His mother knew how to manage him. He agreed enthusiastically. And a few days later, when he chanced to travel up to London with Miss Abbott, he had all the time the pleasant thrill of one who is better informed. Their last journey together had been from Monteriano back across Europe. It had been a ghastly journey, and Philip, from the force of association, rather expected something ghastly now.
He was surprised. Miss Abbott, between Sawston and Charing Cross, revealed qualities which he had never guessed her to possess. Without being exactly original, she did show a commendable intelligence, and though at times she was gauche and even uncourtly, he felt that here was a person whom it might be well to cultivate.
At first she annoyed him. They were talking, of course, about Lilia, when she broke the thread of vague commiseration and said abruptly, “It is all so strange as well as so tragic. And what I did was as strange as anything.”
It was the first reference she had ever made to her contemptible behaviour. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s all over now. Let the dead bury their dead. It’s fallen out of our lives.”
“But that’s why I can talk about it and tell you everything I have always wanted to. You thought me stupid and sentimental and wicked and mad, but you never really knew how much I was to blame.”
“Indeed I never think about it now,” said Philip gently. He knew that her nature was in the main generous and upright: it was unnecessary for her to reveal her thoughts.
“The first evening we got to Monteriano,” she persisted, “Lilia went out for a walk alone, saw that Italian in a picturesque position on a wall, and fell in love. He was shabbily dressed, and she did not even know he was the son of a dentist. I must tell you I was used to this sort of thing. Once or twice before I had had to send people about their business.”
“Yes; we counted on you,” said Philip, with sudden sharpness. After all, if she would reveal her thoughts, she must take the consequences.
“I know you did,” she retorted with equal sharpness. “Lilia saw him several times again, and I knew I ought to interfere. I called her to my bedroom one night. She was very frightened, for she knew what it was about and how severe I could be. ‘Do you love this man?’ I asked. ‘Yes or no?’ She said ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t you marry him if you think you’ll be happy?’ ”
“Really—really,” exploded Philip, as exasperated as if the thing had happened yesterday. “You knew Lilia all your life. Apart from everything else—as if she could choose what could make her happy!”
“Had you ever let her choose?” she flashed out. “I’m afraid that’s rude,” she added, trying to calm herself.
“Let us rather say unhappily expressed,” said Philip, who always adopted a dry satirical manner when he was puzzled.
“I want to finish. Next morning I found Signor Carella and said the same to him. He—well, he was willing. That’s all.”
“And the telegram?” He looked scornfully out of the window.
Hitherto her voice had been hard, possibly in self-accusation, possibly in defiance. Now it became unmistakably sad. “Ah, the telegram! That was wrong. Lilia there was more cowardly than I was. We should have told the truth. It lost me my nerve, at all events. I came to the station meaning to tell you everything then. But we had started with a lie, and I got frightened. And at the end, when you left, I got frightened again and came with you.”
“Did you really mean to stop?”
“For a time, at all events.”
“Would that have suited a newly married pair?”
“It would have suited them. Lilia needed me. And as for him—I can’t help feeling I might have got influence over him.”
“I am ignorant of these matters,” said Philip; “but I should have thought that would have increased the difficulty of the situation.”
The crisp remark was wasted on her. She looked hopelessly at the raw over-built country, and said, “Well, I have explained.”
“But pardon me, Miss Abbott; of most of your conduct you have given a description rather than an explanation.”
He had fairly caught her, and expected that she would gape and collapse. To his surprise she answered with some spirit, “An explanation may bore you, Mr. Herriton: it drags in other topics.”
“Oh, never mind.”
“I hated Sawston, you see.”
He was delighted. “So did and do I. That’s splendid. Go on.”
“I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.”
“Petty selfishness,” he corrected. Sawston psychology had long been his specialty.
“Petty unselfishness,” she repeated. “I had got an idea that everyone here spent their lives in making little sacrifices for objects they didn’t care for, to please people they didn’t love; that they never learnt to be sincere—and, what’s as bad, never learnt how to enjoy themselves. That’s what I thought—what I thought at Monteriano.”
“Why, Miss Abbott,” he cried, “you should have told me this before! Think it still! I agree with lots of it. Magnificent!”
“Now Lilia,” she went on, “though there were things about her I didn’t like, had somehow kept the power of enjoying herself with sincerity. And Gino, I thought, was splendid, and young, and strong not only in body, and sincere as the day. If they wanted to marry, why shouldn’t they do so? Why shouldn’t she break with the deadening life where she had got into a groove, and would go on in it, getting more and more—worse than unhappy—apathetic till she died? Of course I was wrong. She only changed one groove for another—a worse groove. And as for
