CHAPTER XXXIIAN EXPLANATION
Mrs. Ramsay’strip to the Sunny South was accounted for by the fact that she had recently come into possession of a comfortable fortune, left to her by her godfather “in recognition and admiration,” said the will, “of the noble way in which Kathleen Ramsay had carried out her marriage vow—for better or worse.”
The widow had gladly accepted an invitation, and joined the Morven party. She was extremely fond of Aurea, the girl’s sunny nature and light-heartedness was a grateful tonic for her own sad frame of mind; but she now felt deeply indignant with her friend for her treatment of Mr. Wynyard, and could not have believed her capable of such snobbishness, had she not witnessed it with her own eyes. She had noticed his hurried address, Aurea’s quick reply, and then his face.Whathad the girl said, to thus turn him into stone? Personally, she liked Owen immensely! was deeply in his debt, and ready to forward his happiness and his interests to the best of her ability. Kathleen Ramsay, a woman of warm feelings and responsive susceptibilities, would have been delighted to promote a love-match between Owen Wynyard and Aurea Morven.
Aurea’s unexpected attitude had filled her with amazement and rage; she could hardly restrain herself, but managed to hold her peace—and that with painand grief—for four whole days; at the end of the time, she received a letter from Aurea’s lover, which caused her restraint to break all bonds:—
“Dear Mrs. Ramsay,—I find it will be impossible for me to go over and see you, as we are leaving for Milan to-morrow. I should have liked to have had a long talk with you—you and I have few secrets from one another—but, as the Rector and Miss Morven are in your hotel, I could not have faced them again, and given Miss Morven the trouble of cutting me for a second time. You suspected me, I know, and I may tell you that it was Aurea Morven who kept me in Ottinge for six months; that, chiefly for her sake, I took on a detestable job in Town, and engaged to risk my neck with this crazy motorist; for every week that I was earning my bread and keeping my promise, was bringing me, I believed, nearer toher. To the best of my knowledge I have never given her any reason to think ill of me; on the contrary, I have striven tremendously hard to make myself more worthy of her, and the other day, when I met her accidentally, I thought it was a wonderful piece of good luck for me; instead of which, it was the blackest day I’ve ever known. She refused to remember or recognise me. I have only six months more to work off—sometimes I think I’ll chuck the whole thing and enlist; I would, only for my sister. What’s the good of trying? I’m afraid this is a beastly sort of letter, but....”
“Dear Mrs. Ramsay,—I find it will be impossible for me to go over and see you, as we are leaving for Milan to-morrow. I should have liked to have had a long talk with you—you and I have few secrets from one another—but, as the Rector and Miss Morven are in your hotel, I could not have faced them again, and given Miss Morven the trouble of cutting me for a second time. You suspected me, I know, and I may tell you that it was Aurea Morven who kept me in Ottinge for six months; that, chiefly for her sake, I took on a detestable job in Town, and engaged to risk my neck with this crazy motorist; for every week that I was earning my bread and keeping my promise, was bringing me, I believed, nearer toher. To the best of my knowledge I have never given her any reason to think ill of me; on the contrary, I have striven tremendously hard to make myself more worthy of her, and the other day, when I met her accidentally, I thought it was a wonderful piece of good luck for me; instead of which, it was the blackest day I’ve ever known. She refused to remember or recognise me. I have only six months more to work off—sometimes I think I’ll chuck the whole thing and enlist; I would, only for my sister. What’s the good of trying? I’m afraid this is a beastly sort of letter, but....”
Some words were scratched out, but read, very carefully, and held up to the light, they were faintly decipherable.
“I sometimes feel as if I were going mad—I don’t care now if we have some bad accident. I only hope it will kill me.—Yours sincerely,“Owen Wynyard.”
“I sometimes feel as if I were going mad—I don’t care now if we have some bad accident. I only hope it will kill me.—Yours sincerely,
“Owen Wynyard.”
It was the Honourable Mrs. Ramsay, daughter of the late, and sister of the present, Viscount Ballingarry—andnot Katie—who, that evening, entered Aurea’s bedroom immediately after a knock. She discovered her young victim in a charming whitenegligéand a rose silk petticoat, engaged in brushing her magnificent hair. There was war in the visitor’s face as she seated herself, and, after a moment’s expressive silence, fired her first gun.
“Aurea, I want you to tell me why you were so amazingly, so cruelly, rude to Owen, your aunts’ chauffeur?”
Miss Aurea, after a glance at her friend, coolly replied—
“Why shouldIbe called upon to do the polite to my aunts’ci-devantemployé?”
“Aurea! This is not you—there must be some crooked turn in you, or there’s some other detestable girl in your body!”
“It is Aurea Morven, I assure you,” and she drew herself together with a quick movement; “and I do not wish to hear anything of Owen, the chauffeur.Iknow more about him than you suppose.”
“You don’t know a quarter as much as I do!” retorted Mrs. Ramsay with decision, and her eyes gleamed.
“I know that he was on a ranch in South America, that he was a waiter on theAnaconda——”
“Oh yes, go on.”
“That he was probably in the Army, that he is in disgrace with his family, and came to hide himself in Ottinge till the storm, whatever it was, blew over! and that a tall dark lady came to meet him at Brodfield, and even at the Drum.”
“How do you know?” inquired Mrs. Ramsay.
“I saw her—I saw him kissing a woman at the Drum as I passed; all Ottinge might have done thesame! Their shadows were on the blind. I saw him and the woman drive away; they passed me in a motor, he, leaning back delightfully at his ease, and she bending over him as if she adored him! And this is not second-hand news, for I witnessed it myself.”
“Why should you be so furious, Aurea? Aurea,Iknow why!” and her tone was vibrating and sarcastic.
The girl turned upon her with flashing eyes; but, before she could speak, Mrs. Ramsay said—
“You say your news is first-hand—so is mine; I promised to keep Mr. Wynyard’s secret.”
“Oh yes, I knew his name was Wynyard,” interrupted Aurea.
“Of course—my poor old man uttered it with his last breath. He was fond of Owen; he mistook him for his friend and schoolfellow—Owen’s father—and Owen allowed him to think so. I pledged myself to silence, but evenhewould permit me to break it now. The lady who came to see Owen, and who has so excited your wrath, was”—speaking very deliberately—“his sister, Lady Kesters.”
Aurea’s tortoiseshell brush fell to the floor with a resounding clang. Then, in a very few words, Mrs. Ramsay—impulsive, eloquent, and Irish—laid the whole story of Sir Richard’s bargain before the girl, who stood listening as if in a dream.
“Mr. Wynyard was so good to my poor husband, and, indeed, to me, I’ll never, never forget it. And, you see, Jimmy knew his father and mother, whom he could not remember, and one night in the dusk, just before I left, he told me his whole story. Of course I had always known he was the son of Captain Wynyard, and that he himself had been in the Red Hussars, butI didnotknow why he was earning his bread as your aunts’ chauffeur! He never said a word of you, but I understood—I realised the attraction that kept him, a young man of the world, in out-of-the-way Ottinge. He opened his heart to me that August night, and now, Aurea, you have broken it.”
“I?”
“Don’t pretend,” she cried passionately, and she looked at her almost threateningly; “don’t add to your sins.Youknow as well as I do how you treated him—certainly not as a lady should do; why, if I were to meet one of the Brodfield fly-drivers here I’d give him a civil greeting. You were outrageously rude—you overdid it. My only comfort is that, to be so jealous, you must have been extremely fond of him.”
Aurea coloured—she could blush furiously—and her complexion was very pink indeed, as seen through long strands of hair.
Then she sat down rather suddenly, and said—
“What’s done is done—and never can be undone!” and buried her face in her hands.
Whereupon the Honourable Mrs. Ramsay, having said her say, and “rubbed it in” remorselessly, quietly effected her departure.