Again Mrs. Selford rejoiced. She had been in some consternation over Alec Turner"s now obvious attachment, coming just at the time when Anna had established the right to please herself. Suppose her first use of liberty had been to throw herself away? For to what end be stylish if you are going to marry on a hundred and fifty pounds a year? But Anna was quite safe--strangely safe, Mrs. Selford thought in her heart, though she rebuked the wonder. Almost unkindly safe, she thought sometimes, as she strove to soften the blows which fell on poor Alec--since, so soon as he ceased to be dangerous, he became an object of compa.s.sion.
"Anna is so sensible," she said to Selford. "She"s quite free from the silliness that girls so often show"; but she sighed just a little as she spoke.
"She"d make a good wife for any man," declared Selford proudly--a general declaration in flat contradiction to Caylesham"s theories about double harness.
Anna paid no heed to opinions or comments. She went about her business and managed it with instinctive skill. It sometimes puzzled poor Alec Turner to think why his presence was so often requested, when his arrival evoked so little enthusiasm. He did not realise the part he played in Anna"s scheme, nor how his visits were to appear to Walter Blake. Anna"s generalship had thought all this out. The exhibition of Alec was a subsidiary move in the great strategic conception of capturing Walter Blake on the rebound from Sibylla.
But the p.a.w.n was not docile, and objected violently so soon as its function began to be apparent. Anna precipitated what she did not desire--a pa.s.sionate avowal in which the theme of her own gifts and fascination was intermingled with the ideal of influencing the trend of public opinion from a modest home and on a modest income. She was told that she could be removed from the vanities of life and be her true, her highest self. When she showed no inclination to accept the path in life thus indicated, Alec pa.s.sed through incredulity to anger. Had he cast his pearls before---- Well, at inappreciative feet? At this tone Anna became excusably huffy; to refuse a young man is not to deny all the higher moral obligations. Besides Alec annoyed her very much by a.s.suming persistently that the dictates of her heart called her towards him, and that worldly considerations alone inspired her refusal.
"Oh, you"re silly!" she cried. "I tell you it"s nothing of the sort."
The dusk of the afternoon softened her features; the light of the fire threw up in clear outline the stylish well-gowned figure. Poor Alec, in his shabby mustard suit, stood opposite her, his hands in his pockets, in dogged misery and resentment, with all the helpless angry surprise of a first experience of this kind, fairly unable to understand how it was that love did not call forth love, obstinate in clinging to the theory of another reason as the sole explanation. Things did not exist in vain.
For what was his love?
"But--but what am I to do?" he stammered.
Rather puzzled--after all rather flattered, Anna prayed him to be sensible and friendly. He consented to hope for her happiness, though he was obviously not sanguine about it. For himself all was over! So he said as he flung out of the room, knowing nothing of what lay before him on the path of life; discerning nothing of a certain daughter of a poor old political writer--a little round woman who made her own gowns, was at once very thrifty and very untidy, was inclined to think that the rulers of the earth should be forcibly exterminated, and lavished an unstinted affection on every being, human or brute, with which she was ever brought into contact. And if she did not greatly influence the trend of public opinion--well, anyhow she tried to. Just now, however, Alec knew nothing about her; he was left to think hopelessly of the trim figure and the lost ideals--the two things would mix themselves up in his mind.
To his pathetic stormy presence there succeeded Walter Blake, with all his accomplishment in the art of smooth love-making, with his aspirations again nicely adjusted to the object of his desires (he was so much cleverer than poor Alec over that!), with his power to flatter not only by love but still more by relative weakness. He, of course, did not run at the thing as Alec had done. That would be neither careful of the chances nor economical of the pleasure. Many a talk was needed before his purpose became certain or Anna could show any sign of understanding it.
He dealt warily with her; he was trying, unconsciously perhaps, to perform the task Caylesham had indicated to him--the task of learning her paces and adapting his thereto. It was part of his theory about her that she must be approached with great caution; and of course he knew that there was one very delicate bit of ground. How much had she heard about himself and Sibylla? It was long before he mentioned Sibylla"s name. At last he ventured on throwing out a feeler. Anna"s unruffled composure persuaded him that she knew nothing of the facts; but her shrewd a.n.a.lysis of Sibylla showed, in his judgment, that she quite understood the woman. It was the dusk of the afternoon again (Anna rather affected that time of day), and Blake, with a sigh which might be considered in the nature of a confession, ventured to say:
"I wish I could read people as you can. I should have avoided a lot of trouble."
"You can read yourself anyhow, can"t you?" asked Anna.
"By Jove, that"s good--that"s very good! No, I don"t know that I can.
But I expect you can read me, Miss Selford. I shall have to come to you for lessons, shan"t I?"
"I"ll tell you all the hard bits," she laughed.
"You"ll have to see a lot of me to do that!"
Anna was not quite so sure of the need, but she did not propose to stop the game.
"Do I seem so very reluctant to see a lot of you?" she inquired.
Blake"s eyes caught hers through the semi-darkness. She was aware of the emotion with which he regarded her. It found an answer in her, an answer which for the moment upset both her coolness and her sense of mastery.
She had a revelation that her dominion, not seriously threatened, yet would be pleasantly chequered by intervals of an instinctive submission.
This feeling almost smothered the element of contempt which had hitherto mingled in her liking for him and impaired the pride of her conquest.
"I was judging you by myself. Compared with me, you seem reluctant," he said in a low voice, coming a little nearer to her. "But then it does me such a lot of good to come and see you. It"s not only the pleasure I come for, though that"s very great. You keep up my ideals."
"I"m so glad. The other day I was told I"d ruined all somebody"s ideals.
Well, I oughtn"t to have told you that, I suppose; but it slipped out."
Things will slip out, if one takes care to leave the door open.
She was standing by the table, and Blake was now close by her.
"Since I"ve known you----"
"Why, you"ve known me for years, Mr. Blake!"
"No, I only knew a little girl till--till I came back to town this time." He referred to that yachting cruise on which he had ultimately started alone. "But since then I"ve been a different sort of fellow. I want to go on being different, and you can help me." His voice trembled; he was wrapped up in his emotion, and abundantly sure of its sincerity.
Anna moved away a little, now rather nervous, since no instinct, however acute, can give quite the a.s.surance that practice brings. But she was very triumphant too, and, moreover, a good deal touched. That break in young Blake"s voice had done him good service before: it never became artificial or overdone, thanks to his faculty of coming quite fresh to every new emotional crisis; it was always most happily natural.
"Anna!" he said, holding out his hands, with those skilfully appealing eyes of his just penetrating to hers.
With a long-drawn breath she gave him her hand. He pressed it, and began to draw her gently towards him. She yielded to him slowly, thinking at the last moment of what she had decided she would never think about and would show no wisdom in recalling. The vision of another woman had shot into her mind, and for a few seconds gave her pause. Her hesitation was short, and left her self-confidence unbroken. What she had won she would keep. The dead should bury its dead--a thing it had declined to do for Christine Fanshaw.
"Anna!" he said again. "Do you want me to say more? Isn"t that saying it all? I can"t say all of it, you know."
She let him draw her slowly to him; but she had spoken no word, and was not yet in his arms, when the door opened, and she became aware of a man standing on the threshold. Young Blake, all engrossed, had noticed nothing, but he had perceived her yielding.
"Ah, my Anna!" he whispered rapturously.
"Hush!" she hissed, drawing her hand sharply away. "Is that you, Richards?"
Richards was the Selfords" manservant.
The man laughed.
"If you"d turn the light on, you couldn"t mistake me for anybody so respectable as Richards," he said. "I"ve been with your father in the study, and he told me I should find your mother here."
Anna recognised the voice.
"Mr. Imason! I didn"t know you were in London."
"Just up for the day, and I wanted to see your father."
Anna moved to the switch, and turned on the light. She glanced hastily at young Blake. He had not moved; his face was rather red, and he looked unhappy. Anna"s feeling was one of p.r.o.nounced anger against Grantley Imason. His appearance had all the effect of purposed malice; it made her feel at once jealous and absurd. But it was on her own behalf that she resented it. She was not free from a willingness that Blake should be made uncomfortable; so much discipline would be quite wholesome for him. For her own part, though, she wanted to get out of the room.
"May I ring for the real Richards, and---- Oh, I beg your pardon, Blake, how are you? May I ring for the real Richards, and send word to your mother, Anna?"
Grantley was, as usual, urbane and unperturbed.
"I"ll go and find her for you. I think she"s lying down."
"Oh, well, then----"
"No, I know she"ll want to see you," and Anna ran lightly out of the room.
Grantley strolled to an armchair and sank into it. He did not look at Blake, nor, his formal greeting given, appear conscious of his presence.
Young Blake was in a turmoil. He hated to see Grantley; all the odious thought of his failure and defeat was brought back. He hated that Grantley should have seen him making love to Anna Selford, for in his heart he was conscious that he could not cheat an outside vision as he could manage to cheat himself. But both these feelings, if not swallowed up in fear, were at least outdone by it. His great desire had been to settle this matter finally and irrevocably before a hint of it came to the ears either of Grantley or of Sibylla. What would Grantley do now?
"You saw us?" he asked in a sullen anxious voice.