People noticed the change in her and began to discuss it, and more than one of the “old guard” hit upon the reason of it. It became subtly known and whispered about that Adela Sellingworth was desperately in love with Rupert Louth. Several of her friends hinted at their knowledge to Lady Sellingworth, and she was forced to laugh at the idea as absurd, knowing that her laughter would serve no good end. These experienced women knew. Impossible to deceive them about a thing of that kind! They were mercilessly capable in detecting a hidden passion in one of their body. Their intrigues and loves were usually common property, known to, and frankly discussed by them all.
Lady Sellingworth presently had the satisfaction of knowing that the whole of the “old guard” was talking about her passion for Rupert Louth. This fact drove her to a hard decision which was not natural to her. She wanted to marry Rupert because she was in love with him. But now she felt she must marry him to save her own pride before her merciless fellow-women. She decided that the time had come when she must trample on her own delicacy and prove that she still possessed the power of a conqueror. Otherwise she would be laughed at by the greater part of the society in which she usually lived.
She resolved to open Rupert Louth’s eyes and to make him understand that she and all she stood for were at his disposal. She knew he was up to the eyes in debt. She knew he had no prospects. Lord Blyston had no money to give him, and was for ever in difficulties himself. It was a critical moment for Louth, and a critical moment for her. Their marriage would smooth out the whole situation, would set him free from all money miseries, and her from greater miseries still—torments of desire, and the horror of being laughed at or pitied by her set. And in any case she felt that the time had arrived when she must do something drastic; must either achieve or frankly and definitely give up. She knew that she was nearing the end of her tether. She could not much longer keep up the brilliant pretence of being an untiring Amazon crammed full of the joie de vivre which she had assumed for the purpose of winning Rupert Louth as a husband. Her powers of persistence were rapidly waning. Only will drove her along, in defiance of the warnings and protests of her body. But the untiring Amazon was cracking up, to use a favourite expression of Louth’s. Soon the weary, middle-aged woman must claim her miserable rights: the right to be tired occasionally, the right to “slack off” at certain hours of the day, the right to find certain things neither suitable nor amusing to her, the right, in fact, to be now and then a middle-aged woman. Certainly something in her said to Lady Sellingworth: “In your marriage, if you marry, you will have to act even better, even more strenuously, than you are acting now. Being in love as you are, you will never be able to dare to be your true self. Your whole married life will be a perpetual throwing of dust in the eyes of your husband. To keep him you will have to live backwards, or to try to live backwards, all the time. If you are tired now, what will you be then?” And she knew that the voice was speaking the truth. Her imp, too, was watching her closely and with an ugly intensity of irony as she approached her decision.
Nevertheless, she defied him; she defied the voice within her, and took it. She said to herself, or her worn nervous system said to her, that there was nothing else to be done. In her fatigue of body and nerves she felt reckless as only the nearly worn out feel. Something—she didn’t know what—had cast the die for her. It was her fate to open Rupert Louth’s eyes, to make him see; it was her fate to force her will into a last strong spasm. She would not look farther than the day. She would not contemplate her married life imaginatively, held in contemplation, like a victim, by the icy hands of reason. She would kick reason out, harden herself, give her wildness free play, and act, concentrating on the present with all the force of which her diseased nerves were capable.
Instead of thinking just then “after me the deluge,” her thought was “after my marriage to Rupert Louth the deluge.” She would, she must, make him her husband. It would be perhaps the last assertion of her power. She knew enough of men to know that such an assertion might well be followed by disaster. But she was prepared to brave any disaster except one, the losing of Louth and the subsequent ironical amusement of the “old guard.”
Two or three days later Louth called, mounted on one of her horses, to take her for a ride in the park.
During the previous night Lady Sellingworth had scarcely slept at all. She had got up feeling desperately nervous and almost lightheaded. On looking in the glass she had been shocked at her appearance, but she had managed to alter that considerably, although not so completely as she wished. Depression, following inevitably on insomnia, had fixed its claws in her. She felt deadly, almost terrible, and as if her face must be showing plainly the ugliness of her mental condition. For she seemed to have lost control over it. The facial muscles seemed to have hardened, to have become fixed. When the servant came to tell her that Louth and the horses were at the door she was almost afraid to go down, lest he should see at once in her face the strong will power which she had summoned up; as a weapon in this crisis of her life.
As she went slowly downstairs she forced herself to smile. The smile came with difficulty, but it came, and when she met Louth he did not seem to notice any peculiarity in her. But, to tell the truth, he scarcely seemed to notice her at all with any particularity. For her strange and abnormal pre-occupation was matched by a like pre-occupation in him. He took off his hat, bade her good morning, and helped her skilfully to mount. But she saw at once that he was not as usual. His face was grave and looked almost thoughtful. The merry light had gone out of his eyes. And, strangest phenomenon of all, he was tongue-tied. They started away from the house, and rode through Mayfair towards the park in absolute silence.
She began to wonder very much what was the matter with Rupert, and guessed that he had “come an awful cropper” of some kind. It must certainly be an exceptional cropper to cloud his spirit. Perhaps he had lost a really large sum of money, or perhaps he—The thought of a woman came suddenly to her, she did not know why. Suspicion, jealousy woke in her. She glanced sideways at Rupert under her hard hat. He looked splendid on horseback, handsomer even than when he was on foot. For he was that rare thing, a really perfect horseman. His appearance disarmed her. She longed to do something for him, by some act of glowing generosity to win him completely. But they were still in the streets, and she said nothing. Directly they turned into the green quietude of the park, however, she yielded to her impulse and spoke, and asked him bluntly what was the matter.
He did not fence with her. Fencing was not easy to him. He turned in the saddle, faced her, and told her that he had made a damned fool of himself. Still bent on generosity, on being more than a friend to him, she asked him to tell her how. His reply almost stunned her. A fortnight previously he had secretly married a Miss Willoughby—really a Miss Bertha Crouch, and quite possibly of Crouch End—who was appearing in a piece at the Alhambra Theatre, but who had not yet arrived at the dignity of a “speaking part.” This young lady, it seemed, had already “landed” Louth in expenses which he didn’t know how to meet. What was he to do? She was the loveliest thing on earth, but she was accustomed to living in unbridled luxury. In fact she wanted the earth, and he was longing to give it to her. But how? Where could he possibly get hold of enough money for the purchase of the earth on behalf of Miss Bertha Crouch—now Willoughby, or, rather, now the Hon. Mrs. Rupert Louth? His face softened, his manner grew almost boyishly eager, as he poured confidences into Lady Sellingworth’s ears. She was his one real friend! She was a woman of the world. She had lived ever so much longer than he had and knew five times as much. What would she advise? Might he bring little Bertha to see her? Bertha was really the most splendid little sort, although naturally she wanted to have the things other women had—etc., etc.