"I wonder—I wonder!" said Nelly under her breath. She was realizing, with a sick dismay, that this was the last evening delivery and that to-morrow would be Sunday, a day during which, for those at least who live in London and wait upon the post for comfort, the operations of Providence are entirely suspended. Two nights and a day to be lived through—somehow!
Her mother took out the letter again, and fingered it caressingly.
"It's what I've been longing for all my life," she said. "When are you going to answer it, dear?"
"To-morrow, mummy, to-morrow," wailed poor Fenella, and fled from the room.
She climbed the stairs weakly, feeling the empty house's atmosphere no longer chill, but stifling and oppressive. By the time she had reached her room the impulse to fling herself upon her knees, to bury her face in the coverlet and weep and weep, had passed. Instead she lit both candles of her dressing-table and, sitting down, gazed long and earnestly at her reflection in the tilted mirror. To study herself thus was rather a habit of hers. The woman who has beauty and does not know it is a graceful conception, but lacks reality. All the world is a conspiracy, pleasant or otherwise, to convince her. Fenella was not vain, but, with all encountered comeliness compared to it, her body had not ceased to be a rapture to a curiously impersonal love of beauty, innate in her as in all sorts of people, but which, in her case, by a bounteous accident of nature, could be fed most delicately upon its own outward substance. Nor was she ignorant that, in the quarter to which she had devoted it, she was, to use the world's chosen language, and in a sense far beyond its choice meaning, "throwing her good looks away." She knew it—she gloried in it. No whisper that reached her from jealous or puzzled friends could add to her own conviction of it—no secret recess of her being but responded and thrilled to the call of self-sacrifice. At a certain height of passion woman becomes strangely sufficient to herself—is priestess and host in one, with an ecstasy in the immolation that men can only guess at. For all the lack of curiosity as to her lover's past life which was so unaccountable a thing to her mother, the girl guessed that it had been hard and sad, so sad and hard that the full strangeness of the destiny that brought him to lips and arms like hers could only be dimly comprehended by him. His blindness forced self-valuation upon her. She flung her beauty, the freshness of her youth, the tribute of other men's burning eyes and stammering tongues, into the scale against it. She asked only love. Let him but love, she would teach him appreciation in time. She had her own white conscience in such matters, too, even though the obtuseness of her lover's senses tempted her to lengths that innocence does not often venture. It was not three weeks ago since, sitting upon the dunes, at the end of an afternoon during which the grizzled head had been her plaything, she had asked Paul abruptly whether he did not in his heart sometimes think her a shameless woman. And the undisguised astonishment of the gray eyes at her question had been at once a reproach and the sweetest, completest assurance that it was possible to have. And then and there, drawing from his arms, and while the loose sand trickled through her fingers, she had made the poor little apologia of her love, haltingly and timidly, and told him that should it ever happen—inconceivable surely on this day of sunshine and sweet airs as that sky and sea should change places—that he should go one way in life, she another, she had such a store of shameful memories as would press her to the earth all the rest of her days.
Yet it was this possibility, scarce to be imagined a fortnight ago, which she was facing to-night; now, as she combed and plaited her black hair, so fine and loose that the comb ran through its length at a single stroke; now as, unfastening the corset that had chafed and rayed the tender flesh at her waist, she put on her long white robe and stood before the mirror, a trembling penitent, about to make amends through a whole racked night for the follies of her undisciplined heart. Buoyant and hopeful by nature, and really knowing nothing yet for certain, she was aghast at the urgency with which defeat claimed acceptance, and at the weakness and intermittence that her imagination, pressed into loyalty's service, showed in working toward her lover's justification. She felt herself sentenced, a culprit, a prey to the illogical anger of some power which she had failed to propitiate only because she had not known of its existence. The chill of abandonment was already at her heart. As for the letter which she had just heard read to her, she hardly gave it a thought, although a wish of her own heart, unavowed, but very intimate, was realized in it. To-night any comfort save the one for which her whole being ached was a traitor—an accomplice in the conspiracy of silence, of shrugged shoulders, of amused wonder that had surrounded her poor little love-story from the first. No one had meddled, she remembered; no one had interfered or seemed anxious. With smarting eyes as she laid her head on her pillow she paid her tribute to the wisdom of the world.
The morrow with its suspended bustle—its clanging church bells and the awkward voices of milkwomen and paper-boys ringing upon the silence of the streets and squares, was a torture not to be borne. As soon as her mother had gone to church she dressed herself and left the house. The morning was fine but close. In the park the moisture of a whole week's rain, sucked out of the stale earth by the sun, surcharged the air almost to the level of the tree-tops with a palm-house atmosphere that weighed alike upon flesh and spirit. Although it was September, the parks as she crossed them were full of smartly dressed people—mothers and young daughters—sturdy children with dawdling lawn-clad nurses—ivory-faced old ladies in ample creased robes of silk—an occasional earnest young man, professionally silk-hatted, striding along with a chattering girl at his side, who bravely but jerkily maintained the pace of his long legs. They all seemed to be coming in opposite directions. She was on one of those unhappy errands when we feel we are making head alone against a contrary current of joyous contentment.
The bell from the great Parliament tower was tolling twelve as she passed into Dean's Yard. The old gravelly square was deserted, except for a statuesque policeman and one little blue-coated messenger boy, with his round cap cocked over his ear, who from pure lightness of heart was waking its staid echoes with a shrill medley of popular airs. She had set out with no precise intention, drawn as by a magnet to the spot where the treasure of her heart was kept from her, but, though she did not reason, with every step her insensate impulse hardened. She would test the tottering fabric of her happiness now, though, at a touch, it should topple into ruins about her head.
Cowley Street was empty, and pigeons were feeding in the roadway. She was leaning against the railings—fighting, reasoning with a heart that the mere sight of his windows had driven into tumult, when the stillness was invaded by the blast of a motor-horn. The doves took flight above the sunlit roofs. A big touring car, coming from the river, swept into the street, and drew up, with a creaking of its brakes, outside the door that she was praying for strength to approach. A woman alighted, glanced at the number upon the red door, and plied the knocker briskly. Her hat was veiled and a light dust-cloak covered her dress, but one moment's application of that intuitive knowledge which women possess told the girl that she was probably handsome and undeniably rich. The whirr and clutter of the cylinders ceased unaccountably just as the door was opened. Cowley Street on Sunday is more than still. She heard his name clearly, the very accent in which it was uttered somehow confirming her first impression; then the door closed. With a single jaunty glance at the remaining feminine interest, the green-coated chauffeur swung himself out of his seat and busied himself with some recalcitrant machinery or other under the bonnet of the car.