CHAPTER X.

THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON.

IN this bright summer-time the gardens of the toy-villa were a paradise of roses. The lawns were dotted by great clumps and mounds of blossom; red and white damask and maiden’s-blush jostling one another in rich profusion. Tall standard-roses climbed skyward on iron rods, rustic baskets brimmed over with the precious flowers; and there were so many creeping tendrils entwining thin iron-work arches and airy colonnades, that the visitor who approached Mrs. Jerningham made his way to her presence beneath a gentle shower of perfumed petals.

Under the falling rose-petals went the editor of the _Areopagus_ one sultry morning. He had come from London by rail, and the dust of the journey was white upon his dark-blue coat. He looked a little wan and jaded in the searching July sunshine, a little the worse for late hours and perennial anxieties; and he sighed ever so faintly as a warm gust of summer wind flung a spray of blossom against his face.

The river lay before him, deeply blue under the cloudless sky; and on his left, half hidden amongst guelder-roses and the dark foliage of myrtle and magnolia, there was the villa, a fantastical edifice, in which the Tudor, the Moorish, the Italian, and the mediæval Norman forms of architecture had struggled for preeminence; a house which seemed all windows, and in which every window was of a different type--the house of all others to be dear to the heart of a woman.

The garden of roses, the river, and the fantastical villa made altogether a very charming picture--a picture which Mr. Desmond contemplated with a half-regretful sigh.

“Surely one ought to find happiness in such a place!” he said to himself.

He had entered by a little gate that was rarely locked; and he went across the lawn towards an open drawing-room window, with the air of a man who has no need of ceremonial announcement. Mrs. Jerningham came out of the window as he approached.

“Good morning, Mr. Desmond,” she said, as they shook hands. “Have you come by rail--on such a warm day too? That is very good of you. I think a noonday ride in a railway carriage at this time of year is a species of martyrdom. One thinks of the iron coffin and the Piombi at Venice, and that kind of thing.”

Mr. Desmond looked at the speaker, doubtfully. This was evidently not exactly the reception he was accustomed to receive from Mrs. Jerningham.

“If you are going to talk to me like a stage-widow, Emily, I had better go back to town,” said he, gravely.

“How should I talk to you? I see you so seldom now, that I lose the habit of adapting my conversation to your taste. I think stage-widows are very charming people. At any rate, they always find _something_ to say, and that is an important consideration.”

“I have been very much occupied lately.”

“It seems to me that you are always very much occupied. I saw your name, by the bye, amongst the names of the people at the breakfast at Pembury.”

“I was obliged to go to Pembury.”

“And you were at Marble Hill on Tuesday.”

“I had particular business with Lord Chorlton.”

“And you chose the occasion of an archery fête for your business.”

“I was glad to seize any opportunity. Chorlton is not easily to be got at.”

“Oh, please don’t speak of him as if he were a jockey,” exclaimed the lady, with an air of irrepressible irritation.

“What has happened to annoy you this morning, Mrs. Jerningham?”

“Nothing--this morning.”

“But something _has_ annoyed you.”

“Yes, I am tired of my life; that is all that ails me, Mr. Desmond. I am tired of my life. Of course you will tell me that it is very wicked to be tired of one’s life, and that there are people starving in those dreadful London alleys who would be very glad to come and live here, and stare at the river, and wonder whether the swans are tired of _their_ lives, as I do hour after hour in all the long, long days of the long, long summer. But, you see, that doesn’t make my case any better. I am very sorry for the poor people; and if it were not so impossible to imagine them in conjunction with amber-silk furniture, I am sure they would be very welcome to come here. I have made a feeble attempt to do some good in my neighbourhood; but I find that other people can do that kind of thing much better than I, and that my money is all that is really necessary. My life passes, and the time, which is so long as it crawls by, leaves no mark behind it. And then, when I look forward to the future, I see--a blank.”

Her tone and manner had become more serious as she went on. They had walked away from the house, and by this time were in a sheltered pathway that bordered the river.

“Yet the future may not be altogether blank, Emily,” answered Laurence. “There may come a time when----”

“Yes; I know what you mean. There may come a time when I shall be as free as you were before you met me in the hospital at Bundersbad. I sometimes fancy that, if you or I ever see that day, it will come too late. There are sacrifices which cost too much, and the sacrifice which you have made for me is one of them.”

“The greater sacrifice has been on your side,” said the editor, very gravely.

“I do not know that, Laurence. I sometimes think that your bondage must be harder to bear than mine. For nine years you have patiently endured all the complaints and caprices of a discontented woman, when you might have had a bright home, and a happy wife to bid you welcome in it, but for me.”

“The bright home and the happy wife may be mine yet, Emily.”

“If they ever are yours, they will come to you too late. A home is one of the blessings which must not be waited for. A man loses the habit of home-life. I have seen something of this, you know, in my father’s life. He did not marry till he was between forty and fifty; and when he married, he had lost the capability of being happy at home. It will be the same with you, Laurence, if you do not marry soon. The hard, worldly way of thinking, and the self-contained feelings of a bachelor, are growing stronger with you day by day, and even a wife whom you loved would hardly be able to make home agreeable to you. And this is all my fault, Laurence--my fault!”

“This is not fair, Emily,” said Mr. Desmond, almost sternly. “When I lament the restraints of my position, it will be time for you to reproach yourself on my account, and not till then. Pray let us be reasonable. When you and Harold Jerningham parted for ever, it was agreed between us that we should be friends, and friends only, so long as your husband’s life should last. He is so many years our senior, that it is not possible for us to ignore the fact that in all likelihood the day will come when you and I can be united by a sweeter tie than that of friendship. If there be a sin involved in looking forward to that day hopefully, but not impatiently--I have been guilty of that sin; but I have been guilty of no other wrong against the man who bears your name. God knows, and you know, that I have been true to our compact. I have been your friend, and nothing but your friend. No shadow of a lover’s caprice, no touch of a lover’s jealousy, has ever clouded our friendship. It has been the one bright oasis in the desert of an anxious and laborious life. And if you think that the treasure is unvalued by me because I do not spend three days a week in the delicious idleness of this garden, or because I do not waste all my evenings in your drawing-room, you are only a new example of the ignorance which obtains among your class with regard to the necessities of a working life.”

Mrs. Jerningham’s face brightened considerably while Mr. Desmond was speaking. It was a fine patrician face, with the bloom of youth still upon it, in spite of the lady’s nine-and-twenty years’ residence in this planet. She turned to Mr. Desmond with a smile, and held out her hand.

“Shake hands, Laurence, and forgive me,” she said, gently. It was part of their covenant that they should be at liberty to address each other by their Christian names, but that none of the epithets sacred to the use of lovers should ever obtain currency between them.

“And you are really not tired of your position?” said Mrs. Jerningham, with a pleading smile.

“Have I ever hinted a complaint?”

“No, Laurence. But then you are not the kind of person to complain. You would be like that dreadful Spartan boy one never hears the last of: you would hide the animal--why do some people call it a wolf, and others a fox, by the bye?--under your waistcoat, and go about the world smiling the smile of martyrdom. I am so afraid of doing you a great wrong. Poets and novelists are always preaching about a woman’s unselfishness; but I really think that is one of the formulas of their art. Have I not shown myself very selfish, Laurence? I allowed my foolish eyes to be dazzled by that Dead-Sea fruit which the world calls a splendid marriage; and having bitten the apple and found the bitterness of its core, I share the ashes with you.”

“I am very well content with the ashes.”

“Some day you will be tired of your bondage.”

“When that day comes, I will ask you for my freedom.”

“Will you promise me that, Laurence?”

“With all my heart.”

“In that case I am quite happy,” answered the lady, eagerly. “And you really do not wish to claim your freedom immediately, Laurence?”

“Neither immediately nor in the remote future. If Mr. Jerningham should live to be a hundred years of age, at which period I should be eighty, the bachelor habits which you reprobate may perhaps have taken complete possession of me; but as Mr. Jerningham is not the kind of man whose life would be taken on the most reasonable terms by the Norwich Union or the European, I can afford to place my faith in time.”

“Laurence, there is something so horrible in this calculation.”

“I do not calculate; I wait. And now let us talk of something else. You have not asked me any of your usual questions about the toilettes at Marble Hill.”

“I don’t want to know anything about them,” replied Mrs. Jerningham, frigidly.

Mr. Desmond winced. A man’s intellect, however acute, is rarely equal to the exigences of feminine society. The châtelaine of Marble Hill happened to be one of those matrons who cannot bring themselves to think well of any woman living apart from her husband. Emily Jerningham’s name had been wont to figure in the lady’s visiting-list, and had vanished therefrom immediately after the establishment of the villa at Hampton.

“The fête was rather a dull affair,” said Mr. Desmond, presently, with that clumsy hypocrisy which is the male creature’s best substitute for tact.

“What did Lady Laura Paunceford wear?” asked Mrs. Jerningham, with feminine inconsistency.

“Oh, some wonderful costume of blue, very cloudy and voluminous, like the dress of a goddess in one of Sir Godfrey Kneller’s ceilings. I believe she wore something that was intended for a bonnet--a blue gauze butterfly, skewered to her head by silver arrows.”

“Did she look well?”

“By no means; she is not a daylight beauty.”

“And Miss Fitzormond?”

“Miss Fitzormond’s dress was absolutely dowdy. A new style, Mrs. Castlemaine told me; the last rage in Paris; and supposed to have been developed from the fair Eugénie’s inner consciousness. It is rather hard upon the Empress that she should be accredited with every atrocity invented by the enterprising milliners of the Fauburg St. Honoré.”

“What was the dress?” Mrs. Jerningham demanded, languidly.

“Something mauve, festooned with steel chains and spikes; Miss Fitzormond looked like a mauve prisoner escaped from Newgate.”

“Were there many pretty women at the fête? No; you needn’t answer me. Of course you will declare that you found yourself amidst an assemblage of Gorgons. Men are so fearful of wounding a woman’s vanity, that they rarely remember she may by some possibility possess a grain or two of common-sense. Let us go to the dining-room. It is time for luncheon, and I dare say my aunt has been sending skirmishers out to look for me.”

“There is a parcel of books and music at the station. Will you send for it?”

“With delight. How good of you to bring me more new books!”

“Are you prepared to stand a competitive examination in the last I brought you?”

“Better than you in the works of the authors you have lately annihilated, Mr. Editor and Reviewer.”

On this they went back to the house, where they were received by the most amiable of dragons, dressed in dove-coloured silk, and a pale-blue morning-cap, which made middle age a state for youth to envy. The luncheon, in common with all the surroundings of Harold Jerningham’s wife, was perfection. The spirit of the elegant Harold himself pervaded this house, across the threshold whereof his foot had never passed. It was Mr. Jerningham’s pet architect who had restored the miniature mansion, and Mr. Jerningham’s favourite upholsterer who had decorated and furnished the interior. When Mrs. Jerningham wanted a new servant, it was Mr. Jerningham’s steward who supplied the vacancy in her well-organized establishment. Life had been made very easy for her since her separation from her husband--a little too easy, perhaps; for a woman who has none of the ordinary cares of her sex is apt to create troubles of her own.

People who wondered and speculated about the separation were often surprised to hear Mr. Jerningham say: “I have bought that picture for my wife;” or, “I am looking for a safe pony-phaeton for my wife;” or, “I want to find a good binder for some books of my wife’s.” He took pains to let the world know that he was on excellent terms with the lady in the toy-villa; and this certificate of character had served Emily Jerningham in good stead. Her husband’s diplomacy might have kept even the sacred portals of such houses as Marble Hill open to her, if Mr. Desmond had not been quite so frequent a visitor at her house. But the world is slow to believe in a Platonic attachment, and it is not to be denied that the friendship of Laurence Desmond had cost Mrs. Jerningham a certain price.

Nor was that friendship altogether pleasant to her. The conversation of this morning was only a variation upon a very familiar theme. Again and again Mr. Desmond had been called upon to listen to the same complaints, and to dispel the same doubts. There were times when he was very conscious of the pain and weariness involved in this state of things. There were times when a still, small voice within him echoed Emily Jerningham’s wish that they had never met in the hospital at Bundersbad, never renewed the friendship so near akin to love, never interchanged those foolish, sentimental letters which had caused the separation of Harold and his wife. It seemed such a weak, frivolous, despicable piece of wrong-doing, now that it was done, and had exercised a lifelong influence upon the destinies of three people.

If Mrs. Jerningham was doubtful and suspicious of Mr. Desmond, he, on his part, was not entirely at his ease about her. Was she happy? He asked himself that question very often, and the answer was not always pleasant to him.

“No real happiness ever came of wrong-doing,” he said to himself; “we did wrong, and we are paying the price of our folly.”

It was only to himself that Mr. Desmond ever said so much as this. To Emily Jerningham he was always the same--an attentive and respectful friend--patient, chivalrous, and self-sacrificing as a social Bayard; but not to be beguiled from the duties of his professional position, even by the claims of friendship.