Audrey Craven Part 21

He had turned, and his hand was on the door to go, when he heard her calling him back softly.

"Ted----" She had followed him to the door, he felt the touch of her little gloved hand on his coat-sleeve; under the black meshes of her veil he saw her eyes shining with tears that could not fall. He hesitated.

"Forgive me," she whispered.

"Not till you have answered my question."

"Which question, Ted?"

"The impertinent one."

"About Vincent?"

"Yes."

Her eyes had been fixed on the ground, now they glanced up quickly.

"Did Vincent tell you I was engaged to him?"

"No."

Her eyelids drooped again; then, urged to desperation by her own cowardice, she raised them and looked in his face to answer. And as she looked, she saw for the first time how changed it was. Its bloom was gone, the lines were set and hard: Ted looked years older than his age.

"Don't believe him if he ever says so. I am not engaged to him, and I never was."

"Thanks. That was all I wanted to know."

He turned on his heel and left her. He knew that she had lied.

He left her in a state of vague consternation. She had been prepared for an outburst of feeling on Ted's part, in which case she would have remained mistress of the field without loss of dignity. As it had happened, the victory was certainly not with her. This was contrary to all her expectations. She had looked for protestations, emotions--in short, a scene; but not for cold, dispa.s.sionate cross-examination. It was so unlike Ted--Ted, who was always giving himself away; it was more the sort of thing she could have fancied Wyndham saying under the same circ.u.mstances. She had seen something of this impersonal manner once or twice before, in those rare moments when they had discussed some picture, or Ted had talked to her about his work or Katherine's. It had annoyed her then; she thought it showed a want of enthusiasm. Now the boy's heartless self-possession amazed and overpowered her. Audrey was incapable of imagining what she had not seen, and she had never got to the bottom of the Haviland character; never divined its gravity under the mask of frivolity; never proved its will, nor reckoned with its pride. Three days ago she would have laughed at the idea of referring any moral question to Ted's judgment, for she had taken no pains to hide her faults from him; she had been selfish, reckless, vain, capricious, by turns and altogether, and it had made no difference then. Now she felt that he had condemned her. To be sure, she had told him a lie; but what was that in the catalogue of her offences?

It was everything. He could have forgiven anything but that.

CHAPTER XVII

But Ted's notion of morality was a question Audrey had no time to go into. A violent ring at the front-door bell recalled her to herself, and made her glance at the clock. It was a quarter-past three. She had wasted half an hour in fruitless discussion with Ted, and it left her ill-prepared for the stormy interview to follow. Her nerve gave way before the prospect of that hour with Hardy. She might have escaped it if it had not been for Ted, for she had meant to call early on her uncle and aunt, and bring them back with her to Chelsea, so that it would be impossible for Vincent to see her alone. Ted's coming had made that scheme useless. She listened. Yes, it was Vincent; she had heard his voice in the hall.

"I told him between three and four. Anybody else would have known that meant half-past four."

She spent ten minutes after Hardy was announced gathering herself together to meet him. She would have thought of sending for Miss Craven, an old device of hers when she wanted to avoid explanations; but Miss Craven was away. Her only hope was in some casual caller.

Meanwhile Hardy was striding up and down the drawing-room, waiting impatiently for Audrey. He was a little hurt at being shown into an empty room; he had expected to find the small thing sitting there to welcome him. That ten minutes was the longest he had ever spent,--it was the meeting-point in time for two eternities. As his thought leaped forward to the future it was thrown back upon the past. Then, as he gazed about him half mechanically, he was aware that his eyes were looking for the things they had been used to, and could not find them.

Everything was changed in that room he had run in and out of as a boy.

The familiar furniture, the signs and tokens of Audrey's daily presence, the old-fashioned knick-knacks which had delighted her mother's heart, all were gone. His aunt's portrait was no longer there; in its place hung the photogravure of the Madonna di San Sisto. Instead of the cosy corner where he had lain at Audrey's feet his last night in England, there stood a polished rosewood secretary, thrown open, showing its empty pigeon-holes. Everywhere he looked it was the same; there were new things all around him. If he could have read their secret he would have seen that that room was the picture of Audrey's soul; the persons who had by turns taken possession of it had left there each one the traces of his power. If you could have cut a vertical section through Audrey's soul, you would have found it built up in successive layers of soul.

When you had dug through Wyndham, you came to Ted; when you had got through Ted, you came upon Hardy, the oldest formation of all. The room was instructive as a museum filled with the records of these changes.

But the specimens were badly arranged, recent deposits lying side by side with relics of an earlier period: thus the floor was covered with the bearskin given by Hardy and the Persian rugs laid down during the Art age. The rosewood secretary and a little revolving book-case by Audrey's chair marked the change wrought by Wyndham. They were part of modern history and the memory of man. Hardy, in the midst of these curiosities of natural science, was like a lay visitor without a guide: he admired, he wondered, he recognised an object here and there, but of what it all meant he had not the ghost of an idea.

He left off wondering, and waited, listening for the feet that used to fall so lightly on the stairs.

At last the door opened softly, and Audrey stood before him. But she stood still, looking at him as if uncertain whether to go or stay.

"Audrey!" His face lit up with joy, his heart bounded.

"How do you do, Vincent?"

He held out his arms, and she came to him slowly, without a word. She let him hold her for an instant, closing her eyes to hide the fear in them; let him lift her veil and kiss her cheeks and mouth. Then she turned her face away, put out her hands against his chest, and pushed him from her.

"Audrey! What have I done?"

"Oh! I don't know, I don't know!"

She walked away to the looking-gla.s.s over the chimneypiece, and took off her gloves and veil. She wanted to gain time. Hardy followed her to the opposite side of the fireplace.

"Whatever possessed you, Vincent, to grow that horrid beard?"

He had forgotten the change in his personal appearance. He looked in the gla.s.s and was startled by his own reflection. Owing to the agony of the shock she had given him, his face was still grey and drawn. The poor fellow tried to smile, and that made matters worse.

"I daresay it was a nasty shock. Did it make you feel as if I was somebody else?"

"Oh no; it has not altered you much. It's not that. But--I hate beards, as you know."

There was silence. Hardy was struggling with the old stifling sensation in his heart. Emotion was bad for him.

"Is this all you've got to say to me, after being a year away?"

She looked at him, shook her head, and played with the ornaments on the mantel-board.

"Why can't you speak to me? Has anything happened? Is anybody dead?"

"No; but I wish I was."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because----" She was trying to wring the neck off a little china image now. "Oh, Vincent, don't think me very unkind! but I--I'd rather, another time, you didn't show your cousinly affection quite in that way.

That's all."

He covered his eyes with one hand to shut out the sight of Audrey.

"No, that's not all, I see. There's something else behind that,--there must be. _Has_ anything happened?"

She bowed her head and sighed, a long shivering sigh. The china image slipped through her fingers, and was broken to bits on the hearthstone.

"Audrey--what is it?"