Occasionally the young man tried to tell himself that perhaps the real reason of his discontent was their guest's att.i.tude to himself. It was clear that the famous soldier did not like the younger of his hosts, in fact he hardly made any attempt to conceal his prejudice, and the two men, though of course forced into a kind of intimacy, saw as little as they could of one another.

It was with his hostess that General Lingard spent every odd moment,--every moment that he could spare from the work on which he was engaged--a book he had promised to write by a certain date. And after a very few days Wantele discovered with amus.e.m.e.nt, discomfiture, amazement that Lingard was actually consulting Athena about his book, reading her pa.s.sages as he wrote them.

And then Wantele told himself with shame that the doing of this was not so foolish or so strange, after all,--for the book was to appeal to the general public, and Mrs. Maule might reasonably be supposed to belong to that public.

But not even Wantele in his darkest, most suspicious moods suspected the depth, the reality of Lingard's peril.

The exciting, exhilarating experiences which were now befalling him produced on one who was essentially a man of action, not a philosopher and thinker, an extraordinary mental and even physical effect.

The absurd homage, the crude flattery, to which Lingard found himself subjected by the young and the foolish among Mrs. Maule's guests annoyed rather than pleased him, but he would be moved to the soul when a word said--often an awkward, shy word--showed how great was the place he had conquered in the estimation of those of his fellow-countrymen and countrywomen who were jealous for their country's glory.

He had instinctively discounted the newspaper fame showered so freely upon him on his immediate arrival in England; he was humorously conscious that he owed it in a great measure to the absence of any other competing lion of the moment.

True, he had at once received a number of invitations from hostesses of the kind who make it their business to secure the latest celebrity, and he had grudged the time he spent over the writing of coldly civil refusals. Lingard had also been plagued with innumerable letters from people who vaguely hoped he would be able to do something which would contribute in some way to their advancement, or that of their near relations. And then there had come absurd and painful communications from lunatics, begging-letter writers, and autograph hunters.

Not till he came to Rede Place did the position he had won become really clear to him, though pride and good breeding made him appear to take his triumph lightly.

And Athena Maule shared it all with him! The very letters he received were, at her entreaty, shown to, and discussed with her in a way which gave each of them a special value and importance. Athena was much more impressed with his triumph than he allowed himself to be; and when alone with her,--and they were very often alone together,--Lingard unconsciously moved in a delightful atmosphere of subtle, wordless sympathy and flattery.

Jane Oglander, absorbed in the physical crisis through which was pa.s.sing the friend with whom she was staying, became even to her lover infinitely remote; though Lingard liked to remind himself, now and again, that it was Jane who had given him his new, enchanting comrade and friend.

Athena Maule appeared to Hew Lingard the most selfless human being he had ever known. And yet, each day, when the guests, the people she so kindly asked to meet him, were all gone, and when he and she were enjoying an hour of rest and solitude together, to which he had now learnt to look forward so eagerly, she was always ready to talk to him about herself. Soon there was no subject of conversation between them which held for Lingard so potent, so entrancing a lure.

There came a day when the soldier, more moved, more secretly excited, more exhilarated than usual, was able to express to her something of what he felt.

Among those who had been bidden to Rede Place was an old man, a Crimean veteran who in his day had enjoyed, though of course on a smaller scale, much the same kind of experience Hew Lingard was now pa.s.sing through.

The two had been allowed, by tacit consent, to have a considerable amount of talk together, and Lingard had been greatly touched and moved by the other's words of understanding praise, and appreciation, of the difficult, perilous task he had accomplished.

Sure of her sympathy and understanding, he told Mrs. Maule all that the veteran's words had meant to him, and at once, as was her wont,--though he remained quite unconscious of it,--she brought the subject round to the personal, the intimate standpoint: "You don't know," she said softly, "what it means to me to know that you met that dear old man here."

And that had given him his chance of saying what he felt each day more and more, namely that he owed everything, _everything_ to her,--to her thoughtful kindness and to her instinctive knowledge of what would at once please and move him.

How amazed he would have been could he have seen into Athena's heart!

She had thought it rather absurd that Lingard should care so much for praise uttered by such an unimportant person as the poor, broken old officer who led a quiet and rather eccentric existence on the edge of a lonely common some way from Rede Place. He had originally come into the neighbourhood in order to be near Mabel Digby's father, and Athena had never thought him to be of the slightest consequence,--indeed, she had only a.s.sented to his being asked to meet General Lingard because Mabel had earnestly begged that he might be.

Conscious hypocrisy is far rarer than the world is apt to believe, and only succeeds in its designs with those who are mentally ill-equipped.

The women who work the most mischief in civilized communities are supreme egoists, and an egoist is never a conscious hypocrite.

When dealing with a being of the opposite s.e.x to her own, Athena Maule always held up to his enraptured gaze a magic mirror in which was reflected the beautiful and pathetic figure of a deeply injured woman: one who had made a gallant fight against the harsh fate which had married her to such a man as Richard Maule, and which placed her in subjection to so cruel and contemptible a creature as was Richard's kinsman and heir, d.i.c.k Wantele.

Mrs. Maule was also affected, and very powerfully so, by all that took place during the ten days which elapsed between d.i.c.k Wantele's return and Jane Oglander's arrival.

The people among whom she habitually lived knew nothing of such men as Hew Lingard. Rich and idle always, vicious or virtuous according to their temperament and the measure of their temptations, they had no use for the great workers of the world, unless indeed those workers'

struggles, victories, and defeats lay in the world of finance.

Thus it was that General Lingard presented to Athena Maule the attractive human bait of something new, untasted, unrehea.r.s.ed.

She did not mean to act ill by Jane Oglander; on the contrary, as the days went on, Lingard's betrothed became in Mrs. Maule's imagination a cruel, almost a pitiless rival. She could not help contrasting her own life with that which was now opening before her friend. Jane was about to be lifted, through no merit, no effort of her own, into a delightful, a pa.s.sionately interesting and shifting atmosphere, that which surrounds a commanding officer's wife in one of the great military centres of the Empire at home or abroad.

Athena longed to try her power--the power she knew to be almost limitless in one direction--on the type of man with whom Jane would henceforth be surrounded, a type of whose very presence Jane, she knew well, would scarcely be aware! It was strange, it--it was horrible to think that Jane would be leading a delightful and stimulating existence while she, Athena, would be going the same dreary round among the same selfish, stupid people of whom she had grown so tired.

During those days when she was acting, for the first time, as the real mistress of Rede Place, and as hostess to a man whom all the world wished at that moment to meet and entertain, Mrs. Maule told herself again and again, with deep, wordless anger, that life was indeed using her hardly.

How ironic the stroke of fate which made a Jane Oglander be chosen by a Hew Lingard! There was one consolation--but Athena was in no mood for finding consolation--in the thought that both General Lingard and Jane would ever regard Mrs. Richard Maule as the most welcome, the most honoured of their guests. Thanks to that fact, she would enter and doubtless achieve the social conquest of that official section of the English world into which her incursions had been few and seldom repeated.

CHAPTER IX

"FERDINAND.--I have this night digged up a mandrake.

CARDINAL.--Say you?

FERDINAND.--And I am grown mad with it."

And now the evening of the last of their delightful days had come,--so at least Athena Maule thought of it, for Jane Oglander was arriving the next morning.

Wantele and Athena had had a sharp difference that afternoon. She wished that the gay, the amusing doings of the last few days should continue, and she had made out a further list--a short list, so she a.s.sured herself,--of people who had been forgotten, and who might as well be asked now. To her anger and surprise, d.i.c.k Wantele had refused her reasonable request backing up his refusal with the authority of her husband, of Richard himself.

"Richard thinks we've had enough of it, and that Jane would so hate it all," he said, having reminded her half jokingly that they had arranged everything of the kind should end with Jane Oglander's arrival. "I think we owe Jane some consideration. She would be miserable married to a man who was always being lionised in this absurd fashion----"

He stopped, then added lightly, "You don't know England, my dear cousin: there will be a new lion soon, then our friend will have to take a back place. To do him justice I think he's already getting rather sick of it all!"

Mrs. Maule remained silent for a moment, and then she exclaimed, with a rather curious look on her lovely face, "I don't agree! I think that he enjoys it, d.i.c.k, and surely it is good for his career that he should do so. Jane should understand that!"

Wantele lifted his eyebrows. It was a trick of his when surprised or amused. "He will go on having plenty of that sort of thing after he's married--if Jane lets him!"

Athena turned pettishly away. Thanks to d.i.c.k Wantele she was never allowed to forget the fact that her delightful, her famous guest was going to be married--and to her own dearest friend. d.i.c.k never spared her. He seemed to delight in "rubbing it in." It was the more irritating inasmuch as Hew Lingard never spoke to her of Jane.

During those pleasant, exciting days Mrs. Maule had sometimes asked herself whether Lingard ever thought of Jane when--when he was with her, with Athena. She had taken the trouble to find out, by means not wholly creditable, that Lingard wrote to Jane every day; and there was always one letter from the many that reached him each morning which he picked out first and put in his pocket. The sight of his doing this gave Athena a little pang of jealous pain. It annoyed her that any man when with her should concern himself with another woman.

And then something else on this last day added to Mrs. Maule's depression. Her husband was not well. He was feeling the effects of the excitement of the last few days. Just after her unpleasant little discussion with d.i.c.k, Richard Maule had addressed her directly--a thing he scarcely ever did. "Aren't you going away?" he asked ungraciously. "I thought you were going away as soon as Jane Oglander arrived."

She had answered briefly that her plans were changed, that she would not be leaving Rede Place for nearly another month. But as, a moment later, she had swept out of the room, she had told herself with rage that her present life was intolerable,--that no woman had ever to put up with such insults as she had to put up with, from d.i.c.k on the one hand, and Richard on the other!

Within an hour her feelings were a.s.suaged. Lingard, seeking her as he had now fallen into the way of doing, had found her quivering with anger, and what he took to be bitter pain.

She had told him of her husband's desire that she should leave Rede Place on her friend's arrival, and he had received her confidences with burning indignation and pa.s.sionate sympathy. Nay more, the atmosphere between them became electric, almost oppressive. Then, to Athena's sharp surprise and annoyance, Lingard suddenly turned on his heel and left the room, muttering something about having work to do.

That evening, for the first time for many days, Athena, General Lingard, and d.i.c.k Wantele dined without the restraining presence of strangers.

d.i.c.k, unlike the other two, was in good spirits, nay more, lively and, in his own rather caustic way, amusing.

Jane Oglander would be here to-morrow! He dwelt on the thought with satisfaction and an almost malicious pleasure. Ten days ago the thought of seeing Jane at Rede Place had been painful, but now he would welcome her presence. It was time, high time, she were here.

Now and again, while talking to Athena,--he could always compel her attention,--he stole a glance at Jane Oglander's lover. Lingard did not look as looks the man who is going to see his love on the morrow. His expression was one of deep gravity, almost of suffering. There was a strained look about his eyes, his mouth was set in grim lines, and unless directly addressed he remained silent.