Part 59 (1/2)

Cedric stopped, and his right hand tapped with his spectacles on his left hand, in the little, characteristic trick that was so like Sir Francis.

Alex had already heard him make much the same observations, but she realized that Cedric had retained all his old knack of reiteration.

”I see,” she said.

”Well, my dear, the long and the short of it is, that you must let me be your banker for the time being. And--and, Alex,” said Cedric, with a most unwonted touch of embarra.s.sment breaking into his kind, a.s.sured manner, ”you needn't mind taking it. There's--there's plenty of money here--there is really--now-a-days.”

Alex realized afterwards that it would hardly have occurred to her to _mind_ taking the twenty pounds which Cedric offered her with such patent diffidence. She had never known the want of money, either in her Clevedon Square days or during her ten years of convent life. She did not realize its value in the eyes of other people.

The isolation of her point of view on this and other kindred subjects gradually became evident to her. Her scale of relative values had remained that which had been set before her in the early days of her novitiate. That held by her present surroundings differed from it in almost every particular, and more especially in degree of concentration.

All Violet's warm, healthy affection for Rosemary did not prevent her intense preoccupation with her own clothes and her own jewels, or her innocently-a.s.sured conviction that no one was ever in London during the month of August, and that to be so would const.i.tute a calamity.

All Cedric's pride in' his wife and love for her, in no way lessened his manifest satisfaction at his own success in life and at the renovated fortunes of the house of Clare.

Both he and Violet found their recreation in playing bridge, Cedric at his club and Violet in her own house, or at the houses of what seemed to Alex an infinite succession of elaborately-gowned friends, with all of whom she seemed to be on exactly the same terms of an unintimate affection.

Violet at night, when she dismissed her maid and begged Alex to stay and talk to her until Cedric came upstairs, which he never did until past twelve o'clock, was adorable.

She listened to Alex' incoherent, nervous outpourings, which Alex herself knew to be vain and futile from the very longing which possessed her to make herself clear, and said no word of condemnation or of questioning.

At first the gentle pressure of Violet's soft hand on her hair, and her low, sympathetic, murmuring voice, soothed Alex to a sort of worn-out, tearful grat.i.tude in which she would nightly cry herself to sleep.

It was only as she grew slowly physically stronger that the craving for self-expression, which had tormented her all her life, woke again. Did Violet understand?

She would reiterate her explanations and dissections of her own past misery, with a growing consciousness of morbidity and a positive terror lest Violet should at last repulse, however gently, the endless demand for an understanding that Alex herself perpetually declared to be impossible.

It now seemed to her that nothing mattered so long as Violet understood, and by that understanding restored to Alex in some degree her utterly shattered self-respect and self-confidence. This dependence grew the more intense, as she became more aware how unstable was her foothold in the world of normal life.

With the consciousness of an enormous and grotesque mistake behind her, mingled all the convent tradition of sin and disgrace attached to broken vows and the return to an abjured world. One night she said to Violet:

”I didn't do anything _wrong_ in entering the convent. It was a mistake, and I'm bearing the consequence of the mistake. But it seems to me that people find it much easier to overlook a sin than a mistake.”

”Well, I'd rather ask a _divorcee_ to lunch than a woman who ate peas off her knife,” Violet admitted candidly.

”That's what I mean. There's really no place for people who've made bad mistakes--anywhere.”

”If you mean yourself, Alex, dear, you know there's always a place for you here. Just as long as you're happy with us. Only I'm sometimes afraid that it's not quite the sort of life--after all you've been through, you poor dear. I know people do come in and out a good deal--and it will be worse than ever when Pam is at home.”

”Violet, you're very good to me. You're the only person who has seemed at all to understand.”

”My dear, I do understand. Really, I think I do. It's just as you say--you made a mistake when you were very young--_much_ too young to be allowed to take such a step, in my opinion--and you're suffering the most bitter consequences. But no one in their senses could blame you, either for going into that wretched place, or--still less--for coming out of it.”

”One is always blamed by some one, I think, for every mistake. People would rather forgive one for murder, than for making a fool of oneself.”

”Forgiveness,” said Violet thoughtfully. ”It's rather an overrated virtue, in my opinion. I don't think it ought to be very hard to forgive any one one loved, anything.”

”Would _you_ forgive anything, Violet?”

”I think so,” said Violet, looking rather surprised. ”Unless I were deliberately deceived by some one whom I trusted. That's different. Of course, one might perhaps forgive even then in a way--but it wouldn't be the same thing again, ever.”