III
He had perhaps expected that she would not come down, but there was no opportunity given them for speech because the butler announcing dinner followed her into the library. They went in.
He sat opposite her, looking ashamed, with his eyes lowered, and the red coming and going in his sunburned cheeks.
They talked for the sake of the servants, and she asked him whether Hawes had been as lovely as ever and whether Lady Rockington's nerves were better, and how their youngest boy (delicate from his birth) was now.
Whilst she spoke her brain was turning, turning like a wheel; could she only, for five minutes, think clearly, then might much after disaster be avoided. She knew that in the conversation that was to come Roddy would follow her lead and that it would be she who would be responsible for all consequences.
She knew that and yet she could not force her brain to be clear nor foresee what the end of it all was to be.
The dessert and the wine came at last and she went—
"I'll be in the library, Roddy," she said.
He gave her a quarter of an hour, and in that pause, with the house quite silent all about her and the fire crackling and the lights softly shining, she strove to discipline her mind.
She had known as soon as she had seen them there that the most awful element in it was that this had in no way altered the earlier case—it merely precipitated a crisis and demanded a definition. Nothing could have proved to her that she had never loved Roddy so much as her own feeling at this crisis towards him. Therein lay her own sin.
It was simply now of the future that she must think. The awful chasm that might divide them after this night, were not their words most carefully ordered, shook her with fear; peril to herself, for she could stand aside and see herself quite clearly: and she knew that if to-night she and he were to say things that they could neither of them afterwards forget, then, for herself, and from her deep need of love and affection, there was temptation awaiting her that no disguise could cover.
Then, as more clearly she figured the scene in the garden, patience seemed difficult to command.
She hated Nita Raseley—that was no matter—but she despised Roddy, and were he once to-night to see that contempt she knew that his after remembrance of it would divide them more completely than anything else could do.
When he came in she had still no clearer idea of what she intended to say, or how she wished things to go. She was sitting in an arm-chair by the fire with her hands shielding her face, and he sat down opposite her and stared at her and cleared his throat and wished that she would take her hands down and then finally plunged:
"Rachel—I don't know—I can't—hang it all, what can I say? I've been a beastly cad and I'd cut my right hand off to have prevented it happening——"
She took her hand down and turned towards him—
"Let's cut all the recrimination part, Roddy," she said. "It was very unfortunate—that was all. It was rather beastly of you, and as for Nita——"
Here he broke in—"No, I say, you mustn't say anythin' about her. She wasn't a little bit to blame—It just——"
"Well, we'll leave Nita. She isn't of any importance, anyway. The point is that things have been wrong for months between us, and as we haven't been married very long that's a pity. This has just brought things to a head, that's all——"
"No," said Roddy firmly. "No, Rachel, that ain't fair to Nita. I know it isn't nice, but I must put that out fair and square—fair and square to Nita.
"We'd had a jolly old drive to Hawes—rippin' day, cold as anythin', with the horse just spankin' along, and then the Rockingtons were jolly and the lunch was jolly and back we came. We looked about the house for you and heard you were still out walkin', so we just strolled about the garden a bit and then—Well, anyway, Nita simply had nothin' to do with it. It was so rippin' and jolly after the drive and all, that I just kissed her. All in a second I just felt I had to ... beastly weak of me," he finally added in a contemplative tone.
"Well, that disposes of Nita," said Rachel. "Don't let's mention her again. Meanwhile what sort of life am I going to have if 'things' are going to sweep over you like this continually? Besides, it's rather early days, isn't it? We haven't been married half a year yet."
"No," said Roddy slowly, "no, we haven't and it's simply beastly. I'm a perfect swine. When I married you the one thing I meant to do was to be just as kind to you as I jolly well could be, and give you a perfectly rippin' time, and here I am hurtin' you like anything——"
She moved impatiently. "Never mind that, Roddy. You have been very kind and I'm sure you'd have given anything for me not to have come into the garden just when I did, so as to have avoided hurting me. But what I do know is that you're not straight with me. You know I told you before we were married that the one thing that mattered was Truth—truth to oneself and truth to everyone else—Well, we haven't been straight with one another for a single instant. You've done any number of things that would be wrong to you if I knew about them, but wouldn't be in the least wrong if I didn't."
"Of course," said Roddy, "no feller tells his wife everything—that would be absurd. I think things are worse if people know about 'em whom it hurts to know—much worse."
She was suddenly confronted now with a Roddy whose assurance and confidence in his own personality startled her. Because he had never been gifted with words and liked to be in the company of dogs and horses she had fancied that he had no ideas about anything.
Rachel was a great deal younger than she knew and a great deal more contemptuous of the other half world than her experience of it justified. Strangely enough this confidence on Roddy's part angered her more than anything else could have done.
"The fact is that since our marriage we've never got to know each other in the least. We talk and go to places together and you give me things and I give you things—and that's all. I don't know you and now, after to-day, I can't trust you——"
He coloured a little at that, but said nothing.
She went on, rather fast and her breath coming between her words: "But I'm not going to be so silly as to make a scene because I saw you kissing Nita Raseley. She's simply not worth thinking about,—but you ought to be straighter to me all the way round. If you've wanted to be kind to me as you say, then you might have taken me more into your life——"
"Well," said Roddy slowly, "if you'd managed to love me a bit, Rachel, things might be different."
This answer was so utterly unexpected that it took her like a blow. That Roddy should attack her when he had, only a few hours before, been discovered so abominably!
"What do you mean, Roddy?" she stammered angrily. "Love you? But——"
"Yes," he persisted doggedly, "I know when you accepted me you said you didn't and I know that I hadn't any right to expect it, but I believe if you hadn't thought me such a silly ass and hadn't looked all the time as though you were just indulgin' my silly fancies until somethin' more sensible had come along, things might have been different. I'm the sort of feller," Roddy said, choosing his words carefully, "that you could have made anythin' out of, Rachel. I'm weak in some ways—most men are—and when a thing comes dancin' along lookin' ever so temptin', why, then I generally have to go after it. But you could have kept me, Rachel, more than anyone I've ever known——"
She was not touched nor moved, only angered that he, so obviously in the wrong, should attempt justification.
"Yes," she said hotly. "And I suppose in another moment you'll be telling me that it's silly of me to be angry at what I saw this afternoon?"
He thought it out a moment, then answered: "No, it was perfectly natural of course—only I don't think you ought to mind much. If you really cared, you wouldn't. It don't matter really so much what I do if I still like you best. Moments don't count—it's what goes on all the time that matters. Why, I might kiss a hundred women and still you'd be the only woman who mattered to me. I've never cared for one so long before," he added simply.
Then as she said nothing he went on: "I've never been sort of educated—never cared enough for anyone to give things up. I would have given things up for you if you'd wanted me to, but you didn't really——"
"Aren't we a little off the point, Roddy?" she flung back. "The point is how are we going to get along all the years and years we've got in front of us? What are we going to do?"
"Everybody's just the same," said Roddy quietly. "It takes a lot of years before married people settle down. We can't expect to be any different——"
But although he spoke so quietly he watched her, hoping for some yielding on her part; in an instant, had she come to him, she would have seen a Roddy whom she had never seen before and from that moment onwards would have had a power over him that nothing could have shaken.
So delicately hung the balance between them. But she was filled with a sense of her own wrongs, her loneliness, the injustice of it all. At that moment all affection for Roddy had left her, she would only have been glad if she had known that she was never to see him again. His slow voice, his way of thinking out his sentences, his thick clumsy hands and his red face, everything came to her now as a continuation of the chains that she had worn all her days.
She got up and confronted him—
"Yes," she said fiercely, "that's exactly it. Life is to be like everyone else. We're to say the things, do the things that our neighbours say and do. Because your friends at Brooks's kiss their wives' friends, therefore you are to do so. Because the men you know never say what they mean and lie about everything they do, therefore you do the same. Oh! I know! Haven't I heard it all my life? Haven't my precious family lived on lies? You've caught it all from my delightful grandmother! I congratulate you!"
"What if I have?" he said. "She's a friend of mine, Rachel. She's been dashed good to me—You're not to say a word against her."
"I hate her," Rachel cried passionately. "All my life she's been over me—for years she's been my enemy. If she stands for everything that you believe, then it isn't any wonder that we have nothing in common, that you should be proud of this afternoon, that—that——"
She was biting her lips to keep back the tears. Over his face had crept a sulky obstinate look that might have told her, had she seen it, that she was driving him very far.
"She's fine," he said. "She's made England what it is. You're all for ideas, Rachel, and for Truth and lots of things, but you're difficult to live with."
"Very well, Roddy. Thank you. Now we know how we stand. I at least owe Nita a debt for having cleared up the situation. If you find it difficult with me I can at least return the compliment—and I have at any rate this added advantage, that I speak the truth."
As he looked at her across the room he saw in her that same figure that he'd seen once just before proposing to her—someone foreign, unknown—He felt as though he were quarrelling with a stranger....
She turned and went.
For a long while he stood gazing into the fire, his hands in his pockets. How had it all happened? Why had they let it come to that kind of quarrel when they might so easily have prevented it?
And she, crying bitterly in her room, asked herself the same question.