December Love Part 79

"No."

Craven was not speaking at this moment, and she felt that he was listening to them. She remembered how Beryl had hurt her and, speaking with deliberate clearness, she added:

"Garstin, the painter, has had this man, Nicolas Arabian, as a sitter for a long time, certainly for a good many weeks. And Beryl is just now intensely interested in portrait painting."

"What--he's a model! But with a flat in Rose Tree Gardens!"

"He is evidently not an ordinary model. I believe Mr. Garstin picked him up somewhere, saw him by chance, probably at the Cafe Royal or some place of that kind, and asked him to sit."

"Do you know him?" asked the Baron, with sharp curiosity.

"Oh, no! I have never set eyes upon him. Beryl told me."

"Miss Van Tuyn! We all thought she was trying to keep the whole matter a secret."

"Well, she told me quite openly. You were there, weren't you?"

She turned rather abruptly to Craven. He started.

"What? I beg your pardon. I didn't catch what you were saying."

"He's lying!" she thought.

The Baron was addressed by his neighbour, Magdalen Dearing, whose husband he was supposed, perhaps quite wrongly, to finance, and Lady Sellingworth was left free for a conversation with Craven.

"We were speaking about Beryl," she began.

Suddenly she felt hard, and she wanted to punish Craven, as we only wish to punish those who can make us suffer because they have made us care for them.

"It seems that--they are all saying--"

She paused. She wanted to repeat the scandalous gossip about Beryl's visit to this mystery man, Arabian, immediately after her father's death. But she could not do it. No, she could not punish him with such a dirty weapon. He was worthy of polished steel, and this would be rusty sc.r.a.p-iron.

"It's nothing but stupid gossip," she said. "And you and I have never dealt in that together, have we?"

"Oh, I enjoy hearing about my neighbours," he answered, "or I shouldn't come here."

She felt a sharp thrust of disappointment. His voice was cold and full of detachment; the glance of his blue eyes was hard and unrelenting. She had never seen him like this till to-day.

"What are they saying about Miss Van Tuyn?" he added. "Anything amusing?"

"No. And in any case it's not the moment to talk nonsense about her, just when she is in deep mourning."

With an almost bitter smile she continued, after a slight hesitation:

"There is a close time for game during which the guns must be patient.

There ought to be a close time for human beings in sorrow. We ought not to fire at them all the year round."

"What does it matter? They fire at us all the year round. The carnage is mutual."

"Have you turned cynic?"

"I don't think I was ever a sentimentalist."

"Perhaps not. But must one be either the one or the other?"

"I am quite sure you are not the latter."

"I should be sorry to be the former," she said, with unusual earnestness.

Something in his voice made her suddenly feel very sad, with a coldness of sorrow that was like frost binding her heart. She looked across the big table. A long window was opposite to her. Through it she saw distant tree-tops rising into the misty grey sky. And she thought of the silence of the bare woods, so near and yet so remote. Why was life so heartless?

Why could not he and she understand each other? Why had she nothing to rest on? Winter! She had entered into her winter, irrevocable, cold and leafless. But the longing for warmth would not leave her. Winter was terrible to her, would always be terrible.

How the d.u.c.h.ess of Wellingborough was laughing! Her broad shoulders shook. She threw up her chin and showed her white teeth. To her life was surely a splendid game, even in widowhood and old age. The crowd was enough for her. She fed on good stories. And so no doubt she would never go hungry. For a moment Lady Sellingworth thought that she envied the d.u.c.h.ess. But then something deep down in her knew it was not so. To need much--that is greater and better, even if the need brings that sorrow which perhaps many know nothing of. At that moment she connected desire with aspiration, and felt released from her lowest part.

Craven was speaking to Mrs. Farringdon; Lady Sellingworth heard her saying, in her curiously m.u.f.fled, contralto voice:

"Old Bean is a wonderful horse. I fancy him for the next Derby. But some people say he is not a stayer. On a hard course he might crack up.

Still, he's got a good deal of bone. The Farnham stable is absolutely rotten at present. Don't go near it."

"Oh, why did I come?" Lady Sellingworth thought, as she turned again to the Baron.

She had lost the habit of the world in her long seclusion. In her retreat she had developed into a sentimentalist. Or perhaps she had always been one, and old age had made the tendency more definite, had fixed her in the torturing groove. She began to feel terribly out of place in this company, but she knew that she did not look out of place.

She had long ago mastered the art of appearance, and could never forget that cunning. And she gossiped gaily with the Baron until luncheon at last was over.

As she went towards the drawing-room Mrs. Ackroyde joined her.

"You were rather unkind to Alick Craven, Adela," she murmured. "Has he offended you?"

"On the contrary. I think he's a charming boy."

"Don't punish him all the afternoon then."

"But I am not going to be here all the afternoon. I have ordered the car for half-past three."

"It's that now."

"Well, then I must be going almost directly."

"You must stay for tea. A lot of people are coming, and we shall have music. Alick Craven only accepted because I told him you would be here."

"But you told me he had accepted when you asked me."

"That's how I do things when I really want people who may not want to come. I lied to both of you, and here you both are."

"Well at any rate you are honest in confession."

"I will counterorder your car. Henry, please tell Lady Sellingworth's chauffeur that he will be sent for when he is wanted. Oh, Anne, welcome the wandering sheep back to the social fold!"