed every other sensation of the evening—from
his pleasure in Rhoda to his growing antipathy
towards Monty. He was puzzled and chagrined.
CHAPTER TWELVE: ENCOUNTER — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii
Patricia arrived at the Maynes' house a moment
early. She had walked from her rooms through
one of the streets to the north of the King's Road, and
in spite of her new boredom, which made her a little
shrink from the prospect of an evening with uncongenial
people, she was aware of curiosity at sight of the house.
It was one of those tall featureless houses which lie in
respectable avenues in Kensington, stained by a kind
of grim insipidity and separated from the road by an
iron railing, a grass plot, and an immense flight of stone
steps. The portals were massively columnar, and the
windows bay. There was nothing to make the Maynes'
house different from those upon each side of it excepting
the number and the fact that the iron gate did not
groan as it was opened. From without, the house was
what Patricia expected.
Indoors it was distinct. There was no smell of cooking;
the walls were papered in a blue-gray, the staircase
was fresh and clean with blue-grey paint, and a carpet
of the same colour in a rather darker shade extended as
far as she could see. Her mind instantly received the
impression: "Liberty!" The maid was young, pretty,
smiling, and curious. And as Patricia went forward
into the room into which she was informally shown
Edgar himself was there, with a plump old lady and a
pretty young woman and a surreptitiously barking immature
cocker spaniel all close behind him. Patricia
received a shock. This was a home, the first home she
had been in for years. These were kind people. Her
heart was opened to them. She was a child at once,
eager that they should like her and be her friends. How
strange it was, when she had dreaded something alarming
and something boring. She was hardly conscious
that they looked at her with keen eyes and brains, so
definitely did she feel herself greeted by warm hearts.
She was for an instant deeply moved.
"My mother, Claudia, Pulcinella ..." said Edgar,
with a minimum of awkwardness.
There were two warm hand-clasps, and a glance, ever
so rapid, at Claudia; and Patricia saw the little dog's
tail twisting, and stooped to pat the glossy body which
was being shyly insinuated into her notice by its agreeable
owner. In the firelight and gaslight there was
cheerfulness, but there was peace also, and it was the
tranquillity—the homely quality of peace—that Patricia
first noticed. She saw it for a moment only; and then
Claudia led the way up to a bedroom in which she could
remove her cloak and hat, and smooth her hair, and if
necessary, powder her face before dinner. But Patricia
had no need to powder her face, and so the two girls
had no opportunity for any prolonged mutual scrutiny
by means of the mirror. They were shy of each other,
and hardly spoke together until their return to the drawing-room.
It was then that Patricia, sitting down, first
properly glimpsed the Mayne household, which by now
had been brought to full strength by the arrival of old
Mr. Mayne and a sedate cat whose name was Percy.
Mr. Mayne was a man of over sixty, small and thin,
with a fierce aspect and a ridiculously mild voice. He
had a moustache and beard resembling the pictures Patricia
had seen of pirates. His eyes were commanding.
Only his voice was inappropriate. It was a clear deep
voice, but it lacked volume; and in face of such a terrifying
presence it came as the bleat of the kid from the
mouth of the jaguar. His wife was equally gentle, but
she looked placid, and in Mrs. Mayne there were no
sharp contrasts. She was round, plump, and cheerful,
the sort of a woman upon whose lap a ball of wool refuses
to stay, especially when there is a little dog at
hand. Very different from these were the two children.
For Edgar Patricia was conscious of an increasing sense
of respect. She now saw that his quietness had its
quality and interest. His rather grave face, with its
general air of brownness, was not one which attracted
her; but he looked well-built, and her friendliness
towards him would have been perfect if she had not felt
one very singular thing about Edgar. It was that he
went his own way. With great considerateness of others,
she was sure, but quite inhumanly, he went his own
way. Patricia felt that if he decided to do a thing an
effort beyond her own power would be needed to turn
him from his object. She had made up her mind that
he was not subject to human weaknesses, and she resented
the aloofness created by this freedom.
Claudia was different again, but not equally disconcerting.
She was tall, and noticeably pretty, with a
very occasional immaturity of gesture which indicated
her youthfulness. Dark, and a little like her brother,
she had a gaiety of demeanour and a sparkling air of
enthusiasm which his temperament forbade. To Patricia
there was something irresistibly charming and wise
about Claudia. That she also went her own way, if such
was the case, caused in Claudia's case no barrier between
them. It was natural and right that Claudia, being a
modern young woman, should go her own way. Patricia
went her own way. She thought of Claudia:
"She's prettier than I am, but her figure isn't as good.
Nor's her taste. She doesn't dress as well as I do.
She's very clever and kind and nice. I like her. Of
course, not as clever or as nice as I am. But then
I'm...."
It was extremely pleasant to be in a comfortable home
which really was a home, and to be in the company of
such born friends as the Maynes. Patricia sighed with
content.
She had not noticed Percy, who had entered the room
during her absence; and Percy, who had been washing
his face, had not noticed Patricia. When he discovered
that a stranger was in the room Percy was slightly annoyed.
He did not like strangers. It had taken him
some weeks to grow used to Pulcinella and even now
he sometimes spat at the little dog, for Percy had been
for three years the dominating force in this house. When
Percy wished to leave or to enter a room he gave a
single blood-curdling deep miaow; when he thought the
time had come for him to be nursed he took his welcome
for granted; when he shook off the years and demanded
a game they were all at his service. Although Pulcinella
was insistently lively, no real romp ever occurred in
which Percy was not the leader. Even Pulcinella, who
barked and bounded in the effort to produce a mock-battle,
was afraid of Percy; and the human beings were
not so much afraid as respectful and affectionate towards
him. Percy therefore disliked strangers, who disturbed
his sense of what was proper. Pausing in the act of
licking delicately extended fingers, he stared rudely at
Patricia. He decided to watch her for a few moments
before making up his mind as to her acceptability as a
new acquaintance.
Patricia, quite unconscious of this important scrutiny,
was allowing herself to be entertained by Percy's elders.
She did not see a big Persian cat, whose long hair was
nearly as black as his dignified nose and whose tail, when
paraded, was as large as an ostrich feather. She merely
looked from the small face with bushy whiskers of Mr.
Mayne to the beautiful soft complexion of Mrs. Mayne,
and again to the exuberantly expressive eyes and lips
of Claudia. She liked Claudia better and better each
minute. She did not look at all at Edgar, in whom she
was conscious of feeling no true interest whatever.
"Isn't it very lonely for you to live alone, Miss Quin?"
Mrs. Mayne was asking. She did not wait for an answer;
but continued: "I've never lived alone, so I don't
know what it's like; but I should have thought it likely
to make a young girl miserable. Yet I know, of course,
that one sometimes wishes very much to be alone with
one's thoughts. As a holiday it must be very pleasant...."
It was the quiet voice of a contented
woman that meandered slowly and almost prattlingly
among words that came without effort.
"Think of the liberty, mother!" exclaimed Claudia.
"Not always having other people to consider. Not always
having somebody to say she isn't ladylike."
"I like it," said Patricia. "And I'm not at all ladylike."
"Perhaps you're not much alone?" suggested Claudia.
"Oh, yes. All day. But I'm generally out in the
evenings."
"Claudia always speaks as though I were a fault-finding
mother; but it isn't true, and I don't think she means
it altogether. I should be sorry to think I was a fault-finder,"
ruminated Mrs. Mayne.
"You're a darling," Claudia declared. "But, like
most mothers, you live in the past. You don't feel that
you're grown up and that you don't understand this
generation. That's what I complain of." She turned
to Patricia. "This is a very difficult household. Father
doesn't care two straws about anything that goes on outside
the house, except the things that are put into newspapers.
He would write letters to the papers, only he
prides himself on never having written to the papers.
He's conceited about it. That's what saves us endless
humiliation. Mother thinks the world's a very distressing
place, and the latest sort of girls very top-heavy and
reckless and...."
"I don't think they're very happy," urged Mrs. Mayne.
"Perhaps they're not. All the better. Perhaps something
will come of it—unless they enjoy their unhappiness
too much, as some of them do. She doesn't understand
that there have been changes since she was a girl."
"Only too well." Mrs. Mayne showed spirit.
"Well, she doesn't sympathise with them. She
doesn't realise her standards don't apply to to-day.
She's absolutely——"
"I'm sure I'm very faulty," agreed Mrs. Mayne, almost
approvingly. Edgar laughed at his mother's unquenchable
power to discomfit Claudia, and the two exchanged
a glance.
"As for Edgar," proceeded Claudia, "he's quite hopeless.
I bring friends here, and he thinks they're awful.
So they are—he's quite right. But I shouldn't know
they were awful if he didn't point it out. That's the
disastrous consequences of bringing people here. Edgar
says nothing about them at all, and so he stimulates
my corrosive faculty. He'll drive me to having surreptitious
friends."
Patricia's nose was a little in the air.
"I don't think he's very human," she said.
"You see?" Claudia looked in triumph at her brother.
To Patricia, she continued. "The trouble about him is,
he's a good man. He's old-fashioned. He has principles.
It's a nuisance when a man has principles. He
was brought up to think it was the thing to be decent and
honourable, and so on. He doesn't live in our age at
all, when everybody's trying hard to be wicked and only
half-succeeding."
"I know," agreed Patricia, relishing the irony but perceiving
the truth of her new friend's analysis. "I think
it's impossible for one generation to understand the
next."
"Exactly. But the next can understand the one—like
winking."
"I'm sure I'm very easy to understand," said Mrs.
Mayne. "Edgar isn't. I've never understood him. Or,
for that matter, Claudia, although she's my own daughter."
"You know too much about me to understand me,
mother," cried Claudia. "That's true, isn't it, Edgar?
Too many things, I mean."
"It's certainly ingenious," agreed Edgar, quietly. He
had hitherto been listening in silence to the debate, although
all had been aware of his presence.
"What nonsense!" cried Mrs. Mayne.
Patricia thought: How nice and silly they are with
each other! Her spirits rose yet higher. She felt that
here the talk was the kind of talk—nonsensical and yet
true—that she liked above every other kind. It was
clear and light, without strain and without stereotyped
slang. After so much that was quite otherwise, that
aped smartness and achieved only repetition, this chatter
gave her ease of heart as nothing else could have done.
She smiled upon them all, impulsively, so that Edgar
turned away to hide his passionate relief.
"Dinner is served, ma'am," said the pretty maid, at
the door. They all moved forward, leaving Percy at
his toilet and losing Pulcinella en route.
Patricia, leading the way with Mrs. Mayne, saw the
dining room with a friendly and interested eye; and as
the chairs and sideboard were all of old mahogany, she
supposed herself to be amid the relics of Mr. and Mrs.
Mayne's early married life. The room was large and
lofty, and the mahogany furniture suited it, so much
did the shape and arrangement of everything accord.
It was very different from the drawing room, where the
note had been a light grey, with loose covers of flowered
chintz upon the more comfortable seats and curtains of
a shade warmer than that which otherwise prevailed.
Here in the dining room the curtains were dark and the
gas-shades mellow in tone. Everything was subdued.
It was an "old" room, not at all what she would have
expected from her quick imagination of Claudia's taste.
Well, that was a puzzle the more. Involuntarily she
shook her head. In this house the older people counted
more heavily than she could have expected. The
younger ones were not all-powerful. She guessed that
the drawing room represented the farthest concession
Mrs. Mayne would make to modernity; and it was already
fifteen years out of date. She did not realise that
it heralded the coming revival of Liberty in house-decoration.
Her insight was gone as quickly as it had come. Patricia
hardly knew what had been her impression, so much
less apt was she in thought than in intuitive knowledge.
She was still charmed; but she knew that Mrs. Mayne
also was in the habit of going her own way. It was a
family habit. Patricia could not restrain a half-glance
at the whiskered Mr. Mayne, who sat with such benignant
fierceness at the head of the table. Was his pictorial
ferocity merely a compensation? Or was his
mildness the serenity of a dictator? Perhaps even Mr.
Mayne.... She was deeply and childishly impressed.
For an instant her self-assurance trembled. Patricia,
of course, was unquestionably Patricia and in that respect
unique; but could there possibly be other people—other
real people—than Patricia in the world? It had
seemed in that very uncomfortable instant as though
there might be four others. With something like panic,
she raised her spoon from the table.
"What I should like to do," explained Claudia, "would
be to re-shuffle the world a little. I could do it so nicely.
I'd separate people under forty and people over forty.
They could meet, and talk, and the people over forty
wouldn't be made to feel they were quite useless; but
they shouldn't have any power over the younger ones."
"It would be a splendid idea." Patricia was eagerly
responsive.
"For a month," agreed Mrs. Mayne, with her natural
irony.
"For always," firmly insisted Claudia. "Oh, you'd
see a change."
"Forty in years?" asked Edgar. "Isn't that rather
arbitrary?"
"I didn't mean I'd destroy them. Only separate
them."
Edgar laughed a little.
"I believe you'd have a reactionary 'left' even then,"
he said, agreeably. "And a revolutionary 'right,' too.
And another thing, Claudia ... you don't take into account
the fact that some quite young people are obscurantist.
When you think of young people you always
think of yourself. Never of Johnny Rix or Daphne
Petton...."
"Oh, but they're awful! I'd expose them at birth!"
declared Claudia.
Edgar was unconvinced. He shook his head.
"You can't be everywhere at once," he warned.
"Well, there's Miss Quin...."
"Two of you—against a multitude."
"You're hopelessly cynical, Edgar. Miss Quin, he's
a Pyrrhonist, I find."
"Good gracious!" Patricia was astounded. "What's
that?"
"Nothing. Simply nothing at all."
"Inhuman?" asked Patricia, hopefully.
"Perfectly. I forget whether it comes from a man
or a place; but he doesn't believe in anything at all. It's
a ghastly state of mind to be in."
"Really, Claudia; you're too sweeping," protested
Mrs. Mayne. "Anybody would think Edgar wasn't the
kindest and best——"
"Oh, ever so good. Good unbelievably. Kind....
Frightfully interested in the insect world of human beings.
Considerate—as few men are considerate—to the
poor creatures who live around him."
"And very tolerant of Claudia," pursued Mrs. Mayne,
turning to Patricia. "Oh, dear, this fish is over-cooked,
Rachel, and I particularly.... However, it's no good
grumbling.... I hope you'll like it, my dear. We
have a very good fishmonger, and a very good cook, too;
but ... Edgar, I wish you'd speak for yourself.
Claudia will give Miss Quin such a peculiar...."
"He doesn't care ..." Claudia looked across at her
brother. "Do you?"
Patricia could tell that he did not care. He was quite
unconcerned. A slight grimness came into her expression.
She wished him less unconcerned. She would
have liked to believe in Edgar's susceptibility to pain.
As it was, he seemed invulnerable. Patricia turned once
more to Claudia with great sympathy and friendliness.
"I think your idea's very attractive," she said. "About
the division."
Mr. Mayne gave a short, rather sardonic laugh.
"Wine's corked," he remarked. "Take it away, Rachel.
And bring another bottle. With the chill off.
Properly. Not roasted...."
Patricia lost her head. A tremulous twitching seized
the corners of her mouth. She tried to control herself,
and became desperate in the effort. In another instant
she felt that she must giggle. Fortunately there came a
diversion which saved her.
"Miaow!" cried Percy, from outside the door.
"What a menagerie it is!" said Mr. Mayne, in a savage
tone. "It's incredible! Let him in, let him in!
Of course, it's the fish. I never knew a cat...." His
voice, even in this protest, was very low. He spoke as
hushedly as a man telling a tale of horror.
It was then that Patricia saw that behind his ferocious
air Mr. Mayne could hardly restrain his own ridiculous
laughter. She looked swiftly round the table, from one
to the other, from Edgar, to whom her glance first went,
to Claudia, at his side. All were smiling, as if good-naturedly
and at something absurd. Uncontrollably
she laughed a little, thankful to find that they were not
even solemn. And as she did this Percy appeared.
Patricia had a glimpse of brilliant eyes and a huge waving
tail which stood high above Percy's body as he made
a leisurely entrance.
"Do you go to the theatre much, Miss Quin? My
husband and I sometimes go, but it always seems to me
that it's only an excuse for going out to dinner and for
dressing up and seeing crowds of expensively-dressed
people who are enjoying the same experience. I'm really
much happier at home with a book. Although the books
nowadays don't seem to be as interesting as they were.
They're not very amusing. Very clever, I suppose, telling
us all about our thoughts—which I'm sure we never
have—and about young men and girls who seem to me
to be very disagreeable and morbid and get themselves
into sad trouble about things that don't happen to any
of our friends. Do you like them?"
"I'm never quite sure," admitted Patricia. "They are
very clever, of course."
"I wonder if cleverness is a good thing. Is it, Edgar?"
"Very good thing, mother," said Edgar, obediently, as
if he had been thinking of something else.
"He doesn't think so!" declared Claudia. "Nor do I.
It's only self-consciousness."
Mrs. Mayne appeared to digest the information. Unchecked,
she thoughtfully continued:
"People are self-conscious, of course. Even I notice
that. Of course, I'm old; and so I take an interest in
what other people are doing. But I don't think I was
ever any different. I'm sure I'm not always thinking
about myself or my own affairs, which is all that seems
to engross most of the people Claudia brings to the
house. They seem rather peculiar. I'm not always saying
that the young ones don't understand me——"
"It wouldn't be true," interjected Claudia. "It would
be absurd."
"I think it might be true. But we hear nothing at all
from Claudia, from morning to night, but the great disadvantages
of young people; and their wisdom, and foresight;
and——"
"Mother!"
An extremely mischievous smile appeared upon Mrs.
Mayne's face. With her white hair and clear complexion,
and in her rather high-cut dress of amber-coloured
silk, she looked, when she smiled, ageless. She was a
match for her daughter. Behind that rambling speech
was a brain as acute and as teasing in its workings as
anything Claudia could show; and Mrs. Mayne had the
advantage over Claudia that her ideas were inflexible,
while her daughter's were undisciplined and often wholly
undetermined. Claudia resumed:
"I think you ought to know, Miss Quin, that mother's
very unscrupulous. I mean, you must have noticed it
for yourself; but you're so nice that perhaps you may
not have let yourself think it. Father and I are the only
people in this house who are scrupulous. We're very
just. Edgar's pretty awful. But mother's unscrupulousness
passes all bounds. I have this evening said a
few words about young people, but that's because of
something Edgar was saying earlier in the evening. He
said you were a young woman, as though that conveyed
anything at all. He was asked to describe you; and he
said that."
"Oh, more than that," interpolated Edgar. "Surely."
"That was the principal thing. I said: 'What sort
of a young woman?' and mother admitted that 'young
woman' sounded like a term of reproach. Which it
certainly is. She admitted it."
Patricia looked across at Edgar with some resentment,
but also with some pity. He was eating his dinner in
tranquillity, and Patricia felt a sudden suppression of
anger in her breast.
"After all," she said, quietly. "He's a 'young man,'
I don't know which is more of a term of reproach. We
can't help our age or our sex. But for some reason
women cannot get men to think of them as human beings.
Always, they're regarded as women, and never
as individuals."
"I think it's because men are rather new to the idea
that they are individuals, and because women also are
rather self-conscious about it. They haven't had an individual
life for very long. Don't you think so, Miss
Quin?"
Patricia, recovering a little from her enthusiasm, shook
her head, smiling as if with greater wisdom.
"I think it's because women are simply rather conceited,"
remarked Edgar, in a surprised tone. "The
temptation to conceited men is to take them down a peg."
A jerk seemed to shake Patricia. So that was what
he thought! She understood now the reason of her
lack of sympathy with him. He was indifferent. He
cared for nothing but his own egotism. In that he resembled
other men, no doubt; but in his case the offence
took an extreme form. He did not appreciate Patricia
Quin! He thought her conceited. He did not take her
seriously. It was unpardonable, since it showed invincible
stupidity. But what did it matter, after all?
Patricia decided suddenly that she did not like him, that
she had never liked him. When she looked at Edgar
she could tell that such a man, so free from human
weakness, and so incapable of appreciating anything
which did not accord with his prejudices, would never be
able to inspire real affection.
After dinner a number of Claudia's friends came
either unexpectedly or upon some casual invitation from
Claudia. All were young men and women of refined
tastes; and for a short time during their restless incursion
there was a good deal of chatter. Patricia found
herself not quite so much at home as she had been. She
wished it had not been thought necessary—if that were
indeed the case—for others to be invited. She felt so
much older than Claudia's friends, so much superior to
them in intelligence and knowledge of the world. They
produced a superficial air of bustle and jollity; but it
was all so naïve as to be tiresome and stupid. Claudia
was different. She at least had brains and high spirits.
She also had vitality. But the others were so many boys
and girls, and not of the kind of boy and girl that Patricia
had recently begun to find amusing. These had no
spice of danger about them; and Patricia had developed
of late a new craving for just this spice. The girls were
good suburban girls; the boys good suburban boys. Not
one of them seemed to have a lurking devil. Quickly
the party became what Patricia had feared it would be.
It became insipid. Mrs. Mayne, from even the teasing
and mischievous old lady of the dinner, grew into such
a woman as her placid appearance would have indicated.
Edgar and his father both disappeared, the former to
return after not more than half-an-hour, during which—as
he supposed that Patricia would be amusingly employed—he
had cleared off some arrears of work. If
it had not been for Claudia, Patricia's spirits would
deeply have been sunk into boredom.
But at last the evening took a turn. The visitors,
having stayed an hour, went as suddenly as they had
come. Supper brought her once more within the circle
of the Maynes; and she and Claudia and Edgar were at
a table together. Edgar seemed preoccupied; but nothing
could check Claudia's high spirits. She and her
mother sparred with considerable spirit. Patricia delighted
in the happy relationship. She found herself as
the evening advanced recovering all the zest that she had
lost on the coming of the juvenile visitors. Called upon
to do so, she even gave her impressions of those who had
called, and during this period she could not help glancing
at Edgar to see whether he was amused at her comments.
To her chagrin, Edgar remained serious. Although he
smiled, his expression was grave. He was not attending.
Patricia hardened. Such neglect chilled her, so
unusual was it. Swiftly her resentment at his implied
belief in her conceitedness returned and increased. It
was not known to her that during his absence from the
room Edgar had discovered something which had given
him a great shock. She judged only by her own egocentric
knowledge, and she accordingly misinterpreted
his mood. Only to Edgar, therefore, was Patricia's
manner at all cold. But he presently shook off whatever
had been the matter which had made him thoughtful,
and as he became animated Patricia was lured farther
and farther from her grievance, until at last it was for
the time altogether forgotten.
By then it was eleven o'clock, and the evening was
ended. After warm exchanges of kind expressions between
herself and Claudia, and after a further invitation
from Mrs. Mayne, Patricia found herself walking
through the dark streets by Edgar's side.
"I'm very glad I came," she told him naïvely. "I
think Claudia's splendid."
"You were rather afraid, weren't you?" Edgar asked.
"I'm always afraid of meeting somebody new. I
feel at a disadvantage. I'm afraid of meeting people
cleverer than myself."
"Oh, Claudia isn't that," she heard him say. Patricia's
eyes opened in the safe darkness. Oho! she wonderingly
said to herself. That did not sound much
like an attempt to discourage a conceited young woman.
How strange he was!
"I think she is." A very subdued voice conveyed the
disclaimer. Edgar made no reply. Patricia, who believed
him incapable of inspiring affection, felt a remarkable
little flood of liking fill her heart. What a peculiar
effect Edgar had upon her. He made her feel like a very
small girl, much younger than himself, much weaker
and sillier and less splendid than usual, but in no way
distressed by the sensation. Childishly, there darted
into Patricia's mind the wish that she had also possessed
a brother—a brother something like Edgar, who could
understand what was said to him, who did not all the
time make demands, who was safe and sure and reliable.
A sigh shook her. It was so light as to be imperceptible
to her companion. Her eyes filled with tears. At
times in Patricia's conquering life there came instants
when she would have given the world to rest quite
quietly upon some such strong human support. Moments
of loneliness sometimes assailed her, when a sustaining
hand would have been of all things the most welcome.
She did not feel lonely with Edgar—only happy
and at ease. She was now very happy indeed. Then
the moment's mood passed, and she was once again alert,
and, immediately afterwards, troubled by another
thought. She did not know that she was hiding her
heart even from herself.
The walk from the Maynes' house was an affair of
perhaps half-an-hour. Their course lay almost directly
south; but the intersection of the streets was imperfect,
so that they had occasionally to take sharp turns. It
was a fine starry night, and the stars seemed to yellow
the lamps which at regular intervals shed very definitely
restricted rays into the darkness. Tall houses stood erect
upon each side of every road, and every now and then
the walkers passed loitering couples or other pedestrians.
Very few people, however, were in the streets; for the
night, although serene, was chilly and therefore untempting.
Patricia could see the lamps winking in the distance,
and whenever she came into that little glow which surrounded
each of them she had a curious sense of her
own physical appearance, as though she could see herself.
She walked well, and enjoyed the swinging motion.
She felt strangely at peace, and spoke without
effort. And then suddenly, when they were close to a
lamppost and could see all around them faintly illuminated,
two other people—a man and a girl—coming
from the opposite direction, were simultaneously within
the circle of light. A quick greeting passed, and the
parties were once more separated, lost in the immediate
darkness.
Neither Edgar nor Patricia spoke—Patricia because
a shock had gone straight to her heart and left her
breathless. The two who had thus unexpectedly emerged
and disappeared in that silent moment were Harry and
Rhoda Flower. The shock had been like a dagger in
Patricia's heart. All her talk ceased. She felt that all
her happiness was extinguished. She continued to walk
by Edgar's side; but it was as one numbed and bewildered
by a tragic happening. They were both very
silent for the remainder of the journey, all the ease of
their companionship destroyed.
At parting Patricia kept her betraying face half turned
from Edgar, and stayed only for the briefest and coldest
"Good night, and thank you," before setting her key
to the door and slipping into the house. But Edgar
had not failed to see that she was quite colourless, so
that he too had something to think about upon his return
journey.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE SIBYL — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi
During that evening Edgar had been away from
the others for about half-an-hour, seated in his
room with bundles of papers belonging to his business.
This was enforced, because his absence from England
had led to great accumulations of work, and only by
some such evening trouble could he hope to make good
the time lost from the daily routine. So he had been busy.
And quite by accident, Edgar had come across a single
sheet of paper which had disturbed him out of all proportion
to its size and importance among its fellows.
It was with other papers in a small bundle surrounded
by an elastic band; and in glancing through this bundle,
flicking the letters apart, Edgar had caught sight of an
arresting address. Hastily, though still without more
than casual interest, he had stretched the band so as to
see the whole of the letter. It was the signature which,
taken in conjunction with the heading, had brought an
exclamation to his lips. It had thrown him quite unexpectedly
into a revelation concerning Monty Rosenberg.
It opened to his investigation some at least of
the interstices of Monty's dark and secret mind.
The occasion of Monty's sudden need of money had
been for Edgar a curious puzzle. Monty's unwillingness
to follow the obvious course, which was to raise a
loan from his bank to tide him over the emergency, had
been another puzzle. The third puzzle had been his reason
for approaching Edgar for assistance. Edgar had
explained the third puzzle by the fact that he had recently
been engaged in business dealings with Monty (over the
transfer to himself of the "Antiquarian's Gazette," in
which no money had passed), and the possibility that
Monty, who was secretive by nature, had no friend intimate
enough to be asked—without explanation—for so
large an amount as two-thousand five-hundred pounds.
And the other two puzzles were both explained by the
letter which Edgar had discovered.
The letter was written upon a single sheet of business
note-paper, and was an acknowledgment of some trivial
communication. But the heading was that of the South
Hampstead branch of the Great Central Bank; and the
signature was plainly to be read as "Frederick Tallentyre,
Branch Manager." It became immediately clear
why Monty should have wished to conceal any adjustment
of his affairs from the manager of his local bank.
Less clear was the immediate occasion. Frederick Tallentyre
was the husband of Blanche. And Blanche, unless
Edgar's perceptions were at fault, was Monty's present
mistress. Now why should Monty want so large
a sum at short notice? And why should he wish the
fact of his requiring a loan concealed from the husband
of his mistress?
That was one of Edgar's preoccupations as he walked
homeward. As a business man, he needed to know as
much as possible about all those with whom he was engaged
in financial transactions, and he was not so wealthy
as to regard two-thousand five-hundred pounds as a negligible
sum. Had the money something to do with
Blanche? And, if so, what had it to do with her?
The second and even more pressing preoccupation
was with Patricia and Harry. It had been clear to Edgar
that Patricia, when he met her at Monty's, was
changed, that she was not at peace. She had been restless
and emotional beyond the ordinary. It seemed that
her attitude to himself was different, and less cordial.
He loved her, and any change was thus of importance
to him. The same air of reluctance in her glances and
speeches had been apparent during this evening. Only
upon their walk had she seemed to return to an ordinary
cameraderie. And at the height of their newly-rediscovered
ease this encounter with Harry Greenlees had
spoiled everything. Or had it been the encounter with
Rhoda? Could it be—and Edgar's heart leapt at the
thought—that Patricia had with chagrin noticed him in
Rhoda's company at Monty's party; had thought....
It was fantastic. Patricia was not crude enough for
that. Edgar brushed aside any notion so preposterous.
Harry, then.... His mouth became stern.
Edgar was not, outside of business, analytical; but
he took intricate views of whatever was unfamiliar.
And Patricia was unfamiliar. She was his new and
precious delight. During the whole of the evening he
had watched her without direct scrutiny; had felt, and
not calculated, her changes of expression, the quick,
gentle turns of her head, the speedless flights of amusement,
interest, disdain, hostility, and sympathy which
were so easily to be read. And in each reference to
himself he had discerned something unwelcome—flattering,
perhaps, as showing that she did not ignore him;
but unwelcome. All the arch curiosity which might
have accompanied any consciousness of attraction was
absent. What if this should be explicable by some feeling
for Harry? It might easily be so. Edgar knew
that, so far as he could imagine the standards of a young
girl's heart and mind, there was no comparison between
Harry and himself. Harry was a big fellow with a
handsome face, a ready tongue, charm—with the very
qualities, in fact, to make him the subject of sentimental
dreams. And Edgar could not refuse to suppose Patricia
capable of sentimental dreams. He fought against
the notion; but common sense had greater power over
him than the instinct to idealise the beloved. He recognised
that Patricia, like other young girls, was probably
romantic. Well, he was no figure of romance. That
was all. If she employed romantic standards he stood
no chance of winning her love in return for his devotion.
The battle was lost before issue was joined.
He awoke still less sanguine, but with a grimness
which was not unfamiliar. After all, he had certain
obvious advantages. He might be less showy than
Harry; but he was not insignificant. If it came to the
test of brain, his own was not inferior. His position
was assured, while Harry's was probably that of a freelance—delightful
in youth, but dwindling and even becoming
precarious with the passing of each year. More
than that, however. Edgar had the knowledge that
Harry succeeded easily. He could tell that Harry took
little heed for the morrow. That unlined youthful face,
in a man not much younger than himself, told him a good
deal. He put Harry down as thirty-five. And if a man
had not taken thought by the time he is thirty-five he will
never begin to take thought after that age. He may
harden; but he will never mature. Also, if a man is
not married by the time he is thirty-five, there is generally
a reason. It might be, as it was in Edgar's own
case, that he has worked too hard, so that all his energy
has been absorbed. That was not Harry's position. He
was not married because he did not wish to be married.
He pleased too easily, and he was not the sort of man
who finds marriage an excellent starting-point for inexhaustible
love-affairs.
No! Edgar was quite generous to Harry. He saw
him as a man free from that skidding of the mind which
is called sentimentalism. Love affairs—yes; but always
sporting. As a man he had no objection to Harry.
Directly, however, Harry appeared in the neighbourhood
of Patricia, the situation changed. It would almost
equally have changed if Harry had begun to make love
to Claudia. He did not know that Claudia would have
found Harry tiresome; but that was because he did not
perceive that in calling himself unattractive, he spoke
without her authority. And as for Patricia—who could
tell what Patricia thought or felt? For all Edgar knew
she might have fallen in love with the man whose dancing
she so much admired; or with the pink and white
baby who performed with the fire-irons, or with Monty
Rosenberg. She might be incapable of falling in love
with anybody, through self-infatuation, which is a disease
greatly in vogue in modern times. She might give
her love in time even to Edgar Mayne.
Edgar somehow thought, as he shaved, that this was
not so improbable as he had felt on the previous evening
or upon his awakening.
Claudia was the first person Edgar encountered that
day. She was sitting by the fire in the breakfast-room,
eating an apple and reading "The Daily Courier." A
dress of blue serge with a small green collar and green
cuffs made her look very slim and juvenile. Her dark
hair, in a billow, hid part of her face as she bent over
the paper; and Edgar could barely catch a glimpse of
her eyelashes and the rather inquisitive tip of her nose.
At the other end of her person there was a considerable
display of ankle, small and well-shaped.
"Hullo, good-morning!" said Claudia cheerfully.
"Nobody else down yet, my poor boy. And I only got
up to see you. I think that girl's splendid." She cast
aside her paper. "You've got good taste in people, Edgar.
I've noticed it. She's got one fault; and I'm going
to cure her of it. I'm going to take that girl in
hand."
"I wonder if she'd do the same for you," pondered
Edgar aloud, as he rang for breakfast.
"She may try. Don't you want to know her fault?"
asked Claudia, with a straight glance.
"Perhaps I know it."
"Perhaps you do." The acknowledgment was faintly
puzzled. "But you like her, don't you?"
"Very much."
"She's almost good enough for you to marry."
Claudia was reflective.
"Oh, not quite?" innocently asked Edgar. "No, I
suppose not." He was too well-acquainted with Claudia
to be drawn, even if he had supposed her to be angling
for an admission, which she was not.
"Is she rich?"
"I've no idea."
"I shall find out. I think she's poor. And that's
one reason why this fault of hers is a danger."
They seated themselves at the table, and began to eat
moderately warm breakfast.
"Why do you think it's a danger?" asked Edgar.
"Well ..." Claudia spoke with her mouth full;
but she was full of candour, because she and Edgar were
the best friends in the world. "You see, Edgar, she's
conceited. It may be only skin deep; but if it isn't, then
she's hopeless. I mean, if it's ingrained."
Edgar felt a creeping of the flesh. His grave expression
of interest did not change; but his breath was
a little short.
"She's very young, of course," he objected. "Isn't
conceit a phase with some people?"
"I hope to cure her. But you'd admit it's a very dangerous
thing to have in the blood."
"You're very wise, Claudia," he said, after a pause.
"I'm vain; and you're proud (which is a sort of vanity);
and we're both obstinate. But we're not conceited.
Now Patricia thinks no end of herself. She's
got the idea that there's something wonderful just in the
fact that she's herself. At least, I think so."
"She thought you were cleverer than she was. She
liked you."
"Well, that's good," said Claudia. Edgar smiled.
"No, don't you see, it's good because it shows.... All
the same, its wrong to compare yourself."
"I've just been comparing myself with another man.
I thought I came out of it rather well, on the whole...."
"Silly! That sort of thing's...."
"I was quite serious."
"Then you're in love. That's all I can say. And I
don't want you to be in love—yet I like Patricia awfully.
I'm going to see her; and I think I'm going to
cure her of her fault. But if I don't cure her, then I'd
sooner you didn't fall in love with her."
"I don't think we'll quite assume...."
"My dear Edgar. You can't bring a girl to this house
without my realising that something's up. You'll grant
that, won't you? I don't mean the ordinary inspection.
Less crude than that, I hope. But none the less pretty
obvious."
"I can see that it was a very incautious thing to do,"
admitted Edgar, solemnly.
"Therefore—" "Miaow!" cried Percy from outside
the door. Claudia rose to admit him, speaking as she
crossed the room. "Therefore—good-morning, Percy—I
consider that I'm called on to protect you. You're
fortunate in having me. Of course, mother's fallen in
love with her on the spot; and hopes she will attract
you."
For the first time Edgar showed signs of embarrassed
exasperation.
"She's idiotic!" he muttered.
"The older generation," calmly explained Claudia.
"That's what that is. You'd admit that I'm much more
realistic. I'm not by any means sure that Patricia's
... well, eager to attract you. She ought to be, because
you're the best man she's ever likely to meet. But
you can't tell. When a girl's conceited, she tries this
man and that until she's afraid of missing the train altogether.
And then she plunges, and ... well!"
"Claudia, you make me uncomfortable by your profundity,"
said Edgar, respectfully.
She bowed to him across the table.
"Mother says I'm an enfant terrible. I have already
told her that I'm a child of my generation. In some
ways I know much more than you do, Edgar."
"In all, my dear. In all," was his modest rejoinder.
"You also talk more. But I hope you will save Patricia."
"If I don't, nobody can," said Claudia. "But she
may have to have a ... Well, we'll see. I was going
to say she might have to burn her fingers. I wonder how
you'd like that. Not much, I expect. Edgar, there's
something I want to ask you...."
Edgar looked at his watch.
"I oughtn't to stay," he said. "Fill my cup first. I
shall be listening."
"What's a man's feeling about a girl?" Edgar
waited. "I mean, about things she does."
"What things?"
"Reckless things. Silly things. I expect men feel different
things—and different things about different girls—and
different things about different girls at different
times. But what I mean is this. All girls except me
have very much more liberty than they used to do.—Well,
even me, then; but they use their freedom differently.
They go about freely, and so on. Don't they?
Well, they do silly things—compromise themselves."
"I should think it's harder to do that now than it used
to be."
"It's very funny—I don't think it is, somehow. It's
all a convention. You can do certain things; but not
others. It's odd. But that's not what I wanted to ask
you. What I meant was—if somebody had been silly—had,
we'll say, gone off with a man, found she didn't
care for him, left him.... How would you feel about ... about
marrying her?"
"You alarm me!" cried Edgar, still a little amused,
but with a constriction of the heart. And then, for a
moment, it crossed his mind that she might even be hinting
at something which he dared not contemplate. His
mind went straight to Harry, to the meeting.... He
was conscious of a cold sweat. The thing was so monstrous,
and the feeling it aroused in him so passionate,
that he did not understand until he had recovered composure
what it was further that Claudia was saying.
"That is how you feel?" Claudia was persisting.
"You do feel ... well, horror?"
Edgar looked at her. Gradually his expression lightened.
Claudia's face was so earnest, her concern to
know his view was so obviously sincere.
"I couldn't possibly tell you how I should feel," he
answered, smiling.
"Would you marry a girl who ... well, who wasn't
quite ... wasn't quite fresh?"
Forgetting the horror he had glimpsed, Edgar thought
for an instant.
"It all depends on the girl's attitude," he ventured.
"I think for me it would be a question of whether there
was any confusion in her mind between me and the other
man. If there were, I wouldn't marry her."
"You do admit the right of a girl to freedom of every
kind of action?"
"In theory."
"Not in fact?" Claudia was very eager. Edgar answered
definitely.
"Not in fact. Any more than I admit the same right
in a man."
"Ah, that's the point! You admit the right; but you
don't think it should be indulged. I quite agree, Edgar.
It's because it affects other people. That's ethics; not
conventions. All the difference in the world. Thank
you. I've been thinking about it a good deal, and I
wanted to hear what you felt. Good boy!"
As he rose from the table, Claudia also rose, and gave
him that rare thing, a kiss. For Claudia was no more
demonstrative of affection than her brother.
"Sorry to have been a bore," she said abruptly. "I
wanted to know. It hadn't anything to do with—with
what we'd been talking about, you know."
"God forbid!" said Edgar, as he turned away from
her in some haste.
Claudia returned to Percy, who had jumped upon her
chair and was giving little sniffs at the odours of breakfast.
She patted Percy's head, or rather, his nose, so
that he scowled at her; and, after having lifted Percy to
another chair, poured herself more coffee. Although
Claudia looked so young, and her movements were still
the free movements of youth, she was rather grave as
she sat at the table. So many little thoughts and intuitions,
chiefly about Edgar, but some of them about Patricia,
ran in her head. She could not be other than
grave.
Edgar went straight out of the house after he had left
Claudia in the breakfast room. He could not at first
understand why he felt so extraordinarily miserable as
he walked along the street; but he awoke to find his own
exclamation, "God forbid!" dinning in his ears. What
if the subject Claudia had introduced were something to
do with Patricia! His mind was instantly alight. The
man distraught by love will believe almost anything evil
of the inscrutable mistress—that she is a devil, harlot,
liar, angel, fool.... Edgar was not so extreme; but
he was filled with that wild electricity of emotion which
accompanies the throwing into a combustible mind of
any such suggestion. His day was spoilt because of
this one frantic thought. There was no pity here for
Patricia; no understanding; only the fierce blaze of uncontrollable
mental agitation. His heat cooled, of
course; but the effect of it remained. Edgar knew that
those calm doubtings and considerations of the night and
morning were but the shadows of his real doubtings.
Of consideration he had none: only a fire that smouldered,
and that looked and felt like coldness. But he
did not dare to recall the subject of the morning talk,
or Claudia's dissociation of it from the discussion of
Patricia's nature. To have done so would have brought
him to a pitch of unmanageable fear. As it was, the
thought, although suppressed, lay full of secret life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ANOTHER DAY — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii — ix — x
While Edgar speculated, Patricia suffered. Her
vanity had been wounded by Harry's silence: the
meeting, which showed her that he was solacing himself
with Rhoda, wounded her vanity yet more. It was a
mortal blow to her sense of power. Parting might have
been sweet pain. This was otherwise. It was a shuddering
anguish. Soberly Patricia tried to face the truth: her
mind could not grasp it. She could not suppose that the
romance—so sweet, so almost childish—was concluded.
Although her words, and even her thoughts, were frequently
those of a woman, her heart was still the easily
wounded heart of a child. She had been living in a
dream; and nobody would tarry until her due awakening.
She found herself in a discouraging world where
the grown-up is still all-powerful. Harry was a man,
fixed in rigid manhood, without the gift of indefinite
spiritual expansion; and she had hoped that he was still
a boy, still able to play, still able to postpone his maturity
until some vaguely contemplated future. Her dream
was shown to have been a folly.
It was to the sense of disaster that Patricia came.
Not yet to desperation.
That morning it occurred to her to look at her bank-book.
Two manuscripts had been returned through the
post; and as she ate her breakfast Patricia suddenly
recollected that she had not had anything accepted for
some weeks. A tremor went through her. Her eyes
flinched. Supposing.... With some anxiety she
counted the small amount of money in her purse. And
then, as she continued to sit in that constricted room
with the low ceiling and the sun-stained wall-paper, the
room seemed to grow darker. The oilcloth and rug grew
more tawdry. The whole of her surroundings were seen
as deplorable. Patricia had thought little of money
lately, for she had given all her attention to the delightful
play that was in progress; and she had worked without
earnest endeavour. It had not appeared necessary,
and the fancies had come with ease. So often her eyes
had wandered, and her memories and anticipations had
become exciting; and when that happened the pen strayed
on only half-heeded, or remained quite still upon the
table. And now, with this awakening, what she had
written seemed to Patricia silly and babyish and without
value, with all the pleasant sportiveness by which it had
been inspired wholly evaporated. And she found that
she had other things to face besides the loss of Harry.
For a few minutes she pretended that there was nothing
to fear, that there must lie pounds and weeks between
the moment and the end of comfort. Her confidence
was staunch. Nothing to fear ... nothing to fear....
She was Patricia Quin. Just as she felt that she
would never die, so Patricia felt that she would never
want. It was true, perhaps. And yet when her thoughts
tried to create money out of nothing it did not seem clear
how she was to live ... presently ... soon ... very
soon....
Without preparation, Patricia's courage suddenly deserted
her. She lost her nerve. She no longer had her
dream of Harry: she was awake: she was stifling. And
disaster lay ahead. She wasn't any good.... She was
afraid.
"I'm afraid," she whispered to herself, with bowed
head. "I'm a coward!" It was for Patricia a terrible
confession. Energy, confidence, egotism as a rule sustained
her in every shock. Now these things were deserting
her in face of a spectre. In vain did she rally.
It was true: she was afraid.
With the expression of a baby that is afraid and is
trying not to confess it; with eyes that seemed to grow
larger each minute and a mouth that was pursed in fear
that masqueraded as courage, Patricia stood alone in that
ugly little room with the highly coloured furnishings and
the gilded mirror. She knew she had her friends, who
would welcome her rich or poor, but they would welcome
a happy Patricia, and not one who was cowed by disaster.
Such a Patricia as this would be unfamiliar. She
could never bear to go among them starving or wretched.
Where she had queened it, she could never play Cinderella.
But when her imagination darted ever so little
forward—to the day when the money which had seemed
such wealth was exhausted,—Patricia heard pity, and
shrank from it. Hers was the panic cry: "All is lost!"
She had been bold; her way had seemed so clear, so conquering.
In that minute of discovery it was not surprising
that confidence vanished. She was not one used to
hardship, to the canvassing of expedients. All her life
had been spent thoughtlessly so far as provision for anything
beyond the moment was involved. She had no
preparation at all for this emergency. She had awakened
to nightmare.
With nerves shaken, and despair almost at her elbow,
ready to plunge into her heart at a motion, Patricia tried
to think. If her money went, what prospects were
there? Harry's help—no! She could never appeal to
Harry. That was a new thought, and one which confirmed
her decision. In no circumstances whatever could
she ever have gone to Harry as one humiliated. Nor
could she have married him except for love, as an equal—as
a superior, the adored, the shining wonderful of
her own dreams. Marriage occurred to her—marriage
as a way out of want—as it has occurred many times to
women;—and it was only without true imagination that
she saw it. It was a suggestion made by her inexperience—the
sort of careless, unrealised notion that trips
off the mind's surface. She knew that at any time she
could have married Jacky; and the notion almost, even
in the midst of her distress, made her laugh. It was
absurd. Jacky! Jacky as a husband, a perpetual companion!
There was nobody whom she could marry. A
situation? Who would employ her? Now, when men
and women were clamouring for work! And how, after
so much liberty, endure the constraints and disciplines of
office life! Impossible.
Dry-eyed and wretched, Patricia received her shock.
She was stunned. A day earlier—in full panoply, deliciously
happy, self-enchanted, inspired with the greatest
ambitions, now she was amazed to find how insubstantial
were the foundations of her confidence. In an
instant, from independence, she had fallen to a paralysing
discovery. Patricia was terrified. The knowledge
that she was only a frightened, inexperienced little girl
was borne in upon her.
If she could have been caught in that mood by somebody
capable of understanding her, who would have
taken all her native silliness at its true value as the ebullience
of youth, Patricia might have been turned at this
moment into a channel leading straight to growth and
happiness. But there was nobody at hand. There so
rarely is anybody at hand. She had friends, but no
friend. She was entirely without a friend to whom she
could turn for renewal of that self-justification which
is essential to happiness. She had been without a guide
all her life, and all the acquaintances of the last few
weeks were self-engrossed and pleasure-loving. She
had been so wonderful, and now she saw that the power
upon which she had counted did not exist. She was
alone, and that was the consciousness which for Patricia
lay uppermost. She was alone. Although she tried
very hard to bluster, it was forced home to her that nobody
cared very much what she did with her life. Harry
had wanted her for himself, to make love to, to play with;
never for the sake of seeing that she made the best of
herself. He had not been interested in her. He had
not imagined her. He did not love Patricia: he was
merely "in love" with her, which meant that she provided,
in her response, flattery to his own self-love.
Not a real friend: they did not grow in this heartless
realm. There was only one house in London which she
had felt as a home; and Claudia she hardly knew, while
she was sure that Edgar Mayne, although he was kind,
was inhuman. He could never understand that she was
Patricia Quin, the marvellous Patricia; and that so she
must remain in her own eyes for weeks and months and
years to come—she believed, for ever. When she
thought of him it was of one whose friendship she might
value if only he would do what he could never do—acknowledge
her will as a thing quite as splendid as his
own. No friend: she was alone. A sob shook Patricia.
The first hint of desperation showed in her. She gave
a sob. What did it matter what she did? Nobody
cared. Again that surge of arrogance swept—now a little
less strongly—over her. She could rely upon only
herself; and she was a little girl. Edgar was grown-up.
Harry was grown-up. Amy was grown-up. They were
all finished: only Patricia had the power of infinite
growth. They could none of them understand her. She
was too big to be understood—too big, and too childishly
helpless. Patricia angrily wiped away two tears which
had stolen out on to her cheeks. The contrast between
her egotism and her situation was insufferable. She felt
reckless, without hope. Who cared?
She was dining that night with Monty; and they were
going on to dance at a club. She supposed it would be
Topping's, but she was not sure. And as she wiped
away her tears Patricia felt glad to be going out to
dance. She thought that for one evening at least she
would be able to forget that she had lost Harry and that
she was on the verge of poverty. Still with that expression
of fear and misery upon her face, she began to
wonder about the dress she would wear, and about the
evening, and about Monty; and as she did this her heart
was a little eased at the distraction of her thoughts, and
a more cheerful glance gave freshness to her appearance.
She might still be fearful; but at any rate she was—ever
so slightly—relieved. Complete disaster was not yet.
The day went on, very slowly, giving Patricia time for
many changes of emotion between her fear and her arrogance,
for tears and blustering or consoling speeches and
recoveries; and by the evening she had become calmer.
But the assertion of self-control had been purchased.
She was no longer normal. The knocking of a postman
in the street below made her heart flutter, and her ears
strain. Any violent noise was enough to set her nerves
jangling. With her mind lost, she could not do anything
with concentration, but committed mistakes in spelling,
wrote words that made nonsense, spilt water from
the vase she had just re-filled, and almost broke the vase
itself by striking it against the table in inattentive blindness.
And at last the day grew dark, and then it seemed
as though the lighted gas tried her eyes, making them
smart, and as though the atmosphere were unaccountably
heavy. Out-of-doors it was raw, with a mist rising.
Within, the heat was dry and exhausting. And the hours
would not pass quickly enough. They dallied slowly
round the clock, and she watched the seconds hand with
impatience from quarter to quarter. The room grew
smaller and smaller, closing in upon her until she sprang
to her feet as if to force the walls apart, so that she could
breathe.
The meeting with Monty was for seven o'clock, and
the little restaurant where they were to dine was already
half-full of people when Patricia arrived. She went
straight in, and saw Monty waiting in the hall of the
restaurant, his overcoat already discarded, and a cigarette
between his lips. For the first time that day Patricia's
heart really lightened. Monty was in evening dress (for
so it had been arranged), and he always looked his most
handsome when dressed. The white shirt enhanced the
olive darkness of his skin, and the beautifully cut coat
made him look slimmer than he was. And there was a
quality in Monty's caressing manner which pleased and
soothed Patricia. It was full of admiration. Monty
had very dark and tired eyes, which seemed never to
yield their secrets. There was power in his carriage.
Everything about Monty, from his bearing to his finger
tips, suggested luxury and invulnerability. He seemed
always just to have left the hands of his hairdresser and
the manicurist.
And on this evening he was more than ever regal and
courteous. His quick glance was full of sympathy and
reassurance, as though he were saying: "You are unhappy,
but you look, as usual, incomparably lovely.
You deserve, and you shall have, all the consolation, all
the happiness that I can give you; and it will make me
very proud if you will let me entertain you with all the
resources of expensiveness and unobtrusive delicacy."
Spoken, the words would have been odious; conveyed,
they were as balm.
"Come straight in," murmured Monty, his hand upon
her wrist. Patricia could still feel that he bore about him
the aroma of the Egyptian cigarette which he had thrown
away, and it seemed appropriate to him. He had for
her the attractiveness of something exotic. The proximity
of that dark face and dark head was agreeable;
where all was softness and gentle modulation, she, too,
could not fail to yield. "How punctual you always are!
I've got a table there—in the far corner. It will be
quieter. And I ventured—you will excuse me?—to
order the dinner."
With a checked sigh, Patricia allowed Monty to help
her with her coat, so that her arms might be free; and
as he seated himself opposite she smiled. She did not
know that it was a pathetic smile: she would have blushed
had she known it. But Monty's glance seemed to be
everywhere, although it was so seldom anything but gentle
and melancholy. He spoke to the waiter, who disappeared
and returned too quickly to allow of any talk
in the interval. The waiter bore two small glasses.
"This is a very exceptional cocktail," said Monty.
"It will do you good."
Patricia held out her hand for the glass he extended.
For the first time in her life she was eager for stimulant.
She drank the cool bitter drink, which sent a slow motion
of revived life through her, and filled her eyes and made
the feeling of dispirited tiredness recede. Monty was
watching her.
"Very good," Patricia assured him. She saw the
black head inclined, the slow smile which crossed Monty's
face; and upon the table his plump and beautifully
shapely hand as he received his own glass. As he did
this, a waiter brought a shining bucket, containing ice,
held a bottle for verification, and drew with a muffled
pop the wine-cork. Patricia started: Monty was giving
her champagne. How glad she was! It was as if he
had known that she was miserable, and had planned to
disperse the shadow. It was magic.
"You like the wine dry?" said Monty. "This is Ruinart."
Patricia nodded, shyly smiling. How kind he was!
How kind and consoling and suave and perfectly controlled.
As if he had known! Her heart warmed. Already
the wretchedness of the day was slipping out of her
memory. Her spirits were rising with each instant. She
was growing happy.
"You're tired," suggested Monty. "Don't talk.
Keep very still, and your headache will go. Let me do
the talking. I'm not so used to that as some of our
friends are; and it will please me and rest you. Will
you have some of this—and this?" His voice was so
low, and its quality had so much the soft smoothness
of velvet, that every word brought peace. "It ought to
be possible for us all to leave England now and follow
the sun. One ought now to be starting for the East,
where the sun is, and spending the days in winter quarters.
We ought to be going soon to Tunisia or beyond,
further than the winter tourists go; and then we could
come back and explore the ruins of Carthage; and you
should learn all about the ancient civilisations, and forget
that this sharp and strident Europe exists. It's so
very lovely to travel back gradually to the West, and to
see Sicily, where the most beautiful things in the world
are; or it must be enchanting to go to India, to those
places where Europeans rarely go, and learn something
about the Hindu philosophy by going back for a dozen
or so centuries and forgetting that the world as we know
it has any existence. I've never been to India; but one
day I shall go, because the wish to see it is growing
stronger and stronger, and I'm afraid of dying or growing
old before I've savoured all the beauties of the unfamiliar."
Monty spoke very slowly, and as if to cast a spell upon
her, so that she might forget her tiredness and her headache.
Patricia nodded. She thought how beautiful it
would be to escape from all her present distress, and to
wander over the face of the earth, where there was
always sunshine and happiness.
"I should like," continued Monty, "to travel by car all
over the world, and go through the roads, staying where
the fancy suggested, and going on when I was tired.
It would be very good to go through France, and
Northern Italy, and on to the East. One's seen the
familiar beauties. Now is the time to try and see what
remains."
"I haven't seen even the familiar beauties," said
Patricia, staring straight in front of her. In imagination
she could see a long white road winding towards distant
mountains. "I've never been out of England. Why, I
still think that to go to France and Italy and Spain would
be the most glorious thing in the world. Perhaps I shall
go, one day."
"Nothing could be easier, I'm sure," sympathised
Monty. "Why not go?"
"Because I haven't any money," retorted Patricia.
"You can't go, if you haven't any money."
"You should get somebody to take you," ventured
Monty. "It could easily be arranged."
Patricia remained serious: Harry, she knew, tramped
through Europe. It would have been easy to go with
him. He would make everything easy. A film was
across her eyes. Meditatively, forgetting Monty, she
sipped her champagne, and felt its incomparable pricking
upon her tongue, delicious and golden.
"Yes, it could easily be arranged," said Patricia,
drowsily. Then a little dryness touched her, and she
looked straight at Monty, smiling. "But it won't," she
added.
Monty's glance held her eyes for an instant. But
Patricia's eyes were blue and clear, as baffling to Monty
in their purity as his own were unreadable to Patricia
by reason of their impenetrable softness. Something in
those eyes smouldered.
"What a pity," said Monty.
Two hours later they were at Topping's, and Patricia
was dancing. The champagne had cleared her head, but
she had had more to drink than usual, and her lightness
was unwelcome. As she left the room where she
changed her shoes and handed her coat to an attendant
she was moved once more to thought of Harry by memory
of her first visit to this place. Her lips seemed to be
swollen and to ache, and she had been made short-sighted,
and her lids were hot and unrefreshing to tired eyes.
But she was less unhappy, more pliant, more forgetful
of the possible disasters of the future. When Monty
joined her she took his arm naturally, but also because
she felt glad of the safety which his protection gave her.
She could not bear to be here alone, to hear the band in
the distance, and to think of Harry. It was as though,
in touching Monty, she had said: "Take me anywhere—anywhere—so
that I shan't think of to-morrow. Because
I'm frightened of to-morrow!"
They pressed into the room, through little bunches
of people who stood near the door; and Patricia heard
the noise incomparably loud in her ears, and she was
dancing with Monty as if there were to be no to-morrow.
The champagne had robbed her of the power to feel:
she was numbed by it; but it had given her brain clearness
and vivacity. When suddenly she caught sight,
among the dancers who were sitting at a neighbouring
table, of Harry and Rhoda, the shudder which ran
through her body was unconcealed. Tears filled her
eyes. Monty could not have failed to observe her emotion;
but his acknowledgment of it was a warmer pressure
of reassurance.
"Don't let's ... go ... over there," whispered
Patricia. "I don't want to go. I don't ... like them.
I don't want to ... talk to Harry and Rhoda. Let's
... keep on dancing. I want to."
If only Monty would keep her there, with one arm
about her, safe from her unhappiness.... If only he
would protect her now....
Patricia was not to escape Harry; for she and Monty
had presently to rest. They sat at one of the tables, and
Monty ordered some more to drink, and gently urged
Patricia to join him. As she was hesitating, refusing,
yielding, a voice came from behind them which sent a
tremor through her. Harry and Rhoda stood there,
laughing like children who had stolen unawares upon
sleeping elders.
"Hullo!" cried Harry. "Hullo, Patricia!"
Rhoda drew up a chair to Patricia's side, and began
vivaciously to talk. Patricia had a glimpse of the dead
white cheeks and red lips and full dark eyes, and struggled
to carry on a conversation with Rhoda while she
was giving all her attention to what was passing behind
her, between the two men.
"Saw you when you first came in!" said Rhoda.
"What a pretty dress that is. This blue ... there
aren't many complexions that would stand it. Yours
does, though. I'm sticking to black just now. Makes
me look svelte. I'm getting fat. You've been dining
with Monty, I suppose. Lucky girl. I had to dig
Harry out. He's working like a nigger. Going
abroad...."
"I ... had ... to ... dig ... Harry ... out!...
He's ... going ... abroad!" That was all
Patricia heard. "He's going abroad ... going to the
East, and the sun, perhaps ... tramping in the sun,
making everything ... easy."
"I wish ... I were going ... abroad," stammered
Patricia.
"Wouldn't it be jolly. I say, let's all go! If you
could get somebody.... You could join us somewhere....
I mean...." Rhoda checked herself. Patricia
shrank back.
"No, no!" she whispered. But she had heard the
words which Rhoda had spoken so thoughtlessly. And
behind her was Harry's voice, quite quietly saying:
"Let's change partners for a dance, Monty. I...."
Her hand shot out uncontrollably. A "no" started
to her lips. She heard Monty say with equal quietness,
in his thick sweet voice:
"By no means, Harry. I wouldn't deprive you of
your partner for the world. How entirely charming she
looks, with that ivory skin...."
"Patricia," said Harry, at her side, his lips to her ear.
"Dance this once with me. Dear, I want you to. This
once."
She looked up at him with something of the old insolent
laughter in her eyes.
"What nonsense!" she said, rather breathlessly. "I'm
with Monty."
She was quite cold to Harry now; but she would have
died rather than dance with him.
When once more she was dancing, Patricia felt that
the encounter, the blow, the opportunity, had caused her
spirits to mount. And her gratitude to Monty was vehement.
She yielded herself completely to the sensuous
enjoyment of the dance, to Monty's immaculate skill, to
the secret enchantment that bound her. She could feel
Monty's soft, wine-laden breath upon her cheek, and the
occasional contact of his body with her own; and she
did not in any smallest degree shrink from him. But
the emotion which she experienced was tinged with recklessness.
She was being sustained by fierce resistance
to the shadow of desperation, which now, as the evening
neared its end, grew ever nearer.
"I'm sorry. I ought to have been able to avoid that
encounter. I didn't see Harry until they were there,"
Patricia heard Monty saying in her ear. She laughed
back.
"It didn't matter in the least," she said. "It was fun.
I enjoyed it."
And having heard herself laugh, she laughed again,
each moment more elated by the wine she had drunk and
the blatant noise with which the room was filled to echoing
and the excitement which accompanied the noise and
gave it significance. She could see the smouldering light
leap again into Monty's eyes, and she was thrilled anew
with revived consciousness of power. It intoxicated her.
That sweeping sense of invincibility came back and settled
upon Patricia like a golden cloud which had strayed. She
was extraordinarily lovely. The glitter of her fair hair
in the bright light, and the pure beauty of her clear eyes,
and the life in all her features, were enhanced and made
wonderful. Monty's attraction to her was so manifest
that she could not but respond to it. The little darting
spice of mischief was in her expression; but he could
see that her nostrils were pinched above the parted lips,
as though she were trying to restrain the betrayal of her
inclination towards him. Never had Patricia shaken
herself so free from care; never had she been so aware
of the secret jubilation which she felt at being admired.
She was excitedly happy, but with a new feeling that was
not zest, that was, instead, a knowledge of peril—even a
deliberate and wanton encouragement of it.
Patricia chose to go home by omnibus. She knew that
if they went otherwise Monty must inevitably make love
to her; and although she was warmed and excited, and
so, amorous, she was restrained from abandon by some
timidity, rather than by distaste or a saving caution.
Monty's desire for her was palpable: Patricia could not
be unaware of it. The knowledge was in her blood, and
it fired her; but she was not experienced or callous or
bold enough to yield to her own importunities. Reckless
though she felt, she must at all costs gain time. She was
not ready—she was maliciously tantalising—she was inspirited
and moved and made tremulous with fierce and
unusual excitement. And so, to gain time, Patricia chose
to travel in the open. Some colour to her preference
was given by the fact that the evening was brilliantly fine,
and Monty remained inscrutably unruffled to the end.
He was never more characteristic than in his watchful
impassivity. But as they parted he quickly and deliberately
put his arm round her, as if it might have been
for one further dance. Patricia did not protest. She
breathed quickly, her lips closely compressed. Even
when he stooped and took her hand, and then lingeringly
kissed it, she remained, with a sort of excited triumph,
and her head back, unflinching. She pressed his hand
gently in releasing her own, and stood watching from the
open door Monty's retreating figure. He looked back,
espied her, hesitated, made as if to return; and was only
discouraged by her swift withdrawal. Patricia's eyes
were fixed, and she entered the house unseeing, creeping
up the stairs, with tightly closed mouth. She was jubilant,
cool once more, exulting; and there was for the first time
cruelty and baseness in her triumph. Only when she
was in her own room, and when she had set the candle
down, did she feel the blood flooding her cheek and her
neck and even her breast. It receded, and came again,
painfully, until her whole body burned. Patricia was
ashamed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: CONTRAST — i — ii — iii — iv — v
Patricia thought: How difficult it is to be good!
And it's so easy to be wicked. Some people want
to be wicked, and can't. It's ... it's easy.
She was standing in her little brown room and looking
at her own reflection in the mirror with the gilded
frame. And as she looked at herself, she saw a hardness
come, and a new glitter in her eye. And it was
then that she realised how easy it was to be wicked, and
how difficult to be good. How easy it was to drift into
wickedness that made one defiant afterwards, and a little
afraid! That made one continue avid of excitement!
Patricia felt that she could not keep still. Such nervous
restlessness as she was now experiencing was strange;
but she could not keep still. If she sat down she found
herself immediately again standing, moving about the
room; and stopping, lost in a dream. She could not
think consecutively. If she began to think, ridiculous
words came into her head from nowhere, and fragments
of the speech of somebody else; and cross currents of
her own thought interrupted and distracted her attention.
"I'm going mad!" she suddenly thought. And from
somewhere came the comment, "Ah, I've noticed that,
have I?... Pengewith.... As if it could be helped....
Monty was ... of course, women ... I wonder
how the name Saskatchewan is really pronounced: I
suppose it's.... Yes, mad. Mad, because all this ...
I could go to Africa, Biskra—isn't that where they go?
Or Samarkand.... What beautiful names they have.
... I'd like to go travelling on and on, and the moon
at night shining on the desert.... All very quiet, and
stars, and peace.... Horrible insects.... Stop!
Stop!"
Patricia put her hands to her ears, as if in that way
to check the nightmare of her thoughts. She forced herself
to sit quietly down, to take up a book. Every noise
in the house and street was subdued; and after a few
moments her eyes would not attend to the page, and her
brain would not accept the meaning of the printed word;
and these idiotic thoughts came stealthily back as little
devils might have done. She was trying hard not to
think of something in particular. She was trying not to
think of what had happened on the previous evening, of
what might still happen. She did not want to face her
own actions, or their consequences; and all these devilish
little thoughts that so frightened her came because
she had as it were locked up the only thing she wanted
most desperately to think about, and was refusing to let
her mind have free play.
In the afternoon there was a noise at the door, and
Lucy put in a pink face. She was washed, and she
looked mysterious. A finger was to her lips.
"Some'dy downstairs," she whispered, her lips framing
the words. "Miss Roberts. Shall I let her come
up?"
Patricia welcomed the thought of a visitor. She
brightened at once.
"Oh, anybody!" she cried, with a great breath of relief
at the prospect of escape from her solitude, and the
gnawing thoughts to which she was offering so steadfast
a resistance.
"Right!" cried Lucy, who had been secret from a sense
of diplomacy. Patricia, hastily scrambling useless
papers together, heard Lucy trample down to the front
door and send Amy up; and so she went out on to the
dark landing to guide and exhort her friend. She was
really delighted to see the dim form which she knew to
be that of Amy rounding the difficult corner and achieving
the ascent. Eagerly she stretched a hand to bring
her friend within the tiny, ugly room.
"How nice!" she exclaimed. "Come in. I'm in a
muddle; but come in."
"What stairs!" Patricia heard Amy gasp. Then she
saw the visitor throw off a cloak and a light hat, and toss
her hair. There was a moment's silence as they scrutinised
each other. "Patricia, I had to come and see
you. You didn't write, or anything." The agitation
which Patricia was feeling was as nothing to the agitation
which Amy showed. She looked ghastly, and the climb
had made her breathe gaspingly. Her lips looked blue.
"I ought to have come." Patricia was filled with remorse.
"No. I—felt I had to see you after the other day.
You know, the day you came to see me, and Harry Greenlees
came."
"Well!" Patricia gave a startled exclamation. Then
she sat down and began to laugh. "What ages ago it
seems!" Really, it was incredible! She had almost forgotten
the studio and Amy's warning and Harry's arrival.
So much had happened in the interval, so poignant
had been her emotions, that the reference made her
breathless. "Well!"
"I heard Harry was going abroad," pursued Amy,
again with that sharp scrutiny. "I was afraid...."
"Afraid? Oh, that I might be going, too! But why,
Amy? I should have thought you would have known
... Nothing could happen to me—ever—that I
didn't ... I thought ... I thought a girl ought to
be free to live with any man she chose ... to see...."
Patricia was half-laughing. For this moment she was
malicious in the ridicule of such singular concern. She
was immediately to learn the occasion of it. Amy, who
sat in the only armchair in the room, which had been
covered with horsehair, and super-covered (as it were)
by a loose envelope that was washable, looked disagreeably
back at Patricia in recognition of such levity. Her
face, under the stress of recent events, was losing its
clearness, and was developing a rough greyness of colour.
Her eyes protruded, and the rims of them were faintly
pink. Amy was ageing quickly. By thirty she might
be unsightly. She was old, and stale, and without any
sort of colour or imagination or quality. She repelled
Patricia, as a poor relation might have repelled a busy
man in difficulties, or as a sick person repels a healthy
one.
"I know," she whispered. "I've tried it. I went
down to the country with Jack. But I couldn't stand it.
It was awful. I left him as soon as we got there. Patricia,
I couldn't have stayed there with him."
Patricia wheeled round at the incredible announcement.
She stared at her friend. An exclamation burst
from her lips.
"But Jack!" she cried. "Jack!"
Amy misunderstood her; she thought Patricia was
still in a state to harp on the inconsiderateness to
Jack.
"Oh, he doesn't matter. He's quite all right——."
"I was thinking ... Yes ... I expect he's all
right; but I was thinking...." stammered Patricia. She
was aghast. "Why on earth, if you were going, did you
go with somebody who bores you? Surely it was madness!
Oh, my dear! ... Amy, you must admit that
Jack...."
"I know. I know. He is idiotic. I don't know why
I did it. It seems ridiculous—now. But he kept on
saying I ought to go away; and it seemed impossible to
go away alone. So I thought—well: he's supposed to
love me. If I can bear it, perhaps.... You see, I was
in despair. Well, it's no good: that's all. I've been in
hell. I got into the next train, leaving him there. I
simply went out without telling him, and fortunately
caught the only possible train back. It was dreadful to
see the train coming, and watch the road in case Jack
was coming, too ... I felt insane!"
"So I should think," said Patricia. "Poor Amy!"
She had not really any pity for Amy; but she did not
know what else to say to this inglorious tale. If she
had imagined it, she would have shuddered as at a
squalor. She hesitated, her brain active. Then,
sharply, she demanded: "Have you seen Jack since?"
Amy nodded, tears in her eyes. She was the picture
of lugubriousness. But the colour was rising to her
cheeks.
"He says he's finished with me," she pulped. "We've
had a flaming row. He was filthy!"
"Good!" cried Patricia, almost with vicious emphasis.
There was a moment's horrified pause. Then Amy,
ignoring the ejaculation, continued:
"However, I shall never be rid of him. He isn't the
sort. He'll always be thinking I'll change, and be pestering
me. He's like a cur. The more you kick him, the
closer he sticks. I've only got to whistle. I loathe him.
Don't let's talk about Jack. It was only that I had to
tell you!" She paused, and then, in a minute, resumed:
"Oh, Patricia, I've begun painting again, you'll be glad
to hear. I was a fool ever to take any notice of Felix.
Of course, you know what the explanation of that was!
Mere sexual jealousy. Men simply can't bear a woman
to be an artist. It damages their singularity. It was
all a part of the sex conspiracy. I might have known!
All this upset has revived my ambition. It's done me
good, in fact. It's given me impetus. I'm doing something
that's going to be really good."
Patricia addressed Amy.
"Amy," she said. "You've finished with Jack. If
he hasn't finished with you, you must be finished with
him. For a man who will still stick to you after that
must be an idiot. He couldn't be any good to you. And
if you are going back to painting after swearing as you
did that you had done with it, I shall never understand
you. It seems preposterous. Why, I can remember—Amy,
you were absolutely finished with it. My dear,
what's the good? As for sex conspiracy—it's laughable!
I think you've been behaving very badly, indeed."
"Indeed!" cried Amy, shocked into vituperation by
such an onslaught. "And what about yourself, pray?
When it comes to bad behaviour?"
It was unanswerable. Patricia flushed, staring.
At this moment, while the two of them were mutually
speechless with active hostility, Lucy, interpreting liberally
Patricia's welcome to "anybody," and also possibly
rather intrigued by the appearance of the caller, personally
ushered into the room a second visitor. It was
Claudia. She had crossed the landing with a single impetuous
step, and her eagerness brought fresh air into the
stuffy little room. Her tallness, her dark complexion,
the rich crimson of her astrakhan-trimmed cloak, were all
such as to make her distinguished. There was animation
in Claudia's face which showed her health and tranquillity.
The quick immature grace of her movement
was lovely. She was free from all self-consciousness.
Only at sight of Amy—stricken by contrast into absolute
sickliness of appearance—did she pull up short.
"Oh," she gasped. "I didn't know.... Sorry!"
"Come in!" Even to Patricia it was evident that
Claudia's entry had brought radiance to the room. She
hurried across to greet her. "This is my friend Amy
Roberts—Miss Mayne."
"I'll go," cried Amy, rising from the armchair.
"No, no. Don't be silly." "Oh, don't ... I shall
feel...." There were two protests. But Amy was
injured, wounded.
"Yes. I've said all I'd got to say. And listened to
some plain speaking. Very plain. And I must get back
to my studio. I'll astonish everybody yet! I'm an
artist, Miss Mayne, and I can't leave my work for long."
She fumbled with her cloak.
"But I shall feel I've driven you away!" cried Claudia,
with a puzzled smile.
"You needn't." Amy was brusque in the effort to be
dignified; and as she flung on her cloak and hat she gave
Claudia a frigid smile. "I was just going in any case."
And with that she went to the door. "Good-bye."
"Excuse me." Patricia's glance of reassurance led
Claudia to remain, and, as the two others disappeared, to
remove her own cloak, and to await Patricia's return.
She looked quickly round the shabby room—at the typewriter,
the table-cover, the rug, the stained wall-paper,
and the glass with the gilt frame. Then she went to
the window to glance at the dingy outlook, and returned
to sniff the gas-fire.
"Good Lord!" ejaculated Claudia, very privately to
herself. "The poor thing's stewed alive in smuts up
here. It's a horrible place—all mouldy. No wonder
she's conceited! I should be, myself. She's a dear!
As for the other one—pooh!"
She had barely concluded this soliloquy when Patricia,
who had run up the stairs, arrived breathless, and closed
the door with a rush. She was completely changed.
"It's lovely of you to come," she cried. "I'm ever so
glad. And you came opportunely. I don't know what
would have happened. I'd been lecturing Amy, and
she was excessively cross. She can't bear the truth—or
any criticism. She's very silly!"
"She seemed gloomy," commented Claudia, with some
forbearance.
"Oh, she's worse. I couldn't tell you.... You
see—" Patricia seated herself, all fire to communicate
wisdom—"the poor thing is absolutely mad about herself.
She was told some time ago that she wasn't any
good as an artist. I admit it was heartless, and I don't
know who broke the news. I didn't tell her myself, because
I didn't know. I may as well admit—I did the
same to your brother, as anybody would have to do—that
I tried to like her pictures. They're very strange
pictures, and apparently everybody laughs at them. They
think she's ... well, no good at all. Well, somebody
told her. She was heart-broken. She saw it. She
really did see it. She was passionate, and crushed; but
she somehow realised that she wasn't any good. That
was a week ago. But now she's all changed. She
thinks it's a conspiracy. Belief in her own genius has
come back—twice it's strength!"
"Recoil!" suggested Claudia, elated.
"Something like that. And she's been behaving atrociously—to
a poor man who loves her. I admit that
he's an idiot; but still—even idiots have their rights,
you'd think! He isn't a lunatic. I don't mean that he's
really mad—only in relation to Amy. And it's bad for
her. It makes her feel a sort of horrible empty power—that
he's always there if she needs him. He's just a
dog-like creature, filled with devotion. I like him. He's
too good for her. But he's perfectly idiotic about Amy."
"I couldn't fall in love with that girl," said Claudia
distinctly. "I could try to like her; because she's your
friend. No more. I think she's probably an egoist; and
egoism's a bother."
Patricia was pulled up at this comment.
"There's a lot of good in her," she apologetically explained.
"I oughtn't to talk unkindly about her. And
I'm afraid I'm rather an egoist myself."
"The first thing you've got to do—if you'll try hard to
forgive me for saying such an awful impertinence—is
to move out of these rooms," said Claudia, with superficial
irrelevance.
Again Patricia received a shock. But she recovered
and smiled.
"I can't," she answered. "They're cheap." Then
her tone became more sober. "I've got no money at all.
In fact...." Her lips quivered.
"You couldn't have any money in these rooms," said
that distinct voice. "Move out of them. We'll get you
some money." Claudia spoke with assurance. Patricia
was dazzled.
"But how?" she asked. "I'm desperate for it."
"We'll ask Edgar."
"I couldn't. I think ... I think ... It seems absurd;
but I think perhaps I'm just a little afraid of him."
Claudia surveyed her newest friend with astonishment
and approval. Her emotion seemed to be almost one of
hopeful relief, which surprised Patricia a good deal.
Claudia proceeded.
"Oh, that's awfully good!" she cried. "I'm not afraid
of him; but I think it's nice of you to be. I'm pleased
at that. However, you needn't be afraid of him; because....
Well, what I really came for is to beg you
to come home with me for dinner. Could you? Mother
and father are having their annual wayzgoose, or beano.
It's the anniversary of their wedding. So Edgar and I
are dining alone. You needn't change your dress. I
shan't. Will you come? Do!"
The two girls had tea together at a café, and then
walked to the Maynes' house, arriving there before six
o'clock. Claudia then hastily telephoned to Edgar, leaving
Patricia for the necessary few moments to the entertainment
of Percy and Pulcinella. Patricia was once
again in that delicately cordial room of blue and blue-grey;
and the size of the room as well as the purity of
its simple comfort was a solace to her. There were very
few pictures in the room, and of these the largest was a
strong and beautiful landscape by a modern artist, C. J.
Holmes, which gave Patricia delight. All else was unaffected
and apparently unstudied. A bright fire burned
within the noble grate; and a big old clock ticked hollowly,
reminding her of the clock in a half-forgotten
poem, which said "Ever—Never—Never—Forever."...
The room was quite silent except for this ticking
and the occasional whispering collapses of fragments of
coal. There was an extraordinary peace in this house,
and a sense of open space in the sitting-room which was
enhanced by the cool tones of the furnishings. Patricia
sighed as she sat there alone. The little dog, Pulcinella,
a glossy black twisting creature, was exuberant and
friendly. Patricia could almost have believed that he
recognised her. Percy was more distant. He stared
with big steady eyes. But at last he, too, rising from
his place, stretched and yawned, and came slowly across
to her side. Here, instead of making any advance, he
merely sat with his feathery tail straight behind him on
the floor, while he contemplated the stranger in silence.
"Percy," said Patricia. "You're awfully proud."
He looked at her relentingly. Patricia slipped to her
knees beside him, and the little dog came frisking there
also. Percy turned a solemn head, in order to watch
the gambollings of Pulcinella, and again yawned. His
dignified coquetry was engaging. Then he rubbed his
head against Patricia's sleeve.
"I wish I had as little care as you," she whispered.
And as she sat there her face grew white. She sprang
up, transformed from white to red. Memory of the unknown
creature she had been on the previous night came
destructively to her mind. Her face hardened. "I
oughtn't to be here!" Patricia thought, as the conflict between
her memory and this pervading tranquillity sank
into her mind. "I'm wicked. I want to be wicked!
Claudia—why, Claudia wouldn't want to be my friend
at all if she knew all I think and do and want to do.
I'm an impostor. I'm not nice at all. I'm wicked." A
great stab of misery held her silent, still scarlet. She
even took pleasure in hurting herself, in thinking that
she was wicked.
While Patricia was yet stricken with the enormity of
her own guilty inclination, Claudia came back into the
room, and stood with that air of affection that made Patricia
soft towards her new and guileless and altogether
innocent friend. Claudia pulled a chair up to the fire, and
pointed to it.
"That boy will be here in no time," she gaily said.
"Boy? Oh, how strange to...." Patricia checked
herself. Almost vaguely, she went on: "I hope he's not
coming ... leaving his work."
"It'll do him good!" cried Claudia, unexpectedly.
"What he wants is.... No, Percy, you mustn't claw!"
This last was because Percy was resenting Patricia's neglect
and seeking to re-establish their relations. "What
Edgar wants is something to save him from work altogether.
Work's a great monster."
"I hate it!" acknowledged Patricia. "It's devil-begotten!"
"Edgar's work has made happiness for everybody in
this house. Without it, we should be nowhere. We
shouldn't exist. But Edgar's the one who gets least
out of his work. We're all Old Men of the Sea on his
shoulders. I've never thought of that before, by the
way. I suppose you didn't happen to think of it, by any
chance, and put it into my head?"
"Oh, no," said Patricia naïvely. "You see, I don't
... don't know Edgar very well."
Claudia gave her a quick side-long glance.
"He knows you pretty well, doesn't he?" she answered.
"But of course that's different."
That was the third shock Patricia had received that
afternoon from Claudia. She turned as if to answer;
but Claudia was moving across the room, and Patricia
was left to draw her own inference. The remark had
almost seemed to accuse her of injustice to Edgar. And
what beyond?
They had dined, and were back again in the tranquil
sitting-room, all cosily round the fire, with the lights soft
and the fire an enormous red glow. Patricia was very
subdued. She was happy and unhappy at the same time.
The contrast of this evening, and this quiet fireside, with
the previous evening's hot and tempting excitement, was
impressive; it shook her. She knew that this was in
some way better than the other; she felt herself yielding
to it upon the one hand as she had done upon the other to
passion; and as she knew and remembered, she became
confusedly restless. She wondered if the Maynes always
spent their evenings quietly, and in such blessed
and unendurable tranquillity.
"I couldn't bear to," she thought, with the tears starting
into her eyes. "I'm wicked. I must have excitement.
I couldn't stand it. I should scream, and make
a dash—like Amy running for the train!"
But as if Claudia had guessed what were Patricia's
thoughts, she said:
"This is the first evening Edgar and I have both been
at home for about six weeks—seven weeks—except that
night when you came to dinner." Patricia sighed wearily,
her eyes closing in despair at the sense of guilt which
oppressed her. There was a moment's silence. In the
middle of it, Claudia rose. "Oh, by the way, Edgar.
Patricia's hard up. She wants to ask your advice. I
promised you'd help her."
"No, no. I don't ..." began Patricia, and looked
round for support. But Claudia was no longer in the
room. The door was closed. She was alone with Edgar,
as one imprisoned; and everything Edgar stood for
in her mind was hostile to passion and folly and hot-mouthed
temptation.
She could not bring herself to meet his glance. She
could look no higher than the shoulders of his dark grey
tweed suit. His small and well-shaped feet were opposite
her own. He lay back in a chair which was the
counterpart of the one in which Patricia sat. Edgar, the
maker of this home, who breathed restraint and clear
understanding and ridicule of emotional recklessness.
She was ashamed and tongue-tied. But one grey tweed
suit is very like another, and when Edgar spoke she
could not help quickly glancing up, with resentment of
his unsusceptibility to the charm which she knew herself
to be capable of exercising. He was very brown, and
his brown eyes were very honest, and his lips were very
clearly and pleasantly moulded, as though he smiled
easily. He was smiling now.
"I expect you'd better, hadn't you?" he asked, with
perfect gravity and good-humour.
There came into Patricia's heart a trust which was
rare, and an irresistible call to candour. It annihilated
her resentment, her hostile clinging to the memory of
Monty and the fever in her blood which he represented.
"I didn't mean to ask your advice," she said, looking
straight at Edgar. "You couldn't advise me. You
couldn't understand how I'm placed."
"Of course I couldn't," agreed Edgar. "Unless you'd
tell me. Of course, you could do that."
"Are you laughing at me?" demanded Patricia, with
sharp anger. Then, the question unsolved, she went on.
"It's quite true. I'm coming to the end of my money;
and I don't know what to do. I'm not making any money
just now: only spending it. And I ought to work."
"What sort of work?" asked Edgar. "What can you
do?"
The colour filled Patricia's cheeks. She was again
ashamed before him, with the same feeling of shackled
personality.
"I'm afraid, nothing," she said, speaking at first with
a sort of dry impertinence, and afterwards with rather
wistful humility. "Nothing that you would regard as
anything. I've been writing. I want to write. I think
I've got talent. But ... I'm only a beginner. You
see, I was in an office during the War; and I had a little
money when my uncle died; and I've sold a few of the
things I've written."
"What d'you mean by nothing that I should regard as
anything?" inquired Edgar. Patricia remained silent,
the colour slowly rising, and her heart frozen. She could
not withstand his personality, but she was fighting against
its approach to herself. "You want to keep on the life
of a woman of leisure!" he proceeded, smiling again.
He changed his attitude, sitting more upright in his chair.
"It's awfully hard to go back to drudgery."
Patricia's heart leapt—at the thought, and at his affectionate
kindness.
"I simply couldn't," she cried breathlessly.
"I'm sure you could. You could do anything you
chose." There came from those steady eyes a look that
was full of encouragement, of sympathy. To Edgar
there was no question. He trusted her. It was he who
evoked her quality. Patricia found herself agitated in
self-abhorrence.
"O-oh!" she cried, in pain. "If you knew...." The
painful colour again flooded her cheeks.
"Suppose you tell me," begged Edgar.
"No." Patricia stared into the fire, her hands clasped
upon the arm of her chair. She was driven to defiance
that shocked herself. "I couldn't. And you couldn't
understand. There are all sorts of things in my nature
that you couldn't understand. You ... you've got a
cold will. You don't shrink and waver. You're not
impulsive and ...."
Edgar rose from his chair, his hands in his pockets.
He stood looking away from Patricia, as if in deep
thought. At last he said:
"Do you resent my will, that you call it cold? Why
should you do that? It's unjust. I've no wish but to
help you. As a matter of fact, I haven't a cold will.
I'm obstinate; and I shrink and waver. But I don't
shrink and waver once I've made up my mind. I made
up my mind some time ago that I loved you and wanted
to marry you, and to help you; and so there's no more
hesitation about that."
Patricia was astounded. She turned sharply, her lips
parted in amazement. He was in earnest. His words
made her heart race. Then anger came—and again
shame—and an emotion which she did not analyse.
"Marry? When.... Don't be ridiculous!" cried
Patricia.
Edgar looked down at her, apparently as grave and
unmoved as before, although his voice was changed.
"Why not?" he asked. "I'm in love with you. Will
you marry me?"
Patricia laughed, almost savagely. She was deeply
moved, and her present emotion, in conflict with all she
had been feeling so recently, made her voice loud and
angry, as if she were afraid.
"Love me ... I don't feel that you love me," she
said with bitterness. "Something quite different. I
feel that you're interested in me——"
"Well, I should hope so!" cried Edgar, apparently
amazed. "Isn't that essential?"
"And I don't love you," said Patricia, vehemently. "I
don't!" She was still emphatically protesting. "I respect
you. I think you're ... I think you're everything
that's kind and ... inhuman." She was trying
to remain calm, to equal his restraint with her own; and
she was failing. The failure gave her a passionate sense
of inferiority to him that was intolerable. Suddenly
she began to cry, her hands outstretched helplessly before
her. "It's no good.... It's no good!" she sobbed
through her tears, her little face distorted with the torment
of her heart. "I'm ... an awful ... beast!"
Edgar took the outstretched hands in his own, dropping
to one knee in order to do so. He was so gentle, so extraordinarily
inviting of trust and sincerity and goodness,
that Patricia's head came forward for the merest instant,
and touched his shoulder, as if there to find relief
from her own suffering.
"Do think of it," he urged, his face so near her own,
so comprehending, so full of love. "Patricia ...."
She rose in anguish, beating her hands together.
"You think it's so simple. You think it's a question
of talking and persuading. You don't know what love
is," she said, in this violent, strangled voice. And then,
as if indignantly, she added: "Nor do I! Nor do I!
I couldn't. I don't know how to love. I'm too much
of a beast. I'm too selfish and ugly-hearted! And if
you knew anything about my nature you wouldn't want
to love me. You'd hate me." And with that she began
to dry her eyes, staring away from him, and trembling.
"You're so silly to talk of being wicked," Edgar said.
"How are you wicked?" A very faint tinge of humour
came into his voice at her persistent remorse. "What's
your particular form of wickedness? Don't be so vague,
my dear. You'd enjoy it more if you were thoroughly
wicked. Let me help you not to be wicked!"
Patricia made no answer. When he repeated her
name she ignored him. In a minute, as if she were trying
to be conversational, she went on, still in a dreary,
hopeless tone:
"Isn't it funny. I've been coming across ... all
sorts of people's ideas of love ... lately—both girls and
men;—and they're all of them different. They're none of
them ... mine. And I must have my way of love!"
Edgar was also upon his feet, facing her.
"What is your way of love?" he asked. "It's my way,
too. The others aren't love. They're phantasms."
But Patricia would not speak. Only a little tearful smile,
as at some baffling secret knowledge which he could never
share, played upon her lips and in her eyes. The smile,
as well as her silence, provoked his complaint. "There's
a sort of sublime cheek about you," said Edgar, wonderingly,
"that isn't likely to be equalled. I asked you to
marry me. You ramble on about other people's ideas of
love. The ideas of other people don't interest me."
"Exactly!" cried Patricia, thrown back into anger and
shame and resistance. "That's exactly why nobody
could ever possibly love you. You're only interested in
your own ideas."
"They're not enough, my dear. I want your love."
"I could never love you," said Patricia, trying to speak
coolly, and remaining unconvincing in her childish emphasis.
"I could never love anybody so ... so bitterly
inhuman!"
"Well, won't you try?" he urged, puzzled at her quarrelsomeness
and unable to reconcile it with the indifference
he had feared. "You like me, don't you?"
Patricia shook her head, unexpectedly.
"No!" she cried. "I don't like you. I hate you. I
shall always hate you. You make me feel such a cad!"
And with that she left him, going in search of Claudia.
Edgar, his heart beating, and his temper ruffled, remained
standing as he had stood during the latter part of their
interview. He did not see her again that night. She
had left the house by the time Claudia returned to the
room, and brother and sister averted their eyes from each
other at their first encounter.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: PLAYING WITH FIRE — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii
Patricia made some important discoveries about
herself within the next twelve hours. She was sleepless,
and her brain was active. She found that all love-stories
were entirely wrong, that they were too simple
and too prudish. They did not represent her own feelings
at all. And the more she tried to discover what
her own feelings were, the more bewildered she became.
Like so many other matters connected with herself, as to
which she had no standards of comparison, her feelings
seemed to Patricia to be unique. She was both ashamed
and exultant at this.
At first she was too frantically troubled at the position
in which she found herself to be anything but exclamatory.
Within an amazingly short time she had allowed
three men to make love to her, if with certain restrictions;
and her sense of purity was horrified at this. There immediately
followed, by reaction, some vehement attempts
to justify her own conduct. But when she had been
hysterical for a little while Patricia became calmer. The
calm was even more false than the hysteria. It was in
fact a feature of advanced hysteria. She was not equal
to the strain which the events of the last few days had
created.
"I don't love any of them," she said. "I'm too selfish—too
wicked. I don't deserve to be loved. And I'm
not loved, either. I wanted Harry to adore me. He
couldn't! I want Monty ... he fascinates me. He
excites me. I like it, and hate myself for liking it.
He's passionate; he's sensual. And I'm passionate; I'm
sensual. It's the wicked side of me coming out. And
I only want Edgar to respect me. Respect!" She gave
a hollow little mocking laugh. "He doesn't know me.
He doesn't care for me. He couldn't adore me, because
he despises me. He couldn't be passionate about me, because
he's too cold. He's cold, I tell you. He doesn't
know what it is to want somebody fiercely. I've got no
power over him at all. And I must have power! I
must!"
Her mind went creeping back to Edgar, with a sort of
raging contempt.
"He thinks love's an endless conversation. He thinks
it's like paying another person's daily cheque into your
own account, and being able to draw cheques to the same
amount. It's a transaction. It isn't. There's no romance
in him. He's business. He'd engage me as a
wife as he'd engage a secretary. 'Good post.' A considerate
employer! Everything in the day's round—breakfast,
love, business ... I hate him! I could never
move his judgment. He'd be kind; but he'd never really
give in to me. Besides, I don't want to be just a part
of a man's life. I wouldn't. I must be the whole of it.
I'm too big to be a part of anything. The man I marry
must adore me....
"It's strange. I could—I couldn't ever feel any shyness
or pride with Edgar. I could tell him anything that
came into my head.... No, I couldn't. He's intelligent;
but he's amused at me. He doesn't take me seriously.
That's his limitation. He thinks I'm a funny
little insect. If I told him I was wonderful, he'd say,
'In what way?' Fancy trying to live with a man who
asks what your ideas of love are! No, he wouldn't....
He'd say, quite calmly: 'Yes, I suppose you are. We
all are, in our way.' He does everything with his head.
He hasn't got a heart! He'd think me silly and vain
and....
"Of course, if I was worn out—a poor, broken dispirited
girl who just wanted a home, and food, and if I
fitted in with his work, then it would be different. I'm
not! I'm young! I want love and life, and other young
people ... and admiration. I want power. And I
want to be loved for my beauty ... as Monty loves me.
I want to be desired, as Monty desires me. Edgar
couldn't feel for me in that way.... He only cares for
himself.... For me, perhaps, in a funny way. But
only as something secondary to himself.
"I could go on living with Edgar all my life....
"I couldn't live with him at all. I could have lived
with Harry, because ... Harry's stupid. He's obtuse.
But he's charming. Edgar's not charming. He doesn't
want to be. He could be, if he wanted to be. He only
wants to be quite honest, quite fair.... My God!
Fancy wanting to be quite fair in love!
"Why is it that I attract these men?" She laughed
again, murmuring. She was diverted at her own scorn
of her three lovers. Had life nothing better to offer her
than a choice between charm and desire and cool affection?
It seemed not. And yet on the whole, they were
personable. Harry and Monty were handsome. Edgar,
if not handsome, was not fantastically ill-looking. He
had a good plain clean-cut face, and his hair and eyes
and teeth were good. Oh, she admitted that! But she
was thinking of them, not as men whom one might
notice or fail to notice in the street, but as possible husbands....
Not only as husbands; but as husbands for Patricia
Quin!
These thoughts represented her arrogance. There
remained her modesty. It did not apply in the case
of Harry, because Harry lay, as it were, in the past.
And he had not wanted to marry her. Did Monty?
Patricia's thought of that was a wild blur. But the
secret of her feeling of resentment towards Edgar suddenly
emerged once more in the modest mood which now
came. She had been able to charm Harry: she both attracted
and excited Monty: she did not know what could
attract Edgar to herself, since she felt she did not charm
him at all. How charm the basilisk? If she tried to
charm him he would think her farouche.
"He likes the truth. He'd soon find out that there's
nothing in me at all. I'm only a shallow, pleasure-loving
girl, who's caught his eye because she's pretty and young.
That's nothing. Fifty thousand girls would do as much.
He'd find me out. There's nothing in me. There's only
vanity and ... and wickedness. He wouldn't like
that. He'd be displeased with me for not being wise
and good ... and sensible....
"He's kind. I trust him....
"What on earth am I talking like this for? Anybody
would think I wanted to persuade myself to marry him.
I don't. I don't love him; and never could love him;
and I'll never marry him. He'd bore me. Besides, it's
ridiculous. It's not as though I'd asked him to want me.
I'm not a beggar—yet. And he doesn't really want to
marry me at all. He couldn't care for me.
"I'm inferior to him. I have thoughts and feelings
he wouldn't like. I'm full of ugliness and selfishness and
wickedness.
"I'm no good. I'm no good to anybody. I'm horrible.
"Not really quite horrible. I'm only a ... you see,
I'm ... I am nice. I am good!
"No, I'm no good. I'm no good to anybody...."
There was a long tormented pause. Very low, with a
sudden flush of blood to the cheeks, in an almost vicious
despair:
"Except Monty...."
There was a letter from Monty lying beside her plate
upon the breakfast-table. It said:
"Dear Patricia: Come to dinner—here—to-morrow
night ('To-night' when you get this). We'll dine and
talk, and perhaps go and dance somewhere. Monty."
"Here" was his own house in South Hampstead. Patricia
read the note as a command, and her brows were
raised. Then she re-read it as an appeal. Her heart
began to beat a little faster. For the first time she was
repelled by the warning sense of danger. It was in a
mood entirely reckless that she threw the letter aside,
determined to go. The hardness was again in her eyes.
It was as though she had snapped her fingers at Edgar;
but her heart was heavy, and the curve of her lips was
that of shame and defiance.
Monty sat in the studio waiting for his visitor. Those
hangings which had supplied such barbaric decoration
upon the night of the September party had been replaced.
The whole studio was filled with colour, blazing from
wall to wall. And Monty sat in sombre Napoleonic
gloom amid the marvels of his invention. His face gave
no sign of the slow and melancholy thoughts which were
passing steadily, processionally, before his concentrated
attention. Monty never hurried. He always saw his
way clear before taking any step. He had a slow, fatalistic
patience which was almost always rewarded.
For weeks now Monty had thought that Patricia Quin
was desirable. He had seen her first at his own party
in September, and since then upon many occasions. He
had looked at her at first, speculating, with the cool observation
of a connoisseur. There was much grace,
much wilfulness: her movements were delightful, and
the play of her light emotions full of singular interest.
For a little while Monty had wondered how innocent she
really might be; for he appreciated freshness as much
as any traditional roué could have done, and he disliked
what was callow. His experience of women also made
him suspicious of the assumption of purity in such young
women as interested him. One of Monty's precepts had
been "You cannot shock a woman." It revealed in him
a standpoint already fixed.
As he had seen Patricia his interest in her had grown.
She amused him by her confidence, her ignorance; she
was fresh, and she had spirit. Moreover, when he
thought of her, Monty had the air of one grimly smiling.
Spirit in a young girl entertained him: it could be played
with, and tormented. With its positive effects upon those
less sophisticated than himself he had no concern. For
Monty it had no positive effects, since he was entirely
impervious to the behavior of others where his own determination
was engaged. Such a spirit would be amusing
to break. Nothing more. Even as he thought that,
Monty had an increased stolidity of air. But his interest
was not only in her spirit, which was probably the
mark of unstable will. Patricia seemed to him in every
way delectable. She was unspoilt; she was to be won
by flattery; she was to be kept by insolence.
Nevertheless, Monty did not under-rate the address
which might be required in winning Patricia. He had
dealt previously with young women who were without
experience of love. He foresaw that Patricia would be
shy as a doe, ready at a single alarming move to fly.
She could be flattered, interested, cajoled, by way of her
vanity; but not yet was the moment to be ruthless. That,
perhaps, was a part of the game. Patricia could be
roused, indulged, enjoyed, slowly punished. At least
she must be handled with finesse. Monty calculated his
finesse.
A point which alarmed him was that his own interest
had grown beyond what he had at first imagined that it
would be. He had not been, at any time, wholly cold-blooded
in his design. That was not the whole of
Monty's nature. He had a slow, rising passion; and it
was this which determined his actions in all matters of
sex. But he had been surprised to find, especially at
their last two meetings, that Patricia's innocence, and her
virgin coldness, had moved him to an unexpected degree
of desire. Only by the greatest self-control had he refrained
from alarming her.
Monty appeared to sleep as he sat in his chair in that
barbarically-decorated room with the glass roof. A look
of heaviness spread across his face. Slowly his head
fell back among the cushions. He was intently listening,
and his eyes were closed.
Monty had been right. The noise he had heard had
been that made by the bell. An instant later the studio
door opened and Patricia appeared, demure, even roguish,
but pale and, as he immediately saw, in a state of
over-strained nerves which signalled caution. She was
alarmed by the sense of danger, in no mood of submission,
but as timid as a wild bird. So much was clear
even from her glance round the empty studio, the involuntary
sway of recoil which marked her realisation
of its emptiness.
"Hullo!" cried Patricia, in greeting. "Am I the first?"
"You're the most welcome," Monty assured her.
"Come and sit down. What a cold hand! Is it so very
cold out?"
"Freezing," Patricia assured him. "And it's a horrid
journey, you know."
"How stupid of me!" murmured Monty. "Yes, that's
very stupid. I'm so sorry. It's unpardonable of me."
"Never mind. It's really quite all right. Who else
is coming?" she asked, eagerly. "Not that I need anybody
else, of course." The quick addition was a conscious
attempt to placate him, the result of an effort to
seem more experienced than in fact she was. It did not
deceive Monty.
"That's so kind," he answered. "To dinner—nobody.
I thought you wouldn't mind just ourselves. But afterwards
there are several people—Felix, and ... oh, I
forget. Rudge and Cynthia Blent and Mackinnon and
Timothy Webster. Several more. But they won't be
here till good and late."
Patricia nodded. Monty had not failed to observe
her relief. He felt he had been wise in thus departing
from his original intention, and preparing an after-dinner
party. His letter had suggested another pastime,
as they both knew. Neither commented. It might have
been, he thought, a trivial piece of policy; in reality, as
Monty instantly saw, it had saved the day. He was perfectly
well-aware that otherwise Patricia would have been
on edge for the evening.
"Very fortunate," he thought definitely. "Something's
been happening to her. Look at the eyes, the
pupils ... hands.... Drawn lips. Not only fear of
me. ... Strange. What can it be? It's Greenlees, I
suppose; but what? Is she deeper, or stupidly excitable?"
"Dinner is served, sir," said Jacobs, from the doorway.
"Come along!" Monty caught Patricia's arm with
an attempted air of gaiety. It was essential him that he
should touch her. At that moment his impulse was savagely
to embrace her, to force her body against his own,
to hold her to him while he kissed ravenously her neck
and cheeks and shoulders.
Patricia started at the touch, and there was a warning
degree of resistance in her slightly rigid arm.
"I'm so glad you've got the hangings up again in the
studio," she said, with attempted ease as they entered the
dining-room thus linked and apart. "They make it like
a necromancer's consulting room."
"And supposing myself to be the necromancer," said
Monty, across the table, "how would you wish to consult
me?"'
Patricia unfolded her napkin before answering, and
looked round the dining room. The ceiling and walls
were dim, because the room was lighted only by half-a-dozen
candles set upon the table. The table itself had
been made as small as possible, a perfect circle, and was
not covered with a cloth. The candles within their decorated
orange shades gave a mellow glow. She could
see directly across the table to Monty, hardly three feet
away, and soup was served the instant she was seated.
Jacobs, having served the soup, retired from the room to
await a summons.
"I should wish to consult you ... oh, upon a great
number of things," evasively answered Patricia.
"As for instance?"
She smiled, looking quickly round, as if with a sinking
heart.
"I don't strictly know what a necromancer is; but
supposing him to be a seer of the future, I should like
to know ... I should like to know...." Again Patricia
hesitated. Hastily she improvised a substitute for
the real problem in her mind. "Do you believe in anything
at all?" she asked.
It was strange how tones, however low, were audible
in that room. She could hear Monty's rich, caressing,
magnetic voice, so soothingly quiet, as if it came from
beside her.
"What would you like me to believe in?" he begged.
"In Progress, or Faith, or the future of England and the
Arts? In Beauty and Goodness? In yourself?"
"In honesty, for example. In truth."
"My dear Patricia, you shock me," protested Monty.
"I have the greatest respect for truth, and of course for
honesty."
"Have you any familiarity with either?" She could
see that he would not talk seriously; and she presently
was glad that he would not do so. She had wanted answers
to other questions, and not to those she had put.
The other questions it would have been impossible to ask.
"Patricia, I find that truth and honesty are supposed
to be dull—so commonplace as to shock even those who
seem to be unable to invent any satisfactory substitutes.
'Let us,' says the life-weary dweller in this district, 'let us
read something and see something at the theatre which
will take us away from the sordid truth of every-day
life.' And yet, I have never seen truth. I believe I
shouldn't know it if I saw it. 'What is truth?' asked
jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. He
might have waited until the last trump. As for honesty,
it's an appanage of truth, another romantic illusion. If
you had asked me if I believed in Beauty, or Goodness,
or in yourself, I should have said that the terms were indistinguishable."
"That would have been ample answer to my question
about honesty," said Patricia. "I don't think I shall ask
more questions of the necromancer. He seems to me
rather specious." Nevertheless, Monty's elaborate reply
to her false question had increased her composure. She
was almost at ease, but still there was something to Monty
not quite comprehensible in her ever so faintly agitated
manner. "Won't you ... won't you tell me something
about Carthage, please, or Egypt, or the Desert...."
she asked.
"The desert," said Monty, musingly. "Yes, the
desert...."
He described to the wondering Patricia the Nile as he
had seen it, and how it takes its rise in the mountains,
and how at first the river is red and then green because
of the flood of the Blue Nile, and how the flood of the
White Nile comes later, so that the banks are covered
and the surrounding country is inundated with rich fertilising
mud. He described the desert, and repeated that
short poem of Shelley's about the King Ozymandias.
He told her of the sounds and colours of the East, of all
those things which as a traveller he had seen and
experienced. He pictured the crowds of the Bazaar, the
contrasts, always keeping to familiar things of which
she might have read, for the sake of reawakening past
imagination and past emotion, which would be so potent
in colouring her present mood. And all the time he was
speaking in that slow magic-creating voice of sweetness.
Monty's eyes never once left Patricia, but continued to
absorb her fairness and her purity, as though he could
never cease from desiring her more than anything upon
earth or beyond life itself.
So given were they both to this scene that the food
before them was eaten mechanically, and the wine they
drank insensibly was making them more intimate and
more at the mercy of the hour; and Patricia hardly knew
that she was eating and drinking, so much was she in a
dream. And in the dream she was haunted by the sense
that she would awaken, that fierce, cruel birds of prey
were tearing her heart, that never again would she
know tranquillity or ease of spirit. And Monty was
watching her still, with eyes that yielded nothing and took
everything, while he sought only to maintain the power
which he was achieving by the effect of his story upon
her imagination. To Monty all the marvel of which
he spoke was familiar. He was unmoved by it. Patricia's
beauty, and that alone, was the cause of his unrelaxing
attentiveness, the creeping white heat of his feeling,
which grew each moment more fierce, more concentrated,
more difficult to keep within his own power. He
was moved so vehemently that his eyes were glowing.
Into his face had stolen that look of greedy sensual heaviness
which his passion created. His voice was lower,
and the softness had given place to a dryer tone, still
caressing, still full of unknown music, but deeper and
less smooth. His lips were apart, showing his white
teeth. His hands upon the table were rigid.
And something made Patricia look suddenly at Monty,
when his expression was unguarded; and she had this
clear understanding of his nature and his attitude to herself.
Again she had the sensation which had come to
her at night after they had parted; of blood which rose
to her cheeks and shoulders, which in its recession made
her body burn. It was with fear, a fear which made a
shrill cry of protest, of agony, difficult to repress, that
she slightly shrank. The colour faded from her cheeks.
It was succeeded by deadly pallor, and a trembling such
as she could never previously have known.
After the dinner was finished, they went back to the
studio for coffee; but the picture of the East was forgotten,
and to both of them it was the moment alone that
was the secret preoccupation. Patricia sat upon a low
seat near the fire, and smoked a cigarette; and they spoke
of other things without conviction, and without more
than a pretence of interest or intimacy. And when Monty
would again have engaged her with pictures of travel she
was steadfast in refusal to yield herself. There was a
chasm between them. He could see that she had taken
fright. He was once more adroitly soothing—talked
of the furnishings of his studio, and, indicating each,
said how he had acquired it, and with what pure cunning—talked
not very light-hearted nonsense about the people
who were coming later in the evening—talked of pictures
and music, of mountains and lakes and seas—everything
to reassure her and restore her ease. But all the time
Patricia could remember that glow in his eyes to which
she had awakened at the table; and she shrank back, uncontrollably,
filled with vehement dread, shocked with
the sense of these impenetrable hangings, the dreadful
silence beyond the closed door.
And Monty could not continue to control himself with
the same coolness. With every effort to maintain the
earlier calm, he was driven by urgent necessity to approach
her more nearly. Still he did not touch her; but
his manifestly exercised restraint was betrayed in every
tone. The colours of those barbaric curtains and chairs
began for Patricia to merge and swim together. And
Monty was no longer a man; he became some diabolical
and terrifying figure, dark, sinister, grotesque. She was
afraid—not now of herself, as she had been, but solely
of him. She was cooler now, but watchful, still half-fascinated,
but as one on edge in face of danger. Monty
was laughing and speaking of the dancing which they
had amusedly noticed at their last visit to Topping's; of
Jacky Dean; of the crowd; of other clubs. He imitated
Jacky's devoted, colourless style, which moved him to
great mirth, prolonged until it began to jar. And at last
he said:
"Have you seen the new steps? Look...." As he
spoke, he began dancing alone in the middle of the brilliant
studio, a black figure of grace, his head turned from
her so that she should not see the colour of his cheeks and
the ferocity of his eyes; while Patricia watched the movement
of his feet and the poise of his body. "See? Ta-ta-tum-ta.... Two
steps ... it's a variation of the
Tango, of course, very much simplified; but it's rather
deceptive. Try it...."
He approached her, his hands outstretched. With a
heart of water, Patricia rose, half-protesting. Their
hands met, their heads were level. And as Monty held
her so he increased and strengthened his hold until with
suddenly uncontrollable passion he was savagely pressing
her to him and with fury advancing his face so that he
might command her lips. His whole body was rigid.
The muscles of his arms were like iron to her tender
flesh. Patricia did not scream. She could not have
done so. Both were desperately silent except for their
heavy breathing. She withdrew her head to the greatest
distance that Monty's cruel hold allowed, until she was
suffocating. One hand was tightly pressed to Monty's
side between his body and her own, and was useless.
The other remained. With all her hysterical strength
she used it to push away that dark, insistent face. Patricia's
strength at the moment of stress was so abnormal
that, suddenly exerted so very little more, it might have
been sufficient to dislocate his neck. It was for an instant
only. They were struggling no more. Monty released
her, and they drew apart, panting. Red marks
were beneath Monty's chin. Patricia felt bruised, as she
might have done if she had been severely beaten with a
stick. She was shuddering.
"I'm sorry, Patricia," Monty said, harshly. "I beg
your pardon. It was too much for me." The two of
them turned away from each other, Monty breathing
rapidly, Patricia still almost stifled. "Did I hurt you?
Poor child! I was brutal. I'm sorry...."
With her heart seeming to beat in her throat, Patricia
nodded slowly.
"My fault," she said, indistinctly. "I ought...."
Both, if it had not been for breathlessness and dishevelment,
were treating the situation with strange coolness,
as if all heat had evaporated from it. Patricia had no
fear. She knew that the embrace could not be repeated.
It was as though the fire which had burned in Monty
had been extinguished. He stood before her, recovering
his normal address, the heaviness gone from his face,
and the fury from his eyes. Already he was slipping
back into that slow thick courtesy of manner which had
been so attractive. Quite soon he would be debonair,
perfectly at ease. And she herself, incapable of thought,
and in a state of physical agitation though she was, became
apparently composed. But even as Patricia felt
this, she was overcome by deadly sickness. Her pallor
was increased. She groped her way to the fireplace,
resting her head against the cool mantelpiece in an effort
to recover. And as she stood thus, only half-conscious,
there came a sound which made Monty start. He gave
an exclamation, and turned quickly. At first his hands
went to his neck, instinctively to the spot where he might
bear marks of the struggle. Then, from a sharp glance,
with similar intent, at Patricia, he discovered her fainting
condition.
"Good God, you're ill!" he cried. "That's the bell.
They'll be coming now. Drink this. For God's sake
don't let them see...."
As he spoke he moved quickly across the studio to a
cupboard, from which he produced and brought to her
side a decanter and glass. Again Patricia nodded, taking
the glass from his hand, and sitting once more upon her
low chair, and drinking the brandy. It made her cough.
In the midst of her coughing the studio door opened and
a merry group of newcomers, all peeping and laughing,
appeared without.
They gave universal shouts of greeting, and proclaimed
envy of anybody caught with a brandy-glass in
her hand, and made general uproar. And in doing so the
crowd pushed its way into the studio and its members
scattered.
"Hul-lo!" they jovially cried. "Caught you, Patricia!
Leading an inebriate's life, I see.... Greedy! Oh!"
Patricia, laughing, waved the glass in acknowledgment;
but it was poor laughter, and was fortunately unheard
amid the louder noises of the careless people who
had brought their own gaiety.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE VISITOR — i — ii — iii — iv — v
The noise which the others made, as fresh arrivals
increased their numbers, enabled Monty to return
to Patricia's side. She could see a whiteness even in
Monty's cheeks when he was quite close to her, and her
aversion to him died. Quickly her heart told her that
he too was suffering.
"How are you feeling? Would you care to lie down?
Shall I get you a taxi? I can't get rid of these people
yet. If you'll lie down, I'll take you home later."
"I'll go soon," she whispered back, touched by his
subdued tone. "Don't worry. I'm all right. I'm better.
I'll go presently, when I feel able. I'll just slip
out."
"I'm so sorry," he repeated. "Look here, I must see
you before you go."
At that her nerves again raised protest. A deep shudder
shook her.
"I'd rather not," she said, in the same low voice. "I
couldn't stand any more ... excitement to-night."
"I must see you," he said. "You mustn't go without
giving me five minutes."
And at that moment there was a loud call for him
from the other end of the studio, and Monty left Patricia.
She continued to sit quite still, while the brandy began
slowly to have its effect. The blood stole back to her
cheeks. She looked at her little hands, which lay together,
clenched, in her lap, and slowly unclenched them,
so that the knuckles were no longer white. The nails had
left two or three pink marks in her palms, which gradually
disappeared. The shuddering left her body, which
was now quite inert. A dreadful sensation of staleness
pervaded Patricia. Her head ached. Quietly, and as
if by accident, Monty was near her again. He poured
a little more brandy into her glass.
"Patricia's not very grand," she heard him whisper to
another man. "See that she drinks this, will you?"
The other man, a stranger, drew up his chair, and sat
near her, talking in a low voice while she drank the
brandy. She could not understand what he said, but
his voice was grateful. She smiled her thanks at him,
and her attention wandered away to the groups in other
parts of the studio, so loud, so closely resembling in appearance
the groups which had been present on the occasion
of her first visit to this studio.
So much had happened since that evening that she
realised how changed she now was. It seemed to Patricia
that she must have been a child then. She felt very
old now, as if she were looking back, an old woman, upon
days of happy ignorance. The noise did not echo sweetly
in her ears as it had done. This was no longer an enchanted
meeting-place for those who were wise and wonderful
and superior to the rest of all human beings. She
had seen so much, and felt so much, since she had first
known them that the staleness which had come upon her
this evening was diffused among the visitors. She felt
them to be also stale, curious automata chattering to hide
their emptiness and unhappiness, as she too might now
chatter to combat the knowledge that she was weary and
unable any longer to experience simple things with her
old fresh delight.
A sigh shook Patricia. The feeling of sickness remained
with her. And this stranger who tried vainly to
distract her attention with idle speeches about things she
did not understand and did not want to understand was
no other than the rest. She could see his long hair and
hear his thin light voice; and she was stirred by a contempt
for all that these groups represented. But her
contempt no longer arose from a sense that she was superior
to the groups. For the first time she was sick at
heart as well as in mind and body. She made no attempt
to listen. She only felt tired and filled with distaste and
the longing for quietude and sincerity. The crowd became
vague. At first Patricia thought that she was again
in danger of fainting; but she was immediately better,
and able at last to hear what the man said. He was
talking about the theatre, and was describing a play he
had seen.
"Perfectly ghastly...." he was saying. "And all
these suburbans were enjoying it with all their ears. A
silly little fool of a girl, supposed to be extraordinarily
charming; and saying and doing the most incredible
things...."
Patricia could never have understood that it was her
state of mind alone which made these people distasteful
to her. Any other crowd would have seemed equally
empty and unprofitable. But she was sitting amid the
noise sobered by her late excitement; and her reactions
were so rapid that she was misconstruing a mood as a
revelation. As she had hitherto over-valued herself, and
then, by the mere plunge of her neuroticism, had undervalued
every quality she had, she now felt aghast at the
results of her own unreasoning wilfulness. She saw
herself as a feather, tossed by every wind of inclination,
veering, flying, without will. She was deeply shocked.
She thought of Harry; of Monty; of Edgar; and she
was ashamed. There was no indignation towards Monty;
only acid shame. She had been fascinated, tempted; she
had been flattered and excited; and her vanity had betrayed
her. When the reality had come she had awakened
to the understanding that this fascinating sport
with fire was a horror to her. She, who had thought
herself so clever, and so experienced, was appalled at the
very thing which she had supposed so fascinating. She
felt like the little boy who coveted one of those big glass
jars full of coloured liquid which still stand in the windows
of small pharmacies; and who, when the water had
been emptied, found himself possessed of a jar without
beauty. Nothing could have been more bitter than the
realisation that she was a fool who had not even the courage
to pursue her folly to its end.
Patricia had played with the idea of love for Harry;
and it had been shown to be empty. She hardly thought
of him. Lightly, she had fallen in love with love. And
then, tempted, she had enjoyed her sense of power over
Monty. She had responded to him, encouraged him;
and the result had been this evening's ignominious struggle.
The bruises she had received had been not only
those of the body; they had been bruises of her self-esteem,
of the immaculate legend of Patricia Quin.
Subdued, miserable, she accepted her mortification.
"I've had my lesson!" she thought. And then, with
a rising of that fear which she had thought to allay by
means of excitement, she exclaimed: "But what in the
world am I to do?"
It was to Patricia an appalling moment of realisation.
She fell into a kind of stupor, a dream in which all things
appeared to her in a clear light of understanding, in
which facts which hitherto she had not truly perceived
were made apparent. She was not asleep, but she was so
absorbed in contemplation that all noise made an undersong
to her reverie.
"I've been too clever," she thought. "I shall always
be too clever for myself, too big for my boots. All my
life. I shall go on and on, thinking myself so marvellous,
until I come up against ... what? How am I
marvellous at all? What have I ever done that I should
consider myself marvellous? Nothing!" It was a terrible
confession. If she had been alone she must have
screamed. But she was not alone. She was in this
wildly-coloured room, where each thing had been brought
and placed by some inner certainty of judgment on
Monty's part, until the whole room was a sort of picture
of his mind; and there were others laughing and talking
within a few yards of her. And as Patricia remembered
that this piece of stuff had been brought from that place,
and this other given by some friend, and a lacquered
chest discovered in a small shop in Dublin, and a bronze
figure ... she could not prevent herself from thinking
that Monty was much more wonderful than she would
ever be, much more wonderful, perhaps, than she had
ever imagined. She saw him among his guests, ever
and anon glancing to make sure that she was still there,
that she was better; and Patricia knew that in culture
and acquaintance with all beautiful and sophisticated
things he had wisdom that she would never attain. This
whole house was filled with his personality, filled with
his taste and his knowledge, his love of rare things and
those that were rich in colour and florid in design. His
interests were innumerable. He could talk of all the arts
as only one who was a connoisseur in each could talk.
His sensitiveness to these arts, so coolly displayed, was
due not only to spontaneous outgoing to whatever was
sightly but to the gift which enabled him to appraise its
quality, and that degree of precision to the artist's concept
to which a work of art owes its singularity and therefore
its permanence. He was not a child, exclaiming at
a toy: he was the product of a civilisation, of many civilisations.
His merest words were charged with references
and associations of which Patricia must for ever
remain ignorant. And with all this knowledge, all this
culture, Monty was at bottom the crude animal she had
discovered. He had wanted her as an animal wants another
animal of the same species. And Patricia had
opposed her will to his, her instinctive doctrine of life
to Monty's. Well?
Harry Greenlees had nothing like Monty's culture. In
Monty's sense he was not even educated. But even
Harry was better-instructed and more positive than herself.
He was an individual; he could stand alone;
whereas Patricia only tried to do so, and made a tremendous
fuss about standing alone. Harry was physically
as charming as herself. He was lively, beautiful, able to
do many unexpected things which were outside the needs
of his daily life. He could spend whole days alone without
monotony, which in itself was testimony to his endowment.
He could tell all the wild flowers of Europe
in their seasons; without pretending to be a musician he
could play the piano well enough to be mistaken by the
unlearned for a professional; and without pretending to
be an artist he could draw with a certain cunning. And
he was a competent journalist, a specialist in his own
department, rough and ready in diction, but capable and
individual in style. His technical acquaintance with all
sports was considerable. In his own way Harry also
was a connoisseur. He had a devotion to sport and
sportsmanship, and a code which related itself to the
sporting code; and his sureness of judgment in everything
sporting was that of a good critic. And at bottom
Harry was just a rolling stone, wandering about the
world for the fun of it; and he had wanted Patricia for
his chum, to roll about the world with him for a space,
until one or other of them was tired of the exploit. And
Patricia had refused to roll about the world, because she
imagined that she had a nobler destiny. Well?
Edgar was a man who by the strict disciplining of his
natural capacity had done what came first to his hand.
He had learnt the details of a business which had been
distasteful to him; and he had mastered them. He had
made money, he had travelled, he had created a microcosm
for his family, in which they moved graciously and
comfortably. The whole of his business was at the tips
of his fingers; his reading was considerable, and his understanding
enormous. She had never yet found Edgar
betraying by a false note any failure to comprehend the
essential qualities of a subject or its intricacies. His
mind was so trained that he unerringly caught secondary
meanings, and those which were implicit. He spoke
without any air of authority; but she knew that he was
reckoned wise even among men of greater accomplishments.
And Edgar had offered her help and love; and
Patricia had clung to her own path of folly. What had
she to put against this weight of challenge? If she insisted
upon her personality, in what way was the intrinsic
value of this personality made manifest to the
impressible world?
Soberly Patricia faced the challenge, shrinking from
it. She was a pretty girl; she had high spirits, cleverness
of wit and tongue; an extraordinary sense of the possibilities
of her own talent. And she was essentially a
woman. It was because of her sex that she was at a
disadvantage in her power to experience active life; but
it was also because of her sex, and not because she could
command equality of knowledge or understanding with
them, that these three men sought her and desired her.
If she had refused all of them it was because either she
thought none of them was worthy of her love; or because
she had such confidence in her own individuality that
she preferred to go forward alone. That is, because she
thought that the gift she had for the world was greater
than the gift which these men desired of her. Was it
that she proposed to remain unmarried, to ignore love?
Her response to Harry and Monty had proved that this
was not so. She could not stand alone. Patricia shrank
from the knowledge; but it was forced upon her in her
present mood. And presently she made, aside from all
these specious exaggerations of the value of knowledge
for its own sake, a genuine discovery.
To the question which rebelliously she put to her own
challenge, "Why should they be so much ... more
learned ... than I?" came an answer which was a revelation.
It was unwelcome. She disliked it, and presently
would fall upon her own intuition and perhaps
destroy it. But for the moment it was valid. Patricia
was not incapable of such flights of intuition, and—as
she did now—she generally over-valued them as truths.
The answer which she received from herself in the course
of this singular vision was: "Because they are all interested
in something else besides themselves."
She awoke from her dream to find that the party was
still in progress; and that the man beside her was still
speaking with unabated zest of the theatre, which seems
to be an unrivalled subject for monologue. With a yawn,
Patricia saw that the whole of her analysis had passed
within a few minutes. Nevertheless she remembered it
very clearly; and she was still, as the result of her intellectual
pilgrimage, very serious.
It is one thing to receive such an inspiration as this,
however, and it is quite another to believe it. To believe
it, that is, as one believes in such things as breakfast, or
to-morrow, or relativity. Consequently Patricia felt already
a little vague. She was not satisfied even with her
inspiration, though it had descended in a dream. She
knew that it was a feminine intuition, and feminine intuitions,
however acute, are as the interpretations of the
stars or the palm or the tealeaf—never so remarkable or
so celebrated as when they are confirmed. And as she
conned her problem, Patricia had a very singular notion.
She found herself thinking:
"I shall ask Edgar."
She was astounded at herself. She almost begged herself
to repeat something half-heard which had seemed
incredible. "Oh, I couldn't ask him!" she said, as if in
answer, "I shan't see him again. Of course I shall see
him again. How absurd! I mustn't be silly. He's my
friend." And with that a low small laugh escaped her
lips. Her thoughts strayed into a fresh vein. She wondered
what would have happened if the others had not
come into the studio, if Monty and she had still been
alone there. She knew that she would not still have been
in the studio at all, since she would have been driven to
leave the house long before. And her mind leapt back to
that suggestion about Edgar. Again she had that consciousness
of refuge in him. "I should have ... I
should have...." Then, very quietly indeed, but also
with conclusive sharpness: "I couldn't...."
If only one could do things as they came into one's
head, all the same, how easy life would be!
Patricia sighed. She interrupted the young theatrical
enthusiast, who was talking about societies which were
being formed in all the villages in England for the performance
of Euripides in Gilbert Murray's translation.
"What nonsense!" she said, still only half-attentive to
what her new friend was saying, and without conscious
rudeness. "I'm going home now. Thank you very
much for looking after me. I'm quite well again."
And with that she rose and went quickly to the door
of the studio.
Monty followed.
He made no attempt to conceal his pursuit from the
other guests. He was too obviously afraid that Patricia
might slip out of the house, and so escape him. And the
urgency of his desire to speak with her was extreme.
He arrived in the hall just as she disappeared into the
room where her hat and coat had been left; and Monty
waited there in the dimmed light, a sombre figure, with
his head lowered and his broad shoulders bowed. To
Patricia, emerging, he was like an emissary of the Inquisition,
so appalling, even to her expectant eye, was
his appearance. She lifted her own shoulders with a
slight brusqueness, her head high, and her breath rapid.
"Good-night," said Patricia, quickly. She moved towards
the front door.
"Not yet." It was an appeal, a deep whisper.
"No, no. I'm going."
"I must see you—speak to you—for an instant. Patricia...."
Monty had interposed himself in order that she might
not reach the door without touching him, and as Patricia
could not have borne this contact she was checked instantly.
She stood, hesitant; and then with bowed head
followed the direction of his entreating arm and stepped
into the room at the farther side of the hall. It was the
amber-hued drawing-room in which Edgar had seen
Monty a few evenings previously, a lofty room which
the electric light caused to become faintly and alluringly
luminous. There was a fire, and the room was warm;
but Patricia was shivering a little as she stood a short
distance from the door, facing him. Monty followed her
into the room, closing the door.
"Won't you come over to the fire?" he said in his
gentlest tone. "I can't let you go like this without a
word."
Still that careful modulation, still the raised note at
the end of the sentence! She went nearer to the fire, and
Monty stood near her, by the table.
"Aren't you going to forgive me?" he asked, suddenly.
His manner was slightly changed. A familiarity had
entered it, as though they had a secret understanding;
but he was still bearing himself with soft respect. Nevertheless,
beneath his humility there was ironic contempt
for her sex which betrayed him.
Patricia started at the tone, at the discovery. The
tears came to her eyes. She felt she had no use at all
for such false contrition as he was prepared to display.
It was not forgiveness Monty desired. He was deliberately
pandering to a mentality which his sensual cynicism
led him to despise. Having, apparently, no belief in
purity in women, he was prepared elaborately to connive
at its cunning or hysterical assumption and to submit
to its merely formal placation. He was the diplomat,
playing a familiar game, bargaining with vanity; not a
penitent. And to Patricia such insolent flattery was
more offensive than a brazen making-light of the episode
would have been.
"Don't talk like that, Monty," she begged. "It isn't
forgiveness you need; and you know it. I can't talk
about forgiving. Surely you see that."
"I want you to believe that in asking you here—"
began Monty, cajolingly, still with that cringing air which
masked watchfulness for any sign of emotion or relenting.
Patricia laughed—uncontrollably.
"Oh, Monty!" she exclaimed; and there were still tears
in her voice at the knowledge that he held her to be
simply a common piece of woman's flesh, to be won still,
so long as he sacrificed to her false delicacy, assumed,
perhaps, for the sake of bargaining.
"It's true," he persisted, with more energy. Patricia
turned aside, weary of the encounter, sickened at his cynical
insincerity.
"I've told you I don't want to talk about forgiveness,"
she said. "I couldn't forgive you, because there's no
question of that. It's myself that I can't forgive. It
was idiotic of me to try and play a game I'm not fitted
for, and I'm ashamed of myself. Isn't that enough?"
"Then you'll come again?" he questioned, as if puzzled.
"No," she said. "I've had my lesson. I've been silly
and wicked; but you've been worse. And you're still
being worse, you know. You're under-rating me. You
think I'm pretending. You think you've only got to flatter
me to find I'm no better than ... the rest—I suppose."
She shrugged. "I'm not pretending. I'm
going."
"I love you," Monty told her. "You were surprised.
You were shocked...." He was still persisting in his
former attitude because his imagination was not quick
enough to anticipate the changes of this chameleon. But
he was admiring her perhaps more than he had already
done, and finding her still very desirable.
"I was horrified," Patricia said slowly. "But we're
not talking about the same thing." She was very serious
now. And the fact that she was serious made her again
baffling to Monty, who had expected tears or reproaches
or formal forgiveness, and was trying to discover some
new point of contact which would at least gain time.
Given time, he thought he was always assured of victory;
but he was in a difficulty. She had changed, slipping out
of his power to dominate her; and he had not the key to
the change, for that lay in Patricia's singular vision.
"We're talking about...."
"No," said Patricia. "I came here in a reckless state,
because I'd been very miserable; and you asked me to
come because you wanted to make love to me."
"And I frightened you," said Monty quickly. "Poor
little girl!"
"You did me a lot of good," answered Patricia. "You
shocked me into my senses."
Monty stared at her, his dark eyes glowing, and his
face once more alight with admiration. She saw him
moisten his lips, and saw his hands clenched by his sides.
But also, from another point altogether, she heard a
faint incomprehensible sound. At once she strained her
ears; but Monty had heard no sound, and continued to
stare at her. The sound Patricia thought she had heard
was a tiny crunching of gravel outside the house. She
stared back at Monty, her nerves quivering. Dread was
back in her heart.
"There's nothing to fear," said Monty, in his level
voice of reassurance. "I'm not going to lose my head
again as I did early in the evening. I beg your pardon
for that." Patricia bowed her head again in acknowledgment
of his apology; but she was no longer heeding
his tactical advances. As he spoke, her eyes were glancing
from Monty to the window. She looked so slim and
fair, with the golden light of the room evoking the gold
in her hair and the delicate gleam of colour in her cheeks,
that Monty was moved anew as he had been earlier in
the evening. He was engrossed in her, his eyes avid and
his excitement intense. "By God, you know, you're
beautiful, Patricia," he whispered. "Look here, we'll
go together to the East, and you shall see all those wonders
for yourself." She did not seem to be listening.
Monty played his trump card. "We'll be married, d'you
see, and go straight to the East together; and you shall
have...."
In his eagerness, Monty came towards her, his hands
outstretched. He was continuing, with increasing vehemence,
when Patricia interrupted him. She would have
cried out that what he offered was unthinkable, but, as
she made the effort to speak, her eyes were caught by
something that stifled the words. She could only stand
there, looking beyond Monty, to the doorway, her lips
parted as if in the act of speech, her body rigid with
amazement. For there, just within the room, silhouetted
against the golden door, was another person—a woman,
heavily cloaked, with the hood of her dark cloak shrouding
her face, a woman who had heard the last speech as
she swiftly and silently opened the door, and who stood
perfectly white, as if she were stone. Within the fold
of the hood Patricia saw two glittering eyes. All else
was white, ghastly.
"Really!" said the woman, in a breathless tone, as if
she were stricken with illness. "Monty!"
It was Blanche Tallentyre.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: BLANCHE — i — ii — iii — iv
She had seemed haggard when first Patricia had
noticed her at the September party, and again upon
their second meeting; but now, in that light, hooded, and
in extremity of emotion, Blanche was a picture of unhappiness
such as Patricia had never known. The long
line of her face was sharply cut by the edge of the dark
hood; her lips were a piteous thin gash of brilliance, almost
like a new cut; her eyes were black diamonds. She
stood within the room, pressed back against the door,
listening and watching, her bleak glance entirely for
Monty.
There was an instant's silence after her anguished cry.
Monty's outstretched hands fell once more to his side.
Patricia did not move: she was too horrified to do so.
During that instant, when even the studio revelry was
ignored, the hearts of all three might have stopped beating
for all the motion visible. Then Patricia saw that
Blanche's low breast was rising and falling very quickly,
and the dark cloak fell away from her neck and showed
the hollows at the base of Blanche's throat. But Blanche
paid no heed. She was entirely absorbed in the moment.
Only when Monty moved ever so little towards her did
she speak.
"I didn't expect to find anybody here," Blanche said,
hoarsely. "I didn't expect to find you...." She hesitated,
and with a sort of dreary sarcasm completed her
sentence, "... making a proposal of marriage. It
seems rather odd. I didn't ... expect it. I wonder
if you quite mean it...."
Monty said to Patricia:
"We're interrupted, you see." His shoulders were a
little raised; but his face gave no sign of whatever emotion
he might be feeling. With the emergency, he had
slipped back into that unreadable air of reserve which at
first had been for Patricia such a strong attraction. It
showed, she now knew, as much caution as self-control;
but the silent person in a quarrel is always at an advantage.
His head was sunk upon his shoulders, and
the heavy outline of his jaw was projected, as though
his teeth were firmly clenched.
"I see we're interrupted." Patricia took two or three
steps towards the door. She was still in a state of suppressed
excitement, and was half blind with the continued
emotional tension. "Mrs. Tallentyre," she said,
impulsively. "Monty didn't quite mean his proposal of
marriage; but if he had meant it I shouldn't have ...
taken it seriously. How d'you do?"
For the first time Blanche took notice of Patricia.
She turned her eyes from Monty and looked from Patricia's
head to her feet, as if with intent deliberately to
ignore her. When she spoke again her eyes were
averted.
"What are you doing here?" she asked coldly. She
was imperious, like a mistress who has discovered a servant
in the act of prying.
"Monty has a party," answer Patricia, trying to control
her excitement and to speak in an ordinary tone.
"But I don't understand what.... What is it to do
with you?" In spite of her effort, and perhaps because
of it, she found herself trembling with anger. "I don't
understand you."
Blanche sneered. A look of contempt passed across
her face. The bitter, anxious eyes darted at Patricia a
quick glance of scorn.
"You're impertinent!" she cried, and was again as if
frozen.
"No, Blanche. This is really intolerable, you know,"
put in Monty, anger in his own contemptuous tone.
"We're not at the Lyceum now. Patricia is here as my
guest."
"And you are proposing to her. I interrupted you.
I'm sorry." Blanche gave a brusque laugh. But she
did not move from her position at the door.
"And now I'm going," said Patricia. She made as
if to do so, but looked from one to the other of them in
uncertainty that was not without indignation. Her heart
was fluttering.
"No. You asked what right I had to...." Blanche
moved her arm stiffly, and Patricia saw its wretched
thinness, and the ugly bone at the elbow. "Of course,
I haven't any right...."
"You really mustn't make a scene, my dear Blanche,"
interposed Monty. "It's quite out of the piece, so to
speak. You interrupted a conversation...."
"I came, because I wanted to see you, Monty," said
Blanche. "But the conversation I interrupted concerns
me very vitally. Miss Quin, you may not be to blame.
I can't tell. It's all so ... peculiar. You're only a
vain little fool, of course. But Monty has no right to
offer you marriage."
"I can assure you," answered Patricia, with undesignedly
offensive coolness which arose from her fear and
her effort at self-control, "that that doesn't in the least
matter."
"And now, good-night, Patricia. I'll see you to the
door," said Monty.
"No!" Blanche pressed back. "Miss Quin: Monty
and I have quarrelled. We quarrelled here a fortnight
ago, and he has not answered my letters——"
"My dear Blanche! The story of our quarrel—"
Monty approached, seizing Blanche's arm. He could
quite easily have torn her from the door and made way
for Patricia, and that was clearly his object. His hand
was to her elbow, and Blanche was already bent to exert
her strength in resistance. But as Monty's grip tightened,
she said in a very low tone:
"Do you want me to scream, and bring the others?
Then let go my arm."
Patricia's saw Monty's teeth bared, his left fist
clenched. And then he stood back a little way.
"You're doing yourself no good, you know," he said
presently, in his caressing voice. "Only harm. Poor
fool that you are."
"Miss Quin——"
Patricia spoke entreatingly. She went closer to
Blanche, her voice low and her hands appealing.
"Mrs. Tallentyre, is there any need for me to hear?
I was going when you came: my one wish is to go
now. You're mistaken in me. You needn't have any
thought——"
"Please let me tell you. For a fortnight I have been
ill. I have written to Monty, and he has not answered
my letters. This afternoon I received, without a letter,
a thousand pounds in bank-notes. From Monty, you
understand. A thousand pounds. It was my solatium.
I was to take the thousand pounds, and—good-bye!
You understand that, also? You're very quick."
During all this time, Monty stood with his back turned
to Blanche, and his hands in his pockets. He appeared
not to be listening, but to be thinking of another matter.
Such disregard was to be expected of him; but at this
point he showed that he had been listening intently. He
wheeled round with angering insolence, his eyes widely
opened, his head thrown back.
"Oh," said Monty, as if with surprise. "You've come
to chaffer!"
Blanche flinched, and Patricia—stung to loyalty for
one so helpless in face of the power to insult—felt a sudden
outgoing of pity for her.
"You poor thing!" she cried vehemently. "You're
suffering!"
"Oh, don't be sentimental!" cried Blanche, in a harsh,
impatient voice. She jerked her head in pain. "I
haven't come to chaffer, and I've got no use for your
school-girl sympathy. Keep that for your own wounds.
I'm dealing with real things, as Monty will discover in a
minute. You, with your silly baby face, haven't the
heart to understand. You.... But I'm forgetting.
Monty won't like me to speak harshly to his promised
bride. He'll——"
"I'm not!" shouted Patricia, suddenly out of control.
"I wouldn't!" She was sparkling with temper; and yet
remained staring at Blanche. Her feelings were in
tumult—indignation in conflict with fear, and both with
pity. "Nothing can keep me from being sorry for you,"
she said, "because you're unhappy. I don't like you. I
don't like you. But I'm sorry for you."
"Well, that's very nice," drawled Blanche. "It's so
nice for women to feel for one another."
"If you've not come for Patricia's pity, and not come
to raise the thousand pounds, which, after all, is quite a
generous sum—" began Monty.
"During all the time we've known each other, I've
taken no money from you, Monty. D'you realise that?
You couldn't realise it! It's not in your nature to realise
it, because you're avaricious yourself, and find avariciousness....
Oh, God...." Blanche's voice dropped
wearily. "Haven't I heard your views of money....
Don't I know you, Monty? How well I know you. Too
well! No, I haven't come for money. I don't want it.
I wouldn't take money——"
"But, my dear, you must," Monty said. He turned
quickly, and came towards her, ignoring Patricia, whom
he had forgotten. "It's the only thing I can give you.
Look, I'll make it two thousand. I want to be generous——"
"Generous! My God!" whispered Patricia. She
raised her hands in an unconscious gesture. Was it
really thus that Monty—that such men—computed generosity?
In guineas? She was distraught.
"But it's no good to think that you and I can go on,"
Monty was continuing. "We can't go on." Even here
he was speaking slowly and deliberately, in that thick,
sweet voice which was so seldom raised beyond quietness.
"Our interest is gone. The whole thing's finished,
you know."
Blanche looked at him, her face drawn, and her lips
parted in a miserable smile.
"Finished, yes," she said. "You're tired of me.
That I realise. I realised it long ago. Tant pis. But
it isn't finished." She shook her head. "Five years ago
I was tired of Fred. I met you. Now you're tired.
But you've forgotten Fred."
"Fred!" exclaimed Monty. "What's he got to do with
it?" His voice was suddenly coarse with cruelty. "He
doesn't count. It's nothing to do with him."
"That's why I came," said Blanche, very low. "All
this time Fred's been wondering why I didn't care for
him...."
"Look here, Blanche," said Monty, quietly. "It's no
good to threaten me. You know that!"
"I'm not threatening you, my dear," returned Blanche,
with a shudder. "But it seems that Fred's found a little
girl he wants to marry."
"Fred!" cried Monty. He seemed astounded. Behind
his air of surprise his thoughts moved with the
speed of lightning. "What d'you mean?"
"Just that. You see, he's had me watched," answered
Blanche. "He says he's got all he needs. So I've
brought you back your money. He's vengeful, Monty.
He'll go for damages."
Patricia conceived the situation. Blanche, consumed
with that hot, wasting love which is concentrated upon
the fear of loss, watched, trapped by a husband as unscrupulous
as herself; Monty, at first passionate, as he
had been with Patricia herself, and with more success,
with his love tiring, bent upon extrication, also watched,
trapped; herself, a spectator, half-guilty as the result of
foolish recklessness, trapped here, but possessing the
power of flight. She could escape, and would eventually
do so; but there was no escape for Blanche. There was
none, perhaps, for Monty. Ugly love, ugly renunciation,
and a squalid sequel; and what then! No hope for
Blanche! Nothing for that poor, haggard woman with
the ugly elbows and the glittering wretched eyes of a
dumb creature in pain. There was even no future for
her. Patricia was appalled. And Monty's clumsy attempt—so
grossly insensitive—to close the intrigue with
money.... Why had he chosen this way? A quarrel
there had been, a parting, some coarse-grained assumption
and deliberate plan to make the parting "equitable"
and final. He must have had some urgent reason. Herself?
Monty gave a jeering laugh.
"Well, done, Fred," he said quietly. And then, after
a pause: "And where's his evidence? He's bluffing,
Blanche."
"You say that...." Blanche contemptuously answered.
"He's not bluffing, Monty. He's got an object.
I know. And it isn't money. It's the little girl."
"But, good God, what's that to do with me?" demanded
Monty. "Or, for that matter, with you? Nothing.
Nothing whatever. Any little girl, at Fred's age,
isn't going to be particularly squeamish about marriage.
You've only to look at Fred, too. She must be out for
what she can get. Oh, no, it's absurd. Take it from
me, Blanche, he's bluffing!"
While Patricia, more impressed than ever, was filled
with consternation at this inside glimpse of the working
of Monty's mind, Blanche sighed. Perhaps it was no
revelation to her? Were, then, all people at bottom
coarse, cynical? Was she herself? Patricia recoiled
from a question. Again she had the sense of comparing
those anxious, ghastly eyes to the eyes of a monkey,
which seem to hold all misery, and anxiously to survey
a treacherous and sophisticated and bewildering world.
So might her own eyes have looked if they had indeed,
at this moment, mirrored her dread.
"You'll see," at last Blanche answered quietly, after a
moment's pause.
Monty shrugged his shoulders. He was not so obstinate
in his belief as his speech made him appear. Already
he was searching in his memory for occasions, for
details, for possible spies. An idea occurred to him.
"Jacobs?" he asked. "Impossible."
Blanche shook her head. Patricia, watching her,
thought she was paler. The brilliant lips were hardly
parted as she spoke.
"Nothing's impossible," answered Blanche, drawing
her breath quickly.
Monty looked at her with sudden attention. Suspicion
darted to his eyes.
"You?" he cried. "Not you, Blanche?" His face
had crimsoned. Again Blanche slowly shook her head.
"Nothing's impossible," she repeated.
It was then only that she took further notice of Patricia,
to whom she made a slight ironic inclination of the
head. While Monty stood with that brooding glance of
suspicion still directed upon her, his doubt, once awakened
not easily to be dispelled, Blanche opened the door.
"You want to go, don't you?" she said. "Well, you
can go now. We shall get along better without you
now. I hope you've been edified. You've seen Monty,
and you've seen me, and you've learnt quite a lot that you
won't be able to repeat. It'll do you good. You once
said that the world was full of women who had found
out too late. I wish that you could be one of them. I
should enjoy it. Now go."
Patricia, in silence, passed from the room, and into
the hall; and the door was closed again. Monty had
not spoken. She was alone in the hall, which rose lofty
and spacious above her head to a painted ceiling, the
whole in a brilliant blue. Around the ceiling ran a strip
of shaded light, the reflection of which made the hall's
illumination. The walls were hung with thick brilliant
curtains which deadened all sound, and thick rugs lay
along the polished parquet flooring. Only by the door
stood a single small piece of statuary, a reproduction of
a classic fragment. There seemed to be a stifling heaviness
in the air, as of scent, so much had she been affected
by the late scenes. Patricia paused here as one in a
dream, bowed and trembling, but with emotion that was
new to her. She was no longer afraid or angry; but she
was pierced through and through with the longing for
contact with something unquestionably clean.
She had reached the heavy front door. Her hand was
outstretched to the catch. And then she hesitated. This
poignant desire was irresistible. It was the longing to be
assoiled. Only by such contact could she recover purity,
could she be at peace. Memory flashed a thought into
Patricia's mind. With a glance across her shoulder, a
hasty step to the wide staircase, a pause for intent listening,
she ran back into the room from which she had a
short time before taken her hat and coat.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: NIGHT CALL — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii
At his desk that day, Edgar had worked loyally to
keep his attention concentrated upon matters in
hand. He had always been in the habit of excluding
private concerns from his mind during business hours;
and even here, owing to determination and practice, he
was partly successful. He did not consciously think of
Patricia while he was reading and dictating letters, while
he was talking to several exacting visitors, while he telephoned,
and even while he lunched in company with other
business men. He made no attempt to be alone or to be
in company. It was not apparent to any of those who
dealt with him that day that he was otherwise than as
usual—competent, friendly, and benevolently unshakeable
in decision. And yet the secret Edgar, the unsuspected
Edgar, the Edgar who was Hamlet, was extremely
disturbed. This Edgar was faced with a crisis.
He was angry. He was angry and exasperated and
broken-hearted. But he was much more angry and
exasperated than he was broken-hearted. And in the
middle of his emotions, this secret Edgar was engaged
in the preposterous act of laughing.
The secret Edgar was, in fact, a little boy who had
never grown up; but he concealed this from everybody,
and it was supposed that he did not exist. Therefore the
really grown-up persons in Edgar's office—such as his
typist and his junior clerks and his shipping clerks—had
a feeling of superiority to him which was mingled with
their feeling of respect. They all thought, privately,
how imaginative they were, in being able to enjoy books
and plays which contained whimsical notions, and how
completely a business man Edgar was. And this secret
Edgar, who lost his temper and raged and roared with
merriment in the middle of his own furies, was like a
little boy who had been angry and cannot keep on being
angry because everybody else, so amused, is trying to
remain grave. The secret Edgar was unsuspected by
those around the outward Edgar; and Edgar lived so
entirely in the secret Edgar that he never knew that there
was any other Edgar at all. It never entered his head to
suppose that there were two Edgars—outside and inside,
as it were,—and as the serious Edgar had a day's work
to do, the secret Edgar made no attempt to interfere.
The day's work was done; the last letter was signed; and
Edgar—the composite Edgar—the physical Edgar—was
at length free to abandon himself to anger and exasperation
and broken heart and laughter. He put his hat unemotionally
upon his head, and carefully threaded himself
into his overcoat; and then he left the office, and
was out in the darkness and traffic of the City of London.
Night in the City of London, on a week-day, is as remarkable
and as romantically bizarre as night in some
such centre of the engineering industry as Barrow-in-Furness,
where the tipping of molten slag and the blazing
sky-reflections of many furnaces compose miraculous
effects for the sensitive. As Edgar stepped out into the
cold air, thousands of people were making the sidewalks
impassable, and pressing out into the asphalted roadways,
and jostling and going self-absorbed to every point
of the compass. Many vehicles were joined in the general
hustle and congestion; cabs, omnibuses, postal-vans,
and the like, all flashed their way through the crowds.
Deafening noises filled the ears. Lights and shadows
fought desperately their incessant battle. Boys and
young men carrying waste-paper baskets full of letters,
or piles of parcels which extended from their waists to
their chins, or bundles carried fore and aft across their
bent shoulders, staggered from all directions; others ran,
doubling in and out among the foot-passengers and the
vehicles, unburdened, hurrying hither and thither, their
little black hats pressed down upon their ears, or their
little cheap soft felt hats cocked askew with impudent
carelessness. Others again wore no hats at all, but
swung along bare-headed and short-coated even in the
chilly evening breeze. High above the streets were globes
of white light, which hung centrally, without standards
to support them. And in these narrow streets, in the
white, fizzing lights, amid the close-running traffic, with
this noise and helter-skelter rushing to catch posts and
trains and omnibuses dinning into his ears and dazzling
his eyes and bewildering his senses, the secret Edgar
found himself sensibly exhilarated. It was quite dark,
and the sky was invisible. Somewhere beyond the
crowd and the lights, and beyond the overhanging murk,
it lay; to be guessed and known, but never to be seen.
He had worked well all day. He was contented with
the way in which various transactions in which he was
engaged were progressing. And only one thing in all the
world caused him distress; and yet that one thing, so all-important,
out-weighed every complacency and every
other care. It was a preoccupation. It was Patricia.
Because of Patricia, Edgar was angry and exasperated
and broken-hearted. Because of Patricia, he was
shaken with preposterous laughter.
Within an hour he was indoors, in that house in Kensington
where Patricia had realised what the word
"home" might mean. The house was still; the servants
were quiet-footed and the carpets were thick. Doors,
well-made and heavy, closed gently and remained closed,
without rattling. Even Pulcinella was subdued by even-tide,
except upon the arrival of a member of the family
much beloved. Then no amount of custom could stale
the little dog's rapture. Edgar admitted himself, and
washed, and went down to the brown room upon the
mezzanine floor which was his own room, where there
was a fire, and where books upon white-enamelled shelves
warmed the walls from floor to ceiling and made them
cordially glow with companionship. He had an hour
before dinner, an hour in which to vent his anger and
exasperation, in which to contemplate his broken heart.
And when he reached the room he spent his hour in doing
none of these things. He sat instead and tried to
decide what he was going to do about Patricia. For he
had now definitely made up his mind that Patricia was
to be won. No young woman is so ostentatiously decided
when she has in fact made up her mind.
At the same time, Patricia was a mystery to Edgar.
He could have named her traits with scarcely a grievous
error in observation; but, this done, she would still have
been a mystery. A man who behaved as she was obviously
in the habit of behaving could have had no interest
for Edgar. If he had not loved Patricia he would
have found her insufferable. But he loved her. The
secret Edgar—who was all heart—loved her; the outward
Edgar merely received impressions of her. The
impressions might constantly be disagreeable—some of
them were wholly disagreeable;—but they slipped into the
heart of the secret Edgar, which was big enough to hold
them all. And it was this secret Edgar who conned the
mystery, with rather more humour than the outward
Edgar was always supposed to possess. Which explains
why Edgar's ruminations were interrupted by laughter—not
loud, hearty, hopelessly solemn laughter; but
laughter that was a catching of the breath, explosive, and
then silent.
"She is the most preposterous creature that ever lived,"
said Edgar. "The most conceited, blind, ridiculous little
fathead...."
He would not have dared to communicate this view of
Patricia to anybody alive. He would not have dared to
mention it even to Claudia. Even to hint the smallest
part of it to Patricia herself would have been the act of
a madman. And yet to himself Edgar was frank and
fair about it. Because Edgar knew that when he said
or thought such a thing every word was qualified and
softened by an emotion in himself towards the object of
his laughter which was without comparison the most
precious thing in his life.
Presently he heard the telephone bell ringing downstairs,
and as he was not sure that Claudia was in, and
as Mrs. Mayne was almost as ridiculous on the telephone
as her husband, who invariably rang off while he went
to find somebody less incompetent, Edgar walked out of
the room. The bell had ceased ringing; but he proceeded
as far as the clothes-cupboard where it was installed,
on the chance that the answerer might not be
Claudia. It was she, however. As Edgar put his head
inside the clothes-cupboard she was saying "Hold on,"
and she turned as if to leave the cupboard in search of
somebody who was wanted.
"Oh, there you are," said Claudia. "I didn't know
you were in. It's Mr. Gaythorpe."
Edgar took the receiver from his sister's hand. Old
Gaythorpe was one of those rare people who speak as
clearly on the telephone as they would speak in a room.
Every word he said was audible. Edgar could imagine
the old man present. The dry wisdom of his manner
was in an extraordinary degree conveyed by the sound
of his voice.
"Look here, young man," said Gaythorpe. "I've been
kept here by importunate suitors. My train has gone.
I want to see you. Can I come to dinner?"
"Of course!" cried Edgar, foolhardy in giving such
encouragement without consultation with the kitchen,
but relying upon Mayne ingenuity to expand a meal at
short notice.
"I'll take what Mrs. Mayne gives me," the voice continued,
the voice of an experienced family man. "Right.
I'll come along."
Edgar flung up the receiver. He turned to Claudia,
who was leaning pensively against the doorpost, waiting
to hear the worst.
"He's coming to dinner."
"Gracious!" exclaimed Claudia, blanching. "I must
see mother! We've got one guest already—Olivia
Stephens."
"Oh, do you know her?" said Edgar, surprised. He
was familiar with the name; but he could not at first
discover in what connection.
"School with her," called Claudia, hurrying away.
"Known her all my life. So have you. Come and talk
to her."
It was evidently to be a bright evening. Edgar followed,
trying to remember Olivia Stephens, and to recall
what he knew of her. There came back to his mind a
picture of a girl who came to see Claudia in bygone days,
a girl with a long plait of hair and very arched brows
and a freckled snub nose; of an older girl with her hair
up, who had not very much to say for herself; of a
young creature who flaunted a shapeless olive-green frock
down the cobbled street of a Cornish fishing village,
attended by an amiable fellow in a reddish-brown Norfolk
suit, bearing a black-bowled pipe and a cudgel.
This picture, which wavered and sharpened in its successive
stages, like a series of kinema close-ups, recalled
Olivia to his experience. She was the girl who had married
an artist—the Norfolk-jacketed young man with the
pipe; upon whose behalf Edgar had been persuaded to
buy some water-colour drawings which hung in his
mother's bedroom. What was it about her?—poor,
artist-husband—cheerful—ah, babies! Olivia was the
girl who had the two babies! The girl of his ideal! She
it was of whom Claudia had given accounts which had
filled him with admiring approval. Edgar was triumphant
at his own instinct for clues and associations.
It came into his head that he had seen vague resemblances
to Olivia and the young artist at Monty's September
party. Of course! He had not spoken to her,
because his memory had been too vague; but now he was
clear. The girl he had seen must indeed have been
Olivia; and her artistic husband must have been the link
with Monty and the æsthetes. They were the young
people who were still in love with each other. He could
recall their happiness. Even in recollection Edgar was
pleased with them.
"Babies," he ejaculated recognisingly to himself. He
entered the sitting-room with the anticipation of interest;
but with a certain sinking of the heart lest Olivia should
be restricted to a single topic.
"How are you, Edgar?" asked Olivia. She sat by the
fire in the blue-grey drawing-room; and there was work
in her hands. The work was obviously a garment for
a small child. He recognised her at once by the well-arched
eyebrows, and by the fact that she wore—as in
his first vision—a dress which was olive-green in colour.
The freckles were banished (whether by the season, or
by some more permanent cure, he could not tell); but
the calm, innocent eyes and odd little nose were much
as he remembered them to have been. Her shoulders
were broader, and her breast had developed. Otherwise
she was the agreeable creature he had known, between
fair and dark, with plump arms and legs and a lot of
fair hair. She had a very sweet lazy smile, and an unself-conscious
manner which came of not taking herself
very seriously. She was about twenty-six. Theoretically,
Edgar knew, Olivia was his ideal type of woman. She
gave love with the eager readiness of the trustful child;
she spoke quietly and seldom, but without constraints;
she had courage and patience and unselfishness. And he
was in love with her opposite. One more insoluble
problem.
"How are you?" he answered. "And how's ... er,
Stephens?" Then, with the proud feeling of taking his
fences: "And how are the babies?"
"How nice of you to ask about them!" said Olivia,
comfortably, with her slow, happy, lazy smile. "Joan
isn't very grand. She's got a cold. That makes her just
a little trying and sentimental at the moment. But
Michael is tremendously hefty, and already weighs about
ten stone. He's a sort of prize ox. In fact Mercy—Peter's
sister—says he's not like a baby at all, but like
a beautiful white calf. You haven't seen either of them,
I expect, though Claudia has. Joan's three; and
Michael's just over a year, and walks well. Look here,
you ought to come and see them. They'd do you good.
You must be getting quite middle-aged, Edgar. Yes, I
can see you are. You ought to have children of your
own. Then you wouldn't have time to grow old. Come
and see them, will you?"
"This conversation is going to be extremely indelicate
and extremely rude, I can see," replied Edgar. "I begin
already to remember you as an excessively rude and,
indelicate girl in a pigtail. I am not middle-aged, and
I don't look as though I were middle-aged. So that's
finished. As to the babies, I will come. I ought to have
come before; but I had forgotten all about you. When
Claudia said you were here I had really to recall who
you were. How is it you never come to see us? Or do
you come, secretly?"
Olivia grimaced.
"I go out very little. The babies, you see. Michael
needs somebody still—they both need somebody to put
them to bed; and Michael sometimes yells for me. I'm
only out this evening because Peter's sister is staying
with us. Peter's coming for me later on. He couldn't
come to dinner, because he's finishing some work."
"Painting?"
Olivia shook her head, a little ruefully.
"Black-and-white. He's got some regular work to do
at last. So things are looking up with us. We're beginning
to save. He wants us to go and live in the
country somewhere—not too far away—for the sake of
the babies; and we shall do that next year if we can get
a cottage."
"But would you like that? Wouldn't it be dull for
you?" asked Edgar.
Olivia shook her head again, this time without any
ruefulness at all.
"Nothing could be duller than London," she said.
"Besides, if we had a nurse, Peter and I could always
come up to town for an evening. One consequence of
being rich would be a nurse; and that would mean lots
of liberty, with the right girl. We shouldn't go anywhere
quite in the wilds. And it isn't as though Joan
would need a school just yet. She's got another three
years before she need go. The great thing is for them
to be able to play out-of-doors."
Edgar nodded, much impressed by this notion of life.
"Would you be happier?" he asked.
"I?" cried Olivia. "I couldn't be. I seem to have got
everything I want."
Edgar stared meditatively at this remarkable woman.
"You're very fortunate," he said, drily. And then:
"You're very rare."
With dinner came the other guest, cynically benevolent
as ever; and the table in the big old-fashioned dining-room
was a full one. At it there were three elderly
people and three young ones; and, as if naturally, all the
talking which was not done by Mrs. Mayne took place
between Claudia and old Gaythorpe. They sparred on
the best of terms, because there was a very pleasant feeling
between them, and they were like partners in a game
who knew each other's play. Mr. Mayne sat with fierce
dignity at one end of the table, high above the heat of
battle; and his wife, placidly nimble of brain, at the
other, absorbed in it. Olivia blissfully enjoyed her
dinner in a home-made frock, with hands that were reddened
by house-work, and an inner happiness which
caused her to accept every kindness with glee. Edgar,
lazily listening to Claudia in combat with his old friend,
was content to leave the conversation to them. And
Claudia, who was full of spirits, was being agile and
aggressive; and old Gaythorpe was in his own dry way
being equally agile and aggressive. The motto of each
was the same: "Never give your adversary a moment's
peace."
"You seem to think that income tax is the only tax
there is!" cried Claudia. "It's the rich man's tax, and
always will be. If you were poor, and paid your taxation
indirectly—"
"I do that as well, my dear Claudia. My sugar costs
me—"
"Neither your sugar nor your coal!" she retorted.
"Indeed, yes."
"Our sugar doesn't. Nor our tea. Nor our coal. We
buy in bulk. If you don't escape, it's by bad buying.
We have tons of coal. Poor people buy in quarter-hundredweights,
and pay fifty per cent more. A ha'porth
of jam—you can't get ha'porths now, as it happens—multiplied
many times makes much more a pot than you
pay. Every necessary costs more."
"Is jam a necessary? I never eat it."
"Your pampered children do."
"Ah, my children. Yes.... Pampered indeed. I
agree. The younger generation, of course. Take the
cost of education, Claudia. What have I paid in school
fees?"
"If the Council schools are all you say, they'd have
been quite adequate."
"Your own dexterity isn't the fruit of the Council
school," parried Gaythorpe.
"No; it's my own!" cried Claudia.
"Claudia, dear," objected Mrs. Mayne. "Your father
and I can hardly be called ordinary people."
They all laughed at this simple interruption. Claudia
was instantly deflated. She turned to Olivia.
"Are you going to give your babies any education?"
she demanded.
"Well," said Olivia. "Peter doesn't think ordinary
education is much good. He thinks it just spoils children
to be taught by rote. But then he thinks that better
education only teaches them to spend money—not to
make it. He was at a public school himself."
"And is he well-educated?" pressed Claudia.
"Oh, he ... of course, he knows a lot. But it isn't
very precise knowledge. He can't spell: he's never sure
about words like 'separate' or 'receipt.' He's not very
good at figures. I have to do the sums as a rule; but
then of course that's just knack."
"Yes, and there's another thing!" Claudia, reminded
by Olivia's admission as to figures, returned to her direct
challenge. "Women!"
There was a general groan.
"He's very unsound there," interjected Edgar, cheerfully.
"You'd better go no further."
"By the way, Olivia." Claudia was diverted from her
argument. "Have you ever met an awful girl—an artist—called
Amy Roberts?"
"O-oh!" exclaimed Olivia, in disgust. "Where on
earth did you meet her?"
"At Patricia's—Patricia Quin's."
"Such a nice girl," said Mrs. Mayne, aside to Gaythorpe.
"A friend of Edgar's."
Instantly Gaythorpe shot a glance of inexpressible
malice at Edgar.
"Indeed," he said, politely. There was benign poison
in his encouraging tone. He beamed upon Mrs. Mayne,
hoping for further information about Edgar's friend,
immediately recalling the Miss Fly-away of their conversation.
"Patricia Quin?" repeated Olivia, doubtfully. "Oh,
a fair girl—. Isn't she Harry Greenlees's mistress?"
"No." Edgar did not hear himself speak.
"Who told you that?" indignantly cried Claudia. "It's
scandalous!"
Olivia, disconcerted, tried to remember the name of
her informant. The general distress was so obvious that
she slightly reddened.
"Wait a minute," she said. "I'm sorry if I've said
something I ought not to. I thought there wasn't any
question about it. I think it was Blanche Tallentyre who
told Peter."
"Well, it's not true!" cried Claudia. "What a beast
Blanche Tallentyre must be. Have you ever met her,
Edgar?"
Edgar, deeply moved, was staring at the table, his face
stern. All their eyes were upon him. He had a remembered
glimpse of an unhappy-looking woman across a
dinner-table, of lips parted to speak, of a speech checked
and an enmity formed in a single instant.
"Yes," he answered slowly. "At Monty's. Patricia
was rude to her. That's the explanation. Not deliberately
rude, but wounding. I saw that she felt vicious
about it. But surely you don't accept anything she might
say as probable, Olivia?"
"Perhaps not," Olivia agreed. "No: she isn't a nice
woman. I suppose there's no doubt that she's Monty's
mistress, herself."
"Dear, dear!" protested Mrs. Mayne. "It seems so
horrible to have that word bandied about by nice young
girls. It's such a pity. Don't you think so, Mr. Gaythorpe?"
"I quite agree with you, Mrs. Mayne," said the old
man. "A great pity. A very great pity. And who—"
he paused, speaking across the table to Edgar. "Who
is Monty?"
"Monty Rosenberg." It was a chorus.
"Indeed. And is he a friend of yours, Edgar?"
Edgar's eyes met those of his tormentor very candidly
across the table.
"Perhaps one could hardly call him a friend," he
suavely replied.
"Ah," said Gaythorpe. "Perhaps a debtor?"
No reply was returned to his question, which had been
hardly audible. Gaythorpe bit his lower lip. The rims
of his glasses caught the light as he glanced aside. He
was not, perhaps, altogether certain; but he thought he
had made a very fair guess at the answers to two questions
which for some time had been troubling him. He
wondered whether Monty had ever asked for Edgar's
help, and whether Patricia had ever refused it....
Although Edgar had so immediately denied the assertion
that Patricia was Harry's mistress, Olivia's words
caused him suffering so poignant that he could hardly
maintain composure under the scrutiny of the party. He
had to admit his own jealousy of Harry, and he was
also made to remember Patricia's claim to wickedness,
and Claudia's terrible questions at the breakfast-table.
Together they made a hateful collection of poisonous
thoughts. Although he now answered when he was addressed,
he did so with his mind far away. He could
not eat; he could not think. His one impulse was to get
away from this table, from these people, in order that
he might be alone. All the anger and all the laughter
which had shaken him earlier in the evening were banished.
He did not believe the suggestions which his mind
stealthily insinuated; but they were all the time sliding
into his attention, as though devils were at work in his
tired brain, maddening him. If Patricia were not pure,
of what use her youth, her charm, her cleverness?
None, none, none! He was distraught with suspicions;
not with beliefs, not with doubts; but with these suggestions,
which were like secret voices of temptation. It
was essential that he should deal with them seriously,
by direct conflict, and not emotionally, by infatuated
refusal to face possibilities.
And the meal continued, and the chatter—although
sobered by the turn which the talk had taken—was maintained.
Edgar could not leave the others. Gaythorpe
was his guest. He must play his part. This he did,
with honest endeavour to preserve his good spirits and
his composure. He followed the others into the drawing-room,
and there drank coffee with them. For a moment
it struck him that it was almost better to be with the
whole party than with Gaythorpe alone. If Gaythorpe
were in his study, then a process of inquiry might be
applied; until Edgar could not be sure of his power to
avoid such irritability as would be, to Gaythorpe's probing
mind, more betraying than actual proclamation.
But either from tact or from imperceptiveness, Gaythorpe
made no attempt, when at last they withdrew
from the others, to introduce a personal note. His desire
to see Edgar that night had been due entirely to business
problems; and it was with these that the two men were
engaged for a further hour. Only as he left, old Gaythorpe,
in bidding farewell to Mrs. Mayne, dropped a
hint unheard by Edgar. To Mrs. Mayne's invitation for
another evening he made a significant reply.
"And I hope that the next time I come I shall have
the pleasure of meeting Miss Patricia ... Patricia
Quin. You have quite whetted my appetite to see the
young lady."
He bowed, and his hand-pressure was a reassurance
to Mrs. Mayne; who was much comforted by such confirmation
of her belief in Patricia's innocence.
At last Edgar was alone. He had bidden good-bye to
Olivia, and had received her invitation to come at any
time, on any day, to visit the babies. He had said good-night
to his mother and father, had received a light touch
of farewell from his sister; and he was in his room, by
the fire, with a pipe; and a tray bearing a decanter, a
syphon, and a glass, together with a slice of Mrs.
Mayne's latest private cake, lay on a small table behind
him. He was bending over the fire in the room's light
glow, and the books were shining and the shelves gleaming
in the shadow, when, with a slight rustle, Claudia
appeared in a long silk dressing-gown, her hair plaited
for the night.
"My dear," she hurriedly said. "I knew you'd feel
a bit sick. You don't believe it's true, do you?" The
remark was not a question. It was a statement.
Edgar turned, making no pretence of misunderstanding
her.
"No," he said. "It's not true. And of course it's the
venom of a miserable woman. But it doesn't make me
very cheerful, because ... well, at any rate, they're
friends."
"I was afraid of that," breathed Claudia. "I thought
she might be ... in love with him. I got an idea ...
nothing at all ... just the sort of thing you imagine....
That's really why I came."
"Well, we'll see," answered Edgar, gravely, and without
very much sanguine colour in his tone. "Good-night."
No caress passed. Claudia was a sister, and Edgar
was a brother. They loved and trusted each other. But
neither could have borne to see the other in acute distress;
because both knew that the cause of such distress
would necessarily be external to themselves, and therefore
beyond reach of consolation. Claudia silently withdrew.
Nevertheless, her visit had done Edgar good. He sat
on, smoking; and the fire grew less brilliant, dying on
the surface and keeping its red heart, as it would continue
to do long after the grate had seemed to a casual
eye to be filled only with sullen ash. The room was a
large one, and there were many books in bright, warm
bindings. A desk stood near the window, in such a position
that in daylight it would catch the sun upon its left
side. The desk was orderly. It bore a stand lamp and
a stationery cabinet, and various bundles of papers, tied
or encircled with bands. To this desk Edgar presently
went, standing above it lost in thought, the finger tips
of one hand resting lightly upon its surface. And at
length, when his pipe was burning harshly, he knocked
out the remaining charred fragments of tobacco, and
mixed himself a whisky-and-soda. In a few minutes he
would be in bed, thinking still of Patricia....
And, as he thought that, it seemed to Edgar that he
heard the ringing of the telephone bell. Strange! He
opened the door of his room. There was no mistake.
The bell was furiously ringing. It was echoing through
the house. Edgar knew that everybody else was in bed,
so he did not delay. He ran down to the clothes-cupboard,
and heard the rattling of the bell still in the
receiver as he put it to his ear.
"Hullo! Hullo!" he cried.
And from far off came a little breathless voice.
"Mr. Mayne's? Is that you? Edgar? This is Patricia.
I'm at Monty's ... yes, Monty's. Look here,
I haven't ... changed my mind. No. But I'm in
trouble. Could you come and fetch me in your car?
Could you? How splendid! Don't come to the house.
No, don't come. I'll walk along to Marlborough Road
station, and wait for you there. Yes. You're sure it's
all right? Sure? Be quick. Quick...." Her voice
died as she said the last words; showing that she was
moving away from the telephone even as she spoke.
Strangely elated, his heart beating fast, Edgar stood
for an instant ejaculating with surprise.
"Well!" he whispered to himself. "What on earth
does that mean?" In his excitement Edgar gave a little
laugh. "Extraordinary!"
No more time was wasted. It was precious. He ran
quickly to the hall, back to get an overcoat, felt in its
place for the garage key, remembered approximately the
amount of petrol in the tank of his car, made sure that
he had the key of the front door,—all as if in a single
movement of thought and action; and then, with his
coat still open, left the house at high speed. He was out
again in the night, and in that chilly darkness, racing to
the garage; and as he raced he laughed again, exhilarated
by the sense of adventure, by the surprise of such a call,
by quick speculation as to its cause. Above everything
else, exhilarated by the knowledge that he was after all
to see Patricia that night.
CHAPTER TWENTY: BABIES — i — ii — iii — iv — v — vi — vii — viii
The night was very still and very fresh; but it was
not freezing. A little wind hung and played in the
trees, and sometimes swept along the ground; and it was
dark because neither moon nor stars were visible. All the
noises of the day were silenced. Only at times did a
solitary taxicab create a burst of humming as it passed
the end of a road, and the sound faded as suddenly as it
had risen. Edgar, running from the house in his thin
shoes, made hardly more than a light pattering upon the
sidewalk. It was a night for adventure.
He could not yield to the quick speculations which
darted to his brain; for the moment was one which demanded
a clear head and rapidly applied thought. So
many things might impede his progress: the car might be
difficult to start, a tyre might be down, the thousand unexpected
vagaries with which the motorist may at any
moment be hindered were all present as possibilities to
Edgar's mind. He was alert and anxious, bent upon
meeting every emergency before it arose; and as he ran
swiftly he was almost praying that there might on this
occasion be no mishap.
The garage in which Edgar kept his car lay at some
distance from his home. It had been a stable; but was
so no longer. Two heavy, painted doors fastened with
a padlock. They were opened very quickly, and pushed
back against the outer wall of the garage. The light
showed his faithful friend standing mutely in its place,
as if waiting for his arrival—a grave little dark blue
coupé with a long blue bonnet to match its body, and an
interior of soft grey. Even in his haste, Edgar looked
proudly upon the car. It was so beautiful, so speedy,
so responsive to his touch; its line was so graceful, its
lightness so apparent. Very fit instrument was this car
for the deliverance of any maid in distress. There was
no least incongruity between it and the romantic mission
upon which Edgar believed himself to be engaged.
And yet he must not stay to think or feel. For him
the detail of mechanical aids to swiftness was of urgent
importance. As if in one movement, he switched on the
lights, front and tail, manipulated three little knobs, ran
quickly to the front of the car, and gave his engine a
swing. His lips were tightly compressed; his expert ear
was strained.... The engine was cold. What if there
should be a difficulty in starting? Ghastly! Again he
swung upon the handle, and at the resulting sound
straightened with a breath of inexplicable relief. Within
that little blur of fluttering noise lay reassurance. It was
all right. Tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick, said the engine, as
happy and regular as if the car were coasting a hill.
One, two, three; Edgar was in his place. The noise was
increased. The car was in motion. He was out upon
the dark road, speeding to Patricia through the deserted
streets, now so fair and open to the questing traveller;
the only sound audible to Edgar that beautiful eagerness
which animated his own car. His eyes were steady and
his hand easy upon the wheel. The lights of the main
thoroughfares were clear, unearthly, and the way was
free, as if inviting him to the race.
London at night he knew; but this journey gave Edgar
a new vision of it. So quickly did he pass familiar
objects that they swam together in his recording impression.
It was London dignified and purified into
ghostly loveliness by the night, but London so decreased
in size that it became a village. All monuments and
buildings of great size or antiquity were made insignificant;
the broad roads of the west as he sped through
them were so many paths. He had his goal, and could
not attend the beauties he so silently and so eagerly left
upon his way.
And at last, as he emerged to the appointed meeting-place,
Edgar saw Patricia, a little disconsolate figure,
waiting in the shadow of the railway-station façade. All
there was darkness. The last trains had rumbled their
way through the station, and it was as deserted as if it
had been forgotten. Only Patricia's outline was to be
discerned, but she was recognisable, and as he turned the
car and ran alongside the kerb she came immediately
forward. Both moved as in a dream. He had one
glimpse of a white face within the radiance of the nearer
lamp; and his nerves thrilled as he opened the door so
that she could join him. It was an almost mute encounter,
with midnight long past, in this silence and darkness,
and there was unavoidable constraint upon both
sides, so singular was the relation existing between them.
Without a word, Patricia shut the door and drew back
into the farther corner of the car, away from Edgar.
To his inquiry she made no answer, and he saw that her
eyes were closed, as if in complete exhaustion. Puzzled,
Edgar touched her hand once; but there was no response,
and after a single instant in which he tried to gain some
knowledge from Patricia's expression he turned away
once more and in silence they began their journey together.
Now all was changed. Edgar no longer drove at reckless
speed. He went slowly and easily by a longer route,
which took them by frequented streets; and they passed
many cabs or cars travelling from the opposite direction.
They were thus not alone, since they were in an active
world. Edgar was still concentrated upon the car and the
road; but he was very conscious of Patricia's ominous and
stubborn silence. Many explanations of it, and speculations
as to what had happened, and what had made her
telephone to him at so late an hour entered his head; but
a moving automobile at night, in a city, when one is the
driver, is not a possible situation for agitated enquiry.
Edgar therefore waited for Patricia to explain of her
own accord, which apparently she could not yet do.
Therefore, with only occasional slight glances aside at
the face half invisible in the darkness, he concerned himself
wholly with their progress. Only when the road
was at last clear, and he could take the wheel with his
right hand, did he stretch out the left to her.
"What is it?" he asked. "What was it?"
Patricia took his hand in both her own, and pressed it,
holding it tightly against her breast. But still she did
not speak; and in a moment, when there was an obstruction
in the road, Edgar was forced to withdraw his hand
so that he could use the other to sound the warning horn.
He could feel Patricia's hand extended so that she could
touch him, and the knowledge that she wished this reassuring
contact gave him a faint happiness; and so they
sat together in the darkness until they arrived in Chelsea,
and in the road where Patricia lived. Edgar stopped
the car and the engine, turning to her.
"You haven't changed your mind," he said, in a
murmur. "What then?"
His arm was moved to embrace her; but she did not
permit it. Only she again took his hand in both of
hers.
"I haven't changed my mind at all," said Patricia in
a cold voice.
"So I heard," answered Edgar, smiling, his face close
to hers.
"But I wanted to see you," she whispered.
"And then?"
There was a pause.
"Nothing," whispered Patricia again, so low that he
could hardly hear her. She immediately afterwards
stiffened, discarding his hand as though it had been a
loathsome temptation. Edgar stared down at his poor
hand. "Nothing—nothing at all."
"It's done you good to see me?" he asked. He could
see a quick little nodding. "Well, that's something,
don't you think?"
"You're good," said Patricia. "You're better than
me."
"Of course, I'm extraordinarily good," Edgar agreed.
"But—"
"Silly!" It was a sort of ashamed mumble that he
heard. "Well, I'm going now."
"Oh, not yet." He had tried to take her hand; but
Patricia eluded him, and bent forward to open the door.
The catch was difficult, and she could not master it.
Edgar also bent forward, both arms extended; and it
seemed so much easier to take Patricia in his arms than
to undo the catch of the door that he could not help following
the easier course.
"No!" cried Patricia, succeeding with the catch, and
almost tumbling out of the car. She shut the door firmly
behind her; and Edgar, inside, looked out upon Patricia,
who stood without. The window upon that side of the car
was raised, and so communication between them was
impossible. Edgar opened the door. "Don't get out,"
said Patricia, quickly. "Thank you very much for coming
for me. It was awfully good of you to come."
"Not at all," said Edgar, very politely, stepping to
the ground. "But won't you tell me why you wanted
to see me? And there are one or two other things, by
the way—"
Patricia groaned.
"I can't argue with you to-night," she said, as if in a
goaded voice of exhaustion.
"Will you argue with me to-morrow?"
"I'll never argue with you!" vehemently exclaimed
Patricia. He did not believe her. He thought she would
always argue with him. "And I'm not sure that I want
to see you to-morrow."
"Very well," said Edgar quietly. He took off his cap,
and stepped back into the car.
"What time?" cried Patricia.
He leaned forward.
"You're a silly little thing!" he said. "But as to-morrow
is Saturday, and I shall not go to the office at
all, I'll call for you in this at ten o-clock, and take you
to some thoroughly vulgar and third-rate hotel for
lunch, and then I'll explain—I won't argue; but I'll explain—what's
the matter with you."
And with that he used his mechanical starter, closed
the door of the car, and would have driven off. But
Patricia had come round to the open window of the car.
"Edgar," she said, pleadingly. "Don't be unkind.
I've been a horrible little beast to-night; and I'm very
ashamed of myself—and worse. And I had to see you
to ... to...." She stammered. "I can't tell you,"
she continued. "Yes, I can. I must. I wanted to see
you to get clean again after what I've been going through
this evening. And while I was waiting for you I
thought I'd see if I was good enough for you. And I'm
not. But do come for me to-morrow. It's very necessary.
Really. Good-night, Edgar." She held her hand
in at the window. He shook it, and Patricia, who perhaps
had expected another form of farewell, withdrew
the hand as the car moved forward upon its homeward
journey.
The next morning Edgar gave Claudia the surprise of
her life. They were sitting at breakfast, and Claudia
was being very quiet and tactful in case Edgar should
be feeling badly about what Olivia had said during
dinner on the previous evening. She had taken peeps
at him, and was gradually relaxing her vigilance in face
of his apparently normal cheerfulness. Neither Mr. nor
Mrs. Mayne was present; and the brother and sister
were eating and drinking with a sedate nonchalance customary
to both.
"You going to the office to-day?" asked Claudia, suddenly.
Edgar awakened from some evidently pleasant preoccupation.
"Er ... no, not to-day," he said, helping himself to
another piece of toast. "By the way, you've got a fur
coat, haven't you? Could you lend it to me? That is,
I suppose you wouldn't mind Patricia wearing it? I'm
taking her out to-day in Budge, and she might be cold."
Claudia passed her hand across her forehead.
"Taking Patricia.... My poor boy!" she cried.
"Trouble's turned your brain. No, no. I'll come if you
think it would do you good; but Patricia...."
"I am taking Patricia out in Budge to-day," repeated
Edgar. "And require the loan of your fur coat. Don't
ask questions, there's a good girl; but if you wouldn't
mind lending the coat it might be a boon."
Claudia collapsed.
"The world ends," she said, as if stupefied. "Of
course, have my fur coat. Take anything. But for
Goodness' sake, Edgar, don't leave this thing unexplained.
I couldn't bear it."
"I may bring Patricia here to dinner to-night," answered
Edgar, briefly. "On the other hand, I may not."
"Quite probably not, I should say," observed Claudia,
with detachment. "Does she know you're taking her out
in Budge?" He nodded. Claudia rushed wildly to the
door, and returned presently bearing a fur coat.
"There!" she cried. "And if you won't tell me what
communication you've had with Patricia since I went
to bed last night you're a pig, and I'll throw you over."
He explained, tactfully, that Patricia had telephoned.
He said no more. He was not now quite sure what had
happened on the previous night. He could not disentangle
from each other the speeches actually made and
those which had occurred to him since as possible to have
been made in such circumstances. He was sure of only
one thing; and he was not, as yet, ready to tell Claudia
the whole truth. Therefore he took her fur coat and
swung easily out of the house bearing it upon his arm.
Claudia, left by herself at the breakfast-table, was
bereft of self-confidence.
"Well!" she exclaimed. "What does it all mean? I'm
flabbergasted!" She knew there had been no telephone
call this morning. She knew that Patricia had no telephone
in her rooms. It was a mystery. For the first
time she wondered whether it might not be the case
that Patricia loved Edgar. She had not believed that
hitherto. It was a testimony to her insight as well as to
her sisterly tact that she had not believed it and had not
pretended to believe it, while at the same time she had
resolved that it should become credible to both Edgar
and herself. Perhaps, also, to Patricia. She went about
her work during the morning with a lighter heart than
she had known for several days.
Edgar was punctual in his arrival at Patricia's door.
As he left the car and lowered its hood, a church clock
near by struck the hour. He advanced to the front door,
and knocked. And as he did so Patricia appeared at the
door, dressed for going out. She had feverishly been
ready for ten minutes, and had watched for him. She
greeted him, but their eyes did not meet, and he could
see that she was still pale, possibly from want of sleep;
possibly even, it might have been, from inability to eat
her breakfast.
"I brought a coat of Claudia's," he said, with a good
deal of carelessness which covered a temporary lack of
assurance. "You'd better wear it, because it may be very
cold driving. Would you like to leave your own coat?
No, better bring it."
Patricia was mystified as to his reasoning; but she
allowed herself to be packed into the fur coat, and then
sat quite still while Edgar re-started the car and drove
down the road and round a corner into the King's Road
and so through Putney to Kingston and out on to the
Guildford road. She had tried to equal his casualness
with her own; but she was feeling very shaky, and was
glad of the silence. Patricia did not know where they
were going; but the car's smooth motion was delightful,
and the morning was crisply cold; and as they drew free
of traffic and tramcars the opening country began to
surround her with beauties which sprang freshly upon
every hand and awakened self-forgetful rapture in her
heart. Although the year was dying, there were trees
which still clung to their leaves, and strange attractive
byeways which caught the eye and roused the impulse to
explore; and, as they sped farther, charming little towns
and villages which she had never before seen. When
once they were through Guildford and upon the Hog's
Back the views—thinned and obscured though they were
by autumnal mists—were entrancing, and Patricia lay
back with colour coming again into her cheeks and a
sparkle to her eyes. She was cosily warm in the borrowed
fur coat; the car, although small, had the movement
of one considerably larger; and as Patricia had
almost complete ignorance of motoring the experience
was new and fine. Everything passed swiftly—everything
was glimpsed, half-seen, and immediately succeeded
by some other object of beauty or interest, until it seemed
as though she must be surfeited, since the greedy mind
could not hold so many fleeting images of loveliness.
Patricia thought that this must be the way in which children
saw the whole of life—as a great swift progress of
joys to which they had only to stretch their hands. But
those who grew up knew that the joys passed before
ever they were gathered. The joys alone? Perhaps the
sorrows also. Everything ... everything passed....
That was the thought in her mind. She remembered the
French saying.... Everything passes. Would this
journey end? Would she always travel unsatisfied,
wonder-struck and unresting? Was that her lot? The
fear of it made her shiver.
"Cold?" asked Edgar, aside.
Could he see her? Was he then watching, although so
apparently intent upon the road? Patricia cried "No!"
in response, and a further "Lovely!" in case he should
be hurt; and then her eyes stole on a journey. If Edgar
could know when she shivered, was there ever to be any
escape from his watchfulness, his care? When Patricia,
like the Devil, was sick, or afraid, there was nothing she
so demanded as care; but when she was well, it irked
her. She could see Edgar's face in profile, brown and
kind and firm; and she was a little afraid of him. She
thought he could be stern. Not cruel—never cruel; but
stern. And the words "all the better to eat you with, my
dear" crept into Patricia's head. She was very subdued,
and although she was still observant of the beauties they
passed, and stirred by the rapid motion through crisp air
that was now tempered by brilliant sunshine, extraordinarily
defensive argumentation was going on in her
brain. If she were to marry Edgar, it must be after clear
speech between them. Never for comfort or in despair.
She was resolved upon that. For one thing, her respect
for him exacted as much. Patricia's nerve had been
shaken, and she had lost some of her self-confidence;
and, with that, some of her natural ease of carriage and
pleasure in life itself.
"Where are we going?" she presently called out.
To her surprise, Edgar slowed down. He even
stopped, there upon the Hog's Back, with the beautiful
country stretching away in two valleys upon each side
of the lofty road.
"Wherever you like," he said. "We can lunch at Winchester.
There's a village on the way there—a most
charming village called Chawton, where Jane Austen
lived—full of old thatched houses. You'd like it. I
don't know anything more delicious in its way. I don't
know if we could get food there."
"Are you hungry?" she asked. Unconsciously her
tone was arch; but with pathetic, troubled archness.
"And what's that about Jane Austen?"
"Well, I didn't bring anything to eat, and the air will
make you hungry. We can either go south from
Farnham—only I don't know the roads round Liss or
Petersfield;—or we can go on to Winchester, lunch there,
and go back by way of Basingstoke. Or we can turn
back now and go through Guildford to Godalming...."
"Oh, oh!" cried Patricia. "I don't mind what we do."
"You like it?" He was looking at her in such a
peculiar way that Patricia shivered again. It seemed to
break her composure, which she was struggling so hard
to preserve.
"Oh, my dear," she whispered suddenly. "I'm not
worth it!"
Her hands were in his, and her eyes were as candid
as his own. So they sat in the car on that bright morning,
upon the top of the Hog's Back, and the wide rise
and fall of the lower lands spreading to north and south
under a slight haze. The sky above them was a deep
blue. The road was open, and it seemed that none used
it, so peaceful was the scene upon this glorious morning.
Only Edgar and Patricia were there, with the breeze
around them, and the sunshine ardent, and a sense of the
limitlessness of the world strong in both.
It was here that their talk began.
"Of course the trouble about you is that you don't
love me," said Edgar, in a cool voice which showed that
he was anxious by its elaborate calm. "Not, at any rate,
as I love you."
"No," agreed Patricia. Her own tone was a copy of
his; and the word was a mere acceptance. She was as
grave as he, and yet neither was grave. They were both
grave and not grave. But Patricia had said "no"; and
Edgar had received the shock to which he had steeled
himself.
"Do you—forgive me—you don't love anybody else?
It isn't, of course, necessary that you should; but sometimes
it's a factor."
Patricia glanced up at him, and even in her gravity she
smiled.
"No, I don't love anybody else," she said. "And I
know you well enough to know that when you talk like
that you're being funny."
"I'm not being at all funny," protested Edgar. There
was a sound of consent from Patricia. He went on,
undeterred. "The reason you don't love anybody else is
that you're in love with yourself."
"Oh." Patricia had not been so forewarned as to steel
herself; and this shock depressed her. In a very low
voice she said, trying to hide her wound: "I'm not much
in love with myself at this moment."
The tone was so sad that unconsciously Edgar pressed
her hands in pain. He would have done so much to
save her from humiliation; and yet his way was clear
and his attitude deliberately adopted.
"This is your wickedness, I suppose?" he asked patiently.
Patricia nodded.
"At least, not wickedness—silliness. But perhaps
you'd think it worse. I'd better tell you. Five minutes
ago—a few days ago—I thought I was in love with a
man."
"Harry Greenlees," interposed Edgar. Again Patricia
nodded.
"I can't have been. I was attracted to him—I thought
I was in love with him. I thought he was my ideal
man. I was fond of him. But when it came to the point
I felt I couldn't ever marry him. And as a matter of
fact he didn't want to marry me. He only wanted to
have a love affair with me. But I only found that out
at the end. Well, it's a very little while ago, and I was
in great anguish; and now I've forgotten him. It
couldn't have been anything; anything but just a silly
playing at love and beauty. It wasn't his fault. He did
care for me in his own way; but it was a grown-up way;
and I wasn't ready for grown-up love. I'm not ready
now. I'm shallow. I don't think I could love anybody.
Perhaps what you said is true."
Edgar had listened with attention; and he could tell
that she was being painfully honest, and that she could
not help being honest with him; and this made him feel
proud and humble. It seemed to Edgar to be the first
step in such a relation as theirs must be if it was to lead
to happiness for them both.
"There doesn't seem to me to be much wickedness
there," he suggested mildly.
"No, there isn't," said Patricia, with a faint colour
coming to her cheeks. "The wickedness comes later.
The wickedness comes up to last night." She could tell
that he was now really serious, and she faltered. "It's
... it's Monty," she concluded. Edgar's head jerked.
"Monty!" he cried. "Monty! Oh, but my dear, how
could you?" He was incredulous. "Monty!"
"He fascinated me. There was no question of my
being in love with him. But he made me feel I was
wonderful and beautiful...."
"But to be taken in by Monty!" exclaimed Edgar.
"It's extraordinary. I believe women must somehow be
less fastidious than men. You couldn't imagine me
fascinated with Monty's counterpart?" His face expressed
the horror he felt at his own image. Patricia
shuddered.
"You'd never be fascinated by anybody," she said.
"You'd always be quite calm. Besides, you don't want
to be thought wonderful."
"I don't want Brummagem admiration."
"And you don't give it!" she flashed at him. "You
don't give any admiration. You don't think I'm wonderful.
You think I'm a silly child. Well, that makes
... you see, I couldn't love you...."
"By the way," said Edgar, coolly. "What makes you
think you're so jolly wonderful? Is it something you
do, or something you are?"
Patricia looked at him breathlessly. She was stimulated
to temper.
"Nobody could ever love you!" she cried angrily.
"You're too inhuman!"
Her hands were now altogether withdrawn from him,
and tears sparkled in her eyes. Edgar bent forward, so
that she could not escape him.
"Look here, Patricia," he said. "Can you imagine the
feeling of a lover who hears that the girl he loves has
been making love to an obvious rotter the previous evening?
I mean, if there's one thing that strikes me about
Monty more than another it is his lack of ... what can
I say?—his lack of.... I think he's obviously sensual
and unclean. I can't see his fascination for you. If I
came to you and said I'd been with some horrible woman,
wouldn't you turn sick? Well, I'm disappointed. I'm
angry. The love-making is nothing unless you meant
it, which you didn't. It's nothing. You exaggerate its
importance. You were never in any real danger. I
don't blame you, except for folly. Though of course I
don't like it. But that you should be taken in by
Monty!"
"I wasn't taken in. I knew he must be a rotter. And
yet, you see, I went there," said Patricia. "That shows
the sort of girl I am. I was miserable and reckless.
It amused me to—to play with him, if you like. It made
me feel a woman. I was trying to grow up. You've
made a mistake, Edgar." She was bitter, but not only
with anger. There was hopelessness also in her defiance.
"You ought to marry a nice girl."
"I propose to," said Edgar. "I propose to marry
you."
"Unless of course," retorted Edgar.... "Unless I
adopt you. That might be the simpler course." He also
for the moment was bitter with chagrin. He was encountering
a fact which was hard to accept; and he was
in love with Patricia.
Leaving Patricia aghast at his alternative, he began to
drive on; and the sun continued to glitter upon the polished
metal of the car and upon the wind screen. Patricia
lay back in her corner recovering her temper and
her composure. Presently she shouted at him.
"You've got too much respect for women!" she said.
Edgar took no notice of her. She was quiet a little while,
thinking. At last: "You're quite right. I'm not wonderful!
Edgar, stop! I want to talk to you. I want
to tell you something."
The car was checked; and in her very truthful voice
Patricia described the events of the previous evening.
When she came to the thousand pounds Edgar exclaimed.
At the mention of two thousand he turned quickly to her.
"Monty was prepared to go up to two-thousand five-hundred,"
he said. "He's got a regal way of pensioning
his mistresses. You might have made two-thousand five-hundred
pounds, Patricia."
"He offered to marry me," answered Patricia, defiantly.
"But he didn't really mean it, of course. It was
only something to attract my attention."
"I was thinking," said Edgar, slowly. "Your lovers
are rather a fine set of men, aren't they!"
"You think they're something to be conceited about?"
retorted Patricia. "Edgar, don't you really think I'm
rather wonderful!" It was apparently wistful; but only
apparently so.
"I'm so concerned with my own marvellousness," he
crudely answered, "that I can't spare time to admire
yours."
"But Edgar, girls have to be admired," she said. "Look
here: you've done something. You've achieved something.
Can't you see that if you've never done anything
you have to make up something to live for. If I loved
you, and had no other ambition, I could live in your
interests, as you want me to. But I can't play second
fiddle—not yet—not until I've sown my wild oats. If
I'm no good, then...."
Edgar turned round. If he observed the fiddler sowing
wild oats he ignored the confusion.
"There's something in that," he said. "I don't want
you to play second fiddle. You haven't made up your
mind to marry me; but you've got a sense that you're
going to ... that's so, isn't it?" There was a pause.
"I think so," answered Patricia at last, in a very quiet
voice. "It seems inevitable. That is, if I'm to marry
anybody at all. But I'm not ready to marry you."
"What you'd like to do is not to make up your mind.
You'd like to go on as we are, being friends, until I'm
tired of you and you are tired of me, and we can have
disagreeable middle-ages of loneliness and regret. I
don't care to waste our lives in that way. I admit that
I'm not an ideal lover; but I've got other points, and you
know them. You know that in some curious way you
depend on me. You may not be in love with me; but
no other man means as much to you, or will ever mean
as much. If it's put to you that you either marry me or
lose me, you'll marry me rather than lose me. But if
you don't love me, it would be very wrong to marry me
simply because you couldn't bear to lose me...."
Patricia allowed him to wander on. She was smiling.
"I like to hear you talk," she said. "It's agreeable.
It's all irrelevant, and verbose; and if you think I'm to
be threatened into marrying you, you're mistaken. Can't
you see it would murder my vanity? But I haven't anything
to give you. You'd be giving to me all the time.
I could have given something they wanted to Harry
and Monty, and when it came to the point I wouldn't
give it, because they couldn't give me anything I wanted
in exchange. You can give me a lot. You can make
my life worth living. But I can't give you anything,
because you don't want it."
"We'll get on to Winchester now," said Edgar, with
studied—even ostentatious—patience. "Because I want
to take you back to London to tea with some friends of
ours—Olivia and Peter Stephens."
"Stephens?" said Patricia. "Aren't they ... aren't
they the married people who are happy?" She became
thoughtful. The car began to move; but she was unconscious
of everything but her own darting intuitions.
Amy ... the happy young lovers ... what had Amy
said? For an instant full memory of the conversation
eluded her. Then at last. "Why take me there?" she
asked.
"It'll do you good to meet some real people for a
change," said Edgar. "Happy people. People who
haven't got their heads cluttered with sophistication and
egotism. People who aren't sterile sensation-rakers, and
lascivious fiddlers with their senses."
Again Patricia was lost in thought. His rather heated
tone was a natural discouragement to her. Suddenly she
gave an exclamation.
"Oh, babies!" she said. She did not open her lips
again until the car arrived in Winchester.
They had lunched, and were again upon the road; and
the bare hedges showed Patricia lands that stretched full
of wood and copse and meadow into the farthest distance.
From a high place upon a common, where Edgar
had halted for the sake of the glorious panorama, she
could see Hampshire extending upon the one hand and
Surrey upon the other. She was very happy now, but
her heart a little ached. It was the breeze, perhaps, that
chilled; or a return of her old painful feeling of loneliness....
But as Patricia thought that, she knew suddenly
what she wanted, and Edgar knew it also, for he
put his arm round her.
"My old sweet," he said. "Never think I don't love
you,—as much as any Harry or Monty; and with the
same warmth. I do. You're everything to me."
His lips were very close; and still Patricia delayed,
not excited, but welcoming, half-smiling, half-afraid.
She was shy. She had not been shy with Harry or with
Monty. But she was shy with Edgar. From him a kiss
seemed almost ceremonial. And as she thought that,
Patricia blushed.
"Don't let's go to the Stephenses'," she said, breathlessly,
her head lowered. "I know why you want me
to go there. Do you want babies so much, Edgar? More
than you want me? You see, I'm ... I know I'm conceited
and horrible ... but it's because I feel so worthless."
Lower and lower sank her head, to his breast,
and she was held close to Edgar's heart. "Funny heart,
to beat," she said. "You do love me, don't you....
Really love me...."
"Really," he swore. "All my heart."
"And you think I'm an idiot."
"Yes."
Patricia hit her lover a sharp blow of exasperation.
"And you don't think I'm wonderful."
"No."
She sat upright again, still within the circle of his arm.
"Has your car got a name?" she asked.
"Yes, Budge. Claudia named him; because at first
he wouldn't. She kept saying 'He won't budge. He
won't budge.' And suddenly he did. So that's how he
was christened."
"Well," said Patricia, as though she were concluding
a scene. "This is all very well; but ... Edgar, you do
love me? And you'll try to make me less idiotic? Of
course, I'm not in love with you. You don't attract me
at all. But in a sort of way you're rather nice."
Her lips were trembling. She blinked away some
tears. It did not at all accord with her anticipation of
romance. And yet it was shot through and through
with a beautiful tranquillity.
"I wish you'd let me kiss you," said Edgar. "I can't
if you turn your face away. Unless I slew it round by
force."
"Silly!" muttered Patricia. Edgar exerted force. Not
much was necessary. Patricia put her arms round his
neck, and they kissed, and then laughed. "Suppose
we're making a mistake," she cried. "Suppose it's all
wrong."
"After all, most people take a risk," said Edgar.
"I don't take a risk. It's you who take the risk," she
answered. "You can be trusted. I can't. Look at the
way I've behaved. I'm a rake! Suppose I ran away
with somebody?"
"Then I should keep the babies," said Edgar.
Patricia looked indignantly at him.
"You're only a great baby yourself!" she said. "How
extraordinary! And I thought...." She was amazed.
It was a discovery of the most astounding significance
to her. She had thought of him always hitherto as a
grown-up. Was he then not grown-up? Her eyes
glowed. "Edgar, tell me this!" she exclaimed. "Are
you afraid of me?"
"I am," said Edgar.
"Truly afraid? And do you think I'm a poor insect?"
"I think you're the most wonderful creature that ever
lived. I adore you," said Edgar.
Great tears splashed from Patricia's eyes. Laughing,
she held him closely, and impulsively kissed the brown
cheek next her own.
"Dearest!" she cried. "It's a dream. I didn't know
I ... I didn't realise how much I loved you, until just
exactly that moment when I saw you were nothing but
a silly baby. But you're artful, you know! You're a
deep one." Ruminatingly, she presently added: "I'm not
so sure about those risks."
She was strangely exalted and happy, and her face
was the funny face of a baby; and she sometimes could
not meet Edgar's eyes, and sometimes boldly sought
them; and altogether was mystified by her own sensations,
and by the odd thoughts which came sparkling into
her mind and on to her tongue. The two of them continued
to sit in Budge and to be consumed in the marvel
of their situation. Around them the wind played and
the sun shone as it travelled towards the west, and the
counties continued to subsist as if no lovers sat high
above them absorbed in joy.
