The House of Defence. Volume 1

He hesitated only a moment, then unlocked his despatch-box and took out a half-empty bottle. The sight of it made his desire flicker into flame again; but, after all, he had fully intended to take no more for three days. Then he swept that away also. His will for the time was set on breaking the habit now and at once. He held it out to her.

“Yes; you are right,” he said. “Here it is. Don’t despise me if you can help it, Cathy.”

The use of the shortened name touched her, too.

“Oh, my dear, don’t talk of that,” she said; “and thank you most awfully, Thurso. You will never regret this.”

She went to the window and poured the brown fluid out among the leaves of the creepers, with a little shudder at the stale, sickly smell of it. Then she flung the bottle into the shrubbery.

“I ought to thank you,” he said; “and I do.”

The evening was extraordinarily warm and windless, and though they had dinner in the open pavilion in the garden, Mr. Silas P. Morton only sent for the second thickest of his black-and-white plaids to put round his venerable shoulders as a precaution against chills, and after dinner a bridge-table was started for the occupation of the Americans and Jim and Ruby, while the others preferred for the present to wander about in the deepening dusk. The light still lingered in the west and beneath it the steely grey of the river smouldered with the reflected sunshine that the sky still retained. Moths hovered over the huddled fragrance of the dim garden-beds, emerging every now and then from the darkness into the bright light cast by the lamps in the pavilion where the little party had dined, and the veiled odours of night began to steal onto the air – the odours of tobacco-plant and night-stocks, of dewy foliage, ripe hayfields, and damp earth, which are so far more delicate and suggestive than the trumpet-blown fragrance of the day. Though crimson still lingered in the west, overhead the steel-blue of night was darkening fast, and minute stars were beginning to be lit. From the rest of the world the colour had already faded: it was an etching, a marvellous mezzotint of black-and-white.

Catherine, when they rose from the table, found Villars by her side, in a manner that irresistibly implied that he meant to have a stroll with her, and leaving the others – Maud had already towed Alice Yardly out of Thurso’s immediate neighbourhood, and was listening to a fearfully interminable account of Mrs. Eddy’s relation to Phineas P. Quimby – they went down through the door cut in the yew-hedge, which had so roused Theodosia’s enthusiasm, to stroll along the river-front and catch the last of the evening light. Opposite, on the other bank of the river, a tent was pitched, and outside it three or four young men were seated, having supper at a tablecloth spread on the grass, and lit by a couple of Chinese lanterns. Their fire for cooking burned bravely on the river edge, and the smell of aromatic wood-smoke was wafted across to them. It all looked exquisitely simple and uncomplicated. Catherine rather envied that, for her own life just now seemed involved and ravelled; she did not feel confidence in the future. Indeed, she was not sure whether even the next ten minutes would be quite easy, for woman of the world though she was, and conversational engineer, skilled at directing the flow of talk into the channels in which she wished it to run, she felt vaguely nervous with her companion. At dinner he had been the polished, suggestive talker, but it had seemed to her all the time as if he was talking from the surface only, saying the quick, glib things that came so easily to him. And now, when they had separated themselves from the others, she found her impression had been correct.

“It was so good of you to ask me here,” he said, “quietly, like this; for it means that you admit me again to friendship and intimacy with you – at least, so I take it.”

He struck a match to light his cigarette, holding it in the screen of his hollowed hands, so that the flame illuminated his face very vividly. He had changed extraordinarily little: his dark eyes still had the sparkle of fire and youth in them, and their corners were still unseamed and unwrinkled. His face had grown neither stout nor attenuated; his hair was still untouched by grey, and a plume of it hung, as she had always remembered it, a little apart and over his forehead. He wore neither moustache nor beard, and a very short upper lip separated his large and essentially masculine mouth from a thin, aquiline nose. Then, as he flicked his match away, he threw back his head with the gesture she knew so well.

“Or is that presumptuous of me?” he asked. “I charge you to tell me that, and not let me go on being presumptuous unwittingly.”

She laughed.

“It is not in the least presumptuous,” she said. “I ask the whole world to a ball or a big party, since it does not matter who is there, owing to the crowd. But here in the country I ask only the people I want to see, or for some reason have got to see – you are not among the latter – and the more one wants to see of them, the smaller is the party.”

“You encourage me,” he said. “It is kind of you. Now, my dear lady, we have not seen each other for some time, and though old history is tiresome, I do want to know one thing. Never mind the history, the events, but sum it up for me. Are you happy? Have you been happy?”

She paused a moment. He had a right to know that too.

“Yes, immensely happy,” she said with all honestness – “at least, my life suits me, which, I suppose, implies happiness. I am – what is the cant phrase? – in harmony with my environment. And – and you?”

The moment she had asked it she questioned her wisdom in doing so. It gave him, if he chose, a sort of opportunity.

“Ah, well, I have been hard-working and ambitious,” he said, “and I have got what I wanted. I suppose one should be content with that. Diplomacy suits me; London suits me; a third thing, indeed, suits me.”

“And that?” she asked.

“What you have just so kindly promised me – your friendship. I place it first, I think, not third.”

She laughed again, still a little nervously, and conscious of a determination not to let the conversation get more intimate than this. But for the moment it was out of her hands, for he went on in that cool, quiet voice, separating each word from its neighbours, giving to each its individual value.

“People who have once been friends,” he said, “and after an interval come together again, often make a great mistake in wondering and worrying about the past. Please do not suspect me of such a stupidity; I am more than content to take up the present, just as it is, fragrant with the promise of your friendship, and fragrant with the knowledge that you have been, and are, happy. I would have given my whole life, as you know, to make you that, and now that it has come to you without any effort on my part, why, let us rejoice over the economy of my energy.”

They had come to the end of the path by the river, where an ironwork gate gave onto the highroad outside, and paused a moment before retracing their steps. A big yellow moon had risen over the trees to the east, so that while the western part of the sky still glowed with sunset, the east was flooded with that cold white flame that turns every colour into ivory or ebony. And this strange effect was reproduced on his face, for the warmth of the west shone on one cheek, while on the other was the white coldness of the moon. And fantastically enough she felt herself for the moment reading his words in this double light. They seemed capable of two interpretations.

But instantly she told herself that she was utterly unjustified in such a conjecture. His words had been absolutely guileless, nor had she the smallest cause for interpreting them otherwise. What she had done was to read into them the knowledge that twelve years ago she had treated him shabbily, and now credited him with an impulse of revenge. Yet she feared him a little. Beneath his quiet, kind words there was something white-hot and keen-edged. As he had said, he wanted things and got them. What, then, did he want of her? He had told her – her friendship.

It was like him, too, like his consummate cleverness, which it required cleverness to perceive at all, so subtle and natural was it, to say these strong and serious things about her happiness and her friendship – things which he must know would remain in her mind – and then round off the sentence with a pure triviality about the economy of energy. It gave her, however – as, no doubt, he meant it to do, since he had said his say – an opportunity for altering the direction of the conversation without abrupt transition.

“I really don’t know if one ought to rejoice in economy of energy,” she said, as they turned to walk back. “There is such an enormous lot of energy in the world, and I think there would be less trouble if it was scarcer. I know I have quite as much as I have any use for. I should find more of it embarrassing.”

“You are admirable,” he said. “I believe there is never a scheme to help and relieve distress brought before you to which you do not give real support – not the mere buttress of your name, but your time, your pains, your energy. But, you see, you economise energy in other directions.”

“What directions?” she asked.

“Emotional. You never worry, do you? You never regret, you never allow passion of any sort to master and exhaust you.”

This, again, was rather more intimate than she liked, yet, somehow, she did not resent it. Perhaps it would be truer to say that she could not resent it, for in his very gentleness there was inherent a strength that made resentment futile. You might as well resent the slow, grinding movement of a glacier. In any case, it would do no good to resent it, and Catherine always set her face against purposeless attitudes.

“No; I don’t think I worry much,” she said. “But, then, I am very happy. I have little to worry about.”

Then suddenly she told herself that she was being afraid of this man, and to her next words she summoned her courage, asserting herself against him, announcing her independence.

“And certainly I do not often regret,” she said. “People talk of destiny as if it was a force outside themselves. If I thought that, no doubt I should often regret the dealings of destiny with me. But I don’t, for in almost all important decisions – the things that really make one’s life – destiny is nothing more nor less than one’s own will. And my will isn’t weak, I think.”

“I am sure it is not,” said he. “But what if the destiny or will of another comes into conflict with yours?”

“Oh, then one has to fight,” said she.

“In all your battles, then,” said he, “may success ever attend the most deserving!”

She laughed.

“That is ambiguous. That may be a curse, not a blessing, on my arms.”

“You think, then, that I am so disloyal as to be able to imagine even that anyone is more deserving than you?” he asked.

Again he was a little flowery. Her effort had done her good, and she could tell herself that he was even a little fruity.

“You still delight in phrases, I see,” she observed.

“In sincere ones,” he answered.

They joined the others after this, finding that the millionaire cousin, to his infinite chagrin, had lost seven-and-sixpence, and not long after Catherine suggested adjournment to the women of the party. She herself, for some reason, felt really rather tired, though she had been fresh enough at dinner, and went upstairs immediately and to bed. But sleep, in spite of, or perhaps in consequence of her tiredness, did not soon come to her, and first one thing, then another, held her back from crossing the drowsy borderland. Now it would be the thought of Thurso that pulled her back into waking consciousness, and the perplexed wonder as to what was the wise step to take about him. You could not play with drugs like that; it was safer to play with loaded guns. Yet he had allowed her to throw that bottle away: his will was his own still… Then her mind took a swift excursion forward into the events of next week. It was crammed from end to end, and she must go up to town quite early on Monday. She was glad it was full; she would have no time for thought. She did not want to think… Then she turned on her side and proceeded to do so.

Why had Rudolf Villars come back to trouble the busy tranquillity of her life? He had said that he had come back – it amounted to that – to resume his friendship with her. But what if she could not give it him – what if friendship was not the word for her with regard to him? She felt quite sure he still loved her – had never ceased to love her. And for herself? No one else had ever affected her as he did. She felt all she had felt twelve years ago. She resented that; she rebelled against it. Her will, she had asserted, was her destiny; but what if it came into conflict, as he had said, with another will? She was afraid of him, too, or was it of herself that she was afraid?

And he had changed so little! Youthful violence, perhaps, had gone, but the strength of a man had taken its place. If only he had aged in body even!

Round and round in her head went the incessant wheel of thought. She thought of Thurso again, and of the danger in which he stood; she thought of a hundred things, and then she thought of Rudolf Villars again. She could almost hear his voice in her ears.

She had drawn back her curtains, leaving only the blind to cover the wide-open windows, and the moon outside shone full on it, making the furniture and details of her room vividly visible. The walls were white, the sofas and chairs were white also, and on her dressing-table glimmered the silver of the mirror-frame and the silver handles of brushes and toilet articles. How much or how little, she thought, these common-place, familiar things might mean! How external sights and sounds and objects could be soaked with emotion, and how, again, they could be just like dry sponges, hard and gritty almost to the touch, dead and fossilised! And all she saw here, in this her bedchamber, was no more than dry sponge; no wine or liquor of love had soaked into those things. All her life, but once for a few short weeks, she had been without it, and how much she had missed she was now unwillingly and rebelliously beginning to guess. ’Arry and ’Arriet in the street, who shouted songs and changed hats, were so infinitely richer than she, in spite of all that was hers – her position, her gifts, her beauty. All these should have been just the trappings and embellishment of the chariot in which Love rode. Without Love they were nothing – odds and ends, fit for a jumble sale. Once, it is true, she had seen the chariot of Love ready for her, but she had turned back from it, though her foot was on the step. She had been very young; she could not guess how all-important was her choice, and at that age her mother’s will rather than her own had been her destiny. But now again she felt sure the chariot was coming to her. What she had rejected before was to be offered her again.

Yet still her will was her destiny, and sooner than play with these thoughts or admit argument about them, she got up, meaning to read a book till sleep came to her. The book she wanted was on the table in the window, and before she lit a candle she crossed the room to get it. The clock on her mantelpiece had just chimed two, and a light shone from under the chink of the door on the left that led to Thurso’s dressing-room, so that she knew he was awake still. Also, from outside she heard the subdued crunch of gravel under the heel of someone who still loitered in the air of this still summer night. And then below his breath someone outside – the loiterer, no doubt – began whistling a plaintive Hungarian folk-tune that she had not heard for years. But that – that untutored little melody was soaked and dripping with emotion for her.

The step passed on round to the door that opened into the garden, and she heard it no more. But she did not, even though she had found her book, care to read, but, gently drawing up the blind, she sat at the open window. The moon had swung to its zenith, and a huge flood of white light was poured on the shrubbery where she had thrown the bottle, and on the lawn and flower-beds; and she sat there long, drinking in the serenity of the cloudless night.

Then the sound of another step, quick but stealthy, came to her ears, and next moment she saw Thurso crossing the path to the shrubbery. He struck a match, and seemed by its light to be searching eagerly for something. Eventually he found it, and, emerging again, held it up in the moonlight. There was a drop or two still remaining in the bottle, and, turning it upside down, he let them trickle into his mouth.