VIII
LADY ANNE'S DEPOSITION
We wonder if it has ever happened to any of our readers—being a common human experience, it probably has—on the very morrow of some change which they had assayed, light-heartedly, experimentally, and with all provision made for honorable retreat in case of failure, to find the retreat, as it were, cut off, the old life put out of their reach once and for all, and success in the new becomes the condition not of a pleasanter manner of existence, but of very existence itself.
We know that Fenella's independence of the career she had chosen was never as complete as appearances seemed to warrant. Even if it had been so, hers was not the temperament to discover comfort in any such ignoble security. She had the bright confidence of her youth. Eager for the contest, she was not afraid of any of the rules. And if the comfortable thought that, after all, the worst that could happen her would be a return to domestic conditions with her one ambition quenched, visited her at all in despondent moods, it was rather owing to Madame de Rudder's insistence upon the fact, as the great strategic advantage in a campaign which about this time that lady began to conduct with Mr. Joseph Dollfus—a campaign carried on so pertinaciously and with such utter disregard for the Dominion manager's feelings, that he often wondered whether any inkling of the secret clause, the Lumsden clause, of the treaty could have reached her. If it hadn't, her bluff was a masterpiece.
"I'm afraid Joe Dollfus was rather rude to you to-day, dear," Fenella said to her old mistress one afternoon over the teacups. Madame's irruption into the affair upon the strength of an old "understanding" which her pupil could neither remember nor would deny, had, in fact, at last proved too much for Mr. Dollfus's manners.
"Pooh!" said madame, airily. "I'm not hurt. I don't care what the little bounder says. It's rather a good sign, in fact, that heshouldlose his temper. That type always does when they see you've the whip hand."
"How have we the whip hand?" Fenella never questioned the implied association of interest.
"My dear, because we're not dependent on Joe's say-so for a living. We're not a bankrupt solicitor's daughter with a mother and young sisters to support. We're not poor."
This was about the time that doubts were beginning to assail Fenella.
"Oh, but I amreally," she persisted, rather ruefully.
"Well, you're not to all appearance, and it's appearances that count. Look at where you live! look at your relations! Oh, I've rubbed that all in; trust me."
Fenella sighed. A home in which strangers gave orders; relations under whose roof she would never be tempted again—for that chapter in her life was closed definitely. She had answered one incoherent, penitent letter, and sent back two more unopened.
"My dear Nellikins," said the kind-hearted dame, "have some more tea and don't look so worried. I know we're rather a sham, but try tofeelthe part. Be a winner!" She patted the slim hand held out for the teacup. "You dolookone so, my dear. Once you admit," she went on, in a voice slightly veiled by buttered toast, "once you admit, even to yourself, that you're not doing a thing for fun and because you like it, the game's up. Because it's this sort of people who are coming to the front everywhere now—in books, and pictures, and music, and the stage—and everything."
"I've always heard that dabblers never did anything!"
"My dear, who said 'dabblers'? And besides"—impatiently—"a lot of that musty, fusty old wisdom wants tearing up and writing over again. How can any one who has to worry do the work thatpays. Clever! Oh, yes, they may be very clever, but all they succeed in doing with their cleverness is in making the people who matter—the rich, important people—uncomfortable. And theywill—not—be—made—uncomfortable, my dear. Besides, they never last long. Worry kills them off like the cold kills the flies."
Fenella did not pursue the subject. She felt all the vulgarity of her old mistress, but she felt also an unaccountable sense of protection in her company. Brazen, alert, competent, grasping, utterly disillusioned, mature; with good looks that seem to have settled down for fifteen years' hard service; smartly dressed, opaque of eye, unrestrained of laugh and anecdote with condescending patrons; living in discreet little houses, in discreet little streets off fashionable thoroughfares, with open-work lace blinds at their windows—Berthe, Clarice, Suzanne, Estelle, as the case may be—latterly even, Elizabeth and Kate: polishing nails, crimping hair, ironing out wrinkles, reducing flesh, kneading and anointing the pampered body; teaching dancing, selling fans and lace; "advising" decoration, dabbling in magic, undertaking "confidential" commissions; with a range of service that touches impropriety at one extreme and heroism at the other, and often with a past of their own behind them in which the finer feelings have perished, but not a good heart, the De Rudders of the world play their part in the parasitical life of the rich bravely enough—play it often, too, with a secret hatred and contempt for the class whose follies they fatten on that would be a revelation to the mere reformer.
The trouble began with an interview that poor Lady Anne was "accorded" early in November. The place, a sober "Adams" parlor, distempered in green, furnished in the old oak of commerce, and hung with Romney engravings in black carved wood frames. Between the two gaunt windows a writing-desk, littered with memorandum blocks, supports a large silver inkstand bearing the legend: "ToJas. Pemmer-Lloyd, Esq., M. R. C. S., from a grateful patient." To right, a low couch covered with a white linen cloth and with some mysterious mechanism or other at its head. At its foot, a glass table on rubber wheels, its two tiers loaded with multiform electro-plated apparatus. Carpet obtrusively thick.
"But are you quite sure?" she was saying.
Her companion, a dark, keen-faced man of few words, seems to consider awhile. Conversation in Harley and Weymouth Streets is expensive: even so, it was felt that Pemmer-Lloyd gave short weight.
"Personally," he answered, "I have no doubt whatever. Of course, if you wish, I can arrange a consultation or meet your own doctor. It was quite irregular you're not bringing him."
"Never ride again! Never—ride—again!" Poor Lady Anne kept repeating the dreadful sentence over and over to herself.
"Doctor!" she said aloud. "I have no doctor. Never been ill in my life. And what's the use of paying more money to a lot of men who'll only dot your i's and cross your t's for you? You're the top of the tree, ain't you?"
Pemmer-Lloyd, who was writing at his desk, did not deny the soft impeachment.
"I've written two names," he said, "on the back of your prescription. The apparatus can be obtained at either. The massage should be done in the evening—at your own house, if possible. You will find it a little exhausting at first. Thank you."
Lady Anne laid down two golden coins and a florin near the grateful patient's inkstand, stuffed the prescription into the pocket of her tweed coat, and stumped out to her cab.
"Druce," she said, when the door was opened for her at Suffolk Square, "I shall want you and Twyford to come up and help me pack after lunch. I am going to Market Harborough to-morrow."
She returned unexpectedly after the Christmas holidays, walking a thought more lamely than before, and with a new absorbed gentleness in her manner. She kept her room for three days, writing busily. Many callers, some of them strangers to the servants who admitted them, drove up in cabs and carriages. For the first time since she had taken the rooms her brother, Lord Windybank, spent two nights in the house. Fenella's empty bed was made up for him. On the evening of the second day, after dinner, the two maid-servants were called up to Lady Anne's sitting-room. The earl, a little horsey-legged man, with the face, hair, chin, and voice of his sister, was standing on the hearth-rug. His eyes were inflamed, and he blew his nose violently from time to time on an Indian silk handkerchief, an assortment of which he seemed to keep in the various pockets of his frieze suit. Old Mr. Attneave, the solicitor, stood by the writing-desk, wrapped in the grave professional manner that covers all human contingencies. The girls curtsied, signed a document, laboriously, in a space indicated by the lawyer's chalky finger, curtsied again, and turned to leave the room. Lady Anne called them back, handed each of them a couple of bank-notes from a little pile beneath an enamelled paper-weight, and kissed the dazed hand-maidens on the cheek.
"Be good women," she said, gravely. "Do your duty by your mistress. If I have given cause of offence to either of you, or made your work hard and ungrateful, by word or deed, remember I asked your pardon for it. And now bid your mistress come and see me as soon as is convenient."
Mrs. Barbour entered the room five minutes later with a white, scared face.
"Mrs. Barbour, this is Lord Windybank, my brother. Mr. Attneave I think you have met before. Stop snivelling, Windy;—please do. Won't you sit down? I'm going away to-morrow, Mrs. Barbour, for a short stay in another neighborhood, and whether I shall come back is rather doubtful. No, it isn't nonsense, Windy; I caught the red-headed one's eye when he didn't know I was looking. The other was too old to let anything out. Mrs. Barbour, I want to see your little girl before I go away."
"I'll telegraph for her at once, m'lady."
Lady Anne pursed her lip. "Telegraph for her in the morning," she said. "It's late, and I don't want the child to come up at night. Besides, it will spoil her rest."
"Are you ill, m'lady?" Mrs. Barbour asked, much mystified. There seemed to be so little change in the long white fretful face.
"Oh, dear, yes; quite seriously, ceremoniously ill, I assure you. Please don't look at me that way. You can't see anything. I don't believe any of them can, though they pretend to. And now about Fenella. Mr. Attneave, will you please explain?"
As the lawyer, in dry calculated sentences, explained the details and conditions of the little legacy, Mrs. Barbour broke down and wept after the fashion of her class, with great whoops, and holding her housekeeping apron to her eyes. All her little world seemed to be crumbling. She was not, by nature, an impressionable woman, but had it been her lot, as it is the lot of so many of her kind, to hear, month by month, new footsteps echo on her stairs; to see, month by month, strange faces people her rooms, the dignity of proprietorship, the sense of being mistress of a home, which had done so much to soften and sweeten her, must have missed her altogether, and the wear and tear upon her perceptions vulgarized her heart far quicker than feet or hands shabbied her house. During fifteen years, as far as Lady Anne was concerned, without the slightest temptation to anything that could be construed as a "liberty," or a single soul-searching as regards her own equivocal social status, the service of love had, little by little, been substituting itself for the service of gain. Custom and habit are strong with all who have attained middle life, but with women, after a certain age is reached, they are tyrants. Nor was it in its monetary aspect chiefly, though that might well have given her pause, that the sense of bereavement reached her. Simple words are most convincing. She was wondering how, "if anything should happen," poor Lady Anne in the nursing home, to which she was evidently bound, she could ever find the heart to wait upon strangers in her rooms.
"——five hundred pounds, until the age of twenty-one, unless upon an occasion of urgent necessity, the nature of which shall be determined by said trustees, appointed on the one part by the said Honorable Mrs. Nigel Kedo Barbour——"
"Boo-hoo!" wept the honorable lady.
The invalid patted her upon the shoulder. "My dear, good friend, do control yourself!"
"Oh, I can't, I can't! Oh! I never shall stop in this house. It won't be the same to me."
The broken phrases struggled through her tears like bubbles through water. The lawyer had to stop.
"I suppose," Lady Anne said, after the faithful Druce had led her weeping mistress away, "that class doesn't really know what their ideas are until they've put them into words. They say a lot over, and then pick out the ones they want to keep. Oh, I shall be glad when it's over one way or another, Windy. I think I know now how poor Uncle Eustace must have felt the day before Major Hartnett shot him. There's not much difference between a duel and an operation."
Thus it was to a house cold and dark with the shadow of change and worse that Fenella came home. Mercifully she was spared questioning on her own pale cheeks and dull eyes. Mrs. Barbour was in no mood to be entertained with a description of her doings among the fine folk. Lady Anne was dozing when she arrived, and might not be disturbed. The poor lady was already invested with something of her perilous state. A nurse in a blue linen dress and goffered cap, whose lightest word was law, moved softly up and down stairs in felt ward slippers, carrying various mysterious burdens. She called Fenella at about midnight. The girl had taken off her outer garments and put on a fleecy dressing-gown.
"You must be very quiet," Nurse Adelaide said, "and not stay more than half an hour. I want her to settle for the night while she is out of pain."
Inside a fire burnt cheerily, and a kettle sung its happy and heartless song. A tilted lamp plunged half the room into shadow and the air was sickly with the smell of some anodyne.
"Is that Nelly?" said a voice from the shadow.
The girl bent over the bed and put her lips to the high bony forehead.
"You mustn't cry so, child. You always had such fat tears, Nelly. There's one running in my eye now. Are you dressed?"
"Only ha-half."
"Get under the quilt, then. Be careful, child. I'm 'this side up; fragile; with care.'"
"Dear Lady Anne, is it true what they say? Are you very ill?"
"My dear, I have about one chance in a thousand of ever walking the streets again. It's all my own fault. I had an awful spill, child; none of them know how bad it was. But what could I do? There was the gate with some patent latch or other and I didn't dare get down. I'd never have got up again. Pepper knew it was no use. He tried to roll his dear old eyes back to tell me, bless his heart. And the off-hoof was just a little lazy. Ugh! I'm very wicked, I suppose. Often, after lying awake all night, I've had to bite my lip not to scream when some clumsy lout put me up wrong. Once I was up, I didn't mind. But it was worth it. Oh, Lord! it was worth it. One only has one life. I'd do it again. I'd have been a poor creature, Nelly, without horses and dogs. They've always understood me better than people. If there's a God for them, He's good enough for me, and if there isn't I don't want one either. Windy was shocked because I wanted to call a vet in consultation.... What did I want to tell you, child? Oh! I've been hearing tales about you in the last week. Of course they're all lies. What's become of your pirate friend?—don't pretend you don't know who I mean—Paul Ingram. Wasn't that the creature's name. All over, is it? So much the better. He was no good, Nelly. I saw that the night we talked together. A man can't play beggar-my-neighbor with the world and win, and that's what he wanted. Bryan's better, but I'm afraid he's spoilt another way. But don't let a lot of old-woman talk frighten you away from him. There's a lot of nonsense talked about girls' 'characters.' Every poor girl has to take risks, and every poor girl's mother knows it. There's only two rules. Never do what would lose you your own self-respect, and never love a poor man for his handsome face. You won't, will you, child? You know, when a person's dying they're allowed to make a deposition; so here's mine: There's nothing matters on this earth but just—money. You think every one knows that? Oh! they don't. It wouldn't do if they did. So all sorts of other things—art and high ideals, and, yes—even religion, are given 'em to amuse themselves with until it's too late. Then, of course, they have to pretend they're satisfied. But give 'em their chance over again; you'd see. And for a girl with a face like yours it ought to be so easy. Oh, Nelly, what does your love matter ifhisbuys you health and beauty fifteen years longer, and angel children, and a house with lovely gracious rooms, and cool green lawns in summer, and the winter in the sun, and motor-cars and horses, while poorer women are scrambling and pushing and taking their turns for 'buses and trams in the rain, and a strong arm to help you whenever you need it, and honor and peace in your gray hairs. My own life hasn't been much, but think what it would have been for little ugly Anne Caslon if great-grandfather hadn't dipped his fingers in the Irish Exchequer. And yet—what am I saying?—if Nigel Barbour would have held up his finger, Nelly, I'd have gone with him and cooked his meals and washed his clothes in a garret——"
The nurse tapped Fenella on the shoulder.
"I think you'd best go now. She's been talking some time. I want to settle her for the night."
She shook a bottle as she spoke and poured out a cloudy mixture into a glass.
"Good-night, my pet! Do you remember when I taught you to read—'Ned had a gad—' and you wanted to know what a 'gad' was, and I forgot to find out. I'm afraid we shall never know now."
"I'll see you in the morning," murmured Fenella, as she kissed her. Miss Rigby was on the landing outside, dishevelled, round-eyed, and in a wrapper, asking news of her dear friend in a tragic whisper.
Perhaps it was because she cried herself to sleep that Nelly slept so late. The house was all topsy-turvy, and by the time they remembered to call her Lady Anne had been taken away. Her bedroom windows were wide open and Twyford was strewing tea-leaves on the carpet as Fenella passed the door. She had taken very little luggage—just a portmanteau full of linen and a dressing-case, and two days later she went a longer journey and took no luggage at all.