“Listen, then.... No, I’m not happy.... I haven’t found anything that I wanted in life. It’s all makeshifts. I’m very restless, very dissatisfied, and just at the moment I don’t find life worth living. Only yesterday I was talking like a beastly coward. I was telling a friend that I was frightened of the future, that I could see only blank, empty, joyless days, and that I was going to develop into a nasty, soured, cold-hearted woman. Now I see how disgusting it was of me to say things like that, especially when I was making him unhappy too. I know I ought to brace up my muscles, and start swimming—like you. I don’t feel like it, any more than you do.... You’ll keep my secret, won’t you, Fay, and when I get tired, I’ll come to you and do a howl, and when you get tired you shall do the howling. And then we’ll make another effort and go on swimming again. We’ll help one another, won’t we? Somehow, I fancy the strong people of this world are not those who always achieve great things, but those who keep on fighting, who will not be downed by circumstances.”
Fay kissed her passionately. “I love you. I’d do anything for you. And if I can help you—I didn’t know you had any troubles—I should be so proud of myself. I’ve always looked upon you as someone who didn’t want any help, who always found it easy to do”—vaguely—“the right thing.”
“No! No!” cried Claudia, thinking of the humiliating scene in the studio, “I don’t find it easy at all. I find everything horribly difficult and confusing.... I haven’t even got any fixed principles now. I hardly know what I believe or disbelieve. Sometimes I think I am only an artist, a pagan, merely craving for the beautiful, the perfect; sometimes I feel there is more in life and love than that ... there must be, there must be ... the whole fabric of life could not have been built upon such an insecure foundation. Passion is a big factor in life, but there must be a bigger.”
She was talking to herself now, talking out her own doubts, but Fay lay perfectly still, listening to the voice that she loved, and comprehending only that this woman she had always thought so favoured, so lucky, so above the storms that beset her own course, was in trouble, and that it eased her mind to talk to her—The Girlie Girl of the music-halls. She, Fay, had been entrusted with her secret, and her heart swelled with a pride that made her for a few minutes forget her own tragedy. “Dead common,” she called herself, she was Claudia’s confidante. If Claudia wanted her to keep on fighting—well, it must be done, somehow or other.
“Life can’t be a joke of the gods,” went on Claudia. “It’s the fashion nowadays to pretend that it is—but it can’t be. One can’t simply give way to every temptation with the excuse that one is unhappy, that life has cheated you. If nobody wants you to be loyal to them, you must be loyal to yourself. Oh! how I wish I understood things better.”
There was a click of the door-handle and the nurse came in.
“Mrs. Currey, the cook has got some soup and cold chicken for you in the dining-room. You must be tired after travelling. Won’t you take a little?”
“Yes,” said Fay, rubbing her fists in her eyes, “she must. She’s a duck to come so quickly. Nurse, I’m going to be good after this; at least, I’m going to make a try. It isn’t much in my line, but I’m not so old I can’t learn a new song and dance.... Claudia, send old Jumbo to me.”
At that instant “old Jumbo” put his head dubiously round the door. He was the weakest of husbands and men, but helped by Colin’s lecture, he had almost overcome his repugnance to a sick-room. The last two days had frightened him out of his very limited wits. He had not heard Fay sobbing for the last quarter of an hour. Had Claudia got her asleep or——