Part 23 (1/2)

”There! now you are in a hole,” continues Giddy, laughing, ”with no time to invent a plausible excuse. But come and sit down and ask forgiveness. I dare say Carol will get over it.”

As yet Eleanor has not spoken. She walks like one in a trance to the quaint old chair Mrs. Mounteagle draws forward. She sits down mechanically and gazes at the colours in the carpet, just as she did once before at the b.u.t.terflies' Club.

”What a poor little world it is!” she thinks, ”just like a muddy, narrow lane, through which its puppets drive or run, with the dirt thrown up in their faces at every turn.”

”Come! do not look so glum over it,” coos Giddy, removing Eleanor's cloak. ”Carol knows as well as I do what a row you have been in, and how rusty Mr. Roche has turned. We are both most terribly sorry for you. I am sure I don't know how you stand him. It does so remind me of my late husband, from whom I was separated by mutual agreement two years before his death. Our quarrels began much in the same way. I preferred a will of my own, and meant to have it. He would have treated me like the chickens cooped up in the yard--a useful addition to his table, only their part was the most enviable. I should not have minded being cooked and roasted, for there my sorrows would have ceased.”

”Death must be very pleasant,” says Eleanor slowly, her head turning lightly to the alluring charms of suicide.

”No doubt, when you are old and ugly. But at present life is what you have got to consider, my dear.”

”Life and b.u.t.tered buns,” replies Eleanor drily, as Mrs. Mounteagle hands the dish. ”No, thank you, Giddy. I don't want any tea.”

Her voice trembles with agitation, as Carol, who has never taken his eyes off her, draws a little nearer.

”If you won't eat anything, dear,” murmurs Giddy, ”at least you must drink something just to settle your nerves. Suction is so much more romantic than mastication.”

But Eleanor shakes her head.

”I am going to play peacemaker,” declares Mrs. Mounteagle, ”and leave you two to make it up. I have an important letter to write, which must catch the half-past five post. You owe Carol an apology, and that is always difficult in the presence of a third party.”

Eleanor is about to demur, when she catches Mr. Quinton's expression, and his look withers the words on her tongue, and forces them back.

She only stammers, ”Don't be long,” and collapses into silence.

Giddy's important letter is addressed to the Fur Store. She orders the m.u.f.f.

If things have been going badly at ”Lyndhurst” before the day on which Philip makes his fatal error, they do not bear comparison with the bad times that follow.

Even Erminie's sweet influence cannot bring peace to the ill-conditioned home. True she does her best, coming frequently, and spending long days in Eleanor's society. But though Mrs. Roche entertains her charmingly, she refuses to discuss Philip, and flees from good advice with the clever tact that can conceal rudeness and yet repel in a breath.

”I don't know why,” says Philip one day, in confidence to Erminie, ”but though I do all in my power to win back my wife's love, it seems I have lost it for ever.”

Erminie knows the reason, and so does he, only he dares not own it.

”She has tried me a good deal at times,” he continues, ”yet I love her just as madly, and that is what makes me seem to her fiendishly cruel occasionally, when the spirit of jealousy robs me of reason. I can't bear it, Erminie, to see her restless and dissatisfied in my presence, to feel her shudder from my kiss. An insurmountable barrier is rising between us. Can you guess what it is?”

”Yes.”

Erminie's answer startles Philip.

”Then, you, too, have noticed--all the world sees it? That man who is trying to steal my wife from me is the curse, the foul fiend, the shadow, the shame. I met him in the City only yesterday. He tried to bow, but I looked him in the face and cut him dead. He paled and shrank away.”

”Then, perhaps,” suggests Erminie hopefully, ”Eleanor has broken with him?”

”Not so long as she is in Giddy Mounteagle's clutches. For a while I let my business alone, I stayed at home day after day to guard and watch her. She divined the reason, and chafed against her cage, like a bird bereft of song, whose wings are cut. Things went badly for me on the Stock Exchange; I found I was losing hundreds, thousands, through my absence. Finally I returned, and Eleanor's face grew brighter--_she had seen him again!_”

”How do you know?”