The Greater Inclination

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"Dear Miss Pinsent, you flatter me!"

Lydia rose and gathered up her book and sunshade.

"Well, if you're asked for an opinion--if Lady Susan asks you for one--I
think you ought to be prepared," Miss Pinsent admonished her as she moved
away.

III

Lady Susan held her own. She ignored the Lintons, and her little family,
as Miss Pinsent phrased it, followed suit. Even Mrs. Ainger agreed that it
was obligatory. If Lady Susan owed it to the others not to speak to the
Lintons, the others clearly owed it to Lady Susan to back her up. It was
generally found expedient, at the Hotel Bellosguardo, to adopt this form
of reasoning.

Whatever effect this combined action may have had upon the Lintons, it did
not at least have that of driving them away. Monsieur Grossart, after a
few days of suspense, had the satisfaction of seeing them settle down in
his yellow damask _premier_ with what looked like a permanent installation
of palm-trees and silk sofa-cushions, and a gratifying continuance in the
consumption of champagne. Mrs. Linton trailed her Doucet draperies up and
down the garden with the same challenging air, while her husband, smoking
innumerable cigarettes, dragged himself dejectedly in her wake; but
neither of them, after the first encounter with Lady Susan, made any
attempt to extend their acquaintance. They simply ignored their ignorers.
As Miss Pinsent resentfully observed, they behaved exactly as though the
hotel were empty.

It was therefore a matter of surprise, as well as of displeasure, to
Lydia, to find, on glancing up one day from her seat in the garden, that
the shadow which had fallen across her book was that of the enigmatic Mrs.
Linton.

"I want to speak to you," that lady said, in a rich hard voice that seemed
the audible expression of her gown and her complexion.

Lydia started. She certainly did not want to speak to Mrs. Linton.

"Shall I sit down here?" the latter continued, fixing her intensely-shaded
eyes on Lydia's face, "or are you afraid of being seen with me?"

"Afraid?" Lydia colored. "Sit down, please. What is it that you wish to
say?"

Mrs. Linton, with a smile, drew up a garden-chair and crossed one open-
work ankle above the other.

"I want you to tell me what my husband said to your husband last night."

Lydia turned pale.

"My husband--to yours?" she faltered, staring at the other.

"Didn't you know they were closeted together for hours in the smoking-room
after you went upstairs? My man didn't get to bed until nearly two o'clock
and when he did I couldn't get a word out of him. When he wants to be
aggravating I'll back him against anybody living!" Her teeth and eyes
flashed persuasively upon Lydia. "But you'll tell me what they were
talking about, won't you? I know I can trust you--you look so awfully
kind. And it's for his own good. He's such a precious donkey and I'm so
afraid he's got into some beastly scrape or other. If he'd only trust his
own old woman! But they're always writing to him and setting him against
me. And I've got nobody to turn to." She laid her hand on Lydia's with a
rattle of bracelets. "You'll help me, won't you?"

Lydia drew back from the smiling fierceness of her brows.

"I'm sorry--but I don't think I understand. My husband has said nothing to
me of--of yours."

The great black crescents above Mrs. Linton's eyes met angrily.

"I say--is that true?" she demanded.

Lydia rose from her seat.

"Oh, look here, I didn't mean that, you know--you mustn't take one up so!
Can't you see how rattled I am?"

Lydia saw that, in fact, her beautiful mouth was quivering beneath
softened eyes.

"I'm beside myself!" the splendid creature wailed, dropping into her seat.

"I'm so sorry," Lydia repeated, forcing herself to speak kindly; "but how
can I help you?"

Mrs. Linton raised her head sharply.

"By finding out--there's a darling!"

"Finding what out?"

"What Trevenna told him."

"Trevenna--?" Lydia echoed in bewilderment.

Mrs. Linton clapped her hand to her mouth.

"Oh, Lord--there, it's out! What a fool I am! But I supposed of course you
knew; I supposed everybody knew." She dried her eyes and bridled. "Didn't
you know that he's Lord Trevenna? I'm Mrs. Cope."

Lydia recognized the names. They had figured in a flamboyant elopement
which had thrilled fashionable London some six months earlier.

"Now you see how it is--you understand, don't you?" Mrs. Cope continued on
a note of appeal. "I knew you would--that's the reason I came to you. I
suppose _he_ felt the same thing about your husband; he's not spoken to
another soul in the place." Her face grew anxious again. "He's awfully
sensitive, generally--he feels our position, he says--as if it wasn't _my_
place to feel that! But when he does get talking there's no knowing what
he'll say. I know he's been brooding over something lately, and I _must_
find out what it is--it's to his interest that I should. I always tell him
that I think only of his interest; if he'd only trust me! But he's been so
odd lately--I can't think what he's plotting. You will help me, dear?"

Lydia, who had remained standing, looked away uncomfortably.

"If you mean by finding out what Lord Trevenna has told my husband, I'm
afraid it's impossible."

"Why impossible?"

"Because I infer that it was told in confidence."

Mrs. Cope stared incredulously.

"Well, what of that? Your husband looks such a dear--any one can see he's
awfully gone on you. What's to prevent your getting it out of him?"

Lydia flushed.

"I'm not a spy!" she exclaimed.

"A spy--a spy? How dare you?" Mrs. Cope flamed out. "Oh, I don't mean that
either! Don't be angry with me--I'm so miserable." She essayed a softer
note. "Do you call that spying--for one woman to help out another? I do
need help so dreadfully! I'm at my wits' end with Trevenna, I am indeed.
He's such a boy--a mere baby, you know; he's only two-and-twenty." She
dropped her orbed lids. "He's younger than me--only fancy! a few months
younger. I tell him he ought to listen to me as if I was his mother;
oughtn't he now? But he won't, he won't! All his people are at him, you
see--oh, I know _their_ little game! Trying to get him away from me before
I can get my divorce--that's what they're up to. At first he wouldn't
listen to them; he used to toss their letters over to me to read; but now
he reads them himself, and answers 'em too, I fancy; he's always shut up
in his room, writing. If I only knew what his plan is I could stop him
fast enough--he's such a simpleton. But he's dreadfully deep too--at times
I can't make him out. But I know he's told your husband everything--I knew
that last night the minute I laid eyes on him. And I _must_ find out--you
must help me--I've got no one else to turn to!"

She caught Lydia's fingers in a stormy pressure.

"Say you'll help me--you and your husband."

Lydia tried to free herself.

"What you ask is impossible; you must see that it is. No one could
interfere in--in the way you ask."

Mrs. Cope's clutch tightened.

"You won't, then? You won't?"

"Certainly not. Let me go, please."

Mrs. Cope released her with a laugh.

"Oh, go by all means--pray don't let me detain you! Shall you go and tell
Lady Susan Condit that there's a pair of us--or shall I save you the
trouble of enlightening her?"

Lydia stood still in the middle of the path, seeing her antagonist through
a mist of terror. Mrs. Cope was still laughing.

"Oh, I'm not spiteful by nature, my dear; but you're a little more than
flesh and blood can stand! It's impossible, is it? Let you go, indeed!
You're too good to be mixed up in my affairs, are you? Why, you little
fool, the first day I laid eyes on you I saw that you and I were both in
the same box--that's the reason I spoke to you."

She stepped nearer, her smile dilating on Lydia like a lamp through a fog.

"You can take your choice, you know; I always play fair. If you'll tell
I'll promise not to. Now then, which is it to be?"

Lydia, involuntarily, had begun to move away from the pelting storm of
words; but at this she turned and sat down again.

"You may go," she said simply. "I shall stay here."

IV

She stayed there for a long time, in the hypnotized contemplation, not of
Mrs. Cope's present, but of her own past. Gannett, early that morning, had
gone off on a long walk--he had fallen into the habit of taking these
mountain-tramps with various fellow-lodgers; but even had he been within
reach she could not have gone to him just then. She had to deal with
herself first. She was surprised to find how, in the last months, she had
lost the habit of introspection. Since their coming to the Hotel
Bellosguardo she and Gannett had tacitly avoided themselves and each
other.

She was aroused by the whistle of the three o'clock steamboat as it neared
the landing just beyond the hotel gates. Three o'clock! Then Gannett would
soon be back--he had told her to expect him before four. She rose
hurriedly, her face averted from the inquisitorial facade of the hotel.
She could not see him just yet; she could not go indoors. She slipped
through one of the overgrown garden-alleys and climbed a steep path to the
hills.

It was dark when she opened their sitting-room door. Gannett was sitting
on the window-ledge smoking a cigarette. Cigarettes were now his chief
resource: he had not written a line during the two months they had spent
at the Hotel Bellosguardo. In that respect, it had turned out not to be
the right _milieu_ after all.

He started up at Lydia's entrance.

"Where have you been? I was getting anxious."

She sat down in a chair near the door.

"Up the mountain," she said wearily.

"Alone?"

"Yes."

Gannett threw away his cigarette: the sound of her voice made him want to
see her face.

"Shall we have a little light?" he suggested.

She made no answer and he lifted the globe from the lamp and put a match
to the wick. Then he looked at her.

"Anything wrong? You look done up."

She sat glancing vaguely about the little sitting-room, dimly lit by the
pallid-globed lamp, which left in twilight the outlines of the furniture,
of his writing-table heaped with books and papers, of the tea-roses and
jasmine drooping on the mantel-piece. How like home it had all grown--how
like home!

"Lydia, what is wrong?" he repeated.

She moved away from him, feeling for her hatpins and turning to lay her
hat and sunshade on the table.

Suddenly she said: "That woman has been talking to me."

Gannett stared.

"That woman? What woman?"

"Mrs. Linton--Mrs. Cope."

He gave a start of annoyance, still, as she perceived, not grasping the
full import of her words.

"The deuce! She told you--?"

"She told me everything."

Gannett looked at her anxiously.

"What impudence! I'm so sorry that you should have been exposed to this,
dear."

"Exposed!" Lydia laughed.

Gannett's brow clouded and they looked away from each other.

"Do you know _why_ she told me? She had the best of reasons. The first
time she laid eyes on me she saw that we were both in the same box."

"Lydia!"

"So it was natural, of course, that she should turn to me in a
difficulty."

"What difficulty?"

"It seems she has reason to think that Lord Trevenna's people are trying
to get him away from her before she gets her divorce--"

"Well?"

"And she fancied he had been consulting with you last night as to--as to
the best way of escaping from her."

Gannett stood up with an angry forehead.

"Well--what concern of yours was all this dirty business? Why should she
go to you?"

"Don't you see? It's so simple. I was to wheedle his secret out of you."

"To oblige that woman?"

"Yes; or, if I was unwilling to oblige her, then to protect myself."

"To protect yourself? Against whom?"

"Against her telling every one in the hotel that she and I are in the same
box."

"She threatened that?"

"She left me the choice of telling it myself or of doing it for me."

"The beast!"

There was a long silence. Lydia had seated herself on the sofa, beyond the
radius of the lamp, and he leaned against the window. His next question
surprised her.

"When did this happen? At what time, I mean?" She looked at him vaguely.

"I don't know--after luncheon, I think. Yes, I remember; it must have been
at about three o'clock."

He stepped into the middle of the room and as he approached the light she
saw that his brow had cleared.

"Why do you ask?" she said.

"Because when I came in, at about half-past three, the mail was just being
distributed, and Mrs. Cope was waiting as usual to pounce on her letters;
you know she was always watching for the postman. She was standing so
close to me that I couldn't help seeing a big official-looking envelope
that was handed to her. She tore it open, gave one look at the inside, and
rushed off upstairs like a whirlwind, with the director shouting after her
that she had left all her other letters behind. I don't believe she ever
thought of you again after that paper was put into her hand."

"Why?"

"Because she was too busy. I was sitting in the window, watching for you,
when the five o'clock boat left, and who should go on board, bag and
baggage, valet and maid, dressing-bags and poodle, but Mrs. Cope and
Trevenna. Just an hour and a half to pack up in! And you should have seen
her when they started. She was radiant--shaking hands with everybody--
waving her handkerchief from the deck--distributing bows and smiles like
an empress. If ever a woman got what she wanted just in the nick of time
that woman did. She'll be Lady Trevenna within a week, I'll wager."

"You think she has her divorce?"

"I'm sure of it. And she must have got it just after her talk with you."

Lydia was silent.

At length she said, with a kind of reluctance, "She was horribly angry
when she left me. It wouldn't have taken long to tell Lady Susan Condit."

"Lady Susan Condit has not been told."

"How do you know?"

"Because when I went downstairs half an hour ago I met Lady Susan on the
way--"

He stopped, half smiling.

"Well?"

"And she stopped to ask if I thought you would act as patroness to a
charity concert she is getting up."

In spite of themselves they both broke into a laugh. Lydia's ended in sobs
and she sank down with her face hidden. Gannett bent over her, seeking her
hands.

"That vile woman--I ought to have warned you to keep away from her; I
can't forgive myself! But he spoke to me in confidence; and I never
dreamed--well, it's all over now."

Lydia lifted her head.

"Not for me. It's only just beginning."

"What do you mean?"

She put him gently aside and moved in her turn to the window. Then she
went on, with her face turned toward the shimmering blackness of the lake,
"You see of course that it might happen again at any moment."

"What?"

"This--this risk of being found out. And we could hardly count again on
such a lucky combination of chances, could we?"

He sat down with a groan.

Still keeping her face toward the darkness, she said, "I want you to go
and tell Lady Susan--and the others."

Gannett, who had moved towards her, paused a few feet off.

"Why do you wish me to do this?" he said at length, with less surprise in
his voice than she had been prepared for.

"Because I've behaved basely, abominably, since we came here: letting
these people believe we were married--lying with every breath I drew--"

"Yes, I've felt that too," Gannett exclaimed with sudden energy.

The words shook her like a tempest: all her thoughts seemed to fall about
her in ruins.

"You--you've felt so?"

"Of course I have." He spoke with low-voiced vehemence. "Do you suppose I
like playing the sneak any better than you do? It's damnable."

He had dropped on the arm of a chair, and they stared at each other like
blind people who suddenly see.

"But you have liked it here," she faltered.

"Oh, I've liked it--I've liked it." He moved impatiently. "Haven't you?"

"Yes," she burst out; "that's the worst of it--that's what I can't bear. I
fancied it was for your sake that I insisted on staying--because you
thought you could write here; and perhaps just at first that really was
the reason. But afterwards I wanted to stay myself--I loved it." She broke
into a laugh. "Oh, do you see the full derision of it? These people--the
very prototypes of the bores you took me away from, with the same fenced--
in view of life, the same keep-off-the-grass morality, the same little
cautious virtues and the same little frightened vices--well, I've clung to
them, I've delighted in them, I've done my best to please them. I've
toadied Lady Susan, I've gossiped with Miss Pinsent, I've pretended to be
shocked with Mrs. Ainger. Respectability! It was the one thing in life
that I was sure I didn't care about, and it's grown so precious to me that
I've stolen it because I couldn't get it in any other way."

She moved across the room and returned to his side with another laugh.

"I who used to fancy myself unconventional! I must have been born with a
card-case in my hand. You should have seen me with that poor woman in the
garden. She came to me for help, poor creature, because she fancied that,
having 'sinned,' as they call it, I might feel some pity for others who
had been tempted in the same way. Not I! She didn't know me. Lady Susan
would have been kinder, because Lady Susan wouldn't have been afraid. I
hated the woman--my one thought was not to be seen with her--I could have
killed her for guessing my secret. The one thing that mattered to me at
that moment was my standing with Lady Susan!"

Gannett did not speak.

"And you--you've felt it too!" she broke out accusingly. "You've enjoyed
being with these people as much as I have; you've let the chaplain talk to
you by the hour about 'The Reign of Law' and Professor Drummond. When they
asked you to hand the plate in church I was watching you--_you wanted to
accept."_

She stepped close, laying her hand on his arm.

"Do you know, I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people
away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each
other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between
them--children, duties, visits, bores, relations--the things that protect
married people from each other. We've been too close together--that has
been our sin. We've seen the nakedness of each other's souls."

She sank again on the sofa, hiding her face in her hands.

Gannett stood above her perplexedly: he felt as though she were being
swept away by some implacable current while he stood helpless on its bank.

At length he said, "Lydia, don't think me a brute--but don't you see
yourself that it won't do?"

"Yes, I see it won't do," she said without raising her head.

His face cleared.

"Then we'll go to-morrow."

"Go--where?"

"To Paris; to be married."

For a long time she made no answer; then she asked slowly, "Would they
have us here if we were married?"

"Have us here?"

"I mean Lady Susan--and the others."

"Have us here? Of course they would."

"Not if they knew--at least, not unless they could pretend not to know."

He made an impatient gesture.

"We shouldn't come back here, of course; and other people needn't know--no
one need know."

She sighed. "Then it's only another form of deception and a meaner one.
Don't you see that?"

"I see that we're not accountable to any Lady Susans on earth!"

"Then why are you ashamed of what we are doing here?"

"Because I'm sick of pretending that you're my wife when you're not--when
you won't be."

She looked at him sadly.

"If I were your wife you'd have to go on pretending. You'd have to pretend
that I'd never been--anything else. And our friends would have to pretend
that they believed what you pretended."

Gannett pulled off the sofa-tassel and flung it away.

"You're impossible," he groaned.

"It's not I--it's our being together that's impossible. I only want you to
see that marriage won't help it."

"What will help it then?"

She raised her head.

"My leaving you."

"Your leaving me?" He sat motionless, staring at the tassel which lay at
the other end of the room. At length some impulse of retaliation for the
pain she was inflicting made him say deliberately:

"And where would you go if you left me?"

"Oh!" she cried.

He was at her side in an instant.

"Lydia--Lydia--you know I didn't mean it; I couldn't mean it! But you've
driven me out of my senses; I don't know what I'm saying. Can't you get
out of this labyrinth of self-torture? It's destroying us both."

"That's why I must leave you."

"How easily you say it!" He drew her hands down and made her face him.
"You're very scrupulous about yourself--and others. But have you thought
of me? You have no right to leave me unless you've ceased to care--"

"It's because I care--"

"Then I have a right to be heard. If you love me you can't leave me."

Her eyes defied him.

"Why not?"

He dropped her hands and rose from her side.

"Can you?" he said sadly.

The hour was late and the lamp flickered and sank. She stood up with a
shiver and turned toward the door of her room.

V

At daylight a sound in Lydia's room woke Gannett from a troubled sleep. He
sat up and listened. She was moving about softly, as though fearful of
disturbing him. He heard her push back one of the creaking shutters; then
there was a moment's silence, which seemed to indicate that she was
waiting to see if the noise had roused him.

Presently she began to move again. She had spent a sleepless night,
probably, and was dressing to go down to the garden for a breath of air.
Gannett rose also; but some undefinable instinct made his movements as
cautious as hers. He stole to his window and looked out through the slats
of the shutter.

It had rained in the night and the dawn was gray and lifeless. The cloud-
muffled hills across the lake were reflected in its surface as in a
tarnished mirror. In the garden, the birds were beginning to shake the
drops from the motionless laurustinus-boughs.

An immense pity for Lydia filled Gannett's soul. Her seeming intellectual
independence had blinded him for a time to the feminine cast of her mind.
He had never thought of her as a woman who wept and clung: there was a
lucidity in her intuitions that made them appear to be the result of
reasoning. Now he saw the cruelty he had committed in detaching her from
the normal conditions of life; he felt, too, the insight with which she
had hit upon the real cause of their suffering. Their life was
"impossible," as she had said--and its worst penalty was that it had made
any other life impossible for them. Even had his love lessened, he was
bound to her now by a hundred ties of pity and self-reproach; and she,
poor child! must turn back to him as Latude returned to his cell....

A new sound startled him: it was the stealthy closing of Lydia's door. He
crept to his own and heard her footsteps passing down the corridor. Then
he went back to the window and looked out.

A minute or two later he saw her go down the steps of the porch and enter
the garden. From his post of observation her face was invisible, but
something about her appearance struck him. She wore a long travelling
cloak and under its folds he detected the outline of a bag or bundle. He
drew a deep breath and stood watching her.

She walked quickly down the laurustinus alley toward the gate; there she
paused a moment, glancing about the little shady square. The stone benches
under the trees were empty, and she seemed to gather resolution from the
solitude about her, for she crossed the square to the steam-boat landing,
and he saw her pause before the ticket-office at the head of the wharf.
Now she was buying her ticket. Gannett turned his head a moment to look at
the clock: the boat was due in five minutes. He had time to jump into his
clothes and overtake her--

He made no attempt to move; an obscure reluctance restrained him. If any
thought emerged from the tumult of his sensations, it was that he must let
her go if she wished it. He had spoken last night of his rights: what were
they? At the last issue, he and she were two separate beings, not made one
by the miracle of common forbearances, duties, abnegations, but bound
together in a _noyade_ of passion that left them resisting yet clinging as
they went down.

After buying her ticket, Lydia had stood for a moment looking out across
the lake; then he saw her seat herself on one of the benches near the
landing. He and she, at that moment, were both listening for the same
sound: the whistle of the boat as it rounded the nearest promontory.
Gannett turned again to glance at the clock: the boat was due now.

Where would she go? What would her life be when she had left him? She had
no near relations and few friends. There was money enough ... but she
asked so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. He thought of
her as walking bare-footed through a stony waste. No one would understand
her--no one would pity her--and he, who did both, was powerless to come to
her aid....

He saw that she had risen from the bench and walked toward the edge of the
lake. She stood looking in the direction from which the steamboat was to
come; then she turned to the ticket-office, doubtless to ask the cause of
the delay. After that she went back to the bench and sat down with bent
head. What was she thinking of?

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