The Oyster Part 35

And now--they were playing at Bournemouth, and Baby Cyril had come through croup, with the best doctors in London striving against King Death for the life of Sir Cyril's heir.

How many children would have died in the wheezing, cruel struggle! At heart it made Denise a murderess, and she hated herself for it.

"You--you are cruel to that child," Esme said. "You are, Denise. Take care."

Two small, sand-dusted hands pushed her away. Cyril backed with dignity.

"Mummie only made a miftook, tank you," he said--"only a miftook."

He was loyal to the woman who hated him. Her child, yet he pushed her away, would not accept the clinging tenderness of her hands. Esme sat down again, her eyes hard and bitter.

The years had changed her greatly. Her dazzling beauty had not so much faded as hardened. Her eyes were still bright, her hair gold; but the flush of red-and-white was all art now; her mouth had tightened; the brightness of her blue eyes was that of aching restlessness.

She had tried rest cures and come away half maddened by the quiet, by her leisure to think. She had travelled and come home to England because the boy was there.

Sometimes she would turn to Bertie, show the same half-wild outbursts of tenderness which she had first shown on the day she had sold the pendant; trying to find comfort in his caresses, clinging to him, pouring out tender words. Then the phase would pa.s.s. Without perfect confidence perfect love cannot exist. There was a secret between them; they were lovers no longer. For weeks she would go her own careless way, spending recklessly, always in debt, paying off the mites on account which make debts rolling s...o...b..a.l.l.s, mounting until they crush the maker.

Sometimes Denise was difficult to get at; sometimes she said she was afraid of Sir Cyril. The boy's price came in small sums, fifties, twenties; often frittered away on a day or two's foolish amus.e.m.e.nt.

Old Hugh Carteret made his will, left it ready for signature.

"When you have a child, Bertie, I will leave you everything," he said, "and make your allowance up to what my boys had." He sighed as he spoke of his loss.

Esme would have welcomed a child now--a mite to wipe out Cyril's memory, but none came to her.

She had taken to concealing her debts, to paying them as well as she could, for Bertie grew sterner as the years pa.s.sed.

"I believe that Reynolds girl advises him," Esme once confided to Dollie Gresham. "They're always talking sense."

"So frightfully trying," sympathized Dollie kindly; "kind of thing one learns up for maiden aunts, or uncles about to die; but in everyday life, unbearable."

Esme's old friends dropped her a little; she lost her fresh, childish charm; she was always hinting at her poverty; asking carelessly to be driven about in other people's cars, picking up bundles of flowers and carrying them off, vaguely promising to send the money for them; but she hadn't time to go round to get her own. She wanted now to be entertained rather than entertain. She was feverishly anxious to win at bridge, and irritable to her partner if they lost.

The club saw more of her. Men friends dropped Esme after a time; the disinterested spending of money is not the way of ordinary mankind.

Dinners, suppers, flowers, theatres must have their credit account on one side of the ledger; and Esme would have none of it.

Behind the aching love for her lost boy she liked her husband, and even if she had not liked him, would not have deceived him.

Stolen interviews, bribed maids, carefully-arranged country-house visits, were not of her life.

She sat still now, staring at the sea. Sometimes she would get into a bathing dress, and swim out. She was a fine swimmer, but the ripple of the salt water meant an hour's careful repairs. Her figure, too, had lost its supple beauty and she did not care to show it.

Estelle Reynolds was swimming, carefully, with short, jerky strokes, Bertie holding one hand under her small, firm chin.

Estelle's mother had married again; the girl lived on with her aunt in London. A dull life, only brightened by her friendship with the Carterets.

With eyes which would not see Estelle and Bertie Carteret had put aside that day in Devonshire, tried to hide from each other how sweet it was to meet and talk, how easy to drop into the fatally intimate confidences when man and woman tell of their childhood, and their hopes and fears and foolish little adventures, as men and women only tell to those they care for.

"She is no swimmer," said Esme, contemptuously, "that Reynolds girl."

"Your husband takes care of her." Denise Blakeney's laugh was full of spiteful meaning. "He will teach her to swim, belle Esme."

"I'll swim myself; I'll show them how." Esme's bathing dress was by her side. She picked up the bundle, calling to her maid; regretted the impulse before she had got to her tent; flung herself hurriedly then into the thin webbing, fastened on stockings and sandals and a bright-coloured cap, and ran out.

"Here, Bertie, tell Estelle to look at me." Vanity breaking out as she poised on the board, slipped into the cool water, swam easily, powerfully out to sea; the rush of the water soothed her nerves; she was its master, beating it down, cleaving her way through it. Treading water, she looked through the translucent depths; how quiet it was there. What if she gave up struggling and slid down to peace? She looked down, morbidly fascinated. But before peace there would be a choking struggle; the labouring of smothered lungs for precious air; the few moments of consciousness before the blackness came.

A child's voice rose shrilly from the sh.o.r.e.

"No, mumsie, Cyril didn't. He not sorry, 'cos he didn't."

Esme turned and swam back. She could not die. She would have a son of her own to still the longing for the sad-eyed boy she had sold.

"See, Estelle--strike out! Don't be afraid. Let Bertie go."

"But I am afraid, horribly. And I like one toe on the sand," said Estelle, placidly. "I swim all short, somehow."

"It's because you are afraid." No one was looking at her; Esme's interest in the swimming died out suddenly; she grew bored again, fretful.

She went in, the bathing dress clinging to her, showing how thin she was growing.

"You had better go in too, Estelle. You've been out for an hour. No, you'll never swim the Channel."

Half nervously Bertie sent the girl away, tried to forget the thrill of contact as he held up the firm little chin, as he touched her soft round limbs in the water.

The girl was so completely fresh and virginal, with a new beauty growing in her face and sweet grey eyes. She was lithe, active; he watched her run to catch his wife, to walk in beside her.

Esme was quite young, but she walked stiffly; she was growing angular.

The two women pulled to the flap of the tent, flinging off their dripping things. Esme had thrown a silken wrapper over her shoulders; she stood looking into the long gla.s.s she had hung up in a corner. A sense of futile anger racked her as she looked; the powder was streaked on her face; the rouge standing out patchily; she looked plain, almost old. The mirror showed her slim body, with limbs growing too thin, with her girlish outlines spoilt and gone. Behind her, unconscious of scrutiny, she watched Estelle drying herself vigorously, perfect of outline, with rounded arms moving swiftly, slight and yet well-covered, a model of girlish grace.

With a muttered exclamation Esme looked at tell-tale marring lines, began hastily to put on her expensive under-garments; cobwebby, silken things, trimmed with fine real lace.

"Go for my powder, Scott"--Esme's maids never stayed with her for long--"for my powder, quickly!"

"A clumsy woman." Esme lighted a cigarette, sat in the shadow, accentuating the age she had seen by knowing of it, lines of unhappiness deepening in her handsome face.

Scott, objecting to a quarter of a mile in scorching heat, went mincingly. Came back with powder alone, without rouge or lip salve, or face cream--stood woodenly listening to an outburst of abuse. They were going on at once to a picnic luncheon; the motors were waiting. Denise had called out twice impatiently.

"You said powder, mem."

"I cannot go like this. I must get back; and they will not wait."

Esme had denounced the picnic as a bore in the morning; now she knew what it would be like to sit alone at a cold luncheon and miss the drive.

"Madame"--a soft voice spoke outside the flaps of the tent. Scott, enraged and giving notice, had left to bridle in the sunshine--"is there anything I can do for Madame?"

It was Esme's old maid, Marie. The girl came in with a Frenchwoman's deftness, and pulled a make-up box from her pocket.