Chapter XV: The Secret Out

When, a quarter of an hour later, Darville let his secretary out and rejoined Edris, he found her glancing at one of his books, which she had taken from the long case at the end of the room.

“Oh, by the way,” he exclaimed, suddenly remembering, “I’ve never shown you those snapshots I took when I returned to Switzerland last April.” And from a drawer he took out a large envelope containing a quantity of loose photographs.

“As you know, I went up the Kander Valley to Kandersteg, and to Abelboden, and on to Brigue.”

“You were at Interlaken, also,” she added. “I wrote to you at the Hotel du Lac, but you never replied,” she added reprovingly.

“I was traveling a great deal, and I fear I often neglect my correspondence very sadly,” he said in lame excuse.

He drew two chairs to the round, polished table, and, after they had seated themselves, he placed the pictures before her one after another, explaining each. With him had traveled a Mr. Norman Gale, a personal friend, who was a representative of that world-wide organization that protects and assists travelers in every part of the globe, Messrs. Thomas Cook & Son. Mr. Gale, who was known to Edris, appeared in most of the snapshots.

One snapshot he passed by as without interest to her. It was the picture of a smart, well-set-up young man of thirty, evidently a foreigner, and had been taken at the edge of one of the Swiss lakes.

“Who’s that?” she asked, taking it up and looking at it. “He’s rather nice! Is he Swiss?”

“Oh, that’s Karl Weiss, a friend of mine. Yes, he’s Swiss, and quite a charming fellow.”

“He looks very English,” she remarked.

“He speaks English quite well,” Darville said. “But he has rather the appearance of a German officer. He is a good climber and an expert ski-er.”

“I’d like to meet him, if he climbs,” Edris said. “You know how I adore mountain-climbing. I’m dying to be taught how to cut steps in glaciers, and all that kind of mountain craft.”

“Climbing is too dangerous a sport for a woman,” he remarked.

“Not if you have a good guide and an expert male companion, as you say your friend is.”

“He is, no doubt, a good climber, for he has done the Wetterhorn, the Eiger, the Monch, and several other high and difficult peaks, quite recently. But I shouldn’t care for you to go climbing, my dear child.”

“I did quite a lot of it around the Dents du Midi before I met you. I was a student in Zürich, you know.”

“Well, when you go up to Wengen, don’t start climbing,” he urged. “It is too great a risk.”

“Oh, that’s everybody’s cry! Father and mother are constantly dinning it into my ears. They are always trying to extract from me a promise not to make any more ascents, but I refuse to give my promise to anybody, simply because I love climbing.”

He placed the photograph of Karl Weiss aside, and went on with the others. But she drew it from the pile, and looked at it again.

“He’s just the type of a good climber,” she remarked, as though speaking to herself.

“Oh, if you like his photograph, keep it,” he laughed merrily.

“Then I will,” she replied, placing it aside, with a light laugh. “I don’t suppose I shall ever meet him, shall I?”

“I don’t suppose so,” he answered. “But, nevertheless, he’s a very nice fellow,” and they continued their chatter about the pictures taken during his motor journey through the Bernese Oberland with Mr. Gale.

It was midnight before Edris, after Seton Darville had kissed her hand as usual, wished him good-night and passed into her room.

Her woman’s intuition told her that she had charmed him. Yes, it was true what other women had said, Seton was a “dear”; so kind and sympathetic, with that old-world courtliness, the outcome of his descent from a long line of diplomats since the elegant days of Louis XIV. In French history the noble house of Darville had ever distinguished itself, for its sons were notable throughout the First Empire. The head of the Marquis Henri D’Arville had, at dawn one day, fallen beneath the guillotine outside the Bastille amid the yells of the revolutionary mob.

As Edris brushed her hair before the mirror that night, she suddenly recollected the photograph which she had taken. She had placed it face downwards upon the dressing-table. She paused, took it up, and again examined it carefully. It happened to be a well-focused portrait.

“Yes,” she thought, “Seton says that he is charming, and I can quite believe it. I love Switzerland and the Swiss, and I really think he is my ideal.”

Next second she remembered Lionel, and the bitter lesson his fickleness had taught her.

“I will never love again,” she murmured. “Never in all my life!”

And she tossed the snapshot aside, and continued brushing her dark shingled hair until it stood out like that of a gollywog.

Meanwhile, Seton was in his room poring over a long document typed upon thin, pale-green paper, which he had kept back for consideration out of the big pile which Bennett had submitted to him.

All was silent. The wind, strong at sunset, had now gone down entirely, and upon the sea was hardly a ripple. After he had digested the long document, a report from one of his female agents in Rome, he lit a cigarette, put on his overcoat, and went out upon the balcony to smoke. It was half-past one in the morning, and the stillness was absolute. A distant church clock chimed the half hour, as he sat smoking and thinking in the chilly night.

The problem of certain clever machinations of Great Britain’s enemies to alienate Italy from the Allies was a difficult one, and, as he sat in the arm-chair on the balcony, he was trying to grapple with it. But, contrary to his habit, thoughts of Edris overruled his brain. He loved her to distraction, yet he feared to reveal the secret of his great and all-absorbing passion.

Towards him she was very sweet and sympathetic. Her attitude was, he knew, due to her knowledge of his parting with Elaine. She had from the first been interested in his secret friendship with the peer’s young wife, whose name she did not know, and now that they had parted, her curiosity had been further aroused. Sympathy is akin to love always, but in his case, and at his age, did the time-worn adage really apply? He feared not. No. The whole situation was false, for, after all, he was only clutching at the wind.

In his hard experience of life he retained no illusions of youth. He knew that his fond dream of passion and supreme happiness would never be realized. If he tried to win her as his wife, his efforts would only be as those of a fool who spits against the wind. His keen intellect had received a jar at the moment when she had placed aside the snap of his friend Weiss.

No, he reflected, he must face the bitter truth. Only men of her own age appealed to her. He himself was too old. And yet, after all, was it not natural, when young hearts beat in unison?

Once again he choked down his tears. Then he reëntered the room, pulled down the blind, and, fully alive to the fact that his great passion was only a fond dream that could never be fulfilled, he retired to rest.

In the room adjoining was his adored one. How he longed to place his strong arms about her and tell her the truth of that fierce passion he had conceived for her, and how slowly and stealthily she had stolen into his heart. But he was, after all, a moral coward, as every man is when facing a woman. He feared the flash of scorn in her fine eyes, and the jeering words as to his age that would fall from her lips.

“No, no,” he muttered aloud as he lay in his bed, “she is young--and her lover must be young. I will fade from her life, yet still remain her firmest friend. It would be sheer madness to tell her the truth. Lionel has caused her a revulsion against men, and naturally so. He was a young fool, who did not know how to treat a woman. It is only men of my age who are able to gauge a woman’s character, and to understand their little fads and fancies, their hates and their loves. The majority of men gauge women’s minds by their own,” he went on, still speaking to himself. “Ah, what greater folly? A woman’s mind is apart and unique, even though she may be married. We of the male sex are always so inferior in our intelligence, and our general outlook upon life is always so different.”

Next morning, as they sat at breakfast, Seton said to the girl who had bewitched him, and who looked so fresh and charming:

“Can’t you stay longer, Edris? Do wire to your mother and ask her to allow you to stay a day or two longer--unless, of course, you are bored.”

“Bored!” she cried, looking across the table. “Why, how can I be when you are so kind and delightful to me?”

“Then you will wire, eh?” he asked eagerly. “Let the week-enders go, and then for a day or two we will be together to--to cheer each other in our loneliness,” he ventured to add.

For some moments she made no reply. His charming manner had impressed itself upon her. She had liked him ever since that day in Wengen when he had so frankly told her of his friendship with Elaine, and she had somehow felt that the liking was mutual. But, knowing his character, she never dreamed that he was so infatuated with her.

“Do you really wish me to stay?” she asked, lifting her long, dark lashes and peering into his eyes.

“I do, Edris. I find it very lonely here, and your company is, I assure you, very delightful.”

“How extremely complimentary you are,” she said, with a light laugh. “I suppose, in such circumstances, and if you are coming to Wengen, I must obey your wishes.”

“Then we will go out and telegraph to your mother. I do hope she will give you permission.”

“I think she will. I’m often away visiting. And I know both she and father regard you as their friend.”

So, after breakfast, they sent the telegram to which, later, came an affirmative reply. That day they motored over to Eastbourne, where they lunched at the Grand Hotel on the sea-front, and, later, took their tea at the old-fashioned White Hart, opposite the Town Hall in Lewes, returning home in the fast-falling twilight, after a very charming day.

Every hour he spent at her side he found her the more fascinating, and yet more than ever there was impressed upon him that wide gulf of years between them, that barrier which must prevent the realization of his happiness.

Next day and the next they spent together, walking side by side twice each day in order to exercise his pet Pomeranian. Wet or fine, in all seasons, whenever he was at home, Bundle was Darville’s first thought, and an hour each morning and an hour each evening he devoted to exercising the little dog, notwithstanding how pressed with work he might be.

On several occasions he had been very near making a confession of love to her, but he could never summon courage to do so. He, a man utterly without nerves or fear, independent, bold, even arrogant when the occasion demanded an assertion of his authority, dare not tell her the great secret of his overburdened heart.

Time after time, when she had spoken of Lionel’s fickleness, tears welled in her beautiful eyes, and her tones betrayed what great love she had held for him. That fact in itself caused him to hesitate, and to fear lest she might treat him with disdain.

She, on her part, began to wonder at his exquisite gallantry, his efforts to please her, and how constantly he looked after all the little details for her personal comfort. He had suggested that she should remain there. They cheered each other in their loneliness. She now realized for the first time how terribly lonely he was now that the mysterious Elaine--whoever she was--had gone out of his life.

Yes, they were both indescribably unhappy, and it was that fact which was drawing them together with a strong but invisible magnetism.

On the Wednesday night they had returned rather late from the theater at Brighton, and in her black evening gown she was seated before the fire prior to going to bed, idly smoking a cigarette. He stood close to her, admiring the whiteness of her beautiful shoulders and her wonderful neck and arms, when, almost involuntarily, he placed his hand tenderly upon her shingled head, and, bending to her ear, whispered in a low, soft voice:

“Edris, I want to tell you a secret. May I?”

“A secret?” she echoed, starting, and turning to him. “What?”

He paused for a second, and then blurted out:

“Edris! My darling! I love you!”

“You love me!” she cried, gasping in astonishment. “I--I don’t understand, Seton!”

“Yes, I have loved you madly, but in silence, ever since last February! I--I can’t keep the truth from you any longer. Forgive me!” he implored, grasping her hand and raising it passionately to his lips. “I love you, Edris! _I love you!_”