CHAPTER XIX
In her appeal to Wyndham Audrey had played a bold stroke, and it seemed that she had won it. She had amply revenged herself on Hardy, and more than a.s.sured herself of Wyndham"s friendship. All the same, ever since she had left him at the doors of the Hotel Metropole, a certain constraint had crept into their intercourse. Wyndham was not easily deceived, and he rightly interpreted her abrupt dismissal of him as a final effort to a.s.sert herself before the onset of the inevitable. Even if he at times suspected her of playing a part, she had chosen the right part to play, and he respected her for it. He himself was leading a curious double life. He was working hard at his novel, which promised to surpa.s.s everything that he had yet done. He was so much absorbed in observing, studying, shaping, and touching up, that it never occurred to him to ask himself if he were indeed creating. The thing had been growing under his hands through the autumn; in the winter it seemed to advance by bounds; but in the spring his work came to a sudden standstill. He did not know what Laura, his heroine, was going to do next. He had drawn her as the creature of impulse, but dragging the dead weight of all the conventions at her back--a woman variously dramatic when stirred by influences from without, but incapable of decisive action from within. How would such a woman behave under stress of conflicting circ.u.mstances?--if it came, say, to a fight for possession between the force of traditional inertia and the feeling of the moment? On the one hand the problem was as old as the hills, on the other it was new with every man and woman born into the world. What he called his literary conscience told him that it had to be solved; another conscience in him shrank from the solution. At this point Wyndham did what, as a conscientious artist, he had never done before; he put his work away for a season, and tried not to think about it, devoting himself to Audrey Craven instead. Even he was not always able to preserve the critical att.i.tude with regard to her. As he had told her, criticism comes first, sympathy last of all. And with him--last of all--it had come. He could not go on from day to day, seeing, hearing, and understanding more and more, without acquiring a curious sympathy with the thing he studied. And when the artist tired of her art, the man felt all the influence of her natural magic. He was prepared for that, and had no illusions on the subject.
He tested his present feelings by comparing them with those he had had for Alison Fraser. He had not the least intention of setting up Audrey Craven anywhere near his idol"s ancient place,--he would have shuddered at the bare idea of it. This, though he expressed it differently, was what he meant when he resolved once for all that he would never marry, never put himself in any woman"s power again. And in the plenitude of his self-knowledge he knew exactly how far he could let himself go without either of these evil results following.
Unfortunately, in these cases the woman is seldom so well equipped for self-defence as the man. Owing to her invincible ignorance of her own nature, she must be more or less at a disadvantage. And if this is true of women in general, it was doubly true of any one so specially p.r.o.ne to illusion as Audrey Craven, who would have had difficulty in recognising any part of her true self under its numerous disguises. She was therefore unaware of the action and reaction which had been going on within her during the last year. Whatever its precise quality may have been, her love for Ted Haviland was of a different quality from her feeling for Langley Wyndham. Under that earlier influence, whatever intelligence she possessed had been roused from its torpor by the tumult of her senses; her mind had been opened and made ready for the attack of a finer intellectual pa.s.sion, which again in its turn brought her under the tyranny of the senses. For though her worst enemies could not call Audrey clever, it was Wyndham"s intellectual eminence which had fascinated her from the first. Herein lay her danger and her excuse. She was aware--hence her late access of reserve--that she was being carried away by her feelings; but how, when, and whither, she neither knew nor apparently cared to know. In the meanwhile, in Wyndham"s friendship she not only triumphed over Vincent"s scorn, but she felt secure against his infatuation. For she imagined the scorn and the infatuation as still existing together. She knew that he was still in London, presumably unable to tear himself away from her neighbourhood; and the sense of his presence, of his power over her, had been so long a habit of her mind that she could not lose it now. Otherwise she hardly gave him a thought; and having cut herself off from all communication with Devon Street, she did not certainly know what had become of him.
She had yet to learn.
Towards the end of February she received a letter from Vincent"s mother which left no doubt on the subject. The news of his downfall had reached his home at last. Mrs. Hardy knew of her son"s attachment to his cousin, and had always had fixed ideas on that point. On being told that he had "gone" irretrievably "to the bad," she jumped to a conclusion: it was the right one, as it happened, though she had managed to cover a great deal of ground in that jump. She at once wrote off a long and violent letter to her niece, taxing her with cruelty, fickleness, and ingrat.i.tude, laying Vincent"s misdeeds on her shoulders, and ending thus: "They tell me you are engaged. I pray G.o.d you may not have to go through what you have made my darling boy suffer."
Now, either the poor hysterical lady was an unconscious instrument in the hands of Destiny, or her prayer may have been meant as a modified and lady-like curse; at any rate, if it had not entered into her head to write that letter, it would have saved the writing of one chapter in her niece"s history. But, in the first place, the communication had the effect of making Audrey cry a great deal, for her; in the second, it came by an afternoon post, so that Langley Wyndham, calling at his usual hour, found her crying.
He was a little taken aback by the sight, as indeed any man would have been, for most women of his acquaintance arranged things so as not to do their crying in calling hours.
However, he judged it the truest kindness to sit down and talk as if nothing had happened. But it requires considerable self-possession and command of language to sit still and talk about the weather with a woman"s tears falling before you like rain; and even Langley Wyndham, that studious cultivator of phrases, found it hard. Audrey herself relieved him from his embarra.s.sment by frankly drying her eyes and saying--
"I beg your pardon. I didn"t mean that to happen; but----"
He glanced at the letter open in her lap.
"Not bad news, I hope?"
"N-no," she answered, with a sob verging on the hysterical.
Wyndham looked frightened at that, and she checked herself in time.
"No, it"s nothing. At least I can"t speak about it. And yet--if I did, I believe I should feel better. I am so miserable."
"I am truly sorry. I wish I could be of some use. If you thought you could speak about it to me, you know you can trust me."
"I know I can. Oh, if I could only tell you! But I can"t."
"Why not? Would it be so very hard? I _might_ be able to help you."
"You might. I do want somebody"s advice--so much."
"You are always welcome to mine. You needn"t take it, you know."
She smiled through her tears, for she had acquired a faint sense of humour under Ted"s influence, and had not yet lost it.
"Well, it"s about Vinc--my cousin Mr. Hardy. You remember meeting him here once?"
"I do indeed."
"You may remember something I told you about him then. Perhaps I ought not to have told you."
"Never mind that. Yes, I remember perfectly. Has he been persecuting you again?"
"Ye-yes. Well, no. I haven"t seen him for ages, but I live in dread of seeing him every day. I know, sooner or later, he will come."
She paused. "I wonder if I really could tell you everything."
"Please do, or tell me as much as you care to. I"d like to help you if you would let me."
She went on in a low voice, rather suggestive, Wyndham thought, of the confessional: "I was engaged to him once--long ago--he forced me into it. It began when we were children. He always made me do everything he wanted. Then--he went away immediately after--for a year. When he came back--I don"t know how it was--I suppose it was because he had been away so long--but I was stronger. He seemed to have lost his hold over me, and I--I broke it off."
She looked away from Wyndham as she spoke.
He wondered, "Is she acting all the time? If so, how admirably she does it! She must be a cleverer woman than I thought. But she isn"t a clever woman. Therefore----" But Audrey went on before he could draw a conclusion.
"But I know some day he will come back and make it begin all over again, and I shall have no power. And the thought of it is horrible!"
There was no mistaking the pa.s.sion in her voice this time. He said to himself, "This is nature," and he felt the same cold shiver of sympathy that sometimes ran through him at the performance of some splendid actress. But before he could presume to sympathise he must judge.
"Do you mind telling me one thing? Had you any graver reasons for breaking it off than what you have told me?"
"Yes. He drinks."
"Brute! That"s enough. But--supposing he didn"t drink?"
"It would make no difference. I never cared for him. He thought I did. I couldn"t help that, could I? And then afterwards so many things happened--I was not the same person. If he had not begun to--do that, still it would have been impossible. But he won"t believe it, or else he doesn"t care. He"ll persecute me again, and perhaps make me marry him."
"My dear Miss Craven, he won"t do that. People don"t do those things in the nineteenth century. You"ve only got to state clearly that you won"t have anything to say to him, and he can"t do anything. If he tries to, there are measures that can be taken."
She shook her head dismally.
"Now comes the advice. Shall I tell you the truth? You"ve been worrying your brain over that wretched animal till your nerves are all upset.
You"re ill practically, or you couldn"t take this morbid view of it. You ought to leave town and go away for a change."
"Where could I go to?"
"The south coast for choice. It"s bracing."
"If I only could! No, I can"t leave London."
"Why not? There"s an excellent service of trains----"
"Because--because I love London."
"So do I for many reasons. There"s no place like it, to my mind. But if I"d overworked myself in it, I should tear myself away. You can have too much of a good thing."
"No, not of the only place on earth you care to be in."
"Well, I"ve given my valuable advice. You"re not going to take it--I never thought you would. Personally I hate the people who give me advice. What I should like to give you would be help. But the question is, Am I able to give it? Have I even the right to offer it?"
She looked up at him. Some lyric voice, whether of hope or joy, or both, had called the soul for an instant to her face--a poor little fluttering soul, that gazed out through her grey eyes at Wyndham--for an instant only, and was seen no more. When he spoke, he spoke not to it, but to the woman he had known.