The Oyster Part 48

"Poor boy," she said softly now; and there was no friends.h.i.+p in her voice. Spring called. She was a woman, weary of watching the game she might not join. The wanton voice of London was in her ears to-day--the sooty, dark square, the prim room stifled her. Your being of transient emotions has frittered so many thrills, so many little mockeries of pa.s.sion, that one a little deeper matters little; but the hard-held nature frets at barriers, tears at its self-made bit as its longing eyes look at the wide fields it must not go into. To give nature the rein for once, to know the glory of loving. Man and woman, one giving, one possessing, both tasting the joys of the G.o.ds.

"And it is always the same?" Estelle's strong, slim hands were pressed together as though she held something in them that she would not let go.

"It is always the same," he said bitterly. "The world--what Esme calls the world--has dropped us. Somewhere--Heaven knows where--she finds the money to make another for herself. Is always with Cissie de Burgh--a woman glad to know anyone--with her friends the Henley leaders, and Frank Dravelling. Bridge parties, dinners, bitter tempers. I had to go to supper at the Savoy last night to find one table a ma.s.s of flowers and fruit, to see Esme sweeping past her old friends, to hear her laughing too loud, talking for effect, so that they should see she did not care. It was a pretty party, with neither Tommy nor Lord Francis Dravelling quite sober."

As Sir Cyril Blakeney believed Esme to be a thief, so her husband believed firmly now that some man must pay, and that she was too clever to let him find out.

Their roads lay apart; they were frigidly friendly, and the depth of Esme's hurt prevented her asking for an explanation.

She did not know why her London turned its head away from her; never guessed that Denise had let her fall under such a vile suspicion--to save herself. Never guessed either why Bertie grew suddenly cold, told her one day that for the future she would still hold his name but no more.

Brooding, sore, Esme's brilliant beauty faded; she lived, clawing at the spiked door which closes the room called right. It was bitter to see her book empty of engagements, to hear the cold "Not at home" of well-drilled butlers, to be left out of bridge at the club. For a time she went there, sitting alone, then it hurt too much; she went no more.

As Cain she was tempted to cry out that her punishment was greater than she could bear.

"Leave London. Come to Cliff End," Bertie pleaded once.

"No! Someone has lied, and I must find out who. No, Bertie, I can find other friends."

They were found. Esme spent money recklessly. Smiled now on people she would not have bowed to. Went to houses whose reputation had endured one of the many smudgings. Played high, and lost and won. Ate grilled bones at six o'clock in the morning, and tried to make it pleasure. Her tongue could trip lightly over well-known names. She was welcome in the new set, which called folly, smartness, and weak vice, life.

What was it? A cloak may hide a sore, but the very manner of the concealing chafes the thing it covers.

Unpitied, wrongly suspected, Esme's heart broke as she tore at the locked door. If one could find the backward road--if the Great Powers would give us back the years, seeing as we see now. Lie and scream and bleed, little human, the way is always onward--there are no scissors to cut the false st.i.tches we have made.

If she could go back to that careless springtime and do right. Take motherhood as woman's right and joy and pain; guess how she would love the child which then she had dreaded.

"I was mad--mad," Esme would groan, and yet blame circ.u.mstance and opportunity and Denise, rather than her own selfish weakness.

If Denise had not come to her she must have gone through with it, and gained peace and happiness.

Selfishness and greed and fear had stood for her boy's sponsor, had marred both these women's lives. And Justice, smiling grimly, saw one floating on a flood-tide of prosperity, made happy and successful by her scheming. The other an outcast, broken in health and spirit.

Justice sat quiet. To some the whip is administered at once; to all the punishment, the payment of the fine. Interest grows in the black ledger of our sins.

Two women had schemed successfully, and other lives were drawn now into the mesh.

"I am very tired of it all, Estelle." Bertie got up restlessly. "Very tired. My home is no home. My old friends look at me with a pity which is worse than enmity. I went to Denise Blakeney once. I asked if she knew what was amiss, and she turned red and white and stammered, and 'Oh, no, of course not--unless there might be some scandal, something foolish.' I came away, knowing she would not tell me the truth she knew of."

Estelle's head turned away; she knew; she had heard the black suspicion, but she could not tell Bertie Carteret that the world held his wife to be a thief. Better let him suspect the other, which was not true.

"Well, little companion?" He stopped his restless pacing, looked down at the sunny brown hair, and at the girl's sweet, glowing face. "How is it all to end?"

"When I go back to--to Cape Town," she said.

The words were as knives slas.h.i.+ng at self-control, cold steel carving finely at an open raw.

"No," he slipped out. "By Heaven! you shall not go."

"But I must." Then Estelle's voice faltered; she knew what it would be to part, with nothing known of love save imagining, save a few hand-clasps--friends must not kiss; save the sweetness of nearness driving home from theatres.

"No," he said again. He caught her hands suddenly, held them closely.

"You would take my only comfort," he muttered. "Estelle--don't go."

Man does not see sometimes his supreme selfishness. That this girl should eat her life out to keep him from his sorrows.

"I ... let us go out," she said.

Outside spring rioted, danced, kissing men and maids to madness and to merriment. His breath pa.s.sion, his light touch a thrill.

"Come from this sooty sarcophagus," Bertie said.

They drove to the Park, and on to Kensington Gardens, where London plays at being the countryside. There the big trees were really green; one could look through the tracery at the blue sky, and forget the great city roaring at right and left, at back and front. Toy lap-dogs, belled and netted, and larger dogs held on leash, by well-dressed men and women, bereft of liberty, told that this was a mere painted scene, and no true piece of country.

But it was fresh. Spring danced there gleefully. Summer would gather the harvest; spring was the sower of love thoughts.

Estelle strolled across the gra.s.s, sat down at length on a wooden bench, where a great beech above her made green fretwork against a sea of tender blue.

They were silent. Everyday words were out of tune to spring's music; and they feared to say the others.

"You cannot go, Estelle. You will not really." Bertie harked back to the fear of parting.

"And if I stayed," she said, suddenly mutinous, alluring.

"If you stayed," he whispered, then grew grave. "Could two people not make a world for themselves, Estelle, and be happy in it alone?"

She held sweet fruit to her aching mind, then broke through to the hard kernel of the truth.

"No, for we are never alone," she said gently. "That is the weariness of it. There are no two who strive to make this world who do not draw others inside the hedge of their secret orchard."

His hand fell on hers softly.

"Then, since there is no future, I'll have to-day," he said sharply.

"We'll dine and do a theatre, Estelle, and sup recklessly in some quiet place."

What theatre? Bertie had a paper in his pocket; they bent over it.

"This new thing--Spring," he said.

"It's advanced, isn't it?" she asked.

"It's very much so, they say. Miss Prude! But I am not in the mood for flounced virtue set in Scotch, nor for all the solid worth which the fas.h.i.+on follows. The music's lovely. I hear the piece floats through a pale green wood, and over primroses and daffodils, away to a sapphire sea."

"Let it be Spring then," she said. "This day is yours, my friend."

Friend! whose hand lay hot on hers, when their eyes met half joyously, half despairingly. Joy that fate should have allowed them to meet; despair that since man and woman are created for each other they could not know the fullness of happiness.

A cord long strained will snap at last. The cord of self-restraint which they had tied up the hands of nature with had come to its last strand, and they knew it.