To-morrow had come.
It was the same kind of morning as other mornings; there was no lurid conflagration lighting up the sky. Outside it was dull and quiet, and even the wind was still. Susan paused at the staircase window, gazing a little while.
In the hall beneath she heard Barnaby talking to the dogs. And his voice shook her. The stunned sense of finality that was with her gave way to a sharp and sudden pain.
She could not bear to go down to him. Turning, she fled back.
"Is that you, Susan?" called Lady Henrietta. She was sitting up at her breakfast, and the door of her room was ajar. "Where is Barnaby riding out so early? I heard his boots creaking as he went by."
"I don't know," the girl said, truly. "I haven't seen him."
"Then don't loiter like a draught in the door," said Lady Henrietta impatiently. "Come in and have your tea up here and help me to read my letters."
She did as she was bidden. The sharp kindliness of Barnaby's mother was sweet to her; and it was the last time she would sit with her, the last time she would listen with a smile that was not far from tears to her caustic prattle. Whatever happened to her, however they managed her disappearance, she and Lady Henrietta would never meet again. Would she think of her sometimes,—kindly?—She was not to know....
"What's the matter now?" said Lady Henrietta suddenly. "You look pale."
Hurriedly the girl defended herself from the imputation.
"Of course, it's Barnaby," said Lady Henrietta, undismayed. "I suppose he has been behaving badly."
"Oh no! Oh no!" cried Susan.
Lady Henrietta waved her hands impatiently. How fragile she looked, how pretty;—the pink in her cheekbones matching her painted silk peignoir. The hardness that sometimes marred her expression had softened to a pitying amusement, and she had a look of Barnaby when she smiled like that.
"You'd deny it with your last gasp," she said.
Susan was picking up and arranging the letters that were lying in disorder. It was difficult to sustain that quizzical regard. But Barnaby's mother had not finished with her. She was not to be distracted.
"You never tell me anything, either of you," she said. "What is a mother-in-law for but to rule the tempest and shoot about in the battle? It's too firmly fixed in your heads that I am a brittle thing, and whatever is raging round me I am not to be excited. And it's absurd. I don't mind having a heart,—in reason. It's amusing; a kind of trick up my sleeve. But I won't have it robbing me of my rightful flustrations.—I am as strong as a horse, if you two would realize it. And you and Barnaby are such a funny couple."
She scanned the girl's face a minute.
"I'm attached to you, you little wretch," she said. "But I don't believe you care a straw for him."
But as she spoke her merciless eyes had pierced the girl's mask of light-heartedness. On this last morning Susan was not mistress of herself.
"Youarefond of him!" she said. "Dreadfully, ridiculously fond of him like any old-fashioned girl...."
"Oh, hush!" cried Susan. Anything to stop that unmerciful proclamation. She flung herself on her knees, and her terrified protest was stifled in Lady Henrietta's arms.
"How silly we are!" said she, but she held the girl tightly. "I'm to bridle my tongue, am I? You are afraid I shall tell him? Oh, you poor little girl, you baby, is it as bad as that?"
She pushed her away, as if ashamed of her own emotion, and a fierceness came into her voice, that had been entirely kind.
"If you allow that woman to ruin your lives—!" she said. "Oh, I'm not blind, I'm not altogether stupid—! If you let her take him from us—I'll never forgive you, Susan."
Having launched her bolt, all unconscious of its stabbing irony, she recovered her bantering equanimity, and looked whimsically at her listener.
"Why are you gazing at me," she said, "as if I were about to vanish? I'm not going to die of it. I am going to take the field."
*****
Barnaby was not in the house when the girl went at last downstairs. She wandered in and out of the library, trying to smother her expectation, listening without ceasing for the telegram that was to come and make an end. He did not appear at luncheon, and she sat alone, pretending to eat, but starting at every sound. Afterwards, to quiet her restlessness, she went round to the stables to say good-bye to the horses.
The pigeons flew down to her as she walked into the wide flagged yard. She went to the corn bin and scattered a handful as they circled round her and settled at her feet. The men must be still at dinner. There was no stud groom to look reproachful as she tipped a little oats in a sieve to give secretly to the horse that had been her own in this country of make-believe. She felt like a thief as she lifted the latch. It seemed wrong to be there by herself, without Barnaby. She had always gone round with him.
The horse lifted his beautiful head, and they stared at each other. She patted his quarter with her flat hand, and he went over and let her empty her parting gift in his manger.
"Good-bye," she said. "Good-bye, old boy!"
Tears choked her. She stumbled out through the straw and shut the door on him.
All down that side of the yard there was a row of boxes. The bay came first, and then the chestnut that Barnaby had ridden yesterday afternoon. He pulled a little with Barnaby; ... he had never pulled with her. And there was the hotter chestnut that she had called Mustard, and the brown horse that had been mishandled and had a trick of striking out when a stranger came up to him in the stall. She had gone with Barnaby to look at him when he first arrived from the dealers',—and Barnaby had caught her back just in time. The horse looked at her gravely, sadly, with no evil flicker in his eye. Life had dealt hardly with him as with her, and he seemed, best of them all, to understand. But Barnaby had forbidden her to go near him.... Mechanically she went on to Black Rose's box, but her place was empty.
There was a grey next door, an old horse that had carried her many times. He was to be fired in the spring, sold perhaps. She leant her head, shuddering, against him; and he licked at her hand like a dog.... What was the end of them, all these brave, patient, willing creatures? A few seasons' eager service, and then, step by step, as the tired muscles failed the undying spirit—knocking from hand to hand, harder fare, worse misusage,—the dreadful descent into hell.
Once, on their way back from hunting, they had come suddenly on a strange procession, a gaunt herd of worn-out shadows making their last journey, staggering humbly along the wayside. It was a haunting tragedy. Staring ribs, hollow eyes dim with misery,—and the cursing driver thrashing one that had fallen, and lay in a quivering heap on the grass. She had asked what this horror was.... Just a shipload of useless horses travelling in the dusk their unspeakable pilgrimage to the sea.
And she had turned on the men riding at her side. Shame on them, that were English, that called themselves a sporting nation.... What a lie that was! she had cried....
And Barnaby had said—"She's right there!" and the other men had not laughed....
There were voices in the saddle-room. One of the grooms crossed the yard whistling. She was still leaning her head against the old horse, and she waited. She did not want the men to stare at her and wonder; she did not want them to find her there.
"The master took out Black Rose, didn't he?"
"Yes. He's gone down the fields with his Lordship."
"Will he be riding her in the Hunt steeplechases?"
That was a stranger's voice, not one of Barnaby's servants.
"Can't say."—The stud groom was cautious.
"That's an ugly brute of his Lordship's. Why didn't he ride him here?" said another voice, joining in.
"He had to go somewhere in the motor, and so I'd orders to bring the horse over. It wasn't a job I envied," said Rackham's groom.
"If ever a horse was a devil, that one is," said the stud groom, laconically.
"Wants a devil to back him," muttered Rackham's man. "I never ride out of our yard without expecting he'll down me. Got a history, hasn't he?"
"Who told you that?"
"Stevens told me you'd passed a remark about him."
The stud groom received the insinuating suggestion with a dignity that was proof against pumping for the space of a minute. He chewed on a straw discreetly. Then his own knowledge became too much for him.
"If I told you his history, Arthur Jones," he said slowly, "you'd never lay your legs across him no more."
"Then for God's sake tell it," said Arthur Jones.
The stud groom laughed grimly. He was a man of saturnine humour, and liked impressing his underlings.
"His Lordship knows," he said. "If any man could cow a horse, he can. Weight tells. Weight and devilry. But any other gentleman buying Prince John I'd call it suicide. If I didn't,—according to circumstances, mind you"—he lowered his voice, not much, but enough—"call it murder."
Would the men never stop gossiping and disperse? She would have to face their curious looks at last.
"I was up Yorkshire way when his Lordship bought him," said the stud groom deliberately. "Four of us was leaning over the bars at that auction. Two of us had a mourning band on the sleeve of our coats, and the third chap had unpicked the crape off his a month ago. When they put Prince John in the ring there came a frost on the bidding. They said he'd ought to 'a been shot out of the road, and never put up for sale. His name wasn't Prince John then. He'd been run in two 'chases, owners up;—and he'd killed them both."
The men stood with their mouths open, digesting the horrid tale. And a stable lad ran into the yard from his vantage point on a hillock.
"They're down at the jumps," he said, "—and they're changing horses."
It was then that the girl came out, passing swift as an apparition. The men fell back, touching their caps.
"I'll lay she heard you," said Rackham's man.
The stud groom looked after her curiously and, crossing over to the door of the grey's box, that she had left unfastened, closed it without a word.
She did not know why she was hurrying to the house. What half-conscious panic had seized her as her inattentive mind took its wandering impression of the grooms' idle gossip? What words had reached her, lodging in her brain to inspire that wild sense of impending trouble? It was no good searching for Barnaby in the house. He was down at the jumps,—changing horses.
"There's a wire for you," said Lady Henrietta.
It had come. At first she looked at it stupidly, as if it, the signal, were some trivial interruption. She heard herself explaining, like an unthinking scholar repeating a half-forgotten lesson. "I must go away. I—I have to go away."
"Bad news?" asked Lady Henrietta quickly. Susan crumpled the telegram in her hand.
"Yes, it's bad news," she said. "It is from the lawyers."
Vaguely she recollected what she was to say. Something about going up to London at once, and perhaps on to America.
"Let me see it," said Lady Henrietta. "Yes, it sounds urgent. We'd better send somebody to fetch Barnaby. He will have to take you. You must catch the afternoon train."
"Yes, I must catch the afternoon train," repeated Susan. That was decided. Had not Barnaby mapped it out? She wondered dully how he had managed to convey private instructions for that impeccable message; but all the while she was thinking, thinking,—and suddenly she was conquered by her wild, unreasoning fear for him.
"I'll go and find him," she said.
Lady Henrietta demurred, curious, desiring to cross-examine; but the girl's face smote her, and she forbore to hold her back.
It was not far down the fields, and she went like a driven leaf, possessed by a fear that would not be stilled by reason. She had gone down there sometimes to watch them schooling hunters, and she had ridden the jumps herself, that day when Barnaby showed her how they trained steeplechasers, with real wide hedges and a movable leaping bar. He had tried to prevent her risking the double, bristling with difficulty, and she had defied him, larking over it, and then galloping back to him to say she was sorry.
She counted the fences mechanically as they came up one by one, visible against the winter sky; lines of artificial ramparts, defended by a guard rail, made up with furze;—and the lapping rim of that actual water jump. The strange thing was that as she came nearer and nearer, instead of diminishing, her premonition grew. She talked to herself to keep down her panic.
Why were so few men killed steeplechasing? Because it was dangerous, Barnaby had said. It was the rabbit holes and the mole-hills and the grips that broke your neck unawares.... That was the gate he had shut between them, he sitting on his horse on the far side laughing, while she practised hooking the latch and pushing it back with the handle of her whip. He had shown her first the nail studded in the horn of the handle to keep it from slipping;—and then he had clapped the gate shut, declaring that till she opened it fairly, without his help, she should never pass. And she had ridden through triumphantly at last. It was the only thing he had had to teach her. How quaint they were, these heavy wooden latches.... She let the gate swing and ran.
Rackham was on Black Rose, and Barnaby on a chestnut. They were walking their horses when she caught sight of them, and Barnaby was letting his look over a fence, flicking his whip at the ridge of furze with its withering yellow blossom. They were not talking loud, but she thought his voice sounded angry. The chestnut was restive.
"Keep still, you brute!" he said.
Something was wrong between the two men. Some old antagonism had flared up, rousing them to a hot discussion. The chestnut lifted his forefeet off the ground, and Barnaby shook his bridle carelessly, warning him again to be quiet. Then all at once up he went, seizing the unguarded moment....
Crash!
The girl saw him rise, saw him stagger, falling back on his rider; and she ran on with sobbing breath.
The chestnut rolled over sideways and struggled on to his legs. A little way off the mare was plunging, upset by what was happening; she could hardly be controlled. Susan had reached Barnaby, she had thrown herself down beside him to lift his head from the rough grass where he lay so still. Rackham had dismounted; he was coming to help;—but she was out of her mind with terror. She caught up Barnaby's whip, springing to her feet, lashing at him as if he were a wild beast that she must keep at bay. Then she dropped on her knees again, and laid her cheek on Barnaby's heart, and the turf was heaving up round them both.
Far off, indistinct, she heard troubled whispers, and one quite close.
"He's breathing still, my lady." (That was the stud groom, who had formerly served a countess. He always addressed her so.) She looked up at him.
"He's living yet, my lady," the man repeated in an awed undertone. "Best not try to move him. They've sent a car for the doctor. Best let him lie till they come...."
He knelt on the other side, and one of the men stood over him in his shirt-sleeves, folding up his coat. With significant carefulness they raised Barnaby's head a little and slipped it under. And then they all waited and watched for a hundred years....
When the doctor came he was still unconscious. Something was broken, and there was bad concussion. It was possible he might be injured internally, strained, crushed,—a cursory examination could not make sure. They stripped a hurdle of its furze, and he was lifted and laid upon it; the men hoisted it on their shoulders and tramped with a dreadful slowness through the fields to the house.
"I'll ride on and break it to his mother," said Rackham, averting his eyes from Susan as he spoke to her.
"Yes," she said dully. She had forgotten him.
And as it often is, the one who was thought least fitted to support a shock took it coolly. A lengthy experience of hunting accidents helped her to seize, comforted, on Rackham's report of concussion, and to believe in his blunt assurance that the whole thing was nothing worse than an ordinary spill. A more diplomatic messenger might have terrified her with his gentleness, but she suspected no concealment in a man who, without beating about the bush, looked her right in the face and lied. She did not see the men carry their burden in, and when the others came to her, relieving Rackham, she was comparatively calm. Her active fancy was diverted by measures that she ascribed to a misplaced anxiety for herself.
"I am not going to collapse," she insisted. "It's too ridiculous making this fuss about me and not letting me go to him. It's not the first time the poor boy has been brought back to me knocked silly. You needn't be so fidgety over me;—you had better look after Susan.... My dear, my dear, I know what it is! And concussion is a thing the doctors can't cut you to pieces for, thank Heaven. Give her a little brandy!"
Rackham's glance met the doctor's. The case was too serious to provoke a smile.
Lady Henrietta had turned to Susan.
"Oh," she said, with the air of one who wished to demonstrate to an over-anxious circle that she had her wits about her—"that telegram—! Of course you can't go now. We must wire up to town.—"
The girl listened to her without at first comprehending.
"Oh,—the telegram," she repeated. How pathetically absurd that futile invention sounded now.
"I must go to him," she said.
The doctor nodded encouragement.
"I'll bring a nurse back with me when I come again," he promised.
Into the girl's pale cheek came a sudden colour. She lifted her head and her eyes shone. She held out her hand, and all at once it was steady.
"No one else;—no one but me!" she cried.
Oh, the farce was not played out; the curtain was not down. She was still his wife to that audience; it was to her he belonged, to no other.... Desperately she stood on her rights;—the poor, fictitious rights she had purchased with all that pain.
"Youcan't nurse him," the doctor was saying gently. "You'd break down; you would make yourself ill. You don't know what you would be undertaking."
But Barnaby's mother was on her side.
"Fiddlesticks!" said she. She had brightened unaccountably; in her voice ran a queer little tremor of satisfaction. "Let her make herself ill if she likes. Why shouldn't she? I've no patience with modern vices, calling in hirelings—! A wife's place is with her husband, not quaking outside his door."
Susan was looking bravely in the doctor's doubtful face.
"You can trust me," she said, on her pale lips a wistful flicker that hardly was a smile.—"I too was a—hireling, once. I know how."
She knew he must yield. What man would dare to stop her? What man would dare to dispute her claim? Only Barnaby himself, who might one day laugh at the tragic humour of her assumption. A kind of despairing joy shook her soul, and was blotted in a passionate eagerness of devotion. Barnaby was hurt, perhaps dying, ... and nothing could conjure her from his side.
The house had become very quiet.
Under Barnaby's windows and right down the avenue the crunching granite was spread with tan. The servants moved silently about their work, even in the far kitchens whence not a sound could be heard.
For a long time he was unconscious; for a long time he lay breathing heavily, and they could not tell if he was in pain. Other doctors came down from London, and Lady Henrietta had to be told what it was that the girl was fighting with that pale and steady face.
"It's love, sheer love, that keeps her going," said one witness to another, watching her courage in the deeps of agony and uncertainty, and, at last, in the breakers of hope.
She was safe in giving herself without stint, because for a long while he did not know her, and it did not matter to him who it was that was soothing him with a passionate gentleness of which his jarred brain would have no knowledge when it recovered its normal tone. She could sit at his bedside hushing him, whispering that she loved him, she loved him, and he must sleep.
Sometimes he talked to her in unintelligible mutterings, sometimes his rambling speeches, without beginning or end, were bitter to understand.
"You mustn't mind what he says," the doctor warned her kindly. "It's certain to be rubbish. Generally they go over and over some silly thing they remember.—I had a patient once who got into fearful trouble through winding off something about a murder he had read in a book."
—That was after he had stood awhile listening gravely to Barnaby's restless talk.
—"I'll find a way out. Wait a bit, my darling.... We'll not have our lives ruined by that mad marriage. I'll find a way out for us."
It was not always the same. Sometimes in the night it would be—"I tell you she's my wife. No, no, not the other. Awfully good joke, what? Mustn't lose my head, though; mustn't lose my head."
And Susan would lay her cheek against his in an agony lest he should hurt himself with his excitement.
"Sleep!" she would whisper, "oh, my dearest, lie still and sleep...."
"But I love her. Don't you know that? I can't marry my girl. Because I love her;—just because I love her—mustn't lose my head!"
Once after she had quieted him, and he had lain a little while motionless he called her.
"Are you there?" he said. His voice was so sensible that she trembled.
"Yes," she said softly, and he gave a sigh of content. But soon he was muttering again, and restless.
"She wants me to sleep," he was repeating, "she wants me to sleep."
No, he had not known who she was. She bent over him, smoothing his forehead with a tender and anxious hand. Sometimes her touch was magnetic.
"Yes," she said. "Hush, my dearest."
"Kiss me," he murmured suddenly, "and I'll go to sleep."
And since at all costs he must be coaxed to slumber, she kissed him for the woman who was not there.
*****
Slowly he turned the corner, slowly.
And at last she found him watching her one morning as she came towards him with a cup in her hand, across the great, wide room. She liked this room; it was so vast and simple. Its battered furniture must have been his when he was a boy. And there was no clutter of pictures and photographs; only a few ancient oil-paintings of hounds and horses. Above his bed a square patch in the wall-paper that was unfaded, betrayed where a woman's portrait had hung once and had been taken down.
"Hullo!" he said.
He lay looking at her, thin and haggard, but his whimsical smile unchanged.
"It's she," he said, "or is it the stuff that dreams are made of?"
"It is she," said Susan.
"I've been ill, haven't I?" he said. "And I say, Susan, have you been nursing me?"
"Yes," she said, steadily.
"I thought so. I've had a kind of feeling that you were there. What's it all about? Wasn't I down at the jumps with Rackham,—and the horse went up—? Did I get damaged?"
"Rather," she said.
"And you didn't fly to America?"
"No," she said.
His weak, amused voice, talking in pauses, smote on her heart.
"Ah," said Barnaby. "It would have looked bad if you'd bolted, wouldn't it? No end heartless. Susan,—oh, I've noticed things, off and on,—you've been killing yourself looking after me.—"
His smile was troubled. She shook her head at him.
"You didn't do it," he said, "because, oh,—because of some queer notion that you owed us something—? You didn't do it to make it up to us,—to pay us out?"
She put her arm under his pillow and, raising him slightly, lifted the cup to him and let him drink. If Barnaby could have known:—if he could have seen her claiming him in her hour of desperation—! If he could have dimly guessed what a dreadful happiness had walked hand in hand with pain! She had won something of her mad adventure. She was the woman who had nursed him, who had waked night after night at his pillow. Nobody could rob her of that. And when she was gone he would perhaps think of her with kindness....
"It wasn't remorse," she said.
"It's awfully good of you," said Barnaby. "But why—but why——" There was a faint eagerness in his puzzled voice.
"Perhaps," she said bravely, "it was the dramatic instinct. How could a poor actress forget all her traditions? How could she help rising to her part? Don't talk.... Lie quiet and laugh at me all you want."
*****
One day Lady Henrietta came into the room with a budget of letters and all she could rake of gossip.
"You two have been shut up so long," she said, "I believe you have both forgotten there is such a thing as an outside world. Why don't you ask who has been inquiring for you?"
"Who has been inquiring for me?" said Barnaby.
He was propped high in his pillows, and was looking like himself. In the afternoon he was to dress and sit in a chair and read the paper.
"Everybody," she said. "Poor Rackham has been two or three times a day when you were bad. Of course it was his horse that did the mischief. He would not be satisfied without seeing Susan——"
"Did you see him?" asked Barnaby. There was something a little odd in his intonation.
"Susan see anybody?" exclaimed his mother. "She had eyes for nobody but her patient. All the wild horses in Rackham's stables would not drag her away from you.—He's thinking of going abroad for a bit, he says. To America, or Canada;—he confused me with his talk of cities and mines and mountains. I don't know if he has any idea of making a fortune there or if he is looking out for a lady. I said you might have to go out there too, but the unfortunate accident had postponed it,—and he said it was a bigger place than I fancied, but to let him know if he could be of any use to you. His manner was rather queer."
"Poor chap," said Barnaby. "I daresay he is hard up. It would have been lucky for him if I—Why, what is the matter, Susan?"
"Don't tease her," said Lady Henrietta. "You can't possibly realize what a fright she had!" She turned briskly to the girl, however. "We never heard any more of that mysterious telegram that was to carry you off so quickly the day Barnaby was hurt," she said. "Have you quite forgotten it? Does absolutely nothing matter to you but him?"
Barnaby had begun to laugh, weakly, uncontrollably.
"Oh, that will keep," he said.
"What do you know about it?" said Lady Henrietta, catching him up sharply. "It came when you were out. I understood she was looking for you when she witnessed your smash. And I'm convinced it has never entered her head from that day to this."
Then she remembered her heap of letters.
"Look at all these!" she cried. "All begging for news of him! And the offerings! There never was anything so romantic.... There's one old woman down in the village that's killed her pig and, Barnaby—she sent up a delicate bit in a dish for you."
"Romantic—?" said Barnaby.
"Oh, romance has singular manifestations," said Lady Henrietta. "You never know.... There was that girl of Bessy's, for example, who used to write poetry.—She was too romantic, poor thing, and that's why she never married.—She went in for hero-worship. Used to go into kind of trances of adoration over a famous soldier that she had never seen. And once I tumbled over her sitting on the hearth-rug with her hands clasped behind her head, gazing with a rapt expression into the fire. I thought she was fighting his battles with him in her imagination, or poetising; but she whispered—'Don't interrupt me! I'm darning his socks.—'"
She was turning over her letters.
"Here's one for you, Susan," she said. "It's a London postmark. A big hotel, but rather a common hand."
Susan took it indifferently. Lady Henrietta was already plunged in the midst of a family letter; wherein an aunt of Barnaby's was presuming to offer her advice. She read out bits of it with little shrieks of scorn.
"'When Toby broke his leg I made a point of——' Who cares what folly she committed when Toby broke his leg? 'I do hope, Henrietta, you see that the doctors do not permit the poor boy's wife to be in and out of the sick-room. It irritates the nurses.' ... Ah, but ours is a romantic sick-room! Ifwehad married a fool like Charlotte's daughter-in-law—!"
She glanced up smiling at the other two. Providence, not she, had taken the field; and she had faith in its workings as efficacious. But Susan was not attending. She was reading her letter still. "My dear," said Lady Henrietta, "who is the common person?"
But she got no answer.
"Come! Tell us," said Barnaby; and at his voice Susan started.
"Somebody I—used to know," she said.
Lady Henrietta had returned to her own correspondence. Her mild curiosity could wait until the girl had finished deciphering the almost illegible scrawl.
"You might straighten the pillows for me," said Barnaby.
She tore the letter across and threw it into the fire. Then she came over to him and did what he wanted with a jealous eagerness that was new.
"Was it a worrying letter?" he said, in a low voice. He had nothing to do but look at her.
"No," she said, "it didn't worry me." But her tone was subdued, too quiet, as if she had had a shock.
"I'm eternally grateful to you for burning it, though," he said; "that abominable scent it reeked with was like a whiff of nightmare. I seem to remember it. I wonder where I can have run across a woman who advertised herself like that.... I'm glad you burnt it. Considerate nurse. It was the only thing to do."
She was grateful to him for not insisting. Not yet, not yet; not just this morning! ... Afterwards she would tell him.... She moved away from his side and picked up a newspaper from the pile that lay with the letters.
"Do you know what you look like?" said Lady Henrietta, tapping her cheek. "Like a child that has been startled, like a child when an unkind shake has scattered its house of cards."
It was true. But such a tottering house, such a dream-built, precarious house of cards!—
Lady Henrietta dropped her voice, ostensibly to communicate a paragraph in the aunt's letter that was unsuited to the profane masculine understanding.
"I don't want to pry," she said; "but was that by any chance an anonymous letter?"
"Oh, no, no, it was not," said Susan.
"Not Julia's hand disguised? That woman is capable of anything. She's been here several times inquiring. Sending in brazen messages!—"
"Is there anything in the paper?" said Barnaby.
Susan glanced hastily up and down the sheet. No, there was nothing. Among the theatrical announcements an American play that had come to London.
"She is looking in the advertisements!" said Lady Henrietta, affectionately scornful. "My dear, the poor boy is thirsting for murders and politics."
The advertisements.... And among them——
"To-night at 8.
"The Great American Comedy—'Shut Your Windows' ... Mr. Rostiman's Company. Mr. Hayes, Mr. Vine..." (a long list of names that were unknown to her, and unmeaning);—"And Miss Adelaide Fish."
*****
Barnaby was up and dressed.
He was much amused at his own weakness, at his dependence on that slim, supporting arm. He let Susan settle him carefully in a chair, and then frightened her by getting on to his feet and pretending to walk out of the room. She flew to him, scared, reproachful, making him lean his weight on her shoulder as she brought him back.
"Tyrannical girl!" he said.
She looked down on him as he sat there, dressed and shaved, his clothes fitting rather loosely, his blue eyes hollow. How unspeakably dear he was. How hard to face emptiness....
"I'll put your mother in charge of you while I am gone," she said.
"Don't be too long," said Barnaby. "I'll miss you."
Unwillingly her heart sank. He would miss her. In that little while; in that scant half-hour—!
"Patient," she said, "you flatter."
And smiled at him bravely, and went away.
"I'll go to him immediately," said Lady Henrietta. She was writing furiously, despatching a counterblast to the aunt's interfering letter, which had contained more warnings than she had read aloud. It deserved six pages.
"How do you spell inseparable?" she asked, hardly interrupting the delightful business of administering a slap to one whose daughters-in-law were not wax and whose sons were wild. Distractedly she glanced at Susan.
"You look wan," she said. "I told them you were to have the motor with the hood off. Get all the air you can. Do you mind taking this old brooch into the town to be mended?" Her eyes twinkled as she unpinned it and put it in Susan's hand.
"There!" she said, "that will make sure you don't hurry back too soon, pretending you have had your breath of air."
The girl went into her own room and slipped on a hat and coat. While she tied a veil round her head she remembered that in the diamond star, which was the only thing in the house that was her own, a stone was loose. Since she must go in to the jeweller's on Lady Henrietta's trumped-up errand she might as well take it with her.
The motor was not round when she descended, and she sank into one of the deep chairs in the hall. When she was away from Barnaby the strength in her seemed to fail. It had been heavily tried, and the strain was telling on her, now that it was relaxed.
The tan that had been scattered on the avenue still deadened the sound of wheels. But she saw Macdonald, who was waiting to pack her into the car, moving to the door; and rising, she went towards it. She had not time to draw back as she saw her mistake, for Julia was on the steps.
Swift in seizing her opportunity the visitor walked in at the open door. There was something belligerent in her entrance.
"How is he?" she asked, without preamble, addressing Susan. Macdonald had fallen back discreetly.
"He is better," said Susan coldly. "I have to go out, Miss Kelly."
"I must see him," said Julia, in a low, intense voice that would not be denied. "I've tried and tried, but they never would let me in. You will take me to him."
"I?" said Susan.
Julia did not blench under these accents of proud surprise.
"Yes," she said. "You daren't refuse me. I know too much."
The assurance in her voice warned the girl that this was no hysterical vapouring, but a challenge. She answered her bravely, maintaining an outward calm.
"I am sorry I cannot do as you wish," she said.
How lovely the woman was, with her angry flush, and her long-lashed eyes. How recklessly she spoke. Some theatrical impulse in her had overridden prudence; whoever liked might have heard her.... With that odd irrelevance that keeps the mind steady under fire Susan was wondering who it was that had said—"Yes, she's a beauty, but the back of her neck is common——"
"You have no right to keep us apart," said Julia. "I've been patient ... but this is too much! After all I'm not stone; I'm a woman—With all the world gabbling about you and your devotion—! I daresay you think you are getting an influence over him. Poor Barnaby—! All this while you have had him at your mercy!"
She fixed her eyes on Susan with an indescribable stare of scorn.
"Will you take me to him?" she said.
"I will not," said Susan.
Julia came nearer. They were practically alone. Macdonald was putting rugs in the motor.
"I believe you are fond of him," she said ruthlessly. "Fond of him! You the cheat, you the impostor—!"
Ah,—she had known what was coming. She had read it in Julia's eyes. Desperately she stood her ground.
"You insulted me once before," she said slowly.
"Yes," said Julia. "Even then I was not blinded.... But now I know. I've known ever since the Hunt Ball, when Barnaby——"
"Barnaby—?" Susan repeated the word under her breath as if it was strange to her.
"—When Barnaby said that you were not his wife."
The girl stretched out her hands unconsciously for a support that she did not find. There was a mist between them, and she swayed on her feet. Weak in spirit and body from her long nursing, she felt as if someone had struck her a whirling blow. In a kind of vision she saw Barnaby and Julia dancing;—always Barnaby and Julia dancing;—people had talked that night; they had sympathized with her.... Well might Julia laugh at her disapproving world if he had whispered—that! And it was true. She had only to look in Julia's triumphant face to know that this thing was true.
She could not speak. She turned and walked slowly towards the stairs, and began to go up. On the landing above she waited until Julia had reached her side. Then she went along the corridor without turning her head until they had come to the end.
At Barnaby's door she stopped and, turning the handle, spoke at last to the other woman, the woman to whom he had betrayed her.
"Go to him," she said.
And without another word she left her, and left the house.
Barnaby looked up, surprised.
Susan must have started, and Lady Henrietta would not open his door so slowly. Who was this rustling on his threshold?
She took a little run into the room, and stopped.
"Oh, Barnaby!" she cried emotionally. "At last—!"
His unresponsiveness was thrown away on her excited mood. Flushed with victory she misread his expression, less like rapture than consternation.
"This is a bit unexpected," he said. "I'm not in very good form, Julia. I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me—"
"Was I too sudden?" she said. "Ah, poor Barnaby; how you are altered;—how ill you look! Let me do something for you—"
She rushed at him with enthusiasm, casting a glance around her for illumination, and he could but smile at her hasty gesture, not yet grasping its full significance, not realizing the jealous self-assertion that lay behind her bewildering readiness to push him back in his chair, to shake up his pillows, to administer some potion.
"I don't want anything, thanks," he said. He was still grappling with the problem of her appearance.
"Oh—" she cried, desisting, "to think of you, helpless all this time, and in the hands of that woman—!"
"Are you speaking of my wife?" he said.
Julia laughed softly, reproachfully, and let her eyes rest on his.
"Foolish man!" she said. "You might have trusted me. Think what I've had to endure! Wasn't I punished enough for that ancient misunderstanding? Did you think I was so vindictive that you dared not confide in me? But I would have shared your burdens. For your sake I could even forgive your mother."
What was she driving at? His mouth set in a stiff line that might have warned her if she had not been so sure.
"I meant to wait," she said, "to pretend I was ignorant like the rest; to hug the secret till you struggled out of that wicked tangle and came to me. I understand you so well. I knew for whose sake you were trying to avoid a scandal. Oh, Barnaby, how mad it was—and how like you—!"
"Julia," he said, "what do you mean?"
She missed the dangerous note in his voice, too quiet.
"I'm not angry with you—now," she said caressingly. "But, Barnaby, was it fair to me? People are so uncharitable ... they talked cruelly about us. And if I hadn't known that she was not your wife,—if I hadn't known you were free——"
"That's a mistake," he said grimly. "I am not free."
She stared at him. So great was her gift of illusion, so invincible the vanity that in her was the breath of life, that she had put down his stiffness, his strangeness, to the effort to keep his feelings in control. The glad shock of her visit must have been almost too much for him. But what was that he was saying?
"Oh," she burst out. "Don't tell me she has entrapped you! That's what I was afraid of; that's why I felt I must see you at all risks, in spite of all opposition. I knew she would try to take advantage of your weakness while you were her prisoner, while you lay here at her mercy, no match for her—!"
No, he was not strong yet. His forehead was wet and his mouth was dry. He had a curious longing to find himself back in that cool bed yonder.
"Oh, for God's sake," he cried. "Stop talking nonsense!"
His adjuration checked her passionate speech. She remained gazing.
"I don't know," he said slowly, "how you got hold of your—hallucination. I don't know on what grounds you are making that—accusation. Did I hear you say that Susan was not my wife? Don't repeat it."
Julia drew a quick breath of amazement.
"Barnaby!" she gasped, in an incredulous, startled voice.
"Don't repeat it," he said stubbornly. Yes, the old fire was extinguished, the old spell shattered. And still she gazed at him, unable to comprehend. All at once she began to laugh.
"She did not deny it!" she said. "At first she tried to keep me from you, but when I told her I knew all,—that you had confessed it yourself,—she was beaten. Oh, anybody who saw her face would have known the truth!"
She was frightened then. His eyes were so blue and blazing.
"You told Susan," he repeated, "that I—thatIhad said she was not my wife?"
"Yes," she said, still defiant, but quailing a little before his look.
He stood up. He was regarding her with an expression that held no memories of the past. It was all blotted out; no trampled passion, no hidden tenderness stirred in him to excuse her.
"If you were not a woman—!" he said, in an implacable tone that was unknown to her.—"You had better go."
*****
"What a monster I am!" said Lady Henrietta. "How neglectful!—Was I more than five minutes? You'd have rung if you'd wanted me, wouldn't you? Poor boy, were you very dull?"
"It's nearly time for her to come back," he said.
He was looking tired. Getting up had not done him good. Feeling somewhat guilty his mother sat down to amuse him and make up for her lapse by half an hour's brisk attention.
Somehow his curious depression affected her. She, too, began to listen for the motor.
"I told her not to hurry back," she said apologetically, as time went by. "She's been doing far too much. If she doesn't take care of herself now you're better, she will break down."
"Wasn't that the car?" said Barnaby.
But no light step came hurrying up the stairs.
"I'll ask," said Lady Henrietta, and rang. The servant who came knew nothing, and was sent down to make inquiries. She was puzzled by the report.
"I can't understand this!" she said. "Barnaby—they say the car has come back without her."
His look alarmed her. She jumped up quickly.
"I'll see the man myself," she said; "it must be some ridiculous blunder."
She was a long time downstairs. When she came back she was bewildered and indignant.
"They tell me," she said, "that Julia Kelly has been; that she saw Susan before she went out——"
"She came up here," said Barnaby.
"So the servants tell me," she said. "I can hardly believe it—! And the man says that Susan made him drive her straight to the station. He heard her ask when there was a train to London. There is no message—"
Anger was struggling in her voice with apprehension. She looked suspiciously at her son.
"Barnaby—" she said emphatically, "if this is Julia's doing—I'll never forgive either of you!"
He had got on his feet, and stood uncertainly, as if measuring his strength. The look on his face struck her into silence.
"Don't couple me with Julia," he said, setting his teeth. The sweat was glistening like dew on his forehead. "Poor little girl ... poor little girl.... So she's gone. Why, what's the matter with me? What an incapable fool I am!—How am I to go and find her if I can't—walk—straight across a room—?"