IV
A WEEK passed by without my getting any news from Lady Lexington. My next advices came, in fact, from Jane. One morning she burst into my room when I was reading the paper after breakfast. I had been out late the night before, and had not seen her since yesterday at lunch. Her present state of excitement was obvious.
“She’s asked for time to consider!” she cried. “Imagine!”
“The dickens she has!” I exclaimed. Of course I guessed to whom she was referring.
“Ah, I thought that would startle you!” Jane remarked, with much gratification. “I was at the Lexingtons’ yesterday. She is queer.”
I saw that Jane wanted me to ask questions, but I always prefer having gossip volunteered to me; it seems more dignified, and one very seldom loses anything in the end. So I just nodded, and relighted my pipe. Jane smiled scornfully.
“You’ll go there yourself to-day,” she said. “I know you.”
“I was going, anyhow—to pay my dinner call.”
“Of course!” She was satisfied with the effect of her sarcasm—I think I had betrayed signs of confusion—and went on gravely: “You can imagine how upset they all are.”
“But she only proposes to consider.”
“Well, it’s not very flattering to be considered, is it? ‘I’ll consider’—that’s what one says to get out of the shop when a thing costs too much.”
I had to ask one question. I did it as carelessly as possible. “Did you happen to see Miss Constantine herself?”
“Oh yes; I saw Katharine. I saw her, because she was in the room part of the time, and I’m not blind,” said Jane crossly.
“I gather that she hardly took you into her full—her inner—confidence?”
Jane’s reply was impolite in form, but answered my question substantially in the affirmative. She added: “Lady Lexington told me that she won’t say a word about her reasons. You won’t find it a cheerful household.”
I did not. Jane was right there. I daresay my own cheerfulness was artificial and spasmodic: the atmosphere of a family crisis is apt to communicate itself to guests. It must not be understood that the Lexingtons, or Miss Boots, or Mr Sharples, who was there again, were other than perfectly kind to Katharine. On the contrary, they overdid their kindness—overdid it portentously, in my opinion. They treated her as though she were afflicted with a disease of the nerves, and must on no account be worried or thwarted. If she had said that the moon was made of green cheese they would have evaded a direct contradiction—they might just have hinted at a shade of blue. She saw this; I can quite understand that it annoyed her very much. For the rest, Lady Lexington’s demeanour set the cue: “It must end all right; meanwhile we must bear it.”
She and Mr Sharples and Miss Boots were all going to an afternoon drawing-room meeting, but I was asked to stay and have tea. “You’ll give him a cup of tea, won’t you, Katharine?” And did my ears deceive me, or did Lady Lexington breathe into my ear, as she shook hands, the words, “If you could say a word—tactfully!”? I believe she did; but Jane says I dreamed it—or made it up, more likely. If she did say it, it argued powerfully for her distress.
I had known Katharine Constantine pretty well for three or four years; I had, indeed, some claim to call myself her friend. All the same, I did not see my way to broach the engrossing subject to her, and I hardly expected her to touch on it in talk with me. My idea was to prattle, to distract her mind with gossip about other people. But she was, I think, at the end of her patience both with herself and with her friends. Her laugh was defiant as she said:
“Of course you know all about it? Jane has told you? And of course you’re dying to tell me I’m a fool—as all the rest of them do! At any rate, they let me see they think it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s talk of anything else. I’ve got no right——”
“I give you the right. You’re interested?”
“Oh, I can’t deny that. I’m human.”
She was looking very attractive to-day; her perplexity and worry seemed to soften her; an unwonted air of appeal mitigated her assurance of manner; she was pleasanter when she was not so confident of herself.
“Well, I should rather like to put the case to a sensible man—and we’ll suppose you to be one for the moment.” She laughed more gently as I bowed my thanks. “On the one side is what’s expected of me——”
“Jane’s phrase!” I thought to myself.
“What all the world thinks, what I’ve thought for a long while myself, what he thinks—in fact, everything. And, I tell you, it’s a good deal. It is even with men, isn’t it?”
“What’s expected of us? Yes. Only unusual men can disregard that.”
“It’s worse with women—the weight of it is much heavier with women. And am I to consider myself unusual? Besides, I do like him enormously.”
“I was wondering when you would touch on that point. It seems to me important.”
“Enormously. Who wouldn’t? Everybody must. Not for his looks or his charm only. He’s a real good sort too, Mr Wynne. A woman could trust her heart with him.”
“I’ve always believed he was a good sort—and, of course, very brilliant—a great career before him—and all that.” She said nothing for a moment, and I repeated thoughtfully: “Astonishingly brilliant, to be sure, isn’t he?”
She nodded at me, smiling. “Yes, that’s the word—brilliant.” She was looking at me very intently. “What more have you to say?” she asked.
“A good heart—a great position—a brilliant intellect—well, what more is there to say? Unless you permit me to say that ladies are sometimes—as they have a perfect right to be—hard to please.”
“Yes, I’m hard to please.” Her smile came again, this time thoughtful, reminiscent, amused, almost, I could fancy, tender. “I’ve been spoilt lately,” she said. Then she stole a quick glance at me, flushing a little.
I grew more interested in her; I think I may say more worthily interested. I knew what she meant—whom she was thinking of. I passed the narrow yet significant line that divides gossip about people from an interest in one’s friends or a curiosity about the human mind. Or so I liked to put it to myself.
“I must talk,” she said. “Is it very strange of me to talk?”
“Talk away. I hear, or I don’t hear, just as you wish. Anyhow, I don’t repeat.”
“That is your point, you men! Well, if it were between a great man and a nobody?”
“The great man I know—we all do. But the nobody? I don’t know him.”
“Don’t you? I think you do; or perhaps you know neither? If the world and I meant just the opposite?”
She was standing now, very erect, proud, excited.
“It’s a bad thing to mean just the opposite from what the world means,” I said.
“Bad? Or only hard?” she asked. “God knows it’s hard enough.”
“There’s the consolation of the—spoiling,” I suggested. “Who spoils you, the great man or the nobody?”
She paid no visible heed to my question. Indeed she seemed for the moment unconscious of me. It was October; a small bright fire burned on the hearth. She turned to it, stretching out her hands to the warmth. She spoke, and I listened. “It would be a fine thing,” she said, “to be the first to believe—the first to give evidence of belief—perhaps the finest thing to be the first and last—to be the only one to give everything one had in evidence.” She faced round on me suddenly. “Everything—if one dared!”
“If you were very sure——” I began.
“No!” she interrupted. “Say, if I had courage—courage to defy, courage for a great venture!”
“Yes, it’s better put like that.”
“But people don’t realise—indeed they don’t—how much it needs.”
“I think I realise it a little better.” She made no comment on that, and I held out my hand. “I should like to help, you know,” I said, “but I expect you’ve got to fight it out alone.”
She pressed my hand in a very friendly way, saying, “Any single human being’s sympathy helps.”
That was not, perhaps, a very flattering remark, but it seemed to me pathetic, coming from the proud, the rich, the beautiful Miss Constantine. To this she was reduced in her struggle against her mighty foe. Any ally, however humble, was precious in her fight against what was expected of her.