The visit prolonged itself from a week to a fortnight. Estelle did not sleep the night before Lionel went. She tossed feverishly to and fro, planning their parting. Surely he would not leave her without a word? Surely there must be some touch of sentiment to this separation, horrible and inevitable, that lay before them?
She remembered afterwards that as she lay in the dark and foresaw her loneliness she wondered if she wouldn’t after all risk the Indian frontier to be near him? She was subsequently glad she had decided that she wouldn’t.
It was a very wet morning, and Lionel was to leave before lunch. Winn went as usual into his study to play with his eternal experiments in leather. Lionel went with him. She heard the two men laughing together down the passage. Could real friends have laughed if they had minded parting with each other?
She sat at her desk in the drawing-room biting nervously at her pen. He was going; was it possible that there would be no farewell?
Just some terrible flat hand-shake at the door under Winn’s penetrating eyes.
But after a time she heard steps returning. Lionel came by himself.
“Are you busy?” he asked. “Shall I bother you if we talk a little?”
“No,” she said softly. “I hoped you would come back.”
Lionel did not answer for a moment. For the first time in their acquaintance he was really a little stirred. He moved about the room restlessly, he wouldn’t sit down, though half unconsciously she had put her hand on the chair beside her.
“Do you know,” he said at last, “I’ve got something to say to you, and I’m awfully afraid it may annoy you.”
Was it really coming, the place at which he would have to be stopped, after all her fruitless endeavors to get him to move in any direction at all? It looked like it; he was very obviously embarrassed and flushed; he did not even try to meet her eyes.
“The fact is,” he went on, “I simply can’t go without saying it, and you’ve been so awfully good to me – you’ve let me feel we’re friends.” He paused, and Estelle leaned forward, her eyes melting with encouragement.
“I am so glad you feel like that, Lionel,” she murmured. “Do please say anything – anything you like. I shall always understand and forgive, if it is necessary for me to forgive.”
“You’re awfully generous,” he said gratefully. She smiled, and put out her hand again toward the chair. This time he sat down in it, but he turned it to face her.
He was a big man and he seemed to fill the room in which they sat. His blue-gray eyes fixed themselves on hers intently, his whole being seemed absorbed in what he was about to say.
“You see,” he began, “I think you may be making a big mistake. Naturally Winn’s awfully fond of you and all that and you’ve just started life, and you like to live in your own country, surrounded by jolly little things, and perhaps India seems frightening and far away.” Estelle shrank back a little; he put his hand on the back of her chair soothingly. “Of course it must be hard,” he said. “Only I want to explain it to you. Winn’s heart is yours, I know, but it’s in his work, too, as a man’s must be, and his work’s out there; it’s not here at all.
“When I came here and looked about me, and saw the house and the garden and the country, where we’ve had such jolly walks and talks – it all seemed temporary somehow, made up – not quite natural, I can’t explain what I mean but not a bit like Winn. I needn’t tell you what he is, I dare say you think it’s cheek of me to talk about him at all, I can quite understand it if you do, only perhaps there’s a side of him I’ve seen more of, and which makes me want to say what I know he isn’t – what I don’t think even love can make him be – he isn’t tame!”
He stopped abruptly; Estelle’s eyes had hardened and grown very cold.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Has he complained of my keeping him here?”
Lionel pushed back his chair.
“Ah, Mrs. Winn! Mrs. Winn!” he exclaimed half laughingly, and half reproachfully; “you know he wouldn’t complain. He only told me that he wasn’t coming back just yet, and I – well, I thought I saw why he wasn’t.”
“Then,” she said, turning careful eyes away from him, “if he hasn’t complained, I hardly see why you should attack me like this. I suppose you think I am as unnatural and – and temporary as our surroundings?”
Lionel stood up and looked down at her in a puzzled way.
“Oh, I say, you know,” he ventured, “you’re not playing very fair, are you? Of course I’m not attacking you. I thought we were friends, and I wanted to help you.”
“Friends!” she said. Her voice broke suddenly into a hard little laugh. “Well, what else have you to suggest to me about my husband – out of your friendship for me?”
“You’re not forgiving me,” he reminded her gently, not dreaming what it was she had been prepared to forgive. “But perhaps I’d better go on and get it all out while I’m about it. You know it isn’t only that I think he won’t care for staying on here, but I think it’s a bit of a risk. I don’t want to frighten you, but after a man’s had black water fever twice, he’s apt to be a little groggy, especially about the lungs. England isn’t honestly a very good winter place for him for a year or two – ”
Estelle flung up her head.
“If he was going to be an invalid,” she said, “he oughtn’t to have married me!”
The silence that followed her speech crept into every corner of the room. Lionel did not look puzzled any more. He stood up very straight and stiff; only his eyes changed. He could not look at her; they were filled with contempt. He gave her a moment or two to disavow her words; he would have given his right hand to hear her do it.
“I beg your pardon,” he said at last. “I have overstated the case if you imagine your husband is an invalid. I think, if you don’t mind,” he added, “I’ll see if my things are ready.”
“Please do,” she said, groping in her mind for something left to hurt him with. “And another time perhaps you will know better than to say for my husband what he is perfectly competent to say for himself.”
“You are quite right,” Lionel said quietly; “another time I shall know better.” The rain against the windows sounded again; she had not heard it before.
He did not come back to say good-by. She heard him talking to Winn in the hall, the dogcart drove up, and then she saw him for the last time, his fine, clear-cut profile, his cap dragged over his forehead, his eyes hard, as they were when he had looked at her. He must have known she stood there at the window watching, but he never looked back. She had expected a terrible parting, but never a parting as terrible as this. Mercifully she had kept her head; it was all she had kept.
CHAPTER VII
It was shortly after Lionel’s departure that Estelle realized there was nothing between her and the Indian frontier except the drawing-room sofa. She fixed herself as firmly on this shelter as a limpet takes hold upon a rock. People were extremely kind and sympathetic, and Winn himself turned over a new leaf. He was gentle and considerate to her, and offered to read aloud to her in the evenings.
Nothing shook her out of this condition. The baby arrived, unavailingly as an incentive to health, and not at all the kind of baby Estelle had pictured. He was almost from his first moments a thorough Staines. He was never very kissable, and was anxious as soon as possible to get on to his own feet. At eight months he crawled rapidly across the carpet with a large musical-box suspended from his mouth by its handle; at ten he could walk. He tore all his lawn frocks on Winn’s spurs, screamed with joy at his father’s footsteps, and always preferred knees to laps.