IX
Anastasia was dressed to go out in the Park. It was an exquisite day of early spring. Winter had lingered longer than usual and the green world had been for some time pining and cheerless, an unfilled canvas waiting for its artist--the sun. The park was a shimmering sea of verdant new-born foliage and young spring flowers. Crocuses and daffodils and hyacinths made summer in the midst of London.
Everybody who was anybody wandered or drove or motored in its precincts, or sat on the green chairs under the trees and looked at each other’s clothes, and speculated why So-and-so was--or was not--with somebody else; and somehow or other spring struck a note of freshness into even the stalest speculations, and did its best to prick the heart towards beauty and delight.
Anastasia was dressed to join the distinguished throng. It was her world, and she knew that she would be followed by whispers, criticisms, and speculation, even as she would be joined by groups of privileged young men, very good-looking, well-dressed, ardent, and most terribly silly--and she knew that none of this would amuse her very much, and yet that if it failed her, and when it failed her, there would be nothing else. She was dressed in white and orange, and as she looked at the superb curves of her figure, at the classical white face and wide dark eyes, at the huge coils of her magnificent black hair, she smiled a little. “Keats to-day,” she said to herself, “ye ardent marigolds!”
Then she turned round and faced Edith Lestrange.
“I came up unannounced,” said Edith. “I said you expected me. I don’t know whether you did. Oh, Helen--Helen; it’s you!”
Helen of Troy stood quite still, her arms dropped to her sides, and as she stood there a change came over her face; it was the same face, and yet the years came out in it--the suppressed, ignored, and baffled years; she could no more have passed--even with gullible youth--for twenty-five.
Edith came forward, her hands outstretched.
“Oh, Helen,” she said with a quiver in her voice, “am I so old you don’t remember me--twenty years ago?”
“Don’t!” said Helen of Troy.
She moistened her lips and put her hands up to her throat, then suddenly she began to laugh at first, just her old velvety laugh of music, and then suddenly distorted, bitter laughter--terrible to listen to--like harmony run mad.
“Oh, I remember you!” she cried between the gusts of her laughter. “I remember you all right, Edith.”
Edith came forward quietly; her face was very white and her eyes looked drawn and tired, but she drew the orange and white figure shaking with its bitter laughter to the sofa and sat down beside her.
“I know--I know,” she whispered gently; “don’t laugh so, Helen.”
“It’s all so funny,” laughed Helen of Troy, “so ghastly, ridiculously, agonizingly funny, and he might be your own son or mine, my dear--only we haven’t any!”
“We haven’t any,” repeated Edith. “Now, Helen, give me your hand. See, it’s very cold--and now your other hand! The years have made no difference--nothing has made any difference. You should have come to see me. When did you first know I was his step-mother?”
Helen had found her self-control again; she leaned back on the sofa-cushion with yielded hands and half-shut eyes, gazing at her companion.
“Oh, not till Miss Lestrange came. I wasn’t going to marry him, or give him another thought, you know; I was going to laugh him off gently, and then she let out suddenly about you--and I saw!”
“What did you see?” asked Edith almost sternly.
“I saw your life,” said Helen of Troy, opening her eyes and fixing them on her companion’s face. “I saw your life, Edith, and I see it now.”
“I don’t think you do,” said Edith calmly, “because you have not acted as if you did. Do you suppose I want to wreck the boy’s career?”
“He’ll wreck his own career,” said Helen scornfully. “One rock or another, or else some one must wrap him in cotton-wool. He’s a spoilt peach--just that soft, little rotten spot a woman sees at once. I don’t feel guilty. Of course, I saw what the she-cat had done--cut him adrift from you, and made your marriage a divided thing. I remembered everything you thought about love and marriage, and I guessed quickly enough you’d had your heart caught between two stones, and were having it crushed out of you. I thought if I used the boy he’d heal it all in three years. You only wanted your little chance, my dear, to make him love you from the bottom of his shallow little soul, and if your husband saw that, why, I suppose, even he would be convinced that things weren’t your fault.”
“How do you know he thinks things are my fault now?” asked Edith quickly.
“Have you ever known a man who didn’t hold the woman who loves him personally responsible for all the rubs of life?” asked Helen dryly.
Edith did not answer--she smiled a little. After a moment’s pause she said:
“You’re my friend, Helen?”
“Don’t speak as if I had dozens,” said Helen. “I’ve only had one, and I don’t forget.”
“Then you’ll laugh him away very gently--so gently that it won’t reach very far down?” cried Edith.
“There isn’t very far to reach,” replied Helen irritably. “I don’t see why you always want to be saving people pain; pain does good.”
“Does it?” asked Edith. Her eyes met Helen of Troy’s; they looked a long time into each other’s eyes.
“No,” said Helen at last, “it starves, it ages, it embitters, it doesn’t do good.”
“Well, I’d rather have it done to me than do it to other people,” said Edith. “It’s rather more responsibility than I care to undertake.”
“Oh, I don’t know!” said Helen of Troy with a reckless gesture; “it’s a game like any other game. I wanted to pay back your score for you. I knew you’d never do it. I kept out of your way, I never let on, and I didn’t suppose you’d find out for a day or two. I’m going to-morrow. I thought the little fool couldn’t tell you enough for you to work on, the first time he had spoken to you for years.”
“He showed me your miniature,” said Edith gravely.
Helen laughed.
“My face is my fortune,” she said grimly. “Edith, I’ve made a lot of money!”
“Yes, dear--yes,” said Edith; and she spoke soothingly as you speak to a hurt child.
“I’ve made a lot of money,” repeated Helen of Troy. Then she looked away towards the window and the swaying pots of flowers alive in the sunshine. “And I’ve made nothing else,” she said with a little bitter laugh.
Edith did not speak, and the room seemed filled with an unanswerable silence. Helen of Troy got up at last and moved restlessly to and fro.
“I ought to be in the Park,” she said. “I’ve made heaps of engagements. It doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t your husband love you, Edith?”
“Oh, my dear--my dear!” murmured Edith, “don’t ask me that.”
“But that’s just what I’m going to ask you,” said Helen, coming to a stop in front of her friend. “Don’t pretend--with your eyes! Why, they were so sad when you came in, I thought--I thought--the pain in them would break everything in the room.”
“My husband,” said Edith quietly, “is the best man in the world.”
“As bad as that?” asked Helen, lifting her eyebrows. “Why, my dear, you might as well have married an institution or a reformatory outright.”
“No, not like that,” Edith said quickly; “he’s a dear!”
“Something can generally be done with a dear,” said Helen reflectively, “even a good dear. Edith, an idea has just occurred to me. The chief difference between a bad man and a good is that you know what a bad man wants and you don’t know what a good man wants.”
Edith smiled.
“I think you always know what the man you love wants, but you can’t always give it to him,” she said.
“Tell me about it,” Helen demanded briefly. And she sat down on the sofa again.
“There’s nothing to tell,” said Edith. “His first wife died a year after their marriage, and he is satisfied with that. He wants a sober, matrimonial kind of tie, with no romance. I have supplied more than he needed, but he does not know it.”
“And you thought when you married him--”
“Oh, don’t ask me what I thought,” cried Edith passionately. “I dreamed--and the people who dream get cast into pits. But all this is beside the point, Helen. You’ve got to give this boy up, you know--and do it so that he will not blow his brains out, or make some unprofitable spectacle of himself to Etta and Horace. You haven’t said you would yet, you know.”
“I never knew any one so fond of promises; you ought to belong to a law court or a registry or something,” said Helen impatiently. “Why should I give the boy up? He is pretty and pleases my fancy. I can assure you my fancy is very particular; it’s a great thing to get it pleased.”
“You are going to do it because you want to please me more,” said Edith imperturbably.
“Don’t you see, you stupid woman, that it’ll settle your hash?” Helen broke in; “the boy’ll find out somehow that you’re in it--”
“I shall tell him,” Edith interposed quietly.
“Oh, my Aunt Maria!” groaned Helen of Troy, “my sainted Aunt Maria! You’ll tell him? And what good do you suppose that’ll do?”
“I’m not responsible for results,” said Edith. “But I’ve got to tell him.”
“I’m glad I know nothing of the obligations of virtue,” said Helen. “I understand paying for my fun, but I don’t see why you should pay for other people’s.”
“I couldn’t deceive Horace or the boy,” said Edith, “to save myself. I don’t mind deceiving people at all for any other reason. Half of life is mutually tolerated deceit, but not for purposes of self-protection; that I don’t like, nor, my dear Helen, do you!”
Helen did not reply to this; she merely nibbled her pen, which she had taken up from an inlaid desk beside her.
“I suppose you are going to bully me into this thing?” she observed after a pause.
“Dear me, yes,” said Edith, “that’s what I’m here for!”
Helen laughed.
“Very well, then, my dear,” she said; “without waiting to reflect on the wits of the Lestrange family (and always excepting its head, who had, I imagine, more than a suspicion of the fact), allow me to remark that they should have a goose for their coat-of-arms. I’ve been married twice, and so far as I know the second ceremony still holds good. For professional purposes I do not lay much stress upon my husband’s existence; privately, we prefer our own lives to each other’s. I don’t need any pity. I never cared for either of my husbands, but I managed both beautifully. What do you want me to say to your step-son now? I may as well observe that in three years’ time he would take it much better.”
Edith hesitated.
“I think you ought to tell him that you’re forty-two,” she said at length.
Helen threw back her head and laughed.
“It isn’t twenty years ago,” she murmured. “It’s ten minutes. Now, Edith, if you’ll take my advice you’ll not decide this yourself. You seem to have overlooked for the moment the fact of your husband’s existence. Does he know what happened twenty minutes--years ago--I mean?”
“Oh, yes,” said Edith; “I told him.”
“Very well, then,” said Helen of Troy. “I happen to know that Leslie is dining out to-night. I will, therefore, invite myself to dinner with you. Do you trust me, Edith?”
“You’re a most unscrupulous woman,” said Edith. “Still, you can’t do much harm with a mere meal, so if you like we’ll risk it.”
Helen stooped towards her and kissed her.
“After all,” she said, “I’ve had something out of my life. I’ve had this.”