Chapter XI: Sowing the Wind

Edris Temperley presently found herself in a large, well-furnished sitting-room, the two long windows of which opened out upon a stone balcony which overlooked the wide, green lawns and the English Channel beyond.

As she entered, Seton Darville took her gloved hand in his and, bending gallantly, kissed it with that innate politeness he always showed towards women.

“How charming!” cried the girl, glancing round. “You’re awfully cozy here, aren’t you?”

The room was, indeed, a pleasant one. Across the well-worn red carpet lay a streak of winter sunshine from across the sea. In the center was a large, round antique table of carved walnut, whereon stood a big bowl of apricot-colored glass filled with pink tulips. Upon the dark oak Jacobean sideboard stood several pieces of antique silver, while a long, low bookcase, taking up two of the walls, was filled with works of reference and volumes of travel. On one side of the big fireplace, where the flames danced merrily, stood a deep, easy-chair covered in bright cretonne, while opposite was a great roomy settee covered with the same cretonne, while upon the carved marble over-mantel stood several choice Chinese vases on stands, together with a small snapshot in a silver frame.

Edris recognized it as a picture of herself in her ski-ing kit taken by Seton at Wengen during the previous season.

Next moment a neat, rather elderly maid appeared and conducted her to the adjoining room, a large bedroom, almost as large as the sitting-room, Darville’s room being on the other side of the tiny hall.

In a few moments the girl, having discarded her hat and coat, reappeared, whereupon he drew up the big arm-chair to the fire for her, and she half shyly seated herself in silence.

It was the first time she had been alone with him in his house, and she now rather wished she had not thrown the _convenances_ to the winds as she had done. To be a man’s guest alone in his rooms was, to say the least, a rather unconventional proceeding.

Darville’s eyes fell upon the pretty face, with its dark, shingled hair, which had long ago filled him with such great admiration. He noticed that in her pull-over jumper of jazz colorings she wore the brooch he had bought her one day in Wengen, a little golden ski. She was wearing his present. Was it done deliberately, to remind him of those delightful days which had ended so abruptly, days which, he had since determined within himself, should never be lived over again?

They looked into each other’s faces without uttering a word, and then they both laughed.

“Well. It’s awfully good of you to come down here and see me,” the man remarked awkwardly, for want of something to say.

“I’m delighted,” she replied. “I was so afraid I’d have to go back home without seeing you, and I should have been so disappointed. You never come and see us, though I’ve so constantly asked you,” she added, placing her feet upon the fender and lying back in the big chair. He noticed how smart were her shoes and how pretty her ankles, facts that he had before realized in the ballroom of the great hotel in the Alps.

“Well, you see, I’m so constantly abroad,” he replied, with a smile.

“That’s a very poor excuse,” she laughed.

“I had to leave Wengen suddenly,” he protested, “as I had an appointment in Paris.”

“Ah, that’s all very well! Why are you traveling so constantly? Novelists have no need to move about Europe as quickly as you do.”

“They are the stay-at-homes. I’m always gathering fresh local color for my books, and that necessitates constant travel, for I never write about any place I have not seen.”

She regarded him from beneath her long, dark lashes, and wondered if he was telling the truth. His secretiveness, his long journeys, and his constant changes of address, puzzled her, as it did so many who knew him. There was some hidden motive in his changeful, adventurous life, the truth of which was never guessed even by his most intimate friends.

“Well, I think you might spare a week-end and come to us sometimes,” the girl said with a pout. “Father is constantly asking after you, and a visit from you would cheer him up.”

“Ah, I’m sorry!” he said quickly. “I never thought of that. Your father must find it very dull living in the country, after the active life he has hitherto led. It must be very boring for him.”

“It is, Seton,” the girl declared. “Do come and see him soon.”

Darville looked across at her, and, wondering whether or not she was making her father an excuse for his visit, promised that he would accept the next invitation she sent him, providing that he was in England.

After they had smoked cigarettes the maid served a dainty little lunch, and, as they sat _tête-à-tête_, there crept over Darville that same fascination which he had experienced nearly a year before amid the snows of the high-up Bernese Oberland. Her every movement was full of grace; the poise of that dark, shingled head, the contour of her white arms with the golden slave bangle, the pretty mouth made for passionate kisses--all were perfect and adorable, while her smiles, as they chatted, entranced him.

He preserved a gay exterior, as he usually did, but, within, his heart was terribly heavy and overburdened. He knew that two great barriers lay between them. First, the fact that she was engaged, the discovery of which had caused him to so suddenly part from her. The second was the difference in their ages. It was true that Darville was old only in years. Only when he looked at his reflection in the mirror he realized that his hair was gray and that crow’s-feet showed around his eyes, and he sighed when he realized his real age. Yet, after all, he was strong both mentally and physically; he had a grip of iron and a never-tiring energy equal to that of a man of twenty-five. He knew not fatigue; he could write and travel the whole twenty-four hours round without requiring rest, and he possessed that peculiar faculty, possessed by some outstanding men, of sleeping at once at any hour, or in any place that best suited him. He was ageing, his iron-gray hair was slowly blanching, but his heart and spirit remained youthful, in spite of the strenuous, adventurous life he led.

Upon those ski-ing slopes at Wengen, and at night amid the merriment of the ballroom, he had allowed himself to become fascinated by Edris Temperley, but now, as she sat there at his own table, he fully realized the extreme folly of it all, and began to vaguely regret that he had invited her. He had done so only after months of reflection and of longing, for ever since previous February, when he had left the Palace Hotel so suddenly, descended to Interlaken, and taken the night express to Paris, her sweet face, with those merry, dancing, gray eyes, had haunted him. For months her memory had lived with him, though he had done his very utmost to tear it out of his heart. He had sought the society of other women he knew in London and in foreign capitals in the hope of forgetting her, but it had all been useless. Her letters and her pressing invitations had kept alive the great passion which he had conceived for her, and which he had always so cleverly concealed that she had not the slightest suspicion of it.

The man seated alone with his girl visitor was of a strange, complex nature. He had never loved, and through all his years had jeered at those who became mutually attracted to each other. He was, _par excellence_, a ladies’ man, and counted dozens of pretty and high-born women among his friends. They petted him, sent him cards of invitation, asked him to all sorts of parties, and voted him a real good sport.

He had, however, in secret, one particular friend. She, as a flapper schoolgirl, had taken a great liking to him, he being a friend of her family. She was now twenty-seven, married to a well-known peer, and the leader of a very smart set. Her pretty face looked out at readers of the picture papers very often, for she stayed everywhere as the seasons came and went--Christmas in Egypt; February at her glorious villa near Antibes; April cruising on their great white steam yacht in the Adriatic or the Mediterranean; May on the Italian lakes; June for the London season; July at Aix; August at the Normandie at Deauville; September and October entertaining great shooting parties at Lyddington Castle in Perthshire; November to sunshine in Southern Spain; and then on to Egypt to commence the round again.

For many years they had, in secret, been fast friends. Society never dreamed of their close association, though more than one of her relations entertained shrewd suspicions. Before her marriage they used to meet openly for Darville was often her father’s guest at their ancient castle in Cumberland, but since her marriage three years ago their meetings had been clandestine ones. Elaine was her name, wife of the Earl of Lyddington, who was ten years her senior, and one of the wealthiest men in the peerage. Lyddington Castle, with its wide estates, its grouse moors, known to be the best in the Highlands, its salmon fishing on the Tay; Reddingbridge, the great family mansion twenty miles from York; the big, gloomy house in Grosvenor Square; and the beautiful villa above the rocks at Biarritz were part of the earl’s vast possessions, the villa at Antibes as well as Blacklands in Hampshire being Elaine’s own property, her private income being about twenty-five thousand a year.

Pretty, vivacious, and humorous, she was _chic_ to a degree. For years she had directed Darville’s erratic life. Ever since her schooldays at Roedean he had become devoted to her, as men of his age so often are towards young girls. She had become part of his life, until she had married, and then it was only in secret and at odd, infrequent times that they met, sometimes at country houses in England, and at others in foreign towns, where they would spend stolen days of happiness together. She had been the one bright spot in his otherwise loveless life, and often he waited in quiet patience for months before their next meeting. At last, however, after those years, he had seen that he might arouse the jealousy of Lyddington, her husband. He had told her so one night when they were dining together surreptitiously at a little restaurant at Soho, which they patronized because she would never be recognized. She had burst into tears. Next day he took her down to Skindle’s to lunch, and afterwards they strolled along the river-bank, where he pointed out the folly and danger of their further intimate friendship. Darville, because of his continual journeys and his gay, careless air, had earned the reputation of being fast, yet just the contrary was the case. No woman save Elaine held any attraction for him--and when he searched his heart he was compelled to admit within himself that Edris Temperley, though he might try and ignore the fact, and laugh to scorn his own foolishness, had taken her place.

He had not seen Elaine for many months. It was in her car during an evening run to Hatfield and back that he had taken farewell of her, a painful and pathetic leave-taking, and next day she had gone with her mother to Deauville to try and forget amid the vortex of summer gaiety and the crowd of her gay friends there, while he had gone back to Hove, and there shut himself up for weeks alone with his writing.

Constantly within him there had arisen thoughts of Edris, until he felt himself impelled to see her. Yet his strong will had prevailed, and he had not allowed himself to act in contradiction to his natural hesitation in meeting her again--not until that day.

As she sat there, laughing and chatting over their meal, so sweet-faced and happy, he realized for the first time that he had really acted rightly in bidding farewell to Elaine. Fortunately there had never been any love on either side; only a deep Platonic friendship which had more than once threatened to develop into something more. But it was now all over, and they had agreed not to meet again.

After the table had been cleared Edris sat again in the big chair with her feet upon the fender and smoked a cigarette, while Darville’s miniature black Pomeranian, Bundle, entered, sniffed her approvingly, and then promptly made friends with her.

“What a dear little fellow,” she remarked. “But how different he is from Lord Simba! He’s grown such a huge animal. I can’t hold him. He’s so strong. But,” she added, looking at him through the haze of cigarette smoke, “you know why I came down here, don’t you?”

“To honor me with your presence, I suppose,” was his smiling reply.

“No, to induce you to go to Switzerland,” she said very seriously. “I want you to go, Seton. Without you Wengen will not be the same. Do make an effort to come,” she added persuasively.

He hesitated, and she noticed it instantly.

“I--well, I can’t promise. You see, I have so many engagements. I may be traveling,” he said.

“Why do you travel so much?” again asked the girl with curiosity, for it had always surprised her that he moved about so constantly.

His reply was evasive, whereupon she again begged of him to go to Wengen, but he shook his head.

She looked at him in silence for a few moments, and then asked him point-blank a question which she had long hesitated to put.

“Now, Seton,” she said, bending towards him, her cigarette between her fingers, and her legs crossed, “I want to ask you a plain question. Will you answer it?”

“Ah, that all depends!” he laughed tantalizingly.

“Well. I want you to be quite frank with me,” she urged, a serious expression crossing her sweet, oval face. “I want to know the real reason why you left Wengen so suddenly.”

His brows knit for a second, and he stirred uneasily, but did not reply.

“Were you annoyed at anything?” asked the girl. “Do answer me,” she begged.

“No,” he replied in a low voice after a brief silence, “not annoyed--only pained.”

“Pained!” she exclaimed in surprise. “At what?”

“At something that need not be mentioned,” was his hard reply. She noticed that he sighed slightly, and it caused her to wonder.

“Then you refuse to tell me. That’s unkind!” she remarked disappointedly.

“No, Edris, I am not unkind,” he protested in a low voice, his dark, serious eyes upon hers. “The reason I left you so suddenly is my own secret. That’s all.”

“I remember that--that you left very soon after I told you of my love for Lionel,” she remarked. “Had that anything to do with it?”

Darville drew a long breath, and a strange expression of hardness crossed his face, as slowly he nodded in the affirmative.

“What?” she gasped, open-mouthed in amazement as, for the first time, the truth dawned upon her. “Oh, Seton, I--I’m so sorry--I----”

“You were going to tell me something about Lionel,” he said, as, rising, and, standing before her, he took her hand. “What is it, Edris?”

She bent her head, and for a few moments remained silent.

“Only--only that our engagement is again broken. That’s all,” she said in a tremulous voice, so low as to be hardly audible. “Only that.”