Chapter XX

No dramatic crisis came to break down the endless monotony of Lily's dissatisfaction as time went on. But she envisaged the possibility of one.

"Supposing I meet the man I could have loved--supposing I _do_ love him?"

The specious echo of words that might have been spoken by her father, by Miss Melody, by any of those who had stood for wisdom to her childhood, followed on the thought.

"_Why meet trouble halfway?... How weak to torture oneself about something which may never happen ... crossing bridges before one comes to them...._"

Something in the last phrase awoke a long-dormant memory.

They had said that to her, long ago--the new metaphor leaving a little picture on her plastic, childish mind--in the old days when she had been afraid, because the east wind would give Vonnie earache.

They had said that it was naughty and ungrateful to run and meet trouble halfway. Of course Vonnie wouldn't get earache. And Vonnie had gone out into the east wind, and had got earache. The agony of those nights of silent strain was upon Lily once more as she remembered.

Illumination came to her.

They had bluffed her into accepting those old catchwords then, but was she of her own free-will to be bound by them now?

"_Don't put things into words--don't let imagination run away with you. Beware of imagination. It's morbid to dwell upon what may never happen._"

Shove it all out of sight! Bury it without looking at it! Embark upon adventure by the line of least resistance!

And then, when that which was buried rises to confront you, in stark, unescapable reality, then, realize that your defences are not ready, that an emergency is upon you with which you have deliberately unfitted yourself to cope, that Truth, your only weapon, you have long ago cast from you at the bidding of those who read its name Morbidity.

But she was dimly aware that, as submission had blinded her once, so bitterness obscured her vision now.

The old, inculcated instinct for seeking advice beset her often, but she decided it in the realization that no glib outside verdict could now carry weight with her.

Half enviously, half mockingly, she thought of the old literary convention that, in a time of mental crisis, some chance encounter, some wisdom met almost at random, should provide the unforgettable word holding the key of solution.

"_She never saw the lame cobbler again, but his words had made all life look different henceforward...._"

There were no such fortuitous sign-posts in real life, Lily decided.

More than one adviser, nevertheless, sought her unasked.

"All is not well with you, my Lily."

Aunt Clo's penetrating gaze had underlined her words.

"Shall I tell you, little one, that I foresaw this some time ago? _Moi aussi, j'ai passé par là._ There comes a day, is it not so?"

"What?" asked Lily, mildly bewildered.

"_Jeunesse, jeunesse!_" said Aunt Clo, quite in her old way. "Youth calls to youth, my Lily, as well I know. And watching you, I have re-lived my own past. You know something of the story of my past. Do not, I beseech you, little one--do not let me live to see tragedy repeat itself."

"Tell me what you mean, Aunt Clo."

"Lily, Lily! Fencing is unworthy of you--utterly unworthy of us both."

"I want to know what you think," said Lily wearily.

"Think!" repeated Aunt Clo solemnly. "What _can_ I think?"

Her niece was utterly unable to find a reply to the portentous conundrum.

Miss Stellenthorpe put one hand upon Lily's shoulder and plunged a long, deep look into her eyes.

Then she sank into a seat and allowed the saddest of smiles to dawn upon her lips. She shook her head slowly from side to side. "Who am I, that you should turn to me, my dear? I, who made such a shipwreck of my youth? But O, little one! How lightly I should count the cost, if it is to save you from the same folly, from the same life-time of regret!"

Had Aunt Clotilde really some message to interpret?

Lily looked at her with a faint stirring of hope. Miss Stellenthorpe's fine eyes were glowing.

"Lose all, and you shall find all!" she declared. "The old Prophets knew much, my Lily. Listen, child. It will cost you, to break through the old traditions--who knows it better than I? But you must have courage. You must break free. Your soul asks it of you. And that other--your rightful mate--how can he fulfil himself without you?"

Lily was paralyzed. How difficult, how impossible to stop Aunt Clo in mid-career with the startling commonplace: "There is no other."

"But it's not--there's no one who----"

"_Bambina_--ah, how readily the old name comes! Leave subterfuges to smaller souls. _Leave_ them, I say!"

Aunt Clo's voice rose in a crescendo of impassioned admonishment.

"I do not ask for names--for details. I may perhaps have hoped for a fuller, freer response from you--but I understand. _Je comprends tout--je ne suis pas comme les autres, moi qui vous parle._ But whatever the circumstances, whatever the difficulties, you must find courage to disregard them. It is your soul that is at stake, my Lily. And after all--what are you risking? The good opinion of conventional moralists!"

Aunt Clo's middle finger met her thumb in a resonant snap of utter contempt for all conventional moralists.

"What do they know of such needs as ours? I say ours advisedly, my Lily. You know the outline of my life's story. There was only one man--though many have desired me--but only one man who supremely mattered. And he was bound, even as you are. And she to whom he was bound--she who had called herself my friend--she betrayed us both. She refused him his freedom."

Aunt Clo bowed her head, as though unwilling to face Lily's reception of such a climax.

"You ask me," said Miss Stellenthorpe, after a slight silence which neither had broken, "you ask me why, swept off our feet as we were, he and I did not take the law into our own hands. My reply to you is that I had to suffer the double bitterness of _her_ betrayal, and of _his_. For he failed me--his courage was less than mine. Although I urged him to take the strong way, the high line, he did not do so. He was afraid. I cast pride to the winds, my Lily--I held back nothing. But that other--she tempted him with specious pleadings of her 'rights,' and he was weak. I do not seek to deny it now. He took the coward's refuge."

Miss Stellenthorpe gazed sombrely at her niece.

"Flight. With her."

There was a solemn silence.

"But it was not to speak of myself that I came, _carina_, but of you. Do not wreck your life, little one, for a scruple. You have courage, _n'est-ce-pas_? It needs but one mighty effort to shake off the old superstitions--and after that Love, Freedom, Self-expression! Are these not worth a sacrifice?"

"Yes--if----"

"Go to your lover!" said Aunt Clo with a clarion call. "I am not afraid to say it," and indeed she was not. "_Go to your lover._"

It was more than difficult to undeceive Aunt Clo. Nor, when she finally took her departure, did Lily feel certain that Miss Stellenthorpe had relinquished all hope of her niece's ultimate defiance of the seventh commandment.

It gave her a faint sense of ironical amusement to discover that her father's thoughts had taken the same direction as had Aunt Clo's, inspiring in him diametrically opposite emotions.

Lily went to stay with him, and was glad that she looked ill enough to justify her leaving London whilst Nicholas was obliged to remain there.

"I'm sorry Nicholas couldn't get away," said Philip rather nervously. "It's very good of him to spare you. You're not looking quite as well as you generally do, my child."

This was Philip's nearest approach to an uncomplimentary statement.

"I'm tired," Lily said.

"Come, come, come," said Philip.

The bracing admonition was marred by his uncertain tone, and the anxious glances that he kept casting towards his daughter.

At last he said to her:

"My little pet, you're not fretting about anything, are you? I'm sorry to see you so--so pale."

Something in the kind, familiar, anxious tone stirred Lily suddenly. She began to cry.

"Poor little child!" said Philip.

He seemed less surprised than Lily had expected him to be, at her sudden weakness, and stroked her hair with hands that trembled a little.

"Tell me all about it," he suggested.

Lily had never thought it possible that she should put her vague disappointment and weariness into words, least of all to her father. Nevertheless she found herself trying to do so.

"It isn't anything--that's the worst of it. Nothing definite. Only Nicholas--Nicholas and I--I wish I loved him more than I do--he's disappointed in me."

"No, no," protested Philip. "That great deprivation is worse for you than for him--besides, my poor dear child, you're still young----"

"It isn't that," said Lily. "He was kinder than I can ever say about that--after all, it isn't my fault, and besides, I _might_ have a child, even yet--they didn't say it was impossible. It's just ourselves--Nicholas and me."

"My child!"

Philip Stellenthorpe looked thoroughly frightened. "I know there's a great disparity of years--but you were fully aware of that when you married him. You were in love with him, Lily."

She made no answer.

"And he with you," said her father hurriedly. "I was deeply touched, at the time, by the way in which he spoke of you. But, my little darling, you know that being in love, as people call it, isn't a thing that lasts for ever. Something better comes to take its place. And there are bound to be little frictions, in even the happiest marriages. You mustn't let yourself exaggerate. There's been no misunderstanding between you, has there?"

Lily knew that by the word "misunderstanding" he meant dispute, and she said that there had been none.

"There, then, you see! What is there to fret about? Nicholas is devoted to you."

"I know."

"And he's your husband, my dear child. You love him."

"I am very fond of him," said Lily slowly. Then she added, speaking more for the relief of words, than with any recollection of her hearer, "It's just because I'm fond of him that I'm so unhappy. I can't give him anything real--I've tried and tried to think that I could, and it's no use--I'm sorry because of him, and I'm sorry because of myself--I've missed the best there is, somehow, and I'm realizing it more and more as I go on, and now I just feel as though I couldn't go on any more. If I wasn't fond of Nicholas, I think I should leave him."

"Don't talk like that--don't say terrible things like that. You don't know what they mean," Philip exclaimed in great agitation. "Don't you know that it's a mortal sin?"

"What is?"

"To let your thoughts turn for a moment, after your solemn marriage vows, to--to any thought of--'for better for worse--till death us do part,' and cleaving to him _only_----"

"But I shan't go away. I _am_ fond of Nicholas. It would be much easier for me if I weren't," said Lily.

"What do you mean?"

Lily did not seek to explain what she meant. It was scarcely clear even to herself, save that her affection for Nicholas was real of its kind, and therefore must debar her from the drastic and impetuous measures for which her whole undisciplined youth craved.

She remained away on one excuse after another.

Her old schoolmate, Dorothy, came home from India, and although Lily admired Dorothy's healthy, fair-headed, unbeautiful babies, and went almost daily to play with them, she would not admit that her own childlessness roused in her any regret.

Nor did it.

But she watched with sick envy Dorothy's eagerness for her Indian mail letters, and the tears that clouded her frank, unsentimental gaze, as she spoke of "poor Frank"--who would not be able to afford leave for a long while.

"You are lucky, Lily, to live in England with no dreadful complications about having to go up to the hills, for the sake of the babies, and leave your man, sweltering away in the awful heat. And now I've got to leave Dolly behind, and go back with only Aileen, and I shan't have her after our next leave at home, I don't suppose. Frank is so good he'd let me stay at home with them altogether, like some wives do--but of course I wouldn't."

"Do you think he needs you more than the children do?"

"Well, I do, but apart from that," said Dorothy, "I know I jolly well can't do without _him_!"

She laughed as she spoke, and Lily knew that she did so because she was so much in earnest.

"I've got to finish my mail letter," said Dorothy, who had always hated writing letters.

Lily watched her pull out the perennial block of thin ruled paper to which every day she added a fresh, scrawled contribution.

She herself wrote every few days to Nicholas, and in reply received short letters, indited upon Club notepaper, informing her that he was very busy, or that he had gone past their house, that the exterior painting seemed to be getting on well, that he hoped she was feeling stronger, and would not hurry back to town just yet, the more especially as workmen were still in the house. He was always her devoted husband.

Lily divined haste in the notes, as well as the affectionate feeling that was part of Nicholas. She wrote and told him that Kenneth was to come home in a week's time, and that she should like to await his arrival. Her husband's answer was one of cordial acquiescence, and then he wrote no more for several days.

Lily, as usual, found Kenneth everything that she herself had never dared to be.

He had spent most of his holidays with friends, about whom he vouchsafed the scantiest particulars to his family.

"A fellow I know," or "One of the chaps at the place where I've just been staying," said Kenneth, or, more non-committally still, "Somebody or other that one came across somewhere or other."

"I should like to hear something about this visit of yours, my boy," said Philip, in tones that unwittingly suggested a strong sense of suspiciousness.

"Oh, it was all right."

"So I suppose--so I suppose," Philip laughed rather nervously. "Had it not been 'all right,' as you express it, no doubt I should have been informed. But we've not been told very much about your amusements, or about your young friends themselves. Your school-fellow's father is--or rather was, a good many years ago--an acquaintance of mine, as you know. Besides, my dear boy, I like to know something about the sort of people with whom you're friendly."

Philip's voice had become rebukeful.

"Oh, they're all right," said Kenneth.

"How many brothers and sisters has Graham got?" enquired Lily hastily.

"There were two or three kids knocking about, and a girl with her hair up. She's the eldest."

"Oh, Jean Graham. I think I met her in the Park one day--rather pretty, with fair curly hair."

"Oh," said Kenneth indifferently. But the thought appeared to awaken some association. "I say, Lily, who do you know with carrotty hair?"

"I don't know. Heaps of people. Nobody in particular. What do you mean, exactly?"

"Somebody who's a friend of your old man's. At least----"

"That's not at all a nice way of talking, Kenneth," said his father gravely. "Apologize to your sister."

"No, never mind, Father," Lily interposed.

She remembered, with curious detachment, the two little girls, Vonnie and Lily--who had always been so gentle and respectful in their speech, knowing quite well that anything else would offend the susceptibilities of Father and Mother most terribly.

"It's most disloyal to speak in that rude, foolish way of a near relation--and one who has been so kind to you, too," Philip told the boy.

"Sorry."

Kenneth's tone was so cheerfully unconcerned that Lily hurriedly broke across the light-hearted echo of it that seemed to linger, inappropriately, in the atmosphere diffused by Philip's deep vexation.

"What were you going to tell us about? Somebody with red hair whom Nicholas knows?"

"M'm."

Philip raised his eyebrows at the unceremonious mutter, and sighed, but he uttered no spoken rebuke. Lily wondered whether he gauged the full imperviousness of Kenneth to those silent tokens of disapproval that had been so potent with Philip's elder children.

"A fattish girl, with red hair."

Philip looked up sharply.

"I don't know whether you mean Doris Dickenson," said Lily. "She has red hair. She's a hospital nurse."

"That's it. I knew I'd seen her before. She looked after you when you were ill."

"Yes, she did, but when----"

"I saw her, and old--I mean, Nicholas, too--the other day, when I was coming through London."

"Nonsense, my dear boy," said Philip curtly. "You must have made a mistake. Your brother-in-law would have told me if he'd seen you."

"He didn't see me."

"Then where were you?"

"Just going along down the street. It's all on the way to Victoria station."

"I never gave you leave to hang about London by yourself. I told you to come straight through, in a four-wheeled cab."

"I missed that train----"

"You never told me," exclaimed Philip in horrified tones. "Besides, what do you mean? I met you at the station here at seven o'clock myself. How can you have missed the train?"

"I missed that slow one you wrote about, but I found there was a much better one that got to the junction in time for the connection. At least, it really arrived five minutes after my train was supposed to start, but I knew it would be late, just as it always is. I had heaps of time."

"You had no business to alter the arrangements that Father had made for you, my boy."

"Sorry," said Kenneth in exactly the same cheerful, impersonal accents that he had used before.

"And besides, what would have happened supposing the train hadn't been late? You might have had to spend the night there."

Philip's tone was that of one who points out some terrible danger barely escaped.

Lily felt conscious of a spasm of sharp impatience. No wonder that Kenneth was reticent, even as she herself, as a child, had frequently been deceitful, in the endeavour to evade Philip's portentous anxieties and distrusts.

He was beginning now a serious exposition of the utter inability of "very young people" ever to judge what was best, and Lily felt that she must stop him before her own exasperation made itself felt.

"But what about Nicholas, Kenneth? Why didn't you speak to him?"

Kenneth turned to her, obviously rendered loquacious by his desire to follow her lead.

"Well, I'd really half thought of looking him up, only then I saw scaffolding and stuff outside, and I thought he wouldn't be there. But I looked up at the windows and saw him, as it happened, staring out. And I was just going to cross the street when a taxi drew up at the door, and the carrotty-haired one got out, and ran up the steps like blazes and let herself in. So then I bunked off."

"Let herself in," repeated Philip slowly, "How could she do that?"

"With a key," said Kenneth matter-of-factly. "I suppose old Nicholas didn't want the fag of going down to answer the door, and the servants were all away, or out, or something."

"Yes," said Lily, "the servants are all away; there's only a caretaker."

She spoke quite automatically, but her mind had instantly registered and accepted the new situation unconsciously disclosed by Kenneth, almost without surprise. She suddenly felt as though she had found a clue to some evasive conviction that had been eluding her.

"That's why he hasn't written to me lately," she reflected calmly.

Then she became aware of her father.

"Kenneth is talking nonsense, my little Lily," he said tremulously. "It's all quite--quite--quite unimportant, of course, but you mustn't let yourself----"

She recognized that he was torn between a terrified desire to reassure her, his own sense of shock and outrage, and the old, pathetic instinct to conceal, at all costs, from Kenneth any significance in what Kenneth had just said.

"It's all right," she said, smiling at him without any effort at all.

"What's up?" Kenneth demanded, glancing from one to the other.

"Nothing, my boy, nothing at all. Why should there be anything up, as you call it?" said Philip, grey-faced and shaking. "Only I don't like you to--to tell foolish stories like that."

"But why----"

"Don't argue, now, Kenneth. You know Father will never allow arguing. Now that will do, we needn't say any more about it."

Lily saw on Kenneth's young face exactly that slow awakening to an uncomfortable sense of mystery, that would presently give way to concealed surmisings and surreptitious attempts at trapping down the truth, that had made life a thing of perpetual furtiveness to her own childhood.

She felt so strong a nervous impulse to speak the rending, shattering truth aloud that it came as a sharp relief to see Kenneth, after a suspicious stare at his father, get up and leave the room.

Lily gave Philip no time for the evasions that he was obviously and piteously seeking in his own mind.

"It's all right." She strangely found the words of reassurance on her lips again.

"I know Nicholas. I think he probably has been--unfaithful--with this girl. But it's a sort of passing madness--you mustn't think he's like that really."

"Lily--Lily, my poor child. But we mustn't rush at conclusions, my poor darling. I can question Kenneth quietly, later on--without letting him realize anything, of course."

"No, no. I'm going partly on intuition, Father."

"But had you suspected before, then?"

"Oh no. I knew the girl was--well, a flirt, to put it mildly, and of course I knew that Nicholas admired her. But he's never even seen her since my illness, ages ago."

"How can you tell that, my poor child--what do you know of these things? This business must be tackled by a man. Shall I go up to town at once?"

"I don't think so."

Hard-won certainties, that Lily had scarcely known herself to possess, rallied round her. Her own inner convictions crystallised into decisive speech, gained strength every moment.

"No. It isn't a question for that sort of thing at all--I mean scenes and interviews and recriminations. I shall have to tell Nicholas that I know, and then--then I suppose we shall talk it all over, and see what ought to be done--if anything."

"You don't realize," groaned Philip. "My poor little inexperienced child, you must be guided by me. It may not be as bad as we think."

Lily thought for a moment and then found herself speaking with a decision that surprised herself.

"This is something that I must decide for myself. You can't help me. Nobody can, except Nicholas himself. I should like him to come down here, please."

"You would rather that than let me take you up to London? But are you sure that he will come?"

"Quite sure," said Lily.

In her own mind, she was thinking that very likely Nicholas would write and ask her to come home, before she had even time to send her summons to him. He wasn't deceiving her, "leading a double life," as the conventions of fiction and the drama.

It had all been a sort of accident, probably, Lily reflected. Almost certainly Nicholas, like all weak natures, would feel the instant need of salving his own sense of degradation by making a confession.

Philip was groaning.

"If you had only been more open with me the other day! I had no idea things had gone so far--I thought it was a vague, passing discontent, that meant nothing. But you must have realized even then that he was wronging you in some such terrible way. I could never have believed it, never. However, we mustn't meet trouble halfway, I suppose."

He sighed heavily.

"My poor child, there is at least a remedy open to you, if things are as we fear--though God forbid it should ever come to that."

"What?" asked Lily.

"You can claim your freedom," said her father very low. "There is _one_ cause for which the marriage tie may be dissolved, in the eyes of God."

Lily realized with a shock of astonishment that here was an aspect of the case which actually had not presented itself to her mind.

Divorce.

A second chance! The words flashed through her mind, opening up an illimitable vista of freedom, a sudden, unlooked-for way of escape from that which had appeared unescapable. She had longed wildly and hopelessly for a miracle that would obliterate the years that had elapsed since her marriage to Nicholas Aubray.

Against her own sense of conventional decorum, against her father's shocked unhappiness, relief sprang to life within her at the thought that the miracle might yet take place, the writing of the years might be erased, the irrevocable revoked.