He went out of the room and joined Wilding, who was just replacing the telephone on its cradle.
“The doctor is out, at a confinement, I understand.”
“I think,” said Llewellyn, choosing his words carefully, “that Maria knows what to do. She has, I think, seen Lady Wilding like this before.”
“Yes… yes… Perhaps you are right. She is very devoted to my wife.”
“I saw that.”
“Everybody loves her. She inspires love-love, and the wish to protect. All these people here have a great feeling for beauty, and especially for beauty in distress.”
“And yet they are, in their way, greater realists than the Anglo-Saxon will ever be.”
“Possibly.”
“They don’t shirk facts.”
“Do we?”
“Very often. That is a beautiful room of your wife’s. Do you know what struck me about it? There was no smell of perfume such as many women delight in. Instead, there was only the fragrance of lavender and eau-de-Cologne.”
Richard Wilding nodded.
“I know. I have come to associate lavender with Shirley. It brings back to me my days as a boy, the smell of lavender in my mother’s linen-cupboard. The fine white linen, and the little bags of lavender that she made and put there, clean, pure, all the freshness of spring. Simple country things.”
He sighed and looked up to see his guest regarding him with a look he could not understand.
“I must go,” said Llewellyn, holding out his hand.
CHAPTER seven
“So you still come here?”
Knox delayed his question until the waiter had gone away.
Lady Wilding was silent for a moment. To-night she was not staring out at the harbour. Instead she was looking down into her glass. It held a rich golden liquid.
“Orange juice,” she said.
“I see. A gesture.”
“Yes. It helps-to make a gesture.”
“Oh, undoubtedly.”
She said: “Did you tell him that you had seen me here?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It would have caused him pain. It would have caused you pain. And he didn’t ask me.”
“If he had asked you, would you have told him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the simpler one is over things, the better.”
She sighed.
“I wonder if you understand at all?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do see that I can’t hurt him? You do see how good he is? How he believes in me? How he thinks only of me?”
“Oh yes. I see all that. He wants to stand between you and all sorrow, all evil.”
“But that’s too much.”
“Yes, it’s too much.”
“One gets into things. And then, one can’t get out. One pretends-day after day one pretends. And then one gets tired, one wants to shout: ‘Stop loving me, stop looking after me, stop worrying about me, stop caring and watching.’ ” She clenched both hands. “I want to be happy with Richard. I want to! Why can’t I? Why must I sicken of it all?”
“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.”
“Yes, just that. It’s me. It’s my fault.”
“Why did you marry him?”
“Oh, that!” Her eyes widened. “That’s simple. I fell in love with him.”
“I see.”
“It was, I suppose, a kind of infatuation. He has great charm, and he’s sexually attractive. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“And he was romantically attractive too. A dear old man, who’s known me all my life, warned me. He said to me: ‘Have an affair with Richard, but don’t marry him.’ He was quite right. You see, I was very unhappy, and Richard came along. I-day-dreamed. Love and Richard and an island and moonlight. It helped, and it didn’t hurt anybody. Now I’ve got the dream-but I’m not the me I was in the dream. I’m only the me who dreamed it-and that’s no good.”
She looked across the table, straight into his eyes.
“Can I ever become the me of the dream? I’d like to.”
“Not if it was never the real you.”
“I could go away-but where? Not back into the past because that’s all gone, broken up. I’d have to start again; I don’t know how or where. And, anyway, I couldn’t hurt Richard. He’s already been hurt too much.”