The Lonely Lady of Dulwich Read online

  “I thought you had gone to the races,” she said.

  “I’m far too busy,” he said. “I have roughed out a story, but what I want is the personal touch, and that’s just what I can’t get.”

  Zita laughed a little sadly.

  “I could supply that,” she said, at last.

  “You?”

  “Yes. I was connected with an odd episode in the life of Jean de Bosis, a long time ago, more than ten years.”

  “Could I use it? Could it be published?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Not even in America?”

  “Just imagine what Robert would feel!”

  “He needn’t see it.”

  “He might, and then…”

  “It’s a pity, because I suppose it’s interesting?”

  “It is, or was, interesting to me.”

  “Is it a love story?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you had better not tell me. It’s too rough. It would have made my whole career.”

  “Would it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I will tell it you.”

  “Don’t; if you tell it me I shall use it; I shan’t be able to flog myself off it.”

  “Well, you can use it; I don’t care; I will risk it,” she said triumphantly.

  The opportunity had come to her at last to make just such a sacrifice as she was longing to make – the supreme sacrifice. Yes, she would face all the consequences, even if it meant leaving Robert. It would prove to Walter how much she loved him.

  “I am very fond of you, Walter,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  “And I am very fond of you,” he said, reverently.

  “Are you?” she asked, not really understanding the quality of his intonation.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He meant it, but he meant a different fondness from hers. She loved him with passion. He had put her on a pedestal, to worship in a way, but he had never thought of loving her as she dreamt of being loved. She seemed to him quite outside the range of all that.

  “Yes,” she said, hesitatingly, “I am fond of you. I will prove it you by giving you this story, and you can do what you like with it. After all, you can leave out the names – my name.”

  And then she began to tell him the story of what had happened long ago in Paris; the story of her early life, of her marriage, her life at Wallington; how she and Robert went to Paris, and how Bertrand had painted her picture, and how she had met Jean de Bosis.

  “I was young, and very lovely in those days,” she said.

  “They say you are still better looking now,” said Walter.

  Zita knew she was still beautiful, but she knew there was no longer the bloom of youth about her. It had gone for ever. She smiled, and went on.

  She told him how she had settled to run away with Jean de Bosis, and how at the last minute she had been unable to.

  “I suppose the real reason was I didn’t love him. I didn’t know then what real love meant; I never knew that till much later.”

  “And he – was he sore?” asked Walter.

  “Yes, he was unhappy and then ill; he nearly died.”

  “And when did you meet again?”

  “Ten years later; the year I first met you here.”

  “And he loved you still?”

  “He said he did.”

  “And you?”

  “It was like a dream to me; I was glad to see him, but I couldn’t begin that again, and then…”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, something happened. I became different; I woke up.”

  “It’s a wonderful story,” said Walter. “I can make something big out of it.”

  “Do you think you can?” she said, feeling an exaltedly secret and fearful joy.

  “Sure,” he said, “it will make my whole career. There’s not a soul who knows it, either?”

  “Not a soul. Amelia once had an inkling that something of the sort might happen, but she never knew.”

  “I must get busy,” said Walter, and he went up to his room, leaving Zita by herself.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon alone, till the others came back from the races in time to drink their afternoon glass of water. Zita felt rather like one who has been walking in her sleep and is half aware of having done something tremendous, but does not know what it is.

  CHAPTER XII

  At dinner that night Walter Price announced that he would have to leave Haréville the next morning. He had received orders to go to Paris immediately. The Legges were going to the play, as usual, and Harmer and Mrs Ryland spoke of a mild game of petits chevaux. Zita said she was tired. And as the party got up to separate, after drinking their coffee on the veranda outside the hotel, Zita said to Walter:

  “I shall be in my sitting-room if you have time to come and have a little talk before you go.”

  “I think I’d better say goodbye now,” he said. “I shan’t be able to get to bed as it is; I shan’t be through with my writing till the morning. I’ve got the whale of a story on hand,” he said, witha glance of gratitude to Zita, “so I’ll say goodbye now, Mrs Harmer, and I hope you and Mr Harmer will have a lovely time, and I do thank you from my heart for your great kindness.” As he said this he advanced to Mr Harmer, who was just a little bit ahead. Then coming back a step he said, “Goodbye, Mrs Harmer,” and he added in a lower tone, “you have done more for me than you know. We shall meet in London in the autumn.”

  “Yes,” said Harmer, “and you must come to Wallington and shoot some partridges.”

  “Sure,” said Price, gaily. “I must say goodbye to Mrs Legge and Mrs Rylands; I shan’t see them in the morning.” And he left Zita and Harmer, and caught up Mrs Rylands and the Legges, who had gone on ahead, and said goodbye to them.

  Zita went up to her room and waited. She still hoped that Walter Price had spoken as he had done for the benefit of the public, and that he still meant to come and bid her a more private and more intimate goodbye, even if it was only one word. She waited up till eleven, but he never came, and soon after that her husband came in and she went to bed.

  She did not see Walter Price again, and when she came down in the morning she was told that he had gone by the earliest train.

  The Harmers stayed only another ten days at Haréville, and a week at Gérardmer, and then they went to Wallington.

  The day after they arrived, a lovely August day, when the garden was shimmering with heat and there was a pleasant noise of mowing-machines on the lawn, Zita came down early to breakfast, which was at nine, and found awaiting her a letter which she saw at once was in Walter Price’s handwriting. She was glad that Robert was not yet down. She opened it. It was a long letter. This is what she read:

  Club, London.

  Adorable “Queen Guinevere.”

  (This name was a joke between them. Walter Price had christened her Queen Guinevere because one day she had said to him: “Robert’s name is Arthur as well as Robert, but he can’t bear the name, and he can’t bear being called Arthur, even in fun,” and Walter had said: “That’s because he doesn’t want you to be Guinevere.”)

  I have not had a moment to write since I left Haréville. Things have been humming and a rare lot has happened. I owe all to you. I reckon you know all I have felt for you, although men are pretty dumb when it comes to saying anything they mean or feel, but God, fortunately, made women cute enough to make things square. I’m not much good at saying things, things that I really feel, but I suppose you must have some hunch of what I have always felt for you. I have always, ever since the first moment I saw you, put you above everyone and everything else I have known or seen in the world. You have for me always made the rest of the world look like thirty cents, as the Americans say. You have been my good genius, my guardian angel, and have even replaced in my heart and in my life the place that my sainted mother once held, and might have held still had she not been cut away untimely by a cruel disease.

  You crown
ed all you did for me by giving me that story the other day at Haréville. I worked it up, and gave all my heart to it. Of course I handled the story with the greatest reverence and reserve, and was careful not only not to mention your name, but not to say anything which would betray you to the most cute, nor offendthe most sensitive. I pride myself that it is all in good taste. Well, the USA Editor – A L Scarp – ate it, and on the strength of it I have got a permanent post on the “Illustrated Weekly Moon,” the largest illustrated paper in the States, and the best-selling paper. Thanks to this I am now able to realize what up to now has been but a shadowy dream and a teasing mirage. I have for over two years been engaged secretly to Sylvia Luke, the daughter of Cuthbert Luke, the great genre painter. She is one in a thousand; a jewel of the first water. I need not describe her, as you may have seen her pictures in the shop windows. We have loved each other long, but marriage seemed up to now an impossible dream. To make things easier, Sylvia went on the stage and earned a pittance by playing small parts on tour in vaudeville. She got some good notices, and folks liked her, but the competition was too great, and her father thought she would do better on the concert stage than on the stage, and lately she has been singing at concerts in the provinces with success – she does imitations. But that is all over now. She need no more work for her living. I have enough for both, and besides a handsome salary, one of the swellest positions in the modern Press. And this is thanks to you, Queen Guinevere – great, generous and noble Fairy Godmother. How we both bless you! Sylvia is longing to know you. I have told her so much about you and talked of you so often that she feels she already knows you intimately. We are to be married at the beginning of September, and in a fortnight’s time we sail for the States. We shall live there, but I shall come over to England every summer when things are quiet over there, and I shall not forget the old country, nor Wallington. What more can I say, except that we are grateful to the Fairy Queen who, with a touch of her golden wand, has changed the world for two lovesick mortals? Please give my kindest regards to Mr Harmer.

  Zita read the letter twice. As in a blurred dream, certain odd sights seemed to rise obstinately before her: the first was a small party at Cuthbert Luke’s house in St John’s Wood. Itwas an elaborate house – a house furnished as with stage properties. There were a great many palms and brass warming-pans, and some of the rooms were so low you could hardly stand up in them. It was, she remembered, a musical party that night: Robert had refused to go, and she had been by herself. Luke had welcomed the guests in his velvet jacket, and pointed out what he was exhibiting at the Academy – a picture called After Long Years, and another called The Patrician’s Daughter. The painter’s technique was admirable.

  A pianist had played Hungarian dances; a violinist had played Simple Aveu ; a tenor had sung ‘I’ll sing thee songs of Araby’; and ‘Maid of Athens’, and, finally, the daughter of the house had stepped on to the platform. There was no pressing, because she regarded herself as a professional. She was overwhelmingly blond – what would now be called a ‘platinum blonde’, but the word had not then been invented. She had light grey eyes and a dazzling row of teeth. She did a few imitations – some with music, some without – of Letty Lind, Florence St John, Marie Lloyd, Violet Cameron, Arthur Roberts, and Ellen Terry. She caught and reproduced the accent of the stage and the mannerism of the originals exactly, but there was not a spark of fancy or of humour in her impersonations.

  And then Zita remembered walking down the Burlington Arcade one day and seeing in a shop window a photograph of the same dazzling blonde with flashing teeth, and under it was printed: ‘Miss Sylvia Luke’. This was rare in those days, unless the sitter was an actress or a singer of note, and Sylvia Luke as an artiste was unknown to the public; but she was known as a beauty, well-known enough to have her name printed on the photographs that were for sale in the Burlington Arcade.

  The third snapshot that floated across Zita’s memory was one day at Brighton; she was shopping, and looking at the window of a second-hand jeweller’s shop full of pretty silver and quaint ornaments, when she caught sight of Sylvia Luke and her father, who were looking at the same shop window.

  She only heard Sylvia say two words before she and her father walked on. They were:

  “They’re false.” And in these two words she managed to instil the maximum of contempt with the minimum of refinement.

  Then one day, when Wilfrid Sutton was having tea with her, and the subject of Cuthbert Luke’s pictures happened to crop up, Zita asked Wilfrid whether he knew Sylvia Luke, as he knew most people in the theatrical and Bohemian world.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “she’s a good girl. Good-hearted and respectable; no use on the stage. She can’t act for nuts, and she can’t sing. She has a gift of mimicry, and she can reproduce the sound of some people’s voices exactly, but she isn’t funny, and she has no sense of humour, so she can’t make it amusing, and it ends by being rather a bore; but she’s good-looking and a good sort, and she’s greatly admired and liked. Lots of people have wanted to marry her.”

  That conversation had taken place a year ago, and now…

  She walked to the sideboard and she noticed that in Robert’s place there was a large roll that might contain an illustrated newspaper.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she thought, ‘that contains Sylvia Luke’s picture.’ And she helped herself to eggs and bacon. Robert was late; so late that she rang the bell and asked whether he was not yet up.

  The butler said that he had had breakfast early, and had gone out riding; he would be back presently. Zita finished breakfast; looked at a newspaper; saw the cook; ordered dinner, that is to say, checked the bill of fare that had already been glanced atby Robert; answered some letters and walked into the garden as far as the gardener’s house, which was at the end of the kitchen-garden. She wanted to see the gardener. She found him and discussed one or two matters, cut some flowers for the house, and then strolled back to the house.

  ‘What a lovely day,’ she said to herself, ‘even Wallington is beautiful today.’

  When she got back to the house she was met by Clark, the butler, who had been with them ever since they were married. Mr Harmer had been obliged to go suddenly to London, he said. He had gone by the ten forty-five. He wanted her to follow by the five o’clock train. He had ordered the carriage, and her things were being packed. The caretaker had been informed by telegraph.

  “Did he tell the kitchen-maid to go?” Zita asked.

  “Yes, madam. He said that she was to go tomorrow.”

  “Didn’t he leave a letter or a message for me?”

  Clarke shook his head, and said “No” – sadly, thought Zita. A curious feeling as of a nightmare began to creep over her.

  “Mr Harmer said he would explain everything in London; he had only just time to catch the train, and as it was he nearly missed it, so Charles (the coachman) said.”

  “Oh, that accounts for everything,” said Zita; but she thought it accounted for nothing.

  Before luncheon the second post arrived, and with it a large illustrated newspaper in a roll for her. ‘That’s just like the one which came for Robert this morning,’ Zita thought. She opened it, and her eye fell at once on an article called ‘The Life Romance of Jean de Bosis.’ There was the story, exactly asshe had told it to Walter, with every particle of emphasis, accentuation and vulgarity that headlines, captions, and all the artifices of publicity, as far as they went at that epoch, could give. The captions were terrible: ‘Lovely bride homesick in Parisian home’: ‘Thwarted poet meets his soul-mate’: ‘Famous painter throws starving souls together’: ‘Scared wife jibs at the last fence’.

  Zita read through the article from beginning to end. The whole story was there. Her name was not mentioned, but short of that everything was said, and her picture by Bertrand was produced as an example of his art – as though by accident. There was the story of her life, trumpeted to the world on the loudest of brass instruments, and blazoned in letters of limelight
.

  ‘Well, had she not foreseen this might, this must happen?’ Not quite like that; and then at that moment she had been prepared not to mind because she thought that Walter loved her, or might love her, but now…

  ‘Robert has seen this,’ she said to herself; ‘he will turn me out of the house.’

  She went into his study. In the fireplace there was a litter of envelopes which had been thrown away, and among other rubbish she saw the charred remains of the wrapper that had held the Illustrated Weekly Moon.

  Zita found that her maid had received instructions to pack and go to London with her. She arrived in London at seven o’clock and found the caretaker waiting for her.

  Mr Harmer, she said, was staying at the club; but dinner was ready. The caretaker had cooked a chicken and rice pudding. There was also a letter awaiting her that had been sent by hand. It was from the family solicitor, Mr Hanson, saying Mr Harmer wished him to see her the next morning at his office, and would she kindly call at Lincoln’s Inn at eleven o’clock.

  Zita arrived punctually at Mr Hanson’s office at eleven o’clock the next morning. Mr Hanson received her like a father and plunged gently into the matter, talking in a soothing diminuendo. He did not refer to the cause or the reason, the why or the wherefore; he just stated the fact that Mr Harmer had suggested a separation by mutual consent, and was willing to make his wife an adequate allowance. Mr Harmer hadno wish to divorce, and he supposed she would not wish it either. Would she be willing to agree to this arrangement? Oral consent was sufficient, but it was more usual to draw up a deed, and that was the course Mr Harmer preferred. If she was willing, all that she would have to do would be to sign the deed when it was drawn up. There were certain minor questions of detail as to chattels to settle.

  Zita said at once she was more than willing. Mr Hanson gave a sigh of relief. Mr Harmer was anxious for her to live in the London house until she should find a house that suited her. He had even arranged for a kitchen-maid to come up to London from Wallington to cook for her and to stay as long as should be necessary. He himself would be returning to Wallington as soon as the deed was signed.