“I wonder,” he said half aloud, “I wonder.” And he walked slowly up Piccadilly, his eyes bent on the pavement, his hands behind him, with the air of a man in deep and somewhat harassed thought.
CHAPTER VII—THE DANGEROUS HOUR
A few days afterwards Ella was lying on a sofa in her aunt's drawing-room in Pont Street. It was a hot afternoon, the windows were open, and the sun blinds tempered the light. Between their edges and the tops of the flowers in the window-boxes she could see a great band of golden sunshine. Having been to a late dance the evening before and to a stuffy but advanced picture exhibition in the morning, she was feeling physically languid, and glad to be excused from attendance on Lady Milmo, who was indefatigably attending a charitable committee. In her hand she held a letter that had come by the early afternoon post. It was from Matthew Lanyon, bright and gossipy on the surface, but her quick perception divined an undercurrent of sadness. He was looking forward to her promised visit in August. If only he could persuade Syl to come down too, it would be quite like old times. But perhaps it would be better for Syl to get right away among the Swiss mountains, as he proposed. There was nothing like a complete change for a jaded Londoner. He had come down for a week-end lately and was looking fagged and overworked. The garden had never been lovelier. The rhododendrons were out and all a mass of bumble-bees; he had never seen so many in his life. He was writing late at night, on his knees in the library. Dorothy had made a complicated web of Berlin wool all over his writing-chair, by way of fitting it up as a carriage for her doll, which was throned in the midst, and of course he had not dared to disturb it.
“I think I make an average grandfather,” he wrote, “but I do wish some one had given me a few lessons as to how to become a mother.”
The fragrance of the country garden stole elusively upon the hot London room, and awakened a longing to get away from the glare and chatter into the cool quietude of Woodlands; to exchange the heavy dinnerparty where she was due in a few hours' time, with its heavy hot-house flowers and its artificial talk, for the peaceful summer evening in the summer-house under the trees, in the company of the dear old man, so sane, so sincere, and of Miss Lanyon, whose gentle mind seemed to have lain in lavender. She was tired; her heart was tired. The beautiful world lay hidden behind a mountain, up which she was climbing wearily, vainly. Her feet were tangled in an inextricable maze and her steps were devious. Where could she find a guide? She conjured up the picture of the old man's kind, grave smile, and longed, as only a girl can who is enmeshing her life, to throw herself down by his knees and open all her heart. Had he appeared at that moment at the door, she would have arisen and with a cry, half sob, half welcome, have thrown her arms about his neck and burst into tears.
“If only he could come!” she said, and she sank vaguely into the imagined solace. But what could she say to him? The formulated query crystallised her thoughts into chill dismay. How could she make known, even to him, the humiliation of that last interview with Sylvester, expose to him the nakedness of her outraged pride? She shrank from the thought. And the history of the year's follies? No. Never. She crumpled the letter fiercely in her hand. Then, suddenly repenting of her violence, she smoothed the sheet tenderly and kissed it and slipped it into the bosom of her dress.
The year's follies. In this hour of lassitude and depression—rare to Ella, but common to all her sex, coming to woman with rhythmic iteration as inevitable as the tides—they rose up one by one before her, and her cheeks burned with shame. First it was Lionel Kavanagh, the poet and aesthetic critic. She had been reckless, craving excitement, forgetfulness of her burning humiliation. All through the season a year ago, she had flirted with him, openly, outrageously. He was one of Lady Milmo's menagerie, and used to sprawl on the hearth-rug and alternate rhapsody with mordant wit. And alone in her company he would sail perilously near the wind with sensuous allusiveness, until one day he grew bold and brought her a sonnet frankly sensual. She tore the manuscript into tiny pieces during an ominous silence, and ordered him out of the house. The next was Bertie Hetherington, who made violent love to her at Aix-les-Bains, whither she had been led by Lady Milmo's wandering fancy and rheumatic tendencies. He was a fresh, wholesome young Briton in a Hussar regiment. The vehemence of his devotion was sweet to Ella, and she kept him hoping longer than she knew was right. Perhaps if he had possessed more brains she might have married him. But when he wrote her an impassioned letter in which he affirmed that his heart beet only for her, the spelling caught the humorous side of Ella's fancy and she laughed herself out of her entanglement. Yet she had wronged him, just as Sylvester had wronged her, and she had wronged herself. The fresh bloom of her maidenhood had gone. Her sensitive pride magnified the taint.
In London once more, the need of an occupation, an aim, a purpose, tormented her. She had tried the ignoble and found it bitter. She craved the higher plane of devotion to a cause, something elevated, impersonal. The ordinary pursuits that call forth a woman's self-sacrifice did not appeal to the unrest of her imagination. Besides, her young blood rebelled against self-suppression. In the stress and storm she caught at the first thing to her hand: Roderick Usher's Utopian scheme for the regeneration of art and the consequent purification of society. She was carried away like a straw on the crest of his vehement pro-pagandism. From an occasional attendant at her aunt's receptions, he became a regular visitor. Together they elaborated the scheme, discussed the details. She worked with him in obtaining supporters and canvassing for subscriptions. At first the correspondence, the interviewing, the plotting and intriguing, kept her enthusiastically occupied. She made converts among the young artists and poets who came to the house, inveighing against the tame formalism on the one hand and the morbid exaggeration on the other that were the curses of modern art. She attended meetings in fashionable drawing-rooms and expounded her theories. Notoriety followed her doings. A weekly paper published an illustrated interview with the priestess of the new gospel.