Part 4 (1/2)

”Do you mean,” he asked, ”not unfriendly to me or not unfriendly to Rhoda?”

This was an unexpected question, and for a moment, not knowing what it portended, she hardly knew how to meet it. But the understanding that seemed to deepen with every moment made truth the most essential thing, and she replied after only a hesitation, ”To you.”

Mr. Darley looked all his astonishment. ”But why? Do you feel that you like me, too? Because, of course, I've never forgotten you. That's why I felt it possible to come to-day.”

And since truth was essential, it was she, now, who looked, with her surprise, something that she felt to be a recognition, as she replied, ”I suppose it must be that. I suppose we liked each other at first sight. I certainly didn't know the feeling was reciprocal.”

”Nor did I!” Mr. Darley exclaimed. He took the chair at the other end of the hearthrug, facing her, his knees crossed, his arms clutched tightly across his chest; and now he was able to reach his journey's goal. As all, on Rhoda's side, had been made clear to her that morning, so on his, all was clear, as he said, with a solemnity so young, so genuine that it almost brought tears to her eyes, ”Then since you do like me, please don't let her leave me!”

The situation was before her, definite and overpowering; but how it could have come about remained veiled like the misty approaches to a mountain.

”Does Rhoda want to leave you?” she questioned.

”Why--didn't you know?” Mr. Darley's face flashed with a sort of stupor.

”Didn't she come for that?”

”You answer my questions first,” Mrs. Delafield said after a moment.

He was obedient and full of trust. ”It's because of the child, you know, that lovely little creature in London. From the first--you can't think how long ago it already seems, though we have hardly been a week together--I've seen it growing, that feeling in her that she couldn't bear it. Other things, too; but that more than all. At least,” he was truthful to the last point of scruple, ”I think so. And though she did not tell me that she was saying good-bye this morning, I knew--I knew--that she was coming to you because she wanted her child, and would accept anything, endure anything, to be with it again.”

”What do you think Rhoda had to endure?” Mrs. Delafield inquired.

”Oh--you can't ask me that! I saw you in it and you saw me!” Mr. Darley exclaimed. ”You _will_ be straight with me? You saw that soulless life of hers, with that selfish figurehead of a husband for all guide. She was suffocating in it. She didn't need to tell me. I saw it in her face before she told me. How can a woman live with a man she doesn't love?

When you said not unfriendly to me, did you mean to make a difference?

Did you mean that you don't care for Rhoda? Yet she's always loved and trusted you, she told me, more than any one. You were the one reality she clung to. That's why _she_ could come to you to-day.”

”What I mean is that I'm on your side, not on Rhoda's,” said Mrs.

Delafield, and at the moment her charming old white face expressed, perhaps as never before in her life, the quality of decisiveness. ”I am on your side. But I have to see what that is.”

He was feeling her face even more than her words. He was gazing at her with a rapt scrutiny which, she reflected, exonerating Rhoda to that extent, would make it difficult for a woman receiving such a tribute not to wish to retain it permanently. It enriched and sustained one and--although it was strange that she should feel this--troubled and moved one, too. A sense of pain stirred in her, and of wonder about herself and her fitness to receive such gazes. One really couldn't, at sixty-three, have growing pains; yet Mr. Darley's gaze filled her with that troubled consciousness of expanding life. He wanted Rhoda. She wanted Jane Amoret. So, wasn't it all right? Wasn't she all right? His side was her side. They wanted the same thing. But the troubled sap of the new consciousness was rising in her.

”My side is really Rhoda's side,” said Mr. Darley, as if answering her thought. He held his knee in gripped hands and spoke with rapid security. He was still shy, but he now knew exactly what he wished to say, and how to say it. ”It's Rhoda's side, if only she'd see it. That's why I was not disloyal in asking my question when you said you weren't unfriendly. Really--really--you _will_ believe me--it's for her, too. I wouldn't have let her come with me if it hadn't been. I'm not so selfish as I seem. I know it's dreadful about the child. But--this is my secret; Rhoda does not guess it and I could never tell her--she doesn't love the child as she thinks she does. Not really. In spite of her longing. She longs to love it, of course; but she isn't a mother; not to that child.

That's another reason. It was all false. The whole thing. The whole of her life. The real truth is,” said Christopher Darley, gazing large-eyed at her, ”that Rhoda is frightened and wants to go back. She's not as brave as she thought she was. Not quite as brave as I thought. But if she yields to her fear and leaves me,--she hasn't yet, I know, I see that in your face--but if she goes back to her old life, it will mean dust, humiliation, imprisonment forever.”

”That's what I told her,” Mrs. Delafield said, her eyes on his.

”I knew! I knew!” cried the young man. ”I knew you'd done something beautiful for me--for us. Because you see the truth. And you were able to succeed where I failed! You were able to convince her! You've saved us both! Oh, how I thank you!”

”It wasn't quite like that,” said Mrs. Delafield. ”It wasn't to save either of you. I don't think it right for a woman to leave her husband with another man because she has ceased to love her husband. But I made her go back. I wouldn't even let her tell me that she wanted to leave you. I didn't convince her. I merely made it impossible for her. She left me reluctant and bewildered. You haven't found out yet,”--Mrs.

Delafield leaned forward and picked up the little poker; the fire needed no poking and the movement expressed only her inner restlessness,--”you haven't found out that Rhoda, at all events, _is_ very selfish?”

Christopher Darley at that stopped short. ”Oh, yes, I have,” he answered then; but the frightened croak was in his voice as he said it.

”And have you found out, too,” said Mrs. Delafield, eyeing her poker, sparing him, giving him time, ”that she's unscrupulous and cold-hearted?

Do you see the sort of life she'll make for you, if she is faithful to you and stays with you, not because she's faithful, not because she wants to stay, but gagged and baulked by me? Haven't you already--yourself, been a little frightened sometimes?” she finished.

She kept her eyes on her poker and gave Mr. Darley his time, and indeed he needed it.

”If you've been so wonderful,” he said at last, with the slow care of one who threads his way among swords; ”if, though you think we're lawbreakers, you think, too, that we've made ourselves another law and are bound to stand by it; if you've sent her back to me--why do you ask me that? But no,” he went on, ”I'm not frightened. You see--I love her.”