The Gambler Part 48

Clodagh looked up and met his eyes.

"I don't wish to be paid compliments, Mr. Tomes," she said. "Please don't try to think of any. Did you come to take my husband out?"

Mr. Tomes stammered, visibly crestfallen.

"Well," he began, "there is a certain archway in one of the smaller churches, which I think Mr. Milbanke ought to see. But as an archway is not too weighty for a lady's consideration, it struck me--it occurred to me----"

But Clodagh cut him short.

"Oh, Mr. Tomes, I'm much too frivolous even for archways. Don't take me into your calculations; I should only spoil them. Of course it's very kind of you," she added with tardy remorse, "but the experiment would be a failure. Ask my husband----"

Milbanke looked distressed.

"Oh, my dear----" he began.

But Clodagh's nerves were jarred.

"I know!" she broke in--"I know it's awfully kind of Mr. Tomes! But I couldn't go to see an archway to-day. I couldn't. I really--really couldn't."

Mr. Tomes relapsed into a state of pompous offence.

Milbanke looked from one to the other in nervous misery.

"Certainly not--certainly not, my dear!" he agreed. "You are tired; you have been doing too much." He peered at her through the softly falling twilight with a look of helpless concern.

She felt, rather than saw the look; and that sensitive dread of being rendered conspicuous that attacks us all in early life, caused her to shrink into herself.

"Nonsense!" she said a little coldly. "I am perfectly well. Please go and see Mr. Tomes's archway. I don't mind being left alone. I would like to be left alone."

Milbanke stirred uneasily.

"Of course, my dear, if you wish it!" he murmured. "Mr. Tomes, shall we---- Are you ready----"

He waved his hand towards the ca.n.a.l.

Mr. Tomes drew his loose limbs together, and bowed formally to Clodagh.

"Certainly, if you wish it, Mr. Milbanke!" he said stiffly; and walked off along the terrace.

Milbanke did not follow him at once. He stood looking at his wife in pained uncertainty.

"Clodagh, my dear," he began at last, "if there is anything I can do----"

But Clodagh turned away.

"No," she said almost inaudibly; "no, there is nothing. I'd like to be alone. I want to be alone."

And Milbanke--perplexed, embarra.s.sed, vaguely unhappy--turned slowly, and walked across the terrace after his scientific friend.

Clodagh waited until the last sound of Mr. Tomes's loud, rolling voice had melted into the distance with the departure of his gondola; then with a stiff, tired movement she rose, walked in her own turn across the terrace, and, leaning upon the stone parapet, gazed out into the purple twilight, as she had gazed on the evening of her first arrival.

How long ago--how infinitely far away--that first arrival seemed to her! With the capacity for the a.s.similation of new emotions that belongs to all her race, she had lived more keenly during the last three days, than during the preceding four years. To one of her temperament, life is not a matter of time, but of experience. At eighteen she had been a child; on her twenty-second birthday she had been a girl; and now, when that birthday was past by but a few months, she was conscious of the stirring of her womanhood--roused into swift activity by the first approach of the world with its men and women, its laxities and prejudices, its infinite potentialities for good or evil.

Some vague foreshadowing of this idea was casting itself across her mind, when the thread of her musings was suddenly broken by a quick step sounding across the deserted terrace, and with a slight, involuntary movement, she straightened herself, and brought her hands together upon the cold surface of the parapet.

Sir Walter Gore had parted with Barnard in the hall of the hotel; and now he crossed the terrace quickly, conscious of the fast falling twilight. He was close to the flight of stone steps that led to the water, before the flutter of Clodagh's light dress caught his preoccupied attention.

Seeing her, he paused and raised his hat.

"You look very mysterious, Mrs. Milbanke," he said. "Has your husband gone indoors?"

Clodagh felt herself colour. Unreasonably, and seemingly inexplicably, the mention of Milbanke's name jarred upon her.

"My husband has gone to see an archway in one of the churches," she said with a tinge of sharpness.

Caught by the inflexion of her voice, Gore looked at her more closely through the gathering dusk.

"And you do not share his taste for the antique?"

She turned towards him, her eyes alight with a sharp, cold brightness.

"I hate the antique!" she said with sudden vehemence.

Almost against his will, Gore looked at her again.

"And yet you come from Ireland? Isn't everything there very old?"

For an instant she looked away across the darkening waters; then her glance flashed back to his.

"Yes, old," she said pa.s.sionately; "but so naturally old, that its age is not thrust upon you. Where I come from, there is a ruined chapel on the edge of a cliff that dates from the fourth century. And at the present day the peasants pray there, just as their ancestors prayed centuries and centuries ago. They don't stare at it, and read about it, and write about it, like the antiquarians do. They pray there. The chapel isn't a curiosity to them; it's a part of their lives."

Gore was silent. An unconquerable surprise--a reluctant fascination--held him chained, forgetful of the gathering darkness and of the gondola that awaited him at the foot of the steps.

As he stood hesitating, Clodagh spoke again.

"Don't you believe that things should be lived--not merely looked at?"

she asked, her voice low and tense. Almost unconsciously the desire to interest this man, to win his attention, to compel him to share her opinions, had sprung into her mind.

Gore answered her with directness.

"No," he said. "All things cannot be lived."

His voice was quiet and controlled; the pose of his body, the look in his eyes, all suggested a tempered strength--a curbed vitality. The desire to dominate him rose higher, overshadowing every other sensation in Clodagh's brain.

She stepped nearer to him, her hand resting on the stone bal.u.s.trade, her body bending forward.

"Don't you think that when life is so very short, we are justified in taking all we can--when we can?"

Her warm lips were parted, her eyes shone with an added light. She was walking on the edge of an abyss with the ardour of one whose gaze is fixed upon the sun. But Gore--seeing only the abyss--girded on his armour.