Chapter XIX

Lunch was over. Chalfont had taken his departure; Mrs. Lambert had excused herself on account of a bad headache and gone to lie down. The two girls were alone. The personal equation began to trouble Maggy again.

"I haven't seen you to talk to since you came to the flat," she said diffidently. "Were you really cross with Fred? Of course, what he said about Lord Chalfont was only what he'd heard. I could see by your face you were shocked."

"No, I wasn't exactly shocked," Alexandra answered.

"But you didn't like it. Fred didn't mean any harm. He's like me: he doesn't think what he says. I wish you liked him. You don't, do you?"

"You make me uncomfortable, Maggy. We can't all like the same people."

"But you're sorry I'm so fond of him?"

"Very sorry," said Alexandra in a low voice.

"I can't stop caring because of that. It's--it's in my system. Some girls fall in love with a man because they believe he's good or noble or brave or something they're particularly keen on; but if they find out they're mistaken they're off that man like fleas from a dead rabbit. If that sounds vulgar please forgive me, Lexie. The words just came out. It's one of Fred's expressions. What I mean is, I can't love like that, though I know I should be much more comfortable if I could. If I knew you'd stolen Mrs. Lambert's purse or gone off with a rag-picker it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me. It's you I love, not what you do. And I feel the same about Fred, only more so."

Prior to this, Mrs. Lambert had asked Alexandra a few questions about Maggy's relations with Woolf. The answers she had fitted in with certain information about the man himself previously imparted to her by Chalfont. What she deduced from the two statements made her sorry for Alexandra's friend and a little anxious about her.

"No girl is safe with a man like that," she had said to Alexandra. "If I were you I should try and persuade her to break with him."

And Alexandra meant to try. There was one weapon she might have used to shake Maggy's loyalty to Woolf: the cruelly belittling way in which he had referred to her just before her cab drove off. But she shrank from that. It was too poisonous.

"What would you say if I asked you to leave him?" she asked. "Supposing I needed you back with me?"

Maggy weighed the problem.

"I should say you jolly well knew I couldn't come," she answered. "I'm all in. If Fred was in Hell and wanted me there I believe I'd have to get to him. You don't know what it is."

"What is it?"

"It's the little things about him that have eaten into me. I'm corrupted, or corroded, whatever it is. Perhaps it's both. I love the white lock in his hair, the little pellet in his ear where he got peppered out shooting once, the scent of his tobacco, the smell of a Harris tweed suit he's got." She sniffed sensuously. "And there are other things I can't tell you about...."

"If he were to die or married some one else you would have to resign yourself to doing without him," argued Alexandra.

"Perhaps. I don't know. He's not dead or married, and I'm his. I know he could manage without me. I'm just like an ornament to him. He dusts me and puts me back on my shelf, and takes me down sometimes and has a look at me. I hope to God he'll never drop or break me!"

Alexandra was disturbed by the depth of passion in her voice.

"I know what you think about Fred," Maggy went on. "You think he's something near a cad. Well, there are lots of women who love cads and who don't know that they are cads. Perhaps I'm one of them. You can't put me out of this, Lexie dear. I don't know how it's going to end and I don't want to know. That's where real life is rather like the stage. The tag to a play's kept dark, never spoken until the curtain's about to hide the players from view. If we knew how things were going to end with us--knew the tags to our lives--I guess some of us wouldn't be able to go on with our parts off the stage."

It was like arguing with a fatalist. Her loyalty to Woolf was as unalterable as destiny. Alexandra gave up trying to move her. She changed the conversation, and an hour later Maggy went upstairs in response to a message from Mrs. Lambert, who wanted to say good-by to her.

Mrs. Lambert's bedroom was in half darkness. She was still racked with a headache, but she wanted to see Maggy and to hear whether Alexandra had succeeded in persuading her to break with Woolf. For this purpose she had left the two girls alone together. Maggy closed the door gently behind her and tip-toed toward the bed.

"I'm so sorry you feel bad," she said feelingly. "It won't do for me to stop talking to you. That will make your head worse. I'll just say good-by and go. Thank you for being so kind to me. It was nice to come and see Lexie here."

"You're very fond of her?" asked Mrs. Lambert.

"She's fine. I lived with her, you see. When you live for weeks with another girl in one room, and don't have a cross word it stands to reason one of you must be eighteen-carat. That's Lexie. She never complained or lost heart, not even when things were bad and I left her. She's the quiet sort but she's a fighter. There were soldiers in her family. It comes out in her. But I've started to talk--"

"You don't tire me. Sit down. It's refreshing to hear a woman speak well of another. Rather a novelty too. Aren't you jealous of her going away with me?"

"No, I'm awfully glad she's found you. I was thinking this afternoon how well she fitted in with everything here. She's a lady, like you. Things that I never fretted about because I wasn't used to them, she must have missed terribly. She's fine lace. I'm crochet work."

Mrs. Lambert laid her thin hand on Maggy's.

"How would you like to come on tour with us?" she asked. "I could make room for you. But I suppose your contract at the Pall Mall wouldn't permit of it?"

The unexpected proposition was tempting enough. Under different circumstances Maggy would have jumped at it.

"It isn't the contract that would stop me," she said with some hesitation. "But I've got a--flat."

There was a pregnant pause.

"And there's another reason.... I--I have to go away for a little while ... and I was glad that Lexie would be away. Oh, what have I said? You don't understand?"

"I think I do."

Maggy's face flushed crimson and then went white. Mrs. Lambert's hand still lay on hers. Contact with it gave her a feeling of sisterhood, a longing to confide. Her pent up feelings suddenly found voice.

"I want to tell some one," she choked. "I've got to go through with something I hate--and dread. I've longed to speak to another woman about it, but there was only Lexie, and she's not"--she stumbled over the word--"married. I wouldn't tell her. It wouldn't have been right."

"Tell me."

"I--can't see your face," whispered Maggy fearfully.

"It's not turned from you."

Then Maggy unburdened her soul. A flood of unreserved words broke from her. Mrs. Lambert neither moved nor spoke, but the grasp of her hand tightened as the poignant story culminated.

"I daren't let myself think about it," Maggy's faltering voice went on. "If I think too much my brain begins to rock, and I'm afraid. It's wonderful and awful and I don't feel the same. The other day I saw a woman in the street. She had such a pretty baby in her arms. It was too heavy for her to carry, and she looked dead tired, but I could see by her face how she loved it, weight and all, and I had to hold on to myself to stop from screaming out, 'You're lucky. You can keep yours. I--'" Something she dimly discerned in Mrs. Lambert's face brought her to a sudden stop. "Why, I've made you cry!" she said contritely. "What a brute I am!"

"No, no. Don't take your hand away," was the soft rejoinder. "You poor child! My heart aches for you."

When Maggy re-entered the drawing room her eyes were suspiciously red. She seemed anxious to get away. She put her arms round Alexandra and hugged her.

"Good-by, Lexie," she said breathlessly. "Don't forget me. The best of luck. Mrs. Lambert's an angel. T-tell her so--from me."

She tore herself away, pulled down her veil, and was gone, leaving Alexandra bewildered.

Maggy stopped at a jeweler's on her way home. Taking off her bracelet, she handed it to the man behind the counter.

"Don't bother to tell me what it's worth. Just say whether it's real or sham," she said.

It was sham.

She dropped it into her bag and went out, with a new pain gripping at her heart. She never wore the bracelet again.

After dinner that evening Woolf remarked its absence. She had worn it ever since he had given it to her.

"Where's your bracelet?" he inquired. "I hope you haven't left it about or had it stolen."

"Fred," she said, looking him steadily in the eyes, "I found out quite by accident that it isn't real. Wait a minute. Let me finish. You know I don't care tuppence about the value of anything you give me. It isn't the cost I think of. If you'd given me a ring out of a penny cracker I wouldn't have changed it for another from somebody else a million times its value. But don't sham to me. I--I can't bear it."

"I never told you they were real diamonds," he rejoined in a nettled voice. "If I didn't say they were paste you ought to have guessed it. Anyhow, the bracelet cost me twenty pounds. Genuine stones that size would have run to the price of a damn good race horse." He gave her a disparaging look. "Why, all in, you don't cost me as much as one of the animals I've got in training."

The words froze her. She stared at him in dumb agony.

"Oh, my heart!" she cried, with a sudden catch at her breath.

He sat still, coldly indifferent.

"And I've given it to you!" she presently whispered.