Part 73 (1/2)

It stung him to a miserable sorrow for her and a hurt pride of his own.

”For G.o.d's sake, no!” he said. ”You're going to be by yourself, poor child! Run away with Anne.”

So Esther rose unwillingly, and Anne took her up to the s.p.a.cious chamber where firelight was dancing on the wall and Lydia had completed all sorts of hospitable offices. Lydia was there still, shrinking shyly into the background, as having no means of communication with an Esther to whom she had been hostile. But Esther turned them both out firmly, if with courtesy.

”Please go,” she said to Anne. ”Please let me be.”

This seemed to Anne quite natural. She knew she herself, if she were troubled, could get over it best alone.

”Mayn't I come back?” she asked. ”When you're in bed?”

”No,” Esther said. ”I am so tired I shall sleep. You're very kind. Good night.”

She saw them to the door with determination even, and they went downstairs and sat in the dining-room in an excited silence, because it seemed to them Jeff might want to see his father and talk over things.

But Jeff and his father were sitting on opposite sides of the table, the colonel pretending to read and Jeff with his elbows on the table, his head resting on his hands. How was he to finish what he had begun? For she hated him, he believed, with a childish hatred of the discomfort he had brought her. If there were some hot betrayal of the blood that had driven her to Reardon he almost thought, despite Addington and its honesties and honours, he would not lift his hand to keep her. Addington was very strong in him that night, the old decent loyalties to the edifice men and women have built up to protect themselves from the beast in them. Yet how would it have stood the a.s.sault of honest pa.s.sion, sheer human longing knocking at its walls? If she could but love a man at last! but this was no more love than the puerile effort of a meagre discontent to make itself more safe, more closely cherished, more luxuriously served.

”Father,” said he at last, breaking the silence where the clock ticked and the fire stirred.

”Yes,” said the colonel. He did not put down his book or move his finger on it. He meant, to the last line of precaution, to invite Jeff's confidence.

”Whatever she does,” said Jeff, ”I'm to blame for it.”

”Don't blame yourself any more,” the colonel said. ”We won't blame anybody.”

He did not even venture to ask what Esther would be likely to do.

”I don't understand--” said Jeff, and then paused and the sentence was never finished. But what he did not understand was the old problem: how accountability could be exacted from the irresponsible, how an ascetic loyalty to law could be demanded of a woman who was nothing but a sweet bouquet of primitive impulses, flowered out of youth and natural appet.i.tes. He saw what she was giving up with Reardon: luxury, a kindly and absolutely honest devotion. If she went to him it would be to what she called happiness. If he kept her out of the radius of disapproval, she might never feel a shadow of regret. But Reardon would feel the shadow. Jeff knew him well enough to believe that. It would be the old question of revolt against the edifice men have built. You thought you could storm it, and it would capitulate; but when the winter rigours came, when pa.s.sion died and self got shrunken to a meagre thing, you would seek the shelter of even that cold courtyard.

”Yes,” he said aloud, ”I've got to do it.”

All that evening they sat silent, the four of them, as if waiting for an arrival, an event. At eleven Anne came in.

”I've been up and listened,” she said. ”She's perfectly quiet. She must be asleep.”

Jeff rose.

”Come, father,” he said. ”You'll be drowsy as an owl to-morrow. We'd better get up early, all of us.”

”Yes,” said Anne. She knew what he meant. They had, somehow, a distasteful, puzzling piece of work cut out for them. They must be up to cope with this strange Esther.

Lydia fell asleep almost, as the cosy saying goes, as soon as her head touched the pillow. She was dead tired. But in what seemed to her the middle of the night, she heard a little noise, and flew out of bed, still dazed and blinking. She thought it was the click of a door. But Esther's door was shut, the front door, too, for she crept into the hall and peered over the railing. She went to the hall window and looked out on the dark shrubbery above the snow, and the night was still and the scene so kind it calmed her. But she could not see, beyond the shrubbery, the black figure running softly down the walk. Lydia went back to bed, and when the ”midnight” hooted she drew the clothes closer about her ears and thought how glad she was to be so comfortable. It was not until the next morning that she knew the ”midnight” had carried Esther with it.

XL

It was strangely neutral, the hue of the moment when they discovered she had gone. They had not called her in the morning, but Anne had listened many times at the door, and Lydia had prepared a choice tray for her, and Mary Nellen tried to keep the coals at the right ardour for toasting. Jeff had stayed in the house, walking uneasily about, and at a little after ten he came out of his chair as if he suddenly recognised the folly of staying in it so apathetically.

”Go up,” he said to Lydia. ”Knock. Then try the door.”