"Oh, no, it couldn"t."
And she added, leaning forward now, and looking at him differently:
"Don"t you ever realize how rare you are, Seymour? There is scarcely anyone left like you, and yet you are not old-fashioned. Do you know that I have never yet met a man who really was a man--"
"Now, now, Adela!"
"No, I will say it! I have never met a real man who, knowing you, didn"t think you were rare. They wouldn"t let you go. Besides, what would you retire to?"
Again she looked at him with a scrutiny which she felt to be morally cruel. She could not refrain from it just then. It seemed to come inevitably from her own misery and almost desperation. At one moment she felt a rush of tenderness for him, at another an almost stony hardness.
"Ah--that"s just it! I dare say it will be better to die in harness."
"Die!" she said, as if startled.
At that moment the thought a.s.sailed her, "If Seymour were suddenly to die!" There would be a terrible gap in her life. Her loneliness then would be horrible indeed unless--she pulled herself up with a sort of fierce mental violence. "I won"t! I won"t!" she cried out to herself.
"You are very strong and healthy, Seymour," she said, "I think you will live to be very old."
"Probably. Palaces usually contain a few dodderers. But is anything the matter, Adela? The old dog is very persistent, you know."
"I"ve been feeling a little depressed."
"You stay alone too much, I believe."
"It isn"t that. I was out at the theatre with a party only last night.
We went to _The Great Lover_. But he wasn"t like you. You are a really great lover."
And again she leaned forward towards him, trying to feel physically what surely she was feeling in another way.
"The greatest in London, I am sure."
"I don"t know," he said, very simply. "But certainly I have the gift of faithfulness, if it is a gift."
"We had great discussions on love and jealousy last night."
"Did you? Whom were you with?"
"I went with Beryl Van Tuyn and Francis Braybrooke."
"An oddly uneven pair!"
"Alick Craven was with us, too."
"The boy I met here one Sunday."
Lady Sellingworth felt an almost fierce flash of irritation as she heard him say "boy."
"He"s hardly a boy," she said. "He must be at least thirty, and I think he seems even older than he is."
"Does he? He struck me as very young. When he went away with that pretty girl it was like young April going out of the room with all the daffodils. They matched."
The intense irritation grew in Lady Sellingworth. She felt as if she were being p.r.i.c.ked by a mult.i.tude of pins.
"Beryl is years and years younger than he is!" she said. "I don"t think you are very clever about ages, Seymour. There must be nearly ten years difference between them."
Scarcely had she said this than her mind added, "And about thirty years"
difference between him and me!" And then something in her--she thought of it as the soul--crumpled up, almost as if trying to die and know nothing more.
"What is it, Adela?" again he said, gently. "Can"t I help you?"
"No, no, you can"t!" she answered, almost with desperation, no longer able to control herself thoroughly.
Suddenly she felt as if she were losing her head, as if she might break down before him, let him into her miserable secret.
"The fact is," she continued, fixing her eyes upon him, as a criminal might fix his eyes on his judge while denying everything. "The fact is that none of us really can help anyone else. We may think we can sometimes, but we can"t. We all work out our own destinies in absolute loneliness. You and I are very old friends, and yet we are far away from each other, always have been and always shall be. No, you haven"t the power to help me, Seymour."
"But what is the matter, my dear?"
"Life--life!" she said, and there was a fierce exasperation in her voice. "I cannot understand the unfairnesses of life, the cruel injustices."
"Are you specially suffering from them to-day?" he asked, and for a moment his eyes were less soft, more penetrating, as they looked at her.
"Yes!" she said.
A terrible feeling of "I don"t care!" was taking possession of her, was beginning to drive her. And she thought of the women of the streets who, in anger or misery, vomit forth their feelings with reckless disregard of opinion in a torrent of piercing language.
"I"m really just like one of them!" was her thought. "Trimmed up as a lady!"
"Some people have such happy lives, years and years of happiness, and others are tortured and tormented, and all their efforts to be happy, or even to be at peace, without any real happiness, are in vain. It is of no use rebelling, of course, and rebellion only reacts on the rebel and makes everything worse, but still--"
Her face suddenly twisted. In all her life she thought she had never felt so utterly hopeless before.
Sir Seymour stretched out a hand to put it on hers, but she drew away.
"No, no--don"t! I"m not--you can"t do anything, Seymour. It"s no use!"
She got up from the sofa, and walked away down the long drawing-room, trying to struggle with herself, to get back self-control. It was like madness this abrupt access of pa.s.sion and violent despair, and she did not know how to deal with it, did not feel capable of dealing with it.
She looked out of the window into Berkeley Square, after pulling back curtain and blind. Always Berkeley Square! Berkeley Square till absolute old age, and then death came! And she seemed to see her own funeral leaving the door. Good-bye to Berkeley Square! She let the blind drop, the curtain fall into its place.
Sir Seymour had got up and was standing by the fire. She saw him in the distance, that faithful old man, and she wished she could love him. She clenched her hands, trying to will herself to love him and to want to take him into her intimate life. But she could not bring herself to go back to him just then, and she did not know what she was going to do.
Perhaps she would have left the room had not an interruption occurred.
She heard the door open and saw Murgatroyd and the footman bringing in tea.
"You can turn up another light, Murgatroyd," she said, instantly recovering herself sufficiently to speak in a natural voice.
And she walked back down the room to Sir Seymour, carrying with her a little silver vase full of very large white carnations.