THE DAY’S JOURNEY

“Cecily,” He Said Suddenly, “What are You Going to Do?”

[PAGE [260]]

THE
DAY’S JOURNEY

BY
NETTA SYRETT
AUTHOR OF “ROSANNE,” “THE TREE OF LIFE,” ETC.

“Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.”

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1906

Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1906
Published September 15, 1906
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

THE DAY’S JOURNEY

THE DAY’S JOURNEY

CHAPTER I

ROSE SUMMERS paused a moment before she lifted the latch of a little gate set between two walls of yew. It was June. The sky had the blue of larkspur, the air was sweet with the scent of flowers. The gate in the yew hedge opened upon a small flagged court leading to a porch wreathed with roses. Above the porch clematis and ivy continued the wall of living green almost to the gables of what had once been an Elizabethan farm-house, and was now the picturesque home of Robert Kingslake and of Cecily his wife.

To the left, above a walled garden, great chestnut trees reared their heads, and flung shadows across the lane in which Mrs. Summers was standing. The stillness, broken only by the sleepy clucking of fowls, was of that peculiar peacefulness which broods over an English country-side. On the white dust in the road the shadows lay asleep. The trees themselves drowsed against the blue sky; the very roses above the house-porch laid their pink faces together, and, cradled in leaves, dreamt in the sunshine.

Only a moment passed before Mrs. Summers lifted the latch, yet in that moment she saw in imagination one hill station after another; she hurried through adventures and experiences which had filled five years, and came back to the realization that, in the meantime, her cousin Cecily had just lived here at the Priory, listening to the clucking of the fowls, looking at the chestnut trees against the sky, perhaps tending the roses round the porch. She walked up the flagged path and rang the bell. The door was opened in a few moments by a neat maid, who said that Mrs. Kingslake was out. “But she won’t be long, ma’am, if you’ll come in,” she added.

The porch led almost directly into one of those square, panelled halls which make the most charming of sitting-rooms. At the farther end a long, low casement window framed a vista of the garden—green, luxuriant, brilliant with flowers. On the window-ledge there was a china bowl of sweet peas.

Mrs. Summers looked about her with interest. There was not much furniture, but each piece, though simple, was beautiful in form at least, and in some cases obviously rather costly. It was furniture chosen with discretion. “Better off than they used to be,” was her mental comment.

She glanced at the fresh chintz curtains, at the two or three little pieces of silver, exquisitely cared for, on mantelpiece and tables; at the flowers everywhere. “She’s as dainty as ever,” was her next reflection.

A photograph on the top of a writing-table caught her wandering attention. She took it up, and examined it with interest.

It was that of a man of a possible five-and-thirty, clean-shaven, handsome, with something eager, enthusiastic, almost childlike about the eyes, and the mouth of a sensualist.

Mrs. Summers replaced the photograph; it was of Cecily’s husband, but she was more interested in Cecily, and of her she could find no picture.

She walked presently to the door which led into the garden. Looking out upon its cool greenness and beauty, her thoughts were full of its owner. A very close friendship, rather than the tie of blood, bound her to the woman for whose coming she waited. Much of her girlhood had been spent with Cecily, and up to the time of her own marriage, six years ago, she had stayed weeks at a time at the Merivales’ house in Chelsea. It had been an interesting house to visit. Cecily’s father, a widower and a well-known doctor, was the type of man who attracted the better minds, the more striking personalities, and Cecily was undoubtedly the woman to keep them.

Apparently gazing into the quiet Surrey garden, in reality Mrs. Summers was looking into the drawing-room at Carmarthen Terrace, seeing it as it had appeared on many an evening in the past. The room was full of firelight and candlelight, a quiet, restful room, a little old-fashioned with its traces of mid-Victorianism, brought by Cecily’s clever touch into harmony with a more modern standard of taste. Mrs. Summers remembered the pattern of the long chintz curtains, remembered the subdued tone of the walls, the china in the big cabinet, the water-colors which were the pride of her uncle’s heart. She saw him talking earnestly at one end of the room, his fine gray head conspicuous among the group of men who surrounded him—men well known in the world of science, of letters, and of art. Even more distinctly she saw Cecily, the young hostess and mistress of the house, in the midst of the younger men and women of their circle. She heard the laughter. There was always laughter near Cecily, whose airy insouciance was amusing enough successfully to disguise real ability.

“I’m quite clever enough to pass for a fluffy fool—when necessary.” This, a long-ago remark of her cousin’s, suddenly recurred to Mrs. Summers, à propos of nothing, and she wondered whether Cecily ever wrote anything now. Then her thoughts went back to Cecily as a hostess. She had been looked upon by some of her friends as a brilliant woman, a woman whose social gifts, whose power of pleasing—as well as leading—should carry her far in the yet wider world which would open for her when she made the excellent marriage that every one predicted.

And, after all, Cecily had married Robert Kingslake, a writer with nothing but his pen between him and starvation.

Rose remembered the first day he came to the house, a rather sombre, rather picturesque figure, with his dark eyes and graceful, lithe body. Things moved very quickly after that first evening, so quickly that in retrospect there seemed to Mrs. Summers to have been scarcely a moment of ordinary acquaintanceship. There was a slight interval devoted to impetuous, ardent love-making, and then the wedding, for which she, herself a year-old bride, had not been able to stay.

Her husband’s regiment had been ordered to India a week before Cecily Merivale became Cecily Kingslake, and she had sailed with him. A breath of warm air swept towards the open door, and fanned the short curtains at the window; it brought with it the scent of carnations, and to Mrs. Summers a sudden vision of Cecily as she had last seen her.

She was sitting on the edge of her bed in her room at Carmarthen Terrace. The room was flooded with sunshine. The basin on the washstand was, Mrs. Summers remembered, full of carnations, and as she entered the room she had exclaimed at their beauty.

“They’ve just come. I’m going to arrange them,” Cecily had said. She held a letter which had also evidently just come, and as she raised her head the look on her face had startled her cousin. She remembered fearing for her. Could any human being with impunity be as ecstatically happy as that? It was like tempting Providence.

Something of this, half in jest, half seriously, she had tried to say, and Cecily had laughed, the low, trembling laugh of a delight too deep to find other expression. She had given herself over to her love as the woman a little difficult, more than a little fastidious, always gives herself—with a surrender complete and unquestioning.

The sunny bedroom, the dainty new frocks over the backs of the chairs, the litter of boxes and paper about the room, the brilliant flowers, and Cecily in her white petticoat, her white shoulders bare;—beautiful, proud, and smiling,—Mrs. Summers saw her as though five days rather than five years had passed since they had met.

She moved, and glanced back over her shoulder. The memory was so vivid that it stirred her to impatience. Why didn’t Cecily come? A door closed sharply.

“Where? Where is she?” It was the same clear, eager voice, and Mrs. Summers smiled, suddenly reassured.

The next moment Cecily’s arms were round her, and there was a rush of incoherent questions. Then Rose gently pushed her back, and they looked at one another.

Involuntarily an exclamation rose to the elder woman’s lips, mercifully checked, as she recognized, by Cecily’s eager words.

“You are just the same!” she cried. “You’ve scarcely changed at all.” And then came the inevitable pause. Rose listened to a thrush singing, and to the distant sound of a mowing-machine. She seemed to have been listening quite a long time before Cecily broke in so sharply that her voice was almost like a cry.

“Ah no! don’t look at me! I’m old and ugly. I’ve changed, haven’t I, Rose?” The question ended in a nervous laugh.

CHAPTER II

“I ’M dying to go into the garden,” said Mrs. Summers. She slipped her arm within Cecily’s, and while she talked volubly, felt its trembling gradually lessen. “Tongue cannot tell what I’ve endured since I landed on Tuesday,” she exclaimed. “The children’s ayah has been ill, relations have incessantly banged at the front door, Mother has had one of her attacks—excitement, you know,—and I’ve been tearing my hair. I daren’t write to tell you when to expect me because I didn’t know from hour to hour when I could get away. At last to-day there was a lull; so, forbidding anything to happen in my absence, I just rushed off to you.”

“And the babies?” asked Cecily.

“Splendid. They got horribly spoilt on board, and now Mother’s putting the finishing touches.”

“And Jack?”

“Very fit when I left him, a month ago. But I’m not going to talk babies, nor even husbands. I want to know about you.”

Cecily shrugged her shoulders. “There’s nothing to tell,” she said. “You saw me a month before I came into this house; I’ve been here ever since. This is rather a nice seat.”

They sat down on a bench under a beech tree, and for all her volubility Rose felt herself nonplussed. She glanced at Cecily, her momentary hesitation as to what to say next indicated by a little furrow between the eyes.

Rose Summers was scarcely a pretty, but certainly a striking woman, who, in spite of trying circumstances in the shape of an Eastern climate, looked younger than her thirty-one years. Her figure, of the athletic type, was good; she was exceedingly well dressed, and she wore her clothes with distinction. Her slightly freckled face had a healthy tint, and her eyes—gray, clear, and steady—were beautiful as well as kindly. Their expression was contradicted, to some extent, by the sarcasm indicated in a rather large and certainly humorous mouth. The eyes she turned upon her friend now were troubled, almost incredulous. Her mental picture of the Cecily of five years back had been so vivid that, even with the witness before her, she could not realize the change those years had brought.

Cecily was still graceful; nothing could rob her of the beautiful movements which characterized every change of attitude; and as she threw herself back against the cushions in the corner of the bench, for the first time Mrs. Summers recognized the Cecily of the past.

But her beauty was wellnigh gone. It was a beauty that had always largely depended on happiness, and now, with her blue eyes faded, the delicate color gone from her cheeks, her hair still soft but lustreless, she was almost a plain woman. Rose glanced furtively from her face to her dress. It was of simple dark blue linen, quite neat, quite serviceable. She thought of the dainty muslins, the ribbons, the flowers of earlier summers—and the ludicrousness of even imagining Cecily in a gown that could be characterized as serviceable!

“When you begin to neglect your frocks, Cis, I shall know the end is near.” In the old days Mrs. Summers had often told her this. She recalled it now, and made haste to break the silence.

“Where is Robert?” she asked. “Do I call him Robert? I forget.”

“Of course you do. He’s in town—reading at the British Museum.”

Rose raised her eyebrows with a laugh. “Since when has our Robert become so studious?”

“He’s writing a historical novel, and has to study up the period. Robert is getting quite famous, you know, Rose,” she added, after a moment’s pause.

“Yes—but you, Cis? Why are you not famous?”

“I? Oh, I’m married—instead,” she replied, with a little laugh.

“Tell me all about Robert,” demanded Mrs. Summers. “If you only knew how horribly out of things I feel! I know nothing of what’s been going on in the book world.”

“I should think not—with two babies to look after.”

“And the constant moving from one station to another. One loses touch so quickly, and you know, Cis,” with a touch of reproach, “you haven’t written. Why didn’t you write? For the last year or two I’ve scarcely heard anything of you.”

For a moment her cousin was silent, and when she spoke her voice trembled.

“I know. But after baby died, I hadn’t the heart. And then——” She broke off abruptly.

Mrs. Summers’ voice was very gentle.

“Yes, dear, of course—I understand,” she said. “But tell me everything now. Robert’s getting famous? That means that you’re getting rich, you lucky little wretch!”

“Yes,” returned Cecily. “Yes, I suppose we shall be rich,” she added, slowly.

“Bless the child! Aren’t you glad? Isn’t he glad?”

“Oh, yes, he’s very glad. We can get away now.” She spoke in a quiet, unemotional tone, and Rose glanced at her sharply.

“Get away? But doesn’t he love this place?”

“No, he’s sick of it,” she said, still in the same indifferent voice. “We’re going to sell it, and move to London in the autumn.”

“But Robert was so wild to take it!”

“That was five years ago.”

“It’s perfectly lovely, of course,” returned her friend, glancing round her. “But you never wanted to come, I remember. You wanted so much to live in town. The discussion of town versus country was at its height when I left. So country won?”

“Yes, country won,” Cecily repeated.

“Well, it’s beautiful,” Rose repeated. “I never saw such flowers. What a gardener you must have!”

Cecily laughed. “I am the gardener. I do it nearly all myself.”

Rose’s astonishment kept her silent. Cecily, who knew nothing of country things! Cecily, who, in spite of her love for nature, belonged first to the town—to its life, its thoughts, its opportunities! To this meeting with the friend of her girlhood she had been looking forward for months, and she had met a stranger. She had foolishly expected to take up the thread of intimacy where she had dropped it, and in the interval a whole new pattern had been woven,—a pattern in faded colors, whose design she did not understand.

Cecily was obviously unhappy; obviously, also, she was keeping her at arm’s length, and with such success that she had not the courage to ask direct questions. With gratitude she hailed the appearance of a maid who came with tea, as a relief to her embarrassment—that terrible embarrassment one feels in the presence of a close friend to whose mind one has lost the key.

While the cloth was being spread, and the maid was moving to and fro from the house, they exchanged information on family matters.

“Diana is almost grown up,” said Cecily, speaking of her sister, whom Mrs. Summers remembered as a child of twelve. “You know she’s been living with Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary since father died?” The softening of her voice, the hesitation with which she spoke his name, reminded Rose of one great grief, at least, through which in her absence her friend had passed. “You will like Diana,” Cecily added after a moment. “Of course you’re going to stay to-night, Rose?”

Mrs. Summers admitted that she was open to an invitation. “When is Robert coming back?” she inquired.

“This afternoon, I think. He was staying last night at his godmother’s—Lady Wilmot, you know.”

The mention of her husband’s name did not, as Rose hoped, lead to confidences. Cecily began at once to inquire the earliest date at which her friend could leave the children long enough for a “proper visit,” and Mrs. Summers was soon driven to make conversation.

“What a ridiculous little world it is!” she remarked, stirring her tea; “I haven’t yet been home a week, and already I’ve run across people I’d lost sight of for years before I left England. Now, on Monday, for instance, I was going to the dressmaker’s when I met a girl I used to know, a girl called Philippa Burton.”

“Philippa Burton!” echoed Cecily, with interest. “Why, I went to school with her. A rather pretty dark girl?”

“Major Burton’s daughter? Yes? How strange!”

“Philippa Burton! How it brings all the schooldays back!” exclaimed Cecily, with a retrospective laugh. “I had no idea you knew her, Rose. When did you meet her?”

“That year I went to Leipzig to study music, you know. She was in the same pension, studying something or other also; I forget what. Affectation, I should think.”

“But she had brought that to a fine art even as a schoolgirl,” Cecily remarked. “Tell me about her. We left school the same term, I remember. Is she as pretty as ever?” She spoke with animation, obviously glad of a topic which drew conversation away from personal matters.

“Pretty?—yes, in a floppy fashion.”

Cecily laughed. “Oh, she still flops? She used to be a most intense young woman. When she asked you to pass the salt at dinner, you felt inclined to burst into tears. She was High Church when I knew her, but that was early in her career.”

“Oh, yes, there’s been Rationalism since then, and Socialism, and Vegetarianism, and Theosophy, and what not. Just now it’s Sandals and the Simple Life, whatever that may mean. It seems to cover a multitude of complexities.”

“Does she still yearn?”

“Oh, horribly! She begins at breakfast-time, I’m sure. She’s doing miniatures and mystic drawings now.”

“And mouse-traps, and moonshine, and everything else that begins with an M? It sounds like Alice in Wonderland. Go on. I’m awfully interested to hear of her again. Even as a schoolgirl Philippa posed more than any other human being I’ve ever met.”

“She has a studio in Fulham somewhere,” Mrs. Summers continued. “I happened to be quite close to it when I met her, and she asked me to come in to tea. She had grape-nuts and plasmon. It’s astonishing what lurid views of life can be nourished upon this apparently mild diet,” she added, reflectively.

“Are Philippa’s views lurid?” asked Cecily.

“Oh, my uninstructed married ignorance is to blame, of course!” declared Mrs. Summers, with a meek expression.

“What did she say?”

“A great many things—most of them quite unfit for publication. But the latest and simplest gospel, according to Burton, appears to be, ‘Down with the proprietary view of marriage.’”

Cecily leaned back against her cushions. “Ah!” she said.

“Yes,” continued Mrs. Summers, meditatively, “there should be room in life for frank, free comradeship—camaraderie was, I think, the word—between husbands and ladies who are living the Simple Life. Room for beautiful, breezy, ennobling friendships, untrammelled by vulgar jealousy on the part of the wife.”

“I see,” returned Cecily. “And is the wife to have beautiful, breezy friendships too?”

“Oh, yes! Liberty, Fraternity (presumably), and Equality, of course.”

Cecily was silent a moment. “And you don’t believe in that kind of thing?” she asked.

Mrs. Summers shrugged her shoulders.

“My dear, I haven’t lived the Simple Life,” she returned, dryly.

“Some more tea?” Cecily suggested. “Well, a complicated biscuit, then? I’m afraid I haven’t any plasmon in the house. I wonder now whether a woman like Philippa Burton is more of a hypocrite or a self-deceiver?” she added, thoughtfully, after a few moments.

“About her theories, you mean?”

“Or her practices. A woman seldom has a theory without a concrete example to illustrate it. Philippa has a concrete example, of course?”

“Oh, yes, one of the husbands who comes to be ennobled.”

“Isn’t his wife suited to the task?”

“Apparently not. He is a great genius, warped, stifled, suffocated by the atmosphere of domesticity.”

“Poor man,” said Cecily.

“The wife’s crime, as far as I can understand,” pursued Mrs. Summers, “is her existence, and from Philippa’s point of view I admit it’s enough. No doubt when a man’s tired of his wife it is awfully annoying and stultifying to his genius. But somehow, while Philippa talked, I felt rather sorry for the poor little woman whose mind is so ill-balanced that she can’t turn off her emotions to order.”

“Is the man in love with Philippa, do you think?”

“Well, as he generally spends several hours a day with her, I should say he was—speaking of the human man as I know him.”

“And Philippa?” asked Cecily.

“Philippa, my dear, has sandals and an exalted mind. I also suspect her of a certain amount of concealed jaeger,—and she thinks him very noble. He always speaks ‘quite nicely’ of his wife.” Mrs. Summers paused, the ironical smile deepening upon her lips. “Under these circumstances,” she continued, “the dénouement may be a little delayed.”

“Ah well!” observed Cecily, rising. “It’s a very common little story, no doubt.” There was an underlying ring of bitterness in her words which did not escape her friend’s notice, as she too got up from the bench. “You’d like to come to your room, Rose? Dinner’s at half-past seven.”

“Oh, common enough, of course,” returned Rose, in answer to her first remark. “There’s nothing particularly remarkable about Mr. Fergus Macdonald, I should imagine——”

She was stooping to pick up her handkerchief as she spoke, when a half-articulate exclamation made her sharply raise her head.

Cecily was standing looking at her. “Mr.——? I didn’t catch the name,” she said, in an odd voice.

“Fergus Macdonald,” repeated Rose. “She didn’t tell me his name, but I couldn’t help seeing a very soulful inscription in a book. Why, Cecily, do you know him?” She stammered over the last words, for while she spoke, every drop of color had ebbed away from the other woman’s face.

“Cecily!” she urged.

Cecily sank into the seat she had just left. There was silence for a moment, and then she began to laugh.

“Cecily!” said Mrs. Summers again. “Don’t, Cecily! Do you know him?”

“A little,” she replied. “He’s my husband.”

There was quite a long silence. Rose noticed the long shadows on the grass, was conscious of the brilliance of a bed of flowers in the sunset light.

“Robert!” she whispered at last. “But how——”

“It’s his writing name,” said Cecily, wearily. She had left off laughing now. “Oh, of course, you didn’t know, dear. As you say, you have been out of things——” Her voice trailed off without finishing the sentence.

Mrs. Summers mentally reviewed the preceding conversation. “O Cis,” she murmured, “I could kill myself for it. What a fool I am!—what a fool!”

CHAPTER III

“HERE’S Robert!” exclaimed Cecily, under her breath. “Don’t worry. I’m all right. It doesn’t matter.”

Rose saw with relief that though her face was still colorless it was quite calm, and almost before she had realized that a man was crossing the lawn towards them, she heard her voice again.

“Robert,” she said, “it’s Rose. She took me by surprise to-day.”

Kingslake put out his hand, smiling. “You have been expected for some time. Why, it’s—how many years?”

“Five,” returned Mrs. Summers, laconically.

“Only five? I thought it was longer.” He began to ask about the journey, the date of her arrival, all the conventional questions relating to the circumstances, in the midst of which, as Rose observed, he had apparently forgotten a greeting to his wife. He turned to her at last.

“Well, dear! I’m rather late.” He put some letters on the tea-table. “The post’s in. I found these in the hall.”

Cecily took them up, and began to open the envelopes.

“May I, Rose?” she murmured, absently.

“Do sit down, Mrs. Summers,” urged Kingslake, “we need not go in for ten minutes.”

He seated himself also as she complied, and while he continued the desultory conversation he had begun with her, Rose noticed that he glanced every now and then at his wife, who was deep in her letters.

At first sight he was not much altered. He was still the good-looking, rather picturesque man she remembered; but the hint of weakness in his face was more pronounced, and the lines about his mouth had grown querulous. As she talked, Rose watched him curiously. She was wondering at the reason for the furtive looks he occasionally threw in his wife’s direction. There was a trace of anxiety in his face for which she could not account. Cecily’s correspondence lasted for some time, but at last she raised her head.

“This is quite remarkable,” she said, in a voice which struck Rose as rather clearer even than her usual clear tones. “I’ve just heard from an old school-fellow—a girl I’ve lost sight of for years.”

Mrs. Summers’ eyes flashed with sudden comprehension.

“She says she has met you, Robert,” continued Cecily, in the same tone.

“Oh? May I smoke, Mrs. Summers?” He drew out his cigarette-case. “Who is the lady?”

“Philippa Burton.”

“Oh, yes! She was dining at Lady Wilmot’s last night.” He threw away the match. “What does she say?”

His wife began to read:—

“Dear Cecily,—You will wonder who is addressing you in this familiar fashion, and even when you look at the signature, I wonder whether you will remember your old school-fellow—Philippa Burton? I am writing because, after this week, I shall be a near neighbor of yours. I have broken down a little, over my work; my doctor has ordered me country air, and I find the village to which he is sending me is your village! Sheepcote is so easy of access to town that I can run up when it is absolutely necessary, do as much work as I am allowed, and, I hope, renew my friendship with you. I met your husband yesterday at Lady Wilmot’s. What a charming man he is, and how proud you must be of him.”

“Spare my blushes,” interpolated Kingslake, in a lazy voice. Cecily concluded—

“May I sign myself, as in old days,

“Affectionately yours,
“Philippa Burton.”

She folded the letter deliberately, and replaced it in its envelope.

“Well, you can look after her a little, can’t you?” observed Kingslake. “You might see about getting her rooms, perhaps? Wouldn’t old Mrs. Green take her?—or the Watford woman? But this isn’t very amusing for Mrs. Summers, I’m afraid.” He turned to her politely.

“Oh, on the contrary,” she answered, “these bright, brave young women who work for their living, and at intervals have nervous breakdowns, interest me enormously. It’s a new type to me.”

Kingslake’s face darkened at her flippant tone.

“Ah! you happy married women who are shielded from the world are rather slow to understand some of the truths of life,” he observed, a note of indignation struggling through the suavity of his tone.

“Is it only the lies we encounter then—we happy married women?” she returned, lightly. “That doesn’t speak well for the men who shield us!”

Cecily rose. “Come,” she said, “it’s nearly dinner-time.”

Upstairs, in the spare room to which she showed her friend, Rose turned round with sudden vehemence. “Little devil!” she exclaimed, pointing to the letter her cousin still held. “It’s a feminine masterpiece. Not one untrue statement, yet a lie from beginning to end.”

Cecily was silent. “Don’t!” she said at last, under her breath. “I’ve got to get through the evening.”

Rose glanced at her, and, without speaking again, let her go.

When Cecily entered her bedroom, Kingslake opened his dressing-room door.

“Miss Burton told me she was a school-fellow of yours,” he began. “Were you great friends?”

“Not particularly,” returned Cecily, taking her tea-gown from the wardrobe.

There was silence for a moment.

“She seems a nice sort of girl,” he continued, tentatively.

“She used to be pretty,” said Cecily, staring at herself in the glass as she took down her hair. “Is she pretty now?”

“Yes—rather. At least, yes, I suppose she is.” His voice was studiedly careless. “Mrs. Summers hasn’t altered much,” he continued. “Looks very young still.” He pushed the door wider, and came into the room as he spoke, still fidgeting with his tie.

“We’re a contrast in that respect, aren’t we?” said Cecily, slowly. “I’ve altered a great deal since we were married, haven’t I, Robert?” She still kept her eyes fixed upon the glass from which, as she arranged her hair, her own set face confronted her.

Robert was wandering rather aimlessly about the room. “Oh, I don’t know. Have you?” he replied, absently; then, glancing over her shoulder into the mirror, “You’re looking very washy just now,” he added.

His wife said nothing, and presently he flung himself on the window-seat, and began to play with the silver ornaments on the dressing-table.

“Oh, by the way, whom do you think I ran across at Waterloo this afternoon?” he broke out with a suddenness obviously premeditated. “Mayne—Dick Mayne, you know, just home from Alaska, or Siberia, or wherever it was.”

Cecily pinned on the brooch in front of her tea-gown with deliberation.

“Central Africa,” she said. “Did you speak to him?”

“Speak to him? Of course,” echoed her husband. “I asked him to come down and stay a bit,” he added, opening and shutting a pin-box while he spoke. “He’s a great fisherman, fortunately, or else I don’t know what amusement we could offer him in this God-forsaken spot.”

He glanced at Cecily.

“Well?” he broke out impatiently, after a moment. “You’ve no objection, I suppose? What’s the matter?”

She began to put on her rings, very slowly.

“Nothing’s the matter,” she said. “I was only thinking——”

“Yes? Thinking what?” he urged, moving irritably.

“How jealous you used to be of Dick Mayne.” She turned from the glass, and her eyes, for the first time, met her husband’s. He evaded their glance by springing up.

“Oh, my dear Cecily,” he began angrily. “What nonsense! I do hate this——” The deep sound of the gong downstairs cut him short.

“Please don’t let us discuss it now,” she said, and moved before him out of the room.

CHAPTER IV

THE evening had worn to an end—a really terrible evening for Rose, though both she and Cecily had talked and laughed with apparent ease. Cecily followed her cousin into her bedroom, lighted the candles, rearranged the curtains, was solicitous for her comfort, and, with a flow of light talk, kept her at a distance.

“Good-night, dear,” she said at last, kissing her hastily. “You must be dreadfully tired. Don’t be frightened if you hear a footstep on the stair in the small hours. Robert doesn’t generally come up till then. He writes so late.”

Mrs. Summers’ eyes questioned her mutely, but Cecily’s did not waver.

“Jane will bring your tea when you ring in the morning. Good-night. Sleep well.” She went out smiling, and as the door closed upon her Rose moved mechanically to the nearest chair and sat down. She felt dazed and stupid. Emotions had succeeded one another so rapidly in the past eight hours that the state of mind of which she was most acutely conscious was bewilderment. Through this confused sense, however, self-reproach pierced sharply. How like one of life’s practical jokes it was, to bring her thousands of miles over-sea to tell her best friend what any spiteful acquaintance in the village might have placed within her knowledge. Mrs. Summers looked round the pretty, peaceful room with a sense of oppression. Over the windows, the rose-patterned chintz curtains hung primly. She got up and pushed them aside, and then blew out the candles. A lovely night had succeeded the lovely day, and the garden was magical with moonlight. Sweet scents rose from it. Pools of shadow lay on the silvered grass. Deep and mysterious the great trees stood massed against the luminous sky.

Rose leaned against the window-frame, and let the silence and the peace quiet her thoughts, while she tried to realize the stranger she had found in the place of the old impulsive Cecily. It was the self-control that chilled and baffled her, even while she admired its exercise. Mentally she reviewed the evening, and found Cecily’s demeanor excellent. Her manner towards her husband had been perfectly friendly. A stranger seeing them together, she reflected, would have thought them on very good terms, though Robert might have been pronounced rather absent-minded and preoccupied. At the remembrance of Kingslake, Rose’s face darkened.

“She needn’t have taken so much trouble,” was her bitter reflection. “He wouldn’t have noticed even if she’d been disagreeable. His mind was elsewhere.”

To Rose, whose recollection of Robert was as a lover, so devoted that the only clear idea she had retained about his personality was that he loved Cecily,—to Rose, his present obvious indifference seemed a thing almost incredible. It brought to her, as nothing else since her home-coming had brought to her, the realization that five years is long—that the heart of life may be cut out with its passing.

Mrs. Summers felt her eyes dim with sudden tears. She was hurt at her friend’s reticence. The Cecily she knew had vanished, and with her, it seemed, she had taken all youth, all keenness, all desire. In that moment of disappointment, Rose had a horrible premonition of age.

A tap at the door startled her. While she was hurrying towards it, across the moonlit room, it opened, and Cecily came in.

She was in a long, pale-colored Japanese wrapper, her hair all loose about her face. Standing there in the moonlight, she was the girl Mrs. Summers remembered, and with a revulsion of feeling too glad for words she took her by the arms and put her into an easy-chair near the window.

“It was so lovely, I blew out the candles,” she began.

“Yes,” murmured Cecily, absently. She leaned forward and touched her cousin’s dress with trembling fingers. “It wasn’t because I was horrid or anything that I didn’t stay,” she said, incoherently. “It was because I was afraid to begin. I’m afraid to let myself——” She put her hand on her breast with a gesture that, to Rose, was more eloquent than the broken sentence.

“Tell me, dear,” she urged. “I would have bitten off my tongue rather than have said all I did to-day, but, apart from that, I can’t help seeing that things are wrong with you. I felt it from the first moment. It made me nervous, I suppose, and so I babbled on like a fool about the first thing that came into my head.”

“It doesn’t matter,” returned Cecily, in a weak voice. “It isn’t that.”

“Tell me,” urged Rose again.

“It’s difficult,” she murmured, after a moment, “because there doesn’t seem anything definite to tell. It’s just come like this.”

There was a silence through which Mrs. Summers waited patiently.

“Rose,” she heard at last, “you saw Robert with me, before you went away. He seemed in love, didn’t he?”

“I never saw any one quite so infatuated.” Mrs. Summers’ reply was emphatic.

“And now he speaks of me ‘quite nicely.’... It seems strange, doesn’t it?” She spoke very quietly, as though she were tired.

“I shall never forgive myself!” murmured Rose, turning her head away.

Cecily was roused. “Don’t worry about that!” she exclaimed. “It’s almost a relief to know that there’s something definite—that it’s not only just boredom—with me.” Before Rose could speak, she added, hastily, as though with a determination to get out the words, “Do you know he’s invited Dick Mayne to stay here?”

Rose’s dress rustled with her quick movement of surprise. “He! Invited Dick Mayne?” she echoed.

“Yes—Dick Mayne—to amuse me,” replied Cecily. In the moonlight Rose saw the bitter little smile on her lips.

“But surely he remembers—why, he used to be as jealous as——”

“Hush!” exclaimed Cecily, with a mockery at which her friend winced. “Jealousy is a vulgar passion!”

“Don’t!” murmured Mrs. Summers, vaguely.

“No,” returned Cecily, after a moment. “Because I suppose there’s a good deal to be said for Robert. I didn’t understand the game. I didn’t understand men a bit when I married, Rose, though I knew so many. And I was no baby either. I was five-and-twenty.”

“One can be very much of a baby at five-and-twenty,” observed Mrs. Summers.

“You see, when we married,” Cecily went on, in the same even voice, “Robert wanted me all to himself. He was quite unreasonable about it. He was hurt because I urged that we should live in town.... I tried to have some common-sense. I tried to look ahead—for both of us. I knew in my heart it would be bad for him—for any man—to have no circle, to drop out of things. But he wouldn’t see it. We needed only one another, he said. So I gave in at last, and we settled down here. And naturally we dropped out of all the town set. You know how easily one can do that, especially when there’s very little money. And we had very little indeed at first.”

Rose nodded. “I know,” she said.

“At first, of course, for the first year or more perhaps, it was Paradise. I needn’t bore you with all that.... Then at the end of the second year, baby came ... and I was awfully happy. Perhaps even then Robert was beginning to be bored—I don’t know. I was too happy to suspect it.” There was a long pause. As she talked, Cecily had drawn herself into the shadow, so that her face was hidden; when she spoke again her voice was almost inaudible.

“She was a sweet baby, Rose.... Her hair....” She checked herself abruptly, with a half sob. Mrs. Summers’ hand touched hers. She knew the whole bitterness of the tragedy. Cecily’s life had been in danger at the birth of her little girl, and later she had written that this would be her only child.

“I got very ugly after that,” she went on at last. “I fretted so. I couldn’t help it. I must have been very dull then. I dare say I didn’t amuse Robert.”

Mrs. Summers made an impatient exclamation.

“Ah, but it was a mistake!” cried Cecily; “men expect to be amused. If we want to keep them we must work hard.... And then when I did try to pull myself together and be cheerful, it was too late. Nothing I did pleased him. If I put on a pretty frock he never noticed. If I tried to talk in my old way—I used to be quite amusing once, wasn’t I, Rose?” She broke off with a pathetic little laugh. “When I fooled, you know, he was irritated, and asked me what on earth I was driving at. He would never let me talk about his work. He said it annoyed him to have it ‘pawed over.’” She stopped short, and Rose felt her trembling. “I can’t tell you all of it,” she whispered. “It hurts too much.”

Mrs. Summers waited a few moments.

“And lately he has begun to talk about the necessity for friendships,” she began, in a voice purposely hard and matter of fact.

“Yes,” she continued, “while you were telling me about that girl and her theories it all sounded so familiar.”

“She has adopted your husband’s theories, you think?”

Cecily shook her head with a faint smile.

“No. He has adopted hers. It’s a new phase with Robert. That’s why I’ve been suspecting a fresh influence lately.” She hesitated. “Robert’s like that,” she said at last. “He’s susceptible to every new impression. He reflects everything that——” She paused. “It’s the same with his work,” she went on. “He is always under some fresh influence. Lately it’s been swashbuckling. He’s made money out of that.”

“Why, his work used to be psychological!” exclaimed Rose. “Minute analysis and hair-splitting distinctions!”

“I know. That was one of the phases. There have been many masters since then. And now, I suppose, there will be as many—mistresses.”

She spoke with a quiet irony, more painful than any display of grief. It was the tone of a woman already so disillusioned that a fact more or less made comparatively little difference.

“Cecily,” ventured Mrs. Summers, almost timidly, “there may be nothing wrong.”

Cecily made a weary movement. “Do you know, that seems of little importance. It’s the other things that count, and when they’ve gone——” She did not finish the sentence. Outside, the garden, all vaporous, blue and silver, was like a vision. Softly, quite softly at first, a nightingale began to sing, each note falling like a drop of crystal water through the blue air. Both women were motionless till the song ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

“How beautiful!” murmured Rose.

“I shall miss this garden,” said Cecily, suddenly. “I have worked in it for three years. Every woman ought to have a garden—then at least she gets some of the roses of life. Are you happy?” she added, almost in the same breath, with startling abruptness.

Mrs. Summers hesitated. “Yes,” she returned, finally, “in a placid way—yes. But then, I’m a practical woman. I always left the stars out of my calculations, didn’t I? Jack and I suited each other. We have continued to suit each other. I never expected him to be the lover of romance. Poor dear! he’s not at all made for the part. But he wears well, you know, Cis. And,” her voice softened, “I have the babies.”

Cecily was silent. “Yours is the sane view of life,” she said at last.

“I know; though in moods, fortunately rare, I would exchange it for an insane one,” returned Mrs. Summers, with a laugh. “Though I leave the stars out, I don’t forget they are there.”

“I wonder?” returned Cecily.

“Are you going to say anything about this to your husband?” asked Mrs. Summers, with apparent irrelevance.

“No,” said Cecily, briefly.

“And Mayne? Are you going to have him down here?”

“Yes. Why not? If Robert wishes it, how can I object? I shall be very glad to see Dick again,” she added.

“Is it wise?”

“That’s Robert’s affair.”

“I was thinking of Dick.”

“That’s his affair. He had my answer long ago, and he knows I meant it. Besides,” she smiled a little, “don’t worry—I’ve lost my looks.”

“Dick is not that sort.”

“Every man is that sort.”

Mrs. Summers glanced at her, as she sat with the little mocking smile still on her lips.

“O Cis, dear,” she murmured, deprecatingly.

Cecily got up. “I must go,” she said; “I’m wearing you out.”

Mrs. Summers also rose. With a sudden movement she drew her friend into her arms. For a moment Cecily resisted. Then to the elder woman’s relief she broke into a passion of tears.

“I’ve been so wretched, Rose,” she whispered, incoherently. “He was everything to me. All the world! And now he goes to another woman, and tells her all the things that he used—and says all the words that—— Oh, what’s the good of talking!” she wailed. “It’s all over and done with. He doesn’t care any more. And I suppose he can’t help it. Sometimes I think I don’t care either. And then, all at once——”

It was the old wail, the woman’s plaint, eternal as the hills, ever recurring as the wind and the rains recur; as monotonous as they.

CHAPTER V

IT was Lady Wilmot’s at-home day, but so early in the afternoon that she could still indulge in the tête-à-tête gossip with the friend who had lunched with her, a branch of her life’s occupation in which she excelled.

She was a woman who supported well her fifty-five years. A little portly, her gray crinkled hair arranged à la Marquise, her ample skirts further suggesting the era of powder and patches, her bright eyes full of rather malicious humor, Lady Wilmot was a somewhat striking figure. That she was more feared than loved probably flattered the vanity which was not the least of her characteristics. The circumstance certainly did not affect her. Possessed of an income sufficiently large to make the exercise of life’s amenities a matter of inclination rather than of necessity, her inclination was naturally capricious, and she not infrequently smiled to hear herself described with a nervous laugh as “so delightfully uncommon.”

“Uncommon rude, my dear,” had been her reply in one instance, “as you would have discovered if I had happened to be Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Smith, or Mrs. Robinson.”

As it was, Lady Wilmot’s parties were attended by as heterogeneous a throng as any private house in London. In search of possible amusement, she cast her net wide, and, in company with men and women of her own sort, drew into the Onslow Square drawing-room, journalists who wrote fashion articles, novelists who went into many editions, painters whose imposing canvases appeared every year on the sacred walls of the Academy, as well as those who worked in Chelsea garrets. Then there were the faddists.

“I have the best collection in London,” Lady Wilmot was wont to boast. “I have several excellent antique Vegetarians, a very good color, considering; a complete set of Mystics, only slightly cracked; any number of women athletes in a fairly good state of preservation, as well as one or two interesting oddments.”

Lady Wilmot’s present guest was her niece, a sharp-faced little woman, who for two or three years had been living quietly in the country on account of her health. This fact at least was stimulating. It meant arrears of gossip to be retailed respecting the life-history of their common acquaintances, and since half-past one Lady Wilmot’s tongue had not been idle.

The doings of the immediate family lasted through a protracted and hilarious lunch, and when, somewhat maimed and damaged, its members had been dismissed, there still remained the concentric circles of acquaintances. Lady Wilmot began at the inner rings.

“You know Rose Summers is home?” she said, settling the fat cushions at her back with a view to lengthy comfort. “No, dear, without her gaby of a husband. She’s left him out there to get into mischief. Oh, yes, my dear, he’s not too great a fool for that. None of them are. Did you never meet Jack Summers? A huge imbecile, you know. Over life-size, all body and no brains. The ideal man for a soldier.”

“Rose had enough brains for two,” returned Mrs. Carruthers.

“Yes, but no looks. Most unfortunate arrangement for a woman. She has to marry a man stupid enough not to know she’s got them. She’s staying with Cecily Kingslake.”

“Oh, tell me about the Kingslakes,” asked Mrs. Carruthers, with interest. “They were just married the last time I met them. I used to think Cecily so pretty. What a mistake to make such a poor match!”

“You should see her now,” returned Lady Wilmot, composedly.

“Gone off?”

“Gone under. Buried beneath honeysuckle and green stuff. The worst of love in a cottage is that love doesn’t last, and the cottage does.”

“But I thought Robert was getting on? Some one was talking about his last book the other day, and saying——”

“Yes, quite lately he’s been making money. There was always a popular streak in Robert which only needed working. Some woman’s shown him where it lies, and he’s got it in full swing now, so the guineas are beginning to roll in.”

“Why some woman?”

Lady Wilmot chuckled. “Don’t you know our Robert? A clever woman laughs when she sees him coming.”

“Susceptible?”

“That’s putting it mildly. All men can take flattery in gigantic doses. Robert lives on it entirely. He dined here last night. Incidentally he ate his dinner, but his true meal was provided by the girl he took down, who flung at him pounds of the best butter,—solid pounds. I blushed for her and trembled for him, but I might have spared myself the trouble. She’s too clever, and he has too good a digestion.”

“Didn’t his wife come?”

“No. He comes up to town ‘to read,’ if one may believe him. And I happened to have asked Philippa Burton and young Nevern in to dine last night—not a dinner-party—so I invited Robert too.”

“Perhaps she’s the lady who inspires the new style of writing?” observed Mrs. Carruthers, building better than she knew.

“She’s quite capable of it,” returned Lady Wilmot, “but they only met last night. She has designs on Nevern, I think, temporarily abandoned for Robert. She’s coming this afternoon, by the way.” Lady Wilmot laughed again. “I asked her on purpose to meet Dick Mayne. I thought they’d be so quaint together.”

“Why?” inquired her niece.

“You haven’t seen Philippa? She’s one of the most interesting objects in my collection.”

“Where did you find her?”

“Don’t you remember Major Burton, that seedy-looking man at Cheltenham? Retired, you know, on half-pay. Used to be in your father’s regiment. Well, she’s his daughter. He died some five or six years ago, leaving her next to nothing, and now she potters about. You know the sort of thing such girls do; tinkering with copper, messing about with furnaces to make enamel hat-pins, designing horrible, bleak-looking furniture, and so on.”

“Does she get a living at that?”

“My dear, don’t ask me to probe the mysteries of a woman’s income,” exclaimed her hostess with a laugh. “She’s pretty, and evidently she finds sandals and mystic gowns useful. When a woman’s not sufficiently original to get money or notoriety by her brains, she often achieves both through her fads. Philippa is one of those young women who will always be ‘taken up’ by some one. Silly spinsters of uncertain age have a habit of doing it. She’s just been living with one of them who adored her—thought her a transcendent genius instead of a clever little humbug. Now the smash has come. If you mention Miss Wetherby to Philippa, she looks pained and sighs: ‘It is so sad to lose one’s illusions. Miss Wetherby is not quite the fine woman I thought her.’ What Miss Wetherby says about Philippa, I don’t know—I’m not acquainted with the lady—but I can guess. There used to be a man about. What’s become of him now I don’t know. Another illusion gone, possibly. Philippa’s mysterious in more ways than one. But there, my dear, what does it matter? If you begin to be moral, you lose half the fun of life. I’m strictly unmoral on principle—unmoral’s such a good word, isn’t it? Anyhow I’m looking forward to the meeting between Philippa and Dick Mayne. He doesn’t know the type, and she’ll embarrass him so beautifully. I hope she’ll try to flirt with him. I think I shall scream with joy if she does. It will be too funny.”

“You know Mr. Mayne is going to stay with the Kingslakes?” gasped Mrs. Carruthers, placing edgeways with difficulty her little contribution to “the news.”

“No!” It was a piece of information that had hitherto escaped her aunt, whose manner of receiving it caused Mrs. Carruthers to bridle with importance.

“Yes, I happened to meet him yesterday at the Vezeys’, and he told me so. Why shouldn’t he?”

“Why, you know how desperately in love he was with Cecily.”

“But that was years ago.”

“When they were engaged? Yes. My dear, if you’d heard Robert’s ravings at the time! Heavens! how funny it was! He and Cecily nearly came to grief over it, because Cecily said Mayne was an old friend, and she couldn’t refuse to see him, which was, I believe, what the lunatic wanted her to promise. Robert’s my godson, and he’s good-looking enough to make me quite fond of him, but he’s a heaven-born fool for all that. Have you ever heard his rhetoric when he’s excited? You should. It’s worthy of a successful melodrama. He used to do the romantic hero-in-love to perfection. His feeling for Cecily was such that it was a profanation for any other man to touch her hand, and did I think a woman who allowed a rejected suitor to have tea in the same drawing-room with her, could possess that burning, white-souled adoration for her affianced husband which he required from the woman who was to bear his name? I offered him the impossible advice of not being a fool, and Mayne went away to catch tigers and fevers—and the public ear.”

“Yes, he’s done that,” returned Mrs. Carruthers. “He’s quite a great man now—the papers are full of him.”

“Mr. Mayne,” announced the footman at the door.