II
There had been a week of this strain and strange chill between them, when one night Penelope, feeling intolerably sore and full of vague misgivings, suddenly determined to seek Downing out in the Beach Room. It fell about in this wise. After the quiet evening had at last come to an end, she went upstairs with Cecily and old Miss Wake, dismissed Motey, and then returned to the studio, hoping he would come to her there.
But an hour wore itself away, and he did not come.
Mrs. Robinson went out on to the moonlit terrace, and for awhile paced up and down, watching the lights in the villa being put out one by one. She knew that her old nurse would not go to sleep till she, Penelope, were safe in bed; and she felt, though she could not see them, Mrs. Mote's eyes peering down at her, watching this impatient walking up and down in the bright moonlight. But what would once have so keenly annoyed her no longer had power to touch her. She even smiled when the candle in Mrs. Mote's room was extinguished, and the blind carefully and ostentatiously drawn down. She knew well that the old woman would sit behind it, waiting impatiently, full of suspicious anger, till she saw her mistress return from the place whither she was now bound.
As she went down the steps leading to the shore, Penelope, her eyes cast down, pitied herself with the frank self-pity of a child deprived of some longed-for happiness; she had so looked forward to these days with Downing, spent in this beloved place, which she was about to give up, perhaps never to see again, for his sake.
At last, when standing on the strip of dry sand heaped above the wet, glittering expanse stretching out to the dark sea, Penelope came upon the circle of bright light, warring with the moonlit shore below, thrown by Downing's lamp through the window of the Beach Room.
The sight affected her curiously. For a moment she felt as if she must turn back; after all, he was engaged upon matters of great moment, perhaps of even greater moment to himself than the question of their relation the one to the other. She suddenly felt ashamed of disturbing him at his work—real work which she knew must be done before he went back to town.
But the window, through which streamed out the shaft of greenish-white light, was wide open, and soon Downing heard, mingling with the surge of the sea, the sound, the unmistakable dragging sound, of a woman's long clinging skirt.
He got up, opened the door, and, coming out took her in his arms and drew her silently back with him into the Beach Room. Then, bending down, his lips met and trembled on hers, and Penelope, her resentment gone, felt her eyes fill with tears.
A kiss, so trifling a gift on the part of some women as to be scarcely worth the moments lost in the giving and receiving, is with other women, indeed with many other women, the forerunner of complete surrender.
In her thirty years of life two men only had kissed Penelope Wantley—the one Winfrith, the other Downing.
To-night there came to her with amazing clearness the vision of a garden, ill-cared for, deserted, but oh! how beautiful, stretching behind a Savoy inn in the mountainous country about Pol les Thermes. There she and Downing, drawn—driven—to one another by a trembling, irresistible impulse, had kissed for the first time, and for a moment, then as now, she had lain in his arms, looking up at him with piteous, questioning eyes. How long ago that morning seemed, and yet how few had been the kisses in between!
Suddenly she felt him loosen his grip of her shoulders; and he held her away from himself, at arms' length, as deliberately, in the tone of one who has a right to an answer, he asked her a certain question regarding herself and Melancthon Robinson.
She was pained and startled, reluctant to tell that which she had always kept secret, and which she believed—so little are we aware that most things concerning us are known to all our world—had never been suspected. But she admitted his right to question her, and found time to whisper to her secret self, 'My answer must surely make him glad'; and so, her eyes lowering before his piercing, insistent gaze, she told him the truth.
But, as he heard her, Downing relaxed his hold on her, and with something like a groan he said: 'Why did I not know this before? Why should I have had to wait till now to learn such a thing from you?' And as she, surprised and distressed, hesitated, not knowing what to say, he to her amazement turned away, and in a preoccupied tone, even with a smile, said suddenly: 'Go. Go now, my dear. It is too late for you to be down here. I have work to finish to-night.' Then he opened the door, and, with no further word or gesture of affection, shut her out in what seemed for the moment utter darkness.
But as she slowly began groping her way up the steps, sick at heart, bewildered by the strangeness, by the coldness, of his manner, the door of the Beach Room again opened, and she heard him calling her back with a hoarse, eager cry.
She hesitated, then turned to see his tall, lean figure filling up the doorway, and outlined for a moment against the bright lamplit room, before he strode across the sand to where she stood, trembling.
Once more he took her in his arms, once more he murmured the words of broken, passionate endearment for which her heart had hungered, only, however, at last again to say, but no longer with a smile: 'Go. Go now, my beloved—for I am only a man after all—only a man as other men are.'
Then for some days Penelope had found him again become strangely cold and alien. She had felt the situation between them intolerable, and suddenly she had suggested the sojourn at Kingpole Farm. And on the eve of his departure Downing again seemed to become instinct with the mysterious ardour he had shown from the first moment they had met, from the flash of time during which their eyes had exchanged their first long, intimate, probing look.
Mrs. Mote had followed, with foreboding, agonizing jealousy, this interlude of days in a drama of which she had seen the first, and of which she was beginning to divine the last, act.
It is not the apparently inevitable sin, so much as the apparently avoidable folly, which most distresses those onlookers who truly love the sinners and the foolish. During those still summer days the old nurse felt she could have borne anything but this strange beguilement of her mistress, by one whom the maid regarded as having outlived the age when men make women happy. The sight of Mrs. Robinson, with whom, to Motey's doting eyes, time had stood still, hanging on his words, having eyes only for this man, who, though no longer young, yet seemed even older than his age, struck the watcher as monstrous because unnatural.
So far, Mrs. Mote had been unselfish in her repugnance for the irrevocable step towards which she felt Penelope to be drifting, but of late a nearer and more personal terror had taken possession of the old woman. She was beginning to suspect that she herself was to have no part in Mrs. Robinson's new life, and the suspicion drove her nearly beside herself with anger and impotent distress.
Many incidents, of themselves trifling, had instilled this suspicion in her mind. Mrs. Robinson was trying to do for herself all the things that Motey, first as nurse, and later as maid, had always done for her. Sitting in her own room, next door to that of her mistress, and feeling too proud and sore to come unless sent for, Mrs. Mote would hear the opening and shutting of cupboards and drawers, the seeking and the putting away by Penelope—this last an almost incredible portent—of her own hat, veil, gloves, and shoes!
Even more significant was the fact that of late Penelope had become so considerate, so tender, of the old woman who had always been about her. How happy a sharp, impatient word would now have made Mrs. Mote! But no such word was ever uttered. Instead, Mrs. Robinson had actually suggested that her maid should have a holiday. 'Me? A holiday? and what should I do with a holiday?' Motey had repeated, bewildered, and then with painful sarcasm had added, 'I suppose, ma'am, that is why you are learning to do your own hair?'
She had watched her enemy's departure for Kingpole Farm with sombre eyes and sinking heart, wondering what this unexpected happening might portend to her mistress.
The day after that which had seen Downing leaving Monk's Eype, Mrs. Robinson had found her riding-habit, and also a short skirt she often wore when driving herself, laid out with some elaboration. 'I have everything ready,' had said the old nurse sourly, 'for there will be many rides and drives now, I reckon.' And Penelope, forgetting her new gentleness, had exclaimed angrily: 'Motey, you are intolerable! Put those things away at once!'