Part 19 (1/2)

He smiled. ”That's it exactly. But you won't get that sort of relations.h.i.+p with a man who belongs already to another woman.”

”One gets the pretense.”

He shook his head. ”Not even the pretense. There was a phrase you used about Adair; you said he'd lost his direction. That's true; he has for the moment. Presently he'll refind it and the road leads back to Phyllis. You said something else: you called him a second best. That's all he is, however you take him, whether as a husband, a father or a lover. He lacks earnestness; he has always lacked it. I've been his friend for years; his flabbiness sticks out all over him. But you're not a second best, Mrs. Lockwood. You're a top-notcher--too fine for anything but the best. You really are. You ought to set a higher value on yourself.”

She had regained her composure. He showed a willingness to release her hands, but she let them rest where they were like tired birds, while she regarded him with wistful kindness.

”Too fine for anything but the best! It's a long while since I heard any one say that. Reggie used to say it in almost those very words. But then Reggie,” she caught her breath at the remembered ecstasy, ”Reggie used to think that the sun rose and set for me. He was different from all other men. You advise me to reserve myself for the best. How can I do that, Lord Taborley, when the best is in the past?”

She was very beautiful in the simplicity of her pathos--one of the most beautiful women he had ever met. She had become a little child for the moment and her littleness was baffling. He felt extraordinarily near to her and alone with her. There was no longer any danger in their aloneness. He realized why it was that she was able to give away so much of herself; there was no value in the gift, for her heart was beyond the capture of any man. She was the shuttered house of a vanished happiness, inhabited by a restless ghost. The gold light from the lamp fell in a pool about her. It revealed startlingly the whiteness of her arms and throat, the blueness of her eyes and the primrose gleam of her polished head. She seemed insubstantial as a dream, environed by shadows. And what did she mean by saying that all her best lay in the past? Surely she had misjudged! With her power of charm she could build her world to any pattern.

”The best in the past! None of us know enough about the future to say that. The best lies ahead--always. To believe that brings our best within our grasp.”

”For me it can't.” She spoke hopelessly. ”No believing can do that when your best is dead.”

The finality of her despair silenced him. He could feel it like fingers tightening on his throat. He realized in a flash that this was how he, too, would be tempted to speak were he to lose Terry--that, having lost the best, any careless makes.h.i.+ft would suffice to comfort him. While he considered, her hands snuggled closer in his clasp, establis.h.i.+ng a new sympathy.

”I think,” he said at last, ”even though my best were dead, I should try to go on acting as if it lay still ahead. If I did that, round some new turning I might find it waiting for me as a kind of recompense.”

She leant forward, peering eagerly into his eyes. ”Yes. You would do that. I'm sure of it. I knew you had something to give me the moment we met. That was why I wouldn't let you escape me. I've learnt the secret at last--the secret of your air of conquest. It isn't that you get your desires. It's not that. It's your belief that you will get them that makes you strong.”

Somewhere at the back of his head he remembered the pleading of Delilah with Samson, ”Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth.”

He laughed. ”Perhaps you have guessed. I'm what you might call a round-the-corner person. I have a philosophy all my own; it's a round-the-corner philosophy. I believe that we find everything that we've lost or longed for, if we'll only press on. Everything that we've ever loved or wanted waits for us further up the road, round some hidden turning. It's always further up the road and just out of sight. The whole trick of living is to keep your tail up and march forward with the appearance of success, no matter how badly other people say you've been defeated. More often than not, we're nearer our hidden corners than any of us guess; it's the pluck to struggle the last hundred yards that swings us round the turning and wins our kingdoms for us.”

She withdrew her hands and lay back against the cus.h.i.+ons. ”No amount of courage----” She broke off and tried afresh. ”Being brave wouldn't put him again into my arms. You're wondering whom I'm talking about--Reggie Pollock, my only husband. The other two didn't count, any more than Adair counts. I don't say it unkindly. I do want you to believe that.

They were pa.s.sers-by--that was all. They hung their hats in the hall and, somehow, they stopped. They were nice boys, both of them. It seemed a kind of war-work to let them marry me. You see, they needed me; so when they said they loved me, I didn't have the heart to turn them out.

I suppose I was too amiable. But they didn't count--not at all.”

”The war's over,” Tabs reminded her with quiet humor. ”How long is this amiability going to last?”

She smiled dreamily. ”Adair again! You don't leave him alone for long.

If you think that I ever let him make love to me, you're mistaken. It's only that he's unhappy and I can do something for him.”

Tabs wasn't at all sure that it was only that. This fatal amiability might have raised quite different expectations in Adair. Like her two latest husbands, he might take a notion to hang his hat in her hall. If he did, would she abate her amiability sufficiently to tell him to hang it somewhere else?

She was drifting; what she needed was either a tow-rope or a rudder. He sent his gaze questing through the shadows.

”Those five photographs, all of the same man--they're of Pollock?”

”Yes.”

”He was one of the first of all the aces, wasn't he? It was he who brought down the Zeppelin over Brussels and went missing a few days later. You see, I remember his record. He was outstandingly brave at a time when the world was full of brave men. And you tell me he loved you?”

An expression of triumph flitted across her face. ”Not loved.” Her voice was full-throated. ”He adored me, and to me he was a G.o.d whom I wors.h.i.+ped. I'd have gone through h.e.l.l for him. I'd----”

”No, you wouldn't.”

The flatness of the contradiction pulled her up short. ”No you wouldn't,” he repeated quietly. ”You wouldn't even go through this for him. You wouldn't play the game by him when he was dead. He always kept his end up, whatever the odds against him; but you--you couldn't. This was your chance to show that you were worthy of him. While he was alive, you played a winning game; it was easy to be true to him. But he--he was stauncher; he was most to be trusted when the game seemed all but lost.