XXIX
NONA, that night, in her mother's door-way, wavered a moment and then turned back.
"Well, then—goodnight, mother."
"Goodnight, child."
But Mrs. Manford seemed to waver too. She stood there in her rich dusky draperies, and absently lifted a hand to detach one after the other of her long earrings. It was one of Mrs. Manford's rules never to keep up her maid to undress her.
"Can I unfasten you, mother?"
"Thanks, dear, no; this teagown slips off so easily. You must be tired. . ."
"No; I'm not tired. But you. . ."
"I'm not either." They stood irresolute on the threshold of the warm shadowy room lit only by a waning sparkle from the hearth. Pauline switched on the lamps.
"Come in then, dear." Her strained smile relaxed, and she laid a hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Well, it's over," she said, in the weary yet satisfied tone in which Nona had sometimes heard her pronounce the epitaph of a difficult but successful dinner.
Nona followed her, and Pauline sank down in an armchair near the fire. In the shaded lamplight, with the glint of the fire playing across her face, and her small head erect on still comely shoulders, she had a sweet dignity of aspect which moved her daughter incongruously.
"I'm so thankful you've never bobbed your hair, mother."
Mrs. Manford stared at this irrelevancy; her stare seemed to say that she was resigned to her daughter's verbal leaps, but had long since renounced the attempt to keep up with them.
"You're so handsome just as you are," Nona continued. "I can understand dear old Exhibit's being upset when he saw you here, in the same surroundings, and looking, after all, so much as you must have in his day. . . And when he himself is so changed. . ."
Pauline lowered her lids over the vision. "Yes. Poor Arthur!" Had she ever, for the last fifteen years, pronounced her former husband's name without adding that depreciatory epithet? Somehow pity—an indulgent pity—was always the final feeling he evoked. She leaned back against the cushions, and added: "It was certainly unfortunate, his taking it into his head to come out here. I didn't suppose he would have remembered so clearly how everything looked. . . The Sargent of Jim on the pony. . . Do you think he minded?"
"Its having been moved to father's room? Yes; I think he did."
"But, Nona, he's always been so grateful to your father for what he's done for Jim—and for Lita. He admires your father. He's often told me so."
"Yes."
"At any rate, once he was here, I couldn't do less than ask him to stay to dine."
"No; you couldn't. Especially as there was no train back till after dinner."
"And, after all, I don't, to this minute, know what he came for!"
Nona lifted her eyes from an absorbed contemplation of the fire. "You don't?"
"Oh, of course, in a vague way, to talk about Jim and Lita. The same old things we've heard so many times. But I quieted him very soon about that. I told him Lita had been perfectly happy here—that the experiment had been a complete success. He seemed surprised that she had given up all her notions about Hollywood and Klawhammer . . . apparently Amalasuntha has been talking a lot of nonsense to him . . . but when I said that Lita had never once spoken of Hollywood, and that she was going home the day after tomorrow to join her husband, it seemed to tranquillize him completely. Didn't he seem to you much quieter when he drove off?"
"Yes; he was certainly quieter. But he seemed to want particularly to see Lita."
Pauline drew a quick breath. "Yes. On the whole I was glad she wasn't here. Lita has never known how to manage Arthur, and her manner is sometimes so irritating. She might have said something that would have upset him again. It was really a relief when your father telephoned that they had decided to dine at Greystock—though I could see that Arthur thought that funny too. His ideas have never progressed an inch; he's always remained as old-fashioned as his mother." She paused a moment, and then went on: "I saw you were a little startled when I asked him if he wouldn't like to spend the night. But I didn't want to appear inhospitable."
"No; not in this house," Nona agreed with her quick smile. "And of course one knew he wouldn't—"
Pauline sighed. "Poor Arthur! He's always so punctilious."
"It wasn't only that. He was suffering horribly."
"About Lita? So foolish! As if he couldn't trust her to us—"
"Not only about Lita. But just from the fact of being here—of having all his old life thrust back on him. He seemed utterly unprepared for it—as if he'd really succeeded in not thinking about it at all for years. And suddenly there it was: like the drowning man's vision. A drowning man—that's what he was like."
Pauline straightened herself slightly, and Nona saw her brows gather in a faint frown. "What dreadful ideas you have! I thought I'd never seen him looking better; and certainly he didn't take too much wine at dinner."
"No; he was careful about that."
"And I was careful too. I managed to give a hint to Powder." Her frown relaxed, and she leaned back with another sigh, this time of appeasement. After all, her look seemed to say, she was not going to let herself be unsettled by Nona's mortuary images, now that the whole business was over, and she had every reason to congratulate herself on her own share in it.
Nona (but it was her habit!) appeared less sure. She hung back a moment, and then said: "I haven't told you yet. On the way down to dinner. . ."
"What, dear?"
"I met him on the upper landing. He asked to see the baby . . . that was natural. . ."
Pauline drew her lips in nervously. She had thought she had all the wires in her hands; and here was one— She agreed with an effort: "Perfectly natural"
"The baby was asleep, looking red and jolly. He stood over the crib a long time. Luckily it wasn't the old nursery.
"Really, Nona! He could hardly expect—"
"No; of course not. Then, just as we were going downstairs, he said: 'Funny, how like Jim the child is growing. Reminds me of that old portrait.' And he jerked out at me: 'Could I see it?' "
"What—the Sargent?"
Nona nodded. "Could I refuse him?"
"I suppose that was natural too."
"So I took him into father's study. He seemed to remember every step of the way. He stood and looked and looked at the picture. He didn't say anything . . . didn't answer when I spoke. . . I saw that it went through and through him."
"Well, Nona, byegones are byegones. But people do bring things upon themselves, sometimes—"
"Oh, I know, mother."
"Some people might think it peculiar, his rambling about the house like that—his coming here at all, with his ideas of delicacy! But I don't blame him; and I don't want you to," Pauline continued firmly. "After all, it's just as well he came. He may have been a little upset at the moment; but I managed to calm him down; and I certainly proved to him that everything's all right, and that Dexter and I can be trusted to know what's best for Lita." She paused, and then added: "Do you know, I'm rather inclined not to mention his visit to your father—or to Lita. Now it's over, why should they be bothered?"
"No reason at all." Nona rose from her crouching attitude by the fire, and stretched her arms above her head. "I'll see that Powder doesn't say anything. And besides, he wouldn't. He always seems to know what needs explaining and what doesn't. He ought to be kept to avert cataclysms, like those fire-extinguishers in the passages. . . Goodnight, mother—I'm beginning to be sleepy."
Yes; it was all over and done with; and Pauline felt that she had a right to congratulate herself. She had not told Nona how "difficult" Wyant had been for the first few minutes, when the girl had slipped out of the library after tea and left them alone. What was the use of going into all that? Pauline had been a little nervous at first—worried, for instance, as to what might happen if Dexter and Lita should walk in while Arthur was in that queer excited state, stamping up and down the library floor, and muttering, half to himself and half to her: "Damn it, am I in my own house or another man's? Can anybody answer me that?"
But they had not walked in, and the phase of excitability had soon been over. Pauline had only had to answer: "You're in my house, Arthur, where, as Jim's father, you're always welcome. . ." That had put a stop to his ravings, shamed him a little, and so brought him back to his sense of what was due to the occasion, and to his own dignity.
"My dear—you must excuse me. I'm only an intruder here, I know—"
And when she had added: "Never in my house, Arthur. Sit down, please, and tell me what you want to see me about—" why, at that question, quietly and reasonably put, all his bluster had dropped, and he had sat down as she bade him, and begun, in his ordinary tone, to rehearse the old rigmarole about Jim and Lita, and Jim's supineness, and Lita's philanderings, and what would the end of it be, and did she realize that the woman was making a laughing-stock of their son—yes, that they were talking about it at the clubs?
After that she had had no trouble. It had been easy to throw a little gentle ridicule over his apprehensions, and then to reassure him by her report of her own talk with Lita (though she winced even now at its conclusion), and the affirmation that the Cedarledge experiment had been entirely successful. Then, luckily, just as his questions began to be pressing again as he began to hint at some particular man, she didn't know who—Powder had come in to show him up to one of the spare-rooms to prepare for dinner; and soon after dinner the motor was at the door, and Powder (again acting for Providence) had ventured to suggest, sir, that in view of the slippery state of the roads it would be well to get off as promptly as possible. And Nona had taken over the seeing-off, and with a long sigh of relief Pauline had turned back into the library, where Wyant's empty whisky-and-soda glass and ash-tray stood, so uncannily, on the table by her husband's armchair. Yes; she had been thankful when it was over. . .
And now she was thankful that it had happened. The encounter had fortified her confidence in her own methods and given her a new proof of her power to surmount obstacles by smiling them away. She had literally smiled Arthur out of the house, when some women, in a similar emergency, would have made a scene, or stood on their dignity. Dignity! Hers consisted, more than ever, in believing the best of every one, in persuading herself and others that to impute evil was to create it, and to disbelieve it was to prevent its coming into being. Those were the Scientific Initiate's very words: "We manufacture sorrow as we do all the other toxins." How grateful she was to him for that formula! And how light and happy it made her feel to know that she had borne it in mind, and proved its truth, at so crucial a moment! She looked back with pity at her own past moods of distrust, her wretched impulses of jealousy and suspicion, the moments when even those nearest her had not been proof against her morbid apprehensions. . .
How absurd and far away it all seemed now! Jim was coming back the day after tomorrow. Lita and the baby were going home to him. And the day after that they would all be going back to town; and then the last touches would be put to the ceremonial of the Cardinal's reception. Oh, she and Powder would have their hands full! All of the big silver-gilt service would have to be got out of the safety vaults and gone over. . . Luckily the last reports of Mrs. Bruss's state were favourable, and no doubt Maisie would be back as usual. . . Yes, life was really falling into its usual busy and pleasurable routine. Rest in the country was all very well; but rest, if overdone, became fatiguing. . .
She found herself in bed, the lights turned off, and sleep descending on her softly.
Before it held her, she caught, through misty distances, the sound of her husband's footfall, the opening and shutting of his door, and the muffled noises of his undressing. Well. . . so he was back . . . and Lita . . . silly Lita . . . no harm, really. . . Just as well they hadn't met poor Arthur. . . Everything was all right . . . the Cardinal. . .