Kathlyn Rhodes

“ Instantly Toni's anger melted away and a rush of affection and sympathy took its place.
"I'm sorry, Owen—I didn't mean to be cross. I was talking nonsense—of course you must have Miss Loder, I suppose I am jealous of her—because she is so clever, and I'm such a little idiot."
"I don't want a clever wife, thank you," laughed Owen, little dreaming how his careless words cut into the quivering soul of the girl beside him. "I want a pretty, lively, jolly little girl—half Italian for choice—who is a cross between a wood-nymph and—sometimes—a tiger-cat—or kitten! ”

“ Eva know very well, had known all along, that there could be no happiness for Toni in such a step; and she fully believed that the girl would come to hate and fear the life in front of her. But Eva never for one moment experienced a thrill of pity for the misguided Toni. Rather the thought of the certain misery which faced her filled Eva's perverted mind with a wretched triumph; and her only strong emotion at this juncture was a passionate hope that Owen would not learn the truth in time to save his wife from the worst consequence of her ill-considered action. ”

“ Acting on a hint from Barry, Owen had taken his bride straight away from the Registrar's dingy office to Paddington, thence to Cornwall; and he would never forget the sight of Toni's face when first she saw the sea, lying purple and green beneath a stormy sky.
During the long journey she had said very little, shyness enveloping her as in a mantle; but when the train began to run along the sea shore, so that the whole expanse of ocean lay spread before the window, Toni's face changed, her eyes sparkled, and she turned to Owen with a spontaneous expression of delight. ”

“ In the fog it would be easy indeed to miss one's road—with tragic results. One false step off the towing-path, for instance, and the river, dark and silent, would flow on its way, carrying with it a burden hardly more animated, yet a hundred times more precious, than the sticks and leaves which floated down with the current....
Suddenly Herrick sprang up, unable to bear this haunted solitude any longer. He felt as though he must go forth to make inquiries for himself, to ascertain whether Toni had returned or no, whether all possible measures had been taken for her safety. ”

“ Land and sea alike smiled in the glorious sunshine. It was a day on which life seemed a very sweet and desirable opportunity; but in Toni's face there was no hint of gladness, none of her former almost pagan delight in the beautiful out-of-door world around her.
Although her skin was delicately warmed and coloured by the genial Southern sun, the becoming tan could not hide the thinness of the once rounded cheeks, nor disguise the hopeless droop of the lips which had been used to smile so readily. Toni looked, indeed, the ghost of her former self as she sat gazing out over the Mediterranean ”

“ Owen stared at him. "Good God, man, what do you take me for? A man doesn't wilfully hurt his wife—the woman he loves. And to hurt Toni would be like hurting a child."
"Mr. Rose"—Herrick took a resolution to speak plainly—"are you sure you did not treat your wife rather too much as a child? Are you sure you didn't deny her the right of a woman, the right to share your life, your work, your aims? Are you quite sure you never made her feel her inferiority to you in different ways, never let her see that in some matters she was perhaps hardly your equal? ”

“ As the summer glided by, in a succession of golden, cloudless days, Owen began to ask himself, rather drearily, whether his marriage was going to turn out a success or an irretrievable failure.
When once the novelty of Toni's companionship had worn off, when he had grown used to her pretty, childish ways, accustomed to the sense of youth and light-hearted joy which she diffused about the old house, he began to find, to his dismay, that these were not all the attributes a man looked for in the woman he had made his wife. ”

“ Fairly late that night Barry Raymond jumped off his motorcycle at the gate of the bungalow known locally as the Hope House. It was a perfect June night, and as he unlatched the gate Barry heard a nightingale singing its love-song to the moon, the deliciously pure notes ringing across the river with a fascinating, almost unearthly, effect.
The garden of the bungalow was full of sleeping flowers, and their fragrance stole gently out like a tender welcome to Barry as he strode up the path between their ranks, pale-coloured in the moonlight, though full of rich, glowing colour beneath the sun. ”

“ On a beautiful midsummer morning Antonia Rose crept softly down the broad old staircase of Greenriver and crossed the hall with so fairy-light a tread that never a soul in the house could hear a footstep.
It was very early, barely half-past five; but the glorious summer morning was calling, calling insistently to Toni to come and share its glories; and the call was not one to be disregarded, by Antonia at least.
Not a thing stirred. In the gallery the Ten Little Ladies grew wan and faded before the vitality of the daylight ”

“ Would she be obliged to marry a man for whom she felt only a tepid friendship, unwarmed by the smallest coal from the fire of love? She had found life sad even when married to the man she loved; but what would it be to her as the wife of a man to whom she was almost completely indifferent?
Quite unconsciously Toni was exaggerating Owen's attitude towards his marriage, was accepting as his last word a few irritable sentences wrung from him by fatigue and annoyance at having seen the corrected proofs destroyed in a fit of childish temper on the part of his wife. ”

“ As he watched her gravely attending to the duties of the tea-tray, Owen told himself that he might have made a worse choice.
He had long ago surprised her secret—although Toni had no idea of her self-betrayal. At this stage of her development Toni was pure emotion—a mere lamp through which love might shine unchecked, casting its beams unashamedly upon the object of its devotion. Later she might learn, as many women do, to interpose a veil between her soul and the world. ”

“ She was careful to speak lightly. "If you went away with another man——" for a moment even her nerve failed her, but she conquered her weakness and went on calmly, and her grey Irish eyes were as cold as ice as she looked at Toni. "Then your husband would probably divorce you, and devote himself to his career."
For a second Toni's pallor alarmed her. All the girl's colour died away, leaving her curiously white round the mouth, a sign of emotion to which Eva was not blind; and Mrs. Herrick wondered, uneasily, if Toni were about to faint. ”

“ With a long shudder Toni descended the last step of the great staircase, and drifted slowly across the hall in the direction of the front door. Jock, following, pressed a little too closely against her, and turning, Toni saw, the faithful little friend whom she was about to leave gazing at her with a human appeal in his honest face.
"Take me! Let me go with you where you go! Why go out into the dim cold night alone, when you can have beside you one to protect you and give you love?" ”

“ To the end of her life Toni would never be bookish. She would always prefer living to reading about life; and it was fortunate that her work in this new library consisted largely of translating, roughly, from books in Italian and English, or in typing, from dictation, in either language.
She grew to like her employment in the quiet, mediæval-looking room. Her employer, a gentle, sad-eyed elderly man with an invalid daughter, treated her with the utmost kindness; and if it had not been that every fibre in her being cried out incessantly for Owen, she might in time have been content. ”

“ To-day the water sparkled in the sunshine with a very cheerful effect; and as Toni looked a cream-white swan drifted by, the sun's light turning its feathers into a kind of gilded snow. A punt passed slowly with two occupants, one a girl in a white frock, lying lazily on a heap of blue-green cushions, her uncovered head protected from the sun by a scarlet parasol, the other a bronzed and fair-haired youth, who wielded his pole with an athletic grace purely Greek. ”

“ Toni revolted inwardly against her callousness.
"Oh, I suppose he's told you some tale or other." Mrs. Herrick spoke fiercely, and all her childish beauty waned beneath her passion; "Well, whatever he says, it is I who have paid the bill. Prison! My God, you don't know what it is to be shut up in a cell like a beast—to be ordered about like a dog, to be starved on coarse food, made to sleep on a bed you wouldn't dare to give your servant!" ”

“ You look astonished, Barry! Why shouldn't I marry? Ah, I see! You think because one woman's turned me down no one else will care to risk her happiness with me! Well, of course my value is considerably depreciated, no doubt; but after all, men are in the minority, and I daresay I'll be able to find some girl to take pity on me!"
"Don't talk like that, Owen!" Barry spoke hastily, and his blue eyes looked rather stern. "You don't want a girl to take you out of pity, do you? That's not much of a basis for a happy marriage, is it?"
"No, Barry." He took the rebuke well. "I was talking like a fool. ”

“ He said very little till she had finished, though now and again, a quiet question made clear some point involved by her own incoherency; and from the bottom of his heart he pitied the girl who was beginning to realize that though she might be the wife of the man she loved, she would never be his real companion and helpmate until she could attain something nearer to the high standard of perfection for which he looked.
"This Miss Loder—you like her?"
"I believe—sometimes—I almost hate her," said Toni drearily. "She is everything I am not, you see. She is clever, well-educated, amusing. ”

“ I meant to live so that I could tell you again to your face that I hate you, hate you—hate you! And I'm going to show you what hate is, Jim—I'm going to make you wish you were dead—or in prison, as I have been. Oh, my God—I wish—I wish I were dead!"
With a sudden collapse of all her powers she dropped, face downwards, on the big divan, and burst into a fit of wild and uncontrollable sobbing.
With an effort whose magnitude he himself only half realized, Herrick went softly over to the weeping, writhing figure, and laid his hand very gently on her shoulder. ”

“ A young man jumped out—a man whom neither Rose nor Herrick had ever seen before—and, rushing up the steps, looked wildly round him.
"Where is she?" he demanded loudly. "Where is she?"
"To whom do you allude?" asked Owen coldly, his fastidious soul revolted by the spectacle which the young man presented. Dowson was hatless, dishevelled. In his agony of mind at Toni's departure he had torn his collar apart, feeling himself choking, and during the drive to Greenriver he had rumpled his hair so wildly that it stood up in mad disorder over his head. ”

“ I daresay you make Mr. Rose as happy as any woman could do. I expect he works too hard and that's why he looks so worried."
"Does he look worried?" queried Toni softly. "I suppose I ought to have noticed it—but——"
"But you didn't?" Eva leaned across and patted the girl's arm. "Never mind, dear, it's probably my fancy. I daresay Mr. Rose is not a very lively person at any time—and, after all, one can't always be feeling cheerful."
"You mean," said Toni, who, like other primitive people, was apt to be disconcertingly outspoken, "you mean that Owen—my husband—isn't happy. ”

“ But that's nonsense, because everyone has a soul."
"But not everyone realizes it," he said. "Some people go through life and never know they have more than a body, which claims attention while the soul waits, yearningly, for recognition."
He had spoken half to himself, his thoughts wandering for a moment from the girl beside him to another girl whose soul had been, to him at least, as a sealed book.
"I have been like that," said Toni surprisingly. "But I have a soul—and for Owen's sake I am going to prove it. ”

“ At that moment Toni felt she would have asked nothing better than to jump into the car and journey up to town with Owen to take her old place behind the typewriter in Owen's room. She hated to see him leaving her, longed to beg him to stay; but something stronger than personal longing held her back. A wife, she told herself, must be a help, not a hindrance; and since Owen saw fit to leave her, to carry on the work in which she had now no place, her duty, plainly, was to remain at home and keep everything in her little world in order for his return. ”

“ What a lovely world God made when He made—this!" Toni stood on the steps with arms outstretched, like some young priestess of a pagan faith welcoming the sun. "And why do we lie asleep in stuffy beds when all the birds and flowers have been awake for ages!"
She pulled the big door gently to behind her, and then ran through the gardens and across the terrace to the big grey balustrade which kept the boundary of the garden from the towing path beyond. ”

“ Herrick seemed to view life, indeed, with a kind of large detachment, as though from the height of some soaring pinnacle one might watch, with only half-awakened interest, the doings of the dwellers on the plain; and Owen, who liked to be in the midst of things, to add his quota to the world's doings, found in this attitude of mind a pose, a half-insolent pretence at superiority, which was galling. ”

“ Herrick knew, with a queer, uncanny shrewdness peculiar to her, that the girl's marriage was not altogether happy.
If it had been, it is improbable that Eva would have made a friend of Toni. As she said to herself now and again, she had no use for happy people. Her own life was spoilt—that the spoiling was due to herself she would have been the last to acknowledge—and she was in no humour to watch other people making a success of their lives. What she wanted was to see those around her as unhappy, as disillusioned, as discontented as herself ”

“ From the shut-off regions behind the green baize door came, now and then, the murmur of voices; but for the most part Greenriver lay hushed in lamp-lit, flower-scented silence.
Never had the big hall looked so attractive as now, in the mellow light of the wood fire on the capacious hearth. On the oval oak table a big jar of chrysanthemums stood out, white and copper and mauve, against the panelled wall; and a sombre corner was lightened by the pink and cream blossoms of a tall azalea sent in that morning by an attentive gardener.
Over everything lay the sense of a great peace and tranquillity. ”

“ In spite of her desire to set Owen free, Toni's whole soul revolted at the idea of such treachery. "I'm married, you know, and I couldn't leave my husband."
"Why not?" in his despair the young man pressed still nearer, and again Jock uttered a warning growl. "I know you are married, but still—you're not happy—your husband isn't, either, by what I hear. You'd be wronging nobody—you've no children to consider"—in some ways Mr. Dowson was as primitive as Toni—"if you had, it would be different, but you've only yourself to think about. This life doesn't suit you, Toni. It cramps you, worries you. ”

“ Suddenly Toni dashed away her tears and started to her feet with a suddenness which almost upset Jock.
"Jock, it's no use going on like this. We're a couple of idiots—at least, I'm one, and you're a darling old stupid. But it's time to go, Jock. To go. Do you hear? I'm leaving Greenriver, Jock, leaving my home, my husband, everything I have in the world. I'm going away, Jock, going with a man I hardly know. I shall be called wicked, and I suppose I am; but I can't help it. I've got to go—but oh, Jock, how much easier it would be to die!" ”