December Love

CHAPTER IV

Lady Sellingworth was afraid. In spite of her many triumphs in the past she had a deep distrust of life. Since the tragedies of her middle age her curious natural diffidence, which the habit of the world had never been able to subdue, had increased. In ten years of retirement, in the hundreds of hours of solitude which those ten years had held for her, it had grown within her. And now it began to torment her.

Life brings gifts to almost everyone, and often the gift-bearer’s approach is absolutely unexpected. So it had been in Lady Sellingworth’s case. She had had no premonition that a change was preparing for her. Nothing had warned her to be on the alert when young feet turned into Berkeley Square on a certain Sunday in autumn and made towards her door. Abruptly, after years of neglect, it seemed as if life suddenly remembered that there was a middle-aged woman, with lungs which still mechanically did their work, and a heart which still obstinately persisted in beating, living in Berkeley Square, and that scarcely a bare bone had been thrown to her for some thousands of days. And then life brought her Craven, with an unusual nature, with a surely romantic mind, with a chivalrous sense that was out of the fashion, with faculties making for friendship; life offered, or seemed to offer her Craven, to whisper in her ear, “You have been starving alone for a long time. To tell the truth, I had forgotten all about you. I did not remember you were there. I don’t quite know why you persist in being there. But, as you do, and as you are wearing thin for want of sustenance, here is something for you!”

And now, because of what life had done, Lady Sellingworth was afraid. When she had parted from her friends after the theatre party, and was once more alone in her big house, she knew thoroughly, absolutely, for the first time what life had done.

All the calm, the long calm of her years of retirement from the world, had gone. She now knew how strangely safe she had felt in her loneliness. She had felt surely something of the safety of a nun of one of the enclosed orders. In her solitude she had learnt to understand how dangerous the great world is, how full of trials for the nerves, the temper, the flesh, the heart. The woman who goes into it needs to be armed. For many weapons thrust at her. She must be perpetually on the alert, ready to hold her own among the attacking eyes and tongues. And she must not be tired, or dull, or sad, must not show, or follow, her varying moods, must not quietly rest in sincerity. When she had lived in the world Lady Sellingworth had scarcely realized all this. But in her long retirement she had come fully to realize it. There had been a strange and embracing sense of safety permeating her solitary life. She had got up in the morning, she had gone to bed at night, feeling safe. For the storms of the passions were stilled, and though desire might stir sometimes, it soon slept again. For she never took her desire into danger. She did not risk the temptations of the world.

But now all the old restlessness, all the old anxiety and furtive uneasiness of the mind, had returned. She was again what she had often been more than ten years ago—a woman tormented. And—for she knew herself now—she knew what was in store for her if she gave herself again to life and her own inclinations.

For it had all come back; the old greedy love of sympathy and admiration, the old worship of strength and youth and hot blood and good looks, the old longing for desire and love, the old almost irritable passion to possess, to dominate, to be first, to submerge another human being in her own personality.

After ten years she was in love again, desperately in love. But she was an elderly woman now, so elderly that many people would no doubt think that it was impossible that she should be in love. How little such people knew about human nature! The evening had been almost as wonderful and as exciting to her as it could have been to a girl. When she had come into the hall of the Carlton and had seen Craven through the glass, had seen his tall figure, smooth, dark hair, and animated face glowing with health after the breezes and sunrays of Beaconsfield, she had known a feeling that a girl might have understood and shared.

And she was sixty!

What was to be done?

Craven was certainly fond of her already. Quietly she had triumphed that night. Three women had seen and had quite understood her little triumph. Probably all of them had wondered about it, had been secretly irritated by it. Certainly Beryl had been very much irritated. But in spite of that triumph, Lady Sellingworth felt almost desperately afraid that night when she was alone. For she knew how great the difference was between her feeling for Craven and his feeling for her. And with greater intimacy that difference, she felt sure, must even increase. For she would want from him what he would never want or even dream of wanting, from her. He would be satisfied in their friendship while she would be almost starving. He would never know that cruel longing to touch which marks the difference between what is love and what is friendship.

If she now let herself go, took no drastic step, just let life carry her on, she could have a strange and unusual, and, in its way, beautiful friendship, a friendship which to a woman with a different nature from hers might seem perfect. She could have that—and what would it be to her?

She longed to lay violent hands on herself; she longed to tear something that was an essential part of her to pieces, to scatter it to a wind, and let the wind whirl it away.

She knelt down that night before getting into bed and prayed. And when she did that she thought of Sellingworth and of his teachings and opinions. How he would have laughed at her if he had ever seen her do that! She had not wanted to do it in the years when she had been with him. But now, if his opinions had been well founded, he was only dust and perhaps a few fragments of bone. He could not laugh at her now. And she felt a really desperate need of prayer.

She did not pray to have something that she wanted. She knew that would be no use. Even if there was a God who attended to individuals, he would certainly not give her what she wanted just then. To do so would be deliberately to interfere with the natural course of things, arbitrarily to change the design. And something in Lady Sellingworth’s brain prevented her from being able even for a moment to think that God would ever do that. She prayed, therefore, that she might cease to want what she wanted; she prayed that she might have strength to do a tremendously courageous thing quickly; she prayed that she might be rewarded for doing it by afterwards having physical and mental peace; she prayed that she might be permanently changed, that she might, after this last trial, be allowed to become passionless, that what remained of the fiercely animal in her might die out, that she might henceforth be as old in nature as she already was in body. “For,” she said to herself, “only in that oldness lies safety for me! Unless I can be all old—mind and nature, as well as body—I shall suffer horribly again.”

She prayed that she might feel old, so old that she might cease from being attracted by youth, from longing after youth in this dreadful tormenting way.

When she got up from her knees it was one o’clock. She took two tablets of aspirin and got into bed. And directly she was in bed an idea seemed to hit her mind, and she trembled slightly, as if she had really received a blow. She had just been praying for something earnestly, almost violently, and she had prayed with clear understanding, with the understanding that a long and fully lived life brings to every really intelligent human being. Did she really want her prayer to be answered, or had she been trying to humbug herself? She had thought of a test which would surely prove whether she was genuine in her desire to escape from the torment that was lying in wait for her or not. Instead of receiving a visit from her Greek to-morrow, instead of being at home to Craven in the late afternoon, instead of giving herself up to the lure which must, she knew, certainly lead her on to emotional destruction, she might do this: she might telephone to Sir Seymour Portman to come to her and tell him that she would reward his long faithfulness.

It would be a way out. If she could bring herself to do it she would make herself safe. For though Seymour Portman had been so faithful, and she had never rewarded him, he was not a man any woman would dare to play with. Lady Sellingworth knew that she would never break a promise to him, would never play fast and loose with him. He was strong and he was true, and he had very high ideals and an almost stern code of honour. In accepting him as her husband she would shut a door of steel between herself and her past, with its sins and its many follies. She would begin again, as an old woman with a devoted husband who would know—none better—how to make himself respected, how to hold by his rights.

People might smile at such a marriage, but it would be absolutely suitable. Seymour was a few years older than she was. But he was still strong and upright, could still sit a horse as well as any man, still had a steady hand with his gun. He was not a ruin. She would be able to rest on him. A more perfect support for a woman than Seymour, if he loved, was surely not created. He was a gentleman to the core, and totally incapable of insincerity. He was fearless. He belonged to her world. He was persona grata at Court and in society. And he loved her in that extraordinary and very rare way—as the one woman. All he needed in a woman quite evidently he found in her. How? Why? She did not know, could not understand. But so it was. She would absolutely satisfy his desires.

The aspirin was stilling her nerves. She lay without moving. Had she been a humbug when she prayed? Had she prayed knowing quite well that her prayer was not going to be answered, not intending, or wishing, really, that it should be answered? Had she prayed without any belief in a Being who had the power and probably the will to give her what she asked for? Would she have prayed at all had she been sure that if she offered up a petition to be made old in nature as well as in body it would certainly be granted?

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” she whispered to herself.

The darkness of the big room suddenly seemed very strange. And she thought how odd it was that human beings need in every twenty-four hours a long period of blackness, that they make blackness by turning out light, and stretch themselves out in it as if getting ready for burial.

“Burial! If I’m not a humbug, if really I wish for peace, to-morrow I shall send for Seymour,” she said to herself. “Through him I can get peace of mind. He will protect me against myself, without even knowing that he is doing it. I have only to speak a sentence to him and all possibility of danger, torment and wildness will be over for ever.”

And then she thought of the safety of a prison. But anything was surely better than misery of mind and body, than wanting terribly from someone what he never wants to give you, what he never wants from you.

Torment in freedom, or stagnant peace in captivity behind the prison door—which was the more desirable? Craven’s voice through the telephone—their conversation about Waring—Seymour’s long faithfulness—if he were here now! How would it be? And if Craven—No! No!

Another tablet of aspirin—and sleep!

Lady Sellingworth did not pray the next morning. But she telephoned to Seymour Portman, and said she would be at home about five in the afternoon if he cared for an hour’s talk. She gave no hint that she had any special reason for asking him to come. If he only knew what was in her mind! His firm, quiet, soldier’s voice replied through the telephone that of course he would come. Somehow she guessed that he had had an engagement and was going to give it up for her. What would he not give up for her? And yet he was a man accustomed to command, and to whom authority was natural. But he was also accustomed to obey. He was the perfect courtier, devoted to the monarchy, yet absolutely free from the slave instinct. Good kings trust such men. Many women love them.

“Why not I?” Lady Sellingworth thought that day.

And it seemed to her that perhaps even love might be subject to will power, that a determined effort of will might bring it or banish it. She had never really tested her will in that way in connexion with love. But the time had come for the test to be made.

“Perhaps I can love Seymour!” she said to herself. “Perhaps I could have loved him years ago if I had chosen. Perhaps I have only to use my will to be happy with him. I have never controlled my impulses. That has been my curse and the cause of all my miseries.”

At that moment she entirely forgot the ten years of self-control which were behind her. The sudden return to her former self had apparently blotted them out from her memory.

After telephoning to Seymour Portman she wrote a little note to Craven and sent it round to the Foreign Office. In the note she explained briefly that she was not able to see him that afternoon as had been arranged between them. The wording of the note was cold. She could not help that. She wrote it under the influence of what she thought of just then as a decision. If she did what she believed she intended to do that afternoon she would have to be cold to Craven in the future. With her temperament it would be impossible to continue her friendship with Craven if she were going to marry Sir Seymour. She knew that. But she did not know how frigid, how almost brusque, her note to Craven was.

When he read it he felt as if he had received a cold douche. It startled him and hurt him, hurt his youthful sensitiveness and pride. And he wondered very much why Lady Sellingworth had written it, and what had happened to make her write to him like that. She did not even ask him to call on her at some other time on some other day. And it had been she who had suggested a cosy talk that afternoon. She had been going to show him a book of poems by a young American poet in whose work she was interested. And they would have talked over the little events of the preceding evening, have discussed Moscovitch, the play, the persistence of love, youth, age, everything under the sun.

Craven was severely disappointed. He even felt rather angry and hurt. Something in him was up in arms, but something else was distressed and anxious. It was extraordinary how already he had come to depend upon Lady Sellingworth. His mother was dead. He certainly did not think of Lady Sellingworth as what is sometimes called “a second mother.” There was nothing maternal about her, and he was fully aware of that. Besides, she did not fascinate him in the motherly way. No; but owing to the great difference in their ages he felt that he could talk to her as he could talk to nobody else. For he was in no intimate relation with any other woman so much older than himself. And to young women somehow one can never talk so freely, so companionably. Even in these modern days sex gets in the way. Craven told himself that as he folded up Lady Sellingworth’s letter. She was different. He had felt that for him there was quite a beautiful refuge in Berkeley Square. And now! What could have happened? She must surely be vexed about something he had done, or about something which had occurred on the previous evening. And he thought about the evening carefully and minutely. Had she perhaps been upset by Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde? Was she self-conscious as he was, and had she observed their concentration upon herself and him? Or, on the other hand, could she had misunderstood his manner with Miss Van Tuyn? He knew how very sensitive women are about each other. And Lady Sellingworth, of course, was old, although he never bothered, and seldom thought, about her age. Elderly women were probably in certain ways even more sensitive than young women. He could well understand that. And he certainly had rather made love to Miss Van Tuyn because of the horribly observing eyes of the “old guard.” And then, too, Miss Van Tuyn had finally almost required it of him. Had she not told him that she had insisted on Lady Sellingworth’s being asked to the theatre to entertain Braybrooke so that Craven and she, the young ones, might have a nice little time? After that what could he do but his duty? But perhaps Lady Sellingworth had not understood. He wondered, and felt now hurt and angry, now almost contrite and inclined to be explanatory.

When he left the Foreign Office that day and was crossing the Mall he was very depressed. A breath of winter was in the air. There was a bank of clouds over Buckingham Palace, with the red sun smouldering just behind their edges. The sky, as it sometimes does, held tenderness, anger and romance, and was full of lures for the imagination and the soul. Craven looked at it as he walked on with a colleague, a man called Marshall, older than himself, who had just come back from Japan, and was momentarily translated. He voyaged among the clouds, and was carried away across that cold primrose and delicate green, and his journey was into the ineffable, and beyond the rim of the horizon towards the satisfaction of the unexpressed, because inexpressible, desires. And Marshall talked about Japanese art and presently about geishas, not stupidly, but with understanding. And Craven thought: “If only I were going to Berkeley Square!” He had come down to earth, but in the condition which yearns for an understanding mind. Lady Sellingworth understood him. But now—he did not know. And he went with Marshall drearily to the St. James’s Club and went on hearing about geishas and Japanese art.

The bell sounded in Berkeley Square, and a footman let in Sir Seymour Portman, who was entirely unconscious that Fate had been working apparently with a view to the satisfaction of his greatest desire. He had long ago given up hope of being Adela Sellingworth’s husband. Twice that hope had died—when she had married Lord Manham, and when she had married Sellingworth. Adela could not care for him in that way. But now for many years she had remained unmarried, had joined him, as it were, in the condition of being lonely. That fact had helped him along the road. He could go to her and feel that he was in a certain degree wanted. That was something, even a good deal, in the old courtier’s life. He valued greatly the welcome of the woman whom he still loved with an undeviating fidelity. He was thankful, selfishly, no doubt—he often said so to himself—for her loneliness, because he believed himself able to cheer it and to alleviate it. And at last he had ceased to dread any change in her way of life. His Adela had evidently at last “settled down.” Her vivacious temperament, her almost greedy love of life, were abated. He had her more or less to himself.

As he mounted the staircase with his slow, firm step, holding his soldierly figure very upright, he was looking forward to one of the usual quiet, friendly conversations with Adela which were his greatest enjoyments, and as he passed through the doorway of the drawing-room his eyes turned at once towards the sofa near the big fireplace, seeking for the tall figure of the woman who so mysteriously had captured his heart in the long ago and who had never been able to let it out of her keeping.

But there was no one by the fire, and the butler said:

“I will tell her ladyship that you are here, sir.”

“Thank you, Murgatroyd,” said Sir Seymour.

And he went to the fireplace, turned round, and began to warm his flat back.

He stood there thus till his back was quite warm. Adela was rather slow in coming. But he did not mind that. It was happiness for him to be in her house, among her things, the sofas and chairs she used, the carpet her feet pressed every day, the books she read, the flowers she had chosen. This house was his idea of a home who had never had a home because of her.

Meanwhile upstairs, in a big bedroom just overhead, Lady Sellingworth was having a battle with herself of which her friend was totally unconscious. She did not come down at once because she wanted definitely and finally to finish that battle before she saw again the man by the fire. But something said to her: “Don’t decide till you have seen him again. Look at him once more and then decide.” She walked softly up and down the room after Murgatroyd had told her who was waiting for her, and she felt gnawed by apprehension. She knew her fate was in the balance. All day she had been trying to decide what she was going to do. All day she had been saying to herself: “Now, this moment, I will decide, and once the decision is made there shall be no going back from it.” It was within her power to come to a decision and to stick to it; or, if it were not within her power, then she was not a sane but an insane woman. She knew herself sane. Yet the decision was not arrived at when Sir Seymour rang the bell. Now he was waiting in the room underneath and the matter must be settled. An effort of will, the descent of a flight of stairs, a sentence spoken, and her life would be made fast to an anchor which would hold. And for her there would be no more drifting upon dangerous seas at the mercy of tempests.

“Look at him once more and then decide.”

The voice persisted within her monotonously. But what an absurd injunction that was. She knew Seymour by heart, knew every feature of him, every expression of his keen, observant, but affectionate eyes, the way he held himself, the shapes of his strong, rather broad hands—the hands of a fine horseman and first-rate whip—every trick of him, every attitude. Why look at him, her old familiar friend, again before deciding what she was now going to do?

“Look at him as the man who is going to be your husband!”

But that was surely a deceiving insidious voice, suggesting to her weakness, uncertainty, hesitation, further mental torment and further debate. And she was afraid of it.

She stood still near the window. She must go down. Seymour had already been waiting some time, ten minutes or more. He must be wondering why she did not come. He was not the sort of man one cares to keep waiting—although he had waited many years scarcely daring to hope for something he longed for. She thought of his marvellous happiness, his wonderful surprise, if she did what she meant—or did she mean it—to do. Surely it would be a splendid thing to bring such a flash of radiance into a life of twilight. Does happiness come from making others happy? If so, then—She must go down.

“I will do it!” she said to herself. “Merely his happiness will be enough reward.”

And she went towards the door. But as she did so her apprehension grew till her body tingled with it. A strange sensation of being physically unwell came upon her. She shrank, as if physically, from the clutching hands of the irrevocable. If in a hurry, driven by her demon, she were to say the words she had in her mind there would be no going back. She would never dare to unsay them. She knew that. But that was just the great advantage she surely was seeking—an irrevocable safety from herself, a safety she would never be able to get away from, break out of.

In a prison there is safety from all the dangers and horrors of the world outside the prison. But what a desperate love of the state she now called freedom burned within her! Freedom for what, though? She knew and felt as if her soul were slowly reddening. It was monstrous that thought of hers. Yet she could not help having it. It was surely not her fault if she had it. Was she a sort of monster unlike all other women of her age? Or did many of them, too, have such thoughts?

She must go down. And she went to the door and opened it. And directly she saw the landing outside and the descending staircase she knew that she had not yet decided, that she could not decide till she had looked at Seymour once more, looked at him with the almost terrible eyes of the deeply experienced woman who can no longer decide a thing swiftly in ignorance.

“I shall do it,” she said to herself. “But I must be reasonable, and there is no reason why I should force myself to make up my mind finally up here. I have sent for Seymour and I know why. When I see him, when I am with him, I shall do what I intended to do when I asked him to come.”

She shut her bedroom door and began to go downstairs, and as she went she imagined Seymour settled in that house with her. (For, of course, he would come to live in Berkeley Square, would leave the set of rooms he occupied now in St. James’s Palace.) She had often longed to have a male companion living with her in that house, to smell cigar smoke, to hear a male voice, a strong footstep in the hall and on the stairs, to see things that implied a man’s presence lying about, caps, pipes, walking sticks, golf clubs, riding crops. The whole atmosphere of the house would be changed if a man came to live with her there, if Seymour came.

But—her liberty?

She had gained the last stair and was on the great landing before the drawing-room door. Down below she heard a faint and discreet murmur of voices from Murgatroyd and the footman in the hall. And as she paused for a moment she wondered how much those two men knew of her and of her real character, whether they had any definite knowledge of her humanity, whether they had perhaps realized in their way what sort of woman she was, sometimes stripped away the Grande Dame, the mistress, and looked with appraising eyes at the stark woman.

She would never know.

She opened the door and instantly assumed her usual carelessly friendly look.

Sir Seymour had left the fire, and was sitting in an armchair with a book in his hand reading when she came in; and as she had opened the door softly, and as it was a long way from the fireplace he did not hear her or instantly realize that she was there. She had an instant in which to contemplate him as he sat there, like a man quietly at home. Only one lamp was lit. It stood on a table behind him and threw light on his rather big head thickly covered with curly and snow-white hair, the hair which he sometimes smilingly called his “cauliflower.” The light fell, too, aslant on his strong-featured manly face, the slightly hooked nose, large-lipped, firm mouth, shaded by a moustache in which some dark hairs were mingled with the white ones, and chin with a deep dent in the middle of it. His complexion was of that weather-beaten red hue which is often seen in oldish men who have been much out in all weathers. There were many deep lines in the face, two specially deep ones slanting downwards from the nose on either side of the mouth. Above the nose there was a sort of bump, from which the low forehead slightly retreated to the curves of strong white hair. The ears were large but well shaped. In order to read he had put on pince-nez with tortoise-shell rimmed glasses, from which hung a rather broad black riband. His thin figure looked stiff even in an arm-chair. His big brown-red hands held the book up. His legs were crossed, and his feet were strongly defined by the snowy white spats which partially concealed the varnished black boots. He looked a distinguished old man as he sat there—but he looked old.

“Is it possible that I look at all that sort of age?” was Lady Sellingworth’s thought as, for a brief instant, she contemplated him, with an intensity, a sort of almost fierce sharpness which she was scarcely aware of.

He looked up, made a twitching movement; his pince-nez fell to his black coat, and he got up alertly.

“Adela!”

She shut the door and went towards him, and as she did so she thought:

“If I had seen Alick Craven sitting there reading!”

“I was having a look at this.”

He held up the book. It was Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal.”

“Not the book for you!” she said. “Though your French is so good.”

“No.”

He laid it down, and she noticed the tangle of veins on his hand.

“The dandy in literature doesn’t appeal to me. I must say many of these poets strike me as decadent fellows, not helped to anything like real manliness by their gifts.”

She sat down on the sofa, just where she had sat to have those long talks with Craven about Waring and Italy, the sea people, the colours of the sails on those ships which look magical in sunsets, which move on as if bearing argosies from gorgeous hidden lands of the East.

“But never mind Baudelaire,” he continued, and his eyes, heavily lidded and shrouded by those big bushy eyebrows which seem to sprout almost with ardent violence as the body grows old, looked at her with melting kindness. “What have you been doing, my dear? The old dog wants to know. There is something on your mind, isn’t there?”

Lady Sellingworth had once said to Sir Seymour that he reminded her of a big dog, and he had laughed and said that he was a big dog belonging to her. Since that day, when he wrote to her, he had often signed himself “the old dog.” And often she had thought of him almost as one thinks of a devoted dog, absolutely trustworthy, ready for instant attack on your enemies, faithful with unquestioning faithfulness through anything.

As he spoke he gently took her hand, and she thought, “If Alick Craven were taking my hand!”

The touch of his skin was warm and very dry. It gave her a woman’s thoughts, not to be told of.

“What is it?” he asked.

Very gently she released her hand, and as she did so she looked on it almost sternly.

“Why?” she said. “Do I look unhappy—or what? Sit down, Seymour dear.”

She seemed to add the last word with a sort of pressure, with almost self-conscious intention.

He drew the tails of his braided morning coat forward with both hands and sat down, and she thought, “How differently a young man sits down!”

“Unhappy!” he said, in his quiet and strong, rather deep voice.

He looked at her with the scrutinizing eyes of affection, whose gaze sometimes is so difficult to bear. And she felt that something within her was writhing under his eyes.

“I don’t think you often look happy, Adela. No; it isn’t that. But you look to-day as if you had been going through something which had tried your nerves—some crisis.”

He paused. She remained silent and looked at his hands and then at his eyelids and eyebrows. And there was a terrible coldness in her scrutiny, which she did not show to him, but of which she was painfully aware. His nails were not flat, but were noticeably curved. For a moment the thought in her mind was simply, “Could I live with those nails?” She hated herself for that thought; she despised herself for it; she considered herself almost inhuman and certainly despicable, and she recalled swiftly what Seymour was, the essential beauty and fineness of his character, his truth, his touching faithfulness. And almost simultaneously she thought, “Why do old men get those terribly bushy eyebrows, like thickets?”

“Perhaps I think too much,” she said. “Living alone, one thinks—and thinks. You have so much to do and I so little.”

“Sometimes I think of retiring,” he said.

“From the court?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, but they would never let you!”

“My place could be filled easily enough.”

“Oh, no, it couldn’t.”

And she added, leaning forward now, and looking at him differently:

“Don’t you ever realize how rare you are, Seymour? There is scarcely anyone left like you, and yet you are not old-fashioned. Do you know that I have never yet met a man who really was a man—”

“Now, now, Adela!”

“No, I will say it! I have never met a real man who, knowing you, didn’t think you were rare. They wouldn’t let you go. Besides, what would you retire to?”

Again she looked at him with a scrutiny which she felt to be morally cruel. She could not refrain from it just then. It seemed to come inevitably from her own misery and almost desperation. At one moment she felt a rush of tenderness for him, at another an almost stony hardness.

“Ah—that’s just it! I dare say it will be better to die in harness.”

“Die!” she said, as if startled.

At that moment the thought assailed her, “If Seymour were suddenly to die!” There would be a terrible gap in her life. Her loneliness then would be horrible indeed unless—she pulled herself up with a sort of fierce mental violence. “I won’t! I won’t!” she cried out to herself.

“You are very strong and healthy, Seymour,” she said, “I think you will live to be very old.”

“Probably. Palaces usually contain a few dodderers. But is anything the matter, Adela? The old dog is very persistent, you know.”

“I’ve been feeling a little depressed.”

“You stay alone too much, I believe.”

“It isn’t that. I was out at the theatre with a party only last night. We went to The Great Lover. But he wasn’t like you. You are a really great lover.”

And again she leaned forward towards him, trying to feel physically what surely she was feeling in another way.

“The greatest in London, I am sure.”

“I don’t know,” he said, very simply. “But certainly I have the gift of faithfulness, if it is a gift.”

“We had great discussions on love and jealousy last night.”

“Did you? Whom were you with?”

“I went with Beryl Van Tuyn and Francis Braybrooke.”

“An oddly uneven pair!”

“Alick Craven was with us, too.”

“The boy I met here one Sunday.”

Lady Sellingworth felt an almost fierce flash of irritation as she heard him say “boy.”

“He’s hardly a boy,” she said. “He must be at least thirty, and I think he seems even older than he is.”

“Does he? He struck me as very young. When he went away with that pretty girl it was like young April going out of the room with all the daffodils. They matched.”

The intense irritation grew in Lady Sellingworth. She felt as if she were being pricked by a multitude of pins.

“Beryl is years and years younger than he is!” she said. “I don’t think you are very clever about ages, Seymour. There must be nearly ten years difference between them.”

Scarcely had she said this than her mind added, “And about thirty years’ difference between him and me!” And then something in her—she thought of it as the soul—crumpled up, almost as if trying to die and know nothing more.

“What is it, Adela?” again he said, gently. “Can’t I help you?”

“No, no, you can’t!” she answered, almost with desperation, no longer able to control herself thoroughly.

Suddenly she felt as if she were losing her head, as if she might break down before him, let him into her miserable secret.

“The fact is,” she continued, fixing her eyes upon him, as a criminal might fix his eyes on his judge while denying everything. “The fact is that none of us really can help anyone else. We may think we can sometimes, but we can’t. We all work out our own destinies in absolute loneliness. You and I are very old friends, and yet we are far away from each other, always have been and always shall be. No, you haven’t the power to help me, Seymour.”

“But what is the matter, my dear?”

“Life—life!” she said, and there was a fierce exasperation in her voice. “I cannot understand the unfairnesses of life, the cruel injustices.”

“Are you specially suffering from them to-day?” he asked, and for a moment his eyes were less soft, more penetrating, as they looked at her.

“Yes!” she said.

A terrible feeling of “I don’t care!” was taking possession of her, was beginning to drive her. And she thought of the women of the streets who, in anger or misery, vomit forth their feelings with reckless disregard of opinion in a torrent of piercing language.

“I’m really just like one of them!” was her thought. “Trimmed up as a lady!”

“Some people have such happy lives, years and years of happiness, and others are tortured and tormented, and all their efforts to be happy, or even to be at peace, without any real happiness, are in vain. It is of no use rebelling, of course, and rebellion only reacts on the rebel and makes everything worse, but still—”

Her face suddenly twisted. In all her life she thought she had never felt so utterly hopeless before.

Sir Seymour stretched out a hand to put it on hers, but she drew away.

“No, no—don’t! I’m not—you can’t do anything, Seymour. It’s no use!”

She got up from the sofa, and walked away down the long drawing-room, trying to struggle with herself, to get back self-control. It was like madness this abrupt access of passion and violent despair, and she did not know how to deal with it, did not feel capable of dealing with it. She looked out of the window into Berkeley Square, after pulling back curtain and blind. Always Berkeley Square! Berkeley Square till absolute old age, and then death came! And she seemed to see her own funeral leaving the door. Good-bye to Berkeley Square! She let the blind drop, the curtain fall into its place.

Sir Seymour had got up and was standing by the fire. She saw him in the distance, that faithful old man, and she wished she could love him. She clenched her hands, trying to will herself to love him and to want to take him into her intimate life. But she could not bring herself to go back to him just then, and she did not know what she was going to do. Perhaps she would have left the room had not an interruption occurred. She heard the door open and saw Murgatroyd and the footman bringing in tea.

“You can turn up another light, Murgatroyd,” she said, instantly recovering herself sufficiently to speak in a natural voice.

And she walked back down the room to Sir Seymour, carrying with her a little silver vase full of very large white carnations.

“These are the flowers I was speaking about,” she said to him. “Have you ever seen any so large before? They look almost unnatural, don’t they?”

When the servants were gone she said:

“You must think me half crazy, Seymour.”

“No; but I don’t understand what has happened.”

“I have happened, I and my miserable disgusting mind and brain and temperament. That’s all!”

“You are very severe on yourself.”

“Tell me—have you ever been severe on me in your mind? You don’t really know me. Nobody does or ever will. But you know me what is called well. Have you ever been mentally severe, hard on me?”

“Yes, sometimes,” he answered gravely.

She felt suddenly rather cold, and she knew that his answer had surprised her. She had certainly expected him to say, “Never, my dear!”

“I thought so,” she said.

And, while saying it, she was scarcely conscious that she was telling a lie.

“But you must not think that such thoughts about you ever make the least difference in my feeling for you,” he said. “That has never changed, never could change.”

“Oh—I don’t know!” she said in a rather hard voice. “Everything can change, I think.”

“No.”

“I suppose you have often disapproved of things I have done?”

“Sometimes I have.”

“Tell me, if—if things had been different, and you and I had come together, what would you have done if you had disapproved of my conduct?”

“What is the good of entering upon that?”

“Yes; do tell me! I want to know.”

“I hope I should find the way to hold a woman who was mine,” he said, with a sort of decisive calmness, but with a great temperateness.

“But if you married an ungovernable creature?”

“I doubt if anybody is absolutely ungovernable. In the army I have had to deal with some stiff propositions; but there is always a way.”

“Is there? But in the army you deal with men. And we are so utterly different.”

“I think I should have found the way.”

“Could he find the way now?” she thought. “Shall I do it? Shall I risk it?”

“Why do you look at me like that?” he asked; “almost as if you were looking at me for the first time and were trying to make me out?”

She did not answer, but gave him his tea and sat back on her sofa.

“You sent for me for some special reason. You had some plan, some project in your mind,” he continued. “I did not realize that at first, but now I am sure of it. You want me to help you in some way, don’t you?”

She was still companioned by the desperation which had come upon her when she had made that, for her, terrible comparison between Beryl Van Tuyn’s age and Craven’s. Somehow it had opened her eyes—her own remark. In hearing it she had seemed to hear other voices, almost a sea of voices, saying things about herself, pitying things, sneering things, bitter things; worst of all, things which sent a wave of contemptuous laughter through the society to which she belonged. Ten years multiplied by three! No, it was impossible! But there was only one way out. She was almost sure that if she were left to herself, were left to be her own mistress in perfect freedom, her temperament would run away with her again as it had so often done in the past. She was almost sure that she would brave the ridicule, would turn a face of stone to the subtle condemnation, would defy the contempt of the “old guard,” the sorrow and pity of Seymour, the anger of Beryl Van Tuyn, even her own self-contempt, in order to satisfy the imperious driving force within her which once again gave her no rest. Seymour could save her from all that, save her almost forcibly. Safety from it was there with her in the room. Rocheouart, Rupert Louth, other young men were about her for a moment. The brown eyes of the man who had stolen her jewels looked down into hers pleading for—her property. After all her experiences could she be fool enough to follow a marshlight again? But Alick Craven was different from all these men. She gave him something that he really seemed to want. He would be sorry, he would perhaps be resentful, if she took it away.

“Adela, if you cannot trust the old dog whom can you trust?”

“I know—I know!”

But again she was silent. If Seymour only knew how near he perhaps was to his greatest desire’s fulfilment! If he only knew the conflict which was raging in her! At one moment she was on the edge of giving in, and flinging herself into prison and safety. At another she recoiled. How much did Seymour know of her? How well did he understand her?

“You said just now that you had sometimes been hard on me in your mind,” she said abruptly. “What about?”

“That’s all long ago.”

“How long ago?”

“Years and years.”

“Ten years?”

“Yes—quite.”

“You have—you have respected me for ten years?”

“And loved you for a great many more.”

“Never mind about love! You have respected me for ten years.”

“Yes, Adela.”

“Tell me—have you loved me more since you have been able to respect me?”

“I think I have. To respect means a great deal with me.”

“I must have often disgusted you very much before ten years ago. I expect you have often wondered very much about me, Seymour?”

“It is difficult to understand the great differences between your own temperament and another’s, of course.”

“Yes. How can faithfulness be expected to understand its opposite? You have lived like a monk, almost, and I—I have lived like a courtesan.”

“Adela!”

His deep voice sounded terribly hurt.

“Oh, Seymour, you and I—we have always lived in the world. We know all its humbug by heart. We are both old—old now, and why should we pretend to each other? You know how lots of us have lived, no one better. And I suppose I have been one of the worst. But, as you say, for ten years now I have behaved myself.”

She stopped. She longed to say, “And, my God, Seymour, I am sick of behaving myself!” That would have been the naked truth. But even to him, after what she had just said, she could not utter it. Instead, she added after a moment:

“A great many lies have been lifted up as guiding lamps to men in the darkness. One of them is the saying: ‘Virtue is its own reward.’ I have behaved for ten years, and I know it is a lie.”

“Adela, what is exasperating you to-day? Can’t you tell me?”

Once more she looked at him with a sharp and intense scrutiny. She thought it was really a final look, and one that was to decide her fate; his too, though he did not know it. She knew his worth. She knew the value of the dweller in his temple, and had no need to debate about that. But she was one of those to whom the temple means much. She could not dissociate dweller from dwelling. The outside had always had a tremendous influence upon her, and time had not lessened that influence. Perhaps Sir Seymour felt that she was trying to come to some great decision, though he did not know, or even suspect, what that decision was. For long ago he had finally given up all hope of ever winning her for his wife. He sat still after asking this question. The lamplight shone over his thick, curly white hair, his lined, weather-beaten, distinguished old face, broad, cavalryman’s hands, upright figure, shone into his faithful dog’s eyes. And she looked and took in every physical detail, as only a woman can when she looks at a man whom she is considering in a certain way.

The silence seemed long. At last he broke it. For he had seen an expression of despair come into her face.

“My dear, what is it? You must tell me!”

But suddenly the look of despair gave place to a mocking look which he knew very well.

“It’s only boredom, Seymour. I have had too much of Berkeley Square. I think I shall go away for a little.”

“To Cap Martin?”

“Perhaps. Where does one go when one wants to run away from oneself?”

And then she changed the conversation and talked, as she generally talked to Sir Seymour, of the life they both knew, of the doings at Court, of politics, people, the state of the country, what was likely to come to old England.

She had decided against Seymour. But she had not decided for Craven. After a moment of despair, of feeling herself lost, she had suddenly said to herself, or a voice had said in her, a voice coming from she knew not where:

“I will remain free, but henceforth I will be my own mistress in freedom, not the slave of myself.”

And then mentally she had dismissed both Seymour and Craven out of her life, the one as a possible husband, the other as a friend.

If she could not bring herself to take the one, then she would not keep the other. She must seek for peace in loneliness. Evidently that was her destiny. She gave herself to it with mocking eyes and despair in her heart.