Restless Earth/Chapter 3

He had kept his promise. He had made himself sociable, and had played Patricia Weybourn’s accompaniments with more pleasure and less self-consciousness than he had believed possible. The woman, for all the ultra-coldness of her attitude towards her accompanist, had sung with real feeling, and her voice had proved ultra-pleasant to listen to.

That had been the first of many pleasant musical evenings; and Harley, who was a desultory composer, wrote two songs especially for Patricia Weybourn.

Grace had remarked on this.

“Love songs, Jimmy!” she had teased him. “Remember, I warned you. You’re falling in love with her.”

“Nonsense,” he had answered with an irritability which surprised himself. “I’m willing to admit that my first impression of the girl was a little wide of the mark, but this continual harping on the danger of my falling in love with her is a little wearing.”

“Jimmy!”

“Can’t you think of something else to say?”

He had stalked out of the room with dignity, and with a queer sense of guilt. He had not been willing to admit that his opinion of Patricia Weybourn had changed altogether.

Why his opinion had so changed he could not have explained. Patricia continued to treat him with the curious pitying condescension with which she had greeted him at their first meeting. She had been no less ultra in her implied assumption that he should consider himself extremely fortunate in ​having married a friend of hers. As a man and possible victim she had continued to ignore him.

She had not changed an iota, yet he had seen her differently. He had found her creeping into his love-stories in heroine rôles, ousting the long line of heroines which he had founded upon the characteristics of Grace. His heroines had imperceptibly developed into wonderful blondes who queened it over his heroes and married them more for their titles than their homes. When an editor had dared to say that he preferred the smaller, clinging type of heroine, Harley had dared to suggest that the public was growing tired of the dowdy women who could do nothing for themselves.

Just about this time he had noticed a dowdiness in Grace of which he had not previously been aware. Grace lacked Patricia’s smartness and sense of style. “Old-fashioned” was how he had described one of her gowns.

“But you have always said you loved me best in dove-grey, Jimmy,” Grace had protested.

“Oh, the colour’s all right, but what’s wrong with the style?”

“This is the latest fashion, Jimmy.”

“Is it? Then it must be the way you wear it. You used to be as smart as they made ’em, Grace, but lately you seem to be slipping. Better get Pat to fit you out with something.”

“As a matter of fact this gown came from Picotarde’s, my dear, and everyone admires it but you.”

He had changed the subject abruptly.

“Can’t you stop Joan playing right underneath my window?” he had asked peevishly. “How am I to get any work done?”

“Why, you've never complained of the child before, Jimmy! You’ve often said you liked to hear her there. What is the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter, except that I can’t concentrate while Joan is talking to herself or her dolls.”

​Grace had looked at him steadily for some moments, and he had stared at her with something like defiance.

“Jimmy,” Grace had said quietly, “I think I had better ask Pat not to come here again.”

“Don’t be silly,” he had retorted roughly. “Because I dare to complain of something once in ten years, you immediately assume another woman. If you want to know my honest opinion of your friend Patricia, I think she’s next door to impossible. Regards me as though I were a little off mental balance. Her conceit of herself makes me sick!”

Afterwards he had realised, with something of a shock, that he had committed perjury in order to escape his conscience and the pain in the eyes of Grace.

****

On each of her ensuing visits it seemed that Patricia had taken from him a little more of the contentment which had been his, leaving in its place an increase in restlessness and the tendency to make carping criticism of his home, his wife and his child.

His work began to worry him at this time. He had complained that the fount of inspiration in Grace was running dry. He had accused her of using the same old plots, and had quarrelled with her when she had suggested that his treatment of his themes had become neither one thing nor the other—neither men’s stories nor women’s.

He had begun to resent the smell of cooking in the house.

“How can I write romance when the place reeks of boiling cabbage?” he had demanded of Grace on one occasion.

“Don’t be silly,” Grace had retorted, sharply for her. “The cabbage must be cooked. You must eat.”

“Surely there’s no necessity to feed me cabbage every day.”

“We haven’t had cabbage for over a week, Jimmy. I think you want a holiday, young man.”

​“Rot! I want a little consideration, that’s all. Yqu seem to take a delight, lately, in doing everything you can to interrupt my work. If it isn’t cabbage it’s some other beastly smell; or you sing some idiotic endless tune as you bang into things when you’re sweeping the place. I can’t understand what’s come over you.”

Grace had walked into the hall then and had returned with his hat.

“Go and walk yourself into a better temper, my dear,” was all she said; and he had slammed the back door as he took her at her word.

Shortly after the cabbage episode he had begun to realise that Patricia Weybourn was less ultra- than charmingly-smart; but just when he awoke to the fact that he had fallen in love with his wife’s friend he had never discovered. The awakening had been gradual and painful, for he had fought his conscience every moment of the time. He had known that in Grace he had the well-nigh perfect wife; and, in Joan, such a child as the most fastidious parent might pray for; and he had fought back at the insidious adventuring of his heart.

One evening, when they had had friends for bridge he had drawn Patricia as partner. On that occasion he played in a masterly manner; and Patricia had been pleased to smile upon him and inform their opponents that it was something of a surprise to her to find that authors might be the possessors of reasoning minds, after all.

He had laughed at the time, but later, when he had accompanied her to the tram-car, he had taken the matter up with her seriously.

“Why should it surprise you to find that authors have reasoning minds?”

“Well, for one thing, inspiration is supposed to be the source of all good stories.”

“Thanks for the compliment. I was under the impression that you considered all my stories futile trash.”

​“To be perfectly frank, I have read only one of your stories and have only the haziest recollection of the plot. Something about a girl who fell off the pillion saddle of a motor-cycle and was picked up by a real hero in a sports roadster. There were roses and several cups of afternoon-tea in it, too.”

“And is it because of that early effort of mine that you look down on me?”

“I do not look down on you.”

“You certainly do not look up at me.”

“Conceit! I have yet to meet a man worth looking up at—or to. I look at you with level gaze, James Harley, and I think I see you better than you see yourself.”

“But you don’t think much of me?”

“Don’t I?”

There had been something in her non-committal question, some nuance in her tones, which had caused Harley’s heart to skip a beat. He had looked sharply at her, but the darkness had hidden the expression in her eyes.

He had been silent until they reached the tram-stop and the tram was slowing to a halt.

“When shall we see you again?’ he had asked then.

“When I am invited?”

“We keep open house to you.”

“Thanks. Shall we say Wednesday week?”

“That’s a very distant date.”

“It’s the best I can do, I’m afraid. Good-night.”

She had smiled and waved to him as the tram moved off. It was the first time she had done so, and he had walked home with a smile on his lips—the smile of a conqueror.

“Pat catch the tram all right?” Grace had asked as soon as he had closed the front door on his return.

“Yes,” he had answered shortly.

“What do you two find to talk about on these moonlight walks?”

​“Love,” he had answered ironically. “What else would you expect a woman like that to talk about?”

The note of relief in Grace’s answering laugh had made him feel like a conspirator.

****

It was five weeks later when Patricia again visited the Harleys, and in the interval James Harley had found it increasingly difficult to suppress his repugnance for the caresses which his happy years with Grace had made habitual. There had been moments when he could not bear her lightest touch upon his sleeve; and the obvious effort with which she had maintained a cheerful attitude in the face of his increasing gruffness had exasperated and shamed him.

“What’s happened to the Weybourn woman?” he has asked at last. “I thought she said she was coming up two weeks ago last Wednesday?”

“Did she say she was coming then?” Grace had asked in surprise. “You never told me.”

“Didn’t I? I must have forgotten it. Wasn’t important, anyhow. I have other things to think about.”

“Have you finished that story for the Australian Journal?”

“No.”

“They’ll be wanting it, Jimmy.”

“Let ’em want. I’m not going to send them a story which doesn’t satisfy me; and this one is anything but satisfactory. I don’t seem to be able to get it right.”

“Can I help?”

“Oh, I’ll manage it in time. It’s only a question of waiting for the inspiration. By-the-way, I see you’re allowing Joan to play under my window again. Do something about that, will you?”

When Patricia arrived at the end of the five weeks Grace could not have failed to perceive the true state of affairs insofar as her husbhand was concerned. In Patricia’s company he had become again the James ​Harley whom she had married and with whom she had spent ten happy years. He had been full of light-hearted gaiety, playfully reproaching the visitor for her desertion and protesting that the house seemed like a morgue without her.

“That doesn’t say much for Grace,” Patricia had remarked.

“Oh, Grace understands me,” Harley had cried, throwing himself down beside his wife on the chesterfield and hugging her with real affection. “Don’t you, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” Grace had answered with quiet gravity.

Patricia had eyed them quizzically for a moment, then had turned abruptly to the piano.

Harley had looked at his wife with a puzzled air.

“What’s the matter, dear?” he had asked.

“Nothing, Jimmy.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, come and help us sing a few songs. I have another I want Pat to sing.”

He had lifted Grace to her feet and escorted her to the piano with an arm around her waist, and had wondered why she seemed reluctant to be released.

His easy assumption that the curious emotional disturbance engendered by the proximity of Patricia was merely the faintest stirring of the eternal Adam—too faint to be concerned about—was destroyed on that evening at a point in the road to the tram-stop where the full moon cast the shadow of tall pines.

“Don’t come any further, please,” Patricia had begged. “I’ll be quite all right.”

He had not taken her seriously.

“Too late to argue the matter now, Miss Weybourn. My orders are to see you to the tram. Come along, we’ll miss it if we do not hurry.”

“Please, Mr. Harley, I want to be alone.”

“But you can’t wander these streets alone at this time of night! And—and Grace is sure to ask me ​whether you caught the tram; and what am I to say? Come along.”

“Please!”

His eyes had widened at the almost desperate appeal in the monosyllable. He had stared at her in astonishment, a wild hope surging within him. He had laughed rather uncertainly.

“I know my duty as an escort———”

She had turned and hurried away, and he had followed apologetically, almost running to overtake her. Just as he had been about to speak again she stopped and flared at him.

“Go away! Go home, you fool! Oh———!” She had beaten her clenched hands together in passionate anger. “For God’s sake, go home!”

Then the wild hope in him had become certainty, and the certainty had brought a sensation of largeness. He had felt himself dilate with a knowledge of his hitherto unsuspected power over this woman. He had realised for the first time that he had been on his knees to her and that she had spurned him for her own protection and not for his hurt.

He had taken her by the elbows then and had swung her round so that the light of the moon shone full upon her upturned face. She had struggled in vain to free herself, tearfully demanding that he let her go.

“So that’s how it is, eh?” he had breathed triumphantly.

“Let me go! Let me go, Jimmy! I was a fool ever to have come near you again. But this is the last time. This is good-bye. Let me go!”

“Good-bye, is it?”

“Yes!”

“Because Grace is an old friend, of course? Her husband shall be sacred. Why struggle, my dear? I could hold you like this for a week if necessary.”

“You beast—Jimmy!”

“I’ve heard many tales of your conquests, my dear, and I’ve never believed them until now. Now ​I know your tactics. This time the conquered is going to be hard to lose. You knew you’d catch me at last, didn’t you?”

“I haven’t caught you! I haven’t!” she cried passionately. “I don’t want you! I hate you! Go back home, you fool!”

He had stifled her cries by crushing her in his arms and smothering her lips with kisses—wild, animal caresses. He had lifted his head to laugh at the moonlit sky, and had felt her go limp in his arms and violent sobs shake her.

She had wept bitterly and he had abased himself to comfort her, becoming convinced in the process that he had been unjust; that, in justice to Grace, she had fought and almost conquered a genuine love for him, and had been betrayed by his presence and the moon.

“So that was why you were so distant with me?” he had asked after a long silence following their mutual confession of vain battle with instinctive attraction.

Midnight had passed, and they had sat together upon a sand-dune on the foreshore, close together, submerged in a sea of self-condemnation—yet strangely happy; reluctant to go their separate ways, gazing sentimentally at the moon-path upon the water crossed by moving black shadows where the surf broke with a chill thunder, wishing time might stand still for ever, dreading the morning, telling and re-telling their hopeless loves, pitying themselves and the woman who was the man’s lawful wedded wife.

“When first I saw you, Jimmy, I realised that you were the only man—the only man. If I had had the smallest grain of sense or honour I would have fled from your home on that first night. But I thought I was strong enoughto resist———”

Again he had silenced her with a kiss.

“Poor little Grace!” he had murmured. “What a mess! What are we going to do?”

​For answer she had lain in his arms, pulling his head down until their lips met again.

****

The clock in the breakfast-room struck three as he had opened the front door carrying his shoes in his hand. He had returned home guiltily and with a heavy heart.

He had switched on the shaded light in the bedroom cautiously and had looked at Grace for some minutes with grave pity. Grace slept, or pretended to sleep, and he had seen that her pillow was damp. One hand, flung upon the pillow above her head, held a sodden, crumpled handkerchief.

He had been tempted to stoop and kiss her that he might see her smile in her sleep, as she had smiled many times when he had kissed her after working into the morning hours and she had retired early, but he had lacked the courage. He had lacked the courage to soil her. That was how he had felt about so small a thing.

With infinite caution, that he might not disturb her, he had taken his pyjamas from beneath his pillow, and had made his way to the single bed in the spare room, stealthily.

His heart had jumped painfully when he thought he caught the sound of a sob as he turned out his light.