CHAPTER XXI
Thin sunshine slanted in through the lace curtains of the dining-room window. Encouraged thereby, the parrot preened its feathers, making little snapping and clicking noises meanwhile with its tongue and beak. The grass of the Green, seen between the black stems of the encircling trees, glittered with hoarfrost, while the houses on the opposite side of it looked flat and featureless owing to the interposing veil of bluish mist. Tradesmen's carts clattered by at a sharp trot, the defined sound of them breaking up the all-pervading murmur of London, and dying out into it again as they passed. At the street corner, some twenty yards away, a German band discoursed doubtfully sweet music, the trombone making earnest efforts to keep the rest of the instruments up to their work by the emission of loud and reproachful tootings. It was a pleasant and cheery morning as December mornings go, yet constraint reigned at the Lovegrove breakfast-table.
The day of Serena's oft-discussed departure had dawned. A few hours hence she would remove herself and her boxes to her cousin Lady Samuelson's residence in Ladbroke Square. This should have proved a source of regret to her host and hostess; and they were conscience-stricken, confessing to themselves—though not to one another, since each accredited the other with more laudable sentiments than his or her own—that relief rather than regret did actually possess them. A secret from one another, and that a slightly discreditable one, was so foreign to the experience of the excellent couple that it lay heavy upon their hearts. Each, moreover, was aware of shame in the presence of Serena, as in that of a person upon whom they had inflicted an injury. Hence constraint, which the sunshine was powerless to dissipate.
"May I pass you the eggs, or bacon, or both, Serena?" George Lovegrove inquired, his childlike blue eyes meanwhile humbly imploring pardon for his lack of sorrow at her impending departure. Serena's manner was stiff and abstracted. This, combined with the rustling of her petticoats, filled him with anxiety. Was it possible that she knew?
"Thank you, George, only an egg. Not that one, please, it is much too large. I prefer the smallest. I am not feeling hungry."
"I should never call you much of a breakfast-eater, Serena," Mrs. Lovegrove observed in her comfortable purring voice, from behind the tea urn. She was desirous to pacify her guest. "Now I am rather hearty myself in the morning, always have been so. I do not know whether it is a good thing or not, as a habit. Still, I think to-day you should force yourself a little. You should always make provision against a journey. And then no doubt you are rather fatigued with packing and getting home so late from the theatre. I am pleased to think you had an outing your last night here, Serena. Georgie tells me the play was very comical."
"I dare say it was," Serena replied. "Of course George would be a much better judge of that than I am. Mamma was always very particular what we heard and saw when we were children, and I know I am inclined to think things vulgar which other people only find amusing."
"I did not remark any vulgarity, and do not think Mr. Iglesias would countenance anything of that kind in the presence of a lady. He would ascertain beforehand the nature of the piece to which he invited any lady"—this from George Lovegrove tentatively.
"Oh! of course I don't say there was anything vulgar. I should not like to commit myself to an opinion. I really have been to the theatre very seldom. Mamma never encouraged our going. And then, of course, old Dr. Colthurst, the rector of St. Jude's at Slowby, whose church we always attended, disapproved of the theatre. He had great influence with mamma. And he thought it wicked."
"Indeed," Mrs. Lovegrove commented. "I should be sorry to think that, as so many go. But he may have come across the evils of it personally. He had a son, an artist, who was very wild, I believe. And I remember to have heard our dear vicar speak of Dr. Colthurst as stern, but a true Protestant and a very grand preacher."
"I dare say he was—I don't mean that his son was wild—I know nothing about that, of course, but that Dr. Colthurst was a great preacher."
Serena spoke abstractedly, inspecting the yolk of her poached egg meanwhile as though on the watch for unpleasant foreign bodies.
"But," she continued, "I cannot, of course, be expected to remember his sermons, though I may have been taken to hear him. I suppose I certainly was taken, but I was quite too much of a child to remember. Susan remembers them, but then Susan was so very much older."
She ceased to contemplate her egg, and looked up at her hostess.
"Susan must be very nearly your age, Rhoda; or she may be a year or eighteen months younger. Yes, judging by the difference between her age and mine, she must be quite eighteen months younger. Of course, now, Susan thinks going to the play wicked. I often wonder whether that is not partly because she dislikes sitting still and listening when other people are doing something. Susan likes to take part in everything herself. I often wonder what she would do in church if it was not for the responses and the singing. I am sure she would never sit out a service where the congregation did not join in. Susan cannot bear a choral service. She calls it un-English and Romanising. I do not dislike it—I mean I do not dislike a choral service. But then I do not consider the theatre wicked. I am not prejudiced against it, as Susan is. Still, I cannot deny that I think you do hear very odd things and see very over-dressed people at the theatre."
Serena looked severely at her host, thereby heightening the anxiety which possessed him. For once again, as so often during the past eight or ten hours, a picture presented itself perplexing and fascinating to his mental vision—namely, that of his dear and honoured friend, the grave and stately Dominic Iglesias, helping an unknown lady, of remarkably attractive personal appearance, on with a wonderful black velvet garment—doing so in the calmest way in the world, too, as though it were an event of chronic occurrence—while the frills and furbelows of her voluminous skirts flowed in rosy billows about his feet. What did the picture portend, George Lovegrove asked himself, and still more, what did Serena suppose it portended?
"Do you, indeed?" Mrs. Lovegrove put in, in amiable response to her guest's last remark. She was sensible of being hurt by the allusion to her age. But then Serena was going, and she knew that fact did not distress her as deeply as it might have done. She therefore rose superior to wounded feelings. "It's many years since I've been much of a playgoer," she continued, "and people tell me it's all a good deal changed, and not for the better. I suppose the dressing nowadays is sadly extravagant. I am sure I don't know, and I should always be timid of condemning anybody or their amusements. But there, as I always do say, if you want to keep a happy mind there is so much it is well to be ignorant of."
"I wonder if it is—I mean I wonder if it is well to be ignorant of things," Serena said reflectively. "Of course, if people think you are willing to be ignorant, it encourages them in deceiving you. I think it is very wrong to be deceitful. Sooner or later it is sure to come out, and then it is very difficult to forgive people. Indeed, I am not sure it is right to forgive them."
With difficulty George Lovegrove restrained a groan. His food was as ashes in his mouth; his tea as waters of bitterness.
"Oh! I should be sorry to go as far as that, Serena," Mrs. Lovegrove remonstrated. "If you give way to unforgiving feelings you can never tell quite where they may carry you. But as I was going to say, though I am not much of a playgoer, I was very pleased to have Mr. Iglesias invite me. Only, as I explained to him, I am very liable to find the seats too narrow for comfort in places of amusement, and the atmosphere is often so very close, too. He was most polite and sympathising; but then that's Mr. Iglesias all over. He always is the perfect gentleman."
Serena paused, her fork arrested in mid-transit to her mouth.
"I am not sure that I agree with you, Rhoda," she said. "I am not sure whether I think Mr. Iglesias is really polite, or whether he only appears to be so because it suits his purpose. Of course you and George know him far better than I do. Perhaps you understand—I cannot pretend that I understand him. I may be wrong, but I often wonder whether there is not a good deal which is rather insincere about Mr. Iglesias."
After throwing which bomb, Serena gave her whole attention to her breakfast. Usually George Lovegrove would have waxed valiant in defence of his friend, but a guilty conscience held him tongue-tied. Not so Rhoda; strive as she might, those allusions to her age still rankled. And, under cover of protest against injustice to the absent, she paid off a little of her private score, to her warm satisfaction.
"Well, I am sure," she cried, "I never could have credited that anybody could question Mr. Iglesias's genuineness! I would sooner doubt Georgie, that I would, and fear him deceitful."
Again the good man came near groaning. It was as though the wife planted a poignard in his heart.
"And after you playing the piano to him so frequently the few days Mr. Iglesias stopped here, and seeming so comfortable together and friendly, and his inviting us all to the theatre! Really, I must say I do think you sadly changeable, Serena, that I do."
"No, I am not changeable, Rhoda," the other lady declared, both voice and colour rising slightly. "Nobody ever accused me of being changeable before, and I do not like it. I do not think you are at all justified in making such an accusation. But I am observant. I always have been so. Even Susan allows that I am very observant. I cannot help being so, and I do not wish to help it. I think it is much safer. It helps you to find out who you can really trust. And, of course, I observed a great deal that happened last night. I felt from the first that I owed it to myself to be particularly on my guard, because certain insinuations had been made—you know, Rhoda, you have made them more than once yourself—and some people might have thought that things had gone rather far when Mr. Iglesias was stopping here. I believe Mrs. Porcher and that dreadful Miss Hart did think it. I do not say that things did go far; I only say that people might naturally think that they had. On several occasions Mr. Iglesias' conduct did seem very marked. And, of course, nothing could be more odious to me than to be placed in a false position. One cannot be too careful, especially with foreigners. Mamma always warned us against foreigners when we first came out. I never had any experience of foreigners until I met Mr. Iglesias, here at your house. But, I am sorry to say, I believe now mamma was perfectly right."
As she ended her harangue, Serena with a petulant movement of her thin hands pushed her plate away from the table edge, leaving a vacant space before her. This was as a declaration of war. She scorned further subterfuge. She announced a demonstration. A bright spot of colour burned on either cheek, her small head, on its long stalk of neck, was carried very erect. It was one of those pathetic moments when—the merciless revelations of the morning sunshine notwithstanding—this slim, faded, middle-aged spinster appeared to recapture, and that very effectively, the charm and promise of her vanished youth. Excited by foolish anger, animated by a sense of insult wholly misplaced and imaginary, she became a very passably pretty person, the immature but hopeful Serena of eighteen looking forth from the eyes of the narrow-souled disappointed Serena of eight-and-forty.
"Of course, George may have some explanation of what happened last night," she went on, speaking rapidly. "If he has, I think it would be only fair that he should offer it to me. I took for granted he would do so this morning as soon as we met; or that he would send you to me, Rhoda, to explain if he felt too awkward about speaking himself. But as you both are determined to ignore what happened, I am forced to speak. I dare say it would be much more convenient to you, knowing you have made a mistake, to pass the whole thing over in silence. But I really cannot consent to that. If Mr. Iglesias meant nothing all along, then I think he has behaved disgracefully. If he did mean something at first, and then"—the speaker gasped—"changed his mind, he might at least have given some hint. He ought to have refused to stop here, of course."
"He did refuse," George Lovegrove faltered. This was really dreadful, far worse than anything he had anticipated—and he had not a notion what it was safe to say. "I do wish females' minds were a little less ingenious," he commented to himself. "They see such a lot which would never have entered my head, for instance."
"Still, Mr. Iglesias came," cried the belligerent Serena.
"Yes, I over-persuaded him. He was very unwilling, very so indeed, saying that staying out was altogether foreign to his practice. But I pointed out to him that you and the wife might feel rather mortified if he omitted to come, having taken such an interest in his illness and—"
"If you made use of my name, George, you took a great liberty."
"I am very distressed to hear you say that, Serena. Both the wife and I certainly supposed you wished him to come."
He looked imploringly at his spouse, asking support. But for once the large kindly countenance failed to beam responsive. A plaintive expression overspread its surface. Then the unhappy man stared despondently out into the misty morning sunshine, plastering down his shiny hair with a moist and shaky hand. Even the wife turned against him, making him feel an outcast at his own breakfast-table. He could have wept.
"I have been so very guarded throughout," Serena resumed, "that it is impossible you should have the slightest excuse for using my name. But, of course, if you have done so, my position is more than ever odious. There is nothing for me to do but to go. Fortunately I am going—and I am thankful. If I had followed my own inclinations, I should have gone long ago. Then I should have been spared all this, and nothing would have been said. Now all sorts of things may be said, because, of course, it must all look very odd. It shows how foolish it is to allow one's judgment to be overruled. I stayed entirely to oblige Rhoda. And I cannot but see I have been trifled with."
"No, no, Serena, not that—never that," her host cried distractedly. "If I have been in the wrong, I apologise from my heart. But trifling never entered my thoughts. How could it do so, with all the respect I have for you and Susan? I may have been clumsy, but I acted for the best."
"I am afraid I cannot agree," she retorted. "It is useless to apologise. I am sorry to tell you so, George, for I have trusted you until now; but I do feel, and I am afraid I always shall feel, I have been very unkindly treated by you and Rhoda."
She rose, rustling as she spoke, the parrot, meanwhile, leaving off preening its feathers, regarding her, its head very much on one side, with a wicked eye.
"No, please leave me to myself," she said. "I do not want anybody to help me, and if I do I shall ring for the maids. I want to compose myself before I go to Lady Samuelson's. After all this unpleasantness, it is much better for me to be alone."
"Good-bye, girlie, poor old girlie. Hi! p'liceman, bring a four-wheeler," shrieked the parrot, as Serena opened and closed the dining-room door, flapping wildly in the sunshine till the sand and seed husks on the floor of its cage arose and whirled upwards in a crazy little cloud.
George Lovegrove, who had risen to his feet, sank back into his chair, resting his elbows on the table and covering Ids face with his hands.
"I would rather have forfeited my pension," he murmured. "I would rather have lost a hundred pounds."
Then raising his head he gazed imploringly at his wife. And this time her tender heart could not resist the appeal. He had not been open with her, but she relented, giving him opportunity to retrieve his error. Moreover—but that naturally was a very minor consideration—she was bursting with curiosity.
"Georgie," she asked solemnly, "whatever did happen last night?"
"Mr. Iglesias met a lady friend. She sent for him to talk to her, in the lobby, between the acts," he answered, the red deepening in his clean fresh-coloured face.
"Not any of that designing Cedar Lodge lot?"
"Oh! dear no, not all," he replied, his childlike eyes full of gratitude. He blessed the magnanimity of the wife. But speedily embarrassment supervened. He found this subject singularly difficult to deal with. "Not at all of their class. I confess it did surprise me, for though I have always taken it for granted Dominic belonged to a higher circle by birth than that in which we have known him, I had no idea he had such aristocratic acquaintances. His looks and manner in public, last night, made him seem fitted for any company. Still, I was surprised."
"Did he not introduce you?"
"No. I cannot say he had a convenient opportunity, and the lady may not have wished it. I could fancy she might hold herself a little above us. But, between ourselves, I believe that was what so upset Serena."
"I am of opinion Mr. Iglesias is just as well without Serena," Mrs. Lovegrove declared. "I suppose she cannot help it, but her temper is sadly uncertain. I begin to fear she would be very exacting in marriage. But was the lady young, Georgie?"
The good man blushed furiously.
"Yes, under thirty, I should suppose, and very striking to look at. Serena had called my attention to her already. She thought her over-dressed. I am no judge of that, but I could see she was very beautiful."
"Oh! Georgie dear!" This in high protest. For the speaker belonged to that section of the British public in which puritanism is even yet deeply ingrained, with the dreary consequence that beauty, whether of person or in art, is suspect. To admit its existence trenches on immodesty; to speak of it openly is to skirt the edges of licence.
George Lovegrove, however, had developed unaccustomed boldness.
"So she was, my dear," he repeated, not squinting in the least for once. "She was beautiful, dark and splendid, with eyes that looked right through you, mocking and yet mournful. They made a noble couple, she and Dominic, notwithstanding the disparity of age. As they stood there together I felt honoured to see them both. And if Dominic Iglesias is to have friends with whom we are unacquainted—though I do not deny the thing hurt me a little at first—I am glad they should be so handsome and fine. It seems to me fitting, and as if he was in his true sphere at last."
A silence followed this profession of faith, during which Mrs. Lovegrove's face presented a singular study. She stared at her husband in undisguised amazement, while the corners of her mouth and her large soft cheeks quivered.
"Well, I should never have expected to hear you talk so, Georgie," she said huskily. "It seems unlike you somehow, almost as though you were despising your own flesh and blood."
"No, no," he answered, "I could never do that. I could never be so forgetful of all I owe to my own family and to yours, Rhoda. I am under deep obligations to both. But it would be dishonest to deny that I set a wonderfully high value on Dominic Iglesias' regard, and have done so ever since we were boys together at school. To me Dominic has always stood by himself, I knowing how superior he was to me in mind and in all else, so that it has been my truest honour and privilege to be admitted to intimacy with him. But the difference between us never came home to me as it did when I saw him in other company last night. He is fitted for a higher position than he has ever filled yet—we all used to allow that in old days at the bank—or for any society we can offer him. So, though I felt humiliated in a measure, I felt glad. For I can grudge him nothing in the way of new friends, even though they may be differently placed to ourselves and should come between him and me a little, making our intercourse less frequent and easy than in the past. From my heart I wish him the very best that is going, although it should be rather detrimental to myself."
Mrs. Lovegrove's cheeks still quivered, but the expression of her face was unresponsive once more, not to say obstinate. Jealousy, indeed, possessed her. For the first time in her whole experience she realised her husband as an individual, as a human entity independent of herself. To contemplate him otherwise than in the marital relation was a shock to her. She felt deserted, a potential Ariadne on Naxos. Hence jealousy, resentment, cruel hurt.
"Well, to be sure, what a long story!" she cried, in tones approaching sarcasm, "and all about someone who is no relation, too! Whatever possesses you, Georgie? You aren't a bit like yourself. It seems to me this morning everybody's bewitched." She heaved herself up out of her chair. "I shall go and try to make it up with Serena," she continued. "It is only Christian charity to do so; and, poor thing, I can well understand she may have had cause enough for mortification now I have made out what really did take place last night."
Usually, left alone in the dining-room, George Lovegrove would have proceeded methodically to do a number of neat little odd jobs, humming softly the while funny, shapeless little tunes to himself in the fulness of his guileless content. He would have piled up the fire with small coal and dust, thus keeping it alight but saving fuel till luncheon-time, when one skilful stir with the poker would produce a cheerful blaze. Then he would have proceeded to the little conservatory opening off his box of a sanctum at the back of the house—containing his roller-top desk, his papers, Borough Council and parish reports, his magazines, his best and second-best overcoats hung on pegs against the wall along with his silk hat. In the conservatory, still humming, he would have smoked his morning pipe, feeding the gold-fish in the small square glass tank—a tiny fountain in the centre of which it pleased him to set playing—and later carefully examining the ferns and other pot-plants in search of green-fly, scale, or blight. But to-day the innocent routine of his life was rudely broken up. He had no heart for his accustomed tidy potterings, but lingered aimlessly, fingering the gold watch-chain strained across the convex surface of his waistcoat, sand looking pitifully enough between the lace curtains out on to the Green.
The sun had climbed the sky, burning up the hoarfrost and mist, so that the houses opposite had become clearly discernible. Presently he beheld a tall, upright figure emerge from the front door of Cedar Lodge. For a moment Mr. Iglesias stood at the head of the flight of immaculately white stone steps, rolling up his umbrella and putting on his gloves preparatory to setting forth on his morning walk. And, watching him, a wave of humility and self-depreciation swept over George Lovegrove's gentle and candid soul, combined with an aching or regret that destiny had not seen fit to deal with him rather otherwise than it actually had. He felt a great longing that he, too, were possessed of a stately presence, brains, breeding, and handsome looks. There stirred in him an almost impassioned craving for romance, for escape from the interminable respectabilities and domesticities of English middle-class suburban life. He went a step further, rebelling against the feminine atmosphere which surrounded him, in which "feelings" so constantly usurped the place of actions, and suppositions that of fact. Then, the vision of a beautiful woman with a strange rose-scarlet dress, in whose eyes sorrow struggled with mocking laughter, once again assailed him. Who she might be, and what her history, he most emphatically knew not; yet that she breathed a keener and more tonic air than that to which he was habituated, that feelings in her case did not stand for actions, or suppositions for fact, he was fully convinced.
"Poor old chappie, take a brandy and soda. Got the hump?"—this, shrilly, from the parrot hanging head downwards from the roof of its cage.
At the sound of that at once unhuman and singularly confidential voice close beside him, George Lovegrove gave a guilty start.
"Yes, the wife is quite right," he said, half aloud. "If you want to keep a happy mind there is very much of which it is as well to be ignorant."
Then shame covered him, for in his recent meditations and apprehensions had he not come very near turning traitor, and being, in imagination at all events, subtly unfaithful to that same large kindly comfortable wife?