December Love

by Robert Hichens

She hated her face at that moment, and could not help bitterly regretting the fierce impulse of ten years ago. If she had not yielded to that impulse she might now have been looking, not at a young woman certainly, but a woman well preserved. Now she was frankly a wreck. She would surely look almost grotesque dining alone with young Craven. People would think she was his grandmother. Perhaps it would be better not to go. She was filled with a sense of painful hesitation. She came away from the glass. No doubt Craven was “on the telephone.” She might communicate with him, tell him not to come, that she had changed her mind, did not feel very well. He would not believe her excuse whatever it was, but that could not be helped. Anything was better than to make a spectacle of herself in a restaurant. She had not put Craven’s address and telephone number in her address book, but she might perhaps have kept the note he had written to her before their first meeting. She did not remember having torn it up. She went to her writing-table, but could not find the note. She found his card, but it had only his club address on it. Then she went downstairs to a morning room she had on the ground floor. There was another big writing-table there. The telephone was there too. After searching for several minutes she discovered Craven’s note, the only note he had ever written to her. Stamped in the left-hand corner of the notepaper was a telephone number.

She was about to take down the receiver when she remembered that Craven had not yet had time to walk back to his flat from her house, even if he were going straight home. She must wait a few minutes. She came away from the writing-table, sat down in an armchair, and waited.

Night had closed in. Heavy curtains were drawn across the tall windows. One electric lamp, which she had just turned on, threw a strong light on the writing-table, on pens, stationery, an address book, a telephone book, a big blue-and-gold inkstand, some photographs which stood on a ledge protected by a tiny gilded rail. The rest of the room was in shadow. A low fire burned in the grate.

Lady Sellingworth did not take up a book or occupy herself in any way. She just sat still in the armchair and waited. Now and then she heard a faint footfall, the hoot of a motor horn, the slight noise of a passing car. And loneliness crept upon her like something gathering her into a cold and terrible embrace.

It occurred to her that she might ask Craven presently through the telephone to come and dine in Berkeley Square. No one would see her with him if she did that, except her own servants.

But that would be a compromise. She was not fond of compromises. Better one thing or the other. Either she would go with him to the restaurant or she would not see him at all that night.

If Caroline Briggs were only here! And yet if she were it would be difficult to speak about the matter to her. If she were told of it, what would she say? That would depend upon how she was told. If she were told all the truth, not mere incidents, but also the feelings attending them, she would tell her friend to give the whole thing up. Caroline was always drastic. She always went straight to the point.

But Caroline was in Paris.

Lady Sellingworth looked at her watch. Craven lived not far off. He might be at home by now. But perhaps she had better give him, and herself, a little more time. For she was still undecided, did not yet know what she was going to do. Impulse drove her on, but something else, reason perhaps, or fear, or secret, deep down, painfully acquired knowledge, was trying to hold her back. She remembered her last stay in Paris, her hesitation then, her dinner with Caroline Briggs, the definite decision she had come to, her effort to carry it out, the terrible breakdown of her decision at the railway station and its horrible result.

Disaster had come upon her because she had yielded to an impulse ten years ago. Surely that should teach her not to yield to an impulse now. But the one was so different from the other, as different as that horrible man in Paris had been from young Craven. That horrible man in Paris! He had disappeared out of her life. She had never seen him again, had never mentioned him to anybody. He had gone, as mysteriously as he had come, carrying his booty with him, all those lovely things which had been hers, which she had worn on her neck and arms and bosom, in her hair and on her hands. Sometimes she had wondered about him, about the mentality and the life of such a man as he was, a creature of the underworld, preying on women, getting up in the morning, going to bed at night, with thoughts of crime in his mind, using his gift of beauty loathsomely. She had wondered, too, how it was that such loathsomeness as his was able to hide itself, how it was that he could look so manly, so athletic, even so wistful and eager for sympathy.