“I’m writing cheques,” she said. “I suppose you’re writing to your mother.”
“Why do you think so?” he asked curiously.
“You write to her every day, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “but how do you know?”
She looked at him with unblushing deliberation. “You wrote every day.... If it was to a woman, I wanted to know.... And I told Grace Ferrall that it worried me. And then Grace told me. Is there any other confession of my own pettiness that I can make to you.”
“Did you really care to whom I was writing?” he asked slowly.
“Care? I — it worried me. Was it not a pitifully common impulse? ‘Sisters under our skin,’ you know — I and the maid who dresses me. She would have snooped; I didn’t; that’s the only generic difference. I wanted to know just the same.... But — that was before—”
“Before what?”
“Before I — please don’t ask me to say it.... I did, once, when you asked me.”
“Before you cared for me. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. You are so cruelly literal when you wish to punish me.... You are interrupting me, too. I owe that wretched Kemp Ferrall a lot of money, and I’m trying to find out how much seven and nine are, to close accounts with Marion Page.”
Siward turned and continued his writing. And when the little sheaf of cheques was ready he counted them, laid them aside, and, drawing a flat packet of fresh bank-notes from his portfolio, counted out the tips expected of him below stairs. These arranged for, he straightened up and glanced over his shoulder at Sylvia, but she was apparently absorbed in counting something on the ends of her fingers, so he turned smilingly to his desk and wrote a long letter to his mother — the same tender, affectionately boyish letter he had always written her, full of confidences, full of humour, gaily anticipating his own return to her on the heels of the letter.
In his first letter to her from Shotover he had spoken casually of a Miss Landis. It seemed the name was familiar enough to his mother, who asked about her; and he had replied in another letter or two, a trifle emphatic in his praise of her, because from his mother’s letters it was quite evident that she knew a good deal concerning the very unconventional affairs of Sylvia’s family.
Of his swift and somewhat equivocal courtship he had had nothing to say in his letters; in fact recently he had nothing to say about Sylvia at all, reserving that vital confidence for the clear sympathy and understanding which he looked forward to when he should see her, and which, through dark days and bitter aftermaths, through struggle and defeat by his master-vice, had never failed him yet, never faltered for an instant.
So he brought his letter to a close with a tender and uneasy inquiry concerning her health, which, she had intimated, was not exactly satisfactory, and for that reason she had opened the house in town in order to be near Dr. Grisby, their family doctor.
Sealing and directing the letter, he looked up to see Sylvia standing at his elbow. She dropped a light hand on his shoulder for a second, barely touching him — a fugitive caress, delicate as the smile hovering on her lips, as the shy tenderness in her eyes.
“More letters to your sweetheart?” she asked, abandoning her hand to him.
“One more — the last before I see her.... I wish you could see her, Sylvia.”
“I wish so, too,” she answered simply, seating herself on the arm of his chair as though it were a side-saddle.
They sat there very silent for a few moments, curiously oblivious to the chance curiosity of any one who might enter or pass.
“Would she — care for me — do you think?” asked the girl in a low voice.
“I think so, — for your real self.”
“I know. She could only feel contempt for me — as I am.”
“She is old-fashioned,” he said reverently.
“That means all that is best in a woman.... The old fashion of truth and faith; the old fashion of honour, and faith in honour; the old, old fashion of — love.... All that is best, Stephen; all that is worth the love of a man.... Some day somebody will revive those fashions.”
“Will you?”
“Dear, they would not become me,” she said, the tenderness in her eyes deepening a little; and she touched his head lightly in humourous caress.
“What shall we do with the waning daylight?” she asked. “It is my last day with you. I told Howard it was my last day with you, and I did not care to be disturbed.”
“You probably didn’t say it that way,” he commented, amused.
“I did.”
“How much of that sort of thing is he prepared to stand?” asked Siward curiously.
“How much? I don’t know. I don’t believe he cares. It is my uncle, Major Belwether, who is making things unpleasant for me. I had to tell Howard, you know.”
“What!” exclaimed Siward incredulously.
“Certainly. Do you think my conduct has passed without protest?”
“You told Quarrier!” he repeated.
“Did you imagine I could do otherwise?” she asked coolly. “I have that much decency left. Certainly I told him. Do you suppose that, after what we did — what I admitted to you — that I could meet him as usual? Do you think I am afraid of him?”
“I thought you were afraid of losing him,” muttered Siward.
“I was, dreadfully. And the morning after you and I had been imprudent enough to sit up until nearly daylight — and do what we did — I made him take a long walk with me, and I told him plainly that I cared for you, that I was too selfish and cowardly to marry you, and that if he couldn’t endure the news he was at liberty to terminate the engagement without notice.”
“What did he say?” stammered Siward.
“A number of practical things.”
“You mean to say he stands it!”
“It appears so. What else is there for him to do, unless he breaks the engagement?”
“And he — hasn’t?”
“No. I was informed that he held me strictly and precisely to my promise; that he would never release me voluntarily, though I was, of course, at liberty to do what I chose.... My poor friend, he cares no more for love than do I. I happen to be the one woman in New York whom he considers absolutely suitable for him; by race, by breeding, by virtue of appearance and presence, eminently fitted to complete the material portion of his fortune and estate.”
Her voice had hardened as she spoke; now it rang a little at the end, and she laughed unpleasantly.
“It appears that I was a little truer to myself than you gave me credit for — a little truer to you — a little less treacherous, less shameless, than you must have thought me. But I have gone to my limit of decency; ...and, were I ten times more in love with you than I am, I could not put away the position and power offered me. But I will not lie for it, nor betray for it.... Do you remember, once you asked me for what reasons I dropped men from my list? And I told you, because of any falsehood or treachery, any betrayal of trust — and for no other reason. You remember? And did you suppose that elemental standard of decency did not include women — even such a woman as I?”
She dropped one arm on the back of his chair and rested her chin on it, staring at space across his shoulders.
“That’s how it had to be, you see, when I found that I cared for you. There was nothing to do but to tell him. I was quite certain that it was all off; but I found that I didn’t know the man. I knew he was sensitive, but I didn’t know he was sensitive to personal ridicule only, and to nothing else in all the world that I can discover. I — I suppose, from my frankness to him, he has concluded that no ridicule could ever touch him through me. I mean, he trusts me enough to marry me.... He will be safe enough, as far as my personal conduct is concerned,” she added naively. “It seems that I am capable of love; but I am incapable of its degradation.”
Siward, leaning heavily forward over his desk, rested his head in both hands; and she stooped from her perch on the arm of the chair,
pressing her hot cheeks against his hands — a moment only; then slipping to her feet, she curled up in a great arm-chair by the fire, head tipped back, blue gaze concentrated on him.
“The thing for you to do,” she said, “is to ambush me some night, and throw me into a hansom, and drive us both to the parson’s. I’d hate you for it as much as I’d love you, but I’d make you an interesting wife.”
“I may do that yet,” he said, lifting his head from his hands.
“You’ve a year to do it in,” she observed.... “By the way, you’re to take me in to dinner, as you did the first night. Do you remember? I asked Grace Ferrall then. I asked her again to-day. Heigho! It was years ago, wasn’t it, that I drove up to the station and saw a very attractive and perplexed young man looking anxiously about for somebody to take him to Shotover. Ahem! the notorious Mr. Siward! Dear,... I didn’t mean to hurt you! You know it, silly! Mayn’t I have my little joke about your badness — your redoubtable badness of reputation? There! You had just better smile.... How dare you frighten me by making me think I had hurt you!... Besides, you are probably unrepentant.”
She watched him closely for a moment or two, then, “Are you unrepentant?”
“About what?”
“About your general wickedness? About—” she hesitated— “about that girl, for example.”
“What girl?” he asked coldly.
“That reminds me that you have told me absolutely nothing about her.”
“There is nothing to tell,” he said, in a tone so utterly new to her in its finality that she sat up as though listening to an unknown voice.
Tone and words so completely excluded her from the new intimacy into which she had imperceptibly drifted that both suddenly developed a significance from sheer contrast. Who was this girl, then, of whom he had absolutely nothing to say? What was she to him? What could she be to him — an actress, a woman of common antecedents?
She had sometimes idly speculated in an indefinitely innocent way as to just what a well-born man could find to interest him in such women; what he could have to talk about to persons of that sort, where community of tastes and traditions must be so absolutely lacking.
Gossip, scandal of that nature, hints, silences, innuendoes, the wise shrugs of young girls oversophisticated, the cool, hard smiles of matrons, all had left her indifferent or bored, partly from distaste, partly from sheer incredulity; a refusal to understand, an innate delicacy that not only refrains from comprehension, but also denies itself even the curiosity to inquire or the temptation of vaguest surmise on a subject that could not exist for her.
But now, something of the uncomfortable uneasiness had come over her which she had been conscious of when made aware of Marion Page’s worldly wisdom, and which had imperceptibly chilled her when Grace Ferrall spoke of Siward’s escapade, coupling this woman and him in the same scandal.
She took it for granted that there must be, for men, an attraction toward women who figured publicly behind the foot-lights, though it appeared very silly to her. In fact it all was silly and undignified — part and parcel, no doubt, of that undergraduate foolishness which seemed to cling to some men who had otherwise attained discretion.
But it appeared to her that Siward had taken the matter with a seriousness entirely out of proportion in his curt closure of the subject, and she felt a little irritated, a little humiliated, a little hurt, and took refuge in a silence that he did not offer to break.
Early twilight had fallen in the room; the firelight grew redder.
“Sylvia,” he said abruptly, reverting to the old, light tone hinting of the laughter in his eyes which she could no longer see, “Suppose, as you suggested, I did ambush you — say after the opera — seize you under the very nose of your escort and make madly for a hansom?”
“I know of no other way,” she said demurely.
“Would you resist, physically?”
“I would, if nobody were looking.”
“Desperately?
“How do I know? Besides, it couldn’t last long,” she said, thinking of his slimly powerful build as she had noticed it in his swimming costume. Smiling, amused, she wondered how long she could resist him with her own wholesome supple activity strengthened to the perfection of health in saddle and afoot.
“I should advise you to chloroform me,” she said defiantly. “You don’t realise my accomplishments with the punching-bag.”
“So you mean to resist?”
“Yes, I do. If I were going to surrender at once, I might as well go off to church with you now.”
“Wenniston church!” he said promptly. “I’ll order the Mercedes.”
She laughed, lazily settling herself more snugly by the fire. “Suppose it were our fire?” she smiled. “There would be a dog lying across that rug, and a comfortable Angora tabby dozing by the fender, and — you, cross-legged, at my feet, with that fascinating head of yours tipped back against my knees.”
The laughter in her voice died out, and he had risen, saying unsteadily: “Don’t! I — I can’t stand that sort of thing, you know.”
She had made a mistake, too; she also had suddenly become aware of her own limits in the same direction.
“Forgive me, dear! I meant no mockery.”
“I know.... After a while a man finds laughter difficult.”
“I was not laughing at — anything. I was only pretending to be happy.”
“Your happiness is before you,” he said sullenly.
“My future, you mean. You know I am exchanging one for the other.... And some day you will awake to the infamy of it; you will comprehend the depravity of the monstrous trade I made.... And then — and then—”
She passed one slim hand over her face— “then you will shake yourself free from this dream of me; then, awake, my punishment at your hands will begin.... Dear, no man in his right senses can continue to love a girl such as I am. All that is true and ardent and generous in you has invested my physical attractiveness and my small intellect with a magic that cannot last, because it is magic; and you are the magician, enmeshed for the moment in the mists of your own enchantment. When this fades, when you unclose your eyes in clear daylight, dear, I dread to think what I shall appear to you — what a dreadful, shrunken, bloodless shell, hung with lace and scented, silken cerements — a jewelled mummy-case — a thing that never was!... Do you understand my punishment a little, now?”
“If it were true,” he said in a dull voice, “you will have forgotten, too.”
“I pray I may,” she said under her breath.
And, after a long silence: “Do you think, before the year is out, that you might be granted enough courage?” he asked.
“No. I shall not even pray for it. I want what is offered me! I desire it so blindly that already it has become part of me. I tell you the poison is in every vein; there is nothing else but poison in me. I am what I tell you, to the core. It is past my own strength of will to stop me, now. If I am stopped, another must do it. My weakness for you, being a treachery if not confessed, I was obliged to confess, horribly frightened as I was. He might have stopped me; he did not.... And now, what is there on earth to halt me? Love cannot. Common decency and courage cannot. Fear of your unhappiness and mine cannot. No, even the certitude of your contempt, some day, is powerless to halt me now. I could not love; I am utterly incapable of loving you enough to balance the sacrifice. And that is final.”
Grace Ferrall came into the room and found a duel of silence in progress under the dull fire-glow tinting the ceiling.
“Another quarrel,” she commented, turning on the current of the drop-light above the desk from which Siward had risen at her entrance. “You quarrel enough to marry. Why don’t you?”
“I wish we could,” said Sylvia simply.
Grace laughed. “What a little fool you are!” she said tenderly, seating herself in Siward’s chair and dropping one hand over his where it rested on the arm. “Stephen, can’t you make her — a big, strong fellow li
ke you? Oh, well; on your heads be it! My conscience is now clear for the first time, and I’ll never meddle again.” She gave Siward’s hand a perfunctory pat and released him with a discreetly stifled yawn. “I’m disgracefully sleepy; the wind blew like fury along the coast. Sylvia, have you had a good time at Shotover — the time of your life?”
Sylvia raised her eyes and encountered Siward’s.
“I certainly have,” she said faintly.
“C’est bien, chérie. Can you be as civil, Stephen — conscientiously? Oh, that is very nice of you! But there’s one thing: why on earth didn’t you make eyes at Marion? Life might be one long, blissful carnival of horse and dog for you both. Oh, dear! there, I’m meddling again! Pinch me, Sylvia, if I ever begin to meddle again! How did you come out at Bridge, Stephen? What — bad as that? Gracious! this is disgraceful — this gambling the way people do! I’m shocked and I’m going up to dress. Are you coming, Sylvia?”
The dinner was very gay. The ceremony of christening the Shotover Cup, which Quarrier had won, proceeded with presentation speech and a speech of acceptance faultlessly commonplace, during which Quarrier wore his smile — which was the only humorous thing he contributed.
The cup was full. Siward eyed it, perplexed, deadly afraid, yet seeing no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the waking struggle so sure to follow.
Marion received the cup, lifted it in both hands, and said distinctly, “Good Hunting!” as she drank to Quarrier. Her brother Gordon took it, and drank entirely too much. Then Sylvia lifted it, her white hands half buried among the orchids: “To you!” she murmured for Siward’s ear alone; then drank gaily, mischievously, “To the best shot at Shotover!” And Siward took the cup: “I salute victory,” he said, smiling, “always, and everywhere! To him who takes the fighting chance and wins out! To the best man! Health!” And he drank as a gentleman drinks, with a gay bow to Quarrier, and with death in his heart.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 296
