"And I may get over you," he said, looking not at her, but at the fire and slightly wagging his remaining foot, crossed over the artificial knee.
She was very silent at that, and, shame deepening and anger dropping (it wasn"t anger against her; she must know that) he glanced up at her and found her gaze still on him.
"My dear," he muttered, smiling wryly, "you stick your needles too deeply into my heart. What"s sport to you is death to me.--No; I don"t mean that.--All I really mean is that we mustn"t be like children in a nursery slapping at each other. You"re as unlikely to get over me as I am to get over you, and I ask you, in deep seriousness, to accept that fact with all its implications. There it is and what are you going to do with it and with me?"
She had now risen from her seat and walked away from him, vaguely, and she went toward the third window and stood looking out.
She stood there a long time, without moving, and, remembering what she had said to him of it the other day, and of her fear, a discomfort--yet, comparatively, it was a comfort to feel it after their personal dispute--stirred him, so that, rising, with a sigh, he followed her, and, as he had done the other day, looked out over her shoulder at the cedar, the fountain, and the white fritillaries in their narrow beds. He saw from her fixed face that she had forgotten her fear of the harmless scene. Her gaze, with its new, cold grief, was straight before her.
"Tony; dear Tony," he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. She did not move or look at him.
"Let"s go away," he said. "Let"s leave this place. It"s bad for us both.
Sell it. Give it to Miss Latimer. Chuck it all, Tony, and start a new life with me. Chuck the whole ghoulish business of Malcolm and his feelings and your own infidelity. It has nothing to do with love and heaven; really it hasn"t. You"ll see it yourself some day. Let"s go away at once, darling, and get married." The urgency of what he now saw as escape was suddenly so strong in him that he really meant it, really planned, while he spoke, the Southern flight; Tony deposited at her safe London house that very evening and the license bought next day. Why not?
Wasn"t it the only way with her? As long as she was allowed to hesitate, her feet would remain fixed in this quagmire.
She hardly heard his words; he saw that as she turned her eyes on him; but she heard his ardour and it had broken down her withdrawal.
"I"m so frightened, Bevis," she murmured. "You don"t understand. You are so bitter; so cruel. You frighten me more than I can tell you. I seemed to see, just now, when you said that, about getting over me, that I should lose your love, and his love, too; that that would be my punishment."
This, after all, was a fear easy to deal with. He pa.s.sed his arm in hers and drew her from the window, feeling a foretaste of the final triumph as he did so, for, child, adorable child that she was, she had forgotten already the former fear.
"But you know what a nasty, cantankerous creature I am, darling," he said, making her walk up and down with him. "You don"t really take my flings seriously. And didn"t you begin! How like a woman! What a woman you are! You know that I shan"t get over you. And I a.s.sure you that I don"t think less well of Malcolm"s fidelity."
"But the bitterness, Bevis. Why were you so bitter?" Her voice trembled.
"I am never bitter with you."
"And I"m never bitter with you--though I"m a bitter person, which you aren"t. You know perfectly well that it was Miss Latimer whose neck I wanted to wring.--Beastly little stone-curlew, with her stare and her wailing."
"It felt like my neck. Was it only Cicely"s, then? Poor little Cicely."
"Poor little Cicely as much as you please. Only I"m sick of her, and want to get away from her, and to get you away. Seriously, Tony, why shouldn"t we be off at once?"
"At once?" Her wavering smile, while her eyes dwelt on him, showed the plaintive sweetness of reviving confidence. "But that"s impossible, dear, absurd Bevis."
"Why impossible?"
"Why I couldn"t get married like that; at a day"s notice. And I couldn"t run away. I"m not afraid of Cicely, though you seem to be. And I couldn"t leave her like that, when I"ve only just arrived. It would be too unkind."
The fact that she felt it necessary to argue it all out was in itself a good augury. He could afford to relinquish his project, though he did so reluctantly. "I"m not afraid of her," he said. "Except when she frightens you."
"She doesn"t, Bevis. You are the only one who frightens me; when you tell me the truth; when you tell me that I am unfaithful and that I"ve fallen in love with you, although my husband isn"t really dead; and that perhaps, if I go on tormenting you too much, you"ll get over me." She looked steadily at him while she spoke, though still she tried to smile.
"Do you want another truth, Tony?" he said, putting her hair back from her forehead, doting on her, in her loveliness, her foolishness, her pathos, while he drew her more closely to him; "it"s the last that frightens you most of all, and it never can come true."
"Never? Never?" she whispered, while she, too, came closer, yielding to his arms. "Nothing can ever come between us? You will be able to take care of me, always?"
"It"s all I ask," he a.s.sured her, with his dry, cherishing smile.
V
He had learned to distrust Antonia"s recoveries, but that evening it would have been difficult to believe that their troubles were not over.
The very drawing-room, as they came back to it after dinner, looked, he felt, like the drawing-room of a lovely young widow who was soon to marry again. It seemed, with cl.u.s.tered candles, and flowers where he had never seen them before, no longer to wait upon events, but to celebrate them, and Antonia herself, standing before the fire and knitting, in absurd contrast to her bare arms and pearl-clasped hair, a charity sock, had herself an air of celebration and decision. It was for him, he felt, that her hair had been so clasped, and, as she knew he loved to see it, tossed back from her brow. For him, too, the dress as of a Charles the First lady, with falls of lace at elbow and the lace-edged cape held with diamonds and pearls at her breast. Long pearls were in her ears--he had not seen them there since before the war--and pearls around her throat, and, beloved and unaccountable creature, why, unless in some valiant reaction to life and sanity, should she show this revival?
"What shall we do to amuse ourselves to-night, Cicely?" she asked. She had never asked it before. It had never before been a question of amusing themselves. But, though Miss Latimer, evidently, had "cried and cried," she herself was not without signs of the evening"s magic. Her little pre-war dress, pathetic in its arrested fashion, its unused richness, became her. She, too, wore pearls, and she, too, oddly, with the straight line of her fringe across her forehead, recalled, all pinched and pallid though she was, the court of Charles the First. No one could have looked less likely to be amused, yet she struck him, to-night, as almost charming.
"Shall we have some dummy-bridge?" Antonia went on. "Cicely is very good at bridge, Bevis."
"By all means," said the young man, smiling across at her from the sofa where he smoked. "Shall I get a table?"
He would really rather, he felt, for a little while, sit and smoke, his hands clasped behind his head, and watch Antonia"s hands move delicately among the knitting-needles.
"Or," she went on, starting a new row of her sock, "shall it be table-turning? Cicely is good at that, too. It always turns for her. Do you remember the fun we"ve had with it, Cicely? The night the Austins dined and it hopped into the corner. And the night it rapped out that rude message to Mr. Foster. I feel a little stupid for bridge."
"Yes. I remember. He was very much displeased," said Miss Latimer.
"Comically displeased. He took it all so seriously--though he pretended not to mind. Do you feel like trying it, Cicely? You are the medium, of course. It never did anything without you."
Miss Latimer did not, for some moments, raise her eyes from the fire.
She seemed to deliberate. When she looked up it was to say, "One hardly could, with only three."
"Why, we were only three when it went so well, with you and me and poor Mr. Foster."
"I imagine he had power."
"Well, Bevis may have power. Have you ever sat, Bevis?"
"Once or twice. I"m sure I have no power. And it"s not a game I like."
He felt, as he spoke, that he disliked it very much. So strongly did he dislike it that he wondered at Antonia for her suggestion.
"Why, how solemn you are, Bevis! It"s only a game, as you say. I believe you really are a little scared of it, like Mr. Foster, and think it may rap out something rude. You have a guilty secret, Bevis!"
"Many, no doubt."
"You do believe in it, then?--that it"s supernatural?"
From his sofa, over his cigarette-smoke, his eye at this met hers with a sort of reminder, half grim, half weary. "Still catechisms?" it asked her.
She laughed, and now he knew that in her laugh he heard bravado.
"As if a game could be!" she answered herself. "At the worst it"s only Cicely"s subconscious trickery. Isn"t it, Cicely? Are you tired? Will you try it? I"m longing for it now. It"s just what we need. It will do us good."
"I am not tired. But why do you think a game will do us good, Antonia?"
Miss Latimer asked.
Antonia looked down at her fondly; but did he not now detect the fever in her eye. "Games are good for dreary people. We are all dreary, aren"t we? I know, at least, that I am. So be kind, both of you, and play with me."