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Love Affairs of Pixie

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<h3>Chapter Ten.</h3> <h4>Pixie Gives Joan a Tonic.</h4> A romp with the children restored Pixie’s elastic spirits, and brought a revived wish for her friends’ society. She leaned out of the window and beheld a game of tennis on in obvious need of a fourth player, waved gaily in response to a general beckoning, and tripped downstairs singing a glad refrain. And then, in the corridor outside her boudoir, behold a pale and tragic Esmeralda summoning her with a dramatic hand. Pixie flounced, and a quiver of indignation stiffened her small body. A whole hour of a lovely spring morning had already been spent in struggling to overcome the depression caused by the scene at breakfast, and here was Joan obviously preparing a second edition. Pixie was no niggard in sympathy, but for the moment she had other views. Two charming young men were waiting without in the sunshine, and any ordinary human girl prefers the sunshine and masculine society, to a room indoors and an hysterical sister. Therefore, being excessively human, Pixie flounced, and looked bored and impatient. She entered the room and shut the door behind her. “What’s the matter now?” The answer was sufficiently unexpected. “Pixie, if I die will you promise me faithfully to live here and take charge of my orphan boys?” “I will not!” snapped Pixie sharply. It was just what might have been expected for Esmeralda to picture her own tragic death as the result of a passing squall. Quite possibly she had been sitting for the last hour picturing the stages of her own decline and the grief of the survivors. Strong common sense was the best remedy she could have. “I hope to have my own home to look after. And they are too spoiled. I wouldn’t undertake the charge.” “Somebody,” croaked Esmeralda deeply, “somebody must look after my boys!” “Don’t you worry about that. Geoffrey’ll marry again. They always do when the children are young.” This was deliberate cruelty, but the strain was severe. Stanor was standing, racket in hand, gazing up at the window. The sunshine lit up his handsome face, his expectant smile. Pixie gave another flounce and turned impatiently to meet the next lament; but Esmeralda was silent, her hands were clasped on her knee, and tears—real tears—shone in her eyes. It was a rare thing for Joan to cry; the easy tears which rose to her sisters’ eyes in response to any emotion, pleasurable or the reverse, these were not for her. Looking back over the history of their lives, Pixie could count the number of times when she had seen Joan cry. The outside world vanished from her memory in response to that appeal. “Esmeralda! Darling! You are not ill? You are not really suffering?” Joan shook her head. “Quite strong,” she murmured miserably; “too strong. Only it seems impossible to live on in such misery. It’s gone—the mainspring, everything! I can’t drag along! Thank God, Pixie, you are here! I never could bottle up my feelings. It’s Geoffrey—he doesn’t love me any more. I’m not imagining it—it’s true! He told me himself.” “What did he say?” demanded Pixie practically. She displayed no dismay at the announcement, being used to her sister’s exaggerations, and feeling abundantly convinced in her own mind that this was but another example. Geoffrey was cross this morning, but five days’ residence under his roof had abundantly demonstrated that his love was not dead. “Now, what exactly did he say?” she repeated, and Joan faltered out the dread words. There was silence in the room for a long minute. Then Pixie drew in her breath with a sharp intake. “The bloom!” she repeated softly. “The bloom!” The beautiful significance of the term seemed to occupy her mind to the exclusion of the personal application. She had a vision of love as the apotheosis of human affection, a wondrous combination of kindliness, sympathy, courtesy, patience, unselfishness—all these, and something more—that mysterious, intangible quality which Geoffrey Hilliard had so aptly described. Given “the bloom,” affection became idealised, patience a joy, and selfishness ceased to exist, since the well-being of another was preferred before one’s own; courtesy and sympathy followed automatically, as attendant spirits who could not be separated. Affection might exist, did often exist, in churlish, unlovely form, giving little happiness either to the giver or the recipient Love, the highest, was something infinitely precious, a treasure to be guarded with infinite care, lest in the stress of life its bloom should be destroyed. Joan, looking with anxious inquiry in her sister’s face, read there an earnestness even exceeding her own. “Oh, no!” cried Pixie strongly. “Not that, not that, Esmeralda. Not the bloom. It mustn’t go; it’s too precious. It means everything. You mustn’t let it go!” “But I told you it had gone. It’s too late.” “No!” Pixie shook her head. “I know better. There’s time yet, if you’ll be warned. Last night, when you were comforting Jack after his tumble, Geoffrey sat watching you as Dick watches Bridgie. It can’t be all gone, when he looks like that. He has loved you, been proud of you, been patient with you for—how long is it you have been married? Seven years, and you need a lot of patience, Esmeralda! I suppose it’s come to this—that you’ve used up all the patience he has.” It said volumes for Joan’s penitence that she allowed such a statement to pass unchallenged, and even assented to it with meekness. “I suppose that’s it. For the first few years it was all right. When I got angry he only laughed; then he began to get impatient himself, and this last year things have been going from bad to worse. When he spoke straight out it was easier; there was a row royal, and a grand ‘make up’ at the end, but now he’s so cold and calm.” Esmeralda’s lip trembled at the remembrance of the scene downstairs of the averted figure writing stolidly at the desk. She stared before her in silence for a dismal moment, then added sharply: “And what in the world set him off at a tangent this morning, of all others? There have been dozens of times when I should have expected him to be furious, and he’s been as mild as a lamb; and then of a sudden, when I was all innocent and unsuspicious, to flare up like that! There’s no sense in it!” “It’s always the way with men. You can’t reckon on them,” announced Pixie, with the seasoned air of one who has endured three husbands at least. “Dick’s the same—an angel of patience till just the moment when you’ve made sure of him, and then in a moment he snaps off your head—my head, I mean, never Bridgie’s. There’s too much—bloom.” She put her little head on one side and pursed her lips in thought, with the characteristic Pixie air which carried Joan back to the days of childhood. “Now, isn’t it odd, Esmeralda, how people cultivate almost every good quality, and leave love to chance? They practise patience and unselfishness, but seem to think love is beyond control. It comes, or—it goes. Tant mieux! Tant pis! My dear, if I married a husband who loved me as Geoffrey loved you, it would be the big work of my life to keep him at it, and I’d expect it to be work! You get nothing worth having without trouble, so why should you expect an exception for the very best thing? And the poor man deserves some encouragement. I’d give it to him!” Joan’s lips twisted into a sad smile. “You understand a great deal, Pixie—more than I do, it seems, even after seven years! I never looked at things in that light. I just expected Geoffrey to keep on adoring, whatever I did. What made you think such things?” “Nature!” said Pixie promptly. “And, my dear, I’m clever at loving—I always was. It’s my only gift, and I have studied it just as other people study drawing and music. What you have to do, Esmeralda, is to forget everything and every one else for a while, and comfort Geoffrey. Don’t make a scene and worry the poor man. Don’t make a grand programme of reformation, for that will put him off at the start. Just begin to-night and be sweet to him for a change. If you feel temper coming on, have it out on me! I’m used to you from a child, and if I get too much of it I can always run away and leave you; Geoffrey can’t. It’s mean to take advantage of a man that’s bound.” “If he wanted to go,” began Joan haughtily, then subsided into tears and helplessness. “Pixie! Pixie! It’s so difficult! What can I do?” “D’you need me to tell you? Isn’t it the easiest thing in the world to make love to your own husband, in your own house? Talk of propinquity! Always ready, always handy, if you can’t manage that! My dear girl, the game’s in your own hands.” “Can a leopard change its spots?” “We’re not talking of leopards; we’re talking of women—and they can bridle their tongues!” Again Joan was silent. Could she? A great martyrdom, or heroic effort, these she would have faced gladly, counting them a small price to pay for her husband’s love; but then how to subdue hasty impulses, to keep a watch over her tongue—this seemed beyond her strength. And yet the treasure which was threatened was of such inestimable value. It was impossible to contemplate life without it. Human life is uncertain, and though she would not allow herself to dwell upon such a possibility, Joan had realised in her heart that a day might dawn when she would have to part from husband or son. Death might come, she might have to say farewell to the dear human presence, but never, never had she imagined for a moment that she might be compelled to live on, having bidden farewell to love! Geoffrey her lover, Geoffrey her husband, Geoffrey the father of her boys, was it a fact or a dreadful nightmare that he had sat, untouched by her appeal, and confessed that ... that... Joan winced, unable to bear the repetition, and locked her hands more closely on her knee. Pixie glanced furtively through the window. Stanor had turned back to the tennis-ground and the three-handed game had been resumed. She stifled a pang of disappointment and sat quietly waiting for further confidences, but presently Joan said quietly— “Thank you, Pixie. Now—will you go? I want to think. You’ve been very sweet.” “More bracing than sweet, my dear; but it was what you needed!” Pixie rose with an alacrity which the other was, fortunately, too preoccupied to notice, dropped a kiss on the lovely bent neck, and walked quickly from the room. Joan had had the relief which her nature demanded of giving expression to her feelings; now it was best that she should be alone. Pixie had done her best to help, and now sunshine and Stanor were waiting! In another five minutes she was playing tennis as whole-heartedly as though it were her only business in life. Meanwhile Joan sat alone in her upstairs room, struggling with all the force of her ardent, undisciplined nature to brace herself for the struggle which lay before her. Prayer had become of late a mechanical, stereotype repetition of phrases; to-day there were no phrases—hardly, indeed, any definite words. In the extreme need of life she took refuge in that voiceless cry for help, that child-like opening of the heart which is the truest relationship between the soul and God. She sat with closed eyes and lifted face, penitent, receptive, waiting to be blessed. For the time being doubts were forgotten, everything seemed straight and plain. Then, being Esmeralda, the wayward, the undisciplined, the mood of exultation faded, and depression held her once more. The heavenly help and guidance seemed far-off and unreal. She was seized with impetuous necessity to act at once, to act for herself. Pixie’s proposals failed to satisfy her ardent desires. To wait weeks or months for the reward she craved was beyond endurance. She must contrive something big, something soon, something that would demonstrate to Geoffrey her anxiety to please him. She racked her brain to find a way. Poor, impatient, undisciplined Esmeralda! How little she dreamed of the tragic consequences of that hour! <hr /></div> <div class="bodytext"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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