Chapter Twenty

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"BUT you will come to my ball," said the duchess with decision. The "but" was in answer to Sainty's assertion that he did not go to balls. "Vous vous faites ridicule, mon enfant. That you shouldn't accompany your wife everywhere, that I can see; it would be silly; but equally it is not right never to be seen at all. People ask if anything is wrong with you that you can't appear, if you are half-witted or have fits."

"It is very kind of them to occupy themselves with my affairs," said Sainty. "I shouldn't have supposed that most people remembered that I exist."

"But it is perhaps as well they should remember it sometimes," said his grandmother, with a significant glance at Cissy.

"I should have thought the one form of entertainment from which a lame man might have been held excused was a dance," Sainty persisted.

"Ah! there are dances and dances," replied the duchess. "This is not a dance où l'on dansera, it is a serious entertainment. I don't say it will be amusing; I don't give this kind of thing for my own amusement or for other people's; there will be ministers, public men, royalties; enfin a solemn thing, and you are of the family. You must come, mustn't he, Cissy?"

"Oh, certainly, if you wish it, dear," Cissy answered lightly. "I should think it would just suit him. He will find people to whom he can talk about the housing of the working classes. You know how I always love coming to Sunborough House, but not to this kind of thing; you have said yourself how it bores you."

Sainty smiled at his wife's complete assumption of equality with his grandmother, both in age and position. He couldn't help reflecting how enchanted Lady Eccleston's daughter would have been a short year ago at the prospect of attending the function of which she now spoke so slightingly as being for the uninitiated.

"Well, you will both come, like good children," said the duchess easily. "We don't live only to amuse ourselves, you know."

And so it came about that Belchamber found himself attending the ball in question, and very much lost in that glittering throng. At first he had been amused by the show, as he might have been by a scene in a pantomime. The pompous men, bearers of great names or high positions, stuck about with orders, the indecent bejewelled women, the lights, the flowers, the music; it all made an effect of some gorgeousness, with the really stately beautiful house as a background. But after an hour or so he became aware of a sense of intolerable weariness. He had taken it for granted that he and Cissy would be entirely independent of each other, and that after he had shown himself to his grandmother and the duke, and amused himself for a little while with the pageant, he would be free to depart wherever it pleased him; but to his astonishment Cissy had remarked that she had no intention of staying late and she would be very much obliged if he would take her home in his brougham. "I want Gibson early to-morrow morning," she explained, "so I don't want to take him out to-night, and I haven't been in bed before three one night this week. We can just show ourselves, and then slope."

Once at the ball, however, she seemed to find it less dull than she had anticipated, for Sainty several times caught sight of her dancing, which she had announced that she certainly should not do, and had quite failed in his endeavour to get speech of her to tell her that he would walk home and leave the carriage for her. The night was fine and his own house not five minutes away. Any one but Sainty would simply have gone and left his wife to find it out. But this was a course which his invincible conscientiousness forbade his taking. As he hung forlornly about, hustled by the people who crowded in and out of the rooms, he thought that surely no sound in nature was so ugly as that of a quantity of human voices all talking at once and endeavouring to dominate each other. He came presently on Mrs. de Lissac, who always soothed his exasperated nerves; but after all he need not go to a ball to see her. "We could have had a much pleasanter talk in your house or mine, without having to try and outshout a hundred other people," he said.

"I never can quite get over the strangeness of being here at all," Alice answered. "It always seems rather like a fairy story to me, when I think of my very simple bringing-up at the rectory, that I should come to rub shoulders with all these grandees."

"It is a fairy story in which you have certainly been the good fairy," said Sainty warmly. "I can't tell you the difference it has made to me having you in London to come and talk to sometimes."

"It is dear of you to say that. I like to think that to you I am not the rich woman and possible subscriber or hostess, but just your old govey that you loved when you were a little boy. Sometimes, dear," she added, with a timid look of great tenderness, "I fancy you are not much happier now than you were then."

Sainty passed the back of his hand wearily across his eyes. "Happy," he said; "is any one happy? Think of the lives that are being led within a mile of us to-night; can any one be happy with the cry of those millions in his ears? Certainly not these people with their eternal desperate pursuit of amusement who are afraid of being left for five minutes in company with their own thoughts."

"Poor boy! you certainly are not happy or you would not be so bitter. It is dreadful to think of those poor people. I often wonder if we have a right to be so rich when there are so many starving; but my dear husband says this is Socialism, and if we weren't rich we couldn't give away so much, and  certainly he is very generous; and he says that all these things that I feel as if it was wrong to spend so much on give employment to lots of poor people to make, who would be out of work if there were no rich people to buy things." She brought out this time-honoured piece of argument with such a triumphant pride in her spouse's wisdom that Sainty thought of nothing less than combating it.

"There is one form of happiness that you ought to enjoy in perfection," he said, "that of being and doing good."

Alice blushed. "Oh, you mustn't call me good," she said; "but I was going to say, if there is a lot of misery and poverty, I'm sure there has never been so much done towards relieving it as nowadays."

"The 'World's Bazaar,' for instance," said Sainty.

"Well---yes, dear---that and other things. And I'm sure if, as you say, being and doing good makes us happy, you ought to know it too."

"I!" cried Sainty. "Whom do I make happy?"

"Oh, you are always doing kind things for people, and see how happy you make your wife."

"My wife's happiness is very much independent of me; indeed, I am rather the principal drawback to it." The words slipped out almost before he was aware. Even to this kind old friend he had never spoken of his relations with his wife, and this seemed neither the time nor the place he would have chosen to do so. Mrs. de Lissac looked pained, but she took advantage of his little outbreak to say, "I have sometimes wanted to speak to you about your wife, but have not quite liked to. I think you and she should be more together. You leave her too much to herself. She is very young and pretty to be so independent, and perhaps a little thoughtless."

"Talking of Cissy," Sainty interrupted, "can you tell me where she is? As a beginning of acting on your advice, you see we have come into the world together to-night, and I am actually waiting to go home till she is ready."

A sinuous young lady, clad in a sheath of some glittering, shimmering blackness, turned at the words and held out her hand. "How d'ye do, Lord Belchamber?" she said "I don't believe you remember me. Are you asking for Lady Belchamber? I saw her not five minutes ago with Mr. Morland."

With a start Sainty recognised Amy Winston. The unrelieved black of her dress, and of a long pair of gloves that were pulled up to her elbows, lent a baleful pallor to her face and neck, and above her brow there shone in her dusky tresses a single diamond star which, if real, was a very remarkable ornament to belong to a single woman said mainly to support herself by the manufacture of magazine tales and occasional verse. At sight of this siren good Mrs. de Lissac fell back into the crowd, while the young man to whom Miss Winston was talking, after a half glance at Sainty, made off not less hastily, so that they were left facing one another.

"I remember you perfectly, Miss Winston," Sainty said, "although we have not met very lately. You were kind enough to say you had seen Lady Belchamber. I wish you would tell me where I should find her; she wanted to go home early to-night, and I think may be looking for me."

"She didn't appear to be," replied the young woman, with the faintest suspicion of insolence; "nor, I must say, did she seem in any particular hurry to get home. She was going into the garden with le beau cousin. Didn't you know the garden was lit up? it is one of the great features of the Sunborough House parties. Let's go and look for them."

Sainty couldn't well refuse. He was thinking how much more indecent a very low-necked bodice was on a thin woman than on a fat one.

"Wasn't that Ned Parsons who left you just now?" he asked, as they made their way towards the staircase.

"Yes. He has become very fashionable since his book was such a success; he goes everywhere now. By the way," she added, with a little laugh, "I suppose that's why he bolted at sight of you; he thinks you haven't forgiven him for the liberty he took with your coming-of-age party."

"I should have thought he had quite as much reason to fear my grandmother; yet I find him at her house."

"Oh, well---a great ball like this is hardly being at people's house, you know; it doesn't count. But as a matter of fact he and the duchess have quite made it up. They met at Lady Eva's, and the duchess prepared to crush him. 'I hear, Mr. Parsons,' said she, in her most regal manner, 'that you have put me in a book.' 'Who can have told you such a thing?' Ned asked, with touching innocence. 'The duchess in my book is old and ridiculous; how could she be meant for you?'"

Sainty couldn't help laughing. As they emerged into the cooler and less crowded garden, his guide waited for him to come up beside her. Hitherto she had preceded him, worming her way through the crowd with a deftness bred of long habit, at which Sainty marvelled, and talking lightly to him over her shoulder.

"One doesn't often see you at this sort of thing," she said.

"It is only the second ball of my life," Sainty answered. "You were at my first too."

"Ah! the famous ball immortalised by Parsons. Is it possible that it can be three years ago?"

"Nearly four now."

"Good heavens! so it is. How old we are all getting! Your wife was there too; it was the year she came out. How little any of us thought what was going to happen, except perhaps dear Lady Eccleston. I shouldn't wonder if she had an inkling even then."

Sainty did not like his companion's tone, but hardly knew how to resent it. He had hoped by a rather stiff silence to intimate his want of appreciation of her particular form of humour, but she continued to chatter quite unabashed by his unresponsiveness.

"Cissy is quite a success," she continued; "it is astonishing how quickly she has caught on. I don't know any one who has more admirers, unless perhaps it's Mrs. Jack Purse, and she's been much longer on the scene of battle."

"And who may she be?" Sainty asked, hoping to divert the stream of Miss Winston's malevolence from his own vegetable patch.

"Lord Belchamber, where have you lived? I wish she could hear you; she'd die of it. Why, Mrs. Jack is smartest of the smart. She knows hardly any one but Jews and royalties. I was quite astonished to find her at the Suffords' at Whitsuntide. Hylda Sufford said she couldn't imagine why she came to her, but I think the Guggenheim's party for the prince falling through had something to do with it."

"My wife didn't tell me she met you at the Suffords'."

"Oh, I don't know how I came to be asked, but I was."

"And did you amuse yourself?"

"Oh, we had great fun. One night we all dressed up for dinner. Hylda was a harlequin and Ella Dalsany the columbine."

"Do you mean to say that Lady Sufford came down to dinner in tights before the footmen?"

"Gracious, yes! And Gladys Purse was Mephistopheles and Lady Deans Marguerite; but we all thought Cissy had the best idea."

"And what was that?" asked Sainty nervously. He had neither asked for nor received any account of the Suffords' country-house party.

"Why, she just put on her best frock and all her diamonds, and said she was the Traviata."

Sainty was not sure that this inspiration of his wife's exactly appealed to him. He walked in gloomy silence.

"Didn't she tell you about it?" asked Miss Winston. "She had a tremendous success. Mrs. Jack, with her red legs and cock's feather, was nowhere. Cissy has one immense pull over Gladys Purse as far as the younger men are concerned. It's terribly expensive to admire Mrs. Jack; whereas a charming but impecunious youth like Claude Morland gets many little advantages by the way from his devotion to his pretty cousin."

In spite of an effort to keep her talk on the level of impartial ill-nature, Miss Winston could not quite help a touch of scornful bitterness in her mention of Claude.

Scattered images had been loosely grouping themselves in Sainty's brain as she talked, half-forgotten incidents of his coming-of-age party, the softly opening door, his encounter with his cousin in the sleeping house, his examination of Claude as to his feelings for this same lady---it seemed to him that he began to detect a certain method in the apparently purposeless gossip with which she was favouring him. And then, blinding in its sudden illumination, there flashed across his mind the recollection of the anonymous letters. Here was the key to their authorship thrust suddenly into his mind. He felt the quick, instinctive recoil of a man about to tread on something nasty, and then a sort of shuddering pity for what the creature at his side must have suffered. None knew better than he how they were wounded who put their trust in Claude Morland. He wanted to turn and hurry from her, or at least to find something that should stop the flicker of her evil tongue. He found nothing better to say in the shock of the moment than "Do you think you ought to talk to me so about my wife?"

Sunborough House has, for the heart of London, a relatively large garden, which being cunningly illumined with Chinese lanterns and little coloured lamps, the next day's papers were already reporting that the effect was "fairy-like." Despite these beauties and the somewhat chilly allurements of an English summer night, only a few of the most flirtatiously inclined had been persuaded to drag their expensive skirts over the sooty London grass, and Sainty and his companion had the further end of the enclosure, which they had now reached, practically to themselves. As he made his feeble protestation, they came, round a tree, upon the glass doors of a sort of little summer-house which backed up against the high railing that divided the garden from the Park.

Miss Winston gave one glance into the lighted interior. "I think we are de trop here," she said, turning to Sainty, and, slipping nimbly from his side, she vanished in the soft shadows of the shrubbery. Almost at the same moment the door was opened from within with such suddenness that Sainty, who had not the agility of the fair Aimée, could only save himself from being struck by throwing himself back into the angle formed by the tree and the railing, and in this small space he now found himself made a close prisoner by the open door, which was firmly held in position by the broad back of a man, as he could see through the glass. He reflected that his position was not a dignified one, that as the inmates of the summer-house were evidently leaving it, he had only to stay quiet till they were gone, and then push the door and follow them at his leisure; and they need never know how nearly he had been tricked into playing the spy upon them. Miss Winston had evidently counted on finding her quarry there (perhaps from personal knowledge of his cousin's habits), and had hoped that she could so excite his jealousy that he would not be able, once there, to resist the temptation of looking. He had no doubt as to whom he would have seen, even before he recognised Claude's voice. He was relieved to hear that there was nothing lover-like in it. Morland spoke in brief, business-like tones through which pierced a scarcely disguised note of annoyance. "Then you won't see him?" he said, pausing against the door, evidently continuing some discussion they had been having.

"I daren't," Cissy answered. "I'm sure it would kill me."

"Then you must do the other thing; there are not two ways about it; and the sooner the better. If you're right, you've no time to lose. But are you quite sure?"

"Oh yes, quite. I wasn't at first, but I am now."

"It's cursedly unfortunate----"

They spoke low, and as they moved off he could hear no more.

Sainty pushed the door, and stepped out from his temporary prison. Of the fragment of dialogue that he had overheard he did not understand a word; indeed, he did not pay it any particular attention at the time; he supposed it to refer to some of the many plans the two were always discussing. He was accustomed to Cissy's use of needlessly strong language. "I should simply die of it" was a common phrase with her for expressing dislike of the most trivial things. It was not till months after they were spoken that the words came back to him with a new significance.

He followed the retreating figures up the garden, his feeling one of relief at the failure of an ill-natured plot of which he had been meant to be the victim. Miss Winston's motive was not difficult to guess. It all seemed like something in a novel or play, curiously theatrical and unlike life; but at least the dénouement had been essentially undramatic.

When he reached the front hall, he found Cissy already cloaked among the group of people who were waiting for their carriages.

"Where have you been?" she said. "I've been looking everywhere for you. I told you I wanted to go home early. I thought you must have gone."

"I was looking for you," Sainty answered. "I was told you had gone into the garden, so I went there after you; but we must just have missed."

In the brief transit to their own door neither spoke. Sainty was wondering if he ought to say anything to Cissy of the ill-will that was dogging her footsteps, to put her on her guard against evil tongues. A woman in her exceptional position could not be too careful to furnish no weapons to scandal. Yet it was not only Miss Winston's vengeful jealousy that had warned him to look after his wife. Had not kind little Mrs. de Lissac tried to suggest that he left her dangerously unguarded? Even the duchess had hinted the advisability of his being more with Cissy. It was evident that she was being talked about. Cissy herself seemed to provide him with just the necessary opportunity for speech, so difficult to find in their divided lives. To his surprise, instead of going immediately upstairs on arriving at home, she followed him into his rooms on the ground-floor. His study, though of Spartan simplicity compared to the rest of the house, had the indefinable pleasant air of rooms much lived and worked in. Everything in it was meant for use, and daily used. Books seemed to accumulate round Sainty like some natural growth. The one lamp with its plain green shade lighted the comfortable litter on the big, serviceable writing-table, and on another table near it was the humble appliance by help of which, as in his college days, he sometimes refreshed himself with a midnight cup of tea if he was working late.

"How cosy you are in here," Cissy said, looking about her. "I must have spent five times as much on my boudoir, but with all its silk walls and cushions and frills and furbelows it doesn't look as homey as this."

"You're never in the house for long enough to do more than scratch off a dozen notes," said Sainty, "unless you have people with you. Nothing ever looks like a home in which people don't live."

"I think it's the books," Cissy went on. "They are wonderful furniture. I really must get some."

She lingered, wandering about the room looking at one thing and another. "What's this for?" she asked, coming to the old kettle with its lamp.

"Sometimes I like a cup of tea if I'm working. It's a bad habit I got into at Cambridge."

"How shocking for the nerves, my dear," cried Cissy, with a lifelike imitation of old Lady Firth. "Well, you might have a decent-looking kettle and teapot. I shall have to give you one. Do you mean you could make a cup of tea now, this minute? What fun! Do make me one. I'm cold and famished. It will be lovely."

Sainty obediently set about lighting the spirit-lamp and preparing the demanded refreshment. He was not a little puzzled by this latest caprice of his wife.

Cissy went to the door, and called the butler. "You needn't sit up," she said. "Give me a candle, and then put out the lights and go to bed." She came back, and flung herself into an armchair, her summer wrap of satin and lace billowing foamlike round her.

Sainty, as he made the tea, was wondering how he could introduce the subject on which he wanted to speak. It was not once in six months he would have such an opportunity. He must not let it slip. And yet he was unwilling to sermonise when for once she was in so friendly a mood. He brought the cup of tea to her, and stood looking down at her as she gulped little teaspoonfuls of the hot liquid.

"You have never told me anything about your visit to the Suffords'," he said.

Cissy looked up suddenly. "What about it?" she asked distrustfully.

"I mean about dressing up for dinner and all that. Was it amusing?"

"Oh, that!" said Cissy indifferently, but with an air of relief. "I didn't suppose it would amuse you to hear about such nonsense. Who told you?" she asked, with a return of suspicion.

"Miss Winston. I met her to-night. I hadn't seen her for years."

"That's a nasty cat," Cissy remarked with conviction. "She hates me."

"Oh, you know it?"

"Know it? Of course I know it. Why----" She seemed to think better of what she was going to say, and checked herself. "What did she say about me?" she asked.

"She spoke in a way I didn't like," Sainty answered. "For some reason that woman is your enemy, and I wanted to tell you to be on your guard against her."

"Oh, thanks, that's all right. I'm not afraid of Aimée Winston," and she smiled a little cold smile at her own thoughts.

"Don't you think," said Sainty, with some hesitation, "that you are a little imprudent sometimes? a little careless of appearances? that, in fact, you rather give a horrid woman like Miss Winston occasion to take away your character?"

"Oh, my character!" said Cissy lightly. She had set down her tea-cup, and was pulling off her long gloves, and rubbing her round white arms softly over each other.

"I think, you know," Sainty went on, "you are beginning to be talked about a little. It was not only Miss Winston, but some one else, a nice woman, who----"

"Mrs. de Lissac, for a fiver!" interjected Cissy. "There's another woman who don't love me, though not for the same reason."

"Well, it was Alice, as it happens," Sainty admitted; "but she only said the kindest things, that you were too young and pretty to be left so much to yourself. You know even the duchess implied that I ought to be seen with you sometimes."

"Well," said Cissy imperturbably, "why aren't you? It seems to me that it is you who are failing in your duties, according to all these ladies, not me."

The coolness of the retort took Sainty's breath away for the moment.

"But you know," he stammered, "that there is nothing you would like less. I have never pretended to any right to control your actions. You know you are free to amuse yourself as you like. All I ask is that you won't compromise yourself, won't get talked about, and---and all that." He ended rather lamely. He half expected an outburst. To his surprise she leaned towards him, and laid her hand very gently on his.

"Don't you think," she said, and her voice was kind, "that you are rather to blame perhaps? If I am talked about, isn't it partly your fault? Can I help it if other men admire me?" She had unclasped her cloak, as the tea warmed her, and now, as she rose, it slipped from her and fell into the chair. She was standing very close to him, a beautiful woman, her beauty enhanced by everything that dress could do for it. Her breath was on his cheek, the faint heady fragrance of her garments troubled his nostrils, the dazzling fairness of her bare shoulders was close under his eyes. He drew back a little, bewildered. "I don't understand," he murmured. "I have tried not to annoy you. You remember what you said. After that I naturally could not trouble you."

Cissy sprang suddenly away, and caught up her cloak. There was in her movement something of the recoil of a spring that has been forced too far in one direction and has suddenly escaped.

"Ah, no," he heard her whisper, "I can't----" and then aloud, with a sudden scornful flash, "No, of course you can't understand," she said. "Heavens! it's nearly three . . . and I, who meant to go to bed early. There's a fate against it. Give me my candle. Good night---or what's left of it." She hurried past him, almost snatching the candle from his hand. The feeble flicker of it had vanished from the great well of the staircase, while he still stood in the doorway dumbly wondering.

What had she meant? Was it possible that she repented of her cruelty, that she wished---- For a moment it had seemed so. Yet he could not believe it. Vividly he recalled the night of their wedding, her agonised repetitions that she never could be his. And yet her following him to his room, her words, still more her looks. He stood there long irresolute, wondering if he were losing a great opportunity. Once he started to go and seek her. He looked up at the skylight far above, where the first faint coming of morning was making a pale twilight. He listened, but in all the silent greyness of the big house he could hear no sound but the innumerable ticking of clocks. A breath of chill discouragement seemed to steal down to him where he stood. He had a vision of the grotesque figure he should cut, misled by his own fatuity, and meeting closed doors, or the half concealed impertinence of a waiting-maid, and slowly he turned back into his own rooms and shut the door.