Chapter II

“Why do you always wear black, Alice?” asked Esther Graham. “You are not in mourning that I know of.”

She was Dr. Graham’s only daughter and Mrs. Arne’s only friend. She sat with Mrs. Arne in the dreary drawing-room of the house in Chelsea. She had come to tea. She was the only person who ever did come to tea there.

She was brusque, kind, and blunt, and had a talent for making inappropriate remarks. Six years ago Mrs. Arne had been a widow for an hour! Her husband had succumbed to an apparently mortal illness, and for the space of an hour had lain dead. When suddenly and inexplicably he had revived from his trance, the shock, combined with six weeks’ nursing, had nearly killed his wife. All this Esther had heard from her father. She herself had only come to know Mrs. Arne after her child was born, and all the tragic circumstances of her husband’s illness put aside, and it was hoped forgotten. And when her idle question received no answer from the pale absent woman who sat opposite, with listless lack-lustre eyes fixed on the green and blue flames dancing in the fire, she hoped it had passed unnoticed. She waited for five minutes for Mrs. Arne to resume the conversation, then her natural impatience got the better of her.

“Do say something, Alice!” she implored.

“Esther, I beg your pardon!” said Mrs. Arne. “I was thinking.”

“What were you thinking of?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, of course you don’t. People who sit and stare into the fire never do think, really. They are only brooding and making themselves ill, and that is what you are doing. You mope, you take no interest in anything, you never go out--I am sure you have not been out of doors to-day?”

“No--yes--I believe not. It is so cold.”

“You are sure to feel the cold if you sit in the house all day, and sure to get ill! Just look at yourself!”

Mrs. Arne rose and looked at herself in the Italian mirror over the chimney-piece. It reflected faithfully enough her even pallor, her dark hair and eyes, the sweeping length of her eyelashes, the sharp curves of her nostrils, and the delicate arch of her eyebrows, that formed a thin sharp black line, so clear as to seem almost unnatural.

“Yes, I do look ill,” she said with conviction.

“No wonder. You choose to bury yourself alive.”

“Sometimes I do feel as if I lived in a grave. I look up at the ceiling and fancy it is my coffin-lid.”

“Don’t please talk like that!” expostulated Miss Graham, pointing to Mrs. Arne’s little girl. “If only for Dolly’s sake, I think you should not give way to such morbid fancies. It isn’t good for her to see you like this always.”

“Oh, Esther,” the other exclaimed, stung into something like vivacity, “don’t reproach me! I hope I am a good mother to my child!”

“Yes, dear, you are a model mother--and model wife too. Father says the way you look after your husband is something wonderful, but don’t you think for your own sake you might try to be a little gayer? You encourage these moods, don’t you? What is it? Is it the house?”

She glanced around her--at the high ceiling, at the heavy damask portieres, the tall cabinets of china, the dim oak panelling--it reminded her of a neglected museum. Her eye travelled into the farthest corners, where the faint filmy dusk was already gathering, lit only by the bewildering cross-lights of the glass panels of cabinet doors--to the tall narrow windows--then back again to the woman in her mourning dress, cowering by the fire. She said sharply--

“You should go out more.”

“I do not like to--leave my husband.”

“Oh, I know that he is delicate and all that, but still, does he never permit you to leave him? Does he never go out by himself?”

“Not often!”

“And you have no pets! It is very odd of you. I simply can’t imagine a house without animals!”

“We did have a dog once,” answered Mrs. Arne plaintively, “but it howled so we had to give it away. It would not go near Edward.… But please don’t imagine that I am dull! I have my child.” She laid her hand on the flaxen head at her knee.

Miss Graham rose, frowning.

“Ah, you are too bad!” she exclaimed. “You are like a widow exactly, with one child, stroking its orphan head and saying, ‘Poor fatherless darling.’”

Voices were heard outside. Miss Graham stopped talking quite suddenly, and sought her veil and gloves on the mantelpiece.

“You need not go, Esther,” said Mrs. Arne. “It is only my husband.”

“Oh, but it is getting late,” said the other, crumpling up her gloves in her muff, and shuffling her feet nervously.

“Come!” said her hostess, with a bitter smile, “put your gloves on properly--if you must go--but it is quite early still.”

“Please don’t go, Miss Graham,” put in the child.

“I must. Go and meet your papa, like a good girl.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You mustn’t talk like that, Dolly,” said the doctor’s daughter absently, still looking towards the door. Mrs. Arne rose and fastened the clasps of the big fur-cloak for her friend. The wife’s white, sad, oppressed face came very close to the girl’s cheerful one, as she murmured in a low voice--

“You don’t like my husband, Esther? I can’t help noticing it. Why don’t you?”

“Nonsense!” retorted the other, with the emphasis of one who is repelling an overtrue accusation. “I do, only----”

“Only what?”

“Well, dear, it is foolish of me, of course, but I am--a little afraid of him.”

“Afraid of Edward!” said his wife slowly. “Why should you be?”

“Well, dear--you see--I--I suppose women can’t help being a little afraid of their friends’ husbands--they can spoil their friendships with their wives in a moment, if they choose to disapprove of them. I really must go! Good-bye, child; give me a kiss! Don’t ring, Alice. Please don’t! I can open the door for myself----”

“Why should you?” said Mrs. Arne. “Edward is in the hall; I heard him speaking to Foster.”

“No; he has gone into his study. Good-bye, you apathetic creature!” She gave Mrs. Arne a brief kiss and dashed out of the room. The voices outside had ceased, and she had reasonable hopes of reaching the door without being intercepted by Mrs. Arne’s husband. But he met her on the stairs. Mrs. Arne, listening intently from her seat by the fire, heard her exchange a few shy sentences with him, the sound of which died away as they went downstairs together. A few moments after, Edward Arne came into the room and dropped into the chair just vacated by his wife’s visitor.

He crossed his legs and said nothing. Neither did she.

His nearness had the effect of making the woman look at once several years older. Where she was pale he was well-coloured; the network of little filmy wrinkles that, on a close inspection, covered her face, had no parallel on his smooth skin. He was handsome; soft, well-groomed flakes of auburn hair lay over his forehead, and his steely blue eyes shone equably, a contrast to the sombre fire of hers, and the masses of dark crinkly hair that shaded her brow. The deep lines of permanent discontent furrowed that brow as she sat with her chin propped on her hands, and her elbows resting on her knees. Neither spoke. When the hands of the clock over Mrs. Arne’s head pointed to seven, the white-aproned figure of the nurse appeared in the doorway, and the little girl rose and kissed her mother very tenderly.

Mrs. Arne’s forehead contracted. Looking uneasily at her husband, she said to the child tentatively, yet boldly, as one grasps a nettle, “Say good-night to your father!”

The child obeyed, saying, “Good-night” indifferently in her father’s direction.

“Kiss him!”

“No, please--please not.”

Her mother looked down on her curiously, sadly.…

“You are a naughty, spoilt child!” she said, but without conviction. “Excuse her, Edward.”

He did not seem to have heard.

“Well, if you don’t care----” said his wife bitterly. “Come, child!” She caught the little girl by the hand and left the room.

At the door she half turned and looked fixedly at her husband. It was a strange ambiguous gaze; in it passion and dislike were strangely combined. Then she shivered and closed the door softly after her.

The man in the arm-chair sat with no perceptible change of attitude, his unspeculative eyes fixed on the fire, his hands clasped idly in front of him. The pose was obviously habitual. The servant brought lights and closed the shutters, drew the curtains, and made up the fire noisily, without, however, eliciting any reproof from his master.

Edward Arne was an ideal master, as far as Foster was concerned. He kept cases of cigars, but never smoked them, although the supply had often to be renewed. He did not care what he ate or drank, although he kept as good a cellar as most gentlemen--Foster knew that. He never interfered, he counted for nothing, he gave no trouble. Foster had no intention of ever leaving such an easy place. True, his master was not cordial; he very seldom addressed him or seemed to know whether he was there, but then neither did he grumble if the fire in the study was allowed to go out, or interfere with Foster’s liberty in any way. He had a better place of it than Annette, Mrs. Arne’s maid, who would be called up in the middle of the night to bathe her mistress’s forehead with eau-de-Cologne, or made to brush her long hair for hours together to soothe her. Naturally enough Foster and Annette compared notes as to their respective situations, and drew unflattering parallels between this capricious wife and model husband.