Part 24 (2/2)

The blood was flowing back into her veins. ”Oh, it wasn't your fault,”

she answered. ”We must make the best we can of it.”

He bent forward so that he could see into her eyes.

”Tell me,” he said. There was a note of fierce exultation in his voice.

”I'll promise never to speak of it again. If I had been a free man, could I have won you?”

She had risen while he was speaking. She moved to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders.

”Will you serve me and fight for me against all my enemies?” she asked.

”So long as I live,” he answered.

She glanced round. There was no sign of the returning waiter. She bent over him and kissed him.

”Don't come with me,” she said. ”There's a cab stand in the Avenue. I shall walk to Sevres and take the train.”

She did not look back.

CHAPTER XII

She reached home in the evening. The Phillips's old rooms had been twice let since Christmas, but were now again empty. The McKean with his silent ways and his everlasting pipe had gone to America to superintend the production of one of his plays. The house gave her the feeling of being haunted. She had her dinner brought up to her and prepared for a long evening's work; but found herself unable to think--except on the one subject that she wanted to put off thinking about. To her relief the last post brought her a letter from Arthur. He had been called to Lisbon to look after a contract, and would be away for a fortnight. Her father was not as well as he had been.

It seemed to just fit in. She would run down and spend a few quiet days at Liverpool. In her old familiar room where the moon peeped in over the tops of the tall pines she would be able to reason things out. Perhaps her father would be able to help her. She had lost her childish conception of him as of someone prim and proper, with cut and dried formulas for all occasions. That glimpse he had shown her of himself had established a fellows.h.i.+p between them. He, too, had wrestled with life's riddles, not sure of his own answers. She found him suffering from his old heart trouble, but more cheerful than she had known him for years.

Arthur seemed to be doing wonders with the men. They were coming to trust him.

”The difficulty I have always been up against,” explained her father, ”has been their suspicion. 'What's the cunning old rascal up to now?

What's his little game?' That is always what I have felt they were thinking to themselves whenever I have wanted to do anything for them. It isn't anything he says to them. It seems to be just he, himself.”

He sketched out their plans to her. It seemed to be all going in at one ear and out at the other. What was the matter with her? Perhaps she was tired without knowing it. She would get him to tell her all about it to- morrow. Also, to-morrow, she would tell him about Phillips, and ask his advice. It was really quite late. If he talked any more now, it would give her a headache. She felt it coming on.

She made her ”good-night” extra affectionate, hoping to disguise her impatience. She wanted to get up to her own room.

But even that did not help her. It seemed in some mysterious way to be no longer her room, but the room of someone she had known and half forgotten: who would never come back. It gave her the same feeling she had experienced on returning to the house in London: that the place was haunted. The high cheval gla.s.s from her mother's dressing-room had been brought there for her use. The picture of an absurdly small child--the child to whom this room had once belonged--standing before it naked, rose before her eyes. She had wanted to see herself. She had thought that only her clothes stood in the way. If we could but see ourselves, as in some magic mirror? All the garments usage and education has dressed us up in laid aside. What was she underneath her artificial niceties, her prim moralities, her laboriously acquired restraints, her unconscious pretences and hypocrisies? She changed her clothes for a loose robe, and putting out the light drew back the curtains. The moon peeped in over the top of the tall pines, but it only stared at her, indifferent. It seemed to be looking for somebody else.

Suddenly, and intensely to her own surprise, she fell into a pa.s.sionate fit of weeping. There was no reason for it, and it was altogether so unlike her. But for quite a while she was unable to control it.

Gradually, and of their own accord, her sobs lessened, and she was able to wipe her eyes and take stock of herself in the long gla.s.s. She wondered for the moment whether it was really her own reflection that she saw there or that of some ghostly image of her mother. She had so often seen the same look in her mother's eyes. Evidently the likeness between them was more extensive than she had imagined. For the first time she became conscious of an emotional, hysterical side to her nature of which she had been unaware. Perhaps it was just as well that she had discovered it. She would have to keep a stricter watch upon herself.

This question of her future relations.h.i.+p with Phillips: it would have to be thought out coldly, dispa.s.sionately. Nothing unexpected must be allowed to enter into it.

It was some time before she fell asleep. The high gla.s.s faced her as she lay in bed. She could not get away from the idea that it was her mother's face that every now and then she saw reflected there.

She woke late the next morning. Her father had already left for the works. She was rather glad to have no need of talking. She would take a long walk into the country, and face the thing squarely with the help of the cheerful sun and the free west wind that was blowing from the sea.

She took the train up north and struck across the hills. Her spirits rose as she walked.

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