Chapter II

Wallace did not sleep that night. He was up at early dawn, and roused the chauffeur. Then he went to Vance’s room.

Vance was awake, lying back on his pillows, his arms under his head.

“Well?” he demanded, sulkily.

“It’s going to be a great day. If we start now, we can make Bath early, and—”

“I’m not going to Bath.”

Wallace stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at him. Against Vance’s childish peevishness he stood the genuine passion of Lily Ruskin, and he marvelled. What was there about Vance that enlisted such devotion? That kept Edith faithful, brought Lily to her knees, had cost him a night’s sleep and the entire pleasure of the journey? Certainly the element of boyishness that kept him, Wallace, always on the look-out to save him from danger, was not his attraction for Lily. There was nothing maternal in Lily’s love. He was her man.

“I’m not going to Bath,” Vance repeated.

Wallace suddenly lost his temper.

“You’re going to the devil,” he snapped. “That’s what you’re doing. And I’m pretty sick of holding you back. I’m tired of mothering you.”

With one of his quick changes of mood, Vance laughed. Then, with a great leap, he sprang out of bed and went to the window.

“God, what a day!” he said. “I’m not going to spend it riding between these confounded hedgerows. It’s the sea for me.”

He turned and put an arm around Wallace’s shoulders.

“I’m sane this morning. Don’t look so—nervous. We’ll get a sailboat, all of us, including George Broadhurst, and put our thumbs to our noses as we pass old Johnny Bull’s cruiser out there. Look at the colour of that water!”

He had thrown off the coat of his pajamas, and his splendid torso was bare. He went to the window again, and threw out one magnificent arm toward the sea.

“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—roll,” he declaimed; “Ten thousand fleets sail over thee in vain!”

Some outraged Britisher in the next room rapped sharply on the wall, and his oratorical flight died in a chuckle.

“Go on out,” he said to Vance. “Order the car back to the garage, and ask some one to call Lily, like a good chap. She oughtn’t to miss that sea.”

Wallace was helpless against the flood tide of his morning good humour. He tried to argue, to voice with Lily’s face before him the resolutions of the night before. Vance splashed in his tub, and sang between warnings.

More than once that morning Wallace was tempted to give up the fight and go away. It was so evident that Vance’s infatuation was a temporary madness, a wound that would quickly heal. After all, if anything happened, it was up to the girl. Mrs. Byron, sitting under a sunshade in the bow of the boat, found the situation amusing, a little leaven to the unutterable boredom of the sail. Byron slept, face down in the sun, on the little deck of the fishing boat. The fisherman sat with the tiller ropes in his hand, and spat over the gunwale.

In the shadow of the sail Vance and Lily talked of immaterial things, or sat, flushed and star-eyed, not talking at all. As the night before Vance’s hand lay over hers, and once, when Wallace turned against the wind to light his cigarette, Mrs. Byron laughed a quickly hushed outburst. Wallace hated his situation and voiced his disgust.

“I’m not the watchdog,” he said. “If you two young idiots want to kiss each other, you needn’t wait until I am barking around a corner.”

From the tragedy of the night before, the thing seemed to have descended to broad farce. Wallace’s æsthetic sense was outraged. If the thing was to be a summer flirtation, with its accompaniment of kisses stolen behind the chaperon’s back, it was time he got out. His position was neither dignified nor necessary.

But with the exuberance of Vance’s morning mood, passed the gaiety of the excursion. Lily’s eyes were sombre as the boat came about and tacked along her angular course back toward the pier. Something was said about Avignon. Lily, it seemed, had the offer of a cottage there for the summer. Her eyes met Vance’s, steadily.

Mrs. Byron babbled on, under her sunshade.

“Men always look so well in flannels,” she said. “You should always wear flannels, Mr. Vance. You look like a Greek god in them.”

“Greek gods,” said Vance easily, “were mighty thrifty about flannels, or any sort of clothes.”

* * * * *

The accident happened on their way back to the hotel. Long afterwards, Wallace looked back on that morning, and wondered over many things. What would have happened had the car of the cliff railway not made that sudden jump? Would Lily and Vance have gone to Avignon? Why did the car jerk? Was there, after all, a personal God to direct his puppets?

The party had gone soberly enough along the promenade, Lily, Mrs. Byron and Vance ahead, Wallace and Byron behind, smoking. The terrier formed a connecting link of palpitating life between the two divisions of the party. The hot midsummer sun had made them all languid. Vance strode along, easily conversational, but with eyes only for Lily. The girl walked by his side, head bent, but every atom of her vibrant under his gaze.

The little car started without the dog, and Vance volunteered to go back for him. They had gone a few feet up the cliff face, and he was bent forward, ready to jump. Then the cable jerked, and he went out on his head.

The car climbed steadily. There was no way to stop and return. All of that dreadful time Wallace stood on the platform holding tight to Lily, who did not move, and staring down at the white bundle that was Vance.

He had been picked up when they got down to him, quite unconscious and his head lolling back on the arms of his bearers. Wallace took charge then, and they got him back to the hotel. It was concussion, possibly fracture. His general condition was fair, under the circumstances.

Lily waited outside the door during the consultation, her face set like stone. Then she went in and took charge. Wallace had sent for a nurse and the two women worked together. Vance took a sinking spell in the night, almost went under. During all that time the girl never whimpered, but worked steadily, doing what she was told, with set lips and burning eyes. And somehow, perhaps by the very will of her, he pulled through.

Wallace had notified Edith as soon as he knew definitely. The responsibility was too great to bear alone. And that next morning, early, he showed Lily a cablegram.

“Sailing to-day. Arrive Tuesday. Edith.”

She drew a long breath.

“Will you let me stay until then?”

“Do you think it wise?”

“What harm can it do? I am some one you know. I have helped a little. What of it? I _have_ helped. And I can help more. He knows when I put my hands on him. He is quieter. There is a sort of sixth sense that we have when we love, that tells us if the one we love is near.” She shivered. “I think, if I were dying, and he touched me, I should come back.”

After that, Wallace left things as they were. Vance went into delirium, and opiates did little for him. But Lily, in her white frock, telling him over and over about the cottage at Avignon, could quiet him for hours. And into those whispered words she put all the dream month that was to have been theirs and now never would be.

“This morning we breakfasted on the terrace,” she would croon in her lovely voice. “Purple grapes from the hillside and butter from the whitewashed farmhouse across the valley. And after breakfast we wandered along the path, hand in hand. When we were weary we came back, and you read to me. It was warm, and your voice—was very soothing. I—fell—asleep.” Then, over and over: “I—fell—asleep”—until his wide eyes closed, and he, too, slept.

And the fifth day he was clearly better. The mental confusion persisted, but his general condition had improved. And that day he put his hand over hers, as it lay on the bed. Lily went white and closed her eyes. The nurse was walking on the terrace, and only Wallace was in the room. Lily bent over the sick man, until her cheek was close to his.

“Last night,” she whispered, “last night we sat in the moonlight, under the trees before the cottage. Do you remember? And at last I slid to your feet, with my head against your knee, my dear, my dear. And I told you all the things you are never to forget, never, so long as you live. That I shall always love you, always. That I shall never love any one else. Whenever you think of me you can know that I am thinking of you. For I shall always be thinking of you. And I kissed you on your dear eyes, like this. You will never forget that, either.”

Wallace looked at her and marvelled. She had taken on during the week a spiritual quality which amazed him. The shadow of death lay in her eyes. Sometimes he thought that Vance’s death would have been easier for her than what was coming.

When Vance had dropped asleep, she took up the nurse’s prayer book. She had fallen into that habit. Wallace remembered the couple who had been so amazingly popular in Lily’s queer individualistic world, and the woman who had shot herself on the man’s grave. “It is like that sometimes,” she had said. Looking across the bed at her, he knew that it was like that with her.

Edith came the next morning. Wallace met her, clothed in that garment of old friendship which for so long had covered his heart.

“I got your wire in London,” she said briefly. “It was good news.” And in the cab she turned to him, a little flushed. “All the way over, I said to myself that you were with him, and if he could be saved, you would do it.”

Where Lily had English reserve, Edith had poise. She told Wallace of the children, had herself well in hand. Wallace, who had had some fore-knowledge of Edith’s intuitions, had feared her questions. She asked none.

The Byrons had left that morning. He was grateful for so much. But Lily was still at the hotel. “I can’t do anything with her,” Mrs. Byron had said, hysterically. “She says she will go to-night, but she scares me. Did you ever know any one so strange? If you could know the men who have been mad about her! And to see her hanging over that poor wreck!”

He had a poor opinion of Lily’s power to dissemble. If she were only not in sight!

She was not in the room. She had promised that. The nurse was there, in a state of mental confusion and some dismay. Wallace felt that he could trust her discretion. Nevertheless he was anxious. But everything went off well. Vance knew Edith and smiled at her. Edith was singularly controlled. She told him about the little girls, and he listened with his eyes on her face. Then she had brought news—a splendid cast for the new play, the revival under favourable conditions of an early comedy. Whereas Lily had soothed him with the cottage at Avignon, Edith roused him with the thought of work.

In the midst of Wallace’s anxieties one of Vance’s own quips came to him—“Every woman,” he had said, “should have two husbands, one to love and cherish, the other to honour and obey.” What one woman could ever satisfy Vance’s dual nature? What one woman ever could take the place of all other women to him?

Edith dressed for dinner that night. The relief from strain had revived her colour. Wallace thought she had never been so lovely. Lily had moved to another table and dined alone. Wallace saw that she was not eating; her eyes hardly left Edith’s face, a puzzled look, as if she were trying to fit this wife into Vance’s life, trying to readjust all she knew of him from this new angle. Wallace was uneasy.

It was when the fish had gone that Edith turned to him.

“The girl in black, to my right, Courtney—is she the woman?”

“What woman?”

Edith did not reply at once. She glanced at Lily, and for a moment their eyes met.

“I see she is. She is very lovely.”

“Why should you think there is a woman?”

“There is generally a woman. You know that. I knew, of course, when he changed his plans so suddenly. Am I a shock, or—did she know of me?”

“She knew of you,” said Wallace gravely.

“Just one thing more, Court, I’ll not ask any more questions. It _was_ an accident?”

“Absolutely.”

“He’s emotional, you know. Fearfully intense in each new affair. I—wondered.”

The mutton had come on, and she sat calmly while they were served.

“I’ve often thought,” she said, “how curious things are. He loves us all. He wouldn’t break up the family. He likes to feel that, somewhere behind him, we are there to come back to. He feels that I am solid, dependable. In a way he could hardly do without me. But—”

There seemed to be nothing to say. Wallace pretended to eat. Lily had given up the pretence, and sat, her chin cupped in her palm.

“She’s badly hurt, poor thing,” said Edith, after a time. “Life’s an awful mess, Court. Shall we have coffee on the terrace?”

Wallace had schooled himself so long that he had no longer any fear. There had been times, earlier, when he had not often dared to see Edith Vance. Now he had achieved, on a foundation of old friendship, a sort of superstructure of philosophy. He took what the gods gave, and built contentment from the fragments. So they sat together on the terrace, where a week before Lily had poured out her plea to him.

Edith refused coffee.

“To be quite frank,” she said, “I’m giving the—the girl a chance to say good-bye. She’d manage it somehow, judging by her eyes. So why not be gracious and give it?”

“You are very wonderful.”

“Not at all. Only rather resigned and very experienced.”

“I suppose there’s nothing to do. If I talk to him—”

“You’d make him unhappy, and give him a grievance. It wouldn’t change anything. Sometimes I think, if I made him fiercely jealous, it would help. But it would be too humiliating, under the circumstances. I try to think that, with him, it’s the desire to be loved. We all have that, I suppose.”

“You?”

“I daresay. I’m very human, Court.”

Just for a moment the guards were down between them. No flame leaped into Wallace’s eyes, but the yearning tenderness of a man who has loved a woman long and hopelessly. She bent forward and touched his arm lightly.

“It is a great comfort to me, always, to know that you are behind me.”

The flame was there, then, but she did not see it. He bent over and kissed her hand.

* * * * *

Lily was gone. What her good-bye had been lay between her and Vance and the bewildered nurse who waited in the passage. One thing was certain—there was no resignation in her farewell. She went because she must, creeping like a broken thing out of the room, and along the corridor. Just inside the door of her bedroom was a small straight chair. She dropped into it, and sat there, her hands in her lap. Inconsequential things came into her mind—that she had packed her fresh gloves and sent them in her box, that the early Victorian furniture of the room was hideous, that she must remember to write and give up the cottage at Avignon.

She shivered, and getting up, went to the window. The launch was once again moving across the bay far below, but it was early twilight and there was no star in the bow. She felt rather ill. By stepping out onto the narrow stone balcony, she could see the window of Vance’s room. The nurse had turned on the light. The wife was there now, probably, and Vance’s friend, who had hated her and been kind to her. Three of them, with years of old association to hold them together. And she, alone, on the balcony in the night.

It was the end. She knew that. Had she had her chance, she might have held him forever, held him with the thin strong chain of passion. But they had jockeyed her out of her chance, all of them together. And now she was going.

Wallace had offered to see her off, but she had refused. So now she went down the staircase, very white, looking straight ahead, and crossed the dingy lower corridor. She never even saw the suave lady manager who bowed her out. The cab was waiting, and by it, in the dusk, Vance’s wife. She had thrown a wrap about her; her head was uncovered and a light summer breeze was blowing her fine hair about. She held out her hand.

“I heard you were going. I—please let me thank you for all you have done.”

The same amazing frankness that had characterised Lily’s love for Vance persisted to the end. She ignored Edith’s hand, but there was no defiance in her voice. It had all the hopelessness and directness of one who leaves a dying message.

“I nursed him because I loved him,” she said, and got into the cab.

* * * * *

Vance hugged his grief sullenly for two days; refused to talk, drove Edith frantic by lying for hours with his head pillowed on his arms, generally sulked. But he was improving steadily, and on the third day they got him out of bed.

Much to Wallace’s relief, Lily had not wired or written. Evidently she had played her game hard, and knew herself beaten. It was up to Vance, of course. He might have been harder hit than they thought, might elect to follow her. Wallace, watching Edith with eyes that worshipped, knew that she, too, was thinking of this. She voiced it at last.

“It is worse than I had thought, Court,” she said. “It’s not so much that he’s in love with her. But he keeps thinking how mad she is about him. It’s eating him like a fever.”

She was right. Vance’s one thought now was to see Lily again. He argued to himself that if they were to part, he owed her that much. After all, she had cared for him in his illness, and there had been nothing in their relations to be ashamed of. When he found that Edith’s plan was to go directly to Liverpool, he grew resentful. He would go to London, anyhow. He could slip away at night and leave word he would join them at the ship.

He reached his determination the day the nurse had gone. He would pack a small bag that night and get away early in the morning. And having made his plan, he was vastly cheerful all day, wrote some business letters, dressed and went down to dinner, strutted a bit, if the truth be told, over the interest his return to the life of the place aroused in the hotel.

They had their coffee, as usual, on the terrace, Vance, beside Edith, running his fingers caressingly up and down her arm; Wallace, a little aloof, looking out over the sea.

“I’ll be glad to get back to work and to the kids,” Vance said, suddenly. “What dreams I had about you all, Edith.”

“The children are quite well. Mademoiselle cabled to-day.”

He looked out at the sea, his cup in his hand.

“Court has a lot of theories about dreams—bally nonsense most of them. Do you remember the lady you told us of, who dreams about a dog? What was that, Courtney?”

“I was illustrating a point,” said Wallace, uncomfortably. “I don’t usually cite cases from my practice.”

“Well, this was interesting. Court drew a moral and adorned a tale with it. The lady is in trouble and deep in her soul is buried the fact that she doesn’t love her husband as much as she loves somebody else. Do you see? But every now and then, when she’s asleep, she dreams that a dog is attacking her—isn’t that it, Court?—and she calls for the other man.”

“It sounds very thrilling,” said Edith, quietly. “Does your information include the other man’s name, Court?”

Wallace put down his cup and rose.

“No,” he replied shortly.

Vance’s program was still one of early hours. By ten he was in his bedroom, and Edith, in one of the soft white silk negligées she affected, was reading on the couch in her room beyond. So impatient was Vance to begin his preparations for London that he risked discovery, and put a few things in his bag. He was exultant, almost triumphant. To-morrow he would see Lily. Then he would go back to work, and he would work as never before. Lily! Lily!

At something before midnight he went to the door of Edith’s room and spoke to her. She was asleep on the couch, the book open on the floor beside her. Had he not known Edith as a woman who seldom wept, he would have said that she had been crying.

It was his custom to waken her with a caress. Quite frequently he kissed her closed eyes until they wakened. But out of the delirium after his accident rose vividly Lily’s kisses on his eyelids. His good taste refused this particular caress now. He stood and looked down at her.

And then, quite suddenly, Edith spoke in her sleep, a low tone, quite distinct, full of terror.

“It’s the dog again. He’s coming toward me! Drive him away. Courtney, drive him away.”

She stirred, and her set muscles relaxed. Vance stood, staring at her. Then he went into the next room and sat down. He was still rather weak. His forehead was covered with cold sweat.

“Courtney!” he said. “So it’s been Courtney all these years. God!”

A madness of jealousy seized him. Weak as he was, he flung up and down the room. He recalled, year after year, their married life, the affection that he knew now had not been love, her sweetness, her beauty, Wallace’s eyes as he looked at her. Deep buried, this love of hers; that was like her. And Courtney Wallace did not know that he was the man. What a mess the whole thing was!

From balcony to door and back to balcony he paced. Once he stopped in front of the mirror and surveyed himself.

“She treated me like a child,” he panted. “She thinks I’m a weakling. She pets me as she would a dog. She’s kind to me. By God, I’ll show her I’m a better man than Courtney.”

Quite suddenly he saw his half packed bag on the bed. With an oath he flung its contents back into the drawers. Then, quieter, but determined, he went to his wife’s room and stood beside her.

“Edith!” he said. “You’d better waken and go to bed.” He stooped and kissed her on the eyelids. He had quite forgotten Lily.