Rackham took back the borrowed cloak and strolled along the passage, in no hurry to return to the ballroom. People were passing in and out; some of them were saying good-night, and one pair were wrangling on their way to the door.
"Who was the man you were flirting with in the street?" said the lover in an angry stutter. The lady scoffed.
"What a story!"
"My brother saw you go out. He came up and chaffed me."
"Your brother is a donkey. It must have been someone else."
"I tell you he recognized you by that chiffon fal-lal you wear!"
Rackham stood on one side. Let them fight it out.... Then his mouth hardened. What was he going to do? He had managed to prevent Julia from spoiling it all, and as long as he could keep her quiet the cards were in his hands.
"I won't let you go home," said the Duchess. "Barnaby can do as he likes, but you're too tired to mind sleeping in a cupboard."
She held Susan firmly by the arm as she spoke; she had motives. Barnaby deserved to be punished; his conduct with Julia had really been scandalous. But a worn-out girl, a wisp of white satin, was no match for a naughty husband. She would burst into tears and forgive him. Let Barnaby go home by himself, feeling guilty, and brood upon his unkindness.Shewould tell Susan what to do to him in the morning.
With rough kindness she hustled the girl away with her, and having collected her party, ordered them to bed.
"Because," she said, "until some of you are disposed of I can't tell what to do with the others, and I want to know if there are beds enough to go round."
Susan was the first to be bundled into her attic, and lay wearily listening to a far-off commotion. When at last the household had settled down there was a fresh disturbance, and the elder of the two foreign maids mounted, carrying an armful of pillows.
The Duchess herself followed, to excuse the indicated invasion. She was already in her dressing-gown. The maid set up a chair bed that had stood, doubled up, in the corner, and was sent out of the room for a minute.
"I've come to apologize," said the Duchess, "for pitchforking a stranger into your room like this; but I'm sorry for the woman. You are the only one of them I can depend on not to be horrid to her."
She looked round, measuring the space that was to be shared. "I hope," she said, "you won't bump into each other. The truth is, I have a shocking custom of sticking my head out of the window when something is going on outside; and just as I was getting into bed I heard a tremendous buzzing. Everybody must have started. If this was somebody's motor gone wrong, I supposed I ought to offer my hospitality. And it was. The chauffeur was grovelling; a man I knew was storming at him; and a woman wringing her hands on the pavement. I knew her too, perfectly, and she had no business in that man's car."
She stopped to listen.
"I am not," she said, "a universal mender. If people I don't particularly care about are jumping out of frying-pans, I don't preach at them eternal fire. But this fool of a woman had chosen to bolt under my very nose. Providence had cast her upon my doorstep. So I took the hint. Not being a heathen I really had to."
The confidential maid was ascending with someone strange to the place, who stumbled and chattered in halting French.
"I poked my head farther out," said the Duchess, "and shouted—'Is that you, Lady Cummerbatch? Have you had a breakdown?' and it was worth it to see her jump. I don't in the least know what she answered; it sounded hysterical. 'Well,' I said, 'leave your husband to tinker up the machine; it will probably take him hours. I can put you up.'"
"Her husband?" said Susan, puzzled.
"Tact, my child, tact! I sent Fifine down to fetch her, and kept my eye on him. She followed Fifine into the house like a lamb."
She wrapped her dressing-gown closer round her, and prepared to depart.
"I couldn't keep her in my room," she said; "I've two girls camping on the floor. Besides, she would begin confessing everything, and I am certain that I should smack her. Pretend that you are asleep. If she cries, don't notice. Good night, my child."
She patted Susan on the head, looking as if she would have kissed her, but not being accustomed to caresses, did not quite know how.
Then she wheeled round to receive the late visitor, holding up her finger, and crying—"Hush!" very loud.
Susan lay with her face turned from the light and her eyes shut, as she had been bidden. She heard Fifine, after some careful whispering, close the door and make her way down; she heard a smothered sobbing from the improvised bed that almost blocked the chamber;—and then she heard a stealthy noise in the room, and opened her eyes. On the wall she could see the shadow of a person struggling into her clothes, and evidently about to fly. Some instinct made the girl spring up and fling herself against the door.
"Oh! Oh!" said the strange woman, tottering. "Let me out!"
Susan looked her in the face.
"If you want to go," she said, "I will call the Duchess."
The stranger began to cry. She was thin and fair, with a faded skin and unhappy eyes, outstared by a blaze of jewels. Susan remembered seeing her at the ball. Kilgour had called her the Shop Window.
"He's waiting for me. I must go with him," she cried, worked up to a pitch of agitation that deprived her of self-control.
"You shall not," the girl said.
They both heard an engine vibrating far down below. The woman flew to the window. And then the Duchess's strident voice struck into the night from her own window underneath.
"So glad the motor is working. Don't trouble about your wife, Sir Richard. She's safely tucked up in bed."
Then a furious backing and grinding, as the car started and rushed away into the darkness, baulked of a passenger.
Susan retired sedately into bed, since it was no longer necessary to guard the door. The woman began to strip off her jewels, that she had put on again, anyhow,—flinging them in a heap on the table.
"Absurd, isn't it?" she said, in a high, unnatural key, "wearing all these.... but I wasn't going to leave them behind."
The girl said nothing; she was embarrassed.
"The Duchess took him for Dicky," the prisoner rambled on. Perhaps she was afraid of silence. "Youguessed the truth. I saw you at the ball to-night. They were all talking about you, and I liked your diamonds. Didyourhusband marry you for your money?"
Susan drew a sharp breath. Ah, this woman was more to be pitied than she, who had brought sorrow upon herself.
"Oh, you poor thing!" she said softly, sitting up in bed and clasping her hands round her knees.
Lady Cummerbatch was one of those lucky women who find solace in lamentation. They are the fortunate ones, whose bitterness of heart can be dissipated in bitter speech.
"I've heard," she went on, too distracted about her own plight to be conscious of the rank impertinence of which she was being guilty. "I've heard all about your husband. He's the wild Barnaby Hill who was jilted by an Irishwoman and disappeared and married abroad to vex her, and then turned up after his people thought him dead. You're an American too, though you are not my kind. They seem fond of you here; they all take your part;—but what difference does it make? Aren't we two miserable women?"
She began to weep noisily, and then to shiver. Getting into bed, she pulled her fur cloak over her shoulders, and sat hunched up, staring at the light.
"Do you mind my not putting out the candle?" she said. "I can't bear to lie worrying in the dark. If that auto hadn't stuck, and the Duchess hadn't jumped me when I got out to see what was the matter, I'd have been out of my misery.... I said to Sir Richard once—'You married me for my money,' and he laughed in my face and said—'My good young woman, you had an equivalent—you married me for my title.' And then I just screamed, 'I married you for your title! Oh, yes, I married you for your title!' till he banged himself out of the house."
"But if that was not true——" said Susan.
"True? It was all true," she sobbed. "The pity was it didn't keep true. When I married that man I couldn't have told you if his eyes were grey or green. But there—! It wears off with them and it wears on with us."
In her lamentation she continued to identify herself with her compatriot; their common misfortune, as she conceived it, was mixed up in her bewailing.
"Why don't you try it, like me?" she said. "Why don't you run away from him? If you cry and stamp and bluster it makes them vain, but when they've lost you outright they miss you.... Oh, it's awful to live with a man and watch him getting impatient because you are in his way and he's tied to you;—to see him looking hard at you, thinking how could he have paid the price! He tried to be civil at first, but his face soon taught me.... I wonder how long were you deceived?"
"I was never deceived," said Susan, hardly knowing she had uttered that sigh aloud. Her arms were round the other woman now; a poor wretch who had once been happy. Ah, with what pain would she not have gladly purchased some mirage of happiness, some illusion that she was his ... and beloved ... for half an hour!
The haggard butterfly who had been cursed with riches dropped her voice from its wailing tune to a whisper.
"I'm going to France to-morrow," she said. "He won't like that. It will be the same as striking him in the face. He to turn from me to other women who had no money to give him—! When a man sees that what he has tossed in the gutter is precious to another man, when he sees how the other man picks it up,—he feels cheated. It hits him harder than if you had killed yourself. I thought ofthatfirst. But don't you do it! I knew just how he'd say—'Mad! quite mad!' and bury me and forget me. He'll never lose sight of it if I go away like this—" and her voice rose high—"thatwill let him know how I hate him!"
But when her confidences had tired her out, and she loosed her clasp of Susan, pulling up the quilt and sinking into a wearied slumber,—when the girl lay gazing alone at a light that was burning dim;—there was a cry in the silence.
"I've come back, Dicky! Dicky, let me in—! I've come back."
It was the woman who hated her husband, calling to him in her sleep.
*****
Susan awakened in the morning with music in her ears. Dreaming, she danced with Barnaby, and his arm was round her, his breath quick on her cheek, his face not ... kind.
And as the wild illumination of a dream sometimes teaches what a stumbling consciousness dare not know, so the girl awoke trembling.
But that dream of all dreams was madness.
Into her waking mind came the thought of Rackham, the man who had said he loved her. Had she not always been ill at ease with him, and what was that but a warning instinct, divining, shrinking from the peril in a man's admiration? But Barnaby and she had been such good comrades....
Quaint incidents crowded on her, scenes in the hunting field, Sunday afternoons at the stables,—the day he had cut his finger and she had run to him to bind it up;—the day he had told her the brim of her riding hat was too narrow, and made her try on another that satisfied his inspection.... Oh, they had honourably tried not to haunt each other, but all the same.... Dear and safe memories; they blotted out last night.
She raised herself on her elbow and looked across the room at the runaway.
So a woman could sleep whom the casual kindness of an acquaintance had saved from shipwreck; so a woman could sleep who had poured out her soul to a stranger.
Someone was tapping at the door. It was late. Ten, eleven, ah, quite that; and Monsieur had come for Madame and brought her clothes. And Miladi said Madame was to dress in her room, as one was so cramped up here.
The maid waited discreetly at the door, her sharp, foreign eyes taking in everything, the other woman huddled up in bed, her clothes flung all over the floor, her gems scattered recklessly on the table.
Susan slipped on the dressing-gown that had been brought her, and was following, Fifine going down in front as a picket, to see that the coast was clear; when she heard her neighbour calling. Lady Cummerbatch was sitting up in bed.
"I made a fool of myself last night, didn't I?" she said. "Why didn't you smother me with my pillow? Don't be afraid, I'm as wise as an old hen this morning." She pulled the girl close enough to kiss. "You are a dear; you are a dear!" she cried.
Stretching out her arm to the dressing-table, she caught up something from its disordered glitter, squeezing it into Susan's hand.
"Keep it," she said. "I know you've heaps of your own. I saw them last night. But I want you to have something to remember me by. I can do nothing for anybody but give them things.... Do! Please me! I'd have thrown myself out of that window if you hadn't been kind to me."
The girl looked doubtfully at the diamond star that had been thrust upon her.
"If you don't care to wear anything I've worn," said the woman, "put it by. Who knows? Some day you may be glad to have it. If it does come from a worthless creature, it's fit to sell. I've heard of rich women whose husbands ruined them, and who had to pawn their jewels.... How do we know what will happen to you and me?"
Susan went down the irregular flight of stairs. The Duchess was waiting in her room for a word.
"Good morning, my child," she said. "Your husband has very properly come to fetch you. I should advise you to let him off lightly about last night."
The maid had gone out of the room.
"About——?" faltered Susan.
"Philandering with Julia. I believe in severity, of course," said the Duchess bluntly, "but as a matter of fact Kitty and I have been at him like early birds. Told him what we thought of him, and so forth. Don't look so sorry. It's done him good, and you can descend upon him like a forgiving saint."
"I have nothing to forgive him," the girl protested. "Oh, I wish you would not say that."
The Duchess smiled benevolently at her stammering haste. She fancied she understood.
"I quite forgot," she said, "to ask after that idiot upstairs.There'sa woman who tried to enrage her husband into paying her more attention by making herself conspicuous with another man. Bad policy, my child. It makes the man think less of her, though it may alarm his possessive instinct;—and, of course, if anybody stole your old coat you'd feel inclined to knock him down:—but that wouldn't make you believe it was as good as new. No, no, it's a fallacious notion. However, we're talking of this person. I'd be sorry for her feelings if I didn't think the shock of being stopped on the brink would bring her to her senses. We are very good-natured among ourselves, butshewouldn't find it easy to live it down. She isn't one of us."
She smiled encouragingly at the girl, who was wrapped in her own dressing-gown, a thick masculine garment that sat oddly on her slimness.
"People think," she said, "that we hunting people are a lawless band. They think they can come and do as they like in Melton. Just because we have a sporting sense of loyalty to each other, and stick to our friends when they need us. If you or Barnaby, for example, did anything outrageous, we'd scold you a little and let it drop. But we don't do it with an outsider.... He's brought your habit. Get into your things, my dear."
Barnaby nodded to her cheerfully as she came into the breakfast room. He was sitting on the window seat, and the rest of them were at breakfast. Whether or no they had been attacking him, he did not look cast down.
"Well, how are you?" he said. "Good girl, you are coming hunting. I brought everything, didn't I? They nearly left out your boots."
"Look out and see who that is passing," said the Duchess. Someone was cracking a whip below. He flung up the window, and she came round herself.
"What's the matter?" she said. "Is it a serenade, or do you want some coffee?"
A man with a long nose and a grizzling moustache had halted on his way up the street. Two or three others had left him and were trotting on.
"Have you heard the latest?" he said. "Richard Cummerbatch is drawing all the covers like a raging maniac, roaring for his wife. Her party went back in two cars from the ball last night, and each lot thought she had gone in the other. It appears she's bolted."
"Upon my word," said the Duchess, "if you are going to shout scandal at the top of your voice I shall have to put up my shutters. She is just over your head, Major. She had nowhere to go, since her party went off without her; so I took her in."
"Hey? What?" he said, looking up as quickly as if the lady were a chimney-pot that might fall on him. "—Keep still, horse! You don't say so?"
His face was blank for an instant, but he soon recovered from his disappointment. His well of gossip had not run dry.
Cocking his head on one side like a mischievous old bird, he began on another tack.
"Well," he said, "if you're so rough on scandal, you'll have to keep our friend Barnaby in order. What does his poor little American wife say to his goings-on?"
There was an awful pause in the room above.
"Susan," said Barnaby, "he's as deaf as a post. Put your head out and tell him as loud as you can what you think of me."
Somebody began to laugh; the rest followed; and there was no more awkwardness; his presence of mind had saved the situation. As he leaned out of the window with his hand on Susan's shoulder the Major's face was a study. Incontinently he fled.
"There!" said Barnaby, "we have routed the enemy. Let's get on our horses and pursue him. Hullo, who are these? A whole tribe without one sound horse among them."
The Duchess started back.
"Don't tell me it is my friend Wickes," she said. "I promised him weeks ago I'd beat up a little talent for his concert to-night, and I have never done it. For heaven's sake, somebody, volunteer! Is there a woman here who can sing in tune?"
"Do you sing, Susan?" said Barnaby.
"Oh, the man's affectation! Does she or does she not?"
She did not know what impelled her. Perhaps his carelessness; his unshaken attitude of amusement at a position that was—to him—so absurd.
"I could act something, perhaps," she said. The Duchess jumped at her offer.
"Booked!" she declared. "Stop that man clattering past, and tell him I want him to singJohn Peel. And, Cherry, you'll do for a comic song. You're men, and it doesn't matter about your voices, so long as you wear red coats."
The young man she was ordering pushed away his cup with an injured air. A murmur of—"Delighted, I'm sure. Delighted!" floated up from the street.
"You know I have only one song," he said, "and that is—The Broken Heart."
"Well," she said unfeelingly, "you can make it comic."
"Are you coming?" said Barnaby. He was waiting; some of them had already started. The girl caught up her gloves and whip.
"Good-bye, all of you," said the Duchess. "I beg you'll remember your obligations. Barnaby, the thing is at eight. Call down toJohn Peeland tell him.... Whatever you do, don't let my performer come to any harm."
"I will not quit her side for a moment," he promised, and the Duchess shook her head at him as they ran downstairs.
He was laughing as he put her up in the saddle.
"It appears you don't know how to manage a husband," he said. "Don't look so sorrowful.Idon't mind them.—And the general public is anxious to lend a hand."
They rode soberly side by side, over the noisy cobbles, down to the low white bridge thronged with pedestrians, threading their way amidst the stream that was turning in at the gates farther on to the right.
"We'll keep on, shall we?" said Barnaby. "Hounds will be moving directly, and there'll be a fearful crowd getting out of the Park."
So they held on between the lines of townsfolk and, turning upward, fell in with a cluster of horsemen on the watch, loitering on the hill.
"Awful bore, meeting in the town like this," said one of these peevishly. His horse was eyeing a perambulator strangely, and there was no space for antics. "Why do the Quorn do it?"
"Oh, it pleases the multitude."
There was a roar down below, and a scuffling noise as of hundreds running. Above the bobbing heads passed a glimpse of scarlet, as a whip issued from the green gates, clearing a way for hounds that were hidden from view in the middle of the throng. Barnaby turned his horse round.
"Come on," he said. "We'll wait for them out of the town. I suppose it's the customary pilgrimage? Gartree Hill."
Behind them, louder and louder, drowning the tumult, came the quickening tramp of horses. Their own animals grew excited.
"Sit him tight!" said Barnaby. Her horse had nearly bucked into the last lamp-post at the top of the hill. He would not wait peaceably at the corner, so she took him a few yards farther on, straight over the brow, where the way was not street, but road, looking down upon open country.
"Hullo!" said Barnaby.
The fields that spread underneath were bare and wind-swept; there was no sign of life in them. But what was that brownish dab on the right? Incredulously he watched it travelling up the furrow;—and, convinced, let out a wild yell that made their own horses jump.
"It's a fox!" he said. "It's a fox. Keep your eye on him, Susan, while I fetch them up."
He galloped back, waving his hat to hurry the startled host. The huntsman came swiftly over the hill, and a glance assured him; he touched his horn. In half a minute he and his hounds were scouring over the fields, and the riders who had been at the front were jumping out of the road.
"They've found. They are running!"
The cry was flung from lip to lip along the bewildered ranks that had closed up in expectation of the long jog to cover. A minute more and the crowd had burst like a scattered wave, far and wide.
Down the slope; up a rise; in and out of a lane defended by straggling blackthorn; dipping over the skyline; the pack was gone. Only the quickest could live with them, only the first away had a chance of keeping up in the run. They were just a handful as they landed over a stake-and-bound into a rolling pasture, a great rough waste where the ridges rose up like billows, crosswise, submerging the horses that were shortening in their stride.
"Good for the liver!" groaned Kilgour, as he rocked up and down. "But what a sell for the crafty ones waiting on Gartree Hill!"
"They'll cut in with us at Great Dalby," said Barnaby, flinging a glance that side. The pack hung to the left, still flying.
"Not much!" said Kilgour. "D'you suppose the fox is stopping with Lydia Measures for a bottle of ginger beer?—What did I tell you? There they go, wide of the village, over the Kirby lane——"
He broke off his ejaculations, pointing triumphantly with his whip, pushing on. A man of his build could not afford to lag behind, unlike those light-weights who could lie by and then come like a whirlwind and make it up. He must keep plodding on. But he took no shame to diverge suddenly to a gate. Let the young 'uns surmount that rasper.
On the high ground above a breathless horde struck in. Rumour, or the wind, or some saving instinct had warned them; they had come at a breakneck pace from their shivering watch elsewhere.
Susan, riding her hardest, with her chin up and rapture on her face, laughed as she heard the frantic thudding of that pursuit.
"They've missed a bit," cried Barnaby at her shoulder. Her horse was faster than his, but was tiring. She was glad to steady him as the pack ran into a strip of trees.
"What a scent!" said Barnaby. "Hark at them! They're sticking to him;—they're driving him up the Pastures!"
He swung round in his saddle, still keeping on. The rearguard, no longer in desperation, were trooping contentedly down the road.
"They'll get left," he said. "They reckon on losing him. Silly asses, they're lighting their cigarettes!"
Slower, but steadily, hounds were running up the wood. Their cry increased in volume, vociferous, echoing in the trees. It sounded a hundred times louder than in the open. And this time there was no changing foxes; they drove him too hard. Out he went at the top, and had no time to twist and turn in again; they were on his heels. Beyond was a steep drop into a village, and then a long struggle, and another drop to a ford. As the last of them were splashing through the water, the first of them were swinging out of their saddles and turning their horses' heads to the wind. They had run to Baggrave, and killed their fox in the Park.
"Three cheers for Barnaby and his outlier," said Kilgour. "That was no poultry-snatcher, but a real beetle-fed warrior. What the dickens shall we do next?"
"Oh, get up in a tree, somebody, like Sister Anne; and rake the horizon for second horses!"
Susan knew that voice. It was Rackham.
"Get up yourself," said Kilgour. "Your history isn't sound.Idon't trust my weight on anything but a watch-tower."
Susan had turned away her face; she did not want to have to acknowledge Rackham, although he had no shame in approaching her. Nervously she plunged into a rapid argument with Kilgour, whose broad and comfortable presence was a kind of buckler. But through it all she was conscious of him, she heard his voice. He and Barnaby were arranging something about a horse. She did not catch the drift of it, but Rackham turned to her pointedly and asked her opinion.
"I wasn't listening," she said. His glance was penetrating; she could not escape it, and recollection burnt in her cheek. She heard Barnaby whistle suddenly to himself.
Hounds were moving at last, not hurrying, but drifting across the park, searching as they went; and second horsemen were springing up out of nowhere. Those who were lucky were changing horses. Already it was far on in the afternoon.
"That's the worst of beginning so late," said Kilgour. "The day's gone before you know it. And here we've been dawdling, munching.... Now we'll just get away with the twilight after dodging backwards and forwards for an hour or two between the Prince of Wales's and Barkby Holt."
"Shut up, ill prophet!" said Barnaby, as they gathered close in to the cover-side. Already there was a whimper.
But it was late before the prophesied shilly-shallying came to its appointed end, and those who had resisted the false alarms, sticking patiently on guard at a windy corner, saw a fox break at last. A misleading holloa had drawn off the field; they were massing on the other side, out of sight, out of hearing in the rising wind that carried away with it the warning note of the horn. And hounds were slipping out like lightning.
"Come on!" said Barnaby. This time there was no mistake.
It didn't matter that there was a rival shout behind the dense thicket. Let those who liked it exclaim that the pack was divided, and miss a run to hang skirmishing for ever and ever about the Holt.... They had a fox away, and at least half the hounds were on him as he dipped the rise and went spinning into the infinite. Just a handful of riders they were, but high-hearted, as they turned their faces towards the dim red line of the sinking sun.
Miles and miles they seemed to go swinging on. Behind a grey church, round a silent village, and under a rustling wood. The wind was fresh with the breath of twilight; its withering blast died down with that last stinging gust of rain. And hounds were still running as swift as shadows, flickering far and fast.
One by one the rest of them had fallen back; had steadied their faltering horses and listened, beaten. Susan could hardly see the fences as they came up, darker and darker against the sky. But her horse rushed at them gallantly, and she had Barnaby to follow. Hounds were invisible now, but near; their cry was fierce behind that clump of trees, impenetrable but for one glimmering gap of light.
"They're running him still!" called Barnaby, plunging in.
His voice was all she wanted. She could not ask more of Heaven than this one gallop; and all her life she would remember that she had ridden it out with him....
They had to ride warily through the trees, feeling their way, trusting in their horses. Here the path was deep and boggy, there water trickled, and the boughs hung low, swishing against them as they went by. Birds whirred restlessly in the creaking branches, and an owl flew shrieking in front of them. When they emerged from that eerie passage everything had grown weird and strange in the cheating dusk.
"That's the horn," said Barnaby. "He's calling them off. Doesn't it sound unearthly?—There they are. Listen.... Listen.... They're running him in the dark!"
Far away on the hillside a light twinkled suddenly, turning the twilight land into darkness as the first star makes it night in the sky.
Barnaby laughed. "That was a hunt!" he said. "Hark! he's stopped them. We'll have to find our way out of this. Why, we can't see each other's faces.... Let's keep on a bit up this hedge-side, and perhaps we'll get into a bridle-road."
He went first, striking into a kind of track.
"There should be a gate in the corner," he said. "Better let your horse get his head down and smell out the rabbit-holes. We're like the babes in the wood, aren't we? Mind that grip!—Where are you?"
The gate was there. They passed through it, and on the other side was a sign-post. Barnaby struck a match, standing up in his stirrups to peer at the moss-stained board.
"I'm afraid," he said, "we'll be late for that concert. Unless we can strike Kilgour's habitation and get him to send us on. Shall we try for it? We're—oh, never mind where we are; it's the end of the world, anyhow. Are you tired to death?"
He turned round with the match in his fingers, and looked at her, but it had burnt down; he dropped it, and reaching out, caught her hand, swinging it in his as their horses stumbled on side by side.
"What a cold little hand!" he said, but his grip was warming it through the leather....
The end of the world.... He had used the word so lightly, but it called her back to reason. Another day was over. And perhaps to-morrow the world might end.
The Duchess and her friend Wickes were a trifle anxious, but their faces cleared as the late ones arrived. Two or three rows behind them the village schoolmaster dropped like a shot rabbit into his seat.
"A minute later and we'd have been lost," whispered the Duchess. "It's always a battle to keep him off the platform. Once he is wound up no power on earth can stop him. Twice already he has offered his recitation, proposing to fill the breach."
"Poor devil, what a shame!" said Barnaby. "Why not let him?"
"We did let him—once," said Wickes, and a reminiscent shudder passed down the row. He addressed himself eagerly to Susan.
"It's awfully good of you, Mrs. Hill," he said, the worried creases in his long face relaxing. "Every time I get up a village concert I swear it will be the last, but I go on doing it year by year. You have no idea what the tribulations are——"
"That is meant for me," said the Duchess, lowering her voice to a guilty whisper. "—I ask you, how could I help it? You know what a commotion there was this morning, getting off to the meet.—I told somebody to call down from my window to Rufus Brown that he was to attend this concert and singJohn Peel.—I could tell him a mile off by his old grey horse; you know how the creature bobs his head up and down:——"
"Idid your bidding," said Barnaby. "You only said 'Stop him!' and I don't know who on earth it was, but it certainly wasn't Rufus."
"How was I to know," groaned the Duchess, "that he had sold the grey?"
"But the beggar was quite delighted," protested Barnaby, who saw nothing worse than a joke in this substitution of a probably voiceless stranger. "He undertook to do it."
The Duchess pointed a solemn finger.
"Barnaby," she said, "you have been out of the world too long. You don't know the whole horror of the position. There he sits!"
"Flushed with victory," murmured someone else, "hoarse with bawling:——"
"It was an awful moment," said the Duchess, "when he came and thanked me for the compliment I had paid him. I've never spoken to the wretch in my life."
"He feels you have adopted him now," said the Job's comforter at her elbow. "Barnaby, you don't know him. He's the most impossible bounder who was ever kicked out of society, and we have all been turning him the cold shoulder for the last two seasons. We were beginning to hope we had finally choked him off."
"Poor Wickes is nearly beside himself," said the Duchess. "He will never get over it. But imagine my feelings when I discovered what I had done——"
"The populace at the back didn't know what to make of it; they are used to us rollicking inJohn Peel,—shouting out the chorus. But we were all too utterly petrified to emit a whoop——"
"Is there anything you would like in the way of properties, Mrs. Hill?" said Wickes, in a severe, sad voice. Susan looked down, suddenly nervous, her hands clenched, her face a little pale.
"What is your wife going to do?" Kilgour was asking, and Barnaby was answering carelessly that he didn't know.
"She is rather a dab at acting," he said, and now he was looking humorously at her. But for once she failed to smile back her recognition of the eternal joke between them.... Yes, she was good at acting....
"Turn the lights down," she said, and Mr. Wickes flew obediently to the nearest lamp. Anything to obliterate past misfortunes!—"And there is a woman at the back with a baby. Ask her to lend it to me."
She had meant to amuse them differently, but some impulse had made her change her mind. She flung a dark shawl, borrowed, over her satin frock. Mr. Wickes came back to her, carrying the child gingerly; its mother had relinquished it with pride, only protesting against his taking it up by the back of its neck like a puppy, which Wickes, distracted by his responsibilities, had seemed inclined to do.
They were all looking at her with interest, mildly stirred to expect something unusual, as the anxious Wickes helped her on to the platform and lowered another lamp. But as she stood above them their curious faces faded, and the touch of the little body, so light in her arm, took her out of herself. She was once more playing, playing for life, in the Tragedy Company; making the people sob at the tragic end of the drama.
"—Don't waken the child...."
The first note of her voice vibrated like the plaintive string of a harp. The listeners were startled.
She was the woman whose husband was faithless and, in the horrible madness that gripped him, was coming to take her life. She was shut in, hidden in a poor shelter, miles away from human help; and she was listening for his step in terror, loving him so bitterly still that she would have been glad to die, but clinging desperately to life for the sake of his child. And she rocked the baby on her arm, half distracted; singing to it, ceasing her chant to listen ... and imagining his approach. But all the while, in her despair, she stifled the scream that was on her lips;—she must not waken the child.
Farther and farther she retreated, staring with frightened eyes at the door, but still hushing the baby at her breast; and then, all at once, she stopped, and bent her face to its cheek. A pause hung, significant; and then came her cry, dreadful, heart-breaking. The baby was still. He might come; he might kill her ... he could not waken the child....
"Good heavens, how real!" said Mr. Wickes.
Susan, breathing a little quicker, looked down on the dim-lit audience. All these women could ride, all these women could dance.... She wanted Barnaby to think of her sometimes, later. Would he remember her by the one thing they could not do? by that wild scrap of melodrama?
The room was shaking with an almost hysterical applause. Behind there was an enthusiastic stamping. And the only woman who was not crying was the baby's mother, who was too flattered, and one other who looked on with disdainful eyes.
"Did you like it?" asked the actress wistfully. It was Barnaby himself who had come forward to help her down. She could not hear what he said; it was under his breath, and it was drowned in the clapping.
The lights had gone up again; she could recognize the people who were surrounding her, as she stepped down amongst them. Near the wall, not very far from the Duchess, who was frankly borrowing a large, masculine handkerchief, were sitting a thin, fair woman, and a big, stupid, slow-witted man. They both had an odd look of having just found each other. The Duchess wagged her head at them.
"Yes," she whispered, "there they are. They have made it up.... Wickes, don't you think it would be a noble deed to invite the schoolmaster to play God Save the King? It will get his name into the local paper."
"Certainly," said Wickes. He took a long breath, conceiving his troubles over, remaining, however, with his eyes fixed on Susan in a kind of awed curiosity. Finally he spoke out the problem in his mind.
"Do you mind telling me," he said, apologetically, "what spell you used—how you contrived to keep the infant quiet?"
"Oh, she's a witch!" said Barnaby.
"Yes, she's a witch," said the Duchess kindly, "but I know the secret. It had a comforter in its mouth."
They were all moving now, bustling out of their chairs, and blocking up the gangway with their "good nights." The proletariat was waiting for them to depart before shuffling out of the shilling benches. And there was Julia, paler than usual, but as lovely, smiling at Barnaby, giving him a long, strange look that was full of pity and understanding....
"You're done up," said Barnaby. "Come along. I shouldn't have let you be dragged into this performance on the top of a hard day's hunting."
She kept her lip steady, wishing she had not seen that interchange of glances; shrinking absurdly from the implication that was conveyed by Kilgour's officious interposition of his broad person. Did he think he could arrest the march of events by planting himself like a kind ox between Barnaby and Julia? Did he think they would not find means—? Still she kept her lip steady, letting Barnaby hurry her down the room; reminding herself that she had no right to feel insulted, or even a little sad.
*****
When they reached home she was going straight upstairs, as was her custom, but Barnaby stopped her.
"Don't go up yet," he said. "You ate no dinner. I told them we'd have something when we came in."
She let him draw a chair for her beside that red fire in the hall that always tempted the weary to go no farther; and bring things that she did not want out of the dining-room.
"I've sent away the servants," he said. "I've got out of the way of them flitting round me. You'd rather sit here, wouldn't you, and get warm and let me forage?"
For a little while they were gay, and then he cleared away plates and glasses, and a silence fell between them. He settled down in another of the great chairs and lit a cigarette. A smile curved in the corners of his mouth and vanished; he was thinking hard. Susan watched him, shading her eyes with her hand that he might not raise his head suddenly and read their wistfulness. She was not often alone with him in the house.
What was he thinking? His face was no longer careless; the kind blue eyes were fixed earnestly on the fire. She remembered the strangeness of Julia's look and her heart ached, guessing. Something must have happened between them; he must have let her see unmistakably that he loved her still. For there had been no restlessness in Julia's air, no bravado,—it had been the smile of a woman who was sure. And he had himself set a barrier between them.
She felt a wild longing to comfort him, to take his head on her arm and whisper that nothing was too hard for a man,—nothing worth that steadfast, unhappy gaze.
He moved, and the start it gave her set her pulses beating fast. If he had not stirred, might not the impulse have been too much for her? might she not have found herself kneeling by him, comforting him in the madness of her heart? She heard her own voice, imploring, sharp as if in some stress of mortal fright—
"Oh, let me go! Oh, will you not let me go?"
He had looked up quickly. The sobbing wildness of her cry broke in on his absent mood.
"You are tired of the farce?" he said.
She came back to herself. What was the matter with her? "I—cannot—bear it," she said slowly.
And for a minute there was silence again between them. She heard the fire crackling, a far-away clock ticking on the stairs; ... she thought she could hear the silence itself.
"I didn't know it was hurting you," he said.
He was sorry for her; he must not be sorry. She tried to laugh.
"Don't think of me," she said. "It—it didn't matter. After all, I'm an actress. I am one of these strange people that can pretend. Let me go back to the other kind of acting, where nobody will think me real; where there will be crowds applauding, and not just one person to be amused and say—'She carries it off well, but she'll make a slip,—she will stumble!' ... Oh, it couldn't hurt me. Don't you know we can only hurt ourselves?"
"Do you think I'll let you go back to that life?" he said.
His voice recalled the raging warmth of pity with which he had once referred to his lawyer's tale of her plight. Apparently the situation still roused in him a mistaken feeling that she was in his charge. She flushed, struggling with a betraying weakness.
"A hard life," she said, "but not unbearable.... My public will not be cheated. They will not shame me with too much kindness——"
Barnaby was not listening.
"Who was the man,—that fellow last night?" he said.
Why did he speak of that? Did he dare to imagine that she was building on another man's promises? that she was scheming, calculating—?
"No,—" she cried bitterly. "No,—not that!"
A great while after, it seemed to her, he spoke again. His voice was quiet.
"I think you are right," he said. "It's time to make an end of this. It's too dangerous."
"Yes," she said faintly. That at least was true....
He went on, rather quickly. She was not looking at him. She could not.
"Listen. To-morrow you'll have a wire from London. I'll see to it. I'm afraid we can't make it a cable; there isn't time. It will have to be from my lawyers, saying you are wanted in America on important business. My mother doesn't understand business. Anyhow, you'll be excited, and you needn't know what it means; so you can't explain."
"Yes," she said, in the same low voice. "To-morrow."
"We'll have to see about boats and things when we get up to town. And, of course, we'll have to make up a story. But once you're out of this country——"
Yes, once she was out of this country it would all be simple. She had only to disappear.
"What will you say of me?" she asked, with a sad quaintness. "Will you tell them that I am dead?"
He moved suddenly, checking himself.
"Oh, God knows!" he said. "It will take a lot of planning. You've forgotten the—other lady."
Yes, that was his difficulty. Although she would be gone there would still be a bar between him and Julia. That was the tragedy.
"I'll be out when the wire comes, probably," he said. It seemed to amuse him to settle the details; he seemed to be flinging his seriousness aside. "Rackham is coming over to try a horse. For form's sake you'll have to send for me immediately. I'll be somewhere down in the schooling pastures."
The nearness of exile took away her breath. But the impossible situation could only have ended so. That had been their bargain. At least she had not failed him, she had done all that he asked of her, drinking the bitter cup of her own dishonesty to the dregs. A rush of memory carried her back to that first night of his return, so distant, and yet such a little while ago. She held out her hand to him, humbly, uncertainly—
"Good night," she said. "You—you have been good to me."
Barnaby took her hands in his; clasped them hard. It was surely not his voice that was so unsteady.
"It's the last time, is it?" he said. "Let's play it out gallantly. Let's pretend. Susan,—Susan—is that how you say good night to your husband?"
Her heart beat fast; her head was dizzy. He was looking down in her eyes, drawing her hands to his breast.
No, not Barnaby:—not the one man she trusted!...
"Good night,—Sir," she whispered.
And he remembered; he let her go and stood back as she passed him on her way to the stairs.
"Good night," he repeated, in that queer, unsteady voice. "I beg your pardon,—Madam."