Shadows of Flames: A Novel

XLIV

And so, towards the end of December, Sophy left Bobby in the care of Charlotte and Harold Grey, and went to desolate, far-western Ontowega. After six months of that desolation she would be free again. It seemed incredible. She did not go alone, however. Susan Pickett, a second cousin of whom she and Charlotte had been very fond since childhood, went with her. Miss Pickett was a delightful spinster of fifty. She had not married, simply because she had never loved a man enough to want to marry him.

No one ever called Susan Pickett "Cousin Susan" or "Aunt Susan." She was "Sue" to all who loved her, young as well as old. She was a tall, vigorous woman, deep-breasted, and of perfect health. Her thick, brown eyebrows were masculine, her large, well-shaped mouth feminine. Her eyes, deep-set, grey, and humorous, might have been either a man's or a woman's. Eyes of this type—when they are kindly affectionate, as in Sue Pickett's case, are the sign of a big, impersonal humanity. It was never necessary to have Sue "on one's mind" even for a moment. She was always occupied in some way, and always serenely content. This is why Sophy ventured to ask her to share with her for six months the abomination of desolation called on the map of the United States Ontowega.

During the first stages of the long, tiresome journey Sophy was conscious only of a heavy, dull weight of determination and flat sadness. She hated the smell of train-smoke. Now it seemed as if this rank, clogging smoke trailed over the whole landscape of her life, past and future. She sat drearily, hour after hour, watching the telegraph poles snatch up the sagging wires as they flew past. The threads of her own life were like that, she thought—dark strands strung from one bare pole of fact to another, endlessly, monotonously. The bare poles had once been trees—living, joyous things. So had the bare facts of her life. Now lopped, stripped, rigid, they hemmed her in, guiding the thread of her destiny to some dull, conventional end—some mechanical fixture in a bleak station to which this hard, beaten road of divorce was leading.

After certain matters at Ontowega had been settled, they found that they could go to the Black Hills of Dakota without disturbing the course of events. They both loved riding. The lawyer told them that there was capital riding about the Black Hills. The place he suggested was called Bear Spring.

The world without lay in great curving swathes of white, pricked out by green-black pines as in an old Japanese print.

On the third day came a bundle of letters forwarded from Ontowega. The two that Sophy kept for the last were from Bobby and Amaldi. How strange it seemed to see the Italian stamp in the snowy wilderness of Bear Spring! And that seal with its arms and motto—"Che prendo—tengo".... In a flash there rose the memory of the struggle between Loring and Belinda for Amaldi's ring.... How things could hurt one ... things like the impression of a seal. Then she opened Bobby's letter. At the top was written, "I did not let Mr. Grey see this letter. So please to excuse mistakes. R. C. C." Among other things it said:

"Plantagenet" began as follows:

"Richard of England, monarch brave,
Bold as the lion that haunts the cave,
Wielding thy battle-axe with a crash,
As into the foe thou dost boldly dash!"

"Oh, my darling little 'poit'!" murmured Sophy, as she read. But she did not think, from "Plantagenet," that Bobby would ever really be a "poit." The "Grey Day," however, was another thing. Sophy had a queer feeling about her heart as she read that.

As Sophy read these last words she raised them to her lips. It seemed to her that Bobby need not fear about becoming "a author anyhow." She could not think that it was only mother-love that made "A Grey Day" seem unusual to her.

Then she opened Amaldi's letter. Here, too, was an unexpected pleasure. She had found his letters charming from the first, but in this one it was as if he had put aside a certain reserve that she had always noticed before. He might have been talking to her over a log fire at Le Vigne—— Or, no, she corrected herself with a smile—never had Amaldi "talked" to her with the ease, the fulness, the alternate gaiety and depth with which he wrote to her in this long, delightful letter. She sat holding it in her hand when she had finished reading it, trying to recall clearly his dark, irregular face and olive eyes—the sound of his voice. And she smiled again, thinking of the Corinthians' opinion of Paul: ".... His letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; ... but his speech is contemptible." "Dear Amaldi...." she thought, still smiling. "I wonder how it is that you are such a silent man as a rule, and yet can write such perfectly adorable letters?"

She put his letter with Bobby's and laid them both away. For a long time she stood at her bedroom window looking out over the snowy wilds towards the sunset. The afterglow burned red through the inky pines. The snow shone a queer, witch-like blue in the twilight. Sophy saw it all without seeing. She was thinking that there were beautiful things in her life still ... that she ought to be very grateful ... that after a while she ought even to be happy in them....

But as she gazed at the smouldering watchfires of the west, Bobby's words came back to her: "I do not know why it makes me so sad to see the red of the fire in the greyness...."

XLV

"Oh, have your little joke by all means," said Sophy, smiling. "But after all it's 'my funeral' as they say out here.... I suppose the corpse knows better than any one else whether it's dead or not."

"On the contrary—the corpse doesn't know anything whatever about it," said her cousin. "If you were really a corpse, my lamb, you wouldn't know it."

Sophy looked almost hurt.

"Won't you allow me to know about my own nature, Sue?" she asked.

Now Miss Pickett smiled.

"Nature," said she, "is as fond of revivals as a nigger."

On a hot, gusty, dusty day in summer, having returned to Ontowega, they set forth with the lawyer to go before the Judge who was to give Sophy a decree of divorce. The little town looked more hideous than ever in the glare of summer. Such trees as grew along the board sidewalks were grey with dust. The pettish wind flung handfuls of grit into their eyes and nostrils. Sophy followed Mr. Dainton's tall, scraggy figure like a hypnotised "subject." She had but to follow that round-shouldered, obstinate looking back into the yellow-brick square of the "Town Hall" that loomed just ahead, and she would be free. That lank, black figure with its ravel of grey locks escaping from under a black "wide-awake" was the Nikè that led on to Freedom.

Emerald Dainton, the lawyer's little nine-year-old daughter, skipped at Sophy's side, clinging tightly to her cold, gloveless hand—for Sophy's hands were very cold though the thermometer stood at 85 degrees. Emerald had a "mash" on "pa's last divorce lady." That is what Emerald called Sophy in her thought. She was a shrewdly intelligent child, not unattractive, with the most penetrating green-hazel eyes that Sophy had ever seen. She shrank from these eyes, when they fixed consideringly on her face. She could feel Emerald wondering how and why she had come to Ontowega as "pa's" client. She had an insane impulse every now and then to ask the child her views on divorce. She was sure that she held views on the subject and that they would be crisp and to the point.

They entered the Court House, and Mr. Dainton showed the ladies into a dingy room on the left. Emerald skipped in also as a matter of course. There were some plain wooden chairs, a table, a stove, and in one corner behind the stove a horsehair sofa.

From one of the wooden chairs rose a mealy tinted but clever looking man of about forty. Mr. Dainton "presented" him as Mr. Wogram. He was Loring's representative. Mr. Dainton then excused himself for a moment. He returned shortly to say that Judge Boiler was just about to dismiss a case in the Court Room, and would be with them in a few moments.

A desultory conversation on politics then began between Mr. Wogram and Mr. Dainton. Sue and Sophy sat silently side by side on two of the wooden chairs. Sue had put one of her hands on Sophy's and was gripping it tighter than she knew. Emerald had retired to the horsehair sofa behind the stove.

There was a maple tree just outside of the window. An opening in its twigs and leaves made a ridiculous profile against the white-blue dazzling sky. Sophy gazed at this profile, until when she looked away she saw it swimming in green and red on the whitewashed walls. She thought in odds and ends. Then Judge Boiler entered and was introduced. He sat down finally before the bare table and assumed his air of office. He was a heavy, impassive looking man of fifty with a pale, dyspeptic skin, pale blue eyes and thick whitey-brown hair going grey.

Just as proceedings were about to open, Sophy noticed Emerald's little many-buttoned boots and red stockings protruding from behind the stove. She looked at Dainton and the blood swept over her face.

"Excuse me for interrupting ... but your little girl is still in the room, Mr. Dainton," she said.

The lawyer jumped up and drew a protesting Emerald from her horsehair coign of vantage.

"Please, pa ... lemme stay!" she whined. "I might have to get divorced some time. I want to see how you fix it up. Please, pa!"

Mr. Dainton whispered fiercely that he'd "smack her if she didn't shut up that minute." Father and daughter disappeared into another room. Then the father reappeared alone, and the case of Loring v. Loring proceeded....

When it was all over and Mr. Wogram had taken his leave with jerky bows to friend and foe alike, Mr. Dainton turned to Sophy, with a curious reminiscence of the facetious manner in which one addresses brides, and said:

"Allow me to congratulate you ... Mrs. Chesney!"

Judge Boiler did likewise.

Sophy had one dreadful moment of fear, regret, grief, distaste—the awful vertigo of the irrevocable. She tried to smile conventionally. Sue slipped an arm through hers, held her close without seeming to do so, and talked for her—nice, easy, well-sounding commonplaces. While she was thus talking, Mr. Dainton stalked to the inner door and, flinging it open, called jocosely:

"Come along in, Maldy. The knot's untied...."

Emerald sidled in, looking sulky but curious. She eyed Sophy a moment, then said in a loud whisper:

"Is she really divorced?"

"Sure thing," replied her parent

"You did it quick as that, pa? Truly?"

"Truly," said he.

"My!" exclaimed Emerald, overcome with admiration. "I guess it takes longer to hitch 'em up than to unhitch 'em, when you do the unhitching, pa!"

Then she skipped over to Sophy, and clung to her hand again. Her green-hazel eyes devoured the tall, pale lady's face. She was fairly a-quiver to participate in the emotions of the divorced heroine.

"Well...." she said. "Now you're un-married. Are you happy?"

Sue looked like a hawk about to pounce, but Sophy answered quietly:

"I really don't know, Emerald," she said.

"But you ain't sorry you did it, are you?" persisted the child.

This was too much for the patience of a childless woman. Miss Pickett took Miss Dainton by the hand and led her firmly to her father.

"Please explain to your little girl,", said she, "that there are some occasions where children should not be seen, much less heard."

Mr. Dainton admitted ruddily that "he guessed that was so." But he would have liked to shake the woman who had snubbed his Emerald.

The child pouted a while, then sidled up to Sophy again as they walked through the hot, gusty streets towards the hotel. It seemed impossible for her to resist the double fascination that Sophy exercised over her, as woman and as divorcée. Sophy let the child take her passive hand. She was hardly conscious of it, so far was she in a world of alien thought.

Father and daughter escorted them to the Palace Hotel, where they said final good-bys. The two women went upstairs in silence. Without taking off her hat Sophy sat down, still in that brown study. Her eyes were fixed vaguely on the white satin "Regulations" over the door. Miss Pickett moved about, putting articles into her open trunk. They were to leave for Virginia on the midnight train. Every now and then she would glance at Sophy, but she said nothing.

Presently Sophy spoke to her.

"It's very painful ... being born, Sue."

"'Being born'?" said Miss Pickett, stopping on her way to the trunk with an odd shoe in her hand.

"Yes, Sue.... It's hard. It hurts.... Drawing in the first breaths hurts.... When I've breathed really deep, it will be different...."

"Yes— I understand, lamb," said Sue softly.

Sophy went on, her eyes still fixed on the white satin scroll.

"You know, Sue ... it's said that when one dies and wakes up in quite another state, one doesn't realise that one has died just at first. Well ... I feel something like that. I've come into a queer, new state of being. I can't seem to realise myself or anything just yet."

"Yes, dear," said her cousin, fitting the shoe into a corner of the trunk, and coming back to sit down near her. Sophy reached out one hand mechanically, and Sue took it in both her own, with quiet, matter-of-fact affection. Sophy still gazed before her, seeing nothing.

"It's a queer thing to say, Sue," she continued after a moment, "but I don't think I've lived at all yet ... not really."

This did seem odd to Miss Pickett, but she thought it due to a certain inevitable old-maidishness on her part, and gave no sign.

"I'll try to explain what I mean," said Sophy. "I've loved love all my life. But love isn't given us just to love ... the love between two people—a man and a woman ... is only one tiny part of love. Yes...." She knitted her straight brows trying to bring her thought to clearness for the other. "That kind of love—if it tries to be an end in itself has to die ... to wither away. Or, if it does last, then the soul withers."

She smiled suddenly, turning her eyes on her cousin.

"I think the Serpent was really kinder to Adam and Eve, when he got them turned out of Eden, than Jehovah was when he shut them up in it," she said.

"How's that?" asked Miss Pickett, startled, for she was rather orthodox in her views on religious form, though her big heart made her more unconventional in practise.

"Why, just think of it for a moment," Sophy answered. "If the Serpent hadn't interrupted their tête-à-tête—there they would be to this day—wandering love-sick among fadeless flowers, with nothing, nothing, nothing before them but an eternity of love-making!" Her pale face alight with mingled whimsicality and sadness, she added, leaning closer: "Sue ... I'll whisper you something.... The Serpent was Jehovah in disguise, Sue!"

A second later she said:

"Don't be vexed, dear, will you?... It's such a comfort thinking aloud to you like this...."

"No, indeed. Go on. I won't be vexed," Miss Pickett assured her warmly. "You always were an irreverent monkey—but then the Lord made monkeys. He knows how to allow for their antics."

But Sophy was intent upon her own train of thought again and only smiled absently at this indirect reproof.

"Two lessons...." she then said slowly. "It took two bitter lessons to teach me the truth about love—the sort of love that I always dreamed of as supreme—the love that is 'like an Archangel beating his iridescent wings in the void'...."

Miss Pickett could not follow the subtleties of Sophy's musing, she could only feel the pain that underlay it. She said gently:

"You mustn't deny love, honey, just because it's failed you. I don't ever want to see my child grow bitter."

"It's only one kind of love that I'm denying, Sue—not Eros, but Anteros ... the false god.... He comes in a lovely glamour. He's the rainbow on the foam of breaking waves. When the sea is still he vanishes. My bitterness is only against myself—for having worshipped a false god."

"Well, child—maybe you have. But thank the Lord! no mistake is final at your age...."

"My mistakes have been very final for me, Sue. I've laid all my frankincense and myrrh on the altar of Anteros, I've nothing to offer the true god. But there's my son ... my defeat shall make his victory. There shall be one man in the world who knows the true god from the false. Some woman shall be glad through my pain. Some day, when a woman loves my Bobby, she shall be able to say: 'This is my beloved and this is my friend!'"

Sue glanced quickly at her, but her expression was wholly unconscious. She was not thinking of Amaldi in that moment. She was only thinking that love to be real, to be perfect, to be lasting must include friendship, comradeship, understanding, mutual endeavour. That to retain its fulness it must give out to others besides the one, give incessantly, untiringly, without stint, without grudging. That instead of raising magic walls of enclosure, it should level all barriers.

She took another tone suddenly.

Colour came into her face. She looked with darkened eyes at her cousin.

"Sue...." she said. "The fact is that all these years I've been nothing but a miserable happiness-hunter!"

"Nonsense!" said Miss Pickett.

"Just that ... a happiness-hunter," repeated Sophy.

"Well ... and what is everybody else doing but hunting happiness, I'd like to know?" retorted her cousin. "Even the martyrs were after it! If they hadn't found happiness in martyrdom they wouldn't have sought it, you may be sure. Don't be morbid, child, for goodness' sake!"

"I'm not morbid. And what you say is true in a way. But there is selfish happiness and unselfish happiness, and what I've wanted was the selfish kind. I wanted love all to myself. What do I know of life really?... What do I know of what's going on in the real world?... Oh, 'it is good for me that I have been afflicted!' It is something, at least, that I can say that from my soul—with all my might. It is good ... it is good for me.... I'm glad the Serpent has come into Eden.... I'm glad that I've eaten of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil!... Now I'm going out into the wilderness of life, and I'm going to learn how to live. I'm just born, but I'm going to 'put aside childish things' ... that toy called happiness, with all the rest!"

Miss Pickett gazed at the ardent face, with affection. Then she smiled wisely.

"Perhaps, honey," she said, "you'll find happiness in doing without it. At any rate—you seem right happy at the prospect of not being happy."

Sophy rose and, kneeling down beside her, leaned her head on that kind breast.

"Do you know, Sue," she said dreamily, "after all, it's rather wonderful to feel that one has done with love, and yet finds life worth while."

"Is it, dear?" said Sue.

"Yes, it is. You know Socrates was glad when he had passed the age of love. Now I understand why that was. I never did before."

Sue Pickett said nothing, only stroked the dark head upon her breast. But a rather cryptic smile stirred her lips. She was thinking that from all she had read and heard, two beings could hardly differ more essentially than Sophy and the Sage of Athens.

XLVI

That sense of being unreal in a world of unreality, which she had mentioned to Susan Pickett on the day of the divorce, lasted for some time. Then, in the early autumn—in her favourite month of October—began a recrudescence of the imperishable passion for life as opposed to mere existence, that lent her always the elemental charm of fire. Many natures shine in the great dim of circumstance, but with light differently derived. Some are, as one might put it, phosphorescent. In others one divines the pinch of star-dust in the clay—still luminous, still perfervid, as when the cosmic nebula first spun the white hot core of things. It was this mystic fire that glowed again in Sophy, burning clearer for the ash beneath it, even as the humbler, yet still sacred fire of hearths, burns clearer in like case. It was as if in resigning her desire for one supremely personal love, Love itself had drawn nearer. Motherhood meant for her now, not only her feeling for her little son, but an aching towards all unmothered things. It was not welt-schmerz, this feeling—welt passion rather.... She was like one who has lived for years in a lovely, doorless, painted house, lit by perfumed candles—then one day steps through a sudden break in its wall to face the tremendous sea. Yes—life lay like that before her—perilous but to be drowned in rather than left unessayed—unsailed. The cosmic romance was upon her. She no longer belittled romance to a love-tale—rather it was the adventure of a creative god—Zeus as Poet. And this new, impassioned desire to live fully, largely, universally, so confused her in the beginning, that she hardly knew where first to turn—so vast were her ignorances—so clamorous the wave-like voices that called from every side.

She felt a great thirst to know more of the vital questions of the day. She awoke to the fact that the time was in the throes of parturition. Something huge, cyclopean, was being born. Change already stared iron-eyed from the cradle of the twentieth century and hammered with fists of brass. Now was nascent its twin Disorder. She read until her brain reeled and her heart ached. Giddy and downcast, she bared her mind to the bludgeonings of tremendous questions which she could not adequately comprehend. Then common sense—kind old nurse—whispered soothingly: "'Seek not out things that are too hard for thee.' There is a glory of the stars of Political Economy, and another of the moon of Poetic Faculty. Thou shalt comprehend by intuition what will never be given thee by ratiocination. For 'if a man's mind is sometimes wont to tell him more than seven watchmen that sit above in an high tower,' a woman's heart can divine the very stars above the tower and draw down influences as sweet as those of Pleiades for the sustainment of her spirit."

So Sophy left off trying to understand clearly all the "ologies" and fly-wheel within fly-wheel movements of the day, and contented herself with a general apprehension of the zeitgeist. She decided that these gigantic sociological and political questions were for her what the higher mathematics are to the humble arithmetician. She could comprehend that a fourth dimension might exist, but not in what it might consist. It consoled her to remember that in the higher mathematics of existence as of numbers there was an "incalculable quantity." The bigger brains, then, paused at a point higher up, just as hers paused at one lower down.

Then again woke in her the desire to create in her own world of poetry.

All these struggles and hopes, and glees and failures—all this turbulence of her new-straining self, she poured out in her letters to Amaldi, and he answered them in kind. Almost every day they wrote to each other. It seemed incredible to her that her life had once been empty of those letters to which she now looked forward every day as to the simple necessity of food and drink. Never once did he fail to respond to the mood or need from which she wrote—and with so fine, so just a discernment that sometimes he seemed to answer thoughts that she had not written down, but that had been in her mind when she was writing. So exquisitely true was this communication of their minds and natures at a distance that sometimes she almost dreaded meeting him in actuality again. Would not the charm vanish with nearness? She felt that she could far better miss his bodily presence from her life than those wonderful, satisfying letters.

The spring came and with it a new shock for Sophy. She was writing in her old study one March morning when Harold Grey entered with the day's paper in his hand. What he had come to show her was the notice of the death of Lord Wychcote.

Sophy took the paper from him, feeling quite dazed. She grew pale as she read. The notice stated that Viscount Wychcote had died in his sleep at his country seat, Dynehurst, on the night of the second of March. The news had been wired to the Times as being of interest in connection with the divorce of Mrs. Morris Loring, whose son, by her first marriage with Lord Wychcote's younger brother, the Hon. Cecil Chesney, would now succeed to the title—etc., etc.

The shock was a double one to Sophy, for in addition to her sincere affection for Gerald, there was the question of the allowance which he had renewed immediately after her divorce. Now this allowance would most probably be stopped. She had no idea whether Gerald had been in a position to leave her anything, or whether, in case the property were all entailed, she would be still given an allowance, as Bobby's mother and guardian. In case she had to depend entirely on her own slender income, she did not see how she could manage to live in England. She supposed that a sum would be apportioned for Bobby's education, but even that was only a surmise.

Within a few days, however, came a full letter from Mr. Surtees. He explained to her that the bulk of the Wychcote property was entailed, but that certain property which had been left to the late Lord Wychcote in fee simple by a maternal aunt, had been willed to her (Mrs. Chesney) by his lordship. This property consisted of the town house in Regent's Park in which Mrs. Chesney had formerly resided, and a small estate in Warwickshire, called Breene Manor. The Manor house was in good condition, though not of great size. It was a Tudor building and stood in grounds thickly wooded. The situation was salubrious and the view fine, but there was no income from the estate, as Miss Bollinghame, the relative from whom the late Earl inherited the property, had sold all but a hundred acres of the original lands. He wished to explain to Mrs. Chesney, however, that the trustees of the Wychcote property were empowered to advance sums of money for the education and maintenance of her son, and that the money for maintenance would be paid to her as his guardian, in order that she might keep up a position suitable for the young peer. Mr. Surtees ended by venturing to express to Mrs. Chesney his opinion, as the legal adviser of the family, that it would be well for her to come to England with her son as soon as possible.

From the receipt of this letter until two months later, when she was settled at Breene, Sophy moved again in a world of unreality. The quiet of the lovely old house and its surrounding woods and gardens helped to restore her to her normal state once more; for she found Breene a place after her own heart, strangely familiar, as though she had visited it before in dreams. As Mr. Surtees had said, the house was Tudor, but it had been added to and altered during so many other epochs, that it had ended by having a flavour and architecture all its own. For some years it had been leased, and the great walls of yew that enclosed the lawns were smooth and massy from constant clipping. It stood in a crescent of beech woods. Scotch firs towered behind it. To the south lay rose-gardens sloping to an oval pond.

And this adorable old place was her own. Sophy could scarcely believe it. The first three weeks of her return to England had been spent at Dynehurst with Lady Wychcote. Those had been gloomy weeks indeed, for in addition to the natural sadness of the situation, there had been inevitable friction between her and Lady Wychcote on the subject of Bobby's future. Sophy had known of course that this must come, but she had hoped that it would not come so quickly. Lady Wychcote was intolerant of the idea that Bobby should become a writer. Sophy firmly maintained that the boy should choose his own career. Both women controlled their tempers, but there had been some sharp passages of arms between them. When Sophy went to her room the second night at Dynehurst, she thanked Gerald, as though he had been alive and could hear her, for having made it possible for her to live in a house of her own with her son, apart from his grandmother.

While she was at Dynehurst, Olive Arundel had helped Miss Pickett to get all in order at Breene—for Susan had consented to come and live with Sophy for the next few years.

It was quite wonderful to drive up to the old Manor house in the late April afternoon, and find Susan standing in the open doorway to receive her. Behind her the light from a fire of beech logs flickered over the dark wainscoting. Candles and lamps were lighted. The tea-table stood ready. This was home—her home and Bobby's—this lovely, dignified old house with its sheltering yew hedges shutting out the world until she should need it once again.

XLVII

The only regret that Sophy felt for not living part of the time in London was on account of her friendship with Amaldi. It would have been so much easier for her to see him constantly had she been in town. But then Breene was not so far away. He could easily spend a day with her now and then. Susan's presence would make such visits perfectly proper. In his last letter he had said that he would be in England about the end of April. The symphonies that had met with such acclaim in Dresden were now to be given in London.

Sophy looked forward with more and more of that odd mingling of dread and pleasure to seeing him again. She had found the attempt to realise ideals but a tragic business. And the ideal that she had of their friendship was very high.

But from the first day that Amaldi spent with her at Breene, she knew that her doubts had all been unfounded. Their friendship when together again was more perfect than ever, for the slight constraint that she had so often felt underneath his spoken words seemed quite gone. He talked with her now almost as freely as he had written in those letters that she so treasured. And there was something different, also, in his look, his voice, a naturalness, as it were a relaxing of some inner tension.

She did not realise that never before had Amaldi known her as a free woman. Always before she had belonged to some one else. Now she was her own. What she gave him no one else had any right to. The relief and the joy that he had in this knowledge made him seem another man even to himself at this time. It was enough for the time being to realise the inviolateness of all her sanctities. This realisation was so wonderful that it stayed for a while the sharp urge of love, and filled the vacancies of absence with a sense of triumph.

As for the little household—Sue Pickett, Bobby, Harold Grey—they all liked Amaldi heartily. And as other friends, both men and women, often "spent a day" at Breene with Sophy, Miss Pickett had no cause to worry over "appearances," as she had frankly feared that she might have to. Still ... Sue was not quite easy in her heart over the situation. As she had declared, she did believe in friendship between men and women—but not so very much in a friendship between a man and woman as young and attractive as these two.

Then one day something happened to make her really apprehensive. It was about the end of June. Amaldi and Sophy were in the rose-garden. Through an archway in the yew hedge Susan could see them as she sat with her embroidery under one of the big beeches on the lawn. Sophy was cutting roses. As she cut them she laid them in a basket that Amaldi held for her. The sunlight on her thin white gown, and the red and pink and yellow roses that kept tossing into the basket, gave an effect of light-hearted happiness. Sophy's black sash only heightened this impression. It was as though grief had shrunk to the size of a narrow riband.

And as Sue sat there thinking this, she heard the chugging of a motor, and there was Lady Wychcote sweeping round the lawn, all in black from top to toe, the reverse, as it were, of that bright, sun-washed picture framed by the yew hedge.

Susan had not met Lady Wychcote before, but she guessed in an instant who it was. She went forward, her back pringling with the consciousness of the sunny tableau upon which it was turned.

Lady Wychcote was inclined to be gracious. She had heard of Miss Pickett from Sophy of course. So very good of her to take pity on poor Sophy's solitude. And just as she was saying this, she caught sight of the two in the rose garden. Susan knew that she had seen them by the sudden stiffening of her figure, even before she lifted her face-à-main in that direction.

"Who is that with Sophy?" she asked rather abruptly.

"Oh ... an old friend," replied Susan, and the moment the words were uttered she wished them back. They sounded excuse-making somehow. She added quickly: "The Marchese Amaldi."

"Ah?... 'An old friend'?" repeated Lady Wychcote. "I've not met him I think. What did you say the name was?"

"Amaldi.... The Marchese Marco Amaldi...."

"Wait a bit...." said Lady Wychcote. "Though I don't know him, the name seems familiar." She repeated it once or twice: "Amaldi ... Amaldi...." Then she looked quickly at Susan. "Is he by any chance the man whose music has been so much discussed this season?"

"Yes—the same," said Susan.

"Ah ... now I place him. They were talking of him at dinner last night. He has an impossible wife, it seems, that he can't get rid of."

"The Marchese is separated from his wife. There's no divorce in Italy, I believe," said Susan.

"That must seem odd to an American," observed Lady Wychcote in her dryest tone.

Susan resented this tone and the remark, but made no reply.

Her ladyship was again looking towards the garden through her face-à-main.

"He's a very good-looking young man, is he not?" she said at last.

"Yes," assented Susan.

"He comes quite often I suppose?"

Susan looked straight at her.

"What would you call often?" she asked.

"Ah—you're annoyed," said Lady Wychcote coolly; "but the fact is, that a young woman in Sophy's position can't be too careful. In England, among people of our class, there's still a strong feeling against divorce. As an American you could hardly realise how deep-rooted this feeling is. I think it right to tell you of it."

"Thanks," said Susan. She turned towards the rose-garden. "If you will come with me...." she suggested, moving forward as she spoke.

But Lady Wychcote made no move to follow her.

"By the way, do you happen to know where my grandson is?" asked she.

"With his tutor. They've ridden over to Carbeck Castle. A picnic with Lady Towne's children and Mrs. Arundel's little boy. But if you'll follow me, Lady Wychcote, I'll go and tell Sophy that you're here...."

"No. Wait, please," said the other quickly. "I'd like to talk a bit more with you first."

Susan drew forward a wicker chair. Lady Wychcote seated herself, and Susan, following her example, took up her embroidery again. But her fingers felt very nervous. It seemed to her that she had never heard those two in the garden talk and laugh so gaily and incessantly.

"You know Mrs. Arundel, I believe?" now enquired the other, in her chill, brittle voice.

"Yes. She kindly helped me to get this home ready for Sophy."

"You like her?"

The question was a sneer.

"Very much," said Susan rather sharply. She flushed with vexation as she spoke.

Lady Wychcote noticed this flush and divined its cause, but continued with undisturbed composure.

"I'm sorry to seem captious," said she, "but I confess that I'm sorry to hear you say so. In my opinion, Mrs. Arundel is not at all a fitting friend for my daughter-in-law, especially in her present position."

Susan remained silent. She felt too irritated to trust herself.

"I see that you resent what I say," Lady Wychcote took it up again. "But you're probably unaware that Mrs. Arundel's looseness of morals is a matter of common knowledge."

Susan put down her embroidery.

"I don't know anything about that, Lady Wychcote," said she firmly. "I only know that she's been very, very kind to Sophy. I think, if you don't mind, I'll call Sophy now. I'd rather you said these things direct to her."

She rose as she spoke, and went off to the garden before her ladyship could protest.

"Hateful, hateful woman!" thought Susan as she went; "... ready to think evil of every one." But all the same she felt uneasy and perturbed. Suppose that Lady Wychcote should use that acrid tongue of hers in starting gossip about Sophy? But then she would hardly care to do such a thing in regard to the mother of her only grandson! Still—one never knew how such spiteful natures would act. Susan felt thoroughly upset.

She was somewhat reassured by the calmness with which Sophy took the news of her mother-in-law's unexpected visit.

"Motored over?" said she. "Then she must be stopping with the Hiltons. But I thought she wasn't going there until July."

Susan was further relieved to find that Lady Wychcote was very civil indeed to Amaldi. She seemed to find him interesting. They talked together quite a while. When she was leaving, she said to Sophy:

"You must let Robert come to me for a day, while I am with Mary Hilton, Sophy. I shall be there a week longer." Then she turned to Amaldi.

"While you are stopping in the neighbourhood," said she, "it would be very kind of you to come and let me hear a little of the music that every one is talking of, Marchese. My mourning keeps me out of town this year."

Amaldi said that he would be delighted to call on her ladyship, only that he was not stopping in the neighbourhood, and was returning to town that afternoon.

"Ah?" she said, with a look of faint surprise. And this "Ah?" renewed all Susan's uneasiness. To her it seemed so plainly to say: "What! you come all the way from London to call on my daughter-in-law? Then things are even more serious than I thought."

That evening, after Amaldi had gone, she told Sophy bluntly of her misgivings. Sophy was annoyed but not apprehensive.

"She dislikes me, Sue, and she has a bitter tongue—but somehow I don't think she'd go as far as that...."

"Why not?" asked Sue, who was beginning more and more to think that in any matter Lady Wychcote would go just as far as she chose.

"Well ... after all I'm Bobby's mother.... Why should she slander her only grandson's mother? What possible good could it do her?"

"I don't know," Susan said uncertainly. "But somehow I feel afraid of her ... for you...."

"Oh, I've taken care of myself with her ladyship before now!" retorted Sophy lightly.

Susan still brooded.

"I'd be awfully careful, Sophy, child, if I were you."

"How 'careful'—old Mother Misery?" smiled Sophy, slipping an arm about her shoulders.

Susan looked straight at her as she had looked at Lady Wychcote that morning.

"I'd be careful about ... Amaldi," said she bluntly.

Sophy's arm dropped. Rather coldly she said:

"In what way?"

"I think ... perhaps ... yes— I think you'd better not let him come here so often, honey."

Her tone pleaded for indulgence, but was also firm with conviction. Sophy was still rather cold in manner.

"You mean you think I'd better sacrifice a beautiful, harmless friendship to the whim of a sour old woman?" asked she.

Sue didn't retreat.

"I think you'd better not give that 'sour old woman' the least scrimption of cause to gossip about you," she replied.

"You'd have me mould my life on Lady Wychcote's ideas?"

Susan put her hand very lovingly on the dark head.

"Now, lamb ... don't be huffy with your old Sue," she said. "I only want you to be very, very careful how you cross that old tyrant's prejudices.... I've one of the strongest feelings I ever had in my life that you'd regret it."

Sophy looked at her with grey eyes dark and defiant.

"Sue...." she said, "I'll never, never, never give up one atom of my friendship with Marco Amaldi for anybody or anything."

What more could Susan say—at least just then. She went to bed a very disturbed, unhappy woman.

Towards the end of the week Sophy sent Bobby over to the Hiltons' for a day, as she had promised. He returned that evening in quite an agitated state of mind. He rather enjoyed being with his grandmother occasionally. As he told Sophy: "I don't like Granny much—but I almost love her sometimes—when she's telling me 'bout father, and what a great man he would have been if he'd lived—and what jolly things all my grandfathers did for England. I think Granny's something like machinery. You're awful interested in it ... but you don't want to get too near to it."

This evening the cause of his excitement was shown plainly by his remarks to his mother when she went in to "tuck him up."

"I tell you what it is, mother," said he. "It's a awful responsibility for a chap having not to disappoint his mother or his only gran'mother, either of 'em. Now I was just thinkin'—Granny's so set on my bein' a statesman—and you'd like me to be a great writer. Well— I might be both! Dizzy was, you know. Don't you think if I was a great novelist and Prime Minister, both at once, that would be a solution?"

Sophy hugged him and replied with perfect gravity that she thought it would certainly be "a solution."

"Well, I'm glad," sighed Bobby, settling back upon his pillow. "'Cause if you hadn't thought so, I don't think I'd have slept a wink to-night. I'll write Granny first thing to-morrow. She's leaving after lunch. She told me to be sure to tell you so you'd send your letters to her at Dynehurst when you wrote."

But three days later, about six o'clock in the afternoon, a motor from the Hiltons' swept again round the lawn at Breene, and in this motor was Lady Wychcote.

This time, it happened to be Sophy and Amaldi who were sitting out under the big beech. Bobby was there, too. He was leaning with both arms on Amaldi's knee, and looking up eagerly into the young man's face. Amaldi had been telling him some of the adventures of Orlando Furioso.

This time Amaldi had not come down from London for the day, but had also motored over with Olive Arundel from her country place some fifteen miles distant. Susan and Olive were in the house, superintending the hanging of an old print that the latter had brought over for Sophy's writing-room.

Sophy was frankly surprised to see her mother-in-law.

"Why, I thought you were at Dynehurst!" she exclaimed. "Bobby sent you a letter there yesterday."

"No. Mary persuaded me to stop on another week. I came to bring Robert a book I promised him."

"Oh, thank you, Granny!" said the boy. He held up his cheek to be kissed, received the rather forbidding looking volume that she held out, and retired soberly with it. It was called Lives of Noted Statesmen, Condensed. Bobby could not quite make out whether it meant that the lives or the statesmen were condensed. In any case it promised to be but a dull exchange for the adventures of Orlando. And then it was always so much jollier to be told a thing than to read it.

Lady Wychcote said affably to Amaldi:

"I shall flatter myself that if you'd known I was still here you'd have come to play for me while you were in the neighbourhood, Marchese."

"I should have been only too happy," replied he. "Perhaps you will allow me to come to-morrow?"

"What! All the way from London to call on an old woman?— Ah, that's very charming and Italian of you, I must say...."

"I'm stopping with the Arundels just now," said Amaldi. "But I should have been delighted to come from town to play for you." Like Susan, he found something perturbing in Lady Wychcote's manner. He could not define it, but he felt uneasy. There was a something underneath that very affable tone.... He thought her singularly antipatica. Perhaps that was it.... Yes ... it must be that.... She was antipatica.

On this occasion her ladyship did not leave before Amaldi as on her last visit. She remained until he and Olive Arundel had gone. Then she said to Sophy: "By the way—could I have a few minutes alone with you?"

"Of course," said Sophy.

She thought it was to be the usual thing about Bobby's education, which Lady Wychcote did not think sufficiently strenuous and political. But her mother-in-law had quite another matter in mind.

They walked off together down one of the beech avenues, and Lady Wychcote began without preamble.

"My dear Sophy," said she, "you will probably be very angry, but I feel that I must speak. Your friendship with Mrs. Arundel doesn't at all do you justice...."

"Please don't say anything against Olive," put in Sophy quickly.

"Very well. But you know my opinion on that subject already, so after all it isn't necessary. I was thinking of her chiefly just then in connection with the Marchese Amaldi."

Sophy merely looked at her with an inquiring expression.

"I mean that it seems to me doubly unfortunate that he should be such a friend of hers also," continued Lady Wychcote.

"Please explain what you mean by 'doubly unfortunate,'" said Sophy.

"I shall—very frankly. Your position as a divorcée is a very difficult one, and I think that your rather intimate friendship with the Marchese will make it still more difficult."

"You are certainly frank," said Sophy, white with anger. "But you must allow me to be the judge of my own conduct."

"The world constitutes itself judge in such cases," retorted her mother-in-law. "Now pray try to take my words as I mean them. I haven't the least desire to pry or meddle. I am merely calling your attention to what others might think if they chanced to come here twice within a week, as I've done, and each time found that young Italian with you. There would be comment—and not kindly comment either, you may be sure of that."

"Oh," exclaimed Sophy, exasperated, "what a low way of thinking most people have!"

"Yes—the average mind is not exalted in its views," assented the other calmly. "That is what I wanted to remind you of."

Sophy stood still and looked into her eyes with a proud look.

"No breath of scandal has ever touched my name," she said.

"I'm quite aware of that, my dear Sophy," replied Lady Wychcote. "My only object was to help you to prevent such a thing from ever happening."

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure," said Sophy, speaking with difficulty.

The older woman answered with considerable amiability:

"No. You don't think it kind of me. And I quite understand that you resent what you think only tiresome meddling on my part. But I meant it well. Believe me or not, as you choose. Of course, as you said, you must be the judge of your own conduct. Only"—she gave her a very shrewd look indeed—"don't forget, pray, in case a ... some ... unpleasantness should occur, that I tried to forewarn you."

Whiter than ever, Sophy said in a low voice:

"I shan't forget."

"Then that is all. I won't annoy you with the subject again."

"Thanks," said Sophy.

They walked back to the house, and Lady Wychcote commented on the charm of the old grounds, and the advantage that it was for Bobby to have such healthful surroundings, but Sophy said nothing whatever.

XLVIII

It seemed intolerable to Sophy that Lady Wychcote should have taken such a view of her friendship with Amaldi and ventured to speak with her about it. Not that for a moment she felt any anxiety in regard to what "people" might think and say. It was only by chance that Amaldi had come twice to see her within so short a time. Usually there was at least a fortnight's lapse between his visits—sometimes more. But Lady Wychcote's view of the whole matter had left a smirch on what was so clean and fine. The bright mirror of friendship had been breathed upon. The image in it was blurred by this evil breath. And though she gave no hint of what had passed, or what she was feeling, Amaldi knew quite well that something had disturbed her. He kept this knowledge to himself, however. What she did not give him freely he did not want. And alas! he wanted so much that she did not give him in any wise. His first delight in feeling that she was wholly her own again had died down. This masque of friendship, in which she was whole-souled and he half-hearted, became an anguish. He doubted his strength to keep it up. Sometimes he thought that it would be more endurable to blurt out the truth and go into banishment. He felt often that he would prefer the violent, final wound of severance to the long, eked out pain of being near her only as a friend.

Then one day in August he went to Breene, and as soon as he saw Sophy felt sure that some crisis was upon them both.

In fact she had just received the following letter from Lady Wychcote:

"My dear Sophy, you must pardon me for breaking through my resolve, this once, and alluding to a matter which I had seriously intended never mentioning to you again. Clara Knowles came to call on me to-day. As you probably know she has one of the most venomous tongues in England. She had barely said 'How d'ye do' before she flooded me with enquiries as to who was the 'foreigner that was making such running with Sophy Chesney.' (I quote her own elegant expressions.) She said that 'The Barton-Savidges' (a family also famed for scandal-mongering) 'vowed that he was always either turning in at the Breene lodge gates, or coming out of them.' Olive Arundel they said was 'gooseberry.' She asked if it were true that he was a bigamist. And whether you really belonged to a 'free love league' in the States as she had heard. I will not quote more of her disgusting jargon. I only write this much of it, that you may see my apprehensions on your behalf were not without reason." The rest of the letter was confined to inquiries about Bobby, and suggestions as to a special method of German, which had been recommended to her by an ex-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, whose grandson was, at sixteen, proficient in four modern languages, etc., etc.

This letter filled Sophy with rebellious anger, yet at the same time she realised that it had to be considered seriously. The most painful part of all was that she felt that she must speak about it to Amaldi. Despite all her natural independence, she could not defy conventionality to the extent of allowing their friendship to give rise to such odious gossip. And she thought how strange and almost tragic it was, that the only breath of scandal that had ever touched her should be caused by the one perfectly clear, passionless affection of her life.

She told him of the letter as they walked in the beech wood beyond the garden.

"It's only what we might have foreseen in this crowded, narrow-minded place!" she ended bitterly.

Amaldi, who was stripping the fronds of a dead leaf that he had picked up, kept his eyes on it. He did not say anything for a second or two, then he observed in that level, withheld voice that she knew meant intense feeling:

"I'm afraid we might have expected it in any place."

"Oh, Amaldi!—no!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"I'm afraid so," he repeated.

They were seated now on a felled log. Through the incessant quivering of the nervous leaves they could see the gleam of the pond sunk in wreaths of loose-strife—the "long purples" of Ophelia's garland. It was all white and blue with the August sky. Except for the sound of blowing leaves the wood was very still. This stillness seemed to make it all more embarrassing and hateful somehow. Sophy sat chin on hand, staring at the shining pond. Other things that must be put into words were impossible to utter just then.

Amaldi broke the silence.

"I suppose," he said in that expressionless voice, "that we shall have to stop seeing each other—for the present at least."

This was just what Sophy had shrunk from saying. She answered very dejectedly:

"I ... I suppose so. Yes ... it's the only thing to do of course." Then she broke out in her impetuous way: "Oh, how hateful and unnecessary it all is!—how humiliating—and how sad.... I did think that friendship would be left me...."

There were tears in her voice. Amaldi turned suddenly and looked at her. The moment that she saw his eyes she knew what was coming.

"I've failed you, too," he said. "It isn't friendship that I feel for you...."

As her eyes fell away from his, he added passionately: "How could it be otherwise?... How could it be?..."

And all at once it was revealed to Sophy that he was right—that she had been blind and mistaken once again to an almost incredible degree. She sat dumb with pain, knowing less than ever what to say. And her pain told her that he was very, very dear to her, and yet that she recoiled from the mere idea of love more violently than ever. But there was no half way here, she must renounce him if she could not return his love.

Amaldi went on:

"It had to come. I meant to tell you. I hoped that I would be strong enough ... but I'm not. It's beyond me.... I can't endure it—this being near you ... knowing you are free ... loving you ... loving you ... having only your friendship. No man could endure it ... no real man...."

He broke off. The next instant he said, "Forgive me. It seems brutal to speak so ... so bluntly—but at least there must be truth between us."

Sophy said in a choked voice:

"If you think all the suffering is yours ... you ... you are mistaken, Amaldi."

"Forgive me...." he repeated.

"And ... and...." she stumbled on, "you speak of my being free ... but even if ... if things were ... different ... you are not free...."

"Do you mean if you ... loved me?" said Amaldi.

"Yes," she murmured, colouring deeply.

He flushed, too, then paled.

"In that case I should soon free myself," he said.

Sophy glanced up at him in amazement, then down again.

"But ... there is no divorce in Italy...." she stammered.

"An Italian can be naturalised in Switzerland and divorced there," he rejoined, steadying his voice with an effort.

All at once her face quivered, she put up her hands to hide it. Then she whispered brokenly:

"You would do that for me?"

"It would be nothing ... if you loved me," he answered.

There was silence for a moment or two. Then it broke from him again.

"I couldn't go on acting to you ... lying to you...."

"Oh, I know ... I know...." she answered.

Suddenly he was on his knees beside her. He caught her hands and held them to his breast.

"Can't it ever be different?" he was stammering. "Can't it ever be different? Some time ... after years maybe?... Is there no love in you for me?... None at all?"

But as he knelt there beside her stammering with the ardour of his long suppressed love, it was Loring that Sophy thought of—Loring who had also knelt beside her in desperate appeal. She blanched with the confused, humiliating pain of it.

"Oh, don't you see ... don't you see," she pleaded. "I haven't any love to give.... How could I have?..." She drew away her hands and pressed them to her own breast. "I'm like a dead thing...." she said desperately, "dead ... cold...."

He rose and walked away from her, stood thinking for a little, then came back. Still standing, he looked down at her bent head.

"Tell me this at least," he said, "if we had met ... at first ... before things happened in both our lives ... do you think that you might have ... cared for me?"

Sophy did not answer at once. Her past was rushing before her. Then she sprang impulsively to her feet.

"Yes, Amaldi, yes...." she said. "When we were both young ... if we had met then.... Oh, how beautiful life could have been for us!"

Amaldi started forward, then drew back. His eyes confused her. She stood there, rather overwhelmed by her own outburst, looking down again now at the tip of one shoe which she moved nervously from side to side among the last year's leaves. He said in a low voice:

"That makes it easier to say 'good-by' ... and harder. I...."

He stopped short. She forced herself to ask for how long he meant to be gone.

"I think a year ... two years, perhaps, would be best," he answered heavily. The next instant he put it more lightly: "I've always wanted to travel for some years in strange lands. I might come back a more satisfactory 'friend' ... who knows?"

"Don't...." said Sophy, blind with tears now.

She could never remember clearly how they parted. He promised to write her of his plans as soon as he had decided on them. Walking back through the garden, they met Sue Pickett and Bobby. They were not alone again until he left for London.