Читать книгу In the Wilderness - Robert Hichens - Страница 16

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Robin, whose other name was Gabriel, arrived at the “little house,” of which Rosamund had spoken to Dion upon the hill of Drouva, early in the following year, on the last night of February to be exact. For a long time before his coming his future home had been subtly permeated by an atmosphere of expectancy.

No. 5 Little Market Street was in Westminster, not far from the river and the Houses of Parliament, yet in a street which looked almost remote, and which was often very quiet although close to great arteries of life. Dion sometimes thought it almost too dusky a setting for his Rosamund, but it was she who had chosen it, and they had both become quickly fond of it. It was a house with white paneling, graceful ceilings and carved fireplaces, and a shallow staircase of oak. There was a tiny but welcoming hall, and the landing on the first floor suggested potpourri, chintz-covered settees, and little curtains of chintz moved by a country wind coming through open windows. There were, in fact, chintz-covered settees, and there was potpourri. Rosamund had taken care about that; she had also taken care about many other little things which most London housewives, perhaps, think unworthy of their attention. Every day, for instance, she burnt lavender about the house, and watched the sweet smoke in tiny wreaths curling up from the small shovel, as she gently moved it to and fro, with a half smile of what she called “rustic satisfaction.” She laid lavender in the cupboards and in the chests of drawers, and, when she bought flowers, chose by preference cottage garden flowers, if she could get them, sweet williams, pansies, pinks, wallflowers, white violets, stocks, Canterbury bells. Sometimes she came home with wild flowers, and had once given a little dinner with foxgloves for a table decoration. An orchid, a gardenia, even a hyacinth, was never to be seen in the little house. Rosamund confessed that hyacinths had a lovely name, and that they suggested spring, but she added that they smelt as if they had always lived in hothouses, and were quite ready to be friends with gardenias.

She opened her windows. In this she was almost too rigorous for her maid-servants, who nevertheless adored her. “Plenty of warmth but plenty of air,” was her prescription for a comfortable and healthy house, “and not too much or too many of anything.” Dust, of course, was not to be known of in her dwelling, but “blacks” were accepted with a certain resignation as a natural chastening and a message from London. “They aren’t our fault, Annie,” she had been known to observe to the housemaid. “And dust can’t be anything else, however you look at it, can it?” And Annie said, “Well, no, ma’am!” and, when she came to think of it, felt she had not been a liar in the moment of speaking.

Rosamund never “splashed,” or tried to make a show in her house, and she was very careful never to exceed their sufficient, but not large, income; but the ordinary things, those things which of necessity come into the scheme of everyday life, were always of the very best when she provided them. Dion declared, and really believed, perhaps with reason, that no tea was so fragrant, no bread and butter so delicious, no toast so crisp, as theirs; no other linen felt so cool and fresh to the body as the linen on the beds of the little house; no other silver glittered so brightly as the silver on their round breakfast-table; no other little white window curtains in London managed to look so perennially fresh, and almost blithe, as the curtains which hung at their windows. Rosamund and Annie might have conversations together on the subject of “blacks,” but Dion never saw any of these distressing visitants. The mere thought of Rosamund would surely keep them at a more than respectful distance.

She proved to be a mistress of detail, and a housekeeper whose enthusiasm was matched by her competence. At first Dion had been rather surprised when he followed from afar, as is becoming in a man, this development. Before they settled down in London he had seen in Rosamund the enthusiastic artist, the joyous traveler, the good comrade, the gay sportswoman touched with Amazonian glories; he had known in her the deep lover of pure beauty; he had divined in her something else, a little strange, a little remote, the girl to whom the “Paradiso” was a door opening into dreamland, the girl who escaped sometimes almost mysteriously into regions he knew nothing of; but he had not seen in her one capable of absolutely reveling in the humdrum. Evidently, then, he had not grasped the full meaning of a genuine joie de vivre.

To everything she did Rosamund brought zest. She kept house as she sang “The heart ever faithful,” holding nothing back. Everything must be right if she could get it right; and the husband got the benefit, incidentally. Now and then Dion found himself mentally murmuring that word. A great love will do such things unreasonably. For Rosamund’s joie de vivre, that gift of the gods, caused her to love and rejoice in a thing for the thing’s own sake, as it seemed, rather than for the sake of some one, any one, who was eventually to gain by the thing. Thus she cared for her little house with a sort of joyous devotion and energy, but because it was “my little house” and deserved every care she could give it. Rather as she had spoken of the small olive tree on Drouva, of the Hermes of Olympia, even of Athens, she spoke of it, with a sort of protective affection, as if she thought of it as a living thing confided to her keeping. She possessed a faculty not very common in women, a delight in doing a thing for its own sake, rather than for the sake of some human being—perhaps a man. If she boiled an egg—she went to the kitchen and did this sometimes—she seemed personally interested in the egg, and keenly anxious to do the best by it; the boiling must be a pleasure to her, but also to the egg, and it must, if possible, be supremely well done. As the cook once said, after a culinary effort by Rosamund, “I never seen a lady care for cooking and all such-like as she done. If she as much as plucked a fowl, you’d swear she loved every feather of it. And as to a roast, she couldn’t hardly seem to set more store by it if it was her own husband.”

Such a spirit naturally made for comfort in a house, and Dion had never before been so comfortable. Nevertheless—and he knew it with a keen savoring of appreciation—there was a Spartan touch to be felt in the little house. Comfort walked hand in hand with Rosamund, but so did simplicity; she was what the maids called “particular,” but she was not luxurious; she even disliked luxury, connecting it with superfluity, for which she had a feeling amounting almost to repulsion. “I detest the sensation of sinking down in things,” was a favorite saying of hers; and the way she lived proved that she spoke the sheer truth.

All through the house, and all through the way of life in it, there prevailed a “note” of simplicity, even of plainness. The odd thing, perhaps, was that it pleased almost every one who visited the young couple. A certain well-known man, noted as a Sybarite, clever, decadent and sought after, once got into the house, he pretended by stealth, and spent half an hour there in conversation with Rosamund. He came way “acutely conscious of my profound vulgarity,” as he explained later to various friends. “Her house revealed to me the hideous fact that all the best houses in London smack of cocotte-try; the trail of cushions and liqueurs is over them all. Mrs. Leith’s house is a vestal, and its lamp is always trimmed.” Daventry’s comment on this was: “Trimmed—yes, but trimmings—no!”

Even Esme Darlington highly approved of the “charming sobriety of No. 5 Little Market Street,” although he had had no hand in its preparation, no voice in the deciding of its colors, its stuffs, its rugs, or its stair-rods. He was even heard to declare that “our dear Rosamund is almost the only woman I know who has the precious instinct of reticence; an instinct denied, by the way, even to that delightful and marvelous creature Elizabeth Browning—requiescat.”

The “charming sobriety” was shown in various ways; in a lack of those enormous cushions which most women either love, or think necessary, in all sitting-rooms; in the comparative smallness of such sofas as were to be seen; in the moderation of depth in arm-chairs, and in the complete absence of footstools. Then the binding of the many books, scattered about here and there, and ranged on shelves, was “quiet”; there was no scarlet and gold, or bright blue and gold; pictures were good but few; not many rugs lay on the polished wooden floors, and there was no litter of ornaments or bibelots on cabinets or tables. A couple of small statuettes, copies of bronzes in the Naples Museum, and some bits of blue-and-white china made their pleasant effect the more easily because they had not to fight against an army of rivals. There was some good early English glass in the small dining-room, and a few fine specimens of luster ware made a quiet show in Dion’s little den. Apart from the white curtains, and outer curtains of heavier material, which hung at all the windows, there were no “draperies.” Overmantels, “cosy-corners,” flung Indian shawls, “pieces” snatched from bazaars, and “carelessly” hung over pedestals and divans found no favor in Rosamund’s eyes. There was a good deal of homely chintz about which lit up the rather old-fashioned rooms, and colors throughout the house were rather soft than hard, were never emphatic or designed to startle or impress.

Rosamund, indeed, was by far the most vivid thing in the house, and some people—not males—said she had taken care to supply for herself a background which would “throw her up.” These people, if they believed what they said, did not know her.

She had on the first floor a little sitting-room all to herself; in this were now to be found the books which had been in her bedroom in Great Cumberland Place; the charwoman’s black tray with the cabbage rose, the mug from Greenwich, the flesh-colored vase, the china cow, the toy trombone, and other souvenirs of her girlhood to which Rosamund “held.” On the brass-railed shelf of the writing-table stood a fine photogravure of the Hermes of Olympia with little Dionysos on his arm. Very often, many times every day, Rosamund looked up at Hermes and the Child from account books, letters or notes, and then the green dream of Elis fell about her softly again; and sometimes she gazed beyond the Hermes, but instead of the wall of the chamber she saw, set in an oblong frame, and bathed in green twilight, a bit of the world of Pan, with a branch of wild olive flickering across the foreground; or, now and then, she saw a falling star, dropping from its place in the sky down towards a green wilderness, and carrying a wish from her with it, a wish that was surely soon to be granted. Her life in the little house had been a happy life hitherto, but—she looked again at the little Dionysos on the arm of Hermes, nestling against his shoulder—how much happier it was going to be, how much happier! She was not surprised, for deep in her heart she always expected happiness.

People had been delightful to her and to Dion. Indeed, they had flocked to the small green door (the Elis door) of 5 Little Market Street in almost embarrassing numbers. That was partly Mr. Darlington’s fault. Naturally Rosamund’s and Bruce Evelin’s friends came; and of course Dion’s relations and friends came. That would really have been enough. Rosamund enjoyed, but was not at all “mad about,” society, and had no wish to give up the greater part of her time to paying calls. But Mr. Darlington could not forbear from kind efforts on behalf of his delightful young friends, that gifted and beautiful creature Rosamund Leith, and her pleasant young husband. He, who found time for everything, found time to give more than one “little party, just a few friends, no more,” specially for them; and the end of it was that they found themselves acquainted with almost too many interesting and delightful people.

At first, too, Rosamund continued to sing at concerts, but at the end of July, after their return from Greece, when the London season closed, she gave up doing so for the time, and accepted no engagements for the autumn. Esme Darlington was rather distressed. He worked very hard in the arts himself, and, having “launched” Rosamund, he expected great things of her, and wished her to go forward from success to success. Besides “the money would surely come in very handy” to two young people as yet only moderately well off. He did not quite understand the situation. Of course he realized that in time young married people might have home interests, home claims upon them which might necessitate certain changes of procedure. The day might come—he sincerely hoped it would—when a new glory, possibly even more than one, would be added to the delightful Rosamund’s crown; but in the meanwhile surely the autumn concerts need not be neglected. He had heard no hint as yet of any—h’m, ha! He stroked his carefully careless beard. But he had left town in August with his curiosity unsatisfied, leaving Rosamund and Dion behind him. They had had their holiday, and had stayed steadily on in Little Market Street through the summer, taking Saturday to Monday runs into the country; more than once to the seacoast of Kent, where Bruce Evelin and Beatrice were staying, and once to Worcestershire to Dion’s mother, who had taken a cottage there close to the borders of Warwickshire. The autumn had brought people back to town, and it was in the autumn that Rosamund withdrew from all contact with the hurly-burly of London. She had no fears at all for her body, none of those sick terrors which some women have as their time draws near, no premonitions of disaster or presages of death, but she desired to “get ready,” and her way of getting ready was to surround her life with a certain stillness, to build about it white walls of peace. Often when Dion was away in the City she went out alone and visited some church. Sometimes she spent an hour or two in Westminster Abbey; and on many dark afternoons she made her way to St. Paul’s Cathedral where, sitting a long way from the choir, she listened to evensong. The beautiful and tenderly cool singing of the distant boys came to her like something she needed, something to which her soul was delicately attuned. One afternoon they and the men, who formed the deeply melodious background from which their crystalline voices seemed to float forward and upward, sang “The Wilderness” of Wesley. Rosamund listened to it, thankful that she was alone, and remembering many things, among them the green wilderness beneath the hill of Drouva.

Very seldom she spoke to Dion about these excursions of hers. There was something in her feeling for religion which loved reserve rather than expression; she who was so forthcoming in many moments of her life, who was genial and gay, who enjoyed laughter and was always at home with humanity, knew very well how to be silent. There was a saying she cared for, “God speaks to man in the silence;” perhaps she felt there was a suspicion of irreverence in talking to any one, even to Dion, about her aspiration to God. If, on his return home, he asked her how she had passed the day, she often said only, “I’ve been very happy.” Then he said to himself, “What more can I want? I’m able to make her happy.”

One windy evening in January, when an icy sleet was driving over the town, as he came into the little hall, he found Rosamund at the foot of the staircase, with a piece of mother’s work in her hand, about to go into the drawing-room which was on the ground floor of the house.

“Rose,” he said, looking down at the little white something she was holding, “do you think we shall both feel ever so much older in March? It will be in March, won’t it?”

“I think so,” she answered, with a sort of deeply tranquil gravity.

“In March when we are parents?”

“Are you worrying about that?” she asked him, smiling now, but with, in her voice, a hint of reproach.

“Worrying—no. But do you?”

“Let us go into the drawing-room,” she said.

When they were there she answered him:

“Absolutely different, but not necessarily older. Feeling older must be very like feeling old, I think—and I can’t imagine feeling old.”

“Because probably you never will.”

“Have you had tea, Dion?”

“Yes, at the Greville. I promised I’d meet Guy there to-day. He spoke about Beattie.”

“Yes?”

“Do you think Beattie would marry him if he asked her?”

“I don’t know.”

She sat down in the firelight near the hearth, and bent a little over her work on the tiny garment, which looked as if it were intended for the use of a fairy. Dion looked at her head with its pale hair. As he leaned forward he could see all the top of her head. The firelight made some of her hair look quite golden, gave a sort of soft sparkle to the curve of it about her broad, pure forehead.

“Guy’s getting desperate,” he said. “But he’s afraid to put his fortune to the test. He thinks even uncertainty is better than knowledge of the worst.”

“Of one thing I’m certain, Dion. Beattie doesn’t love Guy Daventry.”

“Oh well, then, it’s all up.”

Rosamund looked up from the little garment.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But if Beattie—but Beattie’s the soul of sincerity.”

“Yes, I know; but I think she might consent to marry Guy Daventry.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know exactly. She never told me. I just feel it.”

“Oh, if you feel it, I’m sure it is so. But how awfully odd. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, it really is rather odd in Beattie. Do you want Beattie to marry Guy Daventry?”

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

“Dear Beattie! I want her to be happy. But I think it’s very difficult, even when one knows some one very, very well, to know just how she can get happiness, through just what.”

“Rose, have I made you happy?”

“Yes.”

“As happy as you could be?”

“I think, perhaps, you will have—soon.”

“Oh, you mean——?”

“Yes.”

She went on stitching quietly. Her hands looked very contented. Dion drew up a little nearer to the fire with a movement that was rather brusk. It just struck him that his walk home in the driving sleet had decidedly chilled his body.

“I believe I know what you mean about Beattie,” he said, after a pause, looking into the fire. “But do you think that would be fair to Guy?”

“I’m not quite sure myself what I mean, honestly, Dion.”

“Well, let’s suppose it. If it were so, would it be fair?”

“I think Beattie’s so really good that Mr. Daventry, as he loves her, could scarcely be unhappy with her.”

Dion thought for a moment, then he said:

“Perhaps with Guy it wouldn’t be unfair, but, you know, Rose, that sort of thing wouldn’t do with some men. Some men could never stand being married for anything but the one great reason.”

He did not explain what that reason was, and Rosamund did not ask. There was a sort of wide and sweet tranquillity about her that evening. Dion noticed that it seemed to increase upon her, and about her, as the days passed by. She showed no sign of nervousness, had evidently no dread at all of bodily pain. Either she trusted in her splendid health, or she was so wrapped up in the thought of the joy of being a mother that the darkness to be passed through did not trouble her; or perhaps—he wondered about this—she was all the time schooling herself, looking up, in memory, to the columns of the Parthenon. He was much more strung up, much more restless and excitable than she was, but she did not seem to notice it. Always singularly unconscious of herself she seemed at this period to be also unobservant of those about her. He felt that she was being deliberately egoistic for a great reason, that she was caring for herself, soul and body, with a sort of deep and quiet intensity because of the child.

“She is right,” he said to himself, and he strove in all ways in his power to aid her beautiful selfishness; nevertheless sometimes he felt shut out; sometimes he felt as if already the unseen was playing truant over the seen. He was conscious of the child’s presence in the little house through Rosamund’s way of being before he saw the child. He wondered what other women were like in such periods, whether Rosamund was instinctively conforming to an ancient tradition of her sex, or whether she was, as usual, strongly individualistic. In many ways she was surely not like other women, but perhaps in these wholly natural crises every woman resembled all her sisters who were traveling towards the same sacred condition. He longed to satisfy himself whether this was so or not, and one Saturday afternoon, when Rosamund was resting in her little sitting-room with a book, and the Hermes watching over her, he bicycled to Jenkins’s gymnasium in the Harrow Road, resolved to put in forty minutes’ hard work, and then to visit his mother. Mrs. Leith and Rosamund seemed to be excellent friends, but Dion never discussed his wife with his mother. There was no reason why he should do so. On this day, however, instinctively he turned to his mother; he thought that she might help him towards a clearer knowledge of Rosamund.

Rosamund had long ago been formally made known to Bob Jenkins, Jim’s boxing “coach,” who enthusiastically approved of her, though he had never ventured to put his opinion quite in that form to Dion. Even Jenkins, perhaps, had his subtleties, those which a really good heart cannot rid itself of. Rosamund, in return, had made Dion known to her extraordinary friend, Mr. Thrush of Abingdon Buildings, John’s Court, near the Edgware Road, the old gentleman who went to fetch his sin every evening, and, it is to be feared, at various other times also, in a jug from the “Daniel Lambert.” Dion had often laughed over Rosamund’s “cult” for Mr. Thrush, which he scarcely pretended to understand, but Rosamund rejoiced in Dion’s cult for the stalwart Jenkins.

“I like that man,” she said. “Perhaps some day——” She stopped there, but her face was eloquent.

In his peculiar way Jenkins was undoubtedly Doric, and therefore deserving of Rosamund’s respect. Of Mr. Thrush so much could hardly be said with truth. In him there were to be found neither the stern majesty and strength of the Doric, nor the lightness and grace of the Ionic. As an art product he stood alone, always wearing the top hat, a figure Degas might have immortalized but had unfortunately never seen. Dion knew that Mr. Thrush had once rescued Rosamund in a fog and had conveyed her home, and he put the rest of the Thrush matter down to Rosamund’s genial kindness towards downtrodden and unfortunate people. He loved her for it, but could not help being amused by it.

When Dion arrived at the gymnasium, Jenkins was giving a lesson to a small boy of perhaps twelve years old, whose mother was looking eagerly on. The boy, clad in a white “sweater,” was flushed with the ardor of his endeavors to punch the ball, to raise himself up on the bar till his chin was between his hands, to vault the horse neatly, and to turn somersaults on the rings. The primrose-colored hair on his small round head was all ruffled up, perspiration streamed over his pink rosy cheeks, his eyes shone with determination, and his little white teeth were gritted as, with all the solemn intensity of childhood, he strove to obey on the instant Jenkins’s loud words of command. It was obvious that he looked to Jenkins as a savage looks to his Tribal God. His anxious but admiring mother was forgotten; the world was forgotten; Jenkins and the small boy were alone in a universe of grip dumb-bells, heavy weights, “exercisers,” boxing-gloves, horizontal bars, swinging balls and wooden “horses.” Dion stood in the doorway and looked on till the lesson was finished. It ended with a heavy clap on the small boy’s shoulders from the mighty paw of Jenkins, and a stentorian, “You’re getting along and no mistake, Master Tim!”

The face of Master Tim at this moment was a study. All the flags of triumph and joy were hung out in it and floated on the breeze; a soul appeared at the two windows shining with perfect happiness; and, mysteriously, in all the little figure, from the ruffled primrose-colored feathers of hair to the feet in the white shoes, the pride of manhood looked forth through the glowing rapture of a child.

“What a jolly boy!” said Dion to Jenkins, when Master Tim and his mother had departed. “It must be good to have a boy like that.”

“I hope you’ll have one some day, sir,” said Jenkins, speaking heartily in his powerful voice, but looking, for the moment, unusually severe.

He and Bert, his wife, had had one child, a girl, which had died of quinsy, and they had never had another.

“Now I’m ready for you, sir!” he added, with a sort of outburst of recovery. “I should like a round with the gloves to-day, if it’s all the same to you.”

It was all the same to Dion, and, when he reached Queen Anne’s Mansions in the darkness of evening, he was still glowing from the exercise; the blood sang through his veins, and his heart was almost as light as his step.

Marion, the parlor-maid, let him in, and told him his mother was at home. Dion put his hand to his lips, stole across the hall noiselessly, softly opened the drawing-room door, and caught his mother unawares.

Whenever he came into the well-known flat alone, he had a moment of retrogression, went back to his unmarried time, and was again, as for so many years, in the intimate life of his mother. But to-day, as he opened the door, he was abruptly thrust out of his moment. His mother was in her usual place on the high-backed sofa near the fire. She was doing nothing, was just sitting with her hands, in their wrinkled gloves, folded in her lap, and her large, round blue eyes looking. Dion thought of them as looking because they were wide open, but they were strangely emptied of expression. All of his mother seemed to him for just the one instant which followed on his entrance to be emptied, as if the woman he had always known—loving, satirical, clever, kind, observant—had been poured away. The effect upon him was one of indescribable, almost of horrible, dreariness. Omar Khayyam, his mother’s black pug, was not in the room as usual, stretched out before the fire.

Even as Dion realized this, his mother was poured back into the round face and plump figure beside the fire, and greeted him with the usual almost saccharine sweet smile, and:

“Dee-ar, I wasn’t expecting you to-day. How is the beloved one?”

“The beloved one” was Mrs. Leith’s rendering of Rosamund.

“How particularly spry you look,” she added. “I’m certain it’s the Jenkins paragon. You’ve been standing up to him. Now, haven’t you?”

Dion acknowledged that he had, and added:

“But you, mother? How are you?”

“Quite wickedly well. I ought to be down with influenza like all well-bred people,—Esme Darlington has it badly,—but I cannot compass even one sneeze.”

“Where’s Omar?”

Mrs. Leith looked grave.

“Poor little chap, we must turn down an empty glass for him.”

“What—you don’t mean——?”

“Run over yesterday just outside the Mansions, and by a four-wheeler. I’m sure he never expected that the angel of death would come for him in a growler, poor little fellow.”

“I say! Little Omar dead! What a beastly shame! Mother, I am sorry.”

He sat down beside her; he was beset by a sensation of calamity. Oddly enough the hammer of fate had never yet struck on him so definitely as now with the death of a dog. But, without quite realizing it, he was considering poor black Omar as an important element in his mother’s life, now abruptly withdrawn. Omar had been in truth a rather greedy, self-seeking animal, but he had also been a companion, an adherent, a friend.

“You must get another dog,” Dion added quickly. “I’ll find you one.”

“Good of you, dee-ar boy! But I’m too old to begin on a new dog.”

“What nonsense!”

“It isn’t. I feel I’m losing my nameless fascination for dogs. A poodle barked at me this afternoon in Victoria Street. One can’t expect one’s day to last for ever, though, really, some Englishwomen seem to. But, tell me, how is the beloved one?”

“Oh—to be sure! I wanted to talk to you about Rose.”

The smile became very sweet and welcoming on Mrs. Leith’s handsome round face.

“There’s nothing wrong, I’m sure. Your Rosamund sheds confidence in her dear self like a light all round her.”

“Nothing wrong—no. I didn’t mean that.”

Dion paused. Now he was with his mother he did not know how to explain himself; his reason for coming began to seem, even to himself, a little vague.

“It’s a little difficult,” he began at last, “but I’ve been wondering rather about women who are as Rosamund is just now. D’you think all women become a good deal alike at such times?”

“In spirit, do you mean?”

“Well—yes, of course.”

“I scarcely know.”

“I mean do they concentrate on the child a long while before it comes.”

“Many smart women certainly don’t.”

“Oh, smart women! I mean women.”

“A good definition, dee-ar. Well, lots of poor women don’t concentrate on the child either. They have far too much to do and worry about. They are ‘seeing to’ things up till the very last moment.”

“Then we must rule them out. Let’s say the good women who have the time.”

“I expect a great many of them do, if the husband lets them.”

“Ah!” said Dion rather sharply.

“There are a few husbands, you see, who get fidgety directly the pedestal on which number one thinks himself firmly established begins to shake.”

“Stupid fools!”

“Eminently human stupid fools.”

“Are they?”

“Don’t you think so?”

“Perhaps. But then humanity’s contemptible.”

“Extra-humanity, or the attempt at it, can be dangerous.”

“What do you mean exactly by that, mater?”

“Only that we have to be as we are, and can never really be, can only seem to be, as we aren’t.”

“What a whipping I’m giving to myself just now!” was her thought, as she finished speaking.

“Oh—yes, of course. That’s true. I think—I think Rosamund’s concentrating on the child, in a sort of quiet, big way.”

“There’s something fine in that. But her doings are often touched with fineness.”

“Yes, aren’t they? She doesn’t seem at all afraid.”

“I don’t think she need be. She has such splendid health.”

“But she may suffer very much.”

“Yes, but something will carry her gloriously through all that, I expect.”

“And you think it’s very natural, very usual, her—her sort of living alone with the child before it is born?”

Mrs. Leith saw in her son’s eyes an unmistakably wistful look at this moment. It was very hard for her not to take him in her arms just then, not to say, “My son, d’you suppose I don’t understand it all—all?” But she never moved, her hands lay still in her lap, and she replied:

“Very natural, quite natural, Dion. Your Rosamund is just being herself.”

“You think she’s able to live with the child already?”

Mrs. Leith hesitated for a moment. In that moment certainly she felt a strong, even an almost terrible inclination to tell a lie to her son. But she answered:

“Yes, I do.”

“That must be very strange,” was all that Dion said just then; but a little later on—he stayed with his mother longer than usual that day because poor little Omar was dead—he remarked:

“D’you know, mater, I believe it’s the right thing to be what’s called a thorough-paced egoist at certain moments, in certain situations.”

“Perhaps it is,” said his mother incuriously.

“I fancy there’s a good deal of rot talked about egoism and that sort of thing.”

“There’s a good deal of rot talked about most things.”

“Yes, isn’t there? And besides, how is one to know? Very often what seems like egoism may not be egoism at all. As I grow older I often feel how important it is to search out the real reasons for things.”

“Sometimes they’re difficult to find,” returned his mother, with an unusual simplicity of manner.

“Yes, but still——Well, I must be off.”

He stood up and looked at the Indian rug in front of the hearth.

“When are you coming to see us?” he asked.

“Almost directly, dee-ar.”

“That’s right. Rosamund likes seeing you. Naturally she depends upon you at such——” He broke off. “I mean, do come as often as you can.”

He bent down and kissed his mother.

“By the way,” he added, almost awkwardly, “about that dog?”

“What dog, dee-ar?”

“The dog I want to give you.”

“We must think about it. Give me time. After a black pug one doesn’t know all in a moment what type would be the proper successor. You remember your poor Aunt Binn?”

“Aunt Binn! Why, what did she do?”

“Gave Uncle Binn a hairless thing like a note of interrogation, that had to sleep in a coating of vaseline, when his enormous sheep-dog died who couldn’t see for hair. She believed in the value of contrast, but Uncle Binn didn’t. It would have led to a separation but for the hectic efforts of your aunt’s friend, Miss Vine. When I’ve decided what type of dog, I’ll tell you.”

Dion understood the negative and, in spite of his feeling of fitness, went away rather uncomfortably. He couldn’t forget the strange appearance of that emptied woman whom he had taken unawares by the fireside. If only his mother would let him give her another dog!

When he got home he found Beatrice sitting with Rosamund.

Dion had grown very fond of Beatrice. He had always been rather touched and attracted by her plaintive charm, but since she had become his sister-in-law he had learnt to appreciate also her rare sincerity and delicacy of mind. She could not grip life, perhaps, could not mold it to her purpose and desire, but she could do a very sweet and very feminine thing, she could live, without ever being intrusive, in the life of another. It was impossible not to see how “wrapped up” she was in Rosamund. Dion had come to feel sure that it was natural to Beatrice to lead her life in another’s, and he believed that Rosamund realized this and often let Beatrice do little things for her which, full of vigor and “go” as she was, she would have preferred to do for herself.

“I’ve been boxing and then to see mother,” he said, as he took Beatrice’s long narrow hand in his. “She sent her best love to you, Rosamund.”

“The dear mother!” said Rosamund gently.

Dion sat down by Beatrice.

“I’m quite upset by something that’s happened,” he continued. “You know poor little Omar, Beattie?”

“Yes. Is he ill?”

“Dead. He was run over yesterday by a four-wheeler.”

“Oh!” said Beatrice.

“Poor little dog,” Rosamund said, again gently.

“When they picked him up—are you going, Rose?”

“Only for a few minutes. I am sorry. I’ll write to the dear mother.”

She went quietly out of the room. Dion sprang up to open the door for her, but she had been sitting nearer to the door than he, and he was too late; he shut it, however, and came slowly back to Beatrice.

“I wonder——” He looked at Beatrice’s pale face and earnest dark eyes. “D’you think Rosamund disliked my mentioning poor Omar’s being killed?”

“No.”

“But didn’t she leave us rather abruptly?”

“I think perhaps she didn’t want to hear any details. You were just beginning to—”

“How stupid of me!”

“You see, Rosamund has the child to live for now.”

“Yes—yes. What blunderers we men are, however much we try—”

“That’s not a blame you ought to take,” Beatrice interrupted, with earnest gentleness. “You are the most thoughtful man I know—for a woman, I mean.”

Dion flushed.

“Am I? I try to be. If I am it’s because—well, Beattie, you know what Rose is to me.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Dearer and dearer every day. But nobody——Mother thinks a lot of her.”

“Who doesn’t? There aren’t many Roses like ours.”

“None. Poor mother! Beattie, d’you think she feels very lonely? You know she’s got heaps of friends—heaps.”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t as if she knew very few people, or lived alone in the country.”

“No but I’m very sorry her little dog’s dead.”

“I want to give her another.”

“It would be no use.”

“But why not?”

“You see, little Omar was always there when you were living there.”

“Well?”

“He was part of her life with you.”

“Oh—yes.”

Dion looked rather hard at Beatrice. In that moment he began to realize how much of the intelligence of the heart she possessed, and how widely she applied it. His application of his intelligence of the heart was, he feared, much less widespread than hers.

“Go to see mother when you can, will you?” he said. “She’s very fond of you, I think.”

“I’ll go. I like going to her.”

“And, Beattie, may I say something rather intimate? I’m your brother now.”

“Yes.”

She was sitting opposite to him near the fire on a low chair. There was a large shaded lamp in the room, but it was on a rather distant table. He saw Beatrice’s face by the firelight and her narrow thoroughbred figure in a dark dress. And the firelight, he thought, gave to both face and figure a sort of strange beauty that was sad, and that had something of the strangeness and the beauty of those gold and red castles children see in the fire. They glow—and that evening there was a sort of glow in Beatrice; they crumble—and then there was a pathetic something in Beatrice, too, which suggested wistful desires, perhaps faint hopes and an ending of ashes.

“Would you marry old Guy if he asked you? Don’t be angry with me.”

“I’m not.”

“Of course, we’ve all known for ages how much he cares for you. He spoke to me about it to-day. He’s desperately afraid of your refusing him. He daren’t put his fate to the test. Beattie—would you?”

A slow red crept over Beatrice’s face. She put up one hand to guard herself from the glow of the fire. For a moment she looked at Dion, and he thought, “What a strange expression firelight can give to a face!” Then she said:

“I can’t tell you.”

Her voice was husky.

“Beattie, you’ve got a cold!”

“Have I?”

She got up.

“I must go, Dion. I’ll just see Rosamund for a minute.”

As she left the room, she said:

“I’ll go and see your mother to-morrow.”

The door shut. Dion stood with one elbow resting on the mantelpiece and looked down into the fire. He saw his mother sitting alone, a strange, emptied figure; he saw Beatrice. And fire, which beautifies, or makes romantic and sad everything gave to Beatrice the look of his mother. For a moment his soul was full of questions about the two women.