"But I wait in a horror of strangeness—A tool on His workshop floor,Worn to the butt, and banishedHis hand for evermore."W. E. Henley.
"But I wait in a horror of strangeness—A tool on His workshop floor,Worn to the butt, and banishedHis hand for evermore."W. E. Henley.
"But I wait in a horror of strangeness—A tool on His workshop floor,Worn to the butt, and banishedHis hand for evermore."W. E. Henley.
"But I wait in a horror of strangeness—
A tool on His workshop floor,
Worn to the butt, and banished
His hand for evermore."
W. E. Henley.
In the sick-room all was still.
Lady Louisa lay with her eyes open, fixed. Blended with the cawing of the rooks came the tolling of the bell for her son's funeral. Janey had told her of Dick's death, had repeated it gently several times, had recounted every detail of the funeral arrangements and how her sister Lady Jane was not well enough to come to England for it. How the service was taking place this afternoon and she must go to it, but she should not be away long: Nurse would sit with her while she was away. How Harry was not to be present, as he had been frightened at the sight of the plumed horses. It was more than doubtful whether her mother understood anything at all of what she told her, whether she even heard a voice speaking. But Janey mercifully told her everything on the chance, big things and small: Dick's death, and the loss of Harry's bantam cock, the Harvest Thanksgiving vegetable marrow, and the engagement of theMiss Blinketts' niece to a rising surgeon, and their disappointment that instead of giving her a ring his only present to her had been a snapshot of himself performing an operation. Scores of little things she gleaned together and told her. So that if by any hundredth part of a chance she could indeed still hear and understand she might not feel entirely cut off from the land of the living.
Her mother heard and understood everything. But to her it was as if her prison was at such an immense distance that communication was impossible. Janey's voice, tender and patient, reached down to her as in some deep grave. She could hear and understand and remember. But she could make no sign.
Ah! How much she remembered, as the bell tolled for Dick's last home-coming! Her thoughts went back to that grey morning three-and-thirty years ago when she had seen his face for the first time, the little pink puckered face which had had no hint in it of all the misery he was to cause her. And she recalled it as she had seen it last, nearly a year ago, hardly human, already dead save for a fluctuating animal life. And she remembered her strenuous search for a will, and how Dick's valet had told her that his master had been impressed by the narrowness of his escape when he injured his head, and had actually gone out on purpose to make his will the day he went to Fontainebleau, but had been waylaid by some woman.She had found the name and address of his man of business, and had been to see him, but could extract nothing from him except that Mr. Le Geyt had not called on him on the day in question, had not made any will as far as his knowledge went, and that he had ceased to employ him owing to a quarrel. Dick's business relations with every one except Roger always ended in a quarrel sooner or later—generally sooner. She had made up her mind that Dick must die without leaving a will. It was necessary for the sake of others. But she had not told herself what she should do with a will of his if she could get hold of it. But she had not been able to discover one. The whole situation rose before her, and she, the only person who had an inkling of it, the only person who could deal with it, was powerless.
She had accumulated proofs, doctor's evidence, that Harry's was only a case of arrested development, that he was quite capable of taking his part in life. She had read all these papers to the nurse when first she came to Riff, and had shown herself sympathetic about Harry, which Janey had never been. Janey had always, like her father, thought that if Dick died childless Hulver ought to go to Roger, had not been dislodged from that position even by her mother's thrust that she said that because she was in love with him. Nurse in those first days of her ministry had warmly and withoutarrière penséeencouraged Lady Louisa in her contentionthat Harry was only backward, and had proved that she was partly right by the great progress he made under her authority. She had been indefatigable in training him, drawing out his atrophied faculties.
The papers which Lady Louisa had so laboriously collected were in the drawer of the secretaire, near the fire. The key was on her watch-chain, and her watch and chain were on the dressing-table. Nurse had got them out and put them back at her request several times. She knew where they were.
And now that Dick was dead, Nurse would certainly use them on Harry's behalf, exactly as she herself had intended to use them.
Unscrupulous, wanton woman!
A paroxysm of rage momentarily blinded her. But after a time the familiar room came creeping stealthily back out of the darkness, to close in on her once more.
She had schemed and plotted, she had made use of the shrewd, capable woman at her bedside. But the shrewd, capable woman had schemed and plotted too, and had made use of her son, her poor half-witted Harry. For now, at last, now that power had been wrested out of her own safe hands into the clutch of this designing woman, Lady Louisa owned to herself that Harry was half-witted. She had intended him, her favourite child, to have everything, and Janey and Roger to be his protective satellites. She had perfect confidence in Roger.
But now this accursed, self-seeking woman, who had made a cat's paw of Harry, had ruined everything. She, not Roger, would now have control of the property. She would be supreme. Harry would be wax in her hands. Her word would be law. She could turn her out of the Dower House if she wished it. Everything—even the Manvers diamonds in the safe downstairs which she had worn all her life—belonged tohernow. Everything except in name was hers already—if Dick had died intestate. And no doubt he had so died. How she had hoped and prayed he would do as he had done! How could she have guessed that his doing so would prove the worst, immeasurably the worst calamity of all? Lady Louisa was appalled. She felt sick unto death.
She had laboured for her children's welfare to the last, and now she had been struck down as on a battlefield, and the feet of the enemy were trampling her in the dust.
The door opened, and the adversary came in. She and her patient eyed each other steadily. Then the nurse went to the dressing-table and took the watch with its chain and pendant key, and opened the drawer in the secretaire. Lady Louisa watched her take out a bundle of papers and put them in her pocket. Then she locked the drawer and replaced the watch, and returned to the bedside. She wiped away the beads of sweat which stood on Lady Louisa's forehead, touched her brow and nostrils witheau-de-Cologne, and sat down in her accustomed place. Lady Louisa saw that her eyes were red.
"If looks could kill, yours would kill me, milady," she said. "It's been hard on you to have me to tend you. But that's all over now. Don't you fret about it any more. I shall go away to-morrow, and I don't suppose you'll ever be troubled by the sight of me in this world again."
Presently Janey came in, and the nurse at once withdrew. She took off her gloves, and put back her heavy veil.
"It is all over," she said, with the familiar gesture of stroking her mother's hand. "Such a sunny, quiet day for Dick's home-coming. We ought all to be thankful that his long imprisonment is over, that his release has come."
The other prisoner heard from the depths of her forlorn cell.
"And I ought to tell you, mother, that there is no will. Aunt Jane and Roger have looked everywhere, and made inquiries. I am afraid there is no longer any doubt that Dick has died without making one. So you will have your wish." The gentle voice had a tinge of bitterness. "Everything will go to Harry."
When Janey came downstairs again she found Roger sitting in the library with a hand on each knee. He looked worn out.
She made fresh tea for him, and he drankit in silence, while she mended his split glove.
"Well, it's over," he said at last.
"All the arrangements were so carefully made," she said softly, putting her little thumb into the big thumb of his glove, and finding where the mischief had started. He watched her without seeing her.
"I think everything went right," he said. "I hope it did, and Black did his part. I never heard him read so well."
"I thought the same."
Roger was so accustomed to hear this expression from Janey whenever he made a statement that he had long since ceased to listen to it.
"I'm thankful there was no hitch. I could not sleep last night, earache or something, and I had an uneasy feeling—very silly of me, but I could not get it out of my head—that one of those women would turn up and make a scene."
"From what you've told me, Mary Deane would never have done a thing like that."
"No. She was too proud, but there was the other one, the Fontainebleau one. I had a sort of ideashemight have been in the church. Queer things happen now and then. I didn't like to look round. Mustn't be looking about at a funeral. I suppose you didn't see anyone that might have been her?"
Janey laid down the glove.
"I didn't look round either," she said.
"Others besides Moses have struggled up the mountain only to be shown the promised land, and to hear the words: Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not pass over."
"Others besides Moses have struggled up the mountain only to be shown the promised land, and to hear the words: Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not pass over."
The following morning saw Janey and Roger sitting opposite each other once more, but this time in his office-room, staring blankly at each other. In spite of her invariably quiet demeanour, she was trembling a little.
"I am afraid youmustbelieve it, Roger."
"Good Lord!" was all Roger could say, evidently not for the first time.
There was a long silence.
"When did she tell you?"
"This morning, after breakfast. She and Harry came in together when I was writing letters, hand in hand, as if they were in a novel, and she said they had been married three months."
"Three months!"
"Yes."
"Why, they must have been married in June."
"Yes."
"Good Lord!"
Janey told him how they had been married at Ipswich at a Registry Office. "Her brother,who is a solicitor, was one of the witnesses. She showed me a copy of the certificate. She seems to have been very—methodical."
"It won't hold. Poor Harry is a loony."
"I hinted that, but she only smiled. I think she must have gone thoroughly into that before she took any step. And then she looked at him, and he said like a parrot that it was time he took his proper place in the world and managed his own affairs."
"I never in my life heard such cheek."
"After a bit I sent away Harry. He looked at her first before he obeyed, and she signed to him to go. She has got absolute control over him. And I tried to talk to her. She was very hard and bitter at first, and twitted me with having to put up with her as a sister-in-law. But I could not help being sorry for her. She was ashamed, I'm sure, of what she'd done, though she tried to carry it off with a high hand. She's not altogether a bad woman."
"Isn't she? Well, she's near enough to satisfy me. I don't know what you call bad if kidnapping that poor softy isn't. But the marriage can't hold. It's ridiculous."
"She says it will, and I think she'll prove to be right. She is a shrewd woman, and after all Harry is twenty-three. Besides, mother's always stuck to it that he was only backward, and she got together medical evidence to attest her view. Mother has always wanted to guard against Harry being passed over."
"Dick could leave the property to anyone he liked. It wasn't entailed. He was perfectly free to leave it to Jones, if he wanted to. Poor Jones! He's down with gout at the Lion. He won't get a shilling."
"Yes. But mother foresaw that Dick might never get a will made. He never could get anything done. And I am afraid, Roger, that if hehadmade a will, mother would have got hold of it if she could."
"Janey!" said Roger, deeply shocked. "You don't know what you're saying."
"Oh yes, I do. I feel sure, if poor Dick had made a will, Aunt Jane and mother between them would have——"
"Would have what?"
"Would have destroyed it."
"You simply don't know what you're saying. No one destroys a will. It's a very serious crime, punishable by law. And you are accusing your own mother of it."
"Mother has done some strange things in her time," said Janey firmly. "It's no good talking about it or thinking about it, but Jones told me that when she went to Paris last autumn she looked through all Dick's papers, and went to see his lawyer."
"I went to see him too, and he told me she had been, and had been very insistent that Dick had made a will and left it in his charge, and said that he wanted to make some alteration in it."
"Last autumn! But Dick was not capable then of wishing anything."
"Last autumn, I tell you, since his illness."
They both looked at each other.
"Well, it's no use thinking of that at this moment," said Janey. "The question is, what is to be done about Nurse?"
"Pay her up, and pack her off at once."
"She's gone already. She said it was best that she should go. I've telegraphed for another. But she'll come back as Harry's legal wife, Roger, I do believe."
"This medical evidence in Harry's favour—where does Aunt Louisa keep it?"
"In her secretaire. She made me get it out, and read it to her since her last visit to Paris. I could not bear to look at it. It was all so false. And I know she showed it Nurse. It was after that Nurse worked so hard to make Harry more amenable, more like other people. She slaved with him. I believe she was quite disinterested at first."
"She has certainly done him a lot of good."
"And he's fond of her. He's frightened of her, but he likes her better than anyone, much better than me. Before she left she told every servant in the house, and the men in the garden. At least, she took Harry round with her and made him say to each one of them, 'This is my wife.' The whole village knows by now. And she has taken the medical evidence abouthim. She made no secret of it. She said she sent it yesterday to her brother."
"She stole it, in fact."
"She said that as his wife she thought she ought to put it in safe keeping. I told her she need not have been afraid that we should destroy it. She said she knew that, but that those who deceived others never could trust anyone else. Roger, she has done a very wicked and shameless thing, for the sake of a livelihood, but I think she is suffering for it. And I believe, in spite of herself, she had a kind of devotion for mother. She had done so much for her. She never spared herself. She felt leaving her."
"Did she ask about the will?"
"No. I think there was a general feeling of surprise that the will was not read after the funeral."
"Well, my good girl, how could we, when we couldn't find one?"
"I know, I know. But what I mean is, it must soon be known that no will is forthcoming."
"Of course it is bound to come out before long."
"Have you asked Pike and Ditton, Dick's London men?"
"Yes. I wrote to them days ago. They know of nothing. There is no will, Janey. We have got to make up our minds to it. Pritchard is coming over this morning about the probate, and I shall have to tell him."
Something fierce crept into Janey's gentle face.
"Oh, Roger, it is such a shame!" she stammered. "If ever any man deserved Hulver it is you."
"Dick once said so," said Roger. "Last time he was here, two years ago, that time he never came to the Dower House though I begged him to, and I went round the park with him, and showed him where I had cut down the oak avenue in the old drive. It went to my heart to do it, but he had left me no choice, insisted on it. And when he saw the old trees all down he was quite taken aback, and he said, 'Roger, it is you who ought to have had Hulver. You'd have kept it together, while I'm just pulling it to pieces stick by stick. I must reform, and come and settle down here, and marry Mary. By God I must.' That was the last time he was here, just before he sold the Liverpool property."
"Everything seems to be taken from you, Roger," said Janey passionately. "And to think that this unscrupulous woman will have absolute power over everything!"
"She will be able to turn me off," said Roger. "She will get in another agent—put in her brother, I should think. I always disliked her, and she knew it. Now she will be able to pay off old scores."
Roger looked out of the window, and his patient, stubborn face quivered ever so slightly.
It would have been a comfort to Janey to think that she should one day inherit Noyes, ifthere had been any question of his sharing it with her. But the long-cherished hope that they might some day share a home together had died. It had died hard, it had taken a grievous time to die, but it was dead at last. And Janey had buried it, delved a deep grave for it in the live rock of her heart.
"I don't see how I am ever to marry now," he said hoarsely. "I can't count on the two hundred a year from the agency and this cottage. Even that may go to-morrow. It wasn't much. It wasn't enough to set up house on, but eventhatis as good as gone."
"I have thought lately that you had it in your mind to marry."
A small tear suddenly jumped out of Roger's eye, and got held up in his rough cheek.
"I want to marry Annette," he said.
"Yes, my dear, I guessed it."
"Dreadfully. You don't know, Janey. Dreadfully."
"I know, my poor boy," she said,—"I know all about it." And she came and stood by him and patted his hand.
For a moment Roger sobbed violently and silently against her shoulder.
Then he drew himself away, and rummaged for his pocket-handkerchief.
"You are a brick, Janey," he said gruffly.
"The thing on the blind side of the heart,On the wrong side of the door;The green plant groweth, menacingAlmighty lovers in the spring;There is always a forgotten thing,And love is not secure."G. K.Chesterton.
"The thing on the blind side of the heart,On the wrong side of the door;The green plant groweth, menacingAlmighty lovers in the spring;There is always a forgotten thing,And love is not secure."G. K.Chesterton.
"The thing on the blind side of the heart,On the wrong side of the door;The green plant groweth, menacingAlmighty lovers in the spring;There is always a forgotten thing,And love is not secure."G. K.Chesterton.
"The thing on the blind side of the heart,
On the wrong side of the door;
The green plant groweth, menacing
Almighty lovers in the spring;
There is always a forgotten thing,
And love is not secure."
G. K.Chesterton.
The news of Harry's marriage, which was convulsing Riff, had actually failed to reach Red Riff Farm by tea-time. The Miss Blinketts, on the contrary, less aristocratically remote than the Miss Nevills, had heard it at midday, when the Dower House gardener went past The Hermitage to his dinner. And they were aware by two o'clock that Janey had had a consultation with Roger in his office, and that the bride had left Riff by the midday express from Riebenbridge.
It was the general opinion in Riff that "she'd repent every hair of her head for enticing Mr. Harry."
In total ignorance of this stupendous event, Aunt Harriet was discussing the probable condition of the soul after death over her afternoon tea, in spite of several attempts on the part of Annette to change the subject.
"Personally, I feel sure I shall not even lose consciousness," she said, with dignity. "With some of us the partition between this world and the next is hardly more than a veil, but we must not shut our eyes to the fact that a person like Mr. Le Geyt is almost certainly suffering for his culpability in impoverishing the estate; and if what I reluctantly hear is true as to other matters still more reprehensible——"
"We know very little about purgatory, after all," interrupted Aunt Maria wearily.
"Some of us who suffer have our purgatory here," said her sister, helping herself to an apricot. "I hardly think, when we cross the river, that——"
The door opened, and Roger was announced. He had screwed himself up to walk over and ask for Annette, and it was a shock to him to find her exactly as he might have guessed she would be found, sitting at tea with her aunts. He had counted on seeing her alone.
He looked haggard and aged, and his black clothes became him ill. He accepted tea from Annette without looking at her. He was daunted by the little family party, and made short replies to the polite inquiries of the Miss Nevills as to the health of Janey and Lady Louisa. He was wondering how he could obtain an interview with Annette, and half angry with her beforehand for fear she should not come to his assistance. He was very sore. Life was going ill with him, and he was learningwhat sleeplessness means, he who had never lain awake in his life.
The door opened again, and contrary to all precedent the Miss Blinketts were announced.
The Miss Blinketts never came to tea except when invited, and it is sad to have to record the fact that the Miss Nevills hardly ever invited them. They felt, however, on this occasion that they were the bearers of such important tidings that their advent could not fail to be welcome, if not to the celebrated authoress, at any rate to Miss Harriet, who was not absorbed in ethical problems like her gifted sister, and whose mind was, so she often said, "at leisure from itself, to soothe and sympathize."
But the Miss Blinketts were quite taken aback by the sight of Roger, in whose presence the burning topic could not be mentioned, and who had no doubt come to recount the disaster himself—a course which they could not have foreseen, as he was much too busy to pay calls as a rule. They were momentarily nonplussed, and they received no assistance in regaining their equanimity from the lofty remoteness of the Miss Nevills' reception. A paralysing ten minutes followed, which Annette, who usually came to the rescue, made no attempt to alleviate. She busied herself with the tea almost in silence.
Roger got up stiffly to go.
"I wonder, Mr. Manvers, as you are here,"said Aunt Maria, rising as he did, "whether you would kindly look at the dairy roof. The rain comes in still, in spite of the new tiling. Annette will show it you." And without further demur she left the room, followed by Annette and Roger.
"I am afraid," said the authoress archly, with her hand on the door of her study, "that I had recourse to a subterfuge in order to escape. Those amiable ladies who find time hang so heavily on their hands have no idea how much I value mine, nor how short I find the day for all I have to do in it. My sister will enjoy entertaining them. Annette, I must get back to my proofs. I will let you, my dear, show Mr. Manvers the dairy."
Roger followed Annette down the long bricked passage to thelaiterie. They entered it, and his professional eye turned to the whitewashed ceiling and marked almost unconsciously the stain of damp upon it.
"A cracked tile," he said mechanically. "Two. I'll see to it."
And then, across the bowls of milk and a leg of mutton sitting in a little wire house, his eyes looked in a dumb agony at Annette.
"What is it? What is it?" she gasped, and as she said the words the cook entered slowly, bearing a yellow mould and some stewed fruit upon a tray.
Roger repeated the words "cracked tiles," and presently they were in the hall again.
"I must speak to you alone," he said desperately; "I came on purpose."
She considered a moment. She had no refuge of her own except her bedroom, that agreeable attic with the extended view which had been apportioned to Aunt Catherine, and which she had inhabited for so short a time. The little hall where they were standing was the passage-room of the house. She took up a garden hat, and they went into the garden to the round seat under the apple tree, now ruddy with little contorted red apples. The gardener was scything the grass between the trees, whistling softly to himself.
Roger looked at him vindictively.
"I will walk part of the way home with you," said Annette, her voice shaking a little in spite of herself, "if you are going through the park."
"Yes, I have the keys."
"He has found out about Dick and me," she said to herself, "and is going to ask me if it is true."
They walked in silence across the empty cornfield, and Roger unlocked the little door in the high park wall.
Once there had been a broad drive to the house where that door stood, and you could still see where it had lain between an avenue of old oaks. But the oaks had all been swept away. The ranks of gigantic boles showed the glory that had been.
"Uncle John was so fond of the oak avenue,"said Roger. "He used to walk in it every day. There wasn't its equal in Lowshire. Anne de la Pole planted it. I never thought Dick would have touched it."
And in the devastated avenue, the scene of Dick's recklessness, Roger told Annette of the catastrophe of Harry's marriage with the nurse, and how he had already seen a lawyer about it, and the lawyer was of opinion that it would almost certainly be legal.
"That means," said Roger, standing still in the mossy track, "that now Dick's gone, Harry, or rather his wife, for he is entirely under her thumb, will have possession of everything, Welmesley and Swale and Bulchamp, not that Bulchamp is worth much now that Dick has put a second mortgage on it, and Scorby—andHulver."
He pointed with his stick at the old house with its twisted chimneys, partly visible through the trees, the only home that he had ever known, and his set mouth trembled a little.
"And that woman can turn me out to-morrow," he said. "And she will. She's always disliked me. I shan't even have the agency. It was a bare living, but I shan't even have that. I shall only have Noyes. I've always done Noyes for eighty pounds a year, because Aunt Louisa wouldn't give more, and she can't now even if she was willing. And I'm not one of your new-fangled agents, been through Cirencester, or anything like that,educated up to it, scientific and all that sort of thing. Uncle John was his own agent, and I picked it up from him. When I lose this I don't suppose I shall get another job."
With a sinking heart, and yet with a sense of relief, Annette realized that Roger had heard nothing against her, and that she was reprieved for the moment. It was about all she did realize.
He saw the bewilderment in her face, and stuck his stick into the ground. He must speak more plainly.
"This all means," he said, becoming first darkly red and then ashen colour, "that I am not in a position to marry, Annette. I ought not to have said anything about it. I can't think how I could have forgotten as I did. But—but——"
He could say no more.
"I am glad you love me," said Annette faintly. "I am glad you said—something about it."
"But we can't marry," said Roger harshly. "What's the good if we can't be married?"
He made several attempts to speak, and then went on: "I suppose the truth is I counted on Dick doing something for me. He always said he would, and he was very generous. He's often said I'd done a lot for him. Perhaps I have, and perhaps I haven't. Perhaps I did it for the sake of the people and the place. Hulver's more to me than most things. But hetold me over and over again he wouldn't forget me. Poor old Dick! After all, he couldn't tell he was going to fall on his head! There is no will, Annette. That's the long and the short of it. And so, of course, nearly everything goes to Harry."
"No will!" said Annette, drawing in a deep breath.
"Dick hasn't left a will," said Roger, and there was a subdued bitterness in his voice. "He has forgotten everybody who had a claim on him: a woman whom he ought to have provided for before every one else in the world, and Jones, Jones who stuck to him through thick and thin and nursed him so faithfully, and—and me. It doesn't do to depend on people like Dick, who won't take any trouble about anything."
The words seemed to sink into the silence of the September evening. A dim river mist, faintly flushed by the low sun, was creeping among the farther trees.
"But he did take trouble. There is a will," she said.
Her voice was so low that he did not hear what she said.
"Dick made a will," she said again. This time he heard.
He had been looking steadfastly at the old house among the trees, and there were tears in his eyes as he slowly turned to blink through them at her.
"How can you tell?" he said apathetically.And as he looked dully at her the colour ebbed away from her face, leaving it whiter than he had ever seen a living face.
"Because I was in the room when he made it—at Fontainebleau."
Roger's face became overcast, perplexed.
"When he was ill there?"
"Yes."
Dead silence.
"How did you come to be with Dick?"
It was plain that though he was perplexed the sinister presumption implied by her presence there had not yet struck him.
"Roger, I was staying with Dick at Fontainebleau. I nursed him—Mrs. Stoddart and I together. She made me promise never to speak of it to anyone."
"Mrs. Stoddart made you promise! What was the sense of that? You were travelling with her, I suppose?"
"No. I had never seen her till the morning I called her in, when Dick fell ill."
"Then that Mrs. Stoddart I met at Noyes was the older woman whom Lady Jane found looking after him when she and Jones came down?"
"Yes."
Silence again. He frowned, and looked apprehensively at her, as if he were warding something off.
"And I was the younger woman," said Annette, "who left before Lady Jane arrived."
The colour rushed to his face.
"No," he said, with sudden violence, "not you. I always knew there was another woman, a young one, but—but—it wasn't you, Annette."
She was silent.
"Itcouldn'tbe you!"—with a groan.
"It was me."
His brown hands trembled as he leaned heavily upon his stick.
"I was not Dick's mistress, Roger."
"Were you his wife, then?"
"No."
"Then how did you come to——? But I don't want to hear. I have no right to ask. I have heard enough."
He made as if to go.
Annette turned upon him in the dusk with a fierce white face, and gripped his shoulder with a hand of steel.
"You have not heard enough till you have heard everything," she said.
And holding him forcibly, she told him of her life in Paris with her father, and of her disastrous love affair, and her determination to drown herself, and her meeting with Dick, and her reckless, apathetic despair. Did he understand? He made no sign.
After a time, her hand fell from his shoulder. He made no attempt to move. The merciful mist enclosed them, and dimmed them from each other. Low in the east, entangled in a clump of hawthorn, a thin moon hung blurred as if seen through tears.
"I did not care what I did," she said brokenly. "I did not care for Dick, and I did not care for myself. I cared for nothing. I was desperate. Dick did not try to trap me, or be wicked to me. He asked me to go with him, and I went of my own accord. But he was sorry afterwards, Roger. He said so when he was ill. He wanted to keep me from the river. He could not bear the thought of my drowning myself. Often, often when he was delirious, he spoke of it, and tried to hold me back. And you said he wouldn't take any trouble. But he did. He did, Roger. He made his will at the last, when it was all he could do, and he remembered about Hulver—I know he said you ought to have it—and that he must provide for Mary and the child. His last strength went in making his will, Roger. His last thought was for you, and that poor Mary and the child."
Already she had forgotten herself, and was pleading earnestly for the man who had brought her to this pass.
Roger stood silent, save for his hard breathing. Did he understand? We all know that "To endure and to pardon is the wisdom of life." But if we are called on to pardon just at the moment we are called on to endure! What then? Have weeverthe strength to do both at the same moment? He did not speak. The twilight deepened. The moon drew clear of the hawthorn.
"You must go to Fontainebleau," she wenton, "and find the doctor. I don't know his name, but it will be easy to find him. And he will remember. He was so interested in poor Dick. And he brought the notary. He will tell you who has the will. I remember now I was one of the witnesses."
"You witnessed it!" said Roger, astounded. His stick fell from his hands. He looked at it on the ground, but made no motion to pick it up.
"Yes, I witnessed it. Dick asked me to. Everything will come right now. He wanted dreadfully to make it right. But you must forget about me, Roger. I've been here under false pretences. I shall go away. I ought never to have come, but I didn't know you and Janey were Dick's people. He was always called Dick Le Geyt. And when I came to be friends with you both, I often wished to tell you, even before I knew you were his relations. But I had promised Mrs. Stoddart not to speak of it to anyone except——"
"Except who?" said Roger.
"Except the man I was to marry. That was the mistake. I ought never to have promised to keep silence. But I did, because she made a point of it, and she had been so kind to me when I was ill. But I ought not to have agreed to it. One ought never to try to cover up anything one has done wrong. And I had a chance of telling you, and I didn't take it, that afternoon we drove to Halywater. Mrs. Stoddart had given me back my promise, andoh! Roger, I meant to tell you. But you were so nice I forgot everything else. And then, later on, when we were in the deserted garden and I saw the little lambs and the fishes, I was so dreadfully sorry that everything else went out of my head. I feel I have deceived you and Janey, and it has often weighed upon me. But I never meant to deceive you. And I'm glad you know now. And I should like her to know too."
Her tremulous voice ceased.
She stood looking at him with a great wistfulness, but he made no sign. She waited, but he did not speak. Then she went swiftly from him in the dusk, and the mist wrapped her in its grey folds.
Roger stood motionless and rigid where she had left him. After a moment, he made a mechanical movement as if to walk on. Then he flung himself down upon his face on the whitening grass.
And the merciful mist wrapped him also in its grey folds.
Low in the east the thin moon climbed blurred and dim, as if seen through tears.
"The paths of love are rougherThan thoroughfares of stones."Thomas Hardy.
"The paths of love are rougherThan thoroughfares of stones."Thomas Hardy.
"The paths of love are rougherThan thoroughfares of stones."Thomas Hardy.
"The paths of love are rougher
Than thoroughfares of stones."
Thomas Hardy.
Roger lay on his face, with his mouth on the back of his hand.
Years and years ago, twenty long years ago, he had once lain on his face as he was doing now. He and Dick had been out shooting with the old keeper, and Dick had shot Roger's dog by mistake. He had taken the catastrophe with a stolid stoicism and a bitten lip. But later in the day he had crept away, and had sobbed for hours, lying on his face under a tree. The remembrance came back to him now. Never since then, never in all those twenty years, had he felt again that same paroxysm of despair. And now again Dick had inadvertently wounded him; Dick, who never meant any harm, had pierced his heart. The wound bled, and Roger bit his hand. Time passed.
He did not want to get up any more. If he could have died at that moment he would have died. He did not want to have anything more to do with this monstrous cheat called life. He did not want ever to see anyone again. Hefelt broken. The thought that he should presently get to his feet and stump home through the dusk to his empty rooms, as he had done a hundred times, filled him with a nausea and rage unspeakable. The mere notion of the passage and the clothes-peg and the umbrella-stand annihilated him. He had reached a place in life where he felt he could not go on.
Far in the distance, carried to his ear by the ground, came the muffled thud and beat of a train passing beyond the village, on the other side of the Rieben. He wished dully that he could have put his head on the rails.
And the voice to which from a little lad he had never shut his ears, the humdrum, prosaic voice which had bidden him take thought for Mary Deane and her child, and Janey, and Betty Hesketh, and all who were "desolate and oppressed," that same small voice, never ignored, never silenced, spoke in Roger's aching, unimaginative heart. The train passed, and as the sound throbbed away into silence Roger longed again with passion that it had taken his life with it. And the still small voice said, "That is how Annette felt a year ago."
He got up and pushed back the damp hair from his forehead. That was how Annette had felt a year ago. Poor, unwise, cruelly treated Annette! Even now, though he had heard herstory from her own lips, he could not believe it, could not believe that her life had ever had in it any incident beyond tending her old aunts, and watering her flowers, and singing in the choir. That was how he had always imagined her, with perhaps a tame canary thrown in, which ate sugar from her lips. If he had watched her with such a small pet he would have felt it singularly appropriate, a sort of top-knot to his ideal of her. If he had seen her alarmed by a squirrel, he would have felt indulgent; if fond of children, tender; if jealous of other women, he should not have been surprised. He had made up a little insipid picture of Annette picking flowers by day, and wrapped in maiden slumber in a white room at night. The picture was exactly as he wished her to be, and as her beautiful exterior had assured him she was. For Annette's sweet face told half the men she met that she was their ideal. In nearly every case so far that ideal had been a masterpiece of commonplace; though if prizes had been offered for them Roger would have won easily. Her mind, her character, her individuality had no place in that ideal. That she should have been pushed close up against vice; thatshe, Annette, who sang "Sun of my soul" so beautifully, should have wandered alone in the wicked streets of Paris in the dawn, after escaping out of a home wickeder still; that she should have known treachery, despair; that she should have beenstared at as the chance mistress of a disreputable man!Annette!It was incredible.
And he had been so careful, at the expense of his love of truth, when they took refuge in Mary Deane's house, that Annette should believe Mary Deane was a married woman and her child born in wedlock. And she, whose ears must not even hear that Mary had been Dick's mistress, she, Annette, had been Dick's mistress too, if not in reality, at any rate in appearance.
Roger's brain reeled. He had forgotten the will. His mind could grasp nothing except the ghastly discrepancy between the smug picture of Annette which he had gradually evolved, and this tragic figure, sinned against, passionate, desperate, dragging its betrayal from one man to another. Had she been Dick's mistress? Was it really possible that she had not? Who could touch pitch and not be defiled? Women always denied their shame. How hotly Mary Deane had denied hers only a few months before the birth of her child!
Roger reddened at the thought that he was classing Annette, his beautiful lady, with Mary. Oh! where was the real truth? Who could tell it him? Whom could he trust?
"Janey."
He said the word aloud with a cry. And Janey's small brown face rose before him as he had known it all his life, since they had been children together, she the little adoring girl, and he the big condescending schoolboy. Janey'scrystal truthfulness, her faithfulness, her lifelong devotion to him, became evident to him. He had always taken them for granted, known where to put his hand on them, used them without seeing them, like his old waterproof which he could lay hold of on its peg in the dark. She had always been in the background of his life, like the Rieben and the low hill behind it against the grey sky, which he did not notice when they were there, but from which he could not long absent himself without a sense of loss. And Janey had no past. He knew everything abouther. He must go to her now, at once. He did not know exactly what he wanted to say to her. But he groped for his stick, found it, noticed that the dew was heavy and that there would be no rain after all, and set off down the invisible track in the direction of the village, winking its low lights among the trees.
"Happiness is inextricably interwoven with loyalty, love, unselfishness, the charity that never fails. In early life we believe that it is just these qualities in those we love that make our happiness, just the lack of them that entail our misery. But later on we find that it is not so. Later on we find that it is our own loyalty, our own love and charity in which our happiness abides, as the soul abides in the body. So we discover at last that happiness is within the reach of all of us, the inalienable birthright of all of us, and that if by misadventure we have mislaid it in our youth we know where to seek it in after years. For happiness is mislaid, but never lost."—M. N.
"Happiness is inextricably interwoven with loyalty, love, unselfishness, the charity that never fails. In early life we believe that it is just these qualities in those we love that make our happiness, just the lack of them that entail our misery. But later on we find that it is not so. Later on we find that it is our own loyalty, our own love and charity in which our happiness abides, as the soul abides in the body. So we discover at last that happiness is within the reach of all of us, the inalienable birthright of all of us, and that if by misadventure we have mislaid it in our youth we know where to seek it in after years. For happiness is mislaid, but never lost."—M. N.
Janey had the doubtful advantage over other women that men (by men I mean Roger) always knew where to find her. She was as immovable as the church or the Rieben. It was absolutely certain that unless Lady Louisa was worse, Janey would come down to the library at nine o'clock, and work there beside the lamp for an hour before going to bed. The element of surprise or uncertainty did not exist as far as Janey was concerned. And perhaps those who are always accessible, tranquil, disengaged, ready to lend a patient and sympathetic ear, know instinctively that they will be sought out in sorrow and anxiety rather than in joy. We do not engage a trained nurse for picnic parties, or ask her to grace the box seat whenwe are driving our four-in-hands. Annette is singled out at once as appropriate to these festive occasions. If anyone thought of Janey in connection with them, it was only to remark that she would not care about them. How many innocent pleasures she had silently wished for in her time which she had been informed by her mother, by Dick, even by Roger, were not in her line.
To-night, Janey deviated by a hairbreadth from her usual routine. She came down, seated herself, and instead of her work took up a book with the marker half-way through it, and was at once absorbed in it. She was readingThe Magnetfor the second time.
Since her conversation with Mr. Stirling in the Hulver garden, Janey had readThe Magnet, and her indifference had been replaced by a riveted attention. She saw now what other people saw in his work, and it seemed to her, as indeed it seemed to all Mr. Stirling's readers, that his books were addressed to her and her alone. It did not occur to her that he had lived for several years in her neighbourhood without her detecting or even attempting to discern what he was. It did not occur to her that he might have been a great asset in her narrow life. She was quite content with being slightly acquainted with every one except Roger, and her new friend Annette. She tacitly distrusted intimacy, as did Roger, and though circumstances had brought about a certain intimacy withAnnette, the only girl within five miles, she had always mental reservations even with her, boundaries which were not to be passed. Janey had been inclined to take shelter behind these mental reservations, to raise still higher the boundary walls between them, since she had known what she called "the truth about Annette." She had shrunk from further intercourse with her, but Annette had sought her out, deliberately, persistently, with an unshaken confidence in Janey's affection which the latter had not the heart to repel. And in the end Janey had reached a kind of forlorn gratitude towards Annette. Her life had become absolutely empty: the future stretched in front of her like some flat dusty high road, along which she must toil with aching feet till she dropped. She instinctively turned to Annette, and then shrank from her. She would have shrunk from her altogether if she had known that it was by Roger's suggestion that Annette made so many little opportunities of meeting. Annette had been to see her the day before she went to Noyes, and had found her readingThe Magnet, and they had had a long conversation about it.
And now in Janey's second reading, not skipping one word, and going over the more difficult passages twice, she came again upon the sentence which they had discussed. She read it slowly.
"The publican and the harlot will go into the Kingdom before us, because it is easier for themto flee with loathing from the sins of the flesh, and to press through the strait gate of humility, than it is for us to loathe and flee the sins of the spirit, egotism, pride, resentment, cruelty, insincerity."
Janey laid down the book. When Annette had read that sentence aloud to her, Janey had said, "I don't understand that. I think he's wrong. Pride and the other things and insincerity aren't nearly as bad as—as immorality."
"He doesn't say one is worse than the others," Annette had replied, and her quiet eyes had met Janey's bent searchingly upon her. "He only says egotism and the other things make it harder to squeeze through the little gate. You see, they make it impossible for us even toseeit—the strait gate."
"He writes as if egotism were worse than immorality, as if immorality doesn't matter," said Janey stubbornly. How could Annette speak so coolly, so impersonally, as if she had never deviated from the rigid code of morals in which Janey had been brought up! She felt impelled to show her that she at any rate held sterner views.
Annette cogitated.
"Perhaps, Janey; he has learnt that nothing makes getting near the gate so difficult as egotism. He says somewhere else that egotism makes false, mean, dreadful things ready to pounce on us. He's right in the order he puts them in, isn't he? Selfishness first, and thenpride. Our pride gets wounded, and then resentment follows. And resentment always wants to inflict pain. That is why he puts cruelty next."
"How do you know all this?" said Janey incredulously.
"I know about pride and resentment," said Annette, "because I gave way to them once. I think I never shall again."
"I don't see why he puts insincerity last."
"Perhaps he thinks that is the worst thing that can happen to us."
"To be insincere?" said Janey, amazed.
"Yes. I certainly neverhavemet a selfish person who was sincere, have you? They have to be giving noble reasons for their selfish actions, so as to keep their self-respect and make us think well of them. I knew a man once—he was a great musician—who was like that. He wanted admiration dreadfully, he craved for it, and yet he didn't want to take any trouble to be the things that make one admire people. It ended in——"
"What did it end in?"
"Where insincere people always do end, I think, in a kind of treachery. Perhaps that is why Mr. Stirling puts insincerity last, because insincere people do such dreadful things without knowing they are dreadful. Now, the harlots and the publicans do know. They have the pull of us there."
Janey's clear, retentive mind recalled everyword of that conversation, the last she had had with Annette, which had left an impression on her mind that Annette had belittled the frailties of the flesh. Why had she done that?Because she had not been guiltless of them herself.
In such manner do some of us reason, and find confirmation of that which we suspect. Not that Janey suspected her of stepping aside. She was convinced that she had done so. The evidence had been conclusive. At least, she did not doubt it when Annette was absent. When she was present with her she knew not how to believe it. It was incredible. Yet it was so. She always came back to that.
But why did she and Mr. Stirling both put insincerity as the worst of the spiritual sins? Janey was an inexorable reader, now that she had begun. She ruminated with her small hands folded on the open page.
And her honest mind showed her that once—not long ago—she had nearly been insincere herself: when she had told herself with vehemence that it was her bounden duty to Roger to warn him against Annette. What an ugly act of treachery she had almost committed, would have committed if Mr. Stirling had not come to her aid. She shuddered. Yes, he was right. Insincerity was the place where all meannesses and disloyalties and treacheries lurked and had their dens like evil beasts, ready to pounce out and destroy the wayfaring spirit wandering on forbidden ground.
And she thought of Nurse's treachery for the sake of a livelihood with a new compassion. It was less culpable than what she had nearly been guilty of herself. And she thought yet again of Annette. She might have done wrong, but you could not look at her and think she could be mean, take refuge in subterfuge or deceit. "She would never lie about it, to herself or others," Janey said to herself. And she whohadlied to herself, though only for a moment, was humbled.
She was half expecting Roger, in spite of their conference of this morning, for she knew that he was to see the lawyer about probate that afternoon, and the lawyer might have given an opinion as to the legality of Harry's marriage.
Presently she heard his step in the hall, and he came in. She had known Roger all her life, but his whole aspect was unfamiliar to her. As she looked at him bewildered, she realized that she had never seen him strongly moved before, never in all these years until now. There is something almost terrifying in the emotion of unemotional people. The momentary confidence of the morning, the one tear wrung out of him by perceiving his hope of marriage suddenly wiped out, was as nothing to this.
He sat down opposite to her with chalk-white face and reddened, unseeing eyes, and without any preamble recounted to her the story that Annette had told him a few hours before. "She wished you to know it," he said.
An immense thankfulness flooded Janey's heart as she listened. It was as if some tense nerve in her brain relaxed. He did know at last, and she, Janey, had not told him. He had heard no word from her. Annette had confessed to him herself, as Mr. Stirling had said she would. She had done what was right—right but how difficult. A secret grudge against Annette, which had long lurked at the back of Janey's mind, was exorcised, and she gave a sigh of relief.
At last he was silent.
"I have known for a long time that Annette was the woman who was with Dick at Fontainebleau," she said, her hands still folded on the open book.
"You might have told me, Janey."
"I thought it ought to come from her."
"You might have told me when you saw—Janey, you must have seen for some time past—how it was with me."
"I did see, but I hoped against hope that she would tell you herself, as she has done."
"And if she hadn't, would you have let me marry her, not knowing?"
Janey reflected.
"I am not sure," she said composedly, "what I should have done. But, you see, it did not happen so. Shehastold you. I am thankful she has, Roger, though it must have been hard for her. It is the only thing I've ever kept back from you. It is a great weight off my mind thatyou know. Only I'm ashamed now that I ever doubted her. I did doubt her. I had begun to think she would never say."
"She's the last person in the world, the very last, that I should have thought possible——"
He could not finish his sentence, and Janey and he looked fixedly at each other.
"Yes," she said slowly, "she is. I never get any nearer understanding how anyone like Annette could have done it."
Roger in his haste with his story had omitted the evil prologue which had led to the disaster.
"She wished you to know everything," he said, and he told her of Annette's treacherous lover, and her father's infamy, and her flight from his house in the dawn.
"She was driven to desperation," said Janey. "When she met Dick she was in despair. I see it all now. She did not know what she was doing, Roger. Annette has been sinned against."
"I should like to wring that man's neck who bought her, and her father's who sold her," said Roger, his haggard eyes smouldering.
There was a long silence.
"But I don't feel that I can marry her," he said, with a groan. "Dick and her!—it sticks in my throat,—the very thought seems to choke me. I don't feel that I could marry her, even if she would still have me. She said I must forget her, and put her out of my life. She feels everything is over between us. It'sall very well," savagely, "to talk of forgetting anyone—like Annette," and he beat his foot against the floor.
Janey looked at him in a great compassion. "He will come back to me," she said to herself, "not for a long time, but he will come back. Broken and disillusioned and aged, and with only a bit of a heart to give me. He will never care much about me, but I shall be all he has left in the world. And I will take him, whatever he is."
She put out her hand for her work and busied herself with it, knowing instinctively that the occupation of her hands and eyes upon it would fret him less than if she sat idle and looked at him. She had nothing to learn about how to deal with Roger.
She worked for some time in silence, and hope dead and buried rose out of his deep grave in her heart, and came towards her once more. Was it indeed hope that stirred in its grave, this pallid figure with the shroud still enfolding it, or was it but its ghost? She knew not.
At last Roger raised a tortured face out of his hands.
"Of course, shesaysshe is innocent," he said, looking hopelessly at Janey.
Janey started violently. Her work fell from her hands.
"Annette—says—she—is—innocent," she repeated after him, a flame of colour rushing to her face.
"Yes. Mary Deane said the same. They always say it."
Janey shook as in an ague.
She saw suddenly in front of her a gulf of infamy unspeakable, ready to swallow her if she agreed with him—she who always agreed with him. He would implicitly believe her. The little gleam of hope which had fallen on her aching, mutilated life went out. She was alone in the dark. For a moment she could neither see nor hear.
"If Annette says she is innocent, it's true," she said hoarsely, putting her hand to her throat.
The room and the lamp became visible again, and Roger's eyes fixed on her, like the eyes of a drowning man, wide, dilated, seen through deep water.
"If Annette says so, it's true," she repeated. "She may have done wrong. She says she has. But she does not tell lies. You know that."
"She says Dick did not try to entrap her, that she went with him of her own accord."
"But don't you see that Dickdidtake advantage of her, all the same, a mean advantage, when she was stunned by despair? I don't suppose you have ever known what it is to feel despair, Roger. But I know what it is. I know what Annette felt when her lover failed her."
"She told me she meant to drown herself. She said she did not care what became of her."
"You don't know what it means to feel like that."
Roger heard again the thud and beat of the distant train in the sod against his ear.
"Yes, I do," he said, looking at her under his heavy brows.
"I don't believe you. If you had, you would understand Annette's momentary madness. She need not have told you that. She need not have blackened herself in your eyes, but she did. Can't you see, Roger, will you never, never understand that you have had the whole truth from Annette?—the most difficult truth in the world to tell. And why do you need me to hammer it into you that she was speaking the truth to you? Can't you see for yourself that Annette is upright, as upright as yourself? What is the good of you, if you can't even see that? What is the good of loving her—if you do love her—if you can't see that she doesn't tell lies?I'mnot in love with her,—there have been times when I've come very near to hating her, and I had reason to believe she had done a wicked action,—but I knew one thing, and that was that she would never lie about it. She is not that kind. And if she told you that in a moment of despair she had agreed to do it, but that she had not done it, then she spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Roger could only stare at Janey, dumfounded. She who in his long experience of her had always listened, had spoken so little beyond comment or agreement, now thrust at him with a sword of determined, sharp-edged speech. The only twowomen he thought he knew were becoming absolute strangers to him.
"If I had been in Annette's place, I would have died sooner than own that I agreed to do wrong. I should have put the blame on Dick. But Annette is humbler than I am, more loyal than I am, more compassionate. She took the blame herself which belongs to Dick. She would not speak ill of him. If I had been in her place, I should have hesitated a long time before I told you about the will. It will ruin her good name. I should have thought of that. But she didn't. She thought only of you, only of getting your inheritance for you. Just as when Dick was ill, she only thought of helping him. Go and get your inheritance, Roger. It's yours, and I'm glad it is. You deserve it. But there's one thing you don't deserve, and that is to marry Annette. You're not good enough for her."
Janey had risen to her feet. She stood before him, a small terrible creature with blazing eyes. Then she passed him and left the room, the astounded Roger gaping after her.
He waited a long time for her to return, but she did not come back.