Part 5

“Yes, and Julia lost him and I got him. She called him her boy and her baby! He even told me so, saying how nice it was of her. Quite sincere! He thought so, I daresay. I knew better, as if any man liked to be made to feel small! She’d have handed the moon down to him if she’d had it in her power, and when he cried for such a little easy thing as a divorce, of course she gave it him. A fool, I call her.”

“I don’t know about that,” the friend replied, combatively. “Greater love hath no woman, than she lay down her marriage lines for her husband.”

“Well, I love him, but I couldn’t have done that! I should simply have had to stick to him just the same. And then--if he had thrown me over, nothing would ever have induced me to take money from him!”

“But if you were extravagant and nearly starving?”

“I’d have found a man to support me and buy me frills!”

“Then you couldn’t have loved him, to degrade the thing he had once set store by.”

“If Joe had left me, anything could have become of me for all I cared!… I see what you are driving at, Alice, you think I can’t feel love as Julia does, because I haven’t got beetle brows meeting over my forehead and a big contralto chest to sigh with. My way with Joe, whether I do it from self-control or inclination, comes out best. A man like Joe needs a lot of spoiling, but not from the woman he cares for. I let outsiders do it for me. I don’t cosset him, or make a point of being home every afternoon from my calls at an unearthly hour to dine with him. If a boy offers me a dinner, I accept and Joe gives me my taxi fare, and looks me over, and sees that my dress, for the other man, mind you, is all right. Nor do I wait up for him when he comes back, I just see supper’s laid out all right and the fire kept up and go to bed. I don’t make him look ridiculous by fetching him at the theatre, as some actors’ wives do. Julia, I hear, used to take parts that didn’t suit her, so as to ensure her being on the spot with him, every night. I never know where he is and I don’t go getting his pals to play detective and tell me. I may be conceited, but I do flatter myself, that wherever Joe is, he is thinking of me, and of how soon he can get back to me.”

“I think you are perfectly right,” Miss Walton replied rather sardonically. “It’s the best view to take of marriage, and for a woman married to a popular actor, the only one. Do you happen to know where Joe is, now?”

“Yes, I happen to be able to tell you. He is at the theatre, rehearsing the new play. They must be through by now, though! He’ll be here in a minute. I haven’t seen him since yesterday. We dine together at six o’clock!”

“And it’s half-past five now. Well, I must be off. Good-bye, old girl, and I wouldn’t neglect those pains if I were you. I expect it’s only rheumatism, but as a general rule internal pains should not be ignored. You look rather flushed----”

“I must go and put on some powder before Joe comes. Good-bye. Tell Gladys to come and clear away the tea as you go out.”

Mrs. Mardell was left alone, with two imperfectly drained tea-cups and some broken crumbs of cake on a Japanese tray. The spirit lamp under the kettle had gone out--she missed its cheerful flame. She was hemmed in, her knees were imprisoned by the flaps of the tea-table so that she could not lie back.… She felt disinclined to move and go upstairs for that dust of powder that was to impress Joe.… Everything was a bother… she felt very stupid, but she had no more pain, thank God!…

So she sat on, waiting for the maid to clear away the tea things and set her free, bolt upright in her hostess-corner of the flower-begarlanded sofa, with the pink-shaded lamp behind her, convenient for reading, only she did not want to read. Her head drooped, till her face was in shadow. Her eyes were fixed on a Liberty cosy corner that adequately filled an ugly bare place in the room but that no one ever sat in--and then and there she had a vision.

It seemed to her that her sight pierced through the faint scaffolding of white wood pillars that bore up the inane piece of furniture. She had a view of a cold, bare room distempered in pale green, and nearly empty of furniture, excepting for a bed and an arm-chair. Presently, she distinguished a table made of slabs of glass, covered with bits of shining steel and physic bottles. She smelt a strong odour of ether. Then sundry persons surged into her field of vision, though they had been there all the time; two white-capped nurses, bending solicitously over a bed where a third person lay with long black hair spread over the pillow. A woman, who was speaking so faintly that Florence felt rather than heard what she said.

“You are sure you have sent for him?” the image seemed to say urgently. “Nurse! Nurse! It’s the ‘Quality Theatre’!”

“Yes, Madam, we have telephoned through--‘Quality Theatre.’ It would have been as well----! Can you not give us your husband’s home address, Madam?”

“I don’t know it,” the patient replied wearily. “But he will be at the theatre. He is always at the theatre. It’s his life now. He’ll come… he’ll come!”

“Surely, Madam----”

The nurse turned away to speak to a colleague who had apparently only recently left the room and now returned. Florence then saw the features of the woman on the bed, features never seen by her except across the footlights, charged with bright white and rose. They were grey and unrecognizable now, yet Florence knew whose they were.

She heard the conversation of the two whispering women the while.

“She’s sinking fast,” said the elder nurse.

“She’ll last till he comes, I think,” replied the younger. “He’s just telephoned through that he’s on his way here!”

With her words the whole house and its ramifications were now revealed to Florence Mardell--as it were the open front of a doll’s house. She saw the steps leading up to the door--there were eight of them--the hall, the staircase and the room where the patient lay, at one and the same time. She heard a jingling of bells and the prod of a swift hansom suddenly pulled up at the behest of the urgently waved umbrella of a man within--her husband. She saw him leap out and dash up the steps to the door that was flung open as soon as he touched the bell. She missed no single stage of his progress upstairs to Julia’s room. The nurse opened the door of it, admitted him, and passed out herself. Florence recognized Joe’s familiar gesture--the overcoat hastily flung off and thrown aside, disclosing the dapper little ordinary man, with the long lock of hair, that was his mark of genius, lifting on his forehead as usual, as he impetuously advanced towards the bed. She realized the weak complaisance that stood for paradisaical joy on the face of the woman lying there, whose light of life was too nearly extinguished to permit of a finer demonstration. But the actor’s face was a marvel. This expression, evoked for the beloved dying woman only, was of such a tragic madness as no mime could ever hope to originate or imitate. Florence had never seen that look on his face, and sharp knowledge shot through her that even if she in her turn lay dying she would not see it then. A sob shook, but did not interrupt her steady absorption in the sight spread before her.

Her hungry eyes watched the discreet nurse left in charge retire to the mantelpiece and thoughtfully examine her sleeve links, as the lover, with passionate solicitude and a cunning born of intimate usage, sat down and laying his arms round his mistress’s neck, raised her a little, so as to gain her ear for the last whispers of love.

As a ghost to earth returned, the second wife apprehended the dreadful sense of the words those two exchanged together. Joe spoke with no sense of renewal, but as if Julia and he had parted but a few hours, or it may be days, ago. Florence could not resent, but she suffered the first pangs of a lifelong sorrow as she listened to Julia’s faint sighs of content, her weak rejoinders to Joe’s protestations of undying fidelity, his vows that turned to old, wise, baby talk, and the promises she wrung from him so easily.…

The nurse still fumbled with her sleeve links, blinded by unusual tears.

“You will see me buried?” Julia exacted, her hands twisting in Joe’s hair, playing with the long lock.… “You will make all the arrangements for me, Joe, won’t you? I want _you_--I want you to manage it!…”

Vance was right. Joe was the puny ghost mourner.… And Florence looked on eagerly again.

“It shall be our wedding… our re-marriage!” He soothed her. “We meet again--to part no more… you and I, Julia, my Julia.…”

What did he mean to do when Julia died, as die she must? It was very near now. Florence listened and looked, their voices seemed fainter, more furtive; the scene in the bedchamber was growing evanescent, ragged, as if there were rents in the film. She sometimes feared, so eager was she to see the whole of her own tragedy, that she was beginning to distinguish the wooden lines of the supports of the cosy corner that framed and crossed her view. She realized that Julia’s hour was approaching and that the vision would fade with its instigator. The doctor had come in and the other nurse. She could detect on all three faces the professional discouragement painted there by their foreknowledge of the event. They would look cheerful, normal again, after what must be, was over. But Joe’s face surely could never be set in comic lines again, those muscles, so deeply inured to tragedy, might never relax or unbend.…

She knew it when Julia died, though at the precise moment no one spoke, no one moved in the room for a while. Julia died, where she listed, where Joe would have her--in his arms. The shape of Julia would never go out of them. There would never be room there any more for Florence, whom he had not loved!…

* * * * * * *

She raised her head with a jerk. The pink cushions and hangings of the Liberty cosy corner filled up the lines of the woodwork again. The pillars framed triviality as usual.

She was sitting in her own drawing-room, and Gladys the stupid maid, was there--just come in to take away the tea things.

Mrs. Mardell spoke.

“Dinner will be late to-night.”

“Yes, Ma’am, I see it’s just gone half-past six now.”

“Your master is kept.… He has things to see to.…”

Gladys, eager to show she understood, interrupted. “Yes, Ma’am, Vance will keep dinner back.”

She folded up the table and set her mistress free. Mrs. Mardell had no more pain and knew she would not have any more, but she sat on in her place until seven, the hour at which her husband usually left for the theatre during this piece, in which his part entailed a somewhat lengthy and careful make up.…

She heard the twist of the latch key in the door below, and for the first time in her life, shrank from meeting the eyes of the man she adored with a new and passionate love. But it was the lover of Julia who would come in to her and say something kind, as usual. Kind--merely kind was all he had ever been, in all these years of her blindness. She put out her hands as if to push him from her, and her lips almost framed the words, “Stay, oh, stay away!”

No use, no use! Her observation, tensely quickened, told her that he paused in the hall, for there was an abrupt cessation of all movement. He was hesitating?… Then he made up his mind to the disagreeable duty. So Florence read the gesture. His sturdy dutiful footsteps could be heard ascending… a wild whiff of ether seemed to precede him!…

Her eyes dropped uncontrollably, as he touched and turned the handle of the door gently.… It was done. He was in the room.

How did he look? She must know. She raised her sad eyes, and contemplated the dwarf-actor standing there on the threshold of the pretty cheap drawing-room, oppressing, appalling her with his overpowering dignity. His hair was disordered, and clung, matted, to his damp forehead; the long lock fell over it in the style of one of the good-natured roysterers he excelled in portraying. But his face had the make-up of a clown; the dark features stood out in a mask of putty-coloured whiteness, all but the lips, which had no red. Those eyes which had just looked on death, stared down on her, not unkindly, but unseeing.…

She spoke at last, to break the awful spell which was winding itself round and round her, more than for any other reason.

“Julia is dead,” she said.

“I know.” He took a step forward into the room, and made a cold gesture of menace. She recoiled--then rose and faced him.

“She died in my arms. I loved her.”

He turned away. It was as if he had laid a book aside and a leaf had been folded down. He muttered, with a semblance of forced preoccupation with the business of life--

“I just looked in to tell you that I am going straight back to the theatre.”

“Without any dinner?” she shrieked. Then, more calmly--

“Well, you will have something to eat when you come home, won’t you? What time will that be?”

It was the first time in her life she had asked such a question, and his answer to it, delivered over his shoulder as he went downstairs, cut her to the heart.

“Perhaps never!”

* * * * * * *

Scant consolation! She knew that he did not mean to kill himself--at least not yet, for he had promised to make the arrangements for and attend Julia’s funeral.

THE MEMOIR

Did women in Society ever “speak” to other women, when a man dear to them both was concerned?

Had such an outrageous course ever been pursued since the days when Chriemhild “spoke” to Gudrun in the midst of the Rhine stream?

Little Lady Greenwell pondered this, time after time, day after day, as she sat dressed in her ineffectual Paris best, alone, in crowds, in sunlight gardens, lamp-lit ball-rooms, unlit boudoirs arranged for cosy gossiping teas. She never talked gossip, but she listened to it. A great deal of it covertly was about herself, or rather about her husband. That was one of the reasons why she felt that she ought to speak--speak kindly, seriously, effectively.

She fully meant to tell Cynthia what it was her duty to tell her, but she could not make up her mind to take the first plunge into unconventionality.

So, she sat about through a whole season, watching Sir Hilary’s social triumphs--she herself never triumphed--and arranged her speech, carefully composing it beforehand, rehearsing it, canvassing the relative claims of diplomacy and frankness, fulness and brevity, emotion or matter of fact. What arguments should she use, and which let go? Which, having regard to the character of Cynthia Chenies, would be likely to affect that volatile lady most? Should she plead her own years the more, her own looks the less? Should she take high moral grounds?

Should she put forward the young widow’s personal expediency? It all depended on what form of admonishment Cynthia would take best.

Lady Greenwell was honest enough to admit to herself that she proposed to lecture Cynthia as much for her own good, as Cynthia’s. Truly, she felt that it would be a difficult thing to keep self out of it, or as much in the background as possible.

“Just you let my man alone!”

That was what Kate of Wapping would have said to Peg of Limehouse, and no more ado, but could Lady Greenwell of Highfields, Hungerford, and 50, Carlton House Terrace so bluntly declare herself to the Honourable Mrs. Chenies of Portland Place? Did well-bred women do these things? It seemed at once so absurdly simple, just as you might ask some one to take his foot off your dress and no offence, and at the same time so appallingly impossible a thing to do. Women in Society were not supposed to show when they were annoyed, ask for explanations, or to “act straight.”

How they suffered in consequence of these absurd fetishes of conduct they set up, women alone knew. Moreover, such a subject, even if it were fairly and squarely discussed between two exceptional women, would represent the merely primitive appeal of the one to the other’s generosity, and generosity, though permissible in Wapping or Limehouse is not the “thing” in Mayfair or Portland Place.

Yet some women were really and truly generous at heart--Cynthia was, she was sure. Had it not been for the presence between them of this male bone of contention, Sir Hilary, Lady Greenwell would have been quite fond of Cynthia Chenies. She did not dislike her even now, when Cynthia was making her so uncomfortable, and she admired her sincerely, her frocks and her style. Hilary did, and she could not help following suit in this as in all else.

And, naturally, Cynthia could not help liking Hilary and his open attentions. Who could help liking Hilary and complying with him when he chose to flirt, and he always did choose? He was a born flirt, and he was eight years younger than his wife. Wives, who were burdened with odious supernumerary years, must, of course, give their man a little rope, and Mabel Greenwell gave hers a good deal.

Hilary Greenwell was a traveller, who came home and wrote books about it. He danced and dashed through a season, and then packed up and went to risk his life on some inaccessible mountain or other. Of course, when he came back, brown as a berry, and with sheaves of notes and measurements, he was the rage, and women simply “clawed him” for their parties, and adored him for their boudoirs.

Cynthia Chenies was no exception to the rule. Though a widow, she was little more than a girl, and looked a mere child. At the parties she gave in her big house, so Hilary would say, you always expected to see the dolls set up, and find pips in the orange juice soup, and have to mumble the “pretend” biscuit joint. Child-like, she knew no measure in her appreciation of the handsome traveller returned, and people were saying now that she was making a fool of herself, and that Lady Greenwell didn’t like it.

They were wrong there, Lady Greenwell wasn’t jealous at all. She was sure of Hilary, and would not have insulted him by display of vulgar jealousy. The effect of the scandal on her only amounted to discomfort. Great discomfort she might say, and even annoyance, and a few wet pillowed nights, loyally concealed from Hilary. She was neither young nor beautiful: it behoved her to be clever. She could, she knew, keep his love, though she was unable to restrain those loose tendrils of his fancy which waved airily to and fro, catching here and there temporarily on the fair upstanding flowers that bloomed every year in the great parterre of London’s garden of seasonal delights. Hilary loved her and her only. She must do nothing foolish.

Whatever she felt, whatever she said to Cynthia Chenies, must be a secret for Sir Hilary, a matter between Cynthia and herself. Some women--fools!--thought little Lady Greenwell--would have rushed at once to their husband with an appeal or a command, to “put a stop to it at once,” thus definitely estranging the coveted man without affecting the issue in the desired way. No, it rested with her and her alone, to convince Cynthia of the awkwardness of the situation created by Cynthia’s careless compliance with the fancies of the irresponsible Hilary, a situation merely irksome to his wife, but positively injurious to his wife’s friend. Great interests on either hand were not concerned. No one’s heart was in it.

Punctuality was Lady Greenwell’s virtue--consequently her husband’s too. She sat on the sofa at the Creswicks’, fan in hand, handkerchief in lap. The man who was going to take her in stood over her chair, uttering the usual commonplaces, when the door opened to admit one single, smiling lady--Cynthia Chenies, late as usual, wearing the cluster of flowers she always wore, and that every one attributed to Sir Hilary’s devotion. Lady Greenwell happened to know that Mrs. Chenies ordered them at the florist’s for herself. But how could she tell people that!

She saw, what, of course, other people saw, Cynthia’s careless delicately possessive glance at Sir Hilary, a glance that effectually singled him out, as it were, from a group of like patterned men, clustered about the fireplace. So stupid of Cynthia! Nothing else, of course. Lady Greenwell knew, as well as if she had been told, that Betty Creswick would send the two in together. Suppose she spoke to Betty Creswick, and asked her not to join the tacit conspiracy that prevails in well-regulated, pleasure-loving society, to give the woman, whenever it is possible, to the man she is supposed to want? Never! She would die sooner! For Society would resent such an anti-social proposal and protect its own joys and convenience.

It must go on although it was making her miserable. Would this wretched season never come to an end? Not that she need expect to find any intermission of her troubles even then! For there would come visits, “country-housing” up and down the length and breadth of England and Scotland, the three would be asked constantly to meet each other. She had been so nice to Cynthia, that people all thought that Lady Greenwell had accepted it. There would be no rest for her till the late autumn, when Sir Hilary had agreed to go with a party of men on an expedition to locate a continent somewhere. He would be away for four months.

As a loving wife she ought to have dreaded this approaching separation; she was shocked to realize that in her heart of hearts, she was looking forward to it. She would not see the light of his countenance, but then, neither would the other! Jealousy makes sad dogs-in-the-manger of us all. And she would have the delight of his frequent letters. That is, unless he wrote to Cynthia too?

If only she had had a child! Cynthia had one, Cynthia, a widow, with no husband now to bind faster to her side therewith! What a pity it all was!

Dinner was announced. Sir Hilary gave Cynthia his arm, with a certain look… proud… protecting… sheepish rather.… Yes, she _must_ speak.

She placed her hand lightly on the sleeve of she knew not whom, and followed Hilary and Cynthia into the dining-room. She was miserable, she was sure that Hilary, had he but known how unhappy she was making herself, would have tried at once to alter his line of conduct. And he would have failed! Of that, too, she was sure. Man can do nothing in this line, of himself alone, save by the grace of the woman who is leading him astray. It was settled; she must speak to Cynthia!

Cynthia Chenies, who was not lacking in perception, realized at once the meaning of the innocently diplomatic, intensely special glance which Lady Greenwell, placed exactly opposite, fixed upon her, as soon as everybody was seated.

“_Mabel Greenwell means to speak to me!_”

She could harbour no other thought, from the fish onward. She was a nervous, lazy woman, and the fear of a “woman’s row” was intensely repugnant to her. She hated fuss about men, and bad form, and unconventionality of any kind. Her affair with Sir Hilary, whatever it might mean to her, was openly, at least, quite within the bounds of her world’s convention, and she deeply resented any attempt on Lady Greenwell’s part to draw it out of its limbo of self-chosen vagueness.

To herself, she was willing to admit that she loved Sir Hilary very well, nay, desperately. She was less willing to admit that she suffered over this illicit attachment, and yet did suffer a good deal, for she was a good woman, and Lady Greenwell a healthy woman, so the chances were she would never get him honestly.

She knew Sir Hilary loved her, was fond of Mabel, and respected them both. That being the case, he would not do either of them a wrong for the whole world.

There it was! What an _impasse_! Three scrupulously honourable people caught in a net! No issue but death, and she could not contemplate even Mabel’s death with equanimity. Mabel had been very kind to her, and she and Mabel would have been the greatest friends if Sir Hilary had not stood between them.