Part 3

“As for my being better off, since you are kind enough to take an interest in that aspect of my situation,” she went back, “Christopher hasn’t, it’s true, as much money as Niel. But our tastes are the same, so that I shall certainly be very much better off. We shall live in London--after Niel sets me free.” And here again she just glanced at her aunt, who bowed assent, murmuring, "Yes; yes; he is quite willing to set you free; at once."--“And until then,” Rhoda went on, as if she hadn’t needed the assurance,--second-rate assurance as, Mrs. Delafield felt sure, she found it,--“and until then I shall stay in the country. Christopher has his post still at the Censor’s office, and won’t, I’m afraid, get his demobilization for some time. He translates things, you know. So we are going to find a little old house, for me,--we are looking for one now,--and I shall see a few friends there, quite quietly, and Christopher can come up and down, until everything is settled. I think that’s the best plan.”

Rhoda spoke with a dignity that had even a savour of conscious sweetness, and, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, was running herself very completely into her corner.

There was silence now for a little while. Rhoda finished her milk, and Jane Amoret, gently and unobtrusively moving among her blocks, succeeded, at length, in balancing the last one on her edifice and looked up at her great-aunt for approbation.

“Very good, darling. A beautiful house,” said Mrs. Delafield, leaning over her, but with a guarded tenderness. What a serpent she had become! There was Rhoda’s jealousy to look out for. She might imagine herself fond of Jane Amoret, if she saw that some one else adored her.

“She’s quite used to you already, isn’t she?” said Rhoda, watching them. “I wonder what you’ll make of her. She strikes me as rather a dull little thing, though she’s certainly very pretty. She’s rather like Niel, isn’t she? Though she certainly isn’t as dull as Niel!” She laughed slightly. "All the same,"--and Mrs. Delafield now, in Rhoda’s voice, scented the close approach of danger, and was aware, though she did not look up to meet it, that Rhoda’s eyes took on a new watchfulness,--“All the same I must consider the poor little thing’s future. That is, of course, my one real difficulty.”

“Was it? In going away? In having left her, you mean?” Mrs Delafield prayed that her mildness might gloss, to Rhoda’s ear, the transition to conscious combat that her instinctive change of tense revealed to her own. “Oh, but you need not do that. Don’t let that trouble you for a moment, Rhoda. I will take charge of her--complete charge. I can do it easily. My house is empty, and the child will be a companion to me. I don’t find her dull. She is a dear little thing, so good and gentle. You need really have no anxiety.”

“Oh, I see.” Rhoda was gazing at her earnestly. “Thanks. That’s certainly a relief. Though all the same I don’t suppose you’d claim that you could replace the child’s mother.”

“Yes. I think so, Rhoda. A mother who had left her for a lover.”

Mrs. Delafield kept her eyes fixed on the fire. Rhoda stood up and leaned her back against the mantelpiece. She could no longer control the manifestations of her impatience and her perplexity.

“That would be your view, of course; and father’s; and Niel’s. It’s not mine. I consider the responsibility to be Niel’s.”

“Well, whosesoever the responsibility, the deed is done, isn’t it?” Mrs. Delafield observed. “I’m not arraigning you, you know. I’m merely stating the fact. You have left her.”

Rhoda’s impatience now visibly brushed past these definitions. “You say that Niel is ready to set me free. I took that for granted, of course. It’s only common decency. But that’s hardly what father could have meant in imploring me to come to--you. He told me nothing--only implored, and lamented. And, since I am here, I’d like some information, I confess.”

It was the first step away from pride, and it was a long one. And Mrs. Delafield knew that with it came her own final turning-point. Here, at this moment, she must be true to Tim and Niel, or betray their trust. And here no less--for so it seemed to her--she might, in betraying them, take the law into her own hands and promise herself, and them, that, in breaking it, she would make something better. Yet she did not feel these alternatives, now, at war within her mind. She knew that they were there, implicit, but she knew them already answered. Rhoda had answered for her; and Jane Amoret had answered. It took her, however, a moment to find her own answer, the verbal one, and while she looked for it, she kept her eyes on the fire.

“Your father wants you to go back,” she said at last. “Niel is willing to take you back. That is the information I had for you. Not for a moment because he would accept your interpretation of responsibility, and not for a moment because of any personal feeling for you; which must be a relief to you. Merely for your sake, and the child’s. But I don’t know how to plead such a cause with you, Rhoda. I understand you, I think, better than your father does. I’ve always seen your point of view as he could never see it, and I see it even now. So that I should feel that I asked you something outrageous in asking you to go back to your husband when you love another man. If you should want to go back, that would be a very different matter--if, by chance, you feel you’ve made a mistake and are tired, already, of Mr. Darley.”

She had time, in the pause that followed, the scales pulsing almost evenly--it was as if she saw them--between Rhoda’s pride and Rhoda’s urgency, to wonder at herself. And most of all to wonder that she regretted nothing. She kept her eyes on the fire, but she knew that Rhoda, very still, scrutinized her intently. The sharply drawn tension of the moment had resolved itself, to her imagination, into a series of tiny ticks, as if of the scales settling down to the choice, before Rhoda spoke. Then what she found to say was, “That’s hardly likely, is it?”

“I felt it impossible, you will be glad to hear,” said Mrs. Delafield. “No one who understands you could suspect you, whatever your faults, of two infidelities in the space of a fortnight.”

And now again there was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of the flames up the chimney and the soft movements of Jane Amoret among her blocks.

Rhoda turned away at last, facing the fire and looking down at it, her hands on the edge of the mantelpiece, her foot on the fender; and she presently lifted the foot and dealt the logs a kick.

It was all clear to Mrs. Delafield. She was tired of her poet, or, at all events, did not, in the new life, find compensations enough. She had come, hoping to have her way made clear for a reëntry, dignified, if not triumphant, into the old life. And here she was, in her corner, her head fairly fixed to the wall.

Meanwhile, what had become of the mid-Victorian conscience? What had, indeed, become of any conscience at all, since she continued to regret nothing? She even found excuses, perfidious, no doubt, yet satisfactory. It had been the truth she had given Rhoda--the real truth, her own, if not the truth she owed her, not the truth as Tim and Niel had placed it, all confidently, in her hands. But since it was preëminently not the truth that Rhoda had come to seize, she was willing, now that she had fixed her so firmly, to give her something else, and she really rejoiced to find it ready, going on presently and with a note of relief that Rhoda’s ear could not fail to catch:--

“Not only from the point of view of dignity one couldn’t suspect it of you, Rhoda, but--I want to say it to you, having had my glimpse of Mr. Darley--from the point of view of taste. If you were going to do anything of this sort,--and I don’t need to tell you how deeply I deplore it nor how wrong I think you,--but if you were going to do it, you couldn’t have chosen better. He is gifted; he is charming; he is good. I saw it all at once.”

There was her further truth, and really it was due to Rhoda. Rhoda, at this, faced her again and, highly civilized creature that she was, it was with her genuine grim mirth.

“Upon my word, Aunt Isabel!” she commented. “You are astonishing.”

“Am I? Why?” asked Mrs. Delafield, though she knew quite well.

“Why, my dear? Because you are over sixty years old and you wear caps. I expected to find dismay, reproach, and lamentations--all the strains of poor old father’s harmonium; to have you down on your knees begging me to return to the paths of virtue. And here you are, cool and unperturbed and, positively, patting us on the back; positively giving us your blessing. Well, well, wonders will never cease! Yes, he is charming, no one can deny that; and good and gifted, too. But to think of your having spotted it so quickly! Why, you only saw him once, if I remember, and I don’t remember that you talked at all.”

“We didn’t. I only saw him once.”

“And it was enough! To make you understand! To make you condone!--Come, out with it, Aunt Isabel, you wicked old lady! I see now why I’ve always got on so well with you. You _are_ wicked.”

“To make me understand. I won’t say condone.”

“You needn’t say it. You’ve said enough. And certainly it is a feather in Christopher’s cap. But he is the sort of person one falls in love with at first sight.”

“So I see.”

“And so do I,” said Rhoda, still laughing. But her slightly avenging gaiety dropped from her after the last sally, and turning again to the fire, and again kicking her log, she said, almost sombrely, “He absolutely worships me.”

Was not this everybody’s justification? Mrs. Delafield seized it, rising, as on a satisfying close.

“Will you stay to lunch?” she asked.

“Dear me, no!” Rhoda laughed. “I must get back to Christopher. And the motor is there waiting. So you’ll write to father and tell him that I came here and that you advised me to stick to Christopher.”

"Advised? Have I seemed to advise, Rhoda? Do you mean"--it was, Mrs. Delafield knew, the final peril--“that you had considered not sticking to him?”

Rhoda continued to laugh a little, drawing up her furs.

“Rather not! It couldn’t have entered my head, could it, either from the point of view of dignity or of taste--as you’ve been telling me? You have been very wonderful, you know! Tell father, then, if you like, that you gave us your blessing.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Mrs. Delafield, “that I’m convinced you ought not to go back to Niel.”

"I see,"--Rhoda nodded, and their eyes sounded each other, curiously,--“though father thinks I ought.”

“Of course. That’s why you’re here.”

“Father would have gone down on his knees to beg me.”

“Yes. Down on his knees. Poor Tim!”

She was horribly frightened, but she faced Rhoda’s grim mirth deliberate with gravity. And Rhoda, whatever she might have seen or guessed, accepted her defeat; accepted the dignity and taste thrust upon her.

“Father, in other words, isn’t a wicked old gentleman as you are a wicked old lady. I see it all, and it’s all a feather in Christopher’s cap. Well, Aunt Isabel, good-bye. Shall I see you again? Will you come and call when I’m Mrs. Darley? I don’t see how, with a clear conscience, you can chuck us, you know.”

“Nor do I,” Mrs. Delafield conceded, after only a pause. “I don’t often go to London, but, when I do, I shall look in upon you, if you want me to.”

“Rather!” Rhoda, now gloved and muffled, had fallen back on her normal rich economy of speech. “You’ll be useful as well as pleasant. And Christopher will adore you, I’m sure. I’ll tell him that you think him charming.”

“Do,” said Mrs. Delafield, following her to the door.

She had forgotten even to kiss Jane Amoret good-bye.

V

Still Mrs. Delafield knew no remorse. Rather, a wine-like elation filled her. She thought of her state of consciousness in terms of wine, and ordered up from her modest cellar a special old port, hardly tasted since her husband’s death, and, all alone, drank at lunch a little glass in honour of Jane Amoret’s advent. Also, though elated, she was conscious of needing a stimulant. The scene with Rhoda had cost her more than could, at the moment, be quite computed.

What it had won for her she was able to compute when, after lunch, she went upstairs to look at Jane Amoret asleep in her white cot. She did not feel like a robber brooding in guilty joy over ill-gotten booty. She could not feel herself that, nor Jane Amoret booty. Jane Amoret was treasure, pure heaven-sent treasure, her flower of miracle. Christmas roses had been in her mind since morning, and the darkness, the whiteness of the child, as well as her beautiful unexpectedness, made her think of them anew; her gravity, too; something of melancholy that the flowers embodied; for they were not smiling flowers--gazing rather at the wintry sky in earnest meditation.

Jane Amoret’s black lashes lay upon her cheek, ever so slightly turned up at the tips, and her great-aunt, leaning over her, felt herself doting upon them and upon the little softly breathing profile embedded in the pillow, a bud-like, folded hand beside it.

“Little darling, we will make each other happy,” she whispered.

Rhoda had passed from their lives like a storm-cloud.

Jane Amoret was still sleeping, and she had gone downstairs to the little morning-room where, since the war, she had really lived, to settle with herself what she must say to Tim, when there came a ringing at the front-door bell. The morning-room, at the back of the house, like the nursery, overlooked the southern lawn and the walls of the kitchen-garden; but she could usually hear if a motor drove up, and, in her still concentration upon the empty sheet lying before her on the desk, she was aware that there had been no sound. It was too early for a visitor, too early for the post, and she looked up with some curiosity as Parton came in.

“It’s a gentleman, ma’am, to see you,” said Parton; and her young, trained visage showed signs of a discomfiture deeper than that Rhoda’s coming had evoked. “Mr. Darley, ma’am; and he hopes very much you are disengaged.”

Mrs. Delafield had, as a first sensation, that of sympathy with Parton. Parton evidently knew all about it and was evidently in distress lest her face betrayed her knowledge. In her effort to maintain her own standards of impassivity she suddenly blushed crimson, and Mrs. Delafield then felt that she was very old and Parton very young, and that in that fact alone was a bond, even if there had been no other. She had many bonds with Parton, and now, seeing her so soft, uncertain, and dismayed, she would have liked to pat her on the shoulder and say, “There, my dear, it doesn’t make any difference. I assure you I’m not disturbed.” And since she could not say it, she looked it, replying with the utmost equability, “Mr. Darley? By all means. Show him in at once, Parton.”

There was, after Parton had gone, a short interval, while Mr. Darley doubtless was taking off his coat, and during which she felt herself mainly engaged in maintaining her equability. But, after her encounter with Rhoda, wasn’t she equable enough for any situation? Besides, Mr. Darley could in no fashion menace Jane Amoret, and under all her conjectures and amazements there lay a certain satisfaction. She knew, from her encounter with Parton, that she was interested in all young creatures when they were nice, and she was not sorry to have another look at Mr. Darley.

When he entered and she saw him,--not in khaki as that first time, but in a gray tweed suit,--when Parton had softly and securely closed the door and left them together, she found herself borne along on a curious deepening of the current of sympathy for mere youth. She had not remembered how young he was; she had not had that as her dominant impression at Rhoda’s tea, as she had it now. He must be several years younger than Rhoda; hardly more than twenty-two or three, she thought; and it must have been as a mere child that the war had swept him out into maturing initiations. Something of an experience, shattering yet solidifying, was in his face, fragile, wasted, yet more final and finished than one would have expected at his time of life; and also, in curious contrast to his boyish, beardless look, a deep line was engraved across his forehead; whether by suffering or by the trick she soon discovered in him of raising his eyebrows in an effort of intense concentration, she could not tell.

She gave him her hand simply, and said, “Do sit down.”

But Mr. Darley, though he looked at the chair she indicated, did not take it. He remained standing on the hearthrug, facing the windows, his hands clasped behind him, and she then became aware that he was enduring a veritable agony of shyness. It did not take the form of blushes,--though his was a girlish skin that would display them instantly,--or of awkward gestures or faltering speech. It was a shyness wild, still, and bereft of all appeal, like that of a bird,--the simile came sharply to her,--a bird that had followed some swift impulse and that now, caught in a sudden hand, relapsed into utter immobility. His large eyes were on hers--fixed. His expression was like a throbbing heart. She knew that all she wanted, for the moment, was to show him that the hand was gentle.

“I’m afraid you came hoping to find Rhoda,” she said, looking away from him and giving her chair, as a pretext, sundry little adjustments before drawing it to the fire. “But she left this morning, after seeing me, and you must have crossed her on the road. At least--have you motored?”

The large eyes, she found, were still fixed on her as, with the question, she glanced up at him; but he answered immediately--rather as if with a croaking cry from the blackbird when one pressed it,--

“No; I came by train. I left a little after Rhoda did.”

“By train?” she marvelled kindly. “But we are four miles from the station here. Aren’t you, at your end, as far? And such roads!” She saw now that his boots and upturned trousers were, indeed, deeply mired.

“Oh--I didn’t mind the walk,” said Mr. Darley. “It wasn’t far.”

She was sure he hadn’t found it far. His whole demeanour expressed the overmastering impulse that had, till then, sustained him.

“Have you had any lunch?” she went on. “I can’t think where you can have lunched. There’s nothing at the station. Do let me send for something. I’ve only just finished.”

It seemed strangely indicated that she should, to-day, feed Rhoda and her lover.

But the caught blackbird was in no state for feeding. More wildly, yet more faintly than before he gave forth the croaking cry with, “Oh, no. Thanks so much. Yes. At our station. I found something at our station. Sandwiches; no, a bun. I had a cup of Bovril.”

And now, curiously, poignantly to her, he began to blush as though suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of himself and of how idiotically he must be behaving. Poor child! How young he was! And how ill he had been in the trenches; and how beautiful it was to remember--as she did suddenly, and not irrelevantly, she knew, though she could not trace the relevance--that, in the little volume, written since his return, there had not been a shadow of the ugly rancour, revengeful and provocative, one met in some other soldier-poets whom one might have fancied to be of his kind. For how he must have hated it! And, at the same time,--memory brought back a line, a stanza here and there, from her snatched reading--how holy he had found it; seeing so much more than error, death, and suffering.

Her eyes dwelt on him with something beyond the kindly wish to spare him as she said, “Please sit down. You must be very tired and you are not strong, Rhoda told me. Don’t be afraid of me. I am an old lady who can listen to anything and, I think, understand a great deal. I’ve already heard a great deal from Rhoda. I’m anything but unfriendly to you, I assure you.”

It was--she was aware of it when it had crossed her lips--a curious thing to say to her niece’s lover, to the man who had destroyed Tim’s happiness and wrecked Niel’s home; but it was too true not to be said. And she was perfectly sure now that it was not Mr. Darley who had wrecked and destroyed. It was Rhoda who had taken him, of course; not he Rhoda. He would never take anybody. He would stand and gaze at them as he now gazed at her, and only when they threw out appealing arms would he move towards them. Rhoda had thrown out appealing arms--after she discovered that alluring arms had no effect. Mrs. Delafield’s impressions and intuitions tumbled forth in positive clusters as she took in her companion. Allurements, Russian-ballet back-grounds, snowy throats and velvet eyes, would have no effect upon him at all; he cared as little about them at one end of the scale of sensations as about rats and corpses at the other. He would not even see them. It was something else he had seen in Rhoda; something she had found herself driven to display. And if she were getting tired of him already, it was simply because, having trapped him with the artifice, she now found herself shut up with him in a cage, which, while it was of her own making, was extremely uncongenial to her.

Mr. Darley was far too absorbed in what she had just said to him to think of taking the chair. It had helped him incalculably--that was quite apparent; for though the blush stayed, and though he was still wild and shy, they had already, indubitably, begun to understand each other.

“Do you mean,” he asked, “not unfriendly to me or not unfriendly to Rhoda?”

This was an unexpected question, and for a moment, not knowing what it portended, she hardly knew how to meet it. But the understanding that seemed to deepen with every moment made truth the most essential thing, and she replied after only a hesitation, “To you.”

Mr. Darley looked all his astonishment. “But why? Do you feel that you like me, too? Because, of course, I’ve never forgotten you. That’s why I felt it possible to come to-day.”

And since truth was essential, it was she, now, who looked, with her surprise, something that she felt to be a recognition, as she replied, “I suppose it must be that. I suppose we liked each other at first sight. I certainly didn’t know the feeling was reciprocal.”

“Nor did I!” Mr. Darley exclaimed. He took the chair at the other end of the hearthrug, facing her, his knees crossed, his arms clutched tightly across his chest; and now he was able to reach his journey’s goal. As all, on Rhoda’s side, had been made clear to her that morning, so on his, all was clear, as he said, with a solemnity so young, so genuine that it almost brought tears to her eyes, “Then since you do like me, please don’t let her leave me!”

The situation was before her, definite and overpowering; but how it could have come about remained veiled like the misty approaches to a mountain.

“Does Rhoda want to leave you?” she questioned.

“Why--didn’t you know?” Mr. Darley’s face flashed with a sort of stupor. “Didn’t she come for that?”

“You answer my questions first,” Mrs. Delafield said after a moment.

He was obedient and full of trust. “It’s because of the child, you know, that lovely little creature in London. From the first--you can’t think how long ago it already seems, though we have hardly been a week together--I’ve seen it growing, that feeling in her that she couldn’t bear it. Other things, too; but that more than all. At least,” he was truthful to the last point of scruple, “I think so. And though she did not tell me that she was saying good-bye this morning, I knew--I knew--that she was coming to you because she wanted her child, and would accept anything, endure anything, to be with it again.”

“What do you think Rhoda had to endure?” Mrs. Delafield inquired.