His lack of self-interest, which she divined, charmed Lady Sellingworth; on the other hand, she was tormented by his detachment from her, by his lack of all vision of the truth of the situation. And she was perpetually tortured by jealousy.

Before she had been in love with Rupert she had often felt jealous. All women of her temperament are subject to jealousy, and all middle-aged people who worship youth unsuitably have felt its sting. But she had never before known jealousy as she knew it now.

Although she was so often with Rupert she was more often not with him.

He made no pretences of virtue to her or to anyone else. He was a cheery Pagan, a good sport and--no doubt--a devil among the women. Being a thorough gentleman he never talked, as some vulgar men do, of his conquests. But Lady Sellingworth knew that his silence probably covered a mult.i.tude of sins. And her ignorance of the greater part of his life often ravaged her.

What was he doing when he was not with her? Who was he making love to?

His name was not specially connected with that of any girl whom she knew in society. But she had reason to know that he spent a lot of his time out of society in circles to which she had never penetrated. Doubtless he met quant.i.ties of women whose names she had never heard of, unknown women of the stage, women who went to night clubs, women of the curious world which floats between the aristocracy and the respectable middle cla.s.ses, which is as well dressed as the one and greedier even than the other, which seems always to have unlimited money, and which, nevertheless, has often no visible means of subsistence.

She lay awake often, when she badly needed sleep, wondering where Rupert was and what he was doing.

Jealousy, combined with unnatural physical exertion, and the perpetual endeavour to throw round her an atmosphere of youth, energy and unceasing cheerfulness, wrought havoc in Lady Sellingworth. Her appearance began to deteriorate. Deeper lines became visible near her eyes, and the light of those eyes was feverish. Her nerves began to go to pieces. Restlessness increased upon her. She was scarcely able to keep still for a moment. The more she needed repose the more incapable of repose she became. The effort to seem younger, gayer, stronger than she was became at last almost convulsive. Her social art was tarnished.

The mechanism began to be visible.

People noticed the change in her and began to discuss it, and more than one of the "old guard" hit upon the reason of it. It became subtly known and whispered about that Adela Sellingworth was desperately in love with Rupert Louth. Several of her friends hinted at their knowledge to Lady Sellingworth, and she was forced to laugh at the idea as absurd, knowing that her laughter would serve no good end. These experienced women knew. Impossible to deceive them about a thing of that kind! They were mercilessly capable in detecting a hidden pa.s.sion in one of their body.

Their intrigues and loves were usually common property, known to, and frankly discussed by them all.

Lady Sellingworth presently had the satisfaction of knowing that the whole of the "old guard" was talking about her pa.s.sion for Rupert Louth.

This fact drove her to a hard decision which was not natural to her.

She wanted to marry Rupert because she was in love with him. But now she felt she must marry him to save her own pride before her merciless fellow-women. She decided that the time had come when she must trample on her own delicacy and prove that she still possessed the power of a conqueror. Otherwise she would be laughed at by the greater part of the society in which she usually lived.

She resolved to open Rupert Louth's eyes and to make him understand that she and all she stood for were at his disposal. She knew he was up to the eyes in debt. She knew he had no prospects. Lord Blyston had no money to give him, and was for ever in difficulties himself. It was a critical moment for Louth, and a critical moment for her. Their marriage would smooth out the whole situation, would set him free from all money miseries, and her from greater miseries still--torments of desire, and the horror of being laughed at or pitied by her set. And in any case she felt that the time had arrived when she must do something drastic; must either achieve or frankly and definitely give up. She knew that she was nearing the end of her tether. She could not much longer keep up the brilliant pretence of being an untiring Amazon crammed full of the joie de vivre which she had a.s.sumed for the purpose of winning Rupert Louth as a husband. Her powers of persistence were rapidly waning. Only will drove her along, in defiance of the warnings and protests of her body.

But the untiring Amazon was cracking up, to use a favourite expression of Louth's. Soon the weary, middle-aged woman must claim her miserable rights: the right to be tired occasionally, the right to "slack off"

at certain hours of the day, the right to find certain things neither suitable nor amusing to her, the right, in fact, to be now and then a middle-aged woman. Certainly something in her said to Lady Sellingworth: "In your marriage, if you marry, you will have to act even better, even more strenuously, than you are acting now. Being in love as you are, you will never be able to dare to be your true self. Your whole married life will be a perpetual throwing of dust in the eyes of your husband. To keep him you will have to live backwards, or to try to live backwards, all the time. If you are tired now, what will you be then?" And she knew that the voice was speaking the truth. Her imp, too, was watching her closely and with an ugly intensity of irony as she approached her decision.

Nevertheless, she defied him; she defied the voice within her, and took it. She said to herself, or her worn nervous system said to her, that there was nothing else to be done. In her fatigue of body and nerves she felt reckless as only the nearly worn out feel. Something--she didn't know what--had cast the die for her. It was her fate to open Rupert Louth's eyes, to make him see; it was her fate to force her will into a last strong spasm. She would not look farther than the day. She would not contemplate her married life imaginatively, held in contemplation, like a victim, by the icy hands of reason. She would kick reason out, harden herself, give her wildness free play, and act, concentrating on the present with all the force of which her diseased nerves were capable.

Instead of thinking just then "after me the deluge," her thought was "after my marriage to Rupert Louth the deluge." She would, she must, make him her husband. It would be perhaps the last a.s.sertion of her power. She knew enough of men to know that such an a.s.sertion might well be followed by disaster. But she was prepared to brave any disaster except one, the losing of Louth and the subsequent ironical amus.e.m.e.nt of the "old guard."

Two or three days later Louth called, mounted on one of her horses, to take her for a ride in the park.

During the previous night Lady Sellingworth had scarcely slept at all.

She had got up feeling desperately nervous and almost lightheaded. On looking in the gla.s.s she had been shocked at her appearance, but she had managed to alter that considerably, although not so completely as she wished. Depression, following inevitably on insomnia, had fixed its claws in her. She felt deadly, almost terrible, and as if her face must be showing plainly the ugliness of her mental condition. For she seemed to have lost control over it. The facial muscles seemed to have hardened, to have become fixed. When the servant came to tell her that Louth and the horses were at the door she was almost afraid to go down, lest he should see at once in her face the strong will power which she had summoned up; as a weapon in this crisis of her life.

As she went slowly downstairs she forced herself to smile. The smile came with difficulty, but it came, and when she met Louth he did not seem to notice any peculiarity in her. But, to tell the truth, he scarcely seemed to notice her at all with any particularity. For her strange and abnormal pre-occupation was matched by a like pre-occupation in him. He took off his hat, bade her good morning, and helped her skilfully to mount. But she saw at once that he was not as usual. His face was grave and looked almost thoughtful. The merry light had gone out of his eyes. And, strangest phenomenon of all, he was tongue-tied.

They started away from the house, and rode through Mayfair towards the park in absolute silence.

She began to wonder very much what was the matter with Rupert, and guessed that he had "come an awful cropper" of some kind. It must certainly be an exceptional cropper to cloud his spirit. Perhaps he had lost a really large sum of money, or perhaps he--The thought of a woman came suddenly to her, she did not know why. Suspicion, jealousy woke in her. She glanced sideways at Rupert under her hard hat. He looked splendid on horseback, handsomer even than when he was on foot. For he was that rare thing, a really perfect horseman. His appearance disarmed her. She longed to do something for him, by some act of glowing generosity to win him completely. But they were still in the streets, and she said nothing. Directly they turned into the green quietude of the park, however, she yielded to her impulse and spoke, and asked him bluntly what was the matter.

He did not fence with her. Fencing was not easy to him. He turned in the saddle, faced her, and told her that he had made a d.a.m.ned fool of himself. Still bent on generosity, on being more than a friend to him, she asked him to tell her how. His reply almost stunned her. A fortnight previously he had secretly married a Miss Willoughby--really a Miss Bertha Crouch, and quite possibly of Crouch End--who was appearing in a piece at the Alhambra Theatre, but who had not yet arrived at the dignity of a "speaking part." This young lady, it seemed, had already "landed" Louth in expenses which he didn't know how to meet. What was he to do? She was the loveliest thing on earth, but she was accustomed to living in unbridled luxury. In fact she wanted the earth, and he was longing to give it to her. But how? Where could he possibly get hold of enough money for the purchase of the earth on behalf of Miss Bertha Crouch--now Willoughby, or, rather, now the Hon. Mrs. Rupert Louth?

His face softened, his manner grew almost boyishly eager, as he poured confidences into Lady Sellingworth's ears. She was his one real friend!

She was a woman of the world. She had lived ever so much longer than he had and knew five times as much. What would she advise? Might he bring little Bertha to see her? Bertha was really the most splendid little sort, although naturally she wanted to have the things other women had--etc., etc.

When she got home that day Lady Sellingworth almost crumbled. By a supreme effort during the rest of the ride she had managed to conceal the fact that she had received a blow over the heart. The pride on which she had been intending to trample when she came downstairs that morning had come to her aid in that difficult moment. The woman of the world had, as Louth would have said, "come up to the scratch." But when she was alone she gave way to an access of furious despair; and, shut up in her bedroom behind locked doors, was just a savage human being who had been horribly wounded, and who was unable to take any revenge for the wound. She would not take any revenge, because she was not the sort of woman who could go quite into the gutter. And she knew even in her writhings of despair that Rupert Louth would go scot free. She would never try to punish him for what he had done to her: and he would never know he had done it, unless one of the "old guard" told him.

It was when she thought of the "old guard" that Lady Sellingworth almost crumbled, almost went to pieces. For she knew that whatever she did, or left undone, she would never succeed in deceiving its members. She would not have been deceived herself if circ.u.mstances had been changed, if another woman had been in her situation and she had been an onlooker.

"They" would all know.

For a moment she thought of flight.

But this episode ended in the usual way; it ended in the usual effort of the poor human being to safeguard the sacred things by deception. Lady Sellingworth somehow--how do human beings achieve such efforts?--pulled herself together and gave herself to pretence. She pretended to Louth that she was his best friend and had never thought of being anything else. She was the receptacle for the cascade of his confidences. She swore to help him in any way she could. Even after she received "the Crouch," once Willoughby and still Willoughby to the "nuts" who frequented the stalls of the Alhambra. She received that tall and voluptuous young woman, with her haughty face and her disdainful airs, and she bore with her horrible proprietorship of Louth. And finally she broke it to Lord Blyston at Rupert's earnest request.

That should have been her supreme effort. But it was not. There was no rest in pretence. As soon as Lord Blyston knew, everyone knew, including the "old guard." And then, of course, Lady Sellingworth's energies had all to be called into full play.

It was no wonder if underneath the cleverness of her Greek she aged rapidly, more rapidly than was natural in a woman of her years. For she had piled effort on effort. She had been young for Rupert Louth until she had been physically exhausted; and then she had been old for him until she was mentally exhausted. The hardy Amazon had been forced to change in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, into the calm and middle-aged adviser of hot pa.s.sioned youth, into the steady unselfish confidante, into the breaker of untoward news to the venerable parent--in fact, into Mother Hubbard, as Lady Sellingworth more than once desperately told herself.

"Mother Hubbard! Mother Hubbard! I'm just Mother Hubbard to him and to that horrible girl!"

And she saw herself as Mother Hubbard, a "dame." And she alone knew how absolutely bare her cupboard was at that time. But she struggled on magnificently, taking no rest; she faced the "old guard" with splendid courage, in fact with such courage that most of them pretended to be deceived, and perhaps--for is not everything possible in this life?--perhaps two or three of them really were deceived.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Wellingborough said often at this time: "Addie Sellingworth has the stuff in her of a leader of forlorn hopes!"

Lord Blyston paid up for "the Crouch," once Willoughby, who had now left the Alhambra disconsolate. He paid up by selling the only estate he still possessed, and letting his one remaining country house to an extraordinarily vulgar manufacturer from the Midlands, who did not know a Turner from a Velasquez until he was told. And for the time "the Crouch" was as satisfied as a woman of her type can ever be.

Time pa.s.sed on. Lady Sellingworth went about everywhere with a smiling carefully-made-up face and a heart full of dust and ashes.

But even then she could not make up her mind finally to abandon all pretence of youth, all hope of youth's distractions, pleasures, even joys. She had a terribly obstinate nature, it seemed, a terribly strong l.u.s.t after life.

Even her imp could not lash her into acceptance of the inevitable, could not drive her with his thongs of irony into the dignity which only comes when the human being knows how to give up, and when.

But what the imp could not achieve was eventually achieved by a man, whose name Lady Sellingworth did not know.

This was how it happened.

One day when Lady Sellingworth was walking down Bond Street--it was in the morning and she was with the d.u.c.h.ess of Wellingborough--an extraordinarily handsome young man, whom neither of them knew, met them and pa.s.sed by. He was tall, brown skinned, with soft, very intelligent brown eyes, and strong, manly and splendidly cut features. His thick brown hair was brushed, his little brown moustache was cut, like a Guardsman's. But he was certainly not a Guardsman. He was not even an Englishman, although he was dressed in a smart country suit made evidently by a first-rate London tailor. There was something faintly exotic about his eyes, and his way of holding himself and moving, which suggested to Lady Sellingworth either Spain or South America. She was not quite sure which. He gave her a long look as he went by, and she felt positive that he turned to glance after her when he had pa.s.sed her.

But this she never knew, as naturally she did not turn her head.

"What an extraordinarily good-looking man that was!" said the d.u.c.h.ess of Wellingborough. "I wonder who he is. If--," and she mentioned a well-known Spanish duke, "had a brother that might be the man. Do you know who he is?"

"No," said Lady Sellingworth.

"Well, he must know who you are."

"Why?"

"He seemed deeply interested in you."

Lady Sellingworth wanted to say that a young man might possibly be deeply interested in her without knowing who she was. But she did not say it. It was not worth while. And she knew the d.u.c.h.ess had not meant to be ill-mannered.

She lunched with the d.u.c.h.ess that day in Grosvenor Square, and met several of the "old guard" whom she knew very well, disastrously well.

After lunch the d.u.c.h.ess alluded to the brown man they had met in Bond Street, described him minutely, and asked if anyone knew him. n.o.body knew him. But after the description everyone wanted to know him. It was generally supposed that he must be one of the strangers from distant countries who are perpetually flocking to London.

"We shall probably all know him in a week or two," said someone. "A man of that type is certain to have brought introductions."

"If he has brought one for Adela I'm sure he'll deliver that first,"

said the d.u.c.h.ess, with her usual almost boisterous good humour.