Circe lit a cigarette—the room was already heavy with some Oriental perfume which made Lady Currey sniff—and made herself thoroughly comfortable and picturesque on a low divan. Lady Currey told herself that it was exactly like a room in a harem, never having been in one.
“It is strange your boy should be marrying my girl,” commenced Mrs. Iverson, watching the pearly grey smoke rise in the air. “I confess I thought Claudia would have married quite differently.” Her voice was dangerously sweet.
“Indeed,” said Lady Currey. The perfume irritated her, and she felt a desire to sneeze.
“Yes, quite differently. But neither her father nor I would try to interfere with her choice. I have always allowed my children full liberty of action. And though Claudia would have had an enviable position as the Duchess of Swansea, I recognize her right to choose as her heart dictates. I saw the Duke last night, and he was very downcast. He thought Claudia might relent. Charming fellow, isn’t he?”
She opened her eyes blandly upon her visitor, and nothing but good will to men and contempt for women shone from them.
Lady Currey, who moved very little in London society now, did not personally know Swansea, but knew him to be one of the most eligible partis of the day. She had heard a vague rumour of Swansea’s attentions to Claudia from another quarter and saw no reason to doubt Circe’s news. She was nettled, and felt she was being placed in a false position. It revived old memories. Circe had possessed this trick as a young girl.
“Gilbert is bound to do well,” she said hastily.
“Of course.” Circe lit another cigarette. “But the future—well, it is the future! Futures are like horses—you can never count on them! If they could only invent automatic horses and automatic futures! Still, I have no doubt he will arrive one day, if Claudia is patient. Personally, I should have no patience to wait for a future.”
“Gilbert will make an excellent husband.” Lady Currey, to her great amazement, perceived that she was actually holding a brief for Gilbert. The thing was absurd.
“Oh, yes!” murmured her old friend vaguely. “But all the old-fashioned virtues are so out of date now, like four-wheelers and stage-coaches. The modern excellent husband is such a different article from what we called an excellent husband fifty years ago. I often think what a dreadful bore that good, old-fashioned husband must have been. I am sure those Early Victorian wives must have died of their partners’ excellences. Have you noticed how sad they always look in their portraits?”
“In my young days marriage was considered a sacrament,” remarked Lady Currey stiffly, glancing out of the corner of her eye at a notable array of masculine portraits. “I consider the interpretation and shortening of the marriage service nowadays scandalous. The Bishop of Dorminster quite agrees with me.”
“I am sure he would. If you sell patent medicines, you must believe in patent medicines.... Why don’t you start a campaign against it? I can see you at the head of a flourishing Anti society. I would join it with pleasure, Marian.”
Lady Currey stiffened. “Gilbert has very nice ideas about women.”
“What are nice ideas about women, Marian?”
“He treats women with respect and proper deference.”
“How dull!” murmured Circe, looking at the portrait of a man who had not treated her with undue respect.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said how delightful. But I hope he can—er—offer Claudia something more than respect. I hope he appreciates her and can offer a good deal of love and admiration. Some people set a great store by love—I fancy Claudia does. You see, that would be the one thing—you will forgive my speaking frankly like an old friend—that would compensate her father and me for a less good match than we had the right to expect. We want her to be happy, but Claudia is very much admired. She has had many good offers—I know, though she hasn’t told me—and I should feel a little sad if I thought Gilbert did not adore her. She is really rather a dear. I quite admire her myself, and I admire very few women.”
There was a short pause while Lady Currey struggled for words.
“I—I believe he is very much in love with her,” she said at last, flushing angrily.
“Ah! that is what I brought you up here to know. Love compensates for any worldly loss, does it not?... Dear Marian, I am afraid I must go out now, but it is charming to think that your son is going to marry Claudia. It reunites us again in the bonds of friendship. I am sure Gilbert is charming. Claudia is a lucky girl.”
Lady Currey was not to be outdone. She rose primly in her grey silk.
“Claudia is very handsome. It is Gilbert who is lucky.”
Thus ended a little Mothers’ Meeting.
CHAPTER VII
“LOVE IS THE ONLY CONVENTION”
Claudia was spending the week-end out of town at Holme Court, Wargrave, where one of her aunts, Mrs. Armesby Croft, always spent a good part of the summer. Gilbert had also been invited and her brother Jack, but Jack had refused to go.
She was coming down the stairs on the Friday morning and heard a familiar whistling. Jack’s door was open, and the musical-comedy tune—rather flat—proceeded from his room.
“Jack, I do wish you wouldn’t whistle so flat. Can’t you get your whistle manicured, or something?”
“Hallo! Claud, that you? Come in, I’m nearly all there.”
The late hours he habitually kept had not yet left any mark on Jack Iverson. This morning he looked wonderfully young and fresh, although he had not tumbled into bed until past three. Youth has a magnificent elasticity, and he looked like a modern god that has tubbed and shaved and is ready for a good breakfast.
“Why aren’t you coming down to Wargrave?” inquired Claudia, sauntering into his apartment. “It’s just the week-end for the river.”
“Maybe I am going on the river,” said Jack, with a knowing air, settling his tie in the mirror. “I’ve had on seven ties this morning. How’s this one?”
“Looks all right. I don’t notice anything wrong, so I suppose it’s all right. That’s the test of men’s dressing, isn’t it? Why not Wargrave?”
“Because, though Aunt Margaret is a clinking good sort and keeps a jolly good table, she is not a ravishing companion. You’re only my sister, and—’nuff said.”
Claudia looked at him, and her lip curled. “That means you are going up the river with a ravishing companion, I suppose?”
“Thou supposeth rightly, oh, wise one! She’s just the most fascinating thing you ever struck.”
“Which musical comedy?” queried Claudia, running her eyes over the collection of invitation cards and pretty women on his mantelshelf. The portraits had inscriptions on them of considerable fervour, and she noticed a family resemblance in the handwritings, which were either sprawly or very dashing, with huge flourishes at the end like a stockwhip in action.
“Never you mind. But she’s a duck, the very thing for a steam-launch. Got the neatest thing in ankles you ever saw. Beastly taking a woman with thick ankles on the river. They’re best hidden under a dinner-table.”
“Can she talk about anything?” asked Claudia curiously, picking up a photograph of a smile and a shoulder.
“She can talk well enough when she wants to. Oh! I know you, Claudia, we’ve had this discussion before. I’ve told you I don’t like clever women. I hate a girl who wants to impress you and talks like a smart novel. Give me a nice, affectionate little thing who’s got a string of funny stories and doesn’t make too many demands on a fellow. She’s worth a hundred clever women, with their soaring nonsense.”
“Is she?” Claudia looked at him thoughtfully as he put his watch in his waistcoat. “I often wonder why you and men like you prefer to spend your time with—well, affectionate little things, rather than with girls in your own set. Personally, I can’t understand your taste. I am sure these girls have common ways and petty thoughts. I couldn’t stand a musical-comedy man for five minutes.”
“Oh! that’s different. The men are awful bounders; you’re quite right. I’d like to see one of them make up to you!”
“Why is it so different?”
“Well, it is. I can’t explain things like that to you, but it is. You’re brainy, old girl, and I don’t pretend to be brainy. A lot of good brains do a woman, unless she’s a schoolmistress. Not that Ruby is stupid. She’s—well, she’s bright, if you know what I mean. She knows how to get what she wants, and knows her way about.”
“The cleverness of the gamin,” observed Claudia coolly.
“Well, anyway, she’s clever enough for me. You can be easy and comfortable with her, and she’s an amusing companion. Doesn’t go in for moods and all that nonsense. I like ’em bright and chirpy, I confess. If you girls only knew how your confounded moods and fancies bore a fellow. Why, look at you. You’re full of whims and fancies. You can be an awfully good companion if you like—none better; but one never knows what you will want the next moment. You women expect us to transpose ourselves to your key every few minutes. It’s a damned nuisance, Claudia. Take my advice, don’t try too many moods on with Gilbert.”
“You think there is much in common between you and Gilbert?” Claudia’s voice was sarcastic.
“Yes more than you think,” flashed out Jack unexpectedly. “Oh! I know all about his brains, but otherwise he’s much the same as me. He doesn’t care enough about women generally to make a study of ’em.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“He’s too indifferent, and I’m too lazy,” continued young Iverson, bent on pursuing his train of thought. “I daresay women are nice to me because I’ve got plenty of money—you are right in some cases—but as long as they are nice, what matters?”
“From your point of view, not at all, if you only want a woman as a mere plaything, to smile automatically the moment you appear, and produce a funny story when you turn a handle. You want a doll, Jack, not a woman, a pretty, jointed doll, that squeaks ‘darling’ when you come up to it, and which you can pick up when you like and drop when you like.”
“My dear girl,” said Jack, with a condescending smile “you can’t understand. Women never do understand these things. They talk a lot about sex nowadays, but it’s all talk. The proposition is quite a simple one, if you women wouldn’t wrap it up with complexities.”
“Well, I’m glad I don’t understand,” she returned warmly. “And if I were a man I don’t think I should understand either. I hope I should be more fastidious.” She pounced on a jeweller’s morocco case. “Hallo! May I look, Jack?”
Jack nodded. He rather liked Claudia when she was not too brainy and analytical.
She opened the case with a click. It contained a very handsome pendant with pearl drop and a big ruby in the centre.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” said Jack complacently. “The ruby was my own idea—her name—d’yer see?”
“Quite subtle,” said Claudia gravely; “but I daresay, if you explain it, she’ll see the point.”
“Eh? Oh, well! they like a little present occasionally. And if you saw her pleasure at anything you give her—well, you feel you want to go and buy her the whole shopfull at once.”
“H’m. I think I was wrong in suggesting she was not clever. Let’s go down to breakfast, Jacky.”
“You see,” said Jack confidentially, as they went down the stairs, “a fellow likes to be appreciated. You remember that, my dear, now you are going to be married. Don’t have any moods, and always be appreciative and bright. That does the trick every time. Take my advice.”
“Thank you. I’ll be sure and remember. Appreciative and bright. I might have it framed.”
“Don’t you fancy I don’t know anything about women. You’re a nut, Claudia, I admire you no end, but really you make too great demands on a chap. Come on, I could eat a tin can this morning.”
Later that day Claudia was lying very comfortably in a big wicker chair under an old elm-tree at Holme Court, when Gilbert arrived. He looked noticeably tired and fagged, for the week had been a very hot one, and he had been hard at it. He did not specially remark the pretty picture she made in her cool white linen against the green background, but he appreciated the shade of the elm. His chambers were abominably stuffy.
“Poor boy!” said Claudia softly. “You’re tired, I can see. I’ll be soothing. You don’t want me to tell funny stories, do you?”
Gilbert’s eyes opened in blank surprise, but he caught the twinkle in her eyes, and the smouldering laugh in the corners of her mouth as she watched him. He knew there was a joke somewhere, but he was much too hot and tired to worry it out. Instead he looked at Claudia’s mouth, which was soft and red, with a most provocative pout.
“It’s too warm even to laugh. But it’s nice and cool here.” He dropped into a chair with a huge sigh of content.
“We are all alone here,” said Claudia happily. “The others have gone on the river, but I waited for you.” There was no one in sight except a couple of birds hopping about in search of a worm. “I am going to give you some tea out here, and then we will go down and get one of the boats out.” She dropped a kiss on his hair, which already had several silver threads in it. “I thought I’d stop and mother a poor tired boy! Somehow—wasn’t it ridiculous of me?—I fancied you would like to have me all to yourself.” She laughed a little. “It’s rather nice to have someone to pet and fuss over. I’ve never had anyone who would let me do it. Mother hates us even to kiss her—we do it once a year, at Christmas, when we thank her for her present—and Pat is too tom-boyish to like being petted. I had to fall back on Billie. He can stand any amount of it, but still—well, he’s only a dog.”
“Does that mean I have cut out Billie,” said Gilbert lazily. Her hands, with their soft, rather mesmeric finger-tips, gave him agreeable sensations in keeping with idle hours and summer days.
“No, it doesn’t. As a matter of fact I feel so happy that I could pet the whole world!”
“A tall order! But, I say, I’d rather you didn’t do it to the masculine half. They might misunderstand your mothering instinct.”
She laughed and dropped another kiss on his hair before she went back to her seat among the cushions. Involuntarily he put up his hand and smoothed his hair, which was in no way disturbed. It was thick and straight, and spoke of his abundant energy.
“Gilbert! Don’t brush my kisses off. You are ungallant.”
“Sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to brush them off, but a man hates the idea that his hair has got ruffled.”
“That’s because you are afraid of looking ridiculous! Men are very dignified animals, aren’t they? I believe you’re a particularly dignified, conventional specimen!”
The maid was approaching with the tea-tray. As she came across the lawn, the silver caught the rays of the sun and threw them back in radiant shafts of light. The maid’s cap and apron seemed dazzlingly white against the green and blue of the sky and garden.
“Of course, I’m conventional,” responded Gilbert. “Haven’t you discovered that before? Only weak people are unconventional.”
Claudia pondered this saying as she watched the maid arrange the table.
“I don’t believe that is altogether true,” she said at length, taking hold of the teapot.
“Of course not. Nothing is altogether true and nothing is altogether false. Plenty of milk, please.”
“I don’t believe I have a conventional, tidy mind. I can imagine myself doing quite unconventional things, and I don’t believe I should realize they were unconventional till I looked back.”
“That’s having no mind at all.” He looked at her teasingly. “The little pink abominations out of the cake-basket, please.”
“And then you’d be terribly shocked and put on your barrister air, and say ‘Didn’t you know that ...?’ You don’t altogether hold a brief for conventionality, do you?”
“It’s the safest and most convenient path,” he said, stirring his tea. “Personally, I have no quarrel with convention.”
“Don’t you believe that circumstances may sometimes force you to do unconventional things when convention means death to the spirit?”
“I make allowances for weakness, because weakness is the rule and strength the exception. The world gets weaker-willed and more neurotic every day. That’s why one hears so much talk of ‘individuality,’ ‘independence,’ et cetera. More cake, please.”
Claudia shook her head, not at the request for more cake, but at his dicta.
“That’s not right. You are making no allowance for temperament. Sometimes it’s really brave to be unconventional.”
“More often weak and cowardly,” retorted Gilbert, “and the unconventional people usually put other people in a hopeless mess.”
“I don’t believe you were ever tempted to do anything unconventional.” Claudia looked at him, and it crossed her mind that he was very unlike her mother’s friends.
“No, I don’t pretend to have withstood great temptations in that line. ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ doesn’t enrage me. I put the same notice-board on my own property, and am content.”
“I see. Will that notice-board cover—your wife?” She was smiling at him, but there was a hint of earnest in the dark eyes.
“Most certainly, madam. The rest of the world may admire you—from a safe distance.” He found her looking very pretty behind the silver, the sun through the green branches just flecking her hair. “I warn you I should not make a complaisant husband if I found someone trespassing.” He laughed as he said it, but there was a decided champ of his jaws, which she noticed and secretly admired.
“And I shouldn’t be marrying you if I thought you would,” she replied, with a sudden touch of fire in her voice. “One sees so much of that and it is so—so horrible. One despises the husband more than the wife.” Then she went on more slowly. “I think most women feel the same about it, although they say they want perfect freedom in such matters. Women are playing a game of bluff nowadays. They don’t want a husband to be complaisant.”
He looked across at her, and his mother’s warnings came back to him. Claudia like her mother? Why, she had just naively acknowledged that she only wanted to be dominated by a strong man. Geoffrey Iverson had always been a slackster. A weak man makes a Circe. If a man cannot hold a woman, he deserves and must expect to lose her. Life to-day is not so far removed from savagery after all. The strong man always wins. And had he not won so far all along the line? Had he not taken and kept all that he needed? His mother did not understand that there was no cause to fear. A palmist had once told him that he possessed an indomitable will. He knew that she was right. His thoughts flew back, induced by the peace and quiet, to the last few years at the Bar. He had out-distanced all his rivals. Men who had eaten their dinners at the same time as he were still unknown, briefless. And some of them had shown brilliant promise, some of them had worked hard, too. He knew that already, although he was so young, there was a rumour that he might shortly be taking silk.
Claudia, her chin propped on the palm of her hand, had been watching him, and with a woman’s swift uncanny intuition she knew that he had ceased to think of her, that she had lost touch with him. With a touch of jealousy she cried:
“Gilbert, come back to me. Of what were you thinking?”
He came back at once, but without the faintest comprehension that she had felt left out in the cold, had divined that she had a serious rival.
“Suppose I say I was thinking of nothing in particular?”
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be true. You were thinking of something that pleased you and—and interested you enormously. Your eyes were dark with thought, and there was a glint in them—— Ah! you were back in your chambers with your briefs?”
He laughed.
“Yes, I was right. You had deliberately left this sweet, sunny garden and—and me, and gone back to those stuffy chambers. We haven’t seen one another for four days, and you’d gone back to your work.”
There was an edge to her voice that roused him.
“Claudia, dear, I am very happy here with you, but one can’t control one’s thoughts or shut watertight doors on one’s affairs. A woman’s life is different. Men cannot help mingling their business with their pleasure.”
“You mean we have nothing else to think of but you?” She threw up her head at an angle which was particularly becoming, and showed the softness and whiteness of her throat in the collarless dress.
“No,” he said, “but you haven’t any big objective in life. My dear Claudia, if you understood the keen competition nowadays, you wouldn’t mind a man’s thoughts straying back to the fray. You don’t really, you are much too clever to want a stupid, love-sick swain who can talk or think of nothing else but love. You have said many times that you are in complete sympathy with my ambitions. Don’t be feminine and illogical. I was flattering myself”—he put his hand on hers with his most engaging smile—“that I had won a super-feminine and logical wife.”
“I am in sympathy with you Gilbert.” She carefully kept her eyes from his face, as though that would break the chain of her thoughts. “And I don’t want you to be a stupid, love-sick swain, but——” How could she make him understand without seeming petty and unreasonable? “Gilbert,” she went on quickly, determined to say frankly what she was thinking, “is everything in your life subservient to your work? Sometimes you talk as if everything else—as though we were the rungs upon which you mounted the ladder. When you talk of wasting time—things being trivial and not worth while—your face becomes so contemptuous and hard and engrossed it makes me frightened. I want you to have a career; I wouldn’t have married an idle man. I will help you in every way I can; I shan’t expect impossible attention—but, Gilbert, I want our marriage to mean something to you, a big something.”
She paused for breath, and he opened his lips to speak, but she signed to him to be silent.
“Let me finish. I couldn’t bear to think that your work was everything to you, and that I—I was merely the Hausfrau that bore your name and sat at your table. It might be enough for some women, but it wouldn’t be enough for me. I warn you that if you ever let me drop into the background of life I—I don’t know what I might not do. I told you just now that I wasn’t conventional. Love is the only convention that I own. Gilbert, tell me something quite truthfully. If I am asking things you can’t give me, let us break off the engagement before it is too late. I want”—her voice broke a little and her eyes were dimmed with feeling—“I want a great deal of love. I’ve never had it, you know, and I—I’m so hungry. If I didn’t love you, I shouldn’t be talking like this. You know I love you; but you—you—Gilbert——”
She had risen from her seat and faced him. She was very much in earnest, and her mouth trembled like a child’s. Her full, rounded bosoms under the linen and lace heaved with her quick heart-beats; her eyes asked piteously for love.
She was very beautiful in that moment. She was young and fresh and fragrant, with not a touch of artifice about her. There was no man alive that would not have been touched by her beautiful, pleading eyes. She promised so much. The hint of passion in her eyes and colouring would have allured any man, and Gilbert was by nature a passionate animal. Passion and ambition had warred from his youth, and he had deliberately crushed out his warm human instincts. Until he met Claudia they had been absolutely under control. Now, as on the night he had proposed to her, something swept over him like a huge wave and swamped his brain. He only knew that he desired this girl and that he had never been thwarted in anything he had set his heart upon. He did love her; what more could she want? She was young and immature; she did not understand that man’s feelings may be the deeper for not finding constant expression. Later, when they were married, she would understand better.
He forgot they were in the garden of Holme Court—in his cooler moments he was desperately afraid of any demonstrations of affection—and he sprang to his feet and caught her in his strong arms. He showered kisses on her passionate, trembling lips, kisses that sent a wild thrill of fearful joy through her, that made the placid, sunny garden rock and reel before her eyes, and gave her a vivid glimpse of what marriage might mean. And no man had ever roused her passions before. This man had always had the power to do so since the dinner-party when he had held her hand in his and asked if he might claim the privileges of old friendship and call her Claudia. Something had stirred uneasily then.
“If—if he has this power over me, if he can rouse the woman in me,” she reasoned, “he must be the right man, the man I should marry.” It was the simple, true mating of Nature. Surely, surely all would be well?
“You do—you do love me very much, don’t you? I am more to you than your work?”
Her lips had intoxicated him so that he would have told her any lie so that she did not elude him. But he really thought he was speaking the truth, that there was something more than mere sex attraction between them.
“Yes, yes,” he cried fiercely, with the conquering note of the male; “can’t you feel?—don’t you know?—kiss me, kiss me——”
It was several minutes before they went back to the pink abominations and the more sober discussion of their wedding.
PART II
CHAPTER I
EN ROUTE
Yes, Mrs. Currey was “at home,” the butler admitted, opening the doors hospitably.
By the hats and overcoats lying about the spacious hall of their flat in Albert Hall Mansions, Carey Image knew he was not the only man who had hastened to congratulate Claudia on her husband’s latest honour. He had seen the announcement in the papers that morning. Gilbert Currey had been made a K.C. Image immediately sent a wire to his chambers, and now in person was giving himself the pleasure of calling on his “god-daughter by marriage,” as he called her.
The honour was no surprise to anyone; for the last year or more rumour had marked him out for this distinction. There had even been vague whispers of coming glory in the church at his wedding, eighteen months before. But now Gilbert had stepped into the vacancy left by the death of Howard Barnes, that blunt and sarcastic personality who, under a forbidding exterior, had hidden the heart of a child.
Image had seen very little of the pair since their marriage, for he who has once roamed in the Orient never settles down for long in the dull, tidy lands of the West, and though Cary Image had fully intended to stop in England, he had broken his resolve a few weeks after the ceremony. Japan with her slender golden fingers had beckoned him and he had gone back to the land of almond blossom and universal courtesy.
The room overlooking the Park which he entered, unusually large and lofty for a London flat, seemed crowded to his near-sighted eyes. There was an animated chatter of voices, for Claudia had already gathered around her an amusing and socially attractive set, who talked well and easily, and required but little “managing.” Image’s bright eyes peered out through his eyeglasses in search of his hostess.
She soon came towards him with her most hospitable and welcoming smile. She was always pleased to see him or receive one of his long, descriptive letters. She liked him and she liked his life-story. Gilbert generally spoke of him a little slightingly.
“Welcome, godfather; I’m delighted to see you. You’ve neglected me shamefully of late. From what part of the world have you come?”
“Last of all from Paris, chère madame, and this morning I saw the announcement in the paper. Gilbert is forging ahead. My heartiest congratulations to his charming partner. What could one not hope to do with such a one!”
She listened with a conventional smile, but her eyes did not warm to any enthusiasm as she said lightly, “Thank you, but I have had nothing to do with it. Such a partner as I”—there was a slight emphasis on the word—“is not entitled to claim any share in the congratulations.”
“That is not true,” said Image warmly; “a wife is the closest and best partner a man can have; and I am sure, if the truth were known, that most of our famous men owed much of their success to their wives’ co-operation. The partner in the house is often far more important than the partner in the office.”
“Mr. Image, you really are the most refreshing person,” said a studiously lazy voice from under an enormous mass of lancer plumes at his left. “Isn’t he, Claudia? You are the one faithful appreciative soul in a multitude of scoffers howling in the wilderness. You almost induce a woman to believe in herself.”
Image laughed and peered under the feathery erection to discover that it was Rhoda Carnegie, a cousin of Claudia’s and a woman he had known in Society for many years. She was married to an unsuccessful playwright, a “one play” man, who on the strength of a singleton had induced her to marry him, to their mutual regret. Some people raved about her beauty in superlatives, while others merely dubbed her “queer-looking.” No one refrained from expressing an opinion about her. Her looks and manners were of the arrogant “I-must-be-obeyed” order, and she had a reputation for being irresistible where she chose to charm.
“Ah! Mrs. Carnegie, I could not see who it was. How do you do? I am so glad you agree with me.”
“I don’t in the least,” she responded languidly, through half-shut eyes. “It’s only bad women who play a big part in men’s lives; that’s why I gave up being good. The nice, virtuous, sympathetic wife is—just a super most of the time, unnoticed in the wings. And who wants to be super?”
With a careless laugh Claudia moved away to greet a new arrival. Rhoda Carnegie watched her with a sort of detached, cold-blooded speculation.
“Claudia was never cut out to be a super. I see signs that she will shortly get beyond that stage, for Gilbert gives no one a chance to distinguish himself. He always plays lead. But Claudia is not her mother’s daughter for nothing,” she drawled, playing with a set of golden baubles in her lap. She had but a small income of her own and her husband had less, but Rhoda Carnegie was noted for her extravagance. How she got her very handsome toilettes was a mystery. At least, perhaps it was not an insolvable one to those who knew her well; but a mystery is always more decent than a scandal.
Image listened, rather startled. Then he remembered the type of woman to whom he was speaking. It was said that she made an art of demolishing reputations in as few words as possible.
“I find her looking exceedingly well,” he said, trying to change the subject; “and you, also,” he added courteously.
She looked up at him through her narrow slits of eyes, a trick which some men found fascinating.
“Claudia is the type that goes on getting better-looking until she arrives at the age of fifty, then she remains handsome and distinguished, especially when her hair gets white. It’s a good job our styles don’t clash, or I should have to avoid her. But we are quite different. She is the charming, sympathetic, give-all type which has its admirers, and I—I hold men with a whip, which I don’t hesitate to use. You know the play Doormats? Well, I am the boot.” She laughed insolently. “Now you like the Claudia type. So does Frank Hamilton.”
“Frank Hamilton? Is that the new artist that——”
“Yes, Claudia has made a success of him. She first introduced him socially, and they say he is deluged with commissions for portraits. He isn’t as strong as Sargent or Lavery, and I shouldn’t wonder if he fizzles out, but he has a trick of pleasing his sitters and doing very graceful work. I believe he is doing a portrait of Claudia. That is he over there.”
She pointed quite openly with her fingers to a young man who stood at Claudia’s elbow, holding some cigarettes. There was something in his very attitude that suggested his admiration for his hostess.
Image saw a tall, broad-shouldered, but loose-jointed figure, that spoke more of the studio than the cricket-field. His features were good, graceful rather than strong, and the whole face, he could see, would be one that would please women. His hazel eyes had an appealing, rather wistful look in them, and his mouth, if rather weak, spoke of a taste for and appreciation of beauty and luxury.
“Claudia should prove a good subject for his brush,” said Image, exchanging a nod with a foreign diplomatist whom he knew. “I have heard people speak of him and predict great things for his future.”
“Mostly women, I suppose? Women like him and men—are not keen about him. But then he’s not keen on them. Women fill the bill. A good many of them are taking him up, and I don’t think his head can stand it. He hates me like poison. He loves to talk about himself, and I love and intend to talk about myself. He told a dear friend of mine, who never loses an opportunity of repeating the nasty things that are said about me, that I had the eyes of a Lucretia Borgia.”
“I have always wondered what colour they really are,” said Image, playing up to her obvious lead.
She smiled. “Continue—to wonder! That is the way to make men think about you. An ounce of conjecture is worth a hundredweight of knowledge where women are concerned.... Good gracious, Patricia, is there any more of you to unwind? I thought it was a boa-constrictor standing on his hind legs. Haven’t you stopped growing?”
“In stature—yes.” She was more of an Amazon than ever as she rose from somewhere behind the piano. She gripped Image by the hand, and it was a real grip.
“How about goodness?” queried Rhoda.
“A non-starter—the handicap frightens me. We are not a good family, you know.... What a lot of people and congratulations! I should have thought Gilbert might have got home early to have relieved his wife’s blushes, and given himself a sort of holiday treat.”
“Working as hard as ever?”
“Harder. I annoyed him the other day by predicting a nerve-breakdown—he was playing golf so badly—in a couple of years. And that same night at dinner he was so dead tired or cross that he hardly said a word, and I was left to talk to a boy I’d refused the night before. He was sulky and devoted himself to his food. I had a beastly time. I told Gilbert that he fancied he was an indestructible machine, and that he would find he wasn’t. Anyway, he hates dinner-parties, and he begins to show it in his manners.”
“If I were Claudia I should leave him at home,” said Rhoda coolly. “I always leave mine at home. I tell people not to invite him. A husband is always the skeleton at the feast.”
“Why have a husband at all?” said Pat lightly, who knew her Rhoda.
“It’s a bad habit we shall outgrow in time, like needle-work and charity. A husband is like your appendix. When you don’t know it’s there, it’s no use, and when you do, it’s a nuisance.”
“Had any tea?” inquired Patricia of Image.
“No, will you take me and give me some?” They walked together to the next room. “Dear me, would you mind hobbling on your knees, or providing me with stilts? After the miniature women of Japan you take my breath away. The modern Englishwoman is really a glorious creature.”
Pat laughed amiably. “I’m a sort of yard-measure, aren’t I? It’s a nuisance really, except when you get in a crowd. Mother winces every time she sees me, and father says my feet are larger than his.”
But Image looked admiringly at her over the edge of his tea-cup. To him this fine young girl, so amazingly fresh and healthy, Saxon in colouring, with the limbs of an athlete, was most attractive, though he knew she made his own lack of inches more conspicuous.
“I suppose we shall have you getting married soon?” he said, beaming on her through his glasses.
Patricia shrugged her broad shoulders and nibbled at a sandwich. “Didn’t you hear Rhoda say that we women are getting out of the habit?”
“She talks a lot of nonsense. Don’t listen to it. You are much too fresh and sweet to repeat such horrible cynicism.”
“We are all cynical nowadays. How is it you have escaped? How have you managed to keep on believing in people and things?”
Image answered quite simply and directly. “By loving a woman, my dear. To love a woman well keeps the core of a man’s heart from withering and getting old. My blessings on all your sex, even a Rhoda Carnegie, because of her.”
It was said so naturally that Patricia, who, like all young things, recoiled from any display of sentiment, could not find any fault with the frankness with which he had replied to her question. She became a little graver, and whether by accident or the prompting of some hidden association of ideas, she glanced up at the opposite wall, where hung a portrait of Gilbert, a wedding-present from the tenants on his father’s estate.
“Ah!” she said impulsively, “but why, then, do so many marriages go wrong? They seem so right beforehand, and then——” She checked herself suddenly and shot a sideways look at the little man beside her, like a child who fears she has betrayed a cherished secret. But though Image’s mind was full of alarm at what he felt lay between the lines, he gave no sign that Pat could have had any personal implication in her mind. To Pat’s relief, Frank Hamilton came in for some tea, and she seized upon him and made him known to Carey Image.
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” said Image, with his old-world formality. “I have heard your praises sung, but never found myself in your company before. I saw one of your portraits photographed for an illustrated paper I found in Japan. I understand you are engaged on a portrait of our hostess?”
Hamilton’s face, which had been full of pleased attention—Rhoda said he swallowed praise as a baby swallows milk—clouded a little. Then he replied with an engaging air of frankness.
“To tell you the truth, I have not been successful so far. She is a most difficult subject, though a delightful one. I have already destroyed one portrait and several studies. I think she is tired of my efforts, for I cannot persuade her to come to the studio for sittings. And I want so much to get a good portrait of her.”
Image nodded understandingly. “Yes, I should say Mrs. Currey would be a difficult subject. Her greatest charm is in her animation and spirit, and those qualities are always difficult to transfer to canvas. And such people always appear different to each of their friends, so that a popular success is, I should say, almost impossible. It is before the cow-like, plaster-of-paris woman that people throw up their hands and say ‘How like!’”
“I see you know something about the art of portrait-painting,” said Hamilton, looking pleased.
“He knows something about everything,” exclaimed Pat. “He’s a walking index and encyclopædia, a Who’s Who and a Dictionary of National Biography all combined.”
Claudia came up and caught the last words.
“He’s nothing so dull and uninteresting. It’s a deadly insult, godfather. Up, sir, and at Patricia.”
“How can I?” said Image humorously. “Just look at us! I shall have to get some of the mushroom that Alice nibbled before I fight your sister.”
“Oh! but the pen is mightier than the sword! Annihilate her with an epigram; that’s much more deadly, because your enemies go round repeating it,” said Claudia gaily. Image noticed that Hamilton was feasting his eyes on her face and that Claudia seemed rather to avoid looking at him. Image received the impression that she was used to his homage and did not either actively encourage or resent it.
“Such bad form,” jeered Pat. “Everyone epigrammates nowadays, and you never have the least idea what anyone is talking about. You answer in the same strain, and you wonder what on earth you yourself are talking about. Anyone can get a reputation for being clever, if he’s only vague and wild enough in his conversation.”
In the general laugh at Patricia the group shifted, and Image found himself alone with Claudia. She smiled upon him frankly and said with obvious sincerity:
“It’s so nice to see you again. Don’t run away for a while. By and by, I expect another friend back from ‘furrin parts abroad.’ You remember Colin Paton?”
“Indeed, yes, and shall be glad to see him again.”
“So shall I. He’s such an excellent and satisfying companion. A ‘collectable’ person, you know. At least,” she added, with a slight change of tone, “I used to find him so.”
“That sounds a little like granny, with her ‘When I was young, my dear, I used to——’”
Claudia laughed. “Oh well! friends change, even in eighteen months, or else it is that one changes one’s self, and friends seem different, judged by different standards. Eighteen months may be a day—or an eternity. He went away just before our wedding, you know. He has written me some most delightful letters at intervals since. He is one of the few men who can write something more than a telegram.”
Although he did not appear to be doing so, the keen eyes of her companion were scrutinizing her face as she talked. In middle-age or its borderland lines tell their tale for all to read, massage she ever so assiduously, but the changes in a young face are much more subtle and difficult to classify. But to a student of physiognomy like Carey Image there is sometimes a hint conveyed in the softest curve, a suggestion in an apparently sunny smile, a warning in the glance of brilliantly youthful eyes, such as were now confronting him.
She was not satisfied, she was not happy. The eyes had lost a little of the eager, questioning softness he had noticed in the photograph in Gilbert’s room two years ago, and the mouth had acquired a little more decisiveness and an inclination toward sarcasm rather than smiles. Her whole bearing was much more assured, much more the woman of the world, the woman who has eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. But Image knew that she had not found that fruit altogether sweet. And he was profoundly sorry. He would have been sorry to have read that information on any young man or woman’s face for he always wanted the world to be a more joyful place, but he particularly liked his young hostess. He saw in Claudia the bud that has blossomed but has never been warmed by the good red sun, so that the petals at the heart are still cold and unopened. And with the kindly wisdom of his fifty-four years, Image knew that this spelt danger ahead.
They chatted on, Claudia questioning him about his wanderings abroad, until they were interrupted by one of the servants.
“The master has just rung up, madam, to say that he cannot get back this evening in time to accompany you out to Hampstead to-night, and will you please make his apologies to Mrs. Rivington.”
Claudia listened with a curious compression of her lips, like someone who listens with irritation to a too frequently told tale. Then she made a quick movement towards the door.
“I must speak to him myself. It’s too bad. Mrs. Rivington——”
Then she stopped short, as though second thoughts had put a check on her impulse. She came back to Image with a resigned shrug of her shoulders.
“It really is too bad of Gilbert. I spend half my time making apologies for him and meekly bearing the ill-temper of my hostess whose table has been disarranged.” Yet she looked anything but meek as she said it. “I am sure people will soon cease to ask us, because it is annoying to have your table upset at the last minute. It would try the patience of a hostess in heaven. Mrs. Rivington will be furious. She has asked us several times and we’ve refused.... Oh, well! I must go and telephone at once. That’s the only peace-offering and oblation I can make.”
“Let me go, Claud,” said Patricia; “you can’t leave your guests, and as she is a stranger to me, her wrath will pass harmlessly over my head.”
Claudia accepted the offer with relief. “You’ll find the number under Major-General Rivington, Newcombe Avenue. I say, Pat, suggest that, as Gilbert can’t come, I shall absent myself also.” Hopefully. “Perhaps she’ll let me off, as they are Gilbert’s friends rather than mine. Get me a reprieve if you can. It’s in the wilds of West Hampstead, and it’s such a long drive for a bad dinner.”
“Right-o! I’ll be a perfect Machiavelli on the telephone,” sang out Pat as she departed.
Dr. Fritz Neeburg, who was sitting near by, looked up as Pat went. “Is Gilbert in the habit of working in the evening, Mrs Currey?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, pretty often, Dr. Neeburg. Do you approve of it? You are his doctor, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but he hasn’t been to see me for ages, so I suppose he keeps pretty fit. All the same, I don’t approve of it.”
“He’s looking very tired,” said Claudia lightly. “Last night he did go out with me to a party at the ‘Ritz,’ but he was too tired to talk. I am sure the woman who sat next to him must be going about saying that the new K.C. is the dullest man in London.”
“I must talk to him,” said Neeburg decidedly. “He’s just the sort of a man who has a splendid constitution and takes that as an excuse for overwork. When a man gets into the habit of thinking of himself as a machine Nature has a little way of avenging such slights.”
“Mrs. Currey, give him a curtain lecture,” said Image.
Claudia’s lip curled a little and she raised her eyebrows. “You can’t curtain-lecture a man who listens in silence and then says, like putting in the cork, ‘You don’t understand. Women never do. A man who wants to make his way nowadays must devote himself whole-heartedly to his work. The world is strewn with the wreckage of men who have relaxed too soon or “taken holidays.”’”
Patricia has returned.
“Claudia, I did my best, and even spoke quite plainly; but I couldn’t get you off. She was very cross indeed. Her voice through the telephone was like that of an angry mosquito. She says you, at least, must come, and she wants you to bring a substitute. She suggested that Mr. Hamilton should come out with you, as she wants to make his acquaintance.”
Claudia spoke coldly. “I can’t ask Mr. Hamilton, or anyone, to take Gilbert’s place at a couple of hours’ notice.”
“No, I told her that, but she seemed to think you ought to get her out of the difficulty with the table.”
She did not tell her sister that Lorna Rivington’s rather sharp reply had been, “Your sister and he are such great friends that I am sure he would do it if she asked him.” Instead she whispered in her sister’s ear, “Why don’t you ask Mr. Image? He is such a nice, obliging dear.”
Because her feelings were divided between an unreasonable anger that Mrs. Rivington should make such a suggestion and a pleasurable relief that her long drive might not be so boresome after all, she seized on the alternative suggestion.
“Mr. Image, you have heard of my dilemma. Would you earn the martyr’s crown and take me out to Hampstead? It’s too bad to ask you at such short notice, but——”
“I should have been only too pleased,” returned Image, with a note of sincere regret, “but it is the anniversary of my mother’s death, and I always spend the evening quite quietly. At any other time, if such a situation occurs and I can fill the bill, ring me up and just give me time to dress. But you must give me an hour—I can’t do it in less.” It was well known that Carey Image took an age to attire himself. His neat, precise personal habits and leisurely methods of dressing were a constant amusement to his friends and a handle to his—very few—enemies.
Several people came up to make their adieux, among them Frank Hamilton.
“Why are you going so soon?” asked Claudia of him, for he had lately slipped into the habit of outstaying other visitors and waiting for a talk with her.
“I promised to go to Ealing to-night,” he said with a self-pitying sigh.
“Ealing,” said Claudia vaguely. “Where is that? Then it’s no good asking you to come out with me this evening? My husband is detained at his chambers and I want a substitute.” She was conscious of a slight sense of disappointment, though she had fully made up her mind a minute previously not to ask Hamilton.
“Yes, it is,” he said eagerly. “I can send a wire.”
“But your engagement?”
“Of no importance. I can easily go some other night. Old friends.... If you will have me I am entirely at your service.”
He looked into her eyes with his, over which he had not troubled to draw the blinds of conventionality. They underlined and emphasized the spoken words so that no woman could fail to understand. And she felt a pleasing sensation of power as she parried his devotion. She did not acknowledge it to herself, but she was subtly aware that they were both on the brink of deep waters. His eyes had spoken words of love for many weeks. His very naïveté and boyishness had its attraction for her. He was just as easy to move as Gilbert was difficult. She could colour his thoughts, deflect his mind, bring him instantly inside the circle of her mood. He took his colour from her like a chameleon, and she did not stop to consider whether she alone had this power, or if Frank Hamilton were always so influenced by attractive women.
“Very well, then,” she said, holding out her hand, “You are bidden to take dinner at the house of one Major-General Rivington, who served Her Majesty Queen Victoria with great distinction, and is now resting on his laurels in the wilds of West Hampstead. Come for me at half-past seven.”
CHAPTER II
“LIVE! LIVE! LIVE!”
Claudia did not belong to the tribe of unpunctual women who stretch the minutes at their will and snap derisive fingers at Greenwich. The person who was unpunctual in their house was its master. That, however, was not due to carelessness, but to his uncertain calls. Often it was Claudia who, when the motor was at the door, sat down in her cloak and waited for her spouse.
So this evening she was ready in good time. It wanted still a few minutes to the half-hour when she cast a last critical look at herself in the mirror.
She was one of those women whom a décolleté dress shows at their best, and Claudia knew, as she surveyed herself, that the result was good. She was as little conceited as any of her sex—she had too much brain and good looks for that; but she could not fail to see that the gown she was wearing for the first time made her look strikingly handsome in the best and most individual way. It was as though the creator of the gown had loved his task, for the deep orange of the rich yet light-weight fabric, softened with some exquisite pearl-embroidered lace and bordered on the skirt with dark-hued skunk, threw up into relief the darkly-bronze lights in her hair and made the big brown eyes seem softer and deeper than ever. A strange Oriental-looking headpiece studded with topazes and pearls accentuated the foreign note in her appearance, which so impressed strangers that they refused to believe that she was entirely English as she averred and believed. They said the way she moved and wore her dresses was not English, that she could not belong to the nation of women who know how to choose a frock but not how to wear it. As she stood in front of the mirror she was a flat contradiction to the American who said that English men were dressed, but the women only wore frocks.
Her looks had improved since her marriage. For some unknown reason she scrutinized herself dispassionately that night, and she realized that she was infinitely more attractive to men than when Gilbert had married her. Her figure now was almost as good as her mother’s had been at her age. Indeed, the tops of her arms and her wrists were even prettier. She remembered what an old friend of her mother’s had once said to her just before her marriage. “You will be much admired, my dear, and you will remain naturally good-looking longer than your mother has done. But you will never enslave all sorts and conditions of men as she did—not that you come so far below her in looks, but because hers is the beauté du diable, that irresistible magnet to unregenerate man. You look too intelligent, too independent, too critical. That will pique some here and there, but the woman who shows obviously that she likes men and that they are necessary to her always finds a return for that compliment. Besides, she holds out hopes of reward which your type does not. The majority of men are childish and lazy: they pick the fruit on the lowest branches. You would be too exigeante, you would demand more than they could give. Your nature is not that of a Circe, and men will know it instinctively.” Then she had kissed her affectionately and added, “I am glad you have no beauté du diable. The world is better without it. Take your place in the heart of one man, not in the passions of many.”
Claudia thought over these words as she thoughtfully pulled on her gloves. And simultaneously she recalled a scene soon after Gilbert’s proposal when she had, as to-night, stood in front of the mirror and slowly divesting herself of her garments, half shyly, half exultingly, because of her love of beauty, had watched the charms of her body emerge. She had rejoiced in her own comeliness because it was a gift she was bringing to her husband, a wedding gift such as few women could present.
She shrugged her shoulders at the recollection, and her face hardened a little. She had learned how evanescent a thing is passion with a man of Gilbert’s self-centred, violent nature. And the knowledge rankled, so that as she looked at herself something which was not the individual, Claudia Currey, the wife of the new K.C., but Women Unsatisfied and Disappointed, crept into her eyes and mouth, and which, for the first time, gave her some fleeting resemblance to her mother. Was her mother’s old friend quite right? Was there no touch of the devil’s beauty in her looks now? Perhaps she would have changed her mind if she could have seen the woman looking broodingly at her own reflection, a smouldering defiance in her eyes, an unformed challenge on her lips. That it was not the real Claudia that looked so, the passionate-hearted, idealistic woman who walked away with her head held high, the elder woman would have known; but she would have had to acknowledge regretfully that Claudia was evolving.
Then had she been present she would have seen the little hardness disappear as morning mist before the sun, as a familiar padding sound became evident along the carpet.
Only Billie, only a dog, but so unchangeably devoted, so unceasingly responsive. In a sudden burst of thwarted affection she caught him up, heedless of her costly embroideries, and hugged his fat bundle of soft brown fur. At least this creature loved her, she was his whole world and——
“Mr. Hamilton, madam.”
Billie found himself gently deposited on the floor, where he stood wagging his tail with pleasure at the caress, yet eyeing her beseechingly, as he always did when she was going out, as if to say, “Are you really going to leave me again?”
“Tell Mr. Hamilton that I am quite ready. Is the fur rug in the motor? It will be cold coming home to-night.”
She refastened a corsage spray that had been loosened, and picked up an Eastern-looking garment of dull golds and browns, with a chiffon and skunk muff that matched. Outside it was freezing, and the trees in the Park were lightly powdered with snow. Billie stood on his short stumpy hind legs—a great effort by reason of his plumpness—and besought her to stay with him. Claudia laughed gently, and stooping down, took the little useless, dangling paws in her hand.
“Billie, you fool, don’t you know how ridiculous it is; to love anyone so much? Better far to cut your heart up into lots of little pieces and distribute them than give it away in a lump. Don’t you know that?”
No, Billie didn’t know that at all.
“Well, it is. Listen to my words of wisdom and ponder them in your doggy understanding. It hurts, Billie boy, to love very much, it hurts dreadfully, though you pretend, except to a little dog who keeps your counsel, that it doesn’t. Well, I shall never do it again, and it’s all over, Billie; it’s all over, both the dream and the awakening.... Go to your basket and sleep the sleep of the faithful.”
They drove some way in silence. Inside the motor it was cosy and warm, in pleasant contrast to the streets, for the snow that lingered still on the trees had turned into slush on the pavements. The pedestrians looked uncomfortable and nipped by the east wind which was blowing, and the mud on the roads gleamed evilly in the light of the street lamps. Here and there they passed dirty heaps of snow in sheltered corners. Like the lace petticoats of a fine lady once pure and spotless, it was revolting now in its soiled, bedraggled state. People waiting in the wind at street corners for buses looked enviously at the motor as they passed. The padded luxury in which the two were enveloped, the dim frosted light, the narcissi in the silver holder diffusing a faint perfume, were very intime and aloof from the discomfort abroad.
They had left Baker Street behind them before Claudia came out of her reverie and realized that she was not being sociable. She looked sideways at her companion, to find him steadily regarding her.
“Are you wondering when I would be polite and talk?” she said, with a smile.
“No.... I was making a mental picture of you. I think—I think I can paint you now. I want to paint you in that velvet cloak—what colour do you call it?—it is like copper in the firelight—with the sable just touching your throat at one side just as it is now and falling off the other shoulder. Will you let me? Oh! I want my brushes in my hand now.” His eyes suddenly blazed with the inspiration of the moment as they devoured her. Quickly she drew the folds of the cloak closer around her neck. She felt as though a scorching wind had swept over her, a sirocco of passion came from him to her. She shrank back a little, yet even as she instinctively did so she wondered why. Her husband flagrantly neglected her, most of her friends had consoled themselves for their husbands’ shortcomings, and had not she almost determined to seek the love which she craved outside her home? She met his eyes, and she was half attracted, half repelled by their light. She liked him, she felt his magnetism drawing her, and yet something which she could not quite understand bobbed quickly up to the surface of her mind and surveyed them both with a certain contempt. So she was a little cruel in her reply to his enthusiasm.
“You were not very successful last time. I hope you destroyed that picture.”
“Yes, I slashed it to pieces in the middle of the night,” he said sombrely.
Claudia laughed lightly.
“Why in the middle of the night? Why were you moved to be so melodramatic?” She often teased him and made him angry by saying that he ought to have been an actor. For Frank Hamilton had a torch of the woman in him which clothed in drama many things that he did and said. Whether he was conscious of these effects or whether they came naturally to his character Claudia could never determine.
“I had been dreaming of you,” he said simply. “I had seen you standing at the foot of my bed, looking down on me, and I knew exactly how I should have painted you. So I sprang out of bed and hacked the beastly canvas to pieces. Afterwards I made a rough charcoal sketch of you from memory. To-night you look as you did when you stood at the foot of my bed.” The eyes of the man were audacious, but the words were spoken very quietly.
“I beg to remark that my frock is brand new,” rejoined Claudia flippantly. “I have never worn it even in dream-land. It is hard to be deprived of a positively first appearance when frocks are so ruinously expensive.”
“You looked wonderful that night,” he went on dreamily. “I have always seen you since—as you might look.”
“As I might look,” she repeated, her curiosity getting the better of her discretion. “What do you mean by that?”
He was looking out at the glistening streets, at the flakes of snow beginning to fall again, and he made no reply. This piqued her the more, and she repeated her question.
“I suppose you will be angry with me,” he said slowly. “Women always resent these things. I don’t know why.... As you might look if you were not so proud and if your brain did not rule your heart, if you would let yourself be the woman—you were meant to be.”
Claudia wanted to say “How ridiculous!” but she couldn’t. The motor was passing a large burial ground, the tombstones showing by the railings like dreary grey ghosts in the darkness, shut in with the wet, dripping trees, and looking hungrily at life passing a few yards away. Underneath those tombstones were hearts and brains in silent decay that had once been men and women. Claudia watched them flit by and she was silent now. She wondered if those tombstones had a message for her. Were not the dead saying “Live! live! live! Death started out to meet as soon as you were born.”
The man beside her commenced to quote softly, almost in a whisper: