II
During that strange twilight hour while the three of them were tea-drinking and conducting a rather limp conversation about local matters, Speed came suddenly to the decision that he would not see Clare again. Partly, perhaps, because her last remark just before Helen entered had hurt him; he felt that she had deliberately led him into a position from which she could and did administer a stinging snub. But chiefly his decision was due to a careful and pitiful observation of Helen; he saw her in a dazzling white light of admiration, for she was deliberately (he could see) torturing herself to please him. She was acutely jealous of Clare, and yet, because she thought he liked Clare, she was willing to give her open hospitality and encouragement, despite the stab that every word and gesture must mean to her. It reminded him of Hans Andersen's story about the mermaid who danced to please her lover-prince even though each step cost her agonies. The pathos of it, made more apparent to him by the literary comparison, overwhelmed him into a blind fervour of resolution: he would do everything in his power to bring happiness to one who was capable of such love and such nobility. And as Helen thus swung into the focus of his heroine-worship, so Clare, without his realising it, took up in his mind the other inevitable position in the triangle; she was something, at least, of the adventuress, scheming to lure his affections away from his brave little wife. The fact that he was not conscious of this conventional outlook upon the situation prevented his reason from assuring him that Clare, so far from scheming to lure his affections from Helen, had just snubbed him unmercifully for a remark which any capable adventuress would have rejoiced over.
Anyway, he decided there and then, he would put a stop to this tangled and uncomfortable situation. And after tea, when Helen, on a pretext which he knew quite well to be a fabrication, left him alone again with Clare, he could think of no better method of procedure than a straightforward request.
So he summed up the necessary determination to begin: "Miss Harrington, I hope you won't be offended at what I'm going to say——"
Whereat she interrupted: "Oh, I don't often take offence at what people say. So please don't be frightened."
"You see ..." He paused, watching her. He noticed, curiously enough for the first time, that she was—well, not perhaps pretty, but certainly—in a way—attractive. In the firelight especially, she seemed to have the most searching and diabolically disturbing eyes. They made him nervous. At last he continued: "You see, I'm in somewhat of a dilemma. A quandary, as it were. In fact—in fact I——"
"Supposing we use our ordinary English language and say that you're in a mess, eh? 'Quandary'! 'Dilemma'!" She laughed with slight contempt.
"I don't—I don't quite see the point of—of your—objection," he said, staring at her with a certain puzzled ruefulness. "What has my choice of a word got to do with it?"
"To do with what?" she replied, instantly.
"With what—with what we're going to talk about."
"Since I haven't the faintest idea what we're going to talk about, how can I say?"
"Look here!" He got up out of his chair and stood with his back to the fire. He kept a fretful silence for a moment and then said, with a sharp burst of exasperation: "Look here, I don't know what you're driving at! I only know that you're being most infernally rude!"
"Don't forget that a moment ago you were asking me not to take offence."
"You're damned clever, aren't you?" he almost snarled.
That was all he could think of in the way of an answer to her. He stood there swaying lightly in front of the fire, nursing, as it were, his angry bafflement.
"Thank you," she replied. "I regard that as a very high tribute. And I'm nearly as pleased at one other thing—I seem to have shaken you partly out of your delightful and infuriating urbanity.... But now, we're not here to compliment each other. You've got something you want to say to me, haven't you?"
He stared at her severely and said: "Yes, I have. I want to ask you not to come here any more."
"Why?" She shot the word out at him almost before he had finished speaking.
"Because I don't wish you to."
"You forget that I come at Helen's invitation, not at yours."
"I see I shall have to tell you the real reason, then. I would have preferred not to have done. My wife is jealous of you."
He expected her to show great surprise, but the surprise was his when she replied almost casually: "Oh yes, she was jealous of you once—that first evening we met at the Head's house—do you remember?"
No, he did not remember. At least, he did now that she called it to his memory, but he had not remembered until then. Curious ...
He was half-disappointed that she was so calm and unconcerned about it all. He had anticipated some sort of a scene, either of surprise, remorse, indignation, or sympathy. Instead of which she just said "Oh, yes," and indulged in some perfectly irrelevant reminiscence. Well, not perhaps irrelevant, but certainly inappropriate in the circumstances.
"You see," he went on, hating her blindly because she was so serene; "you see she generously invites you here, because she thinks I like you to come. Well, of course, I do, but then, I don't want to make it hard for her. You understand what I mean? I think it is very generous of her to—to act as she does."
"I think it is very foolish unless she has the idea that in time she can conquer her jealousy.... But I quite understand, Mr. Speed. I won't come any more."
"I hope you don't think——"
"Fortunately I have other things to think about. I assure you I'm not troubling at all. Even loss of friendship——"
"But," he interrupted eagerly, "surely it's not going to mean that, Miss Harrington? Just because you don't come here doesn't mean that you and I——"
She laughed in his face as she replied, cutting short his remarks: "My dear Mr. Speed, you are too much of an egoist. It wasn't your friendship I was thinking about—it was Helen's. You forget that I've been Helen's friend for ten years.... Well, good-bye...."
The last straw! He shook hands with her stiffly.
When she had gone his face grew hard and solemn, and he clenched his fists as he stood again with his back to the fire. He felt—the word came to his mind was a staggering inevitability—he felt dead. Absolutely dead. And all because she had gone and he knew that she would not come again.