The glorious frost lasted a glorious week, generous measure for an English frost, and long enough for Arthur to make considerable improvement in the art of skating; since Margaret maintained her attitude of not caring about it, he had the benefit of the professor's undivided attention. Long enough too it lasted for the new vision to stamp itself deep on his mind. For companion picture he recalled from memory another, which at the outset had made no such vivid impression—Judith crying over the failure of the farce. His mind had passed it by lightly when it was first presented to him; it had not availed to turn his amused thoughts from Miss Ayesha Layard and her medicine. It came back now, at first by what seemed only a chance or freak of memory, but presently establishing for itself a relation with its sister-vision of triumphant grace. Between them they gave to Judith in his eyes something that he had not discerned before—something which had always been there, though not in such full measure in the earlier days of their acquaintance, before disaster and grief, and love and sympathy, had wrought upon her spirit. He saw her now—he was idealising again, no doubt, to some degree, after that generous fashion of his which no cold steel of experience could quite eradicate—as capable of the depths and heights of emotion; no longer as tethered too tight by reason and good sense, somewhat too critical, a trifle too humdrum in her notions—that was the conception of her which he had in the days of Bernadette's reign. The solid merits of that type he left to her still; and in this he was indeed on the firm ground of experience; he had tried and tested them. But now he decked them with bright ornaments and blended their sober useful tints with richer colouring—with tenderness of heart, a high brave joy in life, the grace of form and charm of face in which the eye delights.
Subtly and delightfully sure of his changed vision of her, she dared now to be wholly herself with him, to maintain no shy reserves where prudence held pleasure in bondage, and affection took refuge from the fear of indifference. She borrowed of him too, though this unconsciously, in an instinct to adapt herself to him. As she had lent to him from her stores of fortitude and clear-sightedness, she levied toll for herself on his wealth of persistent and elastic cheerfulness, his gust for life and all that life brings with it.
Yet her old self was not eclipsed nor wholly transformed. Her caution remained, and her healthy distrust of sudden impulses. The satiric smile was still on her lips, to check transports and cool the glow of fascination. She had been so wont to think him Bernadette's man—whether in joy or in delusion, or in the cruel shock of sudden enlightenment—so wont to think Bernadette invincible, that even Bernadette's memory seemed a thing that could hardly be displaced. She craved a probation, a searching test both of her own feelings and of Arthur's. She feared while she enjoyed, and of set purpose nursed her doubts. There was not always skating—not always bright sun, keen air, and the rapture of motion, incentives to hot blood. If he deluded himself, she would have compassion ready and friendship for him unimpaired; but if she, with open eyes, walked into a trap, her judgment of herself would be bitter, and friendship would scarcely stand against the shame.
Arthur went back to town ten days before the Christmas vacation ended, to look after his work and, incidentally, to attend Marie Sarradet's wedding. He left Hilsey cheerfully, with no real sense of a parting or of separation. He was still keen and excited about his work, about the life that seemed now to lie before him in the law, and Hilsey—with all it meant to him—figured no longer as a distraction from that life, or even an enemy to it, but rather as its background and complement, so much a part of it as to seem with him while he worked. And so it was with Judith herself—the new Judith of the new vision. She was no enemy to work either. However bedecked and glorified, she was still Judith of the cool head and humorous eyes, the foe of extravagance and vain conceits.
"Back to my dog!" he said gaily. "Holding on to his tail, I'll climb the heights of fortune! And I hope one or two more will find their way to chambers—some little puppies, at all events."
"Ambition is awake! I seem to see a dawning likeness to Mr. Norton Ward."
"I seem to see, as in a golden dream, enough to pay his rent, confound him!"
"I discern, as it were from afar off, a silk gown gracefully hanging about your person!"
"I discern money in my pocket to pay a railway fare to Switzerland!"
"There rises before my eyes a portly man in a high seat! He administers Justice!"
"Before mine, a lady, gracious and ample, who——" But that final vision was promptly dispelled by a cushion which Judith hurled at him with unerring aim.
Marie Sarradet and Sidney Barslow were married at Marylebone Church, and after the ceremony there was a gathering of old friends at the house in Regent's Park—the family (including Mrs. Veltheim), Amabel Osling, Mildred Quain, Joe Halliday, and Mr. Claud Beverley, the last-named (and so named still in the Sarradet circle) blushing under congratulations; for the drama of real life had met with a critical success, though the London run had not as yet followed. Indeed, as befitted the occasion, a sense of congratulation pervaded the air. It seemed as though more than a wedding were celebrated. They toasted in their champagne the restored stability of the family and the business also. The bridegroom, Managing Director of Sarradet's Limited, showed signs of growing stout; there was a very solid settled look about him; order, respectability, and a comfortable balance at the bank were the suggestions his appearance carried. Far, far in the past the rowdy gaieties of Oxford Street! Old Sarradet basked in the sun of recovered safety and tranquillity. Even Raymond, still nominally "on appro," used, all unrebuked, such airs of possession towards Amabel that none could doubt his speedy acceptance. Marie herself was in a serene content which not even the presence of her aunt could cloud. She greeted Arthur with affectionate friendship.
"It is good of you to come. It wouldn't have seemed right without you," she told him, when they got a few words apart.
"I had to come. You don't know how glad I am of your happiness, Marie."
She looked at him frankly, smiling in a confidential meaning. "Yes, I think I do. We've been very great friends, haven't we? And we will be. Yes, I am happy. It's all worked in so well, and Sidney is so good to me." She blushed a little as she added, with frank simplicity, "I love him, Arthur."
He knew why she told him; it was that no shadow of self-reproach should remain with him. He pressed her hand gently. "God bless you, and send you every happiness!"
She lowered her voice. "And you? Because I've a right to wish you happiness too."
"Fretting about me! And on your wedding day!" he rebuked her gaily.
"Yes, just a little," she acknowledged, laughing.
"Well, you needn't. No, honestly you needn't." He laughed too. "I'm shamefully jolly!"
"Then it's all perfect," she said with a sigh of contentment.
Arthur had missed seeingJephthah's Daughterowing to his mother's death, but since not having seen or read the work is not always a disadvantage when congratulations have to be offered to the author, he expressed his heartily to Mr. Beverley. "Next time it's put up, I shall be there," he added.
"I don't know that it ever will be—and I don't much care if it isn't. It's not bad in its way—you've seen some of the notices, I daresay?—but I'm not sure that it's my real line. I'm having a shot at something rather different. If it succeeds——"
Arthur knew what was coming. "You shan't chuck the office before we've found the dog, anyhow!" he interrupted, laughing. But none the less he admired the sanguine genius. "Only there won't be enough 'lines' to last him out at this rate," he reflected.
At the end—when bride and bridegroom had driven off—Arthur suddenly found his hand seized and violently shaken by old Mr. Sarradet, who was in a state of excited rapture. "The happiest day of my life!" he was saying. "What I've always hoped for! Always, Mr. Lisle, from the beginning!"
He seemed to have no recollection of a certain interview in Bloomsbury Street—an interview abruptly cut short by the arrival of a lady in a barouche. He was growing old, his memory played him tricks. He had found a strong arm to lean on and, rejoicing in it, forgot that it had not always been the thing which he desired.
"Yes, you know a good thing when you see it, Mr. Sarradet," Arthur smilingly told the proud old man. But he did it with an amused consciousness that Mrs. Veltheim, who stood by, eyeing him rather sourly, had a very clear remembrance of past events.
"We'll give 'em a dinner when they come back. You must come, Mr. Lisle. Everybody here must come," old Sarradet went on, and shuffled round the room, asking everyone to come to the dinner. "And now, one more glass of champagne! Oh yes, you must! Yes, you too, Amabel—and you, Mildred! Come, girls, a little drop! Here's a health to the Happy Pair and to Sarradet's Limited!"
"The Happy Pair and Sarradet's Limited!" repeated everybody before they drank.
"AndSarradet's Limited!" reiterated the old man, taking a second gulp.
"I don't know when he'll stop," whispered Joe Halliday.
"If we don't want to get screwed, we'd better make a bolt of it, Arthur."
So they did, and went for a stroll in the Park to cool their heads.
"Well, that's good-bye to them!" said Joe, when he had lit his cigar. "And it's good-bye to me for a bit too. I'm sailing the day after to-morrow. Going to Canada."
"Are you? Rather sudden, isn't it? Going to be gone long?"
"I don't know. Just as things turn out. I may be back in a couple of months; I may not turn up again till I'm a Colonial Premier or something of that sort. The fact is, I've got into no end of a good thing out there. A cert.—well, practically a cert. I wish I'd been able to put you in for a thou. or two, old fellow."
"No, thanks! No, thanks!" exclaimed Arthur, laughing.
"But it wasn't to be done. All I could do to get in myself! Especially as I'm pretty rocky. However they wanted my experience——"
"Of Canada? Have you ever been there?"
"I suppose Canada's much like other places," said Joe, evading the direct question. "It's my experience of business they wanted, of course, you old fool. I'm in for a good thing this time, and no mistake! If I hadn't had too much fizz already, I'd ask you to come and drink my health."
"Good luck anyhow, old fellow! I'm sorry you're going away, though. I shan't enjoy seeing Trixie Kayper half as much without you."
Joe suddenly put his arm in Arthur's. "You're a bit of a fool in some ways, in my humble judgment," he said. "But you're a good chap, Arthur. You stick to your pals, you don't squeal when you drop your money, and you don't put on side. As this rotten old world goes, you're not a bad chap."
"This sounds like a parting testimonial, Joe!"
"Well, what if it does? God knows when we shall eat a steak and drink a pot of beer together again! A good loser makes a good winner, and you'll be a winner yet. And damned glad I shall be to see it! Now I must toddle—get in the Tube and go to the City. Good-bye, Arthur."
"Good-bye, Joe. I say, I'm glad we didDid You Say Mrs.?Perhaps you'll run up against Ayesha Layard over there. Give her my love."
"Oh, hang the girl! I don't want to see her! So long then, old chap!" With a final grip he turned and walked away quickly.
Arthur saw him go with a keen pang of regret. They had tempted fortune together, and each had liked what he found in the other. Joe's equal mind—which smiled back when the world smiled, and, when it frowned, thought a cheerful word of abuse notice enough to take of its tantrums—made him a good comrade, a good stand-by; his humour, crude though it was and pre-eminently of the market-place, put an easier face on trying situations. He had a faithful, if critical, affection for his friends, and Arthur was not so rich in friends as to lose the society of one like this without sorrow. As it chanced, his intimates of school and university days had drifted into other places and other occupations which prevented them from being frequent companions, and he had as yet not replaced them from the ranks of his profession, from among the men he met in the courts and in the Temple; up to now courts and Temple had been too much places to get away from, too little the scene of his spare hours and his real interests, to breed intimacies, though, of course, they had produced acquaintances. As he walked down to the Temple now, after parting from Joe Halliday—and for how long Heaven alone could tell!—he felt lonely and told himself that he must get to know better the men among whom his life was cast. He found himself thinking of his life in the Temple as something definitely settled at last, not as a provisional sort of arrangement which might go on or, on the other hand, might be ended any day and on any impulse. The coils of his destiny had begun to wind about him.
It was vacation still, and chambers were deserted; Henry and the boy departed at four o'clock in vacation. He let himself in with his key, lit his fire, induced a blaze in it, and sat down for a smoke before it. Marie Sarradet came back into his mind now—Marie Barslow; the new name set him smiling, recalling, wondering. How if the new name had not been Barslow but another? Would that have meant being the prop of the family and the business, being engulfed in Sarradet's Limited? That was what it meant for Sidney Barslow—among other things, of course. But who could tell what things might mean? Suppose the great farce had succeeded, had really been a gold mine—of the sort with gold in it—really a secondHelp Me out Quickly!Where would he be now—he and his thousands of pounds—if that had happened? Would he have been producing more farces, and giving more engagements to infectious Ayesha Layard and indefatigable Willie Spring?
Dis aliter visum—Fate decreed otherwise. Detached from the fortunes of Sarradet's Limited, rudely—indeed very rudely—repulsed from the threshold of theatrical venture, he had come back to his Legitimate Mistress. He knew her ways—her rebuffs, her neglect, her intolerable procrastination; but he had enjoyed just a taste of her favour and attractions too—of the interest and excitement, of the many-sided view of life, that she could give. Because of these, and also because of her high dignity and great traditions—things in which Sarradet's Limited and theatrical ventures seemed to him not so rich—he made up his mind to follow the beckoning of fate's finger and to stick to her, even though she half-starved him, and tried him to the extreme limit of his patience—after her ancient wont.
But his renewed allegiance was to be on terms; so at least he tried to pledge the future. He did not want his whole life and thought swallowed up. Here his own temperament had much to say, but his talks with Sir Christopher a good deal also. He would not be a sleuth-hound on the track of success (a Norton Ward, as he defined it to himself privily), nose to the ground, awake to that scent only, with no eyes for the world about him—or again, as it might be put, he would not have his life just a ladder, a climb up the steep side of a cliff, in hope of an eminence dizzy and uncertain enough even if he got there, and with a handsome probability of tumbling into the tomb half-way up. Could terms be made with the exacting Mistress about this? Really he did not know. So often she either refused all favours or stifled a man under the sheer weight of them. That was her way. Still, Sir Christopher had dodged it.
Suddenly he fell to laughing over the ridiculousness of these meditations. Afraid of too much work, when but for that dog he was briefless still! Could there be greater absurdity or grosser vanity? Yet the idea stuck—thanks perhaps to Sir Christopher—and under its apparent inanity possessed a solid basis. There was not only a career which he wished to run; there was a sort of man that he wanted to be, a man with broad interests and far-reaching sympathies, in full touch with the varieties of life, and not starved of its pleasures. Thus hazily, with smiles to mock his dreams, in that quiet hour he outlined the future of his choice, the manner of man that he would be.
The ringing of the telephone bell recalled him sharply to the present. With a last smiling "Rot!" muttered under his breath at himself, with a quick flash of hope that it was Wills and Mayne again, he went to answer the call. A strange voice with a foreign accent enquired his number, then asked if Mr. Arthur Lisle were in, and, on being told that it was that gentleman who was speaking, begged him to hold the line. The next moment another voice, not strange at all though it seemed long since he had heard it, asked, "Is that you, Cousin Arthur?"
"Yes, it's me," he answered, with a sudden twinge of excitement.
"I'm at the Lancaster—over here on business with the lawyers, just for a day or two. Oliver's in Paris. I want to see you about something, but I hardly hoped to find you in town. I thought you'd be at Hilsey. How lucky! Can you come and see me some time?"
"Yes, any time. I can come now, if you like. I'm doing nothing here."
A slight pause—Then—"Are you alone there, or is Frank Norton Ward there too?"
"There's absolutely nobody here but me."
"Then I think I'll come and see you. It's only a step. Will you look out for me?"
"Yes, I'll be looking out for you."
"In about a quarter of an hour then. Good-bye."
Arthur hung up the receiver and returned to his room—the telephone was in Henry's nondescript apartment. A smile quivered about his lips; he did not sit down again, but paced to and fro in a restless way. Strange to hear her voice, strange that she should turn up to-day! Of all the things he had been thinking about, he had not been thinking of her. She recalled herself now with all the effectiveness of the unexpected. She came suddenly out of the past and plunged him back into it with her "Cousin Arthur." He felt bewildered, yet definitely glad of one thing—a small one to all seeming, but to him comforting. He was relieved that she was coming to chambers, that he would not have to go to the Lancaster, and ask for her with proper indifference; ask for her by an unfamiliar name—at least he supposed she used that name! He felt certain that he would have blushed ridiculously if he had had to ask for her by that name. He nodded his head in relief; he was well out of that anyhow! And—she would be here directly!
She met him just as of old; she gave him the same gay, gracious, almost caressing welcome when she found him at the foot of the stairs, awaiting her arrival and ready to escort her to his room. She put her arm through his and let him lead her there; then seated herself by the fire and, peeling off her gloves, looked up at him as he stood leaning his arm on the mantelpiece. She smiled as she used; she was the same Bernadette in her simple cordiality, the same too in her quiet sumptuousness. Only in her eyes, as they rested on his face, he thought he saw a new expression, a look of question, a half-humorous apprehension, which seemed to say, "How are you going to treat me, Cousin Arthur?" Not penitence, nor apology, but just an admission that he might have his own views about her and might treat her accordingly. "Tell me your views then—let's know how we stand towards one another!"
Perhaps it was because some such doubt found a place in her mind that she turned promptly, and in a rather business-like way, to the practical object of her visit.
"I came over to see my lawyers about the money question. They wanted to see me, and convince me I ought to take something from Godfrey. I don't know that I should refuse if I needed it, but I don't. You know what lawyers are! They told me Oliver would desert me, or practically said he would! Well, I said I was going to chance that—as a fact he's settling quite a lot on me—and at last they gave in, though they were really sulky about it. Then they told me that I ought to settle something about Margaret. Godfrey's been very kind there too; he's offered to let me see her practically whenever I like—with just one condition, a natural one, I suppose." She paused for a moment and now leant forward, looking into the fire. "I shouldn't have quarrelled with that condition. I couldn't. Of course he wouldn't want her to see Oliver." She frowned a little. "I told the lawyers that the matter wasn't pressing, as I was going abroad, for a year probably, perhaps longer; it could wait till I got back."
"You're going away?" asked Arthur, without much seeming interest.
"Yes—to Brazil. Oliver's got some interests there to look after." She smiled. "I daresay you think it happens rather conveniently? So it does, perhaps—but I think he'd have had to go anyhow; and of course I mean to go with him. But about Margaret. The real truth is, I didn't want to talk about her to the lawyers; I couldn't tell them what I really felt. I want to tell you, Arthur, if I can, and I want you somehow to let Godfrey know about it—and Judith too. That's what I want you to do for me. Will you?"
"I'll do my best. He won't like talking about it. He may be very unapproachable."
"I know he may!" She smiled again. "But you'll try, won't you?" She looked up at him gravely now, and rather as though she were asking his judgment. "I'm not going to see her, Arthur."
"You mean—not at all? Never?" he asked slowly.
"It was always rather difficult for Margaret and me to get on together, even before all that's happened. We didn't make real friends. How could we now—with sort of official visits like those? Under conditions! Still, that's not the main thing; that's not what I want you to say to Godfrey. I don't mean to see her till she's old enough—fully old enough—to understand what it all means. Then, when she's heard about it—not from me, I don't want to make a case with her or to try to justify myself—when Godfrey, or Judith, or even you, have told her, I want it to be left to her what to do. If she likes to leave it alone, very good. If she likes to see me, and see if we can make friends, I shall be ready. There'll be no concealment then, no false pretences, nothing to puzzle her. Only just what sort of a view she takes of me herself, when she's old enough." She paused and then asked, "Have they told her anything yet?"
"Only that you can't come back yet. But I think they mean to tell her presently that you won't, that—well, that it's all over, you know. Judith thinks she'll accept that as quite—well, that she won't see anything very extraordinary about it—won't know what it means, you see."
"Do you think she misses me much?"
"No, I don't think so. She and her father are becoming very great friends. I think she's happy."
"You've been there a lot?"
"Yes, a good deal."
"I saw your mother's death in the paper. I'm sorry, Arthur."
"They make me quite at home at Hilsey. They've given me a den of my own."
"And Godfrey?"
"He's very cheerful, with his walks and his books—and, as I say, with Margaret."
"You're looking very thoughtful, Arthur. What are you thinking of? Do you think me wrong about Margaret? I shall hear of her, you know. I shall know how she's getting on; Judith will tell me—and Esther. You can too."
"It's all so strange!" he broke out. "The way you've just—vanished! And yet the house goes on!"
She nodded. "And goes on pretty well?" she hazarded, with raised brows and a little smile. He made a restless impatient gesture, but did not refuse assent. "Well, if there's anything to be said for me, there it is! Because it means that I was a failure."
"You weren't the only failure, Bernadette."
"No, I wasn't. It was all a failure—all round—except you; you got on with all of us. Well, when things are like that, and then somebody comes and—and shows you something quite different, and makes—yes, makes—you look at it—well, when once you do, you can't look at anything else. It swallows up everything."
She fell into silence. Arthur moved from the mantelpiece, and sat down in a chair by her side, whence he watched her delicate profile as she gazed into the fire thoughtfully. He waited for her to go on—to take up the story from the day when the long failure came to its violent end, from the morning of her flight.
"I don't see how I could have done anything different; I don't see it now any more than I saw it then. You won't forgive Oliver, I suppose—my old Sir Oliver! In fact, if I know you, Cousin Arthur, you've been trying to paint him blacker in the hope of making me whiter! But he gives me a wonderful life. I never really knew what a man could do for a woman's life before. Well, I'd had no chance of understanding that, had I? It's not being in love that I mean so much. After all, I've been in love before—yes, and with Godfrey, as I told you once. And Oliver's not an angel, of course—about as far from it as a man could be——"
"I should think so," Arthur remarked drily.
She smiled at him. "But there's a sort of largeness about him, about the way he feels as well as the things he goes in for. And then his courage! Oh, but I daresay you don't want to hear me talk about him. I really came only to talk about Margaret."
"You must know I'm glad to hear you're happy."
She caught a tone of constraint in his voice; the words sounded almost formal. "Yes, I suppose you are—and ready to let it go at that?" she asked quickly, with a little resentment.
"What else can I do—or say?" he answered, slowly and with a puzzled frown. "I've got nothing more to do with it. I really belong to—to what you've left behind you. I made a queer mess of my part of it, but still I did belong there. I don't belong to this new life of yours, do I?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "No, I suppose you don't. You belong to Hilsey? Is that it? And I'm trying to get you on my side—unfairly?" She challenged him now with something like anger.
"Oh, it's not a question of sides! I tried not to take sides. The thing went too deep for that. And why must I, why should I? But there's what's happened—the state of things, you see."
"And the state of things makes you belong to Hilsey, and prevents your having anything to do with me?"
"That's putting it too strongly——" he began.
"Oh, but you mean it comes to that?" she insisted.
"I don't see how, in practice, it can work out very differently from that."
His voice was low and gentle; he avoided her eyes as he spoke, though he knew they were upon him, watching him closely. He had come to this curious searching talk—or rather it had come upon him—totally unprepared. She had not been much in his thoughts lately; when he had thought of her, it had been in relation to the past, or to the household at Hilsey. Her present and future life had been remote, out of his ken, perhaps relegated to neglect by an instinctive repugnance, by a latent but surviving jealousy. Now he was faced with it, without time to consider, to get a clear view—much less to find diplomatic or dexterous phrases. If he were to say anything in reply to the questions with which Bernadette pressed him—and he could hardly be dumb—there was nothing for it but to give her bluntly what he thought, his raw reading of the position as it stood, the best he could make of it on the spur of the moment, without looking far forward, or anticipating future modifications and weighing the possible effect of them, and without going into any of the ethics of the case, without moral judgments or a casuistry nicely balancing the rights and wrongs of it; all that seemed futile, arrogant, not for him anyhow. The real present question was how the state of affairs which had come into being affected him in regard to Bernadette, what it left open to them. It was on that point that her questions pressed him so closely and sharply.
What did she expect? A resumption of her empire over him? That the idol should be re-erected in the shrine, pieced together again and put in place to receive its worship? Then she could not understand all that had gone to the making and the adoration of it. The flight had brought mighty changes in and for her—had she not herself said so? In and for him was it to make none? She could hardly expect or claim that. Yet her questions, her resentment, a forlorn pettishness which had crept into her voice and manner, suggested that she was feeling hardly used, that she was disappointed and in some measure affronted by his attitude. She seemed to pit herself against Hilsey—against the household and the home she had elected to leave, for reasons good or bad, under impulses whether irresistible or merely wayward—to pit herself against it with something like scorn, even with jealousy. Had she not herself been all in all to him at Hilsey? Had it not been to him a setting for her charm and fascination, dear to him for her sake? The others there—what had they been to him? Oh, friends, yes, friends and kinsfolk, of course! But essentially, in his real thoughts, her attendants, her satellites—and largely the grievances against which his adoration had protested.
She remembered their last interview, the night before she went away—Arthur's despair, his sudden flare of hot passion, even the words in which he told her that she had been everything, nearly everything, in his life. Discount them as she might, calling them a boy's madness and self-delusion, how they had moved her even at that crisis of her life! They had smitten her with tender grief, and remained her last impression of her generous young devotee. She did not want to hear them again, nor to find that folly still in his heart. But they had been a witness to her power over him. Was it lost? What had destroyed it? Her flight with Oliver? That would be natural and intelligible, and was true in part, no doubt; nor did she complain of it. But it did not seem to be what was deepest in his mind, not the real stumbling-block. If it were a question of personal jealousy and a lover's disenchantment only, how came Hilsey into the matter? And it seemed that it was over Hilsey that they had come to an issue.
She sat a long while, brooding over his last answer, with her eyes still set on his averted face.
"You mean it'll work out that you're part of the family, and I'm not? Are you going to cut me, Arthur?"
"Oh, no, no!" he cried, turning to her now. "It's monstrous of you to say that! God knows I've no grudge against you! I've owed you too much happiness and—and felt too much for you. And if we must talk of sides, wasn't I always on your side?"
"Yes, but now you're not."
"I'm not against you—indeed I'm not! But if you're away somewhere with—well, I mean, away from us, and we're all together at home——"
"Us! We! Home!" she repeated after him, with a smile of rather sad mockery. "Yes, I suppose I begin to see, Arthur."
"They've made it home to me—especially since my mother's death."
Her resentment passed away. She seemed tranquil now, but sad and regretful. "Yes, I suppose that's the way it'll work," she said. "I shall get farther and farther off, and they'll get nearer and nearer!" She laid her hand on his for a moment, with one of her old light affectionate caresses. "I was silly enough to think that I could keep you, Arthur, somehow, in spite of all that's happened. And I wanted to. Because I'm very fond of you. But I suppose I can't. I'm a spoilt child—to think I could have you as well as all the rest I've got!" She smiled. "Awfully thorough life is, isn't it? Always making you go the whole hog when you think you can go half-way, just comfortably half-way! I don't like it, Cousin Arthur."
"I don't like it either, altogether; but that is the kind of way it gets you," he agreed thoughtfully.
"Still we can be good friends," she said, and then broke away from the conventional words with a quick impatience. "Oh, being good friends is such a different thing from being really friends, though!" She took up her gloves and began to put them on slowly. "I had a letter from Judith just before I came over," she remarked. "She writes every three or four weeks, you know. She said you were down there, and that she and you were having a good time skating."
"Yes, awfully jolly. She's a champion, you know!"
Bernadette was busy with her gloves. She did not see the sudden lighting-up of his eyes, as her words recalled to him the vision of Judith skating, the vivid grace of motion and the triumph of activity, there on the ice down at Hilsey.
"Oh, well, she's been to Switzerland in the winter a lot," said Bernadette carelessly. "I suppose she'd have gone this year, if it hadn't been for—" She raised her eyes again to his, and stopped with a glove half-way on. "Well, if it hadn't been for me, really!" She smiled, and jerked her head impatiently. "How I seem to come in everywhere, don't I? Well, I can't help it! She's got no one else belonging to her, and she used to be a lot with us anyhow."
"Oh, you needn't worry about her; she's quite happy," said Arthur confidently.
"I don't know that I was worrying, though I daresay I ought to have been. But she likes being there. I expect she'll settle down there for good and all." As she went back to her glove-buttoning she added, by way of an after-thought, "Unless she marries."
Knowing the thing that was taking shape in his own heart, and reading his own thoughts into the mind of another, as people are prone to do, Arthur expected here a certain suggestion, was wondering how to meet it, and was in a way afraid of it. He felt a sense of surprise when Bernadette passed directly away from the subject, leaving her after-thought to assume the form of a merely perfunctory recognition of the fact that Judith was a girl of marriageable age and therefore might marry—perhaps with the implication that she was not particularly likely to, however. He was relieved, but somehow a little indignant.
"You've told me hardly anything about yourself," said Bernadette. But here again the tone sounded perfunctory, as though the topic she suggested were rather one about which she ought to inquire than one in which she felt a genuine interest.
"Oh, there's not much to tell. I've sown my wild oats, and now I've settled down to work."
She seemed content with the answer, whose meagreness responded sensitively to her own want of a true concern. She was not really interested, he felt, in any life that he might be living apart from her. She was very fond of him, as she said and he believed; but it was fondness, a liking for his company, an enjoyment of him, a desire to have him about her, had such a thing been still possible; it was not such a love or deep affection as would make his doings or his fortunes in themselves of great importance to her. Where his life was not in actual contact with her own, it did not touch her feelings deeply. Well, she had always been rather like that, taking what she wanted of his life and time, leaving the rest, and paying with her smiles. Well paid too, he had thought himself, and had made no complaint.
He did not complain now either. He had never advanced any claim to more than her free grace bestowed; and what she gave had been to him great. But he felt a contrast. At home—his thoughts readily used that word now—his fortunes were matter for eager inquiry, excited canvass and speculation. His meagre answer would not have sufficed there. Judith and little Margaret had to hear about everything; even old Godfrey fussed about in easy earshot and listened furtively. It was not that Bernadette had changed; there was no reason to blame her, or call her selfish or self-centred. It was the others who had changed towards him, and he towards them, and he in himself. For Bernadette he was still what he had been before the flight—what Judith had once called a toy, though a very cherished one. To himself he seemed to have found, since then, not only a home but a life.
She did not know that; she had not seen it happening. Nobody had told her; probably she would not understand if anyone did—not even if he himself tried to; and the task would be difficult and ungracious. And of what use? It would seem like blame, though he intended none, and against blame she was very sensitive. It might make her unhappy—for she was very fond of him—and what purpose was served by marring ever so little a happiness which, whatever else it might or might not be, was at least hard-won?
She rose. "It must be getting late," she said, "and I'm going to the theatre. And back to Paris to-morrow! I shan't be in London again for a long long while. Well, you'll remember what to tell Godfrey—how I feel about Margaret? And—and anything kind about himself—if you think he'd like it."
"I don't really think I'd better risk that."
She smiled. "No, I suppose not. I'm never mentioned—is that it?"
"Oh, Judith and I talk about you."
"I daresay Judith is very—caustic?"
"Not particularly. Not nearly so caustic as when you were with us!"
"Us! Us! I begin to feel as if I'd run away from you too, Arthur! Though I wasn't your wife, or your mother—or even your chaperon, was I? Well, at the end I did run away a little sooner because of you—you'd found me out!—but I don't think I meant to run away from you for ever. But you belong to Hilsey now—so it seems as if it was for ever. I ran away for ever from Hilsey, all Hilsey—and now you're part of it!"
She was standing opposite to him, with a smile that seemed half to tease him, half to deride herself. She did not seek to hide her sorrow and vexation at losing him; she hardly pretended not to be jealous—he could think her jealous if he liked! Her old sincerity abode with her; she had no tricks.
She looked very charming in his eyes; her sorrow at losing her—he did not know what to call it, but whatever it was that she used to get from his society and his adoration—touched him profoundly. He took one of her gloved hands and raised it to his lips. She looked up at him; her eyes were dim.
"It's turned out rather harder in some ways than I thought it would—making quite a fresh start, I mean. I do miss the old things and the old friends dreadfully. But it's worth it. It was the only thing for me. There was nothing else left to do. I had to do it."
"You're the only judge," he said gently. "Thank God it's turned out right for you!"
She smiled under her dim eyes. "Did you think I should repent? Like those frogs—you remember?—in the fable. King Stork instead of King Log?" She laughed. "It's not like that." She paused a moment. "And Oliver and I aren't to be alone together, I think, Cousin Arthur."
He sought for words, but she put her slim fingers lightly on his lips. "Hush! I don't want to cry. Take me to a taxi—Quickly!"
She spoke no more to him—nor he to her, save to whisper, with a last clasp of her hand before she drove away, "God bless you!"
Yes, it was all true! The events of that Red Letter Day had really happened. When Arthur awoke the next morning, he had a queer feeling of its all being a dream, a mirage born of ambition. No. The morning paper proved it; a glance at his own table added confirmation.
Revolving Time had brought round the Easter vacation again. The last case heard in the Court of Appeal that sittings wasCrewdson v. The Great Southern Railway Company, on appeal from Knaresby,j.'s, judgment on the findings of the jury. (The subsequent history of the great Dog Case lay still in the future.) It was a time of political excitement; Sir Humphrey Fynes,k.c.,m.p., had chanced the case being reached, and gone off to rouse the country to a proper sense of its imminent peril if the Government continued so much as a day longer in office. Consequently he was not there to argue Miss Crewdson's case. Mr. Tracy Darton,k.c., was there, but he was also in the fashionable divorce case of the moment, and had to address the jury on the respondent's behalf. He cut his argument before the Court of Appeal suspiciously short, and left to his learned friend Mr. Lisle the task of citing authorities bearing on tricky points relating to the subject of Common Carriers. Arthur was in a tremor when he rose—nearly as much frightened as he had been before Lance and Pretyman,jj., a year ago—but his whole heart was with his dog; he grew excited, he stuck to his guns; they should have those authorities if he died for it! He was very tenacious—and in the end rather long perhaps. But the Court listened attentively, smiling now and then at his youthful ardour, but letting him make his points. When they came to give judgment against his contention, they went out of the way to compliment him. The Master of the Rolls said the Court was indebted to Mr. Lisle for his able argument. Leonard,l.j., confessed that he had been for a moment shaken by Mr. Lisle's ingenious argument. Pratt,l.j., quite agreed with what had fallen from My Lord and his learned Brother concerning Mr. Lisle's conduct of his case. Even Miss Crewdson herself, whose face had been black as thunder at Sir Humphrey's desertion and Mr. Darton's unseemly brevity, and whose shoulders had shrugged scornfully when Arthur rose, found a smile for him in the hour of temporary defeat; that she would lose in the end never entered the indomitable woman's head. Then—out in the corridor, when all was over—Tom Mayne patted him on the back, and almost danced round him for joy and pride—it was impossible to recognise in him the melancholy Mr. Beverley—Norton Ward, hurrying off to another case, called out, "Confound your cheek!" and, to crown all, the august solicitor of the Great Southern Railway Company, his redoubtable opponents, gave him a friendly nod, saying, "I was afraid you were going to turn 'em at the last moment, Mr. Lisle!" That his appreciation was genuine Arthur's table proved. There, newly deposited by triumphant Henry, lay a case to advise the Great Southern Railway Company itself.
"Once you get in with them, sir——!" Henry had said, rubbing his hands together and leaving the rest to the imagination.
Such things come seldom to any man, but once or twice in their careers to many. They came to Arthur as the crown of a term's hard work, mostly over Norton Ward's briefs—for Norton Ward had come to rely on him now and kept him busy 'devilling'—but with some little things of his own too; for Wills and Mayne were faithful, and another firm had sent a case also. His neck was well in the collar; his fee book had become more than a merely ornamental appurtenance. Long and hard, dry and dusty, was the road ahead. Never mind! His feet were on it, and if he walked warily he need fear no fatal slip. Letting the case to advise wait—his opinion would not be needed before the latter part of the vacation, Henry said—he sat in his chair, smoking and indulging in pardonably rosy reflections.
"Rather different from what it was this time last year!" said Honest Pride with a chuckle.
A good many things had been rather different with him a year ago, he might have been cynically reminded; for instance the last Easter vacation he had dedicated to Miss Marie Sarradet, and he was not dedicating this coming one to Mrs. Sidney Barslow; and other things, unknown a year ago, had figured on the moving picture of his life, and said their say to him, and gone their way. But to-day he was looking forward and not back, seeing beginnings, not endings, not burying the past with tears or smiles, but hailing the future with a cheery cry of welcome for its hazards and its joys.
Henry put his head in at the door. "Sir Christopher Lance has rung up, sir, and wants to know if you'll lunch with him to-day at one-thirty—at his house."
"Yes, certainly. Say, with pleasure." Left alone again, Arthur ejaculated "Splendid!" Sir Christopher had seen the report in the paper! He read the law reports, of course. A thought crossed Arthur's mind—would they read the law reports at Hilsey? They might not have kept their eye on his case. He folded up the paper and put it carefully in the little bag which he was now in the habit of carrying to and fro between his lodgings and his chambers.
Sir Christopher was jubilant over the report. "A feather in your cap to get that out of Leonard—a crusty old dog, but a deuced fine lawyer!" he said. But the news of the case from the Great Southern Railway Company meant yet more to him. "If they take you up, they can see you through, Arthur."
"If I don't make a fool of myself," Arthur put in.
"Oh, they'll expect you to do that once or twice. Don't be frightened. The dog of yours is a lucky dog, eh? All you've got to do now is to take things quietly, and not fret. Remember that only one side can win, and it's not to be expected that you'll be on the right side always. I think you'll be done over the dog even, in the end, you know."
"Not I!" cried Arthur indignantly. "That Harrogate cur's not our dog, sir."
"Human justice is fallible," laughed the old man. "Anyhow it's a good sporting case. And what are you going to do with yourself now?"
"I'm off to Hilsey for a fortnight's holiday. Going at four o'clock."
"Losing no time," Sir Christopher remarked with a smile.
"Well, it's jolly in the country in the spring, isn't it?" Arthur asked, rather defensively.
"Yes, it's jolly in the spring—jolly anywhere in the spring, Arthur."
Arthur caught the kindly banter in his tone; he flushed a little and smiled in answer. "It was very jolly there in the winter too, if you come to that, sir. Ripping skating!"
"Does all the family skate?"
"No, not all the family." He laughed. "Just enough of it, Sir Christopher."
The old man sat back in his chair and sipped his hock. "Some men can get on without a woman about them but, so far as I've observed you, I don't think you're that sort. If you must have a woman about you, there's a good deal to be said for its being your own wife, and not, as so often happens, somebody else's. May we include that among our recent discoveries?"
"But your own wife costs such a lot of money."
"So do the others—very often. Don't wait too long for money, or for too much of it. Things are jolliest in the spring!"
"I suppose I'm rather young. I'm only twenty-five, you know."
"And a damned good age for making love too!" Sir Christopher pronounced emphatically.
"Oh, of course, if that's your experience, sir!" laughed Arthur.
Sir Christopher grew graver. "Does the wound heal at Hilsey?"
"Yes, I think so—slowly."
"Surgery's the only thing sometimes; when you can't cure, you must cut. At any rate we won't think hardly of our beautiful friend. I don't believe, though, that you're thinking of her at all, you young rascal! You're thinking of nothing but that train at four o'clock."
Arthur was silent a moment or two. "I daresay that some day, when it's a bit farther off, I shall be able to look at it all better—to see just what happened and what it came to. But I can't do that now. I—I haven't time." They had finished lunch. He came and rested his hand on the old man's shoulder. "At any rate, it's brought me your friendship. I can't begin to tell you what that is to me, sir."
Sir Christopher looked up at him. "I can tell you what it is to me, though. It's a son for my barren old age—and I'm quite ready to take a daughter too, Arthur."
Arthur went off by the four o'clock train, with his copy ofThe Timesin his pocket. But out of that pocket it never emerged, save in the privacy of his den, and there it was hidden carefully. Never in all his life did he confess that he had "happened" to bring it down with him. For, on the platform at Hilsey, the first thing he saw was Judith waiting for him. As soon as he put his head out of the window, she ran towards him, brandishingThe Timesin her hand. No motive to produce his copy, no need to confess that he had brought it!
His attitude towards Judith's copy was one of apparent indifference. It could not be maintained in face of her excitement and curiosity. The report seemed to have had on her much the same effect as skating. She proposed to walk home, and let the car take his luggage, and, as soon as they were clear of the station, she cried, "Now you've got to tell me all—all—about it! What are the Rolls, and who's the Master of them? What's Lord Justice Leonard like? And the other one—what's his name?—Pratt? And what was it in your speech that they thought so clever?"
"I thought perhaps you wouldn't see it," said Arthur, not mentioning that he had taken his own measures to meet that contingency, had it arisen.
"Not see it! Why, I hunt all through those wretched cases every morning of my life, looking for that blessed dog of yours! So I shall, till it's found, or buried, or something. Now begin at the beginning, and tell me just how everything happened."
"I say, this isn't the shortest way home, you know."
"I know it isn't. Begin now directly, Arthur." She had hold of his arm now,The Timesstill in her other hand. "Godfrey's quite excited too—for him. He'd have come, only he's got a bad cold; and Margaret stayed to comfort him. Begin now!"
His attitude of indifference had no chance. All the story was dragged from him by reiterated "And thens—?" He warmed to it himself, working up through their lordships, through Miss Crewdson's smile ("She looks an uncommonly nice old girl," he interjected), through Tom Mayne's raptures and Norton Ward's jocose tribute, to the climax of the august solicitor and the case to advise which attested his approval. "That may mean a lot to me," Arthur ended.
"The people you'd been trying to beat!" Her voice sounded awed at the wonder of it. "I should have thought they'd just hate you. I wish I was a man, Arthur! Aren't you awfully proud of it all?"
Well, he was awfully proud, there was no denying it. "I wish the dear old mater could have read it!"
She pressed his arm. "We can read it. I've helped Margaret to spell it out. She's feeling rather afraid of you, now that you've got your name in the paper. And Godfrey's been looking up all the famous Lisles in the County History! You won't have to be doing Frank Norton Ward's work for him now all the time—and for nothing too!"
In vain he tried to tell her how valuable the devilling was to him. No, she thought it dull, and was inclined to lay stress on the way Norton Ward found his account in it. Arthur gave up the effort, but, somewhat alarmed by the expectations he seemed to be raising, ventured to add, "Don't think I'm going to jump into five thousand a year, Judith!"
"Let me have my little crow out, and then I'll be sensible about it," she pleaded.
But he did not in his heart want her sensible; her eyes would not be so bright, nor her cheeks glow with colour; her voice would not vibrate with eager joyfulness, nor her laugh ring so merrily; infectious as Miss Ayesha Layard's own, it was really! Small wonder that he caught the infection of her sanguine pleasure too. Long roads seemed short that evening, whether they led to fame and fortune, or only through the meadows and across the river to Hilsey Manor.
"Now the others will want to hear all about it," said Judith, with something like a touch of jealousy.
The story had to be told again—this time with humorous magniloquence for Margaret's benefit, with much stress on their lordships' wigs and gowns, a colourable imitation of their tones and manner, and a hint of the awful things they might have done to Arthur if he had displeased them—which Margaret, with notions of a trial based onAlice in Wonderland, was quite prepared to believe. Godfrey shuffled about within earshot, his carpet slippers (his cold gave good excuse for them) padding up and down the room as he listened without seeming to listen, and his shy, "Very—very—er—satisfactory to you, Arthur!" coming with a pathetic inadequacy at the end of the recital.
Then—before dinner—a quiet half-hour in his own den upstairs, where everything was ready for him and seemed to expect him, where fresh fragrant flowers on table and chimney-piece revealed affectionate anticipation of his coming, where the breeze blew in, laden with the sweetness of spring, through the open windows. As he sat by them, he could hear the distant cawing of the rooks and see the cattle grazing in the meadows. The river glinted under the setting sun, the wood on the hill stood solid and sombre with clear-cut outline. The Peace of God seemed to rest on the old place and to wrap it round in a golden tranquillity. His heart was in a mood sensitive to the suggestion. He rested after his labours, after the joyful excitement of the last twenty-four hours. So Hilsey too seemed to rest after its struggle, and to raise in kind security the head that had bent before the storm.
He had left his door ajar and had not heard anyone enter. But presently—it may be that he had fallen into a doze, or a state of passive contemplation very like one—he found Judith standing by the arm-chair in which he was reclining—oh, so lazily and pleasantly! She looked as if she might have been there for some little while, some few moments at all events, and she was gazing out on the fairness of the evening with a smile on her lips.
"I've been putting Margaret to bed—she was allowed an extra hour in your honour—and then I just looked in here to see if you wanted anything."
"I shall make a point of wanting as many things as I possibly can. I love being waited on, and I've never been able to get enough of it. I shall keep you busy! Judith, to think that I was once going to desert Hilsey! Well, I suppose we shall be turned out some day." He sighed lightly and humorously over the distant prospect of ejection by Margaret, grown-up, married perhaps, and thechâtelaine.
"If you want to know your future, I happen to be able to tell you," said Judith. "Margaret arranged it while she was getting into bed."
"Oh, let's hear this! It's important—most important!" he cried, sitting up.
"If you don't want to go on living here, you're to have a house built for you up on the hill there. On the other side of the wood, I insisted; otherwise you'd spoil the view horribly! But Margaret didn't seem to mind about that."
"Yes, I think I must be behind the wood—especially if I'm to have a modern artistic cottage."
"There you're to live—when you're not in London, being praised by judges—and you're to come down the hill to tea every day of the week."
"It doesn't seem a bad idea—only she might sometimes make it dinner!"
"She'll make it dinner when she's bigger, I daresay. At present, for her, you see, dinner doesn't count."
"Why does she think I mightn't want to go on living here? Is she contemplating developments in my life? Or in her own? And where are you going to live while I'm living on the top of the hill, out of sight behind the wood? Did Margaret settle your future too, Judith?"
"I don't think it occurs to her that I've got one—except just to go on being here. We women—we ordinary women—get our futures settled for us. I think Bernadette settled mine the day she ran away and left poor Hilsey derelict."
He looked up at her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Should you put the settling of your fate quite as early as that, Judith?"
She saw what he meant and shook her head at him in reproof, but her eyes were merry and happy.
"Have you thought over that idea of Switzerland in the winter?"
"It's the spring now. Why do you want to think of winter?"
"The thought of winter makes the spring even pleasanter." She smiled as she rested her hand on his shoulder and looked down on his face. "Well, perhaps—if I can possibly persuade Godfrey to come with us."
"If he won't? What are we to do if we can get nobody to go with us?"
She broke into a low gentle laugh. "Well, I don't want to get rusty in my skating. And it's splendid over there." Her eyes met his for a moment in gleeful confession. "Still—the best day's skating I ever had in my life, Arthur, was the first day we skated here at Hilsey."
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