She no longer felt old and wise, but young and helpless before the compulsion of the kindred soul. She owed him the truth, and in giving it she must risk his freedom and his happiness. Looking up at him, that sense of compulsion upon her, she said, "It was because of Jane Amoret.
It was because I loved her and wanted to keep her."
Christopher Darley grew paler than before. "She is here?"
"Yes. She came this morning. She is upstairs, sleeping."
"Rhoda saw her?"
"Yes."
"And left her? To you?"
"Yes. Left her to me."
He raised his head with a backward jerk and stared out of the window before him. She kept her eyes on his face, measuring its strength against hers. He was not measuring. He seemed to be seeing the beautiful and terrible things of which, he had told her, she was capable. She felt, when his eyes came back to her, that he had judged her.
"You see you can"t," he said gently.
"Can"t what? Can"t keep her, you mean, of course."
"Anything but that. You can"t abandon her--even for my sake."
So that had been the judgment. He saw only beauty.
"I shan"t abandon her. I shall always be able to see as much of her as I did of Rhoda, and more. And she is different from Rhoda. I shan"t have the special joy of her, but I shall have the good."
"Moreover," he went on, with perfect gentleness, putting her words aside, "I can"t abandon Rhoda. All that you have said is true. But it doesn"t go far enough. You yourself, you know, see life too much in terms of irony, of fact rather than faith. You"ve owned that Rhoda is adventurous and honest; you"ve owned that she doesn"t lie to herself.
Then she has growth in her. No human being can be like a flower or a fish or a stone. It was mere literature, your saying that. Every human being has futures and futures within it. You know it really. Why you yourself, though you are so old and fixed, are different now from what you were an hour ago. I am different, of course. And Rhoda will be different, too. She won"t disintegrate me. She"ll make me very miserable, doubtless; she has already. And I shall make her angry. But I shall hold her, and she"ll change. You shall see. I promise you. And you will keep Jane Amoret, and she will be eternally different because of you."
Mrs. Delafield, while he spoke, had risen. She stood before him, grasping her gold chain on either side, her eyes very nearly level with his, and she summoned all her will, her strength, her wisdom to meet him. Yes, they had come to that, she and this boy.
"I accept all your faith," she said. "Only you must help me to make my world, and not yours, with it. Don"t be afraid for Jane Amoret. I shall be firmly in her life. Rhoda shan"t keep me out. She won"t want to keep me out. Rhoda has far more chance of changing, of learning something from this experience, as a disconcerted and forgiven wife than as a sullen adventuress; and you--you will not be miserable; not with Rhoda, at all events; and you will be free. I am going to send a wire to Rhoda, at once, and tell her that I have reconsidered my advice to her. That, in itself, will show her how I managed her this morning. I shall tell her that she must go to London to-night, to her father. And to-morrow I"ll take Jane Amoret up and bring Rhoda and Niel together."
He took it all in, wide-eyed, he too now measuring the threat.
"You can"t," he said; "I won"t let you!"
"You"ll have to let me. I have the fact on my side as well as the faith.
She wants to leave you. She wants only the excuse of being asked. You can"t stop my giving her the excuse." Yes, after all, her fact against his faith, she must have her way. What could his love for Rhoda and his feeling for herself do against the ironic fact that Rhoda, simply, was tired of him? "You must see that you can"t force her to stay," she said.
"You couldn"t even prevent her coming to me this morning."
She looked at him with all the force of her advantage and saw that before the cruel fact, and her determination, he knew his helplessness.
It was, again, the bird arrested in its impulse; and a veil seemed to fall across his face, a shyness, almost a wildness to shut them out from each other. He dropped his eyes before her.
"Dear Mr. Darley, my dear young friend, see that it"s best. See that it"s best all round. See it with me," she begged. "I was wrong this morning; wrong from the very first. Let it come to that only. Count yourself out. It was of myself, of my own delight in the child that I was thinking. No, not even thinking; I tried to think it was for her; but it was my own feeling that decided. If you had never come, it would still have been right to give her up--though I should never have seen it unless you"d come. It was almost a crime that I committed. They had asked me to implore her to go back; they trusted me. And I prevented the message coming to her. I did not believe the things I said to her--not as she thought I believed them. I did not care a rap about her dignity; you saw the falsity at once. I cared only about keeping Jane Amoret."
He stood there before her, remote, unmoved, with downcast, unanswering eyes.
"Are you angry? Don"t you see it, too?" she pleaded.
"No." He shook his head. "You had a right to keep the child."
"Against all those other reasons? Against my own conscience?"
"Yes. Because you were strong enough. You were right, because you were strong enough. I believe in law, too, you see--unless one is strong enough to break it for something better. You were. It was a beautiful thing to do."
"But then, if you think me so strong, why not trust me now? This, now, is the thing I want to do."
"Because of me. It isn"t against the law you are acting now; it"s against your own life. I am not angry. But it crushes me."
They stood there then, she deeply meditating, he fixed in his unyielding grief, for how long she could not have said. Parton"s step outside broke in upon their mute opposition.
VI
She and Mr. Darley, Mrs. Delafield was aware, presented precisely the abstracted, alienated air that Parton would expect. The young man moved away to the window while she took from the salver the note Parton presented. Then, her hand arrested in the very act by a recognition,
"Is there an answer?" she asked.
"No answer, ma"am."
"Who brought it?"
"A man from the station, ma"am."
"Very well, Parton."
Parton was gone. Mr. Darley kept his back turned. She held the note in her hand and stared at it. The writing was Rhoda"s; the envelope one of the station-master"s. She had been at the station, then, when she wrote, four miles away. The London train, for which she had been waiting, had gone long since; it had gone before the arrival of Mr. Darley"s.
An almost overpowering presage rose in her mind; she could hardly, for a moment, summon the decision with which to open the envelope. Then, reading as she stood, she felt the blood flow up to her face.
For it was almost too much, although it was, through Rhoda"s act, she who had won finally. Even she, then, had not yet correctly measured Rhoda"s irony or Rhoda"s sardonic a.s.surance. Rhoda, after all, did not care to keep up appearances with her, and, after all, why should she?
Here was fact, and it had been fact all through. She wanted most to go back. She wanted it more than to be dignified in her aunt"s eyes, or, really, in anybody else"s. Once back Rhoda would take care of her dignity. In a flash Mrs. Delafield saw how little, when all was said and done, Rhoda would pay.
DEAR AUNT ISABEL [she wrote, in her ample, tranquil hand]: I"ve been thinking over all you said and have come to the conclusion that you are considering me too much. I feel that I must consider my child. I have made a grave mistake and am not too proud to own it. Christopher and I are not at all fitted to make each other happy. So I have wired to father that I arrive this afternoon, and to Niel that I will see him to-morrow. I have written too, of course, to my poor Christopher. But he will understand me. Thank you so much, dear Aunt Isabel, for your kindness and helpfulness.
Your affectionate RHODA
P.S. Will you send nurse up with Jane Amoret within the week? Not at once, please; that would look rather foolish.
With the acc.u.mulated weight of absurdity, relief, dismay, she had sunk down into her chair, still gazing at the letter, and it was dismay that grew. As if with a violent jolt back to earth, Rhoda seemed to show her that life was not docile to n.o.bilities. She hated to think that he must feel with her that shattering fall. There was nothing for them to do now for each other; no contest and no sacrifice. Rhoda had settled everything.
She spoke to him at last, and, as he came to her, not looking around at him, she held out the note. He stood behind her to read it; and after that he did not speak.
She heard him move presently, vaguely, and then, vaguely, he drifted to and fro. He walked here and there; he paused, no doubt to feel his bones and to count how many had been broken, and then, with a start, he went on again.
"Please come where I can see you," she said at last.
He came at once, obediently, standing as he had stood a little while ago before the fire, his hands locked behind him, but now with face bent down, fixed in its effort to see clearly what had happened to them.