IV.
But she had not; at least not so speedily as she supposed. She returned that evening to town with her husband, and crossed the Channel the following day for a honeymoon, which was rather endured than desired. But the earl proved, in the end, gentleman and philosopher enough—synonyms for gracious acceptance of the inevitable—to make his bow to necessity, and take fate and the prettiest lady in London on his arm.
South had heard from her twice, from Venice and Corfu; long, trivial, ill-spelt letters, lined with a secret wistfulness he had not perceived, under the brave talk of travel.
He received the second while away from town, and only learned, on his arrival in the end of October, that Lady Veynes and her husband had called some weeks earlier, and had inquired the date of his return.
He was puzzled by their presence at that time in London, and a telegram which came from the Court a few days later did not aid his enlightenment. It ran: “Please be at home this evening.—R. E. V.” He had indulged in the unusual extravagance of a box at the Variety for the amusement of some country friends who were doing London in the dull season, and was most anxious to entertain them; yet he provided a substitute and an excuse without a murmur, and dined early by himself. Then, the day having been close and warm, he pushed his chair beside the roasted greenness on the balcony and sat looking down idly, in the early evening, from behind the thick stone balusters upon the square.
The sky was clear above the mulled October mist, and a few pale stars had appeared already, weak and white as city children; there was a reek of heated brick, and an odor of brown leaves drifted from the park with the damp smell of its autumn water.
The roar of traffic had died down; it was always quieter there in the fall, and a piano-organ in the Palace Road seemed to play in an exhausted air. A clatter of wheels crushed through its tune as a hansom shot round the narrow entry and rattled across the quad.
The panels clanged, and South could hear the click of small-heeled shoes upon the pavement. The pause which might cover a payment, the long wheep of the whip, the sudden clash of hoofs, the thin clang of the bell below—all seemed borne up to him with abnormal clearness.
He sat where he was till the door opened and Lady Veynes was announced; then he rose, outlined in the open window against the sky, and called, as his landlord retired, for the lamps. Rosamond walked across to the balcony and stood beside him, gazing absently into the square; then she turned her head quickly and looked up into his eyes. There was an urgent smile in hers which was almost an appeal, but his in return seemed to satisfy it, for she stole out her hand and caught his arm lightly above the elbow.
“What does it mean?” he inquired.
She looked over his shoulder as the man entered and placed a lamp on the table; and when he had retired she stepped across the room and snapped it out.
“I don’t know why you called for it,” she said. “Was it to tint the proprieties?”
“I suppose so,” he replied, regarding her, “but I’m afraid it won’t.”
“No, it won’t. I’m going to sit in your seat here by the window; pull another beside it.”
He did as he was told, and she laid her arms limply along those of the chair, leaned back and sighed.
“Don’t you know why I’m here?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“I’m going away.”
“From what?”
“From the Court, and my husband, and his excellent father, and everything! I’m sick of it all.”
“Why?”
“Can’t you guess? Because I’m not one of them. I’m a kind of curiosity in the house; people come to stare at me, they do, really; possibly they think I’ll kick their hats off at afternoon tea, or pass them the bread and butter on my toe; I don’t know. But I don’t mind that so much, it’s the feeling that I mustn’t do these things because I can. If I was a real lady I might do anything; but because I’m not I must do nothing. Smile, sigh and say good-by; and be a pretty piece of furniture to decorate the rooms and support my husband. But I won’t. I wasn’t made on castors.”
“Well?” he smiled.
“Well, I’m going to run—on wheels!”
“Are they unkind to you?”
“No, they’re not; they’re kind, rather too kind. I mean they make you feel it’s a moral obligation to treat such an outsider humanely. Of course they can’t help it, and it’s nasty of me to mention it, but I can’t help feeling it, either, and it makes me mad. Everything does down there, from morning prayers, with half a squadron of bluey-white servants on red chairs, to the candles at ten o’clock, and to bed with what appetite you mayn’t. And I’ve got to do it! If I suggest anything fresh and sensible they look at me as if I were a sort of missing link. So I shut up and scream inside me and wish for something to bite. Put your hand here.”
He smiled at the sudden change, but laid his hand on the arm of her seat, and she closed her gloved fingers over it.
“Do you want it to bite?” he asked.
“No. Jim!”
“Well?”
“Do you think me a fool?”
“No; I understand.”
There was a breadth in his tone which comforted her.
“You said: Marry him,” she pleaded.
“Yes, I did; perhaps I was the fool; but I didn’t say ‘for three months.’”
“Three? Six!”
“Never!”
“Five, then; I ought to know.”
A certain sharpness in her registry seemed to give it claims to be considered calendar. South looked up at her quickly, and she flushed scarlet.
“Well, five,” he said; “hardly time for a very exhaustive study of the married state.”
“Oh, it’s not the married state,” she explained, slowly, looking out over the square. “I shouldn’t mind being married—married to a man. I’m married to a house.”
“It’s a very good house.”
“I dare say it is; but I’m not a snail, and can’t stand having it on my back;’ I wasn’t born under family bricks.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to leave them.”
“And why did you come here?”
She turned her head and flashed a shy glance across his eyes.
“I thought you might be leaving, too.”
She looked away as she said it, and he did not immediately reply. Presently she loosened her fingers from his, and laid her hand in her lap. She broke the silence sharply.
“I don’t understand you,” she said; “why do you suppose I’ve come here, ever? Do you fancy it’s for the pleasure of a little talk? Why, I’ve gone home sometimes clinching my hands to keep from crying, and hating you fit to kill you.”
South sighed.
“Have you?” he said.
“Yes, I have! It’s horrid of me, I know, because you’ve tried to be kind, mostly; but being kind is worse than anything, sometimes.”
She turned toward him, and through the shadow upon her face her eyes glowed molten, as lead grows red in the ladle.
“Well,” he said, “you may forgive me; I haven’t tried to be kind. I thought all the kindness on the other side. Your very coming was a concession.”
“To what?”
“To a man unknown and immaterial; to the genius of futility.”
“Genius of fiddlesticks! Why did you suppose I came?”
South swung his head in pendulous ignorance.
“Oh, you needn’t mind my blushes, it’s too dark to see them. And when I startled you with Veynes’ proposal, and bored you to admire my figure, and my frock, and everything he might be master of, was that a concession?”
“To my stupidity?” he parried.
“No; the genius for futility—a woman’s!” she said, with drawn bitterness. “All the same, if you guessed?”
“Oh, guessing!” he shrugged.
“No! You’re no such fool. Are you?”
She leaned somewhat away from him with a suggestion of disdain.
“No,” he replied, slowly, rising, “I did not guess; I knew.”
She heard him pacing in the dusky room behind her, and stop at last before the fireplace. He laid one hand over the other and pressed them with his forehead against the mantelpiece.
Cries, shrill and hoarse, drifted in with the darkness from the Palace Road; the evening’s pennyworth of print in shouted headlines, the details draining incoherently into the night.
“Won’t you say you’re sorry?” she inquired, presently.
“For you?”
“No, for yourself. Mightn’t we both have done better?”
“I’ve done nothing,” he murmured, between his arms.
“It’s not a fine confession,” she laughed, curtly; “but you chose.”
“Between what?”
“Between these arms and mine,” she said, slowly, tapping the chair; “between horsehair and flesh and blood. And you chose the horsehair.”
“It’s permanent,” he retorted, somewhat piqued, “and it hasn’t a pulse.”
“Oh, no,” she sighed, “it’s a ‘dead-sure thing’—dead and sure, they’re about the same; you can’t reckon up things that live; and, as for a pulse, it beats faster for other things than fever, you know, and it’s not only the doctor who feels it.”
“Feels it flag?” he queried.
“Oh, bother you!” she exclaimed. “If all men were such chickens, who’d ever marry?”
“The women,” he suggested.
“No, I think they’d be too wise,” she said.
He laughed, an echo of hers; there was not much mirth between them.
“That last day I came here,” she continued, presently, with a musing air, “you might have said more than you did.”
“More?”
“Yes, more for me; something to pretend you couldn’t see me; I felt stripped.”
He smiled at the fire-dogs, remembering her dress.
“I didn’t know it,” he said.
“No, a man never does. Some men, you know, lie to a woman to be rid of her, lie about their love and about their life; say it’s heartbreaking, but impossible; one forgives that—it’s craven but it’s kind; but one can’t forgive the men who lie by saying nothing, merely to be rid of her the sooner, when she might go comforted, and only a little slower, by just one whisper of the love they have.”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“Oh, no,” she sighed, “we never do, we women. We pray not to sometimes; pray to be kept blind, dull, doting.” She laughed abruptly. “Well, I wish you’d said you loved me then, Jim; even though I might have hugged you. Couldn’t you say it now?”
“It’s not lawful.”
“Oh, no,” she sighed again, but reminiscently, “it’s not lawful; but it would be kinder and better than many things that are. Besides, you might rise in my esteem.”
“Thanks,” he said, smiling, pushing himself erect. “I think I’ll stay as I am. I’m high enough now to feel dizzy sometimes when you commend me. The question is, where are you going to stay?”
“To-night at the Grand; my things are there. To-morrow I shall be across the Channel.”
She swung her chair round toward the room.
“Am I going alone?”
“No,” he said, decidedly. “I want you to wait a day.”
“With you?”
“No, but for me. I’m going down to the Court.”
“To give me away?”
He had been staring at the dark mirror. He turned his face slowly toward her with a smile.
“I suppose I need not deny that,” he said. “I shall not give you away, even for your good; you know that.”
“Then for what are you going?”
“You’re making a mistake,” he said, ignoring her question. “If you must leave your husband, you should go by the front door; it’s a higher class of exit, pleasanter, more modern, and more effective; besides, it prevents the good man running after you with a posse of detectives.”
“Do you think he’ll do that?” she groaned.
“Doubtless; perhaps offer a reward. Now, to avoid that and live secure, you’ll grant me a day’s grace, won’t you—and wait?”
“I shall be trusting you,” she said.
“And now you’d better go. I have to catch the nine-fifteen, isn’t it? And I’m very certain you’ve had no dinner.”
“Besides, appearances!” she mocked.
“Yes; or non-appearances, as at present,” he replied, unruffled. “If you’ll wait I’ll call a hansom.”
But she said she would go down with him; and after a glance at her frock, a traveling one, before the mirror, opened the door as he relit the lamp. He followed her along the dusk of the passage to show her the way, but she stopped abruptly on the edge of the stairs, throwing back her head so that it nearly struck him.
“Kiss me,” she whispered.
“No,” he said, quietly; “you’re not mine to kiss.”
She bent her right arm back with a quick movement behind his head, and drew his lips down to her face.
“Ah! if it were only a question of possession,” she sighed, as she pressed them to her own.
She turned on the stairs and looked back at him.
“You don’t resent it?” she inquired.
“Why should I?”
“Oh, because you’re not mine to kiss, I suppose.”
“Ah! that’s your affair,” he smiled.
At the hall door she suggested that, being bound for Waterloo, he might accompany her.
“I’m afraid of you,” he said.
“You needn’t be,” she murmured. “I’m done.”
In the end she waited while he packed a bag, and they drove together under the withered planes through the park to her hotel. But she declined to alight.
“You promised to be good,” he reminded her.
“I’m good—good as gold—I wouldn’t touch you for the world, but I’m going to see you off. Jim, do let me! I’ll come straight back and eat no end of dinner; I will, really! But I must say good-by to you there!”
“Why?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t understand; it’s a presentiment.”
“Presentiments are all stuff.”
“Yes, I know; so are women; but one has them both in—hansoms. Jim!”
“All right; but only to the station, not inside!”
She assented, and they parted, finally, with a feminine complexity of farewell, under the glass-roofed entry; South arriving on the platform to discover that the nine-fifteen had been advanced ten minutes since the first of the month, and that, thanks to Rosamond’s presentiments, he had lost the last train to Veyne St. Mary’s by a few seconds.