Long since the intervals between the sobs had so elongated that the sobs themselves had ceased. Sally’s bowed head was lifted. For a lady who had wept so profusely her eyes were phenomenally bright.
“Yes,” de Dol resumed. “That is what I say to him. I say: ‘I wash my hands.’ ”
“You promise I may come?”
“But no, Duchess. But no. I do not promise. It is not for me to promise anything. I have nothing to promise about. I play that I am dead. It is when I am gone for the lady of whom I speak to do as she may wish. Of my departure she can inform herself. It is easy as Good day.”
Sally stood up. She held out her hand and looking at him through her oblique, half-closed and entirely tearless eyes said sweetly: “You’re a dear.”
De Dol took the hand. Bending over it he sighed, deeply, with relief.
“A cup of tea, Duchess? A glass of wine?”
Sally, shaking her head at the offer, sighed too.
“Forgive me, if I have seemed to insist.”
“Duchess, I pray of you, it is for me to ask your pardon.”
Sally moved on. A moment or two later when de Dol after accompanying her to the cab, saw to it that she really got in, really drove off, he sighed afresh and muttered:
“Let the devil catch me again—if he can!”
XI
At the Sign of the Swan
To those about Welden it was as though he were dead, drowned rather, sunk into depths where nothing can follow, into those deepest depths where life is without form, without colour, without sensation of any kind. But presently either because of their efforts, or because of influences not higher; but the reverse, because he had not suffered enough, death, loosening its hold, retreated; life beckoned, calling him from where he swooned, and imperceptibly, little by little, after infinite hesitations, relapses, retrievals, drifting upward from those depths, he awoke.
Where he was he did not know. What had happened, he could not tell. He did not try. He did not care. He had but one wish, to sink back again and sleep. But again life caught and called him, wrapped him, rocked him, accustoming him gradually to its subtleties, reconciling him to it and to himself.
It was at this juncture that Sally declared herself a miserable woman. In the opinion of the world she deserved to be. The opinion of the world is very valuable. The fried mixture of falsities on which it daily breakfasts would induce apoplexy in any entity less robust. In its distinguished opinion Sally’s husband had fought because of her with a man who was engaged to one of her intimate friends and whom she had inveigled from her.
Even in the way we live now such behaviour is not regarded as nice. Yet any woman might have done as much, and more and worse, and been smiled at, provided only she and her husband continued, outwardly at least, on good terms. But on the open scandal of scandalous ruptures the world, which if credulous is also discreet, turns always its ponderous back.
It turned it on Sally. Though young, rich, good-looking and a duchess, the attitude of the world justified her declaration and the knowledge that it did gave Sally’s mother an attack of indignation morbus of which the nausea lasted through twelve pages of pen and ink.
For final hiccup there was this: “You have disgraced me. No decent person will ever receive you unless you return to your husband at once.”
Mrs. Kandy was then at Aix. The paroxysm dispatched, she felt better. Sally was then at Chantilly. The eructation received, she felt no worse. Lodged at the time at the Sign of the Swan, she had with her Harris and Perkins. She had also her thoughts. These, if not many, were pleasant.
Among them was the fact that Mr. Ridgeway, who had conducted the delicate arrangements of her marriage, was occupied with the still more delicate details of her divorce. Before going to Deauville she had consulted him. On her return she had consulted him again. She had done better. She had retained him. He had assured her that she could be free.
He was as good as his word. Evidence of the conversation that had occurred on the night of sufficed. But with that regard for the honour of families and the repute of women which Anglo-Saxon tribunals lack, during the punctilious and brief debates, the court, in withholding any mention of the corespondent’s name, obscured the lady from the public.
That is but gentlemanly. None the less the obscurity was one in which the world saw many things, the obviousness of the fact, for instance, that Sally had but stolen a march on Malakoff who, gallantly, had desisted from counter charges.
Sally did not attempt to undeceive the world which would not have believed her had she tried. She did not try, however. It would not have suited her book to do so. She had another and a more agreeable task.
De Dol meanwhile had gone, summer was going and Welden, issuing from the great iced bath of death, remounted to life’s surface. Among other lesions, there had been an injury to the occipital cortex which resulted in impairment of vision. For a time he could not distinguish objects. When he succeeded, the first thing he saw was Sally.
He resented her presence. He regarded it
