Part 16 (1/2)
Athena held out her foot to the fire, and Lingard, staring down, saw that she was wearing a curious kind of slipper, one unlike any that he had ever noticed on a woman's foot before. A sandal rather than a shoe, it left visible the lovely lines of the arched instep and slender ankle.
”You were out a long time,” she said, and fixed her eyes on the clock.
It was one of the curious costly toys of which Rede Place was full, and for which old Theophilus Joy had had a marked predilection. Fas.h.i.+oned like a tiny wall sundial, across its face was written in faded gold letters, ”I only mark the sunny hours.” The hands now pointed to three minutes to midnight.
Lingard said no word. He went on staring down at Athena's little foot.
He was wondering if she knew how exquisitely perfect she was physically, how unlike all other women.
”Isn't it odd to think,” she whispered, ”that in a few moments another day will begin? I feel more like Cinderella than ever--now. You have given me such a good time,” her voice trembled, and he looked up and stared at her strangely. ”You've almost made me in love again with life,” and she was sincere in what she said.
”I?” said Lingard hoa.r.s.ely. ”I?”
”Yes, you! You don't know--how could you know?--what it's been to me, what it would have been to any woman, to have a man for a friend, to feel at last that there is someone to whom one can say everything----”
He looked away from her. At all costs he must prevent himself from showing what he felt--the violent, the primitive emotion her simple, touching words had called forth.
How utterly she would despise him if she knew! He swore to himself she should never know that she had made him all unwittingly traitor to the woman she loved,--the woman alas! whom they both loved. Lingard, and that was part of the punishment he already had to endure, never left off loving Jane Oglander. Jane was always, in a spiritual sense, very near to him; it was her physical self which was remote.
The tiny gong behind the little clock began to strike, quick precipitate strokes.
”Isn't it in a hurry?” said Athena plaintively, ”in such a hurry to end the last of my happy days.” Her voice broke into a sob, and Lingard, at last looking straight into her face, saw that tears were rolling down her cheeks.
He gave a hoa.r.s.e inarticulate cry. Athena thought he said ”My G.o.d!” She was filled with a sense of intoxicating happiness and triumph. Each of the wild, broken words--words of self-abas.e.m.e.nt, self-blame, self-rebuke, which Lingard uttered, holding both her hands in his firm grasp,--meant to her what fluttering white flags of surrender mean to besiegers.
With downcast eyes, with beating heart she listened while Lingard, abasing himself and exalting her, took all the blame--and shame--on himself. His words fell very sweetly and comfortingly on her ears.
Athena had no wish to act treacherously by Jane.
Any other man but this strange man would have had her long ago in his arms, but Lingard, though he held her hands so tightly that his grasp hurt, made no other movement towards her, not even when with a sobbing sigh she admitted--and as she did so there came across her a slight feeling of shame--that she, too, had been a traitor, an unwilling, an unwitting traitor, to Jane these last few days.
At last they made a compact--how often are such compacts made, and broken?--that Jane should never, never, know the strange madness which had seized them both.
Lingard spoke of leaving the next day. Nothing would be easier than to urge important business in London. But again the tears sprang to Athena's eyes.
”Don't go away,” she murmured brokenly. ”I couldn't bear it! I promise you that Jane shall never know. Don't leave me with d.i.c.k and Richard--they've both been kinder--indeed, indeed they have--since you've been here, Hew----”
He eagerly a.s.sured her that he would stay. Flight was a cowardly expedient at best, and the feeling he intended henceforth to cherish for Athena Maule was nothing of which he need be ashamed. It was a high, a n.o.ble feeling of compa.s.sion and respect. It was well, nay most fortunate, that they had had this explanation; henceforth they would be friends. The very touch of her cool hands resting so confidingly in his, had driven forth certain black devils from his heart--made him indeed once more true to Jane,--Jane who, if she knew all, would understand.
For there were things Athena had told him of her life with Richard which Jane did not know,--things which it was not desirable Jane should ever know, and which had filled him with an infinite compa.s.sion for Richard's young, beautiful wife.
When Lingard bade her good-night, he resisted the temptation, the curiously strong temptation, of asking Mrs. Maule if she would allow him to kiss her feet.
CHAPTER X
”The pa.s.sion of love has a danger for very sensitive, reserved and concentrated minds unknown to creatures of more volatile, expansive and unreflective dispositions.”
d.i.c.k Wantele walked with swinging nervous strides up and down the short platform of the little country station of Redyford. He had already been there some time, for the local train run in connection with the London express was late. But he was in no hurry--there would always be time to tell Jane that she would not see her lover for some hours.
Mrs. Maule had taken General Lingard over to the Paches to lunch. It was a small matter, an altogether unimportant matter, and it was certainly no business of Wantele's to care about it one way or the other. And yet he did care. He was jealous for Jane in a way she never would be for herself. And then--and then Lingard had allowed himself to be bamboozled--no other word so well expressed it--as to the time of Jane's arrival.