the other, they made talk. At last she rose, gathered the books together, and carried them off. At the door she turned. She must steal another keen moment: “Are you admiring my strength?” she asked. Her pose was fine. With her head thrown back, the roundness of her throat ran finely down to the bosom, which swelled above the pile of books held by her straight arms. He looked at her. Their lips smiled curiously. She put back her throat as if she were drinking. They felt the blood beating madly in their necks. Then, suddenly breaking into a slight trembling, she turned round and left the room.
While she was out, he sat twisting his moustache. She came back along the hall talking madly to herself in French. Having been much impressed by Sarah Bernhardt’s “Dame aux Camélias” and “Adrienne Lecouvreur”, Lettie had caught something of the weird tone of this great actress, and her raillery and mockery came out in little wild waves. She laughed at him, and at herself, and at men in general, and at love in particular. Whatever he said to her, she answered in the same mad clatter of French, speaking high and harshly. The sound was strange and uncomfortable. There was a painful perplexity in his brow, such as I often perceived afterwards, a sense of something hurting, something he could not understand.
“Well, well, well, well!” she exclaimed at last. “We must be mad sometimes, or we should be getting aged, hein?”
“I wish I could understand,” he said plaintively.
“Poor dear!” she laughed. “How sober he is! And will you really go? They will think we’ve given you no supper, you look so sad.”
“I have supped — full —” he began, his eyes dancing with a smile as he ventured upon a quotation. He was very much excited.
“Of horrors!” she cried, completing it. “Now that is worse than anything I have given you.”
“Is it?” he replied, and they smiled at each other.
“Far worse,” she answered. They waited in suspense for some moments. He looked at her.
“Good-bye,” she said, holding out her hand. Her voice was full of insurgent tenderness. He looked at her again, his eyes flickering. Then he took her hand. She pressed his fingers, holding them a little while. Then ashamed of her display of feeling, she looked down. He had a deep cut across his thumb.
“What a gash!” she exclaimed, shivering, and clinging a little tighter to his fingers before she released them. He gave a little laugh.
“Does it hurt you?” she asked very gently.
He laughed again —“No!” he said softly, as if his thumb were not worthy of consideration.
They smiled again at each other, and, with a blind movement, he broke the spell and was gone.
Chapter 4
The Father
Autumn set in, and the red dahlias which kept the warm light alive in their bosoms so late into the evening died in the night, and the morning had nothing but brown balls of rottenness to show.
They called me as I passed the post office door in Eberwich one evening, and they gave me a letter for my mother. The distorted, sprawling handwriting perplexed me with a dim uneasiness; I put the letter away, and forgot it. I remembered it later in the evening, when I wished to recall something to interest my mother. She looked at the handwriting, and began hastily and nervously to tear open the envelope; she held it away from her in the light of the lamp, and with eyes drawn half closed, tried to scan it. So I found her spectacles, but she did not speak her thanks, and her hand trembled. She read the short letter quickly; then she sat down, and read it again, and continued to look at it.
“What is it, Mother?” I asked.
She did not answer, but continued staring at the letter. I went up to her, and put my hand on her shoulder, feeling very uncomfortable. She took no notice of me, beginning to murmur, “Poor Frank — Poor Frank.” That was my father’s name.
“But what is it, Mother? — tell me what’s the matter!”
She turned and looked at me as if I were a stranger; she got up, and began to walk about the room; then she left the room, and I heard her go out of the house.
The letter had fallen on to the floor. I picked it up. The handwriting was very broken. The address gave a village some few miles away; the date was three days before.
“My Dear Lettice:
“You will want to know I am gone. I can hardly last a day or two — my kidneys are nearly gone.
“I came over one day. I didn’t see you, but I saw the girl by the window, and I had a few words with the lad. He never knew, and he felt nothing. I think the girl might have done. If you knew how awfully lonely I am, Lettice — how awfully I have been, you might feel sorry.
“I have saved what I could, to pay you back. I have had the worst of it, Lettice, and I’m glad the end has come. I have had the worst of it.
“Good-bye — for ever — your husband,
“FRANK BEARDSALL.”
I was numbed by this letter of my father’s. With almost agonised effort I strove to recall him, But I knew that my image of a tall, handsome, dark man with pale grey eyes was made up from my mother’s few words, and from a portrait I had once seen.
The marriage had been unhappy. My father was of frivolous, rather vulgar character, but plausible, having a good deal of charm. He was a liar, without notion of honesty, and he had deceived my mother thoroughly. One after another she discovered his mean dishonesties and deceits, and her soul revolted from him, and because the illusion of him had broken into a thousand vulgar fragments, she turned away with the scorn of a woman who finds her romance has been a trumpery tale. When he left her for other pleasures — Lettie being a baby of three years, while I was five — she rejoiced bitterly. She had heard of him indirectly — and of him nothing good, although he prospered — but he had never come to see her or written to her in all the eighteen years.
In a while my mother came in. She sat down, pleating up the hem of her black apron, and smoothing it out again. “You know,” she said, “he had a right to the children, and I’ve kept them all the time.”
“He could have come,” said I.
“I set them against him, I have kept them from him, and he wanted them. I ought to be by him now — I ought to have taken you to him long ago.”
“But how could you, when you knew nothing of him?”
“He would have come — he wanted to come — I have felt it for years. But I kept him away. I know I have kept him away. I have felt it, and he has. Poor Frank — he’ll see his mistakes now. He would not have been as cruel as I have been —”
“Nay, Mother, it is only the shock that makes you say so.”
“This makes me know. I have felt in myself a long time that he was suffering; I have had the feeling of him in me. I knew, yes, I did know he wanted me, and you, I felt it. I have had the feeling of him upon me this last three months especially . . . I have been cruel to him.”
“Well — we’ll go to him now, shall we?” I said. “Tomorrow — tomorrow,” she replied, noticing me really for the first time. “I go in the morning.”
“And I’ll go with you.”
“Yes — in the morning. Lettie has her party to Chatsworth — don’t tell her — we won’t tell her.”
“No,” said I.
Shortly after, my mother went upstairs. Lettie came in rather late from Highclose; Leslie did not come in. In the morning they were going with a motor party into Matloch and Chatsworth, and she was excited, and did not observe anything.
After