“By and by,” he said casually, “Mr. Colin Paton is a friend of yours, is he not? I think I have heard you mention his name?”
“Oh, yes!” returned Claudia easily, “I have known him for years. He has always been a guide, philosopher and friend, and especially in your department.”
“Don’t! It sounds as if I sold ribbons at the stores.... Then, of course, you know about this book of his on Sociology that is bound to make a stir this autumn?”
Claudia sat up abruptly in her chair.
“What book? Has Colin Paton written a book on Sociology?”
“One of the finest, if not the finest, that has yet been written. Such a lot of twaddle and froth is usually poured forth on that subject, but this book is the real thing, and exceedingly well written too. I’ve secured it for America, where we’ve got a good many books on that[238] subject. But I reckon this will put all the others out of court. Where has he got all his knowledge, Mrs. Currey?”
Claudia was some little time before she replied to his question. Colin had not told her! He had been writing this book for a long time, and he had never confided in her! She had thought they were such intimate friends, she had always taken it for granted that he told her—well, most things that were not other people’s secrets, and she was left to learn of his book from a new friend. Why, surely she might have expected that he would have told her long ago of his intention to write it. She had always thought their friendship meant that.
She was very hurt and also a little astounded. It was as though a favourite and well-known view had suddenly taken on an entirely new aspect. Another landmark that she thought was firmly planted in almost eternal solidity seemed to have shifted. She wondered wildly if the whole world were not built on a quicksand, if there were any stability or permanence in any of the human emotions or relations. Their vaunted friendship, what was it worth, if it did not mean that she had his confidence and he had hers?
Littleton wondered at the blank look on her face as she replied rather mechanically:
“Oh, I think he has been studying such questions for years, ever since he was up at Oxford. He’s not a man to talk much or make any show.... Yes, I can quite imagine the book is good.”
She could not turn and accuse herself of living in a fool’s paradise, for she was too unhappy to dwell in such a favoured, sunny clime; but did she know the world she lived in, the people by whom she was surrounded? Why, her younger sister Pat had been accusing her only the other day of bad judgment where men were concerned. Pat had laughed at her on this very subject, and said she[239] did not really know Colin Paton. Was it true? Can one see a man constantly for years and not really know the inner man? But she had always credited herself with unusual powers of divination. She despised other people for taking the world and its creatures at face-value.
“The amount of reading he must have done for this book is enormous,” went on Littleton. “Because, unlike most wildly enthusiastic reformers, who fling adjectives about and scream at the top of their voices, he has marshalled an amazing array of facts and figures. That, and his own discrimination and judgment, make the book so fine. And there are one or two passages, where he lets himself go, that are absolutely stirring. As you know”—with a laugh—“I’m in the trade, and I don’t often enthuse over a book, but I was greatly struck with this.”
“I am glad,” said Claudia dully, “very glad.”
This book had been in his mind for years, perhaps ever since he left Oxford, and he had never talked of it to her. She would never forgive him! He had not thought her worthy of his confidence. He was not her friend. Then a vision of him at Fay’s flat that awful night, quietly directing everyone and watching over her, came across her mental vision, but this only confused her the more. Did he, like most men, look upon her as a graceful, pretty plaything—just a woman? Was his idea of a woman just like her husband’s, only different in kind? Apparently she was of no real use to anyone, except—yes, except to the little music-hall artiste whom the family had rejected.
Then she looked at the man in the chair beside hers, and as her preoccupation had made him drop his guard, she read clearly the very personal admiration in his eyes. For a moment they remained looking at one another, love in the man’s eyes, a hopeless bewilderment and weariness in Claudia’s.
[240]
“Your life does not satisfy you,” said the man abruptly. “I have known that for some time.”
“Is anyone satisfied with his life?”
She was a little startled, but a beautiful, much-sought-after woman is seldom nonplussed by such a situation. She had seen that look in too many men’s eyes. It was only startling with Littleton because she had not noticed that he was falling in love with her. Was that because she had been thinking of Frank to the exclusion of other men? For though love itself may not be blind, it makes a woman insensible to the feelings of other men and her very preoccupation often piques them into desiring her.
Littleton got up and leaned against the mantelpiece, looking down upon her. His straight, spare figure, in his unmistakable American clothing, bespoke energy and endurance. The shape of his head, on the forehead of which the fair hair was thinning a little, told of great mental activity and powers of organization. Some woman might be proud of such a man. In some ways he was not unlike Colin Paton, save that he had the American restlessness and nerviness, and that he lacked the fine polish and self-possession which a man may possibly acquire, but is usually associated with families that can count back many centuries, and that have always tried to uphold the best traditions of English manhood. Paton’s ancestors had mainly been divided into two classes, fighters and scholars. Admiral Worral Paton had fought many a fight with Francis Drake on the high seas, and another Paton in the reign of Elizabeth had been accounted a great and learned savant at court. Before that time, in the reign of Henry the Seventh, there had been a namesake of Colin’s who had fought bravely for the crown, and helped to subdue Lord Lovel’s rising in Yorkshire. Claudia knew of these and of several more worthy and later ancestors, for she had once visited his Elizabethan country home, where his mother still lived, and[241] he had, with laughing comments, conducted her through the gallery of family portraits, which showed, he said, that there had never been any fatal beauty in the family. But she had been struck even then, as a girl—she had only been seventeen at the time—with the indefinable air of breeding and intellectual distinction which they all bore. There was an unmistakable stamp on the faces of all the Patons, which said as plainly as words, “Death before dishonour.” Colin had told her the story of one youth, a gay Royalist with laughing eyes, who had fallen from honour by parting, under pressure from the woman he loved, with one of the King’s secrets. “But, like Judas,” said Colin, “he went out and hanged, or rather shot, himself almost directly afterwards. You, who feel so intensely the joy of life—look at his laughing eyes!—will believe that he expiated his sin.”
At Gilbert’s home, too, there was a small picture-gallery—not very large, for the Curreys had never had any artistic leanings, and had only had their portraits painted to feed their own vanity and pomp—but the Curreys were a different race. Worthy—yes, probably—but heavy and coarse-featured, with none of the fineness and delicacy that distinguished the Patons, and some of them obviously too full-blooded, with the limited vision which embraces only the material things of life.
The man who stood looking down upon her now was of different type from either. He belonged to the virile new world; he had its good qualities and its defects. Like Colin, he was a good companion to be with, but he was so virile and so mettlesome that he occasionally left her rather exhausted.
“Well?” he queried smilingly, not attempting to answer her question.
“I was thinking.”
“I know you were. One can always see the thoughts flitting through your eyes. I have often longed to know[242] what you were thinking about. I believe your thoughts are worth hearing. Won’t you tell me this time?”
She found herself liking his voice, which had a slight American inflection without being nasal.
“I was thinking how different the American man is from the average Englishman, both in mind, temperament and physique.”
“We’re certainly beaten under the last head,” he replied, with a frank laugh. “I am always admiring your Englishmen from the point of view of good looks, though you know our men can be pretty fit, as we’ve shown in your sports’ contests. But we’re not such good lookers, sure. As for temperament”—he looked at her with a little challenge in his grey-blue eyes—“that isn’t racial, you know; it’s individual. I guess one of my countrymen may possess it as well as an Englishman. And what do you mean by a temperament, anyway?”
Claudia shook her head. She refused to be drawn. “Impossible to define. Those who have it do not need a definition, and those who have it not—will never find one. Didn’t someone once say: ‘Art is life seen through a temperament’?”
“But I’m not an artist,” he replied quickly, “only a merchant, who purveys works of art through the medium of a printing-press. Do you think that only professed artists may possess a temperament?”
“Of course not. That would be too ridiculous. I daresay some of the greatest artists are inarticulate.”
“I am glad to hear you say that, because I should have hated to have you put me right out of court. Because,” he spoke slowly, “lately I have begun to realize that a certain resurrection is going on within me; that what I tried deliberately to kill is still alive, painfully alive.”
She was aware that he was on the verge of a confidence, and she only looked her interest. She liked him, and she felt she wanted to know more about him; for[243] never had they discussed their private lives with one another. He was introducing a new element into their friendship.
“I married before I was twenty-two, and last fall I became a widower. I married early after deliberation and sober reflection. Isn’t it curious that one can so often reflect more soberly when one is twenty than when one is approaching forty, as I am now? I married, my friends said, most suitably. I was not what you would call in love with her. I had known her for years, and I was fond of her in a quiet, unemotional way, which you people of temperament despise. I married young to have my mind and energies free for my work of restoring an old firm to its original activity and greatness. I realized that if youth wants to toe the straight line, it must keep clear of emotional complications. I saw other men taken off their work, their senses flaying them into madness and folly, by the women they met. I determined that I would marry and keep clear of attractive women. I would settle down early into a family man, and if there were joys that I knew not—well, the man who has been born blind doesn’t know the glory of the sunshine. My wife was placid and quite content with the small amount of leisure and attention I could give her. All my best energies I gave to my work. Every American is born ambitious; it’s in the very air he breathes, and with his first little squalling breath he draws it in. I had rather a tough fight, but I won out all right.... Now I am nearly forty I begin to wonder if I have done the best with my life; I begin to see that perhaps those other fellows who never got on are not to be pitied after all. I begin to feel a hiatus in my life; I begin to see what life might be.”
As he looked at the beautiful vivid woman among the cushions of the armchair, he recalled the quiet, orderly life he had led with the one who had borne his name,[244] the lack of anything approaching exaltation or beauty in their relationship, the prosaic monotony of their days, and he wondered if he had not been the greatest of God’s fools. What would life be with such a woman as the one Who now sat plaiting her fingers in her lap, her very finger-tips pulsating with life? The magnetism of her womanhood reached him as he stood, and made his breath come more quickly. They had so much in common already, was it too wild and venturesome to hope that they might have more?
“In short,” she said slowly, “you have sacrificed the best years of your life to what you men call ‘the game.’ But you have succeeded. Many men sacrifice everything and—fail. You may feel at odd moments that you have missed something, but I expect you are really quite satisfied. You know the proverb about the cake?”
“Yes, but did I choose the best kind of cake?”
She broke the spell by laughing. It sounded so odd. It reminded her of the days when, as a child, she used to hover over the plate of cakes anxiously seeking to make a good choice.
“That’s life,” she laughed. “If you take the chocolate one, you always wish you had taken the jam-puff. And, after all,” a little wearily, “what does it matter—chocolate or jam? Equally sweet, perhaps, and equally unwholesome.”
He joined in her laugh and held out his hand. “I must go now. Let me come again soon, will you? I enjoyed your charming luncheon-party, but much more have I enjoyed this talk with you. Somehow I always want to talk to you, and I have the reputation for being rather a silent man. I wonder why you inspire me?”
Her hand was in his and she smiled mischievously and mockingly as she said: “I suppose it’s because I talk so much. It makes you feel that you must uphold the superior ability of your sex in all things, even conversation.”
[245]
But he did not smile. His eyes were searching her face, noting the soft, velvety texture of the skin—how he longed to press his lips on her full, creamy throat even more than on her lips—the satiny gloss of her luxurious hair, the long eyelashes which, as he stood above her, swept her cheeks, the small, straight nose and delicate ears.
“You are a very sweet and fascinating woman,” he said suddenly, “and I am sorry that we ever did anything so vulgar as to use your portrait for a book cover.... Good-bye.”
For a few minutes after he had taken his departure Claudia sat thinking about him. Unlike Frank Hamilton, he did not set her pulses singing, and leave her inwardly shaken when he released her hand; but, on the other hand, she found herself considering him more seriously. She conjectured more about him; she found herself wanting his opinion, just as she did Colin Paton’s. Colin! That reminded her of the beginning of their conversation. Colin had clearly shown that their friendship was to him but a small thing. She found herself clenching her fingers into the palm of her hand as she reflected on the secret he had kept from her. This man Littleton was not in any way the equal of Colin Paton, either in brain or in character; but he was evidently trying to tell her how much he appreciated their acquaintanceship, trying to let her know that he realized now what a big part a woman might play in his life. Pat was quite, quite wrong. Colin was an unemotional fish; he even took their friendship coldly.
“And I want love, life, warmth!” she cried to her empty drawing-room. “I am tired of leading this deadly existence. I want someone to love me, to tell me so, to make me feel that he loves me.”
She looked at the room through a blinding mist, so that the delicate walls and the Louis Quinze furniture all[246] swum in a haze, and nothing stood out save the fact that the room, like her heart, was empty, and there was no one to hold out two arms ready to enfold her.
Then she strangled a sob in her throat, and the room became once more the charming, orderly room it always was, filled with sweet scented flowers and majestic palms.
“You’re a fool, Claudia, a fool! a fool! a fool!” she said through her half-closed teeth. “You want things that you will never get, that probably don’t exist except in your stupid imagination.”
Then she went quickly out of the room to her bedroom, where her outdoor clothes were lying on the bed. She rang the bell for her maid.
“Order the car for me, please. I am going to see Mrs. Iverson. Give me that box of picture-puzzles I got for her.”
Fay always wanted her. She would go where she was wanted.