Part 56 (1/2)
The bell went again.
”Now for him!”
He hurried downstairs.
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 fas.h.i.+on, with faculties making for friends.h.i.+p; 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 pa.s.sions 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 wors.h.i.+p of strength and youth and hot blood and good looks, the old longing for desire and love, the old almost irritable pa.s.sion 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 gla.s.s, 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p.
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 friends.h.i.+p, a friends.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionless, 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 wis.h.i.+ng, 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 pet.i.tion to be made old in nature as well as in body it would certainly be granted?