XLIII THE WOMAN’S INNINGS

Ordham walked far out on the moor, then returned, not to the house, but to stroll up and down between the avenue of plane trees that connected it with the Italian garden. He finally threw himself down on a seat in his favourite spot. Above the glassy lake was a broken grey balustrade covered with mould and barely outlined against the stiff old cypresses beyond. In a dark grove on his right were marble seats, several noseless fauns and nymphs, the whole scene so reminiscent of Italy that his mind, always liable to peculiar deflections, experienced once more a sense of infidelity to Margarethe Styr: so often they had planned together that month in Italy which he had been the one to suggest, and this had been a favourite spot for making love to his bride.

He was too indolent to cherish anger for any great length of time, but resentment lingered, and since his talk with the doctor not only had it increased, but he felt that old sense of humiliation in not rising to an occasion. He had a hazy idea that young husbands always flew enraptured to worship their brides anew when informed that their ego had taken a fresh lease; but he felt anything but enraptured. Not only was he very much embarrassed, but, while shrinking from arranging the idea in words, he felt that Mabel, in her determination to press on to victory at any cost in this their first battle, had been indelicate in taking advantage of what could be little more than inference on the part of the doctor aided by her own canny suggestions. Wild horses would not have dragged such an admission from him until the last possible moment. How could she have talked it over with Cresswell—and, no doubt, with her maid? The ideal Mabel whom he had distractedly worshipped for one interminable fortnight had trembled more than once on her pedestal during the intimacy of the honeymoon, but it took this final conscious offence to sweep her off and leave her standing at the base, still beautiful, young, and fascinating, but for evermore bereft of illusion.

He resented, too, the sudden loss of that sense of pagan youth that he had enjoyed from the moment he had met Mabel in London, and which had been crushed but by no means extinguished during the fortnight of despair. He recalled the day in the Maximilianstrasse when he had ungratefully carped at fate for the undue allowance of women of the world that had fallen to his share. He had come into his inheritance soon after, and now he felt suddenly dispossessed. He had not the faintest desire to become a father; the very idea made him hot all over, then cold. Ten years hence would have been time enough; for the matter of that, nothing short of a plague could exterminate his family.

It is probable that to-day he had for the first time something more than a glimpse of the depth and vigour of his egoism, which, heretofore, polite even to himself, he had ignored. At all events, he realized that unconsciously he had for years been planning an existence into which the commonplace and material should as little obtrude as was possible on this mortal plane; he became aware that one of Mabel’s salient attractions had been her ability to help him to achieve this ideal existence with as little trouble to himself as possible. Now that his career was peremptorily postponed, he wanted it more than ever, and not for the services he might be able to render to his country—he admitted this brutally—but that he might live in the congenial atmosphere of Continental and diplomatic life, the while he dwelt in a romantic and splendid old palace with his lovely bride. He wanted to buy beautiful things every day in the treasure-house of Europe. His searching analytical mind craved the constant refreshment of new peoples, with their strange customs, their hidden traits, their thousand differentiations from the people of his own land. He wanted the bright suns of Europe, the wonderful nights, the light careless brilliancy of Continental life, the abundant music, the un-British drama from which every taint of puritanism and philistinism had been banished long since. While his remarkable poise, not the least of his gifts, had preserved the health of his mind notwithstanding his insatiable curiosity, still was it a mind that could only feel quite alive when feeding upon the unusual, stimulated with a variety not to be found rooted in his own orthodox soil; with all, indeed, that was covered from common uncomprehending eyes. To remain in England for a year on end as a prospective parent and an idle country gentleman, while he hated increasingly his sporting neighbours with their wolfish appetites, and was pressed down into the very depths of gloom by leaden skies and drizzling mists—he was still young and irresponsible enough to think of bolting.

But in a little while he faced another side of his problem. He was married to a girl whose pampered existence had given her a fairly good substitute for a strong will. It was patent that when she discovered his was the stronger she would resort to weapons—those enormous tears, for instance,—which he as a man could not emulate. He wished that he had something to fling viciously into the lake, but in that well-kept garden there were neither rocks nor fallen branches. The pebbles of the path were much too small. Then he laughed aloud as he realized that in one small tract of his brain he was as much of a child as his wife. Then he ground his teeth—

He stirred uneasily, turned his head. Mabel was standing there in the grove. Her hair looked like an offering from the sun to the soft gloom of ilex and cypress. Surrounded by those ancient trees, those battered old fauns and nymphs, she looked like the blessed damozel. If she was as white as her frock, her eyes were shining. She had never been more beautiful.

Ordham caught his breath. He had a confused sense that the world had turned over and in the act burst open a shell from which the ideal Mabel, that Mabel whom he had once seen in a sort of magic reflection, had really emerged. She stood quite still, gazing at him with soft appealing eyes, yet holding herself with dignity, and seeming taller than when under the lofty ceilings of the castle. Once more she looked the creature of pure romance, the fairy princess. His pulses shook. In an instant he was the adoring bridegroom, youth revelling in the joy of having found its mate.

Mabel permitted him to cover the distance, and when he had taken her in his arms and kissed her many times, with a certain imperious softness that never became violent, she asked him to sit down, and nestled against him in a fashion that made him feel very big and strong. Then she murmured apologies for “going to pieces.” “She had hidden herself to cry it out, first because she was unhappy and ashamed, and then because she could not control herself. Brigitte had sent for that dear old doctor, who had made her well at once.” By common consent the delicate subject was ignored, and they prattled like happy children themselves.

On the following day she was pink and white once more, in the best of health and spirits. It was evident that she was to be spared the minor and more humiliating common-places of maternity. A week later Lady Bridgminster, who had joined them, was sending out invitations for a monster house party, while the bridegroom ordered the guns cleaned, the discharged beaters replaced, the stables replenished, and felt as if he were hypnotized.