Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

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.

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