The God in the Car: A Novel

There was no mistaking the sincerity of his greeting. Marjory blushed as she gave him her hand, and he fixed his eyes on her in undisguised approval.

"You're looking splendid," he said. "Is it the air or the bathing or what?"

Perhaps it was both in part, but, more than either, it was a change that worked outwards from within, and was giving to her face the expression without which mere beauty of form or colour is poor in allurement. The last traces of what Lord Semingham meant by "insipidity" had been chased away. Ruston felt the change though he could not track it.

Marjory, a bad dissembler, greeted him nervously, almost coldly; she was afraid to let her gaze rest on him or on Mrs. Dennison for long, lest it should hint her secret. Her manner betrayed such uneasiness that Ruston noticed it. Mrs. Dennison did not, for something in Ruston's face had caught her attention. She had seen many expressions in his eyes as he looked at her – of sympathy, amusement, pleasure, even (what had pleased her most) puzzle, but never what she saw now. The look now was a man's homage to beauty – it differs from every other – a lover hardly seems to have it unless his love be beautiful – and she had never yet seen it when he looked at her. She turned away towards the sea, grasping the arm of her chair with a sudden grip that streaked her fingers red and white. Marjory also saw, and a wild hope leapt up in her that her task needed not the doing. But a moment later Ruston was back in Omofaga – young Sir Walter being his bridge for yet another transit.

"How's Mr. Dennison?" asked Marjory, when he gave her an opportunity.

"Oh, he's all right. You'd have heard, I suppose, if he hadn't been?"

It was true. Marjory recognised the inappropriateness of her question, but Mrs. Dennison came to the rescue.

"Marjory wants a personal impression," she said. "You know she and my husband are great allies!"

"Well," laughed Ruston, "he was a little cross with me because I would come to Dieppe. I should have felt the same in his place; but he's well enough, I think."

"I was going down to find Lady Semingham," said Marjory. "Are you coming down this morning, Maggie?"

"Maggie" was something new – adopted at Mrs. Dennison's request.

"I think not, dear."

"I am," said Ruston, taking up his walking stick. "I shall be up with the Baron this afternoon, Mrs. Dennison. Come along, Miss Valentine. We've been having no end of palaver about Omofaga," and as they disappeared down the cliff Mrs. Dennison heard his voice talking eagerly to Marjory.

She felt her heart beating quickly. She had to conquer a strange impulse to rise and hurry after them. She knew that she must be jealous – jealous, she said to herself, trying to laugh, that he should talk about Omofaga to other people. Nonsense! Why, he was always talking of it! There was a stronger feeling in her, less vague, of fuller force. It had come on her when he spoke of his going to Africa, but then it was hard to understand, for with all her heart she thought she was still bent on his going. It spoke more clearly now, stirred by the threat of opposition. At first it had been the thing – the scheme – the idea – that had caught her; she had taken the man for the thing's sake, because to do such a thing proved him a man after her pattern. But now, as she sat in the little garden, she dimly traced her change – she loved the scheme because it was his. She did not shrink from testing it. "Yes," she murmured, "if he gave it up now, I should go on with him to something else." Then came another step – why should he not give it up? Why should he go into banishment – he who might go near to rule England? Why should he empty her life by going? But if he went – and she could not persuade herself that she had power to stop his going – he must go from her side, it must be she who gave him the stirrup-cup, she towards whom he would look across the sea, she for whom he would store up his brief, grim tales of victory, in whose eyes he would see the reflection of his triumphs. Could she fill such a place in his life? She knew that she did not yet, but she believed in herself. "I feel large enough," she said with a smile.

Yet there was something that she had not yet touched in him – the thing which had put that look in his eyes, a thing that for the moment at least Marjory Valentine had touched. Why had she not? She answered, with a strong clinging to self-approbation, that it was because she would not. She told herself that she had asked nothing from her intercourse with him save the play of mind on mind – it was her mind and nothing else that her own home failed to satisfy. She recalled the scornful disgust with which she had listened to Semingham when he hinted to her that there was only one way to rule a man. It seemed less disgusting to her now than when he spoke. For, in the light of that look in his eyes, there stood revealed a new possibility – always obvious, never hitherto thought of – that another would take and wield the lower mighty power that she had disdained to grasp, and by the might of the lower wrest from her the higher. Was not the lower solidly based in nature, the higher a fanciful structure resting in no sound foundation? The moment this spectre took form before her – the moment she grasped that the question might lie between her and another – that it might be not what she would take but what she could keep – her heart cried out, to ears that shrank from the tumultuous reckless cry, that less than all was nothing, that, if need be, all must be paid for all. And, swift on the horror of her discovery, came the inevitable joy in it – joy that will be silenced by no reproofs, not altogether abashed by any shame, that no pangs can rob utterly of its existence – a thing to smother, to hide, to rejoice in.

Yet she would not face unflinchingly what her changing mind must mean. She tried to put it aside – to think of something, ah! of anything else, of anything that would give her foothold.

"I love my husband," she found herself saying. "I love poor old Harry and the children." She repeated it again and again, praying the shibboleth to show its saving virtue. It was part of her creed, part of her life, to be a good wife and mother – part of her traditions that women who were not that were nothing at all, and that there was nothing a woman might take in exchange for this one splendid, all-comprehending virtue. To that she must stand – it was strange to be driven to argue with herself on such a point. She mused restlessly as she sat; she listened eagerly for her children's footsteps mounting the hill; she prayed an interruption to rescue her from her thoughts. Just now she would think no more about it; it was thinking about it that did all the harm. Yet while she was alone she could not choose but surrender to the thought of it – to the thought of what a price she must pay for her traditions and her creed. The payment, she cried, would leave life an empty thing. Yet it must be paid – if it must. Was it now come to that? Was this the parting of the roads?

"I must, yet I cannot! I must not, yet I must." It was the old clash of powers, the old conflict of commands, the old ruthless will of nature that makes right too hard and yet fastens anguish upon sin – that makes us yearn for and hate the higher while we love and loathe the lower.

CHAPTER XV

THE WORK OF A WEEK

Much went to spoil the stay at Dieppe, but the only overt trouble was the feeble health of the Baron von Geltschmidt. The old man had rapidly made his way into the liking of his new acquaintances. Semingham found his dry, worldly-wise, perhaps world-weary, humour an admirable sauce to conversation; Adela Ferrars detected kindness in him; his gallant deference pleased Lady Semingham. They were all grieved when the cold winds laid hold of him, forced him to keep house often, and drove him to furs and a bath-chair, even when the sun shone most brightly. Although they liked him, they implored him to fly south. He would not move, finding pleasure in them, and held fast by an ever-increasing uneasy interest in Willie Ruston. Adela quarrelled with him heartily and energetically on this score. To risk health because anyone was interesting was absurd; to risk it on Ruston's account most preposterous. "I'd be ill to get away from him," she declared. The Baron was obstinate, fatalistic as to his health, infatuated in his folly; stay he would, while Ruston stayed. Yet what Ruston did, pleased him not; for the better part of the man – what led him to respond to kindness or affection, and abate something of his hardness where he met no resistance – seemed to be conspiring with his old domineering mood to lead him beyond all power of warning or recall.

A week had passed since Ruston paid his first visit to Mrs. Dennison in the cottage on the cliff. It was a bright morning. The Baron was feeling stronger; he had left his chair and walked with Adela to a seat. There they sat side by side, in the occasional talk and easy silences of established friendship. The Baron smoked his cigar; Adela looked idly at the sea; but suddenly the Baron began to speak.

"I had a talk with our friend, Lord Semingham, this morning," said he.

"About anything in particular?"

"I meant it to be, but he doesn't like talk that leads anywhere in particular."

"No, he doesn't," said Adela, with a slight smile.

The Baron sat silent for a moment, then he said,

"May I talk to you, Miss Ferrars?" and he looked at her inquiringly.

"Why, of course," she answered. "Is it about yourself, Baron? You're not worse, are you?"

He took no notice of her question, but pointed towards the cliff.

"What is happening up there?" he asked.

Adela started. She had not realised that he meant to talk on that subject.

He detected her shrinking and hastened to defend himself.

"Or are we to say nothing?" he asked. "Nothing? When we all see! Don't you see? Doesn't Miss Valentine see? Is she so sad for nothing? Oh, don't shake your head. And the other – this Mrs. Dennison? Am I to go on?"

"No," said Adela sharply; and added, a moment later, "I know."

"And what does he mean?"

"He?" cried Adela. "Oh, he's not human."

"Nay, but he's terribly human," said the old Baron.

Adela looked round at him, but then turned away.

"I know what I would say, but I may not say it," pursued the Baron. "To you I may not say it. I know him. He will take, if he is offered."

His voice sank to a whisper.

"Then God help her," murmured Adela under her breath, while her cheeks flamed red.

"Yes, he will take, and he will go. Ah, he is a man to follow and to believe in – to trust your money, your fortune, your plans, even your secrets to; but – "

He paused, flinging away his extinct cigar.

"Well?" asked Adela in a low tone, eager in spite of her hatred of the topic.

"Never your love," said he; and added, "yet I believe I, who am old enough to know better, and too old to learn better, have almost given him mine. Well, I am not a woman."

"He can't hurt you," said Adela.

"Yes, he can," said the Baron with a dreary smile.

Adela was not thinking of her companion.

"Why do you talk of it?" she asked impatiently.