The Wingfields as a topic were becoming too much for Framsby. No sooner had the curiosities of Mr. Wingfield’s engagement to the daughter of Farmer Wadhurst been discussed than the news came of that hole-and-corner marriage of the pair. Agriculture was looking up, some people said, while others asserted that it was manorialism that was coming down. There was a feeling of indignation at being cheated out of the marriage; the offence was in their eyes on a level with the promise of a presentation of a stained-glass window to the church and then sending one done on “Glacier” transparent paper. The act, if not absolutely fraudulent, was certainly in very bad taste, a good many people said; but there were others who announced that they were not surprised at that young woman’s desire to avoid publicity being obtained for such an act as her marriage to a second husband before her first had been dead more than two months. These were the people who had invariably referred to Priscilla as Mrs. Blaydon, and pretended not to understand who was meant when anyone spoke of Miss Wadhurst.
The right set agreed that the whole affair, from the engagement to the marriage, was disgraceful, and hastened to leave a second relay of cards upon Mrs. Wingfield the elder, and to enquire with a most interesting expression on their faces, if they were fortunate enough to get a word with that lady, when the young couple would be at the Manor, so that they might leave cards upon them as well.
It might reasonably have been expected, Framsby thought, that the Wingfields had absorbed enough of the conversation of the community up to this point; but it seemed as if the Wingfields had set themselves up as a perpetual topic; for while the buzz about the marriage was still in the air, there came the news, announced in ridiculously large type under the heading of “The Nuttingford Vacancy,” that the Wingfields were in this business as well. “The Candidature of Mr. Wingfield” soon became the most conspicuous line in every newspaper; and the way even the most respectable London organs lent themselves to this new scheme for pandering to that young woman’s insatiable desire for publicity showed, in the estimation of Mrs. Gifford and her friends, with deplorable emphasis, how depraved was the taste of the readers for whom the newspapers catered.
The same censors were, however, just enough to affirm that the woman was at the bottom of it all. They rehearsed the various items in her progress of publicity; and the result was certainly a formidable total. The first was, of course, the sensation of the arrest of Marcus Blaydon at the church door; and then came his trial, and the pathetic appeal made by the prisoner’s counsel to the judge and jury on behalf of the young wife, every line of which appeared in the papers. But this was apparently not enough for that young woman, and her name must be dragged into the published account of the death of her husband. Two months later she had married Mr. Wingfield in a way that was eminently open for discussion, and now here she was urging her poor husband—the poor rich man whom she had inveigled into marrying her, to make a fool of himself by coming forward as a candidate for the representation of an important division of an important county.
They marked off the items on their fingers after the convenient method of Lord Lovat in Hogarth’s picture, and then enquired where it was all going to end. When were those newspapers who gave four or five snapshots every morning of Mrs. Wingfield engaged in canvassing for her husband, and now and again a cabinet portrait of herself, coming to reason? When were they going to cease lending themselves to the ambitious schemes of the farmer’s daughter? Everybody knew, and several newspapers asserted, that Mr. Wingfield had no chance whatsoever of being returned to Parliament for Nutting-ford, so what on earth was the sense of pushing that young woman before the eyes of the public? That was what the censors were anxious to know.
But when the butter-making scenes came, and the papers were strewn with snapshots of this transaction—when the great London organs gave column reports of it, with occasional leading articles, and when finally the news came that Mr. Wingfield was returned by an enormous majority—the members of the best set hurried out to the Manor with a fresh relay of cards. Surely the new member and his wife, out of gratitude for the distinction conferred upon them by the electors of Nuttingford, would provide the people of Framsby with a series offêteson a scale unparalleled by any remembered in the neighbourhood.
Now there was in Framsby a population of some 9,000 who belonged to none of the recognized sets, and who had never so much as heard of the existence of these sets; these are the people who matter in every community, not the retired civil servants, not the retired undistinguished officers of Sappers or the A.S.C.; and these were the people who felt that something should be done to show how proud Framsby was of having given Nuttingford a member and of having given that member a wife who had her portrait looking the whole world in the face out of the pages of the illustrated papers. These are not the people who hire halls and elect a chairman and pass resolutions to the accompaniment of long, commonplace speeches. But they get there all the same, and they got there when they felt that they should do something to show their admiration for Mr. Wingfield and his wife.
What they perceived they could do in this way was to meet the train by which the pair whom they desired to honour would arrive at Framsby, and, removing the horses from their carriage (they had found that the motor was not to be used), harness themselves to the vehicle and drag it through the streets and along the road to the Manor. From the steps of the porch the new member of Parliament would address them, and possibly his wife would follow him; they would all cheer and sing that about the jolly good fellow, and then the final and most important act of appreciation would take place: the health of the young couple would be drunk by the crowd at the young couple’s expense. Moreover, a little reflection was sufficient to convince the good people that the occasion represented what was known as a double event: the celebration was not only of the home-coming of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield, after their honeymoon; it was also the celebration of the splendid and successful election contest in which they had both been so actively engaged.
The good people pulled themselves together. They felt that it could be done. They felt themselves quite equal to doing the honours of the double event, and no one who knew them would have ventured to suggest that the confidence which they had in their own powers was misplaced.
There was very little organization in the matter—very little was required. Half-a-dozen house painters prepared as many lengths of canvas containing the simple manly English words “Welcome Home,” and half-a-dozen young gentlemen in the drapery line got together some slices of bunting which they shaped and glued on to rollers, so that they became bannerets in a moment. For the necessary bouquets they knew that they could depend upon the Manor gardeners; so the arrangements for the demonstration did not occupy much time or thought. The musical accompaniments were suggested by the Town Band, and then it was that Mr. Mozart Tutt, Mr. Morley Quorn, and the other members of the Framsby Glee and Madrigal Meistersingers had a chance of putting into practical form their recognition of what Mrs. Wingfield had done for them upon one occasion, for they prepared some choice serenade music with which to greet the lady and her husband in the course of the night.
Someone suggested that they should practise a chorus beginning “See, the Conquering Hero Comes” for the railway station; but Mr. Tutt was too wise to enter into any contract that would involve competition with the band and the cheers of the public.
And on this scale the home-coming of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield was arranged for; and as neither of them had been informed of the intention of Framsby, they were rather surprised when, late in the evening, their train steamed into the station, and slowed down into an atmosphere of yells. Beyond the barrier there was a sea of faces whose waves were caps with an occasional straw hat, and here and there a bowler—all were in the air undulating fitfully, and lapping the base of a headland bearing the inscription “Welcome Home.”
“Gloriana!” cried Jack. “Is this for us? And I fancied we had been done with all that sort of thing until the next general election.”
“Of course it’s for us,” said Priscilla. “I had no idea that Framsby would rise equal to the occasion.”
“Framsby is rather more than equal to the occasion,” growled Jack. “What I want to know is, what has Framsby got to do with the election?”
“This isn’t an election demonstration. Can’t you see that it’s only a welcome home?”
“Dammitall!” murmured Jack.
It is part of the penalty which people have to pay for being popular that when they are trying to get into the church where a clergyman is waiting to marry them, their admirers prevent them from entering; when they are leaving a public meeting where they have made a stirring speech, they have to fight their way to their carriage, and when they are met at the railway station they are all but deafened first and suffocated afterwards. Jack and his wife tried to stem that sea of faces that roared in front of them, but they found it impossible. The platform exit was narrow, and now it was choked with human life. But this circumstance did not affect the enthusiasm of the people beyond. They cheered and waved and quite prematurely broke into the “Jolly Good Fellow” chorus which, properly speaking, should only find its vent when Mr. Wingfield should announce from the porch of his house that he hoped his good friends would honour him by drinking to the health of his bride.
It was not until the railway authorities had admitted a force of police that Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield were able, following in the hollow of the wedge which they inserted between the masses at the barriers, to reach the outer atmosphere, which was resonant and throbbing with the fifes and drums of “See, the Conquering Hero Comes,” though the moment they put in an appearance, the strains were overwhelmed by cheers as completely as the flame of a candle is overwhelmed when the extinguisher is dropped over it. The whole space in front of the station and the streets to the right and left were crammed with warm human life, cheering in battalions.
It was all very flattering and overpowering, and unless a man had gone through a fortnight’s electioneering he would not know what to do to restore thestatus quo ante. Happily Mr. Wingfield was such a man. He sprang upon a trunk—a weight-carrier of the Saratoga type—and taking off his cap, raised his hand. At once the cheers began to wane and then they ceased altogether in the region of the station, though further away they died hard.
“My friends,” said Jack, in strident tones. “My friends—” and so on. Everyone knows what he said—everyone present knew what he was going to say, and he said it. It lasted just three minutes, and before the crowds had recovered from the effects of that spell of silence, he was in the carriage with Priscilla by his side. The coachman had taken good care to send the horses that had been taken out of the traces, back to their stables, so as to prevent the possibility of a mistake being made by the crowd. He had heard of enthusiasts taking the horses out of a carriage upon a similar occasion and failing to return them.
It was a triumphal progress of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield from the railway station to the Manor. Never could such a home-coming have been looked for by either Jack or Priscilla when, in accordance with the terms of an agreement which they had entered into at the office of the registrar of marriages, they had left that station a couple of months earlier, she having returned to Framsby for one day only from her visit to her Dorsetshire friends, and he from his interesting interview with his promising agent.
The sun had just set when the carriage was dragged along the road to the Manor House, the crowds trotting on each side. It was a warm evening, and they were getting into fine form for the beer which they knew was awaiting them. On through the gates and up the avenue the carriage was dragged. The band had been left some distance behind, so they were spared any more suggestions of the “Conquering Hero,” but the full choir of the Framsby Glee and Madrigal Meistersingers now ranged around the Georgian porch, and in response to the beat of Mr. Tutt, struck into “Hail to the Chief that in Triumph Advances,” and the effect was certainly admirable, especially as the blackbirds and the thrushes supplied an effective obbligato from the shrubberies. There are several stanzas to that stirring chorus, and the young couple had ample time to greet Mrs. Wingfield, who had come to the head of the steps of the porch to welcome them, before the strains had come to a legitimate close. Jack had also time to ask the butler if he had made any arrangements about those casks of beer, and to receive a satisfactory reply.
When the last notes of the melody had died away and the cheers began once more, he stood with Priscilla by his side (she was carrying the beautiful bouquet with which she had been presented: every flower had come from the garden before her) at the top of the steps.
“My dear friends,” he began, and then he said the rest of what everyone expected him to say—even his final words, referring exclusively to the drinking of his health and the health of Mrs. Wingfield, were not unexpected—at any rate, they were quite as well received as any part of his speech; and then came the true and legitimate rendering of the anthem which marks the apotheosis of the orator, “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” followed by the “Hip, hip, hip, hooray!” thrice repeated, with one cheer more in case that the enthusiasm had not found an adequate vent by the triplex scheme, though the latter certainly did not seem to be ungenerous in its application.
The butler responded to the sentiment of the cheer.
Priscilla went upstairs to her room to change her travelling-dress, but Jack, with his arm about his mother, went into the dining-room, where some cold eatables had been laid out, with a refreshing “cup” in an old cut-glass jug. No candles had yet been lighted; there was no need for them; the glow of the sunset came through the windows and imparted the show of life to the portraits, each in its own panel along the wall on both sides of the fireplace.
The man glanced round the room with a look of satisfaction on his face.
“Ha, my old friends,” he cried; “how have you all been since I saw you last? Somehow you don’t seem quite so surly as you used to be when I first came among you. You’re not altogether so sneery as you were, my bold ancestors—what? Do you know, mother, I always had a hang-dog feeling from the first day I found myself among these impressive Johnnies—I had a feeling that they were jeering at me; and I was afraid to argue it out with them on the spot. But now I can face them without feeling that I’m like the dirt beneath their feet. I’ve done something—I’ve married the right wife for a chap like me—she has done it all, mother. I never should have had the cheek to try it off my own bat. She made me go in for it, and then she pulled it off for me. And all so quietly and tactfully; no one would fancy that she was doing it When Franklin Forrester was stating the case to me, she sat by and never uttered a single word, and so it was to the very end. I tell you she almost succeeded in inducing me to delude myself into the belief that I was doing the whole thing. Oh, she’s the wife for me!”
“Indeed I feel that she is,” said his mother, still keeping her hand upon his arm. “I am so glad that I have lived to see your happiness, Jack. I am so glad that I loved her from the first.”
“I knew that you would, dearest. That made you doubly my mother. I felt that I was giving you a daughter after your own heart.”
She pressed his arm, and held up her face to him. He kissed her silently on each cheek, and then on the forehead.
“Good-night, my boy,” she said. “I must leave you now. You will be together.”
“Don’t think of going yet,” he cried.
“I have not been quite so well to-day,” she said. “I just got up so as to be able to welcome you both, but it has been too much for me. You will say good-night to her for me.”
“You do look very pale and frail, my dearest,” he said. “You should not have left your bed. We could easily have put off our return for another day.”
“Oh, I’m not so ill as all that,” she said, with a laugh. “But you know how I need to be careful. If I have a good night I may be able to breakfast with you in the morning. Good night, my own boy. God bless you.”
“God has blessed me,” he said. “I have the best mother in the world—the best wife in the world.”
He put her in the hands of her maid, who was waiting for her in the corridor at the head of the staircase. Then he walked to the further end of the same corridor and stood at the window, looking out at the dissolving crowds below, hearing the “chaff” of the boys and the girls, and the cackling laughter of incipient but certainly not insipid love-making. The advances of the young men were no more deficient in warmth than was the retreat of the young women. The giggle and the shriek were, of course, the natural accompaniments of this playfulness.
And the Meistersingers were giving their serenade in a self-respecting style. Mr. Tutt knew all about how that sort of thing should be done. He had spent close upon three months at Leipzig, studying music on its highest plane and becoming thoroughly familiar with the varying aspects of German sentimentality.
Jack was waiting for the sound of Priscilla’s door and of her steps on the corridor. Half-an-hour had passed since she had gone upstairs, and she was not the girl to be making an elaborate toilet at this time. She should have been ready long ago.
He returned half-way down the corridor, and entered his own dressing-room to change his coat and brush his hair. The bedroom was in silence.
“Hallo!” he said, without opening the connecting door. “Hallo, Priscilla, what are you about that you haven’t come down yet?”
He heard her voice say, “Jack, come to me—come,” but he scarcely knew the voice to be hers; it was the voice of a stranger.
He opened the door and passed through.
She was standing in the centre of the room, still in her travelling-dress—she had only taken off her hat.
“I say, what’s the matter?” he began at the moment of entering. But then he stood still, as she turned her face to him. “Good God! Priscilla—dearest, what is the matter? You are as pale as death.”
He thought that she was about to fall—she was swaying as a tall lily sways in a breath of air. He hurried to her and put his arm about her.
“My God! You are ill. You have been doing too much. You have been overdoing it at that beastly election, and this is the reaction. Pull yourself together, darling.”
She seemed trying to speak, but no word would come. She gasped. Her attempt to speak was choking her. At last she managed to make herself audible. Clutching at his shoulders rather wildly and with her face rigid, pushed forward close to his—with wild eyes and cheeks as pale as moonlight, she cried in gasps:
“Jack—Jack—my own Jack—my husband—swear to me that you will stand by me—that you will never leave me whatever may happen.”
“My darling! Calm yourself! Tell me what has happened.”
“What? What? Only one thing—one thing! I saw his face in the crowd—close to the carriage. He was not drowned—he’s alive—he has returned.”
“What do you mean?—he?—who? God above—not—not that man?”
“Marcus Blaydon—I tell you I saw his face. He smiled—such a smile! There is no chance of a mistake. He is alive, and he has returned.”
The Framsby Glee and Madrigal Meistersingers were giving a spirited rendering of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min’,
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days o’ lang syne?
The moment that she had spoken he flung a protective arm about her—his left arm; his right arm was free, and he had turned his face away from her with a jerk and had alert eyes fixed upon the door. His man’s instinct had forced him into the protective attitude of the primeval man when threatened by a sudden danger of another man or another animal. He had not in that second realized the details of the danger that her words had disclosed; his action was automatic—the inherited instinct of the cave-dweller ancestor.
As such its force was felt in every nerve by the woman who was clinging to him.
The silence was broken by the dwindling laughter of the dissolving crowds outside the house, where primeval man was carrying on his courting of primeval woman after the manner of their tribe, among the shrubberies.
“I knew that you would hold me from him,” said Priscilla. “I knew that I need not fear anything with you near me, my man, my man!”
At her words the man, for the first time, was startled. He turned his face toward her, drawing a long breath, and looked into her eyes.
In another moment he gave a laugh.
“Yes,” she said, smiling and nodding her head, interpreting his laugh by the instinct of the forest. “Yes, let anyone try it.”
There was a long interval before his hand fell away from her waist. He felt with that hand for the back of the chair out of which she had risen on his entering the room—his eyes were still upon her face; they were still upon it when his groping had found the chair, and he sat down slowly and cautiously.
“My God, my God!” he whispered, and once again there was silence. He could hear that she was shivering as if with cold. There was more than a hint of chattering teeth.
“Sit down,” he said, after a long pause. “Sit down and tell me what—what has happened.”
She fell shivering into his arms, a dead weight. He thought that she had fainted, but she had strength enough left to reassure him. She was clinging to him and her head was upon his shoulder.
“You will keep me, Jack, you will keep me from him,” she said in a gasping whisper. “I saw him there, I could not be mistaken—and the way he smiled.... But I knew that something like this was in store for us. It would be impossible for such happiness as ours to last. It is always when one has built up one’s happiness bit by bit, brick by brick, a palace—a palace was ours, Jack—a hand is put out and down it topples. That was why I married you in such haste, my darling. I told you, when you asked me, that I was afraid of losing you. But I haven’t lost you, dear; I have you still. I have you still!”
“You have, Priscilla. Whatever else may be doubtful, you may be certain that you have me still. I will not fail you. Oh, what a fool I should be if I let anything—or anyone—come between us! Where should I be without you? What should I be apart from you, darling? I know—I know what I should be because I know what I was before you came into my life. Do you fancy that I would shrink from killing a man who tried to part us? Let him try it!”
Then he started up with such suddenness that he almost seemed to fling her away from him. He stood in the middle of the room with clenched hands, and cursed the wretch who had done his best to wreck her life—who had not been content with what he had done in this way more than a year before, but who had been guilty of this contemptible fraud—pretending that he was dead so that he might return and complete the work that he had begun—the work in which he had been interrupted. He cursed him wildly—madly—his teeth set and his eyes like the eyes of a hungry wolf—worse—infinitely worse. And she sat by, listening to his ravening and glorying in it as the woman of the cave gloried in the anger of her man when he heard the wolves howl in the distance. She knew that her man would fight them and get the better of them. She knew that the man is fiercer than the wolf and forces the wolf to retreat before his anger. Every curse that Jack uttered—and he uttered a good many—added to her love for him. That was what she had come to by the stress of circumstances.
But she knew that when the passion of the wolf in the man had spent itself, the god in the man would take the upper hand. If there had not been a bit of a god in man he would have remained a wolf.
She noted the dwindling of the impromptu Commination
Service which he conducted without the aid of an acolyte. He paced the room for a while and then stopped in front of one of the windows looking out into the sapphire glow of the summer twilight. Before he turned to her the room had become perceptibly darker. She could not see the expression on his face, for his back was to the light, but she knew what it was by the sound of his voice, when he said, “Forgive me, Priscilla; I forgot myself.”
“You did, dear, you forgot yourself; you remembered only me,” she said. “Sit down, Jack, and let us talk it all over. I have recovered from the effects of that first sense of terror that I had. I suppose it was natural that I should be terror-stricken.”
“Terror-stricken! I cannot understand how you managed to restrain yourself for so long. You saw him shortly after we left the station, you said?”
“Yes, I think I must have cried out, but, of course, you could not hear me on account of the cheers.”
“Ah, those cheers! A triumph—a triumphal progress! A joyful welcome home—that ruffian’s smile.... You could not have made a mistake. I don’t suggest so obvious a way out of this trouble. You saw him.”
“I saw him.”
“And yet you were strong enough to bear yourself as if nothing had happened! No woman alive except yourself could have done that, Priscilla. And then—then you were strong enough to tell me all there was to be told. Another woman—any other woman—would have tried to keep it secret, would have paid the fellow his blackmail until his demands became too monstrous, and then—what might happen? Heaven only knows. But you were straight. You did the right thing. You told me—you trusted me.”
“Whom should I trust if not you, my husband?”
He took the hand that she stretched out to him. He kissed it over and over again. But this was not enough for him; he took her into his arms and put his face down to hers.
“You knew that I was not a fool,” he said. “What should I be without you?... And what is to come out of it, Priscilla? Can you see what is to come out of it all?”
“Everything that we think—the worst—the very worst is to come of it,” she said. “I see quite clearly all that is before us—well, perhaps not all, but enough—oh, quite enough for one man and one woman to bear. Oh, Jack, if you were only a little less true, all might be easy. But you would not let me leave you even if I wished.”
“Take that for granted,” said he. “But what is to come of it all? There would be no use buying him off, though I’ve no doubt that that’s what he looks for. The infernal scoundrel! There’s nothing to be bought off. If he were to clear off to-morrow matters would only be the more complicated.”
“Not a step to one side or the other off the straight road must we take,” she cried. “We must begin as we mean to end. No compromise—there must be no thought of compromise. You are married to me and I am married to you, and to you only—I never was married to that man—that is the truth, and nothing shall induce me to deviate from it, Jack.”
“That’s the way to put it—I don’t care a tinker’s curse what anybody says; and take my word for it, a good deal will be said. Oh, I know the cant. I know the high-hand inconsistency of the Church. But we’ll have the sympathy of every man and woman who can think for themselves without the need of a Church handbook on thinking. Yes, I’m pretty sure that we shall have all the minds on our side if we have the ranters and the canters against us. At any rate, whether we have them with us or not, you’ll have me with you and I’ll have you with me. That’s all that matters to us.”
“That’s all that matters to us. Only—oh, Jack, your mother—your poor mother!”
He was silent for a long time.
“Look here, Priscilla,” he said at last; “when a man marries a wife he throws in his lot with her and he should let no consideration of family or friendship come between him and his wife—that’s my creed. But we can still hope that my mother will see with our eyes.”
She shook her head.
“I have no hope in that way,” she said. “She will go away from us when we tell her what we have resolved upon. But she is so good—so full of tenderness and love for us both. Oh, Jack, I would do anything—anything in the world rather than wound her.”
He saw at once that her feeling for his mother would make her relinquish her purpose. He would need to be firm.
“Look here, my girl,” he said; “there is only one course for us to pursue. We have no alternative. You spoke the truth just now when you said that it would not do for us to deviate in the least from the straight track in this business. The moment we do so we’re lost. That’s all I have to say. Change your dress and follow me downstairs. I’m hungry and thirsty. You must be the same. It will not do for us to let ourselves run down just when we most need to keep ourselves up. We’ll have the devil and all his angels to fight with before we’re done with this affair.”
“I don’t mind the devil,” she said, “it’s the angels that I dread—the angels with the haloes of their own embroidering and the self-made wings. Oh, Jack, I wish we could have the angels on our side.”
“That’s a woman’s weak point; she would go any distance to get the patronage of an angel.”
“Do you remember the day when you called me your good angel, Jack? Alas, alas! Jack!”
“I called you that once, my girl, and I’ll call you so again—now. I never felt greater need of you than I do now. I am just starting life, dear, and that is when a chap most needs a good angel to stand by him.”
“And for him to stand by. Oh, Jack, if I hadn’t you to stand by me now I would give up the fight. If I had not married you, where should I be when that wretch came and said, ‘I have come for my wife’? You have saved me from that horror, Jack.”
“I wish I knew how to keep you from the horror that you have to face, my Priscilla.”
“You will learn, Jack, every day you will learn how to do it.”
He gazed at her from the door for some moments, and then went slowly downstairs and into the diningroom. A footman and the butler were in waiting. He sent them away, telling the latter that Mrs. Wingfield was a little knocked up by the attention of the townspeople, and would probably not come downstairs for some time; there was no need for the servants to stay up.
She came down after an interval, and he persuaded her to eat something and to drink a glass of the “cup” which had been prepared in accordance with an old still-room recipe in the Wingfield family.
Afterwards they went out together upon the terrace, and he lit a cigar. They did not talk much, and when they did, it was without even the most distant allusion to the shadow that was hanging over their life. When there had been a long interval of silence between them, they seated themselves on the Madeira chairs, and he told her how on that evening long ago—so very long ago—more than two months ago—he had sat there longing for her to be beside him; how he had put his face down to the cushion thinking what a joy it would be to find her face close to his.
“And now here it has all come to pass,” he said. “This is the very chair and the cushion, and the face I longed for.”
He sat on the edge of her chair and laid a caressing hand upon her hair; but he did not put his face down to hers—he could not have done so, for her face was turned to the cushion; but even then her sobs were not quite smothered. He could feel every throb as his hand lay upon her forehead. He made no attempt to restrain her. He had an intuition—it was a night of instincts—that her tears would do much more to soothe her than it would be in his power to do.
For an hour they remained there, silent in the majestic silence of the summer night. It was without the uttering of a word that she rose and stood in front of him at last. He kissed her quietly on the forehead and she passed into the house through the open glass door, and he was left alone.
He threw himself down on his chair once more, but only remained there for a minute. He sprang to his feet in the impulse of a sudden thought.
He went down by the terrace steps to the shrubberies, walking quickly but stealthily, and moving along among the solid black masses of the clipped boxes and laurels and bay trees. So he had stalked a tiger that he wanted to kill on his last night at Kashmir. He moved stealthily from brake to brake as though he expected to come upon an enemy skulking there. And then he crossed by the fountains and the stone-work of crescent seats and mutilated goddesses and leering satyrs, into the park and on to the avenue that bent away from the country road. He moved toward the entrance gates and the lodge with the same stealth of the animal who is hunting another animal, pausing every now and again among the trees to listen for the sound of footfalls.
He heard the scurrying of a rabbit—the swishing rush of a rat through the long grass, the flap and swoop of a bat hawking for moths—all the familiar sounds of the woodland and the creatures that roam by night, but no other sound did he hear.
“The infernal skunk!” he muttered. “The infernal skunk! He has not even the manliness to claim her—he does not even take enough interest in her to see where she lives—to look up at the light in her window. He lets her go from him, and he will come to-morrow to try on his game of blackmail. I wish I had found him skulking here. That’s what I want—to feel my fingers on his throat—to throttle the soul out of him and send him down to...” and so forth. He completed his sentence and added to it several other phrases, none of which could be said actually to border on the sentimental. He stood there, a naked man among his woods, thirsting for a tussle with the one who was trying to take his woman from him.
It was not until he had returned to the chair of civilization and had begun to think in the strain of fifty thousand years later, that he felt equal to contrasting this wretch’s bearing with that of the sailor man about whom his mother had read to him when he was a boy and she had thought it possible to impart to him a liking for the books that she liked—a sailor named Enoch Arden who had been cast away on a desert island—he had had great hopes of any story, even though written in poetry, which touched upon a man on a desert island. Enoch Arden returned to England to find his wife married to another man and quite happy, and he had been man enough to let her remain so. But Jack had not forgotten how that strong heroic soul had looked through the window of her new house the first thing on reaching the village. Ah, very different from this wretch—this infernal skunk who had preferred boozing in a bar at Framsby and then staggering upstairs at the “White Hart” to his bed. He had a huge contempt for the fellow who wouldn’t come to Overdean Manor Park to be throttled.
But soon his train of thought took another trend. He knew that Priscilla was womanly, though not at all like other women, to whom the conventions of society are the breath of life, and the pronouncement of a Church the voice of God. She had proved to him in many ways—notably in regard to her marrying of him—that she was prepared to act in accordance with her own feeling of right and wrong without pausing to consult with anyone as to whether or not her feeling agreed with accepted conventions or accepted canons. She had refused to be guilty of the hypocrisy of wearing mourning for the man whom she hated; and she had ignored the convention which would have compelled her to allow at least a year to pass before marrying the man whom she loved.
He reflected upon these proofs of her possession of a certain strong-mindedness and strength of character, and both before and after she had come to him as his wife he had many tokens of her superiority to other women in yielding only to the guidance of her own feeling. This being so, it was rather strange that he should now find that his thoughts had a trend in the direction of the question as to whether it might not be possible that, through her desire to please his mother—to prevent people from shaking their heads—she might be led to be untrue to herself—nay, might she not feel that she could only be true to herself by making such a move as would prevent people from saying, as in other circumstances they would be sure to do, that he was to blame in keeping her with him?
That was the direction in which his thoughts went after he had been sitting on his chair under her window for an hour. But another half-hour had passed before there came upon him in a flash a dreadful suggestion, sending him to his feet in a second as though it were a flash of lightning that hurled him out of his chair. He stood there breathing hard, his eyes turned in the direction of her window above him. He remembered how he had looked up to that window on that night in June when his longing had been: “Oh, that I could hear her voice at that window telling me that she is there!”
She was there—up there in that room now, but... He flung away the cigar which he held unlighted between his fingers, and went indoors and up the staircase.
He remained breathing hard with his hand on the handle of her door.
Would he find that that door was locked—locked against him?
He turned the handle.
She had not locked the door.
She was his wife.
The interview which he most dreaded in the morning was averted, or at any rate postponed. His mother had had a very bad night and was unable to get up—she might not be able to leave her bed for a week. Her malady, though not actually dangerous, was disquieting because it was so weakening, a bad attack frequently keeping her in bed for ten days or a fortnight; and complete quiet was necessary for her recovery and long afterwards.
Jack breathed again. He had been thinking of the revelation which he had to make to his mother before many hours had passed, and the more he thought of it the greater repugnance did he feel for the discharge of this duty. He breathed more freely. She might not be in a position to hear the story for several days, and what might happen in the meantime?
He could not of course make a suggestion as to what might happen; only one happening might be looked for with certainty, and this was the visit of Marcus Blaydon.
“He will not delay in striking his first blow,” said Priscilla. “You will let me see him alone? I shall know what to say to him, Jack.”
But Jack felt that, clever and all though his wife was, he knew better than she did how to deal with such men as Blaydon.
“Don’t think of such a thing,” said he. “You and I are one. We shall face him together. I know that you have your fears for me. You need have none. I can control myself. But that ruffian—one cannot take too elaborate precautions. Such men are not to be depended on. Revolvers are cheap, so is vitriol. I know that type of rascal, and I’ll make my arrangements accordingly. I have met with blackmailers before now, but I’ve not yet met one that adhered strictly to the artistic methods of the profession; they never move without a revolver or a knife—in the case of a woman they trust a good deal to vitriol.”
“I’m quite willing to submit to your judgment, Jack,” said she. “I’m not afraid of him. If you say that I should not see him I’ll leave him to you, but I think that I should face him with you by my side.”
“So you shall,” said he.
And so she did.
They had not rehearsed an imaginary scene with the man. They had not exchanged views as to what to say to him. Each knew what was in the other’s mind on the subject, so that any planning was unnecessary.
He came early—a man of good presence, he seemed to Jack to be probably from thirty-five to forty years of age. His dark hair was somewhat grizzled and so were his moustache and beard. Priscilla had thought it strange that he had not shaved his face on getting out of gaol and starting life afresh. He had always worn that short, square beard; but it now appeared to her to be shorter and to have much more grey in it. His eyes were queer, neither grey nor hazel; they were not bad eyes, and they had a certain expression of frankness and good spirit at times which was quite pleasing, until the man began to speak, and then the expression changed to one of furtiveness, for he looked at the person whom he was addressing with his head slightly averted so that the pupils of his eyes were not in the centre but awry.
The thought that came to Jack Wingfield at the moment of the man’s entrance was that he could easily understand how one might be imposed on by him; but to Priscilla came the thought that she had been right in distrusting him from the first.
He had been shown into the library by the order of Jack; the room was empty; Jack kept him waiting for some minutes before he entered, saying:
“Good morning. Can I do anything for you, Mr. Blaydon?”
“You can,” said the other. “I came here for my wife, and I mean to have her.”
And then Priscilla entered. The man threw out both hands in an artificial, stagey way, and took a step or two toward her.
“Stay where you are,” said Jack imperatively. “You can talk as well standing where you are. Don’t lay so much as a finger upon her. Now, say what you have to say.”
“Isn’t it natural that I should cross the room to meet my own true wedded wife, sir?” said the visitor. “She can’t deny it; if I know anything of her she won’t deny it—we were married according to the rites of God’s holy ordinance in the Church; and those that God hath joined together—but I know she will not deny it.”
“You know nothing of her,” said Jack. “All that you knew of her—all that you cared to know—was that her father had some money which you hoped to get your hands on to cover up the consequence of your fraud. But now you’re going to learn something of her. She escaped by a hair’s breadth from your clutches, and believing you to be dead—the report of your heroic death was another of your frauds, I suppose.”
“I escaped by the mercy of God, sir, and my first thought was for her.”
“Was it? Why was your first thought on getting out of gaol not for her? How was it that you were aboard that vessel?”
“Circumstances beyond my control—but—ah! I wanted to begin life again and not drag her down with me. I felt that I had it in me, sir; I know that I had it in me.”
“You knew that the report of your death was published in the American papers and you knew that it would appear in all the papers here. That was nearly four months ago, and yet you took no steps whatever to have that report contradicted. You wished everyone to believe that you were dead.”
“What better chance could I have of beginning life afresh? It seemed as if the hand of God——”
“Don’t trouble about the hand of God. You didn’t consider that it was due to the girl whom you had linked to your career of crime, to mention in confidence what your scheme was—to begin life again without being handicapped by your previous adventures that had landed you in gaol?”
“I wanted to wait until I had redeemed the bitter past. I wanted to be able to go to her, an honourable man, and say to her, ‘Priscilla, bitter though the past may have been, yet by the mercy of God——‘”
“Quite so. That was quite a laudable aspiration, and it shows that your heart is in the right place.”
“All that I thought about was her happiness, sir. I said, ‘If I have done her an injustice in the past, she shall find out I have atoned——‘”
“You thought of nothing but her happiness? Well, now that you come here and find that she is happy, what more do you want?”
“I want her—my wife.”
“Because you think that she will be happy with you? Why didn’t you go to her and tell her of your plans the very moment you were released from gaol?”
“I hadn’t the courage to face her after what had happened, sir.”
“That was your only reason?”
“That was my only reason.”
The man bent his head in an attitude of humility, and Jack Wingfield, who had spent six years of his life mingling with all sorts of men that go to make up a world, and who had acquired a good working knowledge of men of all sorts, looked at the man standing before him with bent head, and said:
“You lie, sir; you went straight off to another woman.”
The man gave a start, and his humility vanished. His eyes revealed unsuspected depths of shiftiness as he looked furtively from Jack to Priscilla and back again to Jack.
“What do you know about it? Has Lyman been writing to you?”
“Never mind who has been writing to me: the fact remains the same, and I think we have you in a tight place there, Mr. Blaydon,” said Jack, smiling at the result of his drawing a bow at a venture.
“Look here,” cried the visitor. “I know just how I stand. I know what my rights are—restitution of conjugal rights. I’ve been to the right quarter to learn all that, and what’s more, I won’t stand any further nonsense. What right have you to cross-question me—you? It is you who have ruined the girl, not me.”
“Mr. Blaydon,” said Jack quietly, “you are a man of the world, and so am I. You have said enough to show me that you are no fool. Now, speaking as man to man, and without wishing to dispute the legality of your claim or to throw away good money among bad lawyers, how much will you take in hard cash to clear off from here and let things be as they are?”
“Not millions—not millions!” cried the man indignantly. “I’m no blackmailer—don’t let that thought come to you. I don’t ask for money. Good Heavens, sir! what have I done that you should fancy my motives were of that character? No; all I ask is for my wife to come with me.”
“And supposing she went with you to-day, what could you do for her?” said Jack. “Have you a home to which you could take her? What are your prospects?”
“My prospects may be none of the brightest, Mr. Wingfield; I wasn’t born so lucky as you; but I’m her husband, and it’s my duty to think of her first. If she’s the woman I believe her to be, she will acknowledge that her duty is to be with me.”
He looked toward Priscilla, but she remained silent; she made no attempt to acknowledge his complimentary words.
Then Jack went to the mantelpiece, and drew a postcard from behind a bronze ornament—a postcard addressed to himself.
“Take that card in your hand and tell me if you recognize the handwriting,” he said, handing the card to the man who took it and scrutinized the writing closely.
“I never saw that writing in all my life,” he said, and Jack took the card from him smiling. The man looked at his fingers; the card had evidently been leaning against a gum-pot and got a touch of the brush on its border. He wiped his fingers in his pocket-handkerchief, while Jack replaced the postcard where it had been standing.
“If you tell me you have never seen that writing before, I am satisfied,” said he. “But I have a letter or two the writing on which I fancy you would have no difficulty in recognizing. I will not produce them just yet. Now, without wasting more time, Mr. Blaydon, I wish to know from you in one word, now or never, if I offer you the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds——”
Priscilla started up.
“Don’t you speak,” cried Jack, sternly. “I’m prepared to be liberal. But mind, it’s now or never with you, my man; for I’ll swear to you that I’ll never repeat my words—I say now, if I offer you the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds to clear away from here, to go to, let us say, Canada, and sign a paper never to return to England or to make any further claim upon us—well, what do you say—yes or no?”
There was an appalling pause. A great struggle seemed to be going on in the man’s mind, and so there was, but he pretended that it was in his heart, but this was where he made a mistake. He overrated his gifts as an emotional actor. His shifty eyes prevented his being convincing. He turned his head away, and took out his handkerchief. Then he wheeled sharply round and spoke firmly.
“Mr. Wingfield, I’ve told you that I have no thought except for the happiness of my wife. I’ll take the money.”
“Will you indeed?” asked Jack, anxiously.
“I don’t want to stand between her and happiness. I will take the money,” said the visitor.
“I thought that you would decide in that way,” said Jack, “and I’ll pay it to you——”
“Never!” cried Priscilla, speaking for the first time.
“Thank you; that’s the word I was looking for,” said Jack. Then he turned to the man.
“Take yourself away from here, and look slippy about it, my good fellow,” he said. “You have shown yourself to be just what I guessed you were. But I don’t think that you can say so much for us: we’re not just the fools that you fancied, Mr. Blaydon. You thought you were a made man when you learned that the girl you had tricked once had fallen a victim to your second deception. You’ll need a bit of re-making before you can call yourself a man. How much better would our position be if you were to clear off without revealing the fact of your existence to anyone? Our marriage would be legally still no marriage. And you thought that in these circumstances we would hand you over a fortune. Now be off with you, you impudent blackmailer, and do your worst. We shall fight you, and get the better of you on all points. You may take that from me.”
“I have come for my wife, and I mean to have her. You allowed just now that she was my wife,” cried the man, weakly reverting to his original bluff.
“She refuses to go with you, Mr. Blaydon. How do you mean to effect your purpose?”
“I have the law on my side. I know where I stand. Conjugal rights——”
“Two conjugal wrongs don’t make one conjugal right, and you’ll find that out to your cost, my good fellow. We’ve had enough of you now, Mr. Blaydon. I’ve been very patient so far, but my patience has its limits. Go to the attorney or the attorney’s clerk who sent you here, and ask him to advise you as to your next step.” He rang the bell, and the footman had opened the door before he had done speaking.
“Show this person out,” said Jack, choosing a cigar from a box on the mantelpiece, and snipping the end off with as great deliberation as is possible with a snip. Priscilla had already gone out of the room by the other door—the one which led into the dining-room.
The man looked at Jack, and then looked at the respectful but unmistakably muscular footman.
“Good morning, Mr. Wingfield,” he said, picking up his hat.
“Good morning,” said Mr. Wingfield. “Fine weather for the harvest, isn’t it?”
“Admirable,” responded the departing guest. “Admirable! Ha! ha!”
He made a very inefficient villain of melodrama in spite of his “Ha, ha!” laugh.
Yes, but he occupied a very important position as an obstacle to the happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield. He was legally the husband of the young woman who called herself Mrs. Wingfield, and who had never called herself by his name, and a legal husband is a quantity that has always to be reckoned with. His position is a pretty secure one when considered from the standpoint of English legality. In America he would do well not to step on a slide.