CHAPTER XV

The task was so far unpleasant to her that she was anxious to secure the first opportunity and get it over. Her moment would come with the two hours after dinner in the study.

It did not come that evening; for Majendie telegraphed that he had been detained in town, and would dine at the Club. He did not come home till Anne (who sat up till midnight waiting for that opportunity) had gone tired to bed.

Her determination gathered strength with the delay, and when her moment came with the next evening, it came gloriously. Majendie gave himself over into her hands by bringing Gorst, of all people, back with him to dine.

The brilliant prodigal approached her with a little embarra.s.sed youthful air of humility and charm; the air almost of taking her into his confidence over something unfortunate and absurd. He had evidently counted on the ten minutes before dinner when he would be left alone with her. He selected a chair opposite to her, leaning forward in it at ease, his nervousness visible only in the flushed hands clasped loosely on his knees, his eyes turned upon his hostess with a look of almost infantile candour. It was as if he mutely implored her to forget yesterday's encounter, and on no account to mention in what compromising company he had been seen. His engaging smile seemed to take for granted that she was a lady of pity and understanding, who would never have the heart to give a poor prodigal away. His eyes intimated that Mrs. Majendie knew what it amounted to, that awful prodigality of his.

But Mrs. Majendie had no illusions concerning sinners with engaging smiles and beautiful manners. And with every tick of the clock he deepened the impression of his insolence and levity. His very charm and the flush and brilliance that were part of it went to swell the prodigal's account. The instinct that had wakened in her knew them, the lights and colours, the heralding banners and vivid signs, all the paraphernalia of triumphant sin. She turned upon her guest the cold eyes of a condign destiny.

By the time dinner was served it had dawned on Gorst that he was looking in Mrs. Majendie for something that was not there. He might even have had some inkling of her resolution; he sat at his friend's table so consciously on sufferance, with an oppressed, extinguished air, eating his dinner as if it choked him, like the last sad meal in a beloved house.

Majendie, too, felt himself drawn in and folded in the gloom cast by his wife's protesting presence. The shadow of it wrapped them even after Anne had left the dining-room, as though her indignant spirit had remained behind to preserve her protest. Gorst had changed his oppression for a nervous restlessness intolerable to Majendie.

"My dear fellow," he said, "what is the matter with you?"

"How should I know?" said Gorst with a spurt of ill-temper. "I'm not a nerve specialist."

Majendie looked at him attentively. "I say, _you_ mustn't go in for nerves, you know; you can't afford it."

"My dear Walter, I can't afford anything, if it comes to that." He paused with an obscure air of injury and foreboding. "Not even, it seems, the most innocent amus.e.m.e.nts. At the rate," he added, "I have to pay for them." Again he brooded, while Majendie wondered at him, in brotherly anxiety. "I suppose," Gorst said suddenly, "I can go up and see Edith, can't I?"

He spoke as if he doubted, whether, in the wreck of his world, with all his "innocent amus.e.m.e.nts," that supreme consolation would be still open to him.

"Of course you can," said Majendie. "It's the best thing you can do.

I told her you were coming."

"Thanks," said Gorst, checking the alacrity with which he rose to go to Edith.

Oh yes, he knew it was the best thing he could do.

Edith's voice called gladly to him as he tapped at her door. He entered noiselessly, wearing the wondering and expectant look with which a new worshipper enters a holy place. Perpetual backslidings kept poor Gorst's worship perpetually new.

Colour came slowly back into Edith's face and a tender light into her eyes, as if from the springing of some deep untroubled well of life. She seemed more than ever a creature of imperial vitality, bound by some cruel enchantment to her couch. She held out her hands to him; and he raised them to his lips and kissed her fingers lightly.

"It's weeks since I've seen you," said she.

"Months, isn't it?" said he.

"Weeks, three weeks, by the calendar."

"I say--tell me--I _am_ to come and see you, just the same?"

"Just the same? Why, what's different?"

"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me, when a man's married, it's bound to make a difference."

Edith's colour mounted; she made an effort to control the trembling of her mouth, the soft woman's mouth where all that was bodily in her love still lingered. But the sweetness deepened in her eyes, which were the dwelling-place of the immortal, immaterial power. They met Gorst's eyes steadily, laying on his restlessness their peace.

"Are you going to be married, Charlie?" said she, and smiled bravely.

He laughed. "Oh, Lord, no; not I."

"Who is, then?"

"Walter, of course. I mean he is married, don't you know."

"Yes, and is there any difference in him to you?"

"In him? Oh, rather not."

"In whom, then?"

"Well--I don't think, Edie, that Mrs. Walter--I like her--" he stuck to it--"I like her, you know, she's charming, but--I don't think she particularly cares for _me_."

"How do you know that?"

"How do I know anything? By the way she looks at me."

"Oh, the way Anne looks at people--"

"Well, you know, it's something tremendous, something terrible.

Unutterable things, you know. She knocks the Inquisition and the day of judgment all to pieces. They're simply not in it. It's awfully hard lines on me, you see, because I like her."

"I'm glad you like her."

"Oh, I only like her because she likes you, I think."

"And I like her. Please remember that."

"I do remember it. I say, Edie, tell me, is she awfully devoted and all that?"

"To Walter? Yes, very devoted."

"That's all right, then. I don't think I mind so much now. As long as I can come and see you just the same."

"Of course you'll come and see me, just the same."

He pondered for a long time over that. Seeing Edith was the best thing he could do. To-night it seemed the only good thing left for him to do. He lived in a state of alternate excitement and fatigue, forever craving his innocent amus.e.m.e.nts, and forever tired of them. None of them were worth while. Seeing Edith was the only thing that was worth while. He refused to contemplate with any calmness a life in which it would be impossible for him to see her. If the poor prodigal had not chosen the most elevated situation for the building of his house of life, he was always making desperate efforts to leave the insalubrious spot, and return to the high and windswept mansions of his youth. To be with Edith was to nourish the illusion of return. Return itself seemed possible, when goodness, in the person of Edith, looked at him with such tender and alluring eyes. In spirit he prostrated himself before it, while he cursed the d.a.m.nable cruelty that had prevented him from marrying her. Through that act of adoration he was enabled to live through his alien and separated days.

It kept him, as he phrased it, "going," which meant that, wherever his rebellious feet might carry him, he continued to breathe, through it, the diviner air.

And Edith had lain for ten years on her back, and every year the hours had gone more lightly, through the hope of seeing him. She had outlived her time of torment and rebellion. There was a sense in which her life, in spite of its frustration, was complete. The love through which her womanhood struggled for victory in defeat had fulfilled itself by gradual growth into something like maternal pa.s.sion. There was no selfishness in her att.i.tude to him and his devotion. By accepting it she took his best and offered it to G.o.d for him. With fragile, dedicated hands she nursed and sheltered the undying votive flame. She seemed a saint who had foregone heaven and remained on earth to help him. Her womanhood, wrapped from him in veil upon veil of her mysterious suffering, had never removed itself from him. She held him by all that was indomitable in her own nature, and in spite of his lapses, he remained her lover.

She was aware of these lapses and grieved over them and forgave them, laying them, as she had laid her brother's sin, to the account of her unhappy spine. In Edith's tender fancy her spine had become responsible for all the shortcomings of these beloved persons. If Walter could have married Anne seven years ago there would have been no dreadful Lady Cayley; and if she could have married poor Charlie she would not have had to think of him as "poor Charlie" now. It had been hard on him.