The village school was near the church, and while Peters steered the car carefully through groups of children who were loitering in the road she sat silent beside him, wondering, in miserable self-condemnation, how much she had betrayed during those few moments of hysterical outburst. Resolutely she determined that she would be strong, strong enough to put away the dread that haunted her, strong enough to meet trouble only when it came.
Clear of the children and running smoothly through the park Peters condescended to break the silence.
“How went Scotland?” he asked, slowing down behind a frightened fawn who was straying on the carriage road and cantering ahead of the car in panicky haste. “Your letters were not satisfactory.”
“I wasn’t taught to write letters. I never had any to write,” she said with a smile that made the sensitive man beside her wince. “I did my best, David, dear. And there wasn’t much to tell. There were only men—Barry said he couldn’t stand women with the guns again after the bother they were last year. They were nice men, shy silent creatures, big game hunters mostly, and two doctors who have been doing research work in Central Africa. When any of them could be induced to talk of their experiences it was a revelation to me of what men will endure and yet consider enjoyment. You would have liked them, David. Why didn’t you come? It would have done you more good than that horrid little yacht. And we were alone the last two weeks—we missed you,” she added reproachfully.
Peters had had his own reasons for absenting himself from the Scotch lodge, reasons that, connected as they were with Craven and his wife, he could not enlarge upon. He turned the question with a laugh.
“The yacht was better suited to a crusty old bachelor, my dear,” he smiled. Then he gave her a searching glance. “And what did you do all day long by yourself while the men were on the hills?”
She gave a little shrug.
“I sketched—and—oh, lots of things,” she answered, rather vaguely. “There’s always plenty to do wherever you are if you take the trouble to look for it.”
“Which most people don’t,” he replied, bringing the car to a standstill before the front door.
“Is Barry back from London?”
“Coming this afternoon. Thanks for the lift, David, you’ve been a Good Samaritan this afternoon. I don’t think I could have walked. Goodbye—and please forget,” she whispered.
He smile reassuringly and waved his hand as he restarted the car.
Calling to Mouston, who was rolling happily on the cool grass, she went slowly into the house. With the poodle rushing round her she mounted thoughtfully the wide stairs and turned down the corridor leading to the studio. It seemed of all rooms the one best suited to her mood. She wanted to be alone, beyond the reach of any chance caller, beyond the possibility of interruption, and it was understood by all that in the studio she must not be disturbed.
In the passage she met her maid and, giving her her hat and gloves, ordered tea to be sent to her.
Mouston trotted on ahead into the room with the confident air of a proprietor, fussily inspecting the contents with the usual canine interest as if suspicious that some familiar article of furniture had been removed during his absence and anxious to reassure himself that all things were as he had left them. Then he curled up with a satisfied grunt on the chesterfield beside which he knew tea would be placed. Gillian looked about her with a sigh. The room, much as she loved it, had never been the same to her since that December afternoon that seemed so much longer than a bare eighteen months ago. The peace it had given formerly was gone. Now there was associated with it always the memory of bitter pain. She had never been able to recapture the old feeling of freedom and happiness it had inspired. It was her refuge still, where she came to wrestle with herself in solitude, where she sought forgetfulness in long hours of work but it was no longer the antechamber to a castle of dreams. There were no dreams left, only a crushing numbling reality. She thought of her husband, and the question that was always in her mind seemed to-day more than ever insistent. Why had he married her? The reason he had given had been disproved by his subsequent attitude. He had asked her to take pity on a lonely man—and he had given her no opportunity. She had tried by every means in her power to get nearer to him, to be to him what she thought he meant her to be and all her endeavour had come to nothing. Had she tried enough, done enough? Miserably she wondered would another have succeeded where she had failed? And had she failed because, after all, the reason he had given was no true reason? And suddenly, for the first time, in a vivid flash of illuminating comprehension she seemed to realise the true reason and the quixotic generosity that had prompted it. It was as if a veil had been rudely torn from before her eyes. It explained much, letting in an entirely new light upon many things that had puzzled her. It placed her in a new position, changing her whole mental standpoint. How could she have been so stupidly blind, so dense—how could she have misunderstood? He had lied to her, a kindly noble lie, but a lie notwithstanding—he had married her out of pity, to provide for her in the lack of faith he had in her power to provide for herself. To him, then, her dreams of independence had been only a childish ambition that he judged unsubstantial, and in his dilemma he had conceived it his duty to do what seemed to her now a thing intolerable. A burning wave of shame went through her. She was humiliated to the very dust, crushed with the sense of obligation. She was only another burden thrust upon him by a man who had had no claim to his liberality. Her father—the superman of her childish dreams! How had he dared? If love for him had not died years before it would have died at that moment in the fierce resentment that burned in her. But to the man who had so willingly accepted such an imposition her heart went out in greater love and deeper gratitude than she had yet known.
Yet, how, with this new knowledge searing her soul, could she ever face him again? She longed to creep away and hide like a stricken animal—and he was coming home to-day. Within a few hours she would have to meet him, conscious at last of the full extent of her indebtedness and conscious also of the impossibility of communicating her discovery. For she knew that she could never bring herself to refer to it, and she knew him well enough to be aware that any such reference was out of the question. The gulf between them was too wide. The two days she had spent alone at the Towers had seemed interminable, but with a revulsion of feeling she wished now that his coming could be delayed. She shrank from even the thought of seeing him. Though she called herself coward she determined to postpone the meeting she dreaded until dinner, when the presence of Forbes and a couple of footmen would brace her to meet the situation and give her time to prepare for the later more difficult hours when she would be alone with him. For he made a practice, rigidly adhered to, of sitting with her in the evenings during the short time she remained downstairs. He was punctilious in that courtesy as in all other acts of consideration. His own bed-hour was very much later and she often wondered what he did, what were his thoughts, alone in the solitary study that was his refuge as the studio was hers.
But she had come almost to fear the evening hours they spent together, the feeling of constraint was becoming more and more an embarrassment. The last two weeks in Scotland had been more difficult than any preceding them. Craven’s restlessness had been more apparent, more pronounced. And looking back on it now she wondered whether it was association with the men with whom he had travelled and shot in distant countries that was stirring in him more acutely the wander-hunger that was in his blood. During the after dinner reminiscences in the Scotch shooting lodge he had himself been curiously silent, but he had sat listening with a kind of fierce intentness that to her anxious watching eyes had been like the forced calm of a caged animal enduring captivity with seeming resignation but cherishing always thoughts of escape.