It was time, Estelle felt, that the real things of life should come back to her. She had had them before marriage — these real things — light, swift, contacts with chosen spirits; friendships not untinged with a liability to become something less capable of definition. But since her marriage she had been forced into a world of secondary experiences. Winn, to begin with, had stood very much in the way, and when he had ceased to block the paths of sentiment she had not found a substitute. At Aldershot, where they lived, there was an unspoken rule that brides should be left alone. Women called, and men were polite, but when Estelle began those delicate personal conversations which led the way to deeper spiritual contacts she discovered that nothing followed. She could not say that she found the men elusive; stone walls are not elusive, but they do not lend themselves to an easy way across country. As to women, theoretically Estelle desired their friendship just as much as that of men; but in practice she generally found them unsympathetic, and incapable of the finest type of intimacy. They did not seem to know what the word devotion meant. Men did, especially young men, though the older ones talked more about it. Estelle had already seen herself after marriage as a confidante to Winn’s young brother officers. She would help them as only a good woman can. (She foresaw particularly how she would help to extricate them from the influences of bad women. It was extraordinary how many women who influenced men at all were bad!) Estelle never had any two opinions about being a good woman herself. She couldn’t be anything else. Good women held all the cards, but there was no reason why they shouldn’t be attractive; it was their failure to grasp this potentiality, which gave bad women their temporary sway.
It was really necessary in the missionary career open to young and attractive married women, to be magnetic. Up to a certain point men must be led on, because if they didn’t care for you in the right way you couldn’t do anything with them at all. After that point, they must be gently and firmly stopped, or else they might become tiresome, and that would be bad both for them and for you. Especially with a husband like Winn, who seemed incapable of grasping fine shades, and far too capable of dealing roughly and brutally with whatever he did grasp. There had been a dress, for instance, that he simply refused to let Estelle wear — remarking that it was a bit too thick — though that was really the last quality it had possessed.
The question of congenial friendship was therefore likely to be a difficulty, but Estelle had never forgotten Lionel Drummond. When she stopped thinking about Winn except as an annoyance, it became necessary for her to think of somebody else, and her mind fixed itself at once upon her husband’s friend. It seemed to her that in Lionel Drummond she would find a perfect spiritual counterpart. She dreamed of a friendship with him too deep for mere friendliness, too late for accepted love; and it seemed to her exactly the kind of thing she wanted. Hand in hand they would tread the path of duty together, surrounded by a rosy mist.
They might even lead Winn to higher things; but at this point Estelle’s imagination balked. She could not see Winn being led — he was too truculent — and he had never in his tenderest moments evinced the slightest taste for higher things. It would be better perhaps if they simply set him a good example. He would be certain not to follow it.
She and Lionel would have terrible moments, of course. Estelle thrilled at the thought of these moments, and from time to time she slightly stretched the elastic of the path of duty to meet them. They would still keep on it, of course; they would never go any further than Petrarch and Laura. These historic philanderers should be their limit, and when the worst came to the worst, Estelle would softly murmur to Lionel, “Petrarch and Laura have borne it, and we must bear it too.”
She became impatient for Lionel’s arrival and bought a new and exquisitely becoming blue chiffon dress. Both she and her maid were so struck by her appearance that when Estelle heard Winn banging about at the last moment in his dressing room, she knocked at his door. Even the lowest type of man can be used as a superior form of looking glass. He shouted “Come in!” and stared at her while he fumbled at his collar stud; then he lifted his eyebrows and said “War-paint — eh?”
“I only wanted to remind you, dear,” said Estelle patiently, “that the key of the wine cellar is in my bureau drawer.”
Lionel arrived before Winn had finished dressing. Estelle greeted him with outstretched hands. “I am so very glad to see you at last,” she said in her softest, friendliest voice. “I think it will do Winn good to have you here.”
Lionel laughed shyly.
“I shouldn’t have thought,” he said, “that Winn would need much more good.”
“Ah, my dear fellow!” said Winn’s voice behind him, “you don’t know how great my needs are. Sorry I couldn’t meet you.”
Estelle’s beautiful, wavering eyes rested for a moment on her husband. She had never known a man to dress so quickly, and it seemed to her an unnecessary quality.
The dinner was a great success. Both men were absurdly gay. Winn told good stories, laughed at Lionel, and rallied his young wife. She had never seen him like this before, and she put it down to the way one man sets off another.
Estelle felt that she was being a great success, and it warmed her heart. The two men talked for her and listened to her; she had a moment when she thought that perhaps, after all, she needn’t relegate Winn to a lower world.
They accepted with enthusiasm her offer to sing to them after dinner and then they kept her waiting in the drawing-room for an hour and a half.
She sat there opposite a tall Italian mirror, quivering with her power, her beauty, her ability to charm, and with nothing before her but the empty coffee-cups.
She played a little, she even sang a little (the house was small) to recall them to a sense of her presence, but inexplicably they clung to their talk. Winn who at ordinary times seemed incapable of more than disconnected fragments of speech was (she could hear him now and then quite distinctly) talking like a cataract; and Lionel was, if anything, worse. Her impatience turned into suspicion. Probably Winn was poisoning his friend’s mind against her. Perhaps he was drinking too much, Sir Peter did, and people often took after their fathers. That would have to be another point for Lionel and her to tackle. At last they came in, and Lionel said without any attempt at an apology:
“We should love some music, Mrs. Winn.”
Winn said nothing. He stuck his hands into his pockets, and stood in front of the fireplace in a horribly British manner while she turned over her songs. Estelle sang rather prettily. She preferred songs of a type that dealt with bitter regret over unexplained partings. She sang them with a great deal of expression and a slight difficulty in letting go of the top notes. After she had sung two or three, Lionel said:
“Now, Winn, you sing.”
Estelle started. She had never before heard of this accomplishment of her husband’s. It occurred to her now that Lionel would think it very strange she hadn’t, but he need never know unless Winn gave her away. She need not have been afraid. Winn said quietly, as if he said it to her every evening, “D’you mind playing for me, Estelle?” Then he dragged out from under her music a big black book in which he had painstakingly copied and collected his selection of songs.
He had a high, clear baritone, very true and strangely impressive; it filled the little room. When he had finished, Lionel forgot to ask Estelle to sing again. Winn excused himself; he said he had a letter or two to write and left them.
“It’s jolly, your both singing,” Lionel said, looking at her with the same admiring friendliness he had shown her before. She guessed then that Winn had said nothing against her. After all, at the bottom of her heart she had known he wouldn’t. You can’t live with a man for five months and not know where you are safe.
Estelle smiled prettily.
“Yes,” she said gently, “music is a great bond,” and then she began to talk to Lionel about himself.
She had a theory that all men liked to talk exclusively about themselves, and it is certain that most men enjoyed their conversation with her; but in this particular instance she made a mistake. Lionel did not like talking about himself, and above all he disliked sympathetic admiration. He was not a conceited man, and it had not occurred to him that he was a suitable subject for admiration. Nor did he see why he should receive sympathy. He had had an admirably free and happy life with parents who were his dearest friends, and with a friend who was to him a hero beyond the need of definition.
Still, he wouldn’t have shrunk from talking about Winn with Estelle. It was her right to talk about him, her splendid, perfect privilege. He supposed that she was a little shy, because she seemed to slip away from their obvious great topic; but he wished, if she wasn’t going to talk about Winn, she would leave his people alone.
She tried to sympathize with him about his home difficulties, and when she discovered that he hadn’t any, her sympathy veered to the horrible distance he had to be away from it.
“Oh, well,” said Lionel, “it’s my father’s old regiment, you know; that makes it awfully different. They know as much about my life as I do myself, and when I don’t get leave, they often come out to me for a month or two. They’re good travelers.”
“They must be simply wonderful!” Estelle said ecstatically. Lionel said nothing. He looked slightly amazed. It seemed so funny that Winn, who hadn’t much use for ecstasy, should have married a so easily ecstatic wife.
“I do envy you,” she said pathetically, “all that background of home companionship. We were brought up so differently. It was not my parents’ fault of course — ” she added rather quickly. Something in Lionel’s expression warned her that he would be unsympathetic to confidences against parents.
“Well, you’ve got Winn,” he said, looking at her with his steadfast encouraging eyes, “you’ve got your background now.” He was prepared to put up with a little ecstasy on this subject, but Estelle looked away from him, her great eyes strangely wistful and absorbed. She was an extraordinary exquisite and pretty little person, like a fairy on a Christmas tree, or a Dresden china shepherdess, not a bit, somehow, like a wife.
“Yes,” she said, twisting her wedding ring round her tiny manicured finger. “But sometimes I am a little anxious about him — I know it’s silly of me.”
Lionel’s shyness fell away from him with disconcerting suddenness. “Why are you anxious?” he demanded. “What do you mean, Mrs. Winn?”
Estelle hesitated, she hadn’t meant to say exactly what her fear was, she only wanted to arouse the young man’s chivalry and to talk in some way that approached intimacy.
Everything must have a beginning, even Petrarch and Laura.
She found Lionel’s eyes fixed upon her with a piercing quality difficult to meet. He obviously wouldn’t understand if she didn’t mean anything — and she hardly knew him well enough to touch on her real difficulties with Winn, those would have to come later.
But she must be anxious about something — she was forced into the rather meager track of her husband’s state of health.
“I don’t quite know,” she mused, “of course he seems perfectly strong — but I sometimes wonder if he is as strong as he looks.”
Lionel brushed her wonder aside. “Please tell me exactly what you’ve noticed,” he said, as if he were a police sergeant and she were some reluctant and slightly prevaricating witness.
She hadn’t, as a matter of fact, noticed anything. “He sometimes looks terribly tired,” she said a little uncertainly, “but I dare say it’s all my foolishness, Mr. Drummond. I am afraid I am inclined to be nervous about other people’s health — ” Estelle sighed softly. She often accused herself of faults which no one had discovered in her. “Winn, I am sure, would be the first to laugh at me.”
“Yes, I dare say he would,” said Lionel quietly. “But I never will, Mrs. Winn.” She raised her eyes gratefully to him — at last she had succeeded in touching him.
“You see,” Lionel explained, “I care too much for him myself.”
Her eyes dropped. She had a feeling that Petrarch and Laura had hardly begun like that.
The next few days were very puzzling to Estelle; nobody behaved as she expected them to behave, including herself. She found Lionel always ready to accept her advances with open-hearted cordiality, but she had to make the advances. She had not meant to do this. Her idea had been to be a magnet, and magnets keep quite still; needles do all the moving. But this particular needle (except that it didn’t appear at all soft) might have been made of cotton wool.
And Winn wouldn’t behave at a disadvantage; he was neither tyrannical nor jealous. He left her a great deal to Lionel, and treated her with good-natured tolerance in private and with correct attention before his friend.
In theory Estelle had always stated her belief in platonic friendship, but she had never been inconvenienced by having to carry it out. One thing had always led to another. She had imagined that Lionel (in his relations with her) would be a happy mixture of Lancelot and Galahad. The Galahad side of him would appear when Lancelot became inconvenient — and the Lancelot side of him would be there to fall back upon when Galahad got too dull. But in their actual relation there seemed to be some important ingredient left out. Of course Lancelot was guilty and Estelle had never for a moment intended Lionel to be guilty, but on the other hand Lancelot was in love with the Queen.
This quality was really essential.
Lancelot had had a great affection for the King of course, but that had been subsidiary; and this was what puzzled Estelle most, was Lionel’s feeling for her subsidiary to his feeling for Winn?
Lionel was delightful to her; he waited on her hand and foot; he studied all her tastes and remembered everything she told him. Could playing polo with Winn, going out for walks in the rain, and helping to make saddles in Winn’s musty, smelling den appeal to him with greater force than her society? He wasn’t in love with any one else, and if men weren’t in love with any one else, they were usually in love with Estelle. But with Lionel everything stopped short. They conversed confidentially, they used each other’s Christian names, but she was left with the sensation of having come up against an invisible barrier. There was no impact, and there was no curtness; there was simply empty space. She was not even sure that Lionel would have liked her at all if she hadn’t been Winn’s wife. As it was, he certainly wanted her friendship and took pains to win it. It must be added that he won more than he took pains to win. Estelle for the first time in her life stumbled waveringly into a little love.
The visit prolonged itself from a week to a fortnight. Estelle did not sleep the night before Lionel went. She tossed feverishly to and fro, planning their parting. Surely he would not leave her without a word? Surely there must be some touch of sentiment to this separation, horrible and inevitable, that lay before them?
She remembered afterwards that as she lay in the dark and foresaw her loneliness she wondered if she wouldn’t after all risk the Indian frontier to be near him? She was subsequently glad she had decided that she wouldn’t.
It was a very wet morning, and Lionel was to leave before lunch. Winn went as usual into his study to play with his eternal experiments in leather. Lionel went with him. She heard the two men laughing together down the passage. Could real friends have laughed if they had minded parting with each other?
She sat at her desk in the drawing-room biting nervously at her pen. He was going; was it possible that there would be no farewell?
Just some terrible flat hand-shake at the door under Winn’s penetrating eyes.
But after a time she heard steps returning. Lionel came by himself.
“Are you busy?” he asked. “Shall I bother you if we talk a little?”
“No,” she said softly. “I hoped you would come back.”
Lionel did not answer for a moment. For the first time in their acquaintance he was really a little stirred. He moved about the room restlessly, he wouldn’t sit down, though half unconsciously she had put her hand on the chair beside her.
“Do you know,” he said at last, “I’ve got something to say to you, and I’m awfully afraid it may annoy you.”
Was it really coming, the place at which he would have to be stopped, after all her fruitless endeavors to get him to move in any direction at all? It looked like it; he was very obviously embarrassed and flushed; he did not even try to meet her eyes.
“The fact is,” he went on, “I simply can’t go without saying it, and you’ve been so awfully good to me — you’ve let me feel we’re friends.” He paused, and Estelle leaned forward, her eyes melting with encouragement.
“I am so glad you feel like that, Lionel,” she murmured. “Do please say anything — anything you like. I shall always understand and forgive, if it is necessary for me to forgive.”
“You’re awfully generous,” he said gratefully. She smiled, and put out her hand again toward the chair. This time he sat down in it, but he turned it to face her.
He was a big man and he seemed to fill the room in which they sat. His blue-gray eyes fixed themselves on hers intently, his whole being seemed absorbed in what he was about to say.
“You see,” he began, “I think you may be making a big mistake. Naturally Winn’s awfully fond of you and all that and you’ve just started life, and you like to live in your own country, surrounded by jolly little things, and perhaps India seems frightening and far away.” Estelle shrank back a little; he put his hand on the back of her chair soothingly. “Of course it must be hard,” he said. “Only I want to explain it to you. Winn’s heart is yours, I know, but it’s in his work, too, as a man’s must be, and his work’s out there; it’s not here at all.
“When I came here and looked about me, and saw the house and the garden and the country, where we’ve had such jolly walks and talks — it all seemed temporary somehow, made up — not quite natural, I can’t explain what I mean but not a bit like Winn. I needn’t tell you what he is, I dare say you think it’s cheek of me to talk about him at all, I can quite understand it if you do, only perhaps there’s a side of him I’ve seen more of, and which makes me want to say what I know he isn’t — what I don’t think even love can make him be — he isn’t tame!”
He stopped abruptly; Estelle’s eyes had hardened and grown very cold.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Has he complained of my keeping him here?”
Lionel pushed back his chair.
“Ah, Mrs. Winn! Mrs. Winn!” he exclaimed half laughingly, and half reproachfully; “you know he wouldn’t complain. He only told me that he wasn’t coming back just yet, and I — well, I thought I saw why he wasn’t.”
“Then,” she said, turning careful eyes away from him, “if he hasn’t complained, I hardly see why you should attack me like this. I suppose you think I am as unnatural and — and temporary as our surroundings?”
Lionel stood up and looked down at her in a puzzled way.
“Oh, I say, you know,” he ventured, “you’re not playing very fair, are you? Of course I’m not attacking you. I thought we were friends, and I wanted to help you.”
“Friends!” she said. Her voice broke suddenly into a hard little laugh. “Well, what else have you to suggest to me about my husband — out of your friendship for me?”
“You’re not forgiving me,” he reminded her gently, not dreaming what it was she had been prepared to forgive. “But perhaps I’d better go on and get it all out while I’m about it. You know it isn’t only that I think he won’t care for staying on here, but I think it’s a bit of a risk. I don’t want to frighten you, but after a man’s had black water fever twice, he’s apt to be a little groggy, especially about the lungs. England isn’t honestly a very good winter place for him for a year or two — ”
Estelle flung up her head.
“If he was going to be an invalid,” she said, “he oughtn’t to have married me!”
The silence that followed her speech crept into every corner of the room. Lionel did not look puzzled any more. He stood up very straight and stiff; only his eyes changed. He could not look at her; they were filled with contempt. He gave her a moment or two to disavow her words; he would have given his right hand to hear her do it.
“I beg your pardon,” he said at last. “I have overstated the case if you imagine your husband is an invalid. I think, if you don’t mind,” he added, “I’ll see if my things are ready.”
“Please do,” she said, groping in her mind for something left to hurt him with. “And another time perhaps you will know better than to say for my husband what he is perfectly competent to say for himself.”
“You are quite right,” Lionel said quietly; “another time I shall know better.” The rain against the windows sounded again; she had not heard it before.
He did not come back to say good-by. She heard him talking to Winn in the hall, the dogcart drove up, and then she saw him for the last time, his fine, clear-cut profile, his cap dragged over his forehead, his eyes hard, as they were when he had looked at her. He must have known she stood there at the window watching, but he never looked back. She had expected a terrible parting, but never a parting as terrible as this. Mercifully she had kept her head; it was all she had kept.