Every morning quite early she was to be seen, perfectly mounted, cantering in the Row, often with Rupert Louth beside her. Her extraordinary interest in every branch of athletics was generally remarked. She even went to boxing matches, and was persuaded to give away prizes at a big meeting at Stamford Bridge.
Although she never said a word about it to anyone, this sudden outburst of intense bodily activity at her age presently began to tire, then almost to exhaust her. The strain upon her was great, too great. Whatever Rupert Louth did, he never turned a hair. But she was nearly twenty years older than he was, and decidedly out of training. She fought desperately against her physical fatigue, and showed a gay face to the world. But a horrible conviction possessed her. She began presently to feel certain that her effort to live up to Rupert Louth’s health and vigour was hastening the aging process in her body. By what she was doing she was marring her chance of preserving into old age the appearance of comparative youth. Sometimes at night, when all the activities of the day were over and there was no prospect of seeing Rupert again until, at earliest, the following morning, she felt absolutely haggard with weariness of body—felt as she said to herself with a shudder, like an old hag. But she could not give up, could not rest, for Rupert expected of everyone who was not definitely laid on the shelf inexhaustible energy, tireless vitality. His own perpetual freshness was a marvel, and fascinated Lady Sellingworth. To be with him was like being with eternal youth, and made her long for her own lost youth with an ache of desperation. But to act being young is hideously different from being actually young. She acted astonishingly well, but she paid for every moment of the travesty, and Rupert never noticed, never had the least suspicion of all she was going through on account of him.
To him she was merely a magnificently hospitable pal of his father’s, who took a kindly interest in him. He found her capital company. He, like everyone else, felt her easy fascination, enjoyed being with her. But, like Rocheouart of the past days, he never thought of her as a possible lover. Nor did it ever occur to him that she was thinking of him as a possible husband. He always wanted, and generally managed to have a splendid time; and he was quite willing to be petted and spoilt and made much of; but he was not, under a mask of carelessness, a cold and persistent egoist. He really was just what he seemed to be, a light-hearted, rather uproarious, and very healthy young man, intent on enjoying himself, and recklessly indifferent to the future. He was quite willing to eat Lady Sellingworth’s excellent dinners, to ride her spirited horses, to sit in her opera box and look at pretty women while others listened to music, but it never occurred to him that it would be the act of a wise man to try to put her fortune into his own pocket at the price of marrying her.
His lack of self-interest, which she divined, charmed Lady Sellingworth; on the other hand, she was tormented by his detachment from her, by his lack of all vision of the truth of the situation. And she was perpetually tortured by jealousy.
Before she had been in love with Rupert she had often felt jealous. All women of her temperament are subject to jealousy, and all middle-aged people who worship youth unsuitably have felt its sting. But she had never before known jealousy as she knew it now.
Although she was so often with Rupert she was more often not with him. He made no pretences of virtue to her or to anyone else. He was a cheery Pagan, a good sport and—no doubt—a devil among the women. Being a thorough gentleman he never talked, as some vulgar men do, of his conquests. But Lady Sellingworth knew that his silence probably covered a multitude of sins. And her ignorance of the greater part of his life often ravaged her.
What was he doing when he was not with her? Who was he making love to?
His name was not specially connected with that of any girl whom she knew in society. But she had reason to know that he spent a lot of his time out of society in circles to which she had never penetrated. Doubtless he met quantities of women whose names she had never heard of, unknown women of the stage, women who went to night clubs, women of the curious world which floats between the aristocracy and the respectable middle classes, which is as well dressed as the one and greedier even than the other, which seems always to have unlimited money, and which, nevertheless, has often no visible means of subsistence.
She lay awake often, when she badly needed sleep, wondering where Rupert was and what he was doing.
Jealousy, combined with unnatural physical exertion, and the perpetual endeavour to throw round her an atmosphere of youth, energy and unceasing cheerfulness, wrought havoc in Lady Sellingworth. Her appearance began to deteriorate. Deeper lines became visible near her eyes, and the light of those eyes was feverish. Her nerves began to go to pieces. Restlessness increased upon her. She was scarcely able to keep still for a moment. The more she needed repose the more incapable of repose she became. The effort to seem younger, gayer, stronger than she was became at last almost convulsive. Her social art was tarnished. The mechanism began to be visible.