Chapter IV

"It is the worst of crimes to feel life so cheap, and make it so expensive for other people."--MARY A. HAMILTON.

Punctually at ten she made a move; and as she bid Seldon good night his eyes clung to her face with a pathetic mixture of apology and appeal. It needed only that look to stiffen her resolve; though the last thing she wanted at the moment was a quarrel with Bel. She hoped it might not amount to that; but she felt half afraid of her own inner tumult as she knocked lightly at Bel's door.

She found the girl already half undressed, sitting before her glass in a cream-coloured wrapper, her pale hair falling to her waist. Her face so framed, looked engagingly young. She was smiling frankly at her own image; and an aftermath of the same smile served as greeting to her unexpected visitor.

"Come for a talk? How nice of you!"

She indicated a chair near the fire; and Sheila, glad of the warmth, set one silver-shod foot on the fender. But she remained standing--a slim grey figure with a knot of turquoise blue at her waist and a blue fillet threaded through the dark cloud of her hair.

So, for the first time, they seriously confronted one another, these two----

"I'm not so sure," said Sheila slowly, "that you'll think it nice of me when you hear what I have to say."

Bel's eyes expressed polite enquiry.

"Nothing very formidable, I hope? And, for Heaven's sake, don't be tragic. I've had enough tragedy, all these weeks, to last me a lifetime."

"So have ... most of us," Sheila put in quietly. "And there's no question of tragedy, for any one, if you'll only leave poor Mr. Seldon alone."

"Oh, that's all, is it? Hands off your property, in fact?"

"Nothing of the sort." Sheila's temper flared up, do what she would. "Hands off a man who has suffered _more_ than enough on your account already. I think if you realised how much----"

"Suffered--has he? And poured it all into your sympathetic ears? I rather suspected he was gone on you."

"Well, then--why can't you let him be? Isn't one splendid lover enough for you?"

"To possess--certainly," Bel answered with her invincible good-humour. "That man Seldon's a mere invertebrate. But he's clever, in his own way; and he amuses me. If you don't want him for yourself, why in the world d'you bother about him?"

"Simply because he's a human being and he's made a plucky fight against things, and--he's my friend."

"Why not mine too?"

"Friendship is not one of your gifts, Bel. The only kindness you can do him is--what I said: let him alone. He mayn't be worth very much. But he is worth something ... now. Even you'd admit that if you'd seen him as I did, last autumn: a wretched cynical man with no heart in his work. Drinking too, from sheer loneliness and ill-health. And so obviously needing a woman in his life that it was hard to refuse him. In the end--that I mightn't think too badly of him--he told me about that summer in Cornwall. And ... to think it should have been you!"

Something in her tone drew Bel's eyes to her face.

"Well, what harm? I didn't commit murder. I refused him--as you did. That's all."

"It's _not_ all," Sheila flashed out. "Bel--don't prevaricate. He ... he told me everything."

Bel started and a faintly hostile gleam showed in her eyes. Then, very deliberately, she combed back a lock that had fallen half over her face.

"May I ask--what 'everything' amounted to?"

Sheila moistened her lips. "Well ... the way you simply made use of him to secure that other man ... the married one. Mr. Seldon heard afterwards that you--went away with him. That he didn't believe, except when he felt bitter enough to believe anything. Bel--_is_ it true? Any of it? I _must_ know."

She spoke with unguarded urgency; and Bel turned clear hard eyes upon her. The hostile gleam was no longer faint.

"Why must you know what is entirely my own affair? In order to tell Lady Forsyth, or Mark, and make trouble between us, after all I've just been through? Model of virtue though you are, I believe you'd give your beautiful violet eyes to put Mark out of love with me. But you never will. Men don't easily leave off loving me. Mr. Seldon's a case in point. I understand one side of them. And I understand it thoroughly. Mark's a bit straight-laced about some things. But he's tremendously a man. And he'll love _me_--worthless me--to the end of the chapter, whatever I may have done, or do!"

Sheila--amazed, disgusted and angrier than ever--had listened so far without interruption, simply because she could not trust herself to speak. At that moment she hated Bel, as she had never hated any fellow-being; and her white Northern anger would rather have vented itself in blows than words. But, by this time, she had herself in hand.

"_I_ tell Mark?" she said, on a note of concentrated scorn, ignoring the implication of her motive. "It's for you to tell him--whatever there is to tell."

Bel let out a breath of relief. "Then he'll remain in blessed ignorance. Men don't bore us with a recital of their pre-nuptial peccadilloes. They've too much sense. So why the dickens should we inflict ours on them? I'm a modern woman, Sheila. You're not: for all you're the younger. And Mark himself isn't quite modern enough for my taste. It's my only quarrel with him."

She had quite recovered her complacence now. Tilting her head, she swept the brush through her long fine hair: and Sheila stood watching her a moment, fascinated unwillingly.

Then with a small sigh she sat down.

"I rather think," she said slowly, "that, if this war goes on long enough, it is you up-to-date people who will end in being out-of-date. But Bel--" she hesitated. Fuller knowledge would serve no purpose save to increase her own secret misery. Yet, perversely, she still wanted to know. "Are you admitting that what Mr. Seldon heard was true?"

"Just true enough to be a spiteful lie," Bel answered enigmatically, discarding her brush and resting her bare arms on the table. "What are you getting at, you determined little person?"

"The truth--if I can. I don't want to be unjust to you."

"Very scrupulous!"

Bel paused a moment, smiling at her own image ... considering....

She was not given to verbal indiscretions, but she had her reckless impulses: and with Sheila she instinctively knew herself safe; knew that the truth demanded of her by this gentle, inexorable girl would hurt the more because--for very love of Mark and his mother--Sheila could be trusted to keep silence. Hidden knowledge of that kind rankles and pricks, as Bel had learnt from experience; and her own galling sense of Sheila's finer loyalty and courage made the impulse to hurt and startle her irresistible.

"Well," she said at length, turning from the glass, just as Sheila had given up hope of hearing more, "as you evidently won't play the sneak, I don't mind admitting that I had every intention of going off with that other man to Australia. I was at a loose end: in the mood for any escape from humdrum England and sufficiently in love to be tempted. It was Harry, with her awkward genius for rescue-work, who upset the apple-cart. So my 'going off' with him amounted to no more than a week end together at the Lizard----"

"Bel!"

"Don't look so scarified, my dear innocent! Heaps of the smartest girls do that sort of thing;--or rather did, in happier days than these. And properly modern-minded men condoned it. If you're for giving women freedom you can't tie them by the leg to the conventional moralities; and I wasn't going to take such a big risk without due consideration. So he found rooms in a wee cottage at the Lizard and we went there--as temporary brother and sister--to do the considering. He behaved beautifully; and, in the end, we decided to take the plunge. Harry happened to be in Cornwall just then, tackling a troublesome 'case'. So I arranged to go to her and join him in London when he wired. But somehow, she suspicioned what was up: and as she believes in the emancipation of woman, I thought she'd take it reasonably. However--she didn't; and there was the devil to pay. I stood out against her; but she got at him and worked him up over his precious children. So the great adventure fizzled out. And Harry, having rescued me, has stuck to me ever since. I suppose some of the fools at Bude heard we'd been to the Lizard and invented the rest. There! That's the extent of my villainy. The whole thing's dead and gone, and you must admit I'd be a prize fool to tell Mark. He'd worry needlessly; and distrust me. Also needlessly. If any man can hold a woman, it's Mark. Of course you think I'm not fit to black his boots. I'm not. I've told him so. But it's me he wants, my dear,--good or bad. Look here, though; not a word of all this to your 'Mums.' She'd never forgive me."

"No. Never." Sheila's cheeks were flushed and her lips set. "I'm not sure that ... Mark would either. I simply can't understand...."

"Didn't suppose you would." Bel smiled sweetly. "You're too limited. That's the trouble with you good people----"

"Mark's not limited," Sheila broke out with sudden passion. "No more is Mums. Oh--and to think I told her, without knowing it ... the very day you two were out in the yacht----"

"That day? Really, this approaches the dramatic! But never you give her the key to your story. Promise!"

Sheila sighed. "I'm not likely to--for her sake; though it isn't easy keeping anything from Mums. We're so close to each other all through."

"Well, you must manage it somehow," Bel said with decision. "And I expect you have your reserves even from her. Have you ever, I wonder, let her realise that you're dead in love--with Mark?"

"How _dare_ you!" Sheila broke in low and fiercely, "when I've tried to do you justice--to be friends----"

She checked herself, rose, and turned her back on Bel, grasping the mantelpiece with her small fine hands.

The girl surveyed her in genuine surprise.

"I'm sorry," she said good-naturedly. "One would think I'd accused you of stealing! It's no sin!"

Sheila swung round in an access of sheer impatience. "This time it's _you_ who don't understand! If that sort of thing's not sacred to you, it is to me----"

Bel faintly raised her brows. "No," she said, "I don't understand people who mix up falling in love with religion. To me, it's simply the most thrilling amusement on earth. Still, I'm sorry----"

"You're not," Sheila retorted, unappeased. "And I'd like you better if you said so, honestly. _I'm_ sorry I ever came in here at all. Good night."

She moved to the door; but softly and swiftly as a cat Bel sped after her and took her by the shoulder.

"Sheila, my dear, don't be a high-flown little fool," she said in her seductive voice that was seldom wasted on a woman.

"Oh, let me alone, I'm tired," Sheila murmured, and shook off the detaining hand, only to find it slipped through her arm.

"Come and make it up. Then I'll let you go," Bel cooed invitingly.

It was detestable; but Sheila was genuinely tired and too disgusted for further argument. Unresisting, and unresponsive, she allowed herself to be drawn back to the fire and gently pulled down into the chair.

"You're such a lovesome morsel of dignity and reserve," Bel went on, kneeling beside her and warming her hands. "It's quite an achievement to have drawn you out a little. I can't let you shut up again with a click. Besides, we must be friends _now_!"

Sheila, who was hardly attending, did not grasp the import of that last remark.

"I'm not altogether depraved, you know."

"I never said you were."

"But you thought so."

Sheila merely shook her head. She had no further desire to discuss Bel or her very mixed attributes; but, for Bel, there was no more congenial subject on earth.

"You _did_ think so," she insisted, with untroubled conviction. "But I do try to be decent, up to my lights. Can't help it--can I?--if mine are candles and yours are stars? And I admit this beastly war has demoralized me badly. Your Mums talks of it as a 'refiner's fire'; but ... I don't know. That sort of thing doesn't agree with everyone. It may exalt the good; but ... I rather think it makes the bad worse."

Sheila nodded. "It finds us all out. It's burning away the husks of life and forcing us to be our real selves.--_My_ real self, at this moment," she added lightly, "is a mere log of weariness. I must go now."

"Very well--go. Good night, dear."

Bel put up her face for a kiss; but Sheila was on her feet again. "_Will_ you leave Mr. Seldon alone?" she said returning to her original attack.

"I'll try--just to please you! But you can't blame _me_ if the man's a mere weather-cock."

"I do blame you--all along the line," Sheila answered with quiet obstinacy; and at last effected her escape.

But for all her weariness, sleep was long in coming. Though her lids were heavy, her brain was wide awake and haunted distractingly by visions of Bel; her smiling self-complacence, her graceful, studied poses, her serene assurance--cruelly emphasised--that no revelation of her intrinsic worthlessness would affect her dominion over Mark.

Was that true, Sheila wondered, feeling of a sudden very ignorant and limited--as Bel had said? Would it make no difference even if he knew all? Was a man's love so entirely a mixture of infatuation and passion that the soul of a woman counted for next to nothing?

Personally, Sheila did not believe it; but she was too young, too untravelled in the heart's byways, to feel secure in that belief. She only saw Mark, her god among men, lured and held by this elf-maiden of a girl; fair without, hollow within. Mr. Seldon, too--in spite of all he had suffered, in spite of genuine love for herself--seemed powerless to hold his own against Bel. And was it only Bel? Was it only Mark and Seldon? Or, was their private tangle simply part of the cruel, primitive essence of things? Sheila lying there in the dark, pictured hundreds of Bels dragging down hundreds of Marks and Seldons; and her protective, mother-tenderness for the masculine half of creation, raged impotently against it all. One heard so much, in these outspoken days, about men ruining women. Was there not fully as much to be said about women ruining men? Between sleep and waking her mind dwelt long on this side of a question that touched her so nearly. The mixed emotions of the last few days and the need to keep them hidden, had put a severe strain on her. And closer contact with Bel seemed to have rubbed the bloom off life; to have shaken her faith in the nature of things----

Her heart, in its loneliness, yearned for the dear comrade-woman; mother, sister, and friend in one; who could light up even the dark places of life with the fire of her brave enthusiasm. Soon they would all be together, they three: while she, who was intrinsically one with them, remained out in the cold; and must so remain--as Bel had smilingly assured her--to the end of the chapter.