The Masquerader Part 17

The curtness of the answer might have displeased another woman. Eve seemed to take no offence.

"I had a talk with the Fraides to-day," she said "A long talk. Mr.

Fraide said great things of you--things I wouldn't have believed from anybody but Mr. Fraide." She altered her position and looked from Loder's face back into the fire.

He took a step forward. "What things?" he said. He was almost ashamed of the sudden, inordinate satisfaction that welled up at her words.

"Oh, I mustn't tell you!" She laughed a little. "But you have surprised him." She paused, sipped her tea, then looked up again with a change of expression.

"John," she said, more seriously, "there is one point that sticks a little. Will this great change last?" Her voice was direct and even--wonderfully direct for a woman, Loder thought. It came to him with a certain force that beneath her remarkable charm might possibly lie a remarkable character. It was not a possibility that had occurred to him before, and it caused him to look at her a second time. In the new light he saw her beauty differently, and it interested him differently.

Heretofore he had been inclined to cla.s.s women under three heads--idols, amus.e.m.e.nts, or enc.u.mbrances; now it crossed his mind that a woman might possibly fill another place--the place of a companion.

"You are very sceptical," he said, still looking down at her.

She did not return his glance. "I think I have been made sceptical," she said.

As she spoke the image of Chilcote shot through his mind. Chilcote, irritable, vicious, unstable, and a quick compa.s.sion for this woman so inevitably shackled to him followed it.

Eve, unconscious of what was pa.s.sing in his mind, went on with her subject.

"When we were married," she said, gently, "I had such a great interest in things, such a great belief in life. I had lived in politics, and I was marrying one of the coming men--everybody said you were one of the coming men--I scarcely felt there was anything left to ask for. You didn't make very ardent love," she smiled, "but I think I had forgotten about love. I wanted nothing so much as to be like Lady Sarah--married to a great man." She paused, then went on more hurriedly: "For a while things went right; then slowly things, went wrong. You got your--your nerves."

Loder changed his position with something of abruptness.

She misconstrued the action.

"Please don't think I want to be disagreeable," she said, hastily. "I don't. I'm only trying to make you understand why--why I lost heart."

"I think I know," Loder's voice broke in involuntarily. "Things got worse--then still worse. You found interference useless. At last you ceased to have a husband."

"Until a week ago." She glanced up quickly. Absorbed in her own feelings, she had seen nothing extraordinary in his words.

But at hers, Loder changed color.

"It's the most incredible thing in the world," she said. "It's quite incredible, and yet I can't deny it. Against all my reason, all my experience, all my inclination I seem to feel in the last week something of what I felt at first." She stopped with an embarra.s.sed laugh. "It seems that, as if by magic, life has been picked up where I dropped it six years ago." Again she stopped and laughed.

Loder was keenly uncomfortable, but he could think of nothing to say.

"It seemed to begin that night I dined with the Fraides," she went on. "Mr. Fraide talked so wisely and so kindly about many things. He recalled all we had hoped for in you; and--and he blamed me a little."

She paused and laid her cup aside. "He said that when people have made what they call their last effort, they should always make just one effort more. He promised that if I could once persuade you to take an interest in your work, he would do the rest. He said all that, and a thousand other kinder things--and I sat and listened. But all the time I thought of nothing but their uselessness. Before I left I promised to do my best--but my thought was still the same. It was stronger than ever when I forced myself to come up here--" She paused again, and glanced at Loder's averted head. "But I came, and then--as if by conquering myself I had compelled a reward, you seemed--you somehow seemed different. It sounds ridiculous, I know." Her voice was half amused, half deprecating.

"It wasn't a difference in your face, though I knew directly that you were free from--nerves." Again she hesitated over the word. "It was a difference in yourself, in the things you said, more than in the way you said them." Once more she paused and laughed a little.

Loder's discomfort grew.

"But it didn't affect me then." She spoke more slowly. "I wouldn't admit it then. And the next day when we talked on the Terrace I still refused to admit it--though I felt it more strongly than before. But I have watched you since that day, and I know there is a change. Mr. Fraide feels the same, and he is never mistaken. I know it's only nine or ten days, but I've hardly seen you in the same mood for nine or ten hours in the last three years." She stopped, and the silence was expressive. It seemed to plead for confirmation of her instinct.

Still Loder could find no response.

After waiting for a moment, she leaned forward in her chair and looked up at him.

"John," she said, "is it going to last? That's what I came to ask.

I don't want to believe till I'm sure; I don't want to risk a new disappointment." Loder felt the earnestness of her gaze, though he avoided meeting it.

"I couldn't have said this to you a week ago, but to-day I can. I don't pretend to explain why--the feeling is too inexplicable. I only know that I can say it now, and that I couldn't a week ago. Will you understand--and answer?"

Still Loder remained mute. His position was horribly incongruous. What could he say? What dared he say?

Confused by his silence, Eve rose.

"If it's only a phase, don't try to hide it," she said. "But if it's going to last--if by any possibility it's going to last--" She hesitated and looked up.

She was quite close to him. He would have been less than man had he been unconscious of the subtle contact of her glance, the nearness of her presence--and no one had ever hinted that manhood was lacking in him. It was a moment of temptation. His own energy, his own intentions, seemed so near; Chilcote and Chilcote's claims so distant and unreal. After all, his life, his ambitions, his determinations, were his own. He lifted his eyes and looked at her.

"You want me to tell you that I will go on?" he said.

Her eyes brightened; she took a step forward. "Yes," she said, "I want it more than anything in the world."

There was a wait. The declaration that would satisfy her came to Loder's lips, but he delayed it. The delay, was fateful. While he stood silent the door opened and the servant who had brought in the tea reappeared.

He crossed the room and handed Loder a telegram. "Any answer, sir?" he said.

Eve moved back to her chair. There was a flush on her cheeks and her eyes were still alertly bright.

Loder tore the telegram open, read it, then threw it Into the fire.

"No answer!" he said, laconically.

At the brusqueness of his voice, Eve looked up. "Disagreeable news?" she said, as the servant departed.

He didn't look at her. He was watching the telegram withering in the centre of the fire.

"No," he said at last, in a strained voice. "No. Only news that I--that I had forgotten to expect."

XI

There was a silence--an uneasy break--after Loder spoke. The episode of the telegram was, to all appearances, ordinary enough, calling forth Eve's question and his own reply as a natural sequence; yet in the pause that followed it each was conscious of a jar, each was aware that in some subtle way the thread of sympathy had been dropped, though to one the cause was inexplicable and to the other only too plain.

Loder watched the ghost of his message grow whiter and thinner, then dissolve into airy fragments and flutter up the chimney. As the last morsel wavered out of sight, he turned and looked at his companion.

"You almost made me commit myself," he said. In the desire to hide his feelings his tone was short.

Eve returned his glance with a quiet regard, but he scarcely saw it.

He had a stupefied sense of disaster; a feeling of bitter self-commiseration that for the moment outweighed all other considerations. Almost at the moment of justification the good of life had crumbled in his fingers, the soil given beneath his feet, and with an absence of logic, a lack of justice unusual in him, he let resentment against Chilcote sweep suddenly over his mind.

Eve, still watching him, saw the darkening of his expression, and with a quiet movement rose from her chair.