"You press very hardly on Lingard, Jane."

He spoke with a terrible irony, but Jane did not understand.

"No, no!" she cried, distressed. "I press hard on n.o.body, least of all on Hew."

CHAPTER XVI

"Quand le coeur reste fidele, les vilenies du corps sont peu de chose. Quand le coeur a trahi, le reste n'est plus rien."

Athena, sitting alone in the boudoir, heard the return of the two men; but she waited in vain for Lingard to come to her, as he always did come to her, with that blind longing for her presence which he was only now, with dawning consciousness, beginning to resist.

To-night instinct, the wise instinct which always stood her in good stead in all her dealings with men, warned her against seeking him out.

Mrs. Maule had no wish to make Lingard either an unwilling or even a willing accomplice in the scheme which was to result in their ultimate happiness. She had gone quite as far as she dared to go with him the night before. Treachery is one of the few burdens which a human being can bear better alone than in company.

Athena realised that Lingard now regarded his violent, unreasoning attraction to herself as a thing of which to be mortally ashamed. But she was convinced that, once his engagement to Jane Oglander was at an end, he would "let himself go," especially if he was convinced that she, Athena, had been blameless.

And her instinct served her truly. Lingard, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the long day spent away from Rede Place, was in no mood for a renewal of the sentimental dalliance to which Athena had accustomed him.

What had happened--the quick exchange of words, his echo of Mrs. Maule's longing for freedom from a tie which she had led him to believe had ever lacked reality, had brought him, and roughly, to his bearings.

The evening which had followed, spent in company with the two women--the woman to whom he owed allegiance, and whom he had held but a few hours before in his arms, and that other woman who had provoked the unreal words of which he was now ashamed, had contained some of the most odious moments of his life.

He had hailed with intense relief the engagement which took him away for a whole day; and on his return he had gone straight to the sitting-room set apart for his use, his supposed work, and where, after the first two days of his stay under Richard Maule's roof, he had spent so little of his time.

The rather elaborate apparatus connected with the book he was engaged in writing, filled him with contempt for himself. There were the maps, the books, the reports of his staff, his own rough notes, and--in a locked despatch-box--the long diary-letters he had written to Jane Oglander during the course of the Expedition.

The man who is all man, whose nature lacks, that is, any admixture of femininity, is almost always without the dangerous gift of self-a.n.a.lysis. Such a man was Hew Lingard.

All through his life he had always known exactly what he wanted, and when denied he had suffered as suffers a child, with a dumb and hopeless anger. It was this want of knowledge of himself that had ever made him ready to embark blindly in those perilous adventures of the soul in which the body plays so great a sub-conscious part.

Now, for the first time in his life, Lingard did not know what he wanted, and the state in which he found himself induced a terrible and humiliating disquietude.

His was the miserable state of mind of a man who finds himself on the point of becoming unfaithful to a wife who is still loved. Jane Oglander, even now, seemed in a most intimate sense part of himself.

When he had seen her the first time--it had been in summer, in a garden--he had experienced the strange sensation that he had at last found the woman for whom he had been always seeking, and whom he had always known to be somewhere waiting, could he but find her.

Almost at once he had told Jane that he loved her, and almost, even then, had he convinced her that it was true. He had not tried to bind her by any formal engagement, and he had kept to the spirit as well as to the letter of the law. The long diary-letters which he had written to her day by day, and which had reached her at such irregular intervals, were not in any obvious sense love-letters.

He had felt that wherever he was she was there too, and sometimes, when he was in danger, and he was often in danger during those two years, the sense of Jane Oglander's spiritual nearness became curiously intensified. Now that they were together, under the same roof, she often seemed infinitely remote.

Could he now have a.n.a.lysed his own emotions--which, perhaps fortunately for himself, he was incapable of doing--he would have known that his chance of being faithful to Jane would have been increased rather than decreased had they not spent together that week in London.

He had come to Rede Place in a state of spiritual and physical exaltation which had made him peculiarly susceptible to any and every emotion, and for a time he had believed the feeling he was lavishing on Athena Maule to be pity--a pa.s.sion of pity for one who had been most piteously used by fate.

The physical exercise of the day's shooting, spent in a place entirely lacking the emotional atmosphere induced by Athena, had restored Lingard's sense of perspective. With a rather angry discomfiture he realised that he had become afraid of Mrs. Maule and of her power over him. For the first time since he had known her he had been free of Athena, and then, as he and d.i.c.k Wantele got nearer and nearer to Rede Place, it had almost seemed as if she were beckoning to him, and he had longed to respond to her call....

It had required a strong effort of will on his part to go straight upstairs instead of to the room where he knew her to be.

For the first time in his life Lingard did not know what he wanted, or, rather, he was grievously aware that one side of his nature was imperiously demanding of him something he was determined not to grant.

Last night he had thrown a sop to the ravening, hungry beast, but that, so he now swore to himself, should not happen again.

It was seven o'clock when Athena heard a key being turned in the lock of the Garden Room, and her eyes quickly sought the place where her own key was always kept. It was in its place; Lingard always returned it with scrupulous care immediately after having used it.

Then it must be d.i.c.k Wantele who was coming into the house. She wondered where he had been--perhaps to the Small Farm to fetch Jane Oglander.

What a fool d.i.c.k was! And yet--and yet not such a fool after all. d.i.c.k, if he were patient--Athena smiled a little to herself--and he certainly would be patient, might yet be granted the wish of his heart. Jane Oglander's marriage to d.i.c.k Wantele, so Mrs. Maule now admitted to herself, would be a most excellent thing for them all.

Yes--the two she would fain see become lovers had come in together; she could hear their voices in the corridor. And then, to her surprise, the door opened, and Wantele came in alone.

Athena felt suddenly afraid--afraid and uncomfortable. She told herself angrily that her nerves were playing her odious tricks, for as d.i.c.k came towards her she had the sensation, almost the knowledge, that he longed to strike her, and it was a very odd, a very unpleasant, sensation.

He came up close to her. "You know that Jane Oglander intends to break her engagement?" he said abruptly, and there was an angry, a menacing expression on his face.

Athena regained complete possession of herself. She felt quite cool, ready to parry any attack.

"Yes," she said quietly; "Jane told me this morning. I was surprised, but--not sorry, d.i.c.k."

He made no answer, dealt her none of those quick, sarcastic retorts of which he was master. She looked at him fixedly. He had no business to come in and speak to her like that!

"No one who knows and--and likes them both can think them suited to one another. You know that as well as I do, d.i.c.k."

"I deny it absolutely," he cried, "and even if it were true I shouldn't care! Our business in this matter--yours and mine--is to stand by Jane.

I take it that you won't deny that Jane loves Lingard?" And then he went on, without waiting for her a.s.sent: "Do you remember the letter she wrote to you--the letter you showed me? That showed how Jane felt--how she now feels."

Her lips framed a sentence in answer, but she changed her mind and did not utter it. There was no object in making d.i.c.k angry, angrier than he already was; for Athena was well aware that Wantele was very, very angry with her.

"And what do you think we can do?" she said slowly.

"Look here, Athena." He tried to make his voice pleasant, conciliating--and he actually succeeded. Then he wasn't angry, she thought, after all. "This matter is much too serious for you and me to fence about it. I asked you a few days ago to go away--I ask it of you again. After all, what you are doing now can lead to nothing. Lingard must give you but very poor sport, and what is sport to you--eh, what, Athena?"

She remained silent, listening to him with an odd look on her face.

He ventured further: "I feel sure that you had no idea that the matter would become serious, and I agree that if Jane were a different sort of woman she would understand----"

"Understand what?" she said haughtily. "Are you accusing me of breaking off Jane's engagement? I did not think, d.i.c.k, that even your dislike of me could go so far. Till she told me this morning, I had no idea she thought of doing such a thing."

Wantele shrugged his shoulders, but he was determined not to lose his temper.

"I don't accuse you," he said slowly, "and I don't wish to be unfair.

We'll put it in another way, Athena. Lingard came--saw--was conquered!

It's no use our discussing it at this time of day. Still less is it any use for you to try to deny it; you and I both know what happened. I think--nay, I'm quite sure--that if you were to go away, everything would come right between these two people."

"And do you really wish everything to come right between Hew Lingard and Jane Oglander?"