CHAPTER XIV
Spring again, dancing backwards from summer's hot grasp. Light winds whispering wantonly as they caressed the waking earth. Soft sunlight, and everywhere the scent of narcissi, the blaze of golden daffodils.
The brown drawing-room had known no change during the passing months. It was as stiffly hideous as ever. The Church Times and Sunday Herald lay on the same table; the winter fires had been ordered away, and a vase of daffodils glowed yellow in the grate.
"It would be good in Devonshire to-day." Bertie Carteret looked out at the dull, prim square, where the sooty trees were trying to grow green. "Lord! think of the great clean air there blowing in over the sea, and the flowers in the old spring garden; and here with spring there is dust, and there are always pieces of paper blowing round corners."
Through a weary winter he had drawn the veil of friendship across love. Estelle's gentle face had brightened the world for him, a world which had grown very dark.
"Poor boy," she said softly now; and there was no friendship in her voice. Spring called. She was a woman, weary of watching the game she might not join. The wanton voice of London was in her ears to-day—the sooty, dark square, the prim room stifled her. Your being of transient emotions has frittered so many thrills, so many little mockeries of passion, that one a little deeper matters little; but the hard-held nature frets at barriers, tears at its self-made bit as its longing eyes look at the wide fields it must not go into. To give nature the rein for once, to know the glory of loving. Man and woman, one giving, one possessing, both tasting the joys of the gods.
"And it is always the same?" Estelle's strong, slim hands were pressed together as though she held something in them that she would not let go.
"It is always the same," he said bitterly. "The world—what Esmé calls the world—has dropped us. Somewhere—Heaven knows where—she finds the money to make another for herself. Is always with Cissie de Burgh—a woman glad to know anyone—with her friends the Henley leaders, and Frank Dravelling. Bridge parties, dinners, bitter tempers. I had to go to supper at the Savoy last night to find one table a mass of flowers and fruit, to see Esmé sweeping past her old friends, to hear her laughing too loud, talking for effect, so that they should see she did not care. It was a pretty party, with neither Tommy nor Lord Francis Dravelling quite sober."
As Sir Cyril Blakeney believed Esmé to be a thief, so her husband believed firmly now that some man must pay, and that she was too clever to let him find out.
Their roads lay apart; they were frigidly friendly, and the depth of Esmé's hurt prevented her asking for an explanation.