Part 6

Though she pitied Mabel for her age, her plainness, she could not help feeling a little angry with Mabel for having presumed to marry Sir Hilary; she should not have allowed Hilary to persuade her that she was a suitable wife for him. Hilary was so plausible. Once, however, having committed the initial error, Mabel should not have hoped to keep him, except by courtesy.

She knew Sir Hilary well enough not to feel obliged to talk to him, so she plodded imperturbably through the menu, eating a good deal to justify her taciturnity. “Oh, I am so hungry,” she said once or twice, “I have been down to Brighton to-day to see the boy!”

Sir Hilary never worried. He quietly looked after her, gave her her own way now as ever. She was heedless, he safeguarded her reputation as well as he could. He never wrote to her when he was away; she would have forgotten to destroy his letters. He called on her not too often; he dined with her now and then, generally with his wife. There was no need to compromise her by overt acts of this sort. The mad, bad, sympathetic world was kind enough to cater for the indulgence of their affection; in all the ragôuts of society were they skilfully combined, and discreet opportunities of meeting served up to them daily, with the result that every one was happy and amused, except Lady Greenwell, who had been born and bred in the country and never could acquire London’s cynical tone.

Once or twice, however, before this evening, Cynthia had suspected some such strata of unsuspected bourgeois feeling in Mabel. She almost wished Betty Creswick would not be so kind to Hilary and herself, and a little kinder to Mabel. She sometimes even avoided dull parties where she knew he was going. Not so Sir Hilary, he had no scruples of this kind. He adored her, he told her so--“and as there’s nothing wrong about it all, why shouldn’t we see as much of each other as people will let us?”

“Ah, but other people----”--an ellipsis for Mabel, whom it pleased her to mention to him as little as possible. But he understood, in his breezy, butterfly way.

“Mabel is all right. Mabel’s a good sort, and understands me. She isn’t such a fool as to trouble about gossip.”

He never said more. It was tacitly assumed between them that Mabel was awfully fond of him and all that, but “demonstrations would simply bore her, you know.” Meanwhile, he loved Cynthia with every fibre of his being--all save the domestic ones, it was understood--she was his Egeria, his goddess, his good angel, the woman he thought of last thing at night and the first thing on waking, in the jungle, on the veldt, on the frozen Himalayan slope. He was hers--hers only. No one else cared, not even Mabel, who had “settled down.”

Cynthia Chenies hardly realized it, but this passion had come to be her life. She breathed and dressed but for Hilary. She was a cold woman, and content with its platonic manifestations, but she technically regretted the immense waste exemplified in the position of the lover, tied for all his days to two women, neither of whom was or could be everything to him.

She caught Mabel’s eye now and again full of timid reticences and prudent punctilios, but expressing over and above all others, the simple emotion that betrayeth itself in speech.

“I must speak, or burst!” the poor woman fancied Mabel saying, and shivered over her chocolate _mousse_.

The moment came. Sir Hilary left soon after dinner to attend an Ethnological Society’s meeting, and Lady Greenwell timidly offered to motor Mrs. Chenies home. For some fateful reason or other, that lady’s brougham was not forthcoming.

“It is frightfully out of your way, Mabel!” argued the trapped fly.

Gently, but firmly, the spider informed her that a mere difference of a mile and a quarter did not in the least constitute out-of-the-wayness, and the hostess settled it by her vague encouragements.

“So nice of you to chaperon each other like that!”

Mrs. Chenies hardly grasped the significance of Lady Creswick’s remark until the knees of Lady Greenwell and herself were safely stowed under the same bearskin rug.

“I wanted to speak to you, Cynthia,” began Lady Greenwell honestly, without preface or pretence.

“Did you?” replied the other, shrinking as far away from her companion as she could into the corner of the motor. Then, collecting herself, she said, “You can, you know.”

“It is a little difficult for me--but then--I must remember it is for your good, Cynthia.”

“Oh, for my good!” exclaimed Mrs. Chenies, stung by the familiar, too familiar exordium. “You must remember I am not a mere girl--I am a widow.”

“That is just it,” continued Lady Greenwell, delighted. “A young and”--with a gulp--“pretty widow.”

“Oh, don’t mention it,” the other begged her flippantly.

Though her tone grated on and disturbed Lady Greenwell, that lady continued, almost apologetically--

“That is the right way to take it, dear, not seriously! Just a little hint, you know--laugh about it as much as you like when I am done, but listen to me for a minute.…! Could you not contrive, dear, to see a little less of Hilary--my husband?”

“I know he’s your husband, Mabel, well enough!” Mrs. Chenies jerked out crossly. “And I don’t see so much of him as all that!”

“Oh, I know, dear, I know all about your friendship--your intimacy… it’s nothing at all, nothing at all… Only you see people will talk.”

“Yes, bother them!”

“We mustn’t pay too much attention to gossip, of course, but we owe it to--ourselves, to take some notice of what is said. You may want to marry again?”

“Never!”

“Oh, don’t say that!” pleaded the other pitifully. “You are sure to--so young and pretty. But don’t you think, that meantime, that people should couple your name and Hilary’s is prejudicial--rather to you? Of course, I know----”

“What?”

“That there is nothing at all serious between you--nothing at all, Hilary”--she blurted out the indecent fact--“Hilary is devoted to me, and always has been, he has never swerved for the fraction of an instant. Besides, he would not----”

“Would not what?”

“Oh, Cynthia, you do make it so difficult! You seem so stony.… You aren’t offended?”

“No, of course not, I only wanted to know what it was Hilary wouldn’t do?”

Her careless use of the beloved’s name hurt Lady Greenwell a good deal. She drew herself up--

--“Would not allow himself to make love to another woman during his wife’s lifetime. You may as well take that for granted. Only--he is younger than I, and heedless, and you are most attractive, while I am a plain woman, well-dressed. And the world thinks, of course, the usual thing! Oh! Cynthia, help me! And it would not matter, of course, if it were not for you and your reputation, though I can’t deny that it makes me very uncomfortable to hear him lightly spoken of.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“I said what. See less of him. See him only at my house.”

“Will you give him your orders, then, not to call at mine?”

“Dear Cynthia, how could I do that? What do you think of me?”

“I think you are like all women--want to get some one else to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for you. Why should I do your dirty work? And it would not do either, I couldn’t forbid him my house without creating remark, and doing exactly what you don’t want done--getting him talked about. Nor can I go and tell Betty Creswick not to send us in to dinner together----”

“Of course you can’t tell her, but there are methods----”

“And I refuse to employ them, and let all the world think I am doing it because I have a guilty conscience or because you have been making a scene. You don’t want that surely?”

“No.” She shuddered. “Then it has been no use my speaking, practically? And, Cynthia, you can have no idea what it has cost me!”

“I am truly sorry, but, indeed, dear, this sort of carriage lecture never does any good. You can’t have straight talks to women. No woman can employ another woman to help keep her husband for her--it really isn’t done.”

“Keep my husband! But have I not been telling you, Cynthia, all this time, that if I thought for one moment that my husband had been unfaithful to me in word, or thought, or deed, I would not have spoken to anybody at all about it, I would just have died! It is precisely because I do believe in him----”

“Then it makes it quite simple--go on believing in him. You may,” replied the other woman, drily, as the carriage stopped at the door of her own house. “Good-night, Mabel! Thank you for the lift.”

“And are you cross, Cynthia? Believe me, I meant well.”

“You meant well by yourself, eh, dear? Just realize that you were speaking for yourself----”

“Oh, Cynthia, you _are_ cruel.”

“Yes, but honest. Think it over. Let it all be as if it hadn’t been. Shall I kiss you?” She paused, with a light foot on the step.

“Yes, please. You know I am really fond of you, Cynthia, but you seem to have beaten me.”

“Oh, no!” asseverated Mrs. Chenies, “only convinced you that these sort of things can’t be done.”

They kissed.

“I had doubts about the wisdom of it at the time,” murmured Lady Greenwell. “I thought you might say it was tactless. Hilary says I have no tact.”

“Never mind, you are sure he loves you, and that’s better than tact--that’s everything!”

Mrs. Chenies was shaking out her skirts on the pavement, pulling out her latch key.…

“So that’s all right. There’s an end of it----”

“Yes, and come to dinner to-morrow night, will you?”

“Yes, dear. Good-night!”

Two hands met and clasped over the window-bar of the carriage. Lady Greenwell watched her friend in, and whirled away. Mrs. Chenies rushed impulsively upstairs to her room, and threw herself on her bed in an agony of weeping. They were tears both for herself and Mabel.

* * * * * * *

It was a year later. Mrs. Chenies in modified mourning--for she had made herself as black as she dared--rang for admittance at the door of Greenwell House. The very house seemed in mourning. It used to be furnished exotically, with variegated hangings and things Hilary had brought back from abroad. Cynthia shivered. She had been sent for. Why? Why did Mabel Greenwell want to see her? The cords of their friendship had been sensibly loosened. It was perhaps as well. They mourned in their separate corners--of London.

She was ushered into the presence of a little woman whose deep official weeds seemed almost to obliterate her slight frame and make her fade into the surrounding blackness. She rushed at and clung to her handsome visitor, and kissed her mournfully and deliberately on both cheeks.

“Dear, dear Cynthia, how good of you to come to me!”

“Dearest Mabel, how good of you to be willing to see me!”

“Oh, I wanted you--somehow--so much! I believe, when all is said and done, Cynthia, I am fonder of you than I am of any one!”

Mrs. Chenies winced and suffered herself to be kissed again on both cheeks. She looked extremely handsome in her glowing purples and blues. The widow’s inexpressive eyes were merely dimmed and bleared by her tears, those of Cynthia Chenies shone, and she was not so silly as to redden the lids by dabbing them with a handkerchief, as Lady Greenwell did.

“He was so fond of you, Cynthia! He has left you to me as a sort of legacy. We often spoke of you.”

Cynthia started. It had surely been a tacit convention between herself and the dead Hilary, that--

“Yes, I ventured at last to tell him about that talk I had with you once, and he took it just as you did. He laughed at me and said that I had no right to worry you with that sort of thing and that you were perfectly justified in being ‘short’ with me, as you were, Cynthia, you know. He thought it very nice of you to forgive me and go on seeing us as usual.”

“Yes, yes, but I saw very little of him alone after that.”

“He went away so soon after, didn’t he? That was perhaps a good thing--it gave one time----”

“I don’t think you had any need to tell him.”

“Oh, my dear, what could it matter? There was such perfect confidence between us, and I preferred that a trifling incident like that should not be allowed to interfere with it. Surely you don’t mind?”

“Not now!” replied Cynthia Chenies, with an effort. “And I suppose you had a perfect right to do as you liked about it.”

“That’s all right then. And Hilary said--dear thing!--when he left me to go on that wretched expedition that killed him, that I was to be as nice to you as I could, and see as much of you as you would allow me to do, and so I have, and so I mean to.”

“Don’t, don’t cry so, dear!”

“Oh, do let me cry--it helps me! And how can I help it, when I think of the dearest husband ever woman had, lost to me, gone--gone--killed, out there alone, among horrid savages.… Why, Cynthia, you are crying too!”

“I can’t help it either,” said the other savagely, disdaining to wipe her tears away.

“Cynthia, you were fond of him, too--now don’t say you were not!”

“I was.”

Lady Greenwell rose. She looked taller. She looked grim.

“And that is the reason I thought--I made up my mind that you were the proper person to consult about this.…”

“This?” asked the other, following the direction of those sad sunken eyes.

“Yes! It was his last wish, Cynthia!” Lady Greenwell pointed to a large bulging packet lying, with a magnificent despatch box, close to her elbow, and continued, in her thin, nervous, passionate voice--

“You know, when he got ill over there--it came on so gradually--he never ceased writing to me till the very last--he got his secretary to send home the MS. of his new book to me. He wanted me to see to the publication of it. I was to edit it, if he never came back to do it himself--and I was to ask you to be co-editress.”

“Good God!”

“Oh, don’t be frightened, dear, there is nothing to do, it is all done. I did it, only, as he said you were to see it, before it came out, I could not but prepare to carry out his dear wishes. And now I must tell you, as he is gone, I should like to call it _Memorials of a Noble Soul_, something like that, and add some of his letters to me. I have them all here, in this despatch box, I never destroyed a single line of dear darling Hilary’s----”

“They will make a most interesting book!” murmured Mrs. Chenies, looking away.

“Yes, won’t they, only, of course,” Lady Greenwell breathed softly, with a watery smile of triumph, “they will want some editing. They are too intimate, too personal for the ear of the general public. It could not be otherwise. But, still, I don’t think the public should lose because he was in love with his wife, do you?”

“No, certainly not.”

“There is a great deal in them of purely general interest, of course, but it still wants weeding of lover’s phrases and endearments and so on. So I thought the best plan would be for me to read them all aloud to you, and consult you as to what is to be left in, or struck out.”

Cynthia Chenies groaned aloud. Lady Greenwell smiled. She had gained confidence.

“Cynthia, dear, how like you! You were always afraid of hard work, and there is nothing--nothing bores you so much as listening. Hilary noticed that. ‘These brilliant women!’ he used to say.”

“Let’s have the letters,” ejaculated Mrs. Chenies bluffly. She adjusted a cushion or two behind her shoulders. “I have learnt how to listen lately. Let’s have tea first.”

“Certainly!” Lady Greenwell rang the bell. Tea was brought. The hostess dispensed it. Then, with many a reminiscent pause, and sob and dab of the handkerchief, Lady Greenwell opened the despatch box, and produced letters tied up in blue, Hilary’s favourite colour. It was the colour of Cynthia’s eyes. She fidgeted in her place, and Lady Greenwell offered her another cushion--“because this will all take time.”

“I’ll read the first that comes,” the widow of Hilary declared, when they had both settled down. “I am not afraid of your knowing, Cynthia, how fond he was of me. This one begins--he generally begins so--‘_Dear little woman_’--we can leave that out if you like?”

“You can’t. It shows character,” observed Mrs. Chenies sombrely. “Go on.”

Thus encouraged, Lady Greenwell read, shyly at first, but with gathering confidence, as the map of her husband’s affection unrolled itself under her faltering tongue. She read faster. The session was going to last interminably, the letters were good, but long!

“Very vivid! Most interesting!” Mrs. Chenies remarked now and again, drumming with her foot, and with her face turned away.

“It is really rather too intimate!” Lady Greenwell blurted out. “Listen to this--‘_Darling, my darling_.’ I can scarcely bear to read it. ‘_All night I lie and toss on my uncomfortable rugs, and think--think of you, darling, and your soft breast!_’”

“You might put ‘cheek’ there, instead of ‘breast,’ if you liked?” interposed the co-editress hastily. Lady Greenwell looked up.

“Very well.” She used a little pencil at her girdle. Then she resumed--

“‘_And I realize how the thought of one sweet woman at home, can be at once the joy and the torture of the traveller. For I don’t know if it is most sweet or most bitter, this remembrance of happier hours in altered circumstances. It is joy, but then, sometimes the agony of separation is too keen to bear.…_’ Oh, that he should feel it so! I’ll go on, Cynthia, if you don’t feel too much bored. ‘_I stretch out my hands, I look for you, for your warm kind arms----_’”

“You certainly will have to strike all those rhapsodies out,” Mrs. Chenies remarked coldly. “He must have been very ill then. Are the letters all like that? If so, they won’t made a book of very general interest.”

“Ah!” Lady Greenwell exclaimed. She was tossing over the letters feverishly. “They seem to have got mixed! This is one of the English series--written from the Creswicks’ place. That must have been sent the summer before he went, for that’s the only time he ever went to Betty Creswick’s alone. It was the very week I spoke to you, Cynthia.”

“I wish you would not keep on bringing that in,” interposed Cynthia Chenies irritably, “you were quite right, and I was quite wrong, I see that well enough, now. Go on. We are both dining out to-night, I suppose?”

“Not I,” said Lady Greenwell haughtily. “I shall never dine out again.” She read on a little to herself. “He didn’t like being there without me a bit,” she murmured. “In fact, he loathed it.”

“Why didn’t you go with him, then?” asked Mrs. Chenies, though she knew well enough. She had been one of the Creswick party, and the letter explaining Mabel’s reasons for defection had been read aloud to her. But Lady Greenwell couldn’t know that.

“Oh, I got a bad chill at the very last moment, and had to wire I couldn’t go. Cynthia, shall I read this letter?”

“Of course. It’s part of his life, I suppose.”

“‘_My own little brown bird_,’” read Lady Greenwell softly, “‘_I was so grieved to leave you, tucked up in bed, a darkened room and with only a hired nurse to hold your little hot hand. Here I may say I am not enjoying myself a bit, and yet we are a very gay party and everything jolly. But I can’t get any fun out of it without you to talk it over with me, after we’ve gone to bed at four in the morning. Dear little woman, why did you make me go alone? The Creswick ménage is a bit noisy for your quiet sober husband. One gets a little tired of the society of brilliant women--they flash and coruscate--and finally weary. I can’t help thinking of a certain still small brown bird at home sitting on the bough, and waiting for me._’ Oh, Cynthia, I do believe, here is something actually about you--he mentions you by name----”

“I’m the brilliant woman that wearies, am I not? Well, let us hear what he says about me.”

“Shall I? I’ve read them all a hundred times, but I don’t quite remember, so if it annoys you, mind, it is your own fault. Here goes! ‘_The Cynthia of the Minute is really a little overpowering. She seems quite to enjoy saying risque things and compromising herself.…_’ I really don’t think I ought to read this to you, Cynthia?”

“Read it or I shall snatch it out of your hands.”

“Well, you are sure you won’t mind? ‘_Poor little Cynthia, she is astonishingly indiscreet, but she means no harm. She is a dear, nice, ordinary simple woman, pretending to be a sad rake, but as good as gold, really----_’”

“As good as gold, really!”

“Well, isn’t that nice for him to say that! Poor dear boy, he always did go straight to the heart of the matter, didn’t he? He was, as a matter of fact, awfully fond of you, and this just shows it. He knew you through and through--though. What’s the matter?”

“Give me some hot water to drink,” gasped Mrs. Chenies. “Is--this your revenge, Mabel?”

“Dear Cynthia, aren’t you well? You do use such odd stagey words. Revenge! I am your friend and always will be. My husband wanted us to be friends.”

“Well, then, do let us keep friends,” said Mrs. Chenies, drinking her scalding hot water hastily and rising. “I must go. An early dinner for the theatre.… Tommy Vavasor.…”

“But what about the letters? I have only read two.”

“Of course, you must leave that out about me,” said Cynthia, speaking very fast and knotting her fur round her neck as if she wanted to throttle herself, “and all personalities about people still living. And you must not print names. But, as for the rest, I should give the letters in their entirety. Go ahead, that’s my advice to you. You can hurt none, and your collaborator gives you _carte blanche_.”

She escaped. She preserved no memory of the passage from Lady Greenwell’s dull drawing-room to the gas-lit street outside. She bitterly resented the dead man’s view of her innocent attempts at disillusioning him, on the only occasion they had met previously to his departure and after his wife’s lecture, and she would have given her best jewel to discover whether Mabel’s quite thorough revenge had been carefully planned or not?

She married young Lord Vavasor within the year, and contrived, without exciting any suspicion, never again to be alone in the same room with the widowed Lady Greenwell again. But she longed as she had never longed for anything else, to hear of Lady Greenwell’s remarriage.

THE PRAYER

I

“_It is but giving over of a game,_ _That must be lost._”--Philaster.

“Come, Mrs. Arne--come, my dear, you must not give way like this! You can’t stand it--you really can’t! Let Miss Kate take you away--now do!” urged the nurse, with her most motherly of intonations.

“Yes, Alice, Mrs. Joyce is right. Come away--do come away--you are only making yourself ill. It is all over; you can do nothing! Oh, oh, do come away!” implored Mrs. Arne’s sister, shivering with excitement and nervousness.

A few moments ago Dr. Graham had relinquished his hold on the pulse of Edward Arne with the hopeless movement of the eyebrows that meant--the end.

The nurse had made the little gesture of resignation that was possibly a matter of form with her. The young sister-in-law had hidden her face in her hands. The wife had screamed a scream that had turned them all hot and cold--and flung herself on the bed over her dead husband. There she lay; her cries were terrible, her sobs shook her whole body.

The three gazed at her pityingly, not knowing what to do next. The nurse, folding her hands, looked towards the doctor for directions, and the doctor drummed with his fingers on the bed-post. The young girl timidly stroked the shoulder that heaved and writhed under her touch.

“Go away! Go away!” her sister reiterated continually, in a voice hoarse with fatigue and passion.

“Leave her alone, Miss Kate,” whispered the nurse at last; “she will work it off best herself, perhaps.”

She turned down the lamp, as if to draw a veil over the scene. Mrs. Arne raised herself on her elbow, showing a face stained with tears and purple with emotion.

“What! Not gone?” she said harshly. “Go away, Kate, go away! It is my house. I don’t want you, I want no one--I want to speak to my husband. Will you go away--all of you. Give me an hour, half-an-hour--five minutes!”