Part 52 (1/2)
As the curtain fell Traill proposed supper at a restaurant. They readily agreed. Mrs. Durlacher, in the best of spirits, thanking Providence for the weakness of human nature that had driven Sally to follow Traill to the theatre, still thrilling with the sound of his exclamation in her ears, would have lit the dullest entertainment in the world with the humour of her mood. There was a part for her to play. She played it. All her remarks, bristling with the pointed satires of spiteful criticism, were a foil to the gentle temper of Coralie's conversation.
”My G.o.d!” said Traill, as they walked down one of the pa.s.sages to the _foyer_, and he listened to his sister's verdict upon a woman who had gone out before them. ”Do you women allow a st.i.tch of respectability to hang on each other's backs?”
”She'd want more than a st.i.tch,” Mrs. Durlacher replied, ”if she's not going to put on more clothes than that.”
Traill shrugged his shoulders, half conscious of a comparison between his sister and the quiet reserve of this girl beside him.
He had thought her pretty, seeing her at a distance on the night when he had dined with Dolly. Meeting her the day before, in the dim light of the drawing-room at Sloane Street, he had found her still more attractive; but on this evening, in the glamour of bright lights--young, fresh, charming as she seemed to him--his senses were swept by her fascination.
At all times a beautiful woman is wonderful--the thing of beauty and the joy for ever; the phrase that comes naturally to the mind. But when, conscious of her own attractions, she lends that beauty to the expression of pleasure which she finds in the company of the man beside her, then, to possibly that man alone, but certainly to him, she is doubly beautiful. Nature indeed had been generous with Coralie Standish-Roe. Nature has her moods and her devilish humours. She was more than amiable when she bestowed her gifts upon Coralie. You may talk about the value of a n.o.ble heart beating in an empty corset, s.h.i.+ning out of pinched and tired eyes; but it is a value, unmarketable, where the good things in a woman's life are given in exchange. Janet Hallard and her like have learnt the realization of that. And of the qualities of n.o.ble-heartedness, Coralie possessed but very few. Her disposition was intensely selfish. She took all the admiration that she could get--and it was infinitely more than some women dream of--with a grace of grat.i.tude whose parallel may be found in the schoolboy galloping through one helping of food that he may begin another. Her hunger for it was insatiable, but she was too young as yet for any such reputation to have fastened itself upon her; too young for the manner which becomes the natural expression of women of this type to have blotted out her undeniable charm of youth. Youth saved her from Traill's critical appreciation of women. Two years later he would have pa.s.sed her with a momentary lifting of interest which she herself would unconsciously have dispelled at the first touch of acquaintance. Now, he was not only thrilled, he was interested. She was a child. He found her so--as much a child as Sally had been. Add her beauty to that--a beauty unquestionably greater than the simple charm of Sally's baby features--and add still again that fallacious sense of social position by which Traill realized that such a girl he could not ask promiscuously out to dinner, could not casually persuade to come to his rooms, and you have, besides the unavoidable comparison between the two in his mind, that subtle difference which a life of ease and a life of labour makes in the position of women to a man's conception of the s.e.x.
Immediately they stepped outside the theatre into the blaze of light where the attendants were rus.h.i.+ng for carriages, and men and women, in a confused ma.s.s, jostled each other to fight free of the crowd, Traill's eyes searched quickly for a sight of Sally. Mrs. Durlacher also was alert to the possibility of finding her watching their movements. But they saw no trace of her.
In the mouth of a little alley, deep with shadows, on the other side of St. Martin's Lane, she was standing, her heart throbbing, half timidly, half jealously, yet secure in the knowledge that she was safe from observation. With eyes, burnt in the fever of a fierce emotion, she watched them as they stepped into the car that drew up beneath the lighted portico. When she saw Mrs. Durlacher's gesture inviting Traill to sit between them on the back seat; when she saw him willingly accept, notwithstanding that there was more room, more comfort in the seat opposite, she drew in a breath between her teeth, and the nails of her fingers bit into the palms of her hands. Now, from what little she had seen in the theatre, and taking into greatest consideration of all the proof of her own eyes that the woman was beautiful, eclipsing herself at every point of attraction, Sally was full-swept into the mad whirlpool of unreasoning jealousy. Every action and every incident that her starved eyes fed upon were distorted, embittered to the taste as though the taint of aloes had crept into everything.
She thought she saw him lay his hand upon hers as he took the place beside her. In that position she knew that they would be wedged close together, their limbs touching, thrilling his senses as she well knew she herself had thrilled them by even slighter proximity than that.
Here, too, she judged again by the lowest of standards, if judgment it can be said of a wild flinging of thoughts--vitriol hurled in a moment of madness. Yet against him she could find no bitterness. The woman, kissing the hand that strikes her, to s.h.i.+eld it from the falling of the law, is a type that has made no history; but in the hearts of men she is to be found with her ineffaceable record.
It was against the two women, against Mrs. Durlacher with her d.a.m.nable cunning, against the other with her still more d.a.m.nable fascination, that all the blinding acid of Sally's thoughts was cast.
The woman who had hoodwinked him with her lies about her husband, the woman who had crept in, seizing the moment of his blindness--these were the two people in the world whom she could willingly have strangled with her little hands that gripped and loosened in the mad emotion of her rage. Under her breath she muttered--hissing the words--the vain things that she would do. All the civilized refinement of humanity was burnt out of her. She was not human. She had lost control. The thoughts that revelled in her brain were animal; the savage fury of the beast starved of its food and then deprived of the flesh and blood that are s.n.a.t.c.hed from the very clutching of its claws.
It is not so far a call, even now, for this divine humanity, weaned upon the nutritious food of intelligence, nursed in the refining lap of civilization, to hark back, driven by one rush of events, to the lowest forms of nature that exist. If, in the hour of death, seeking immunity from peril, there live men who have trodden down the bodies of women, beaten them with naked fists, severed arms from their bleeding hands that held to safety in order that they might find their own escape; then, surely it is no very wonderful thing for a woman, threatened with the destruction of all her happiness, to give herself over to the mad riot of murderous intent that shouts the cry of b.l.o.o.d.y revolution through her brain!
In these moments nothing human could have been accounted for in Sally.
In these moments the fire of the enraged animal glittered in her eyes, the incoherent mutterings of dumb pa.s.sion vibrated in her breath.
A man pa.s.sing down through the dark shadows of the alley into the street, turned and gazed at her. She took no notice. Did not even see him. The car was just beginning to move out into the traffic.
As it turned, too eager to follow it, she stepped on to the pavement.
Traill's eyes caught her then, saw her begin to quicken her steps, break even into a run following their tardy progress as they squeezed a way through the press of other vehicles. He looked out through the small, square window in the back of the hood and could still see her, forcing her way through the crowds of people, sometimes jostling them upon the path, then running in the gutter for the greater freedom of pa.s.sage.
”G.o.d!” he muttered under his breath, as he turned back again.
”What is it?” asked Coralie.
”Oh, nothing,” he replied; ”nothing.”
Mrs. Durlacher caught her lips between her teeth to crush the smile that rose to them. Now she was sure at least that Sally's power was broken. Her subtle use of that word ”allow” had served its double purpose. Not only had it delicately questioned the possession of that authority which she knew he held above all things; but also, in permitting it, the admission had been deftly drawn from him that Sally was his mistress. She had known it before, as women do know things. Now she was certain of it and, in her certainty, realized that this was the moment--to strike when he was weakest. A man, shaken free of the ties that bind him to one woman, is more ready than another in the reaction of indifference which follows to fetter himself again in order that life may seem less void, less hollow than he finds it.
To Coralie, then, in the dressing-room of the restaurant, as they took off their cloaks, she said--
”My dear girl, you're making that brother of mine in love with you.”
And to Traill, she jested as they said good night--
”My dear boy, considering your obligations to other women, do you think it's fair? The girl's losing her heart to you, or will be if she sees you again.”
CHAPTER X
The congestion of the traffic, the knotted lines of carriages conveying to their houses the thousands of people whom the theatres had disgorged into the streets, enabled Sally to keep Mrs.
Durlacher's car in sight until it pa.s.sed through the wide portals of a restaurant in the Strand where, from the street, she could see them dismount and pa.s.s into the building. They had gone to supper.