The discrepancies of an unfortunate party caused no disturbance to the staff of Wanless Hall. Sanchia, whatever her private cares—and they seemed less than those of other people on her account—suffered nothing to interfere with her housekeeping. Ingram might rage for her in vain, Chevenix agonise, or quarrel with his host and friend, Mrs. Devereux disapprove to the point of keeping her room; but Sanchia, with front serene, moved from office-table to kitchen, to the garden, to the home-farm, interviewed Mrs. Benson, consulted with the stockman, pored—her head close to Clyde's—over seed-pans and melon borders, was keenly interested, judicial, reflective, pleading, coaxing by turns—seemed, in fact, not to have a perplexity in her fair head. Her health was superb, she never had an ache nor failed of an appetite. To see her sitting in the stable-yard on a sunny morning, her lap full of nozzling fox-hound pups, was to have a vision of Artemis Eileithyia. So, it seemed, the grave mother-hound, erect on haunches, with wise ears, and sidelong eyes showing the white, knew her certainly to be. Beside and over her stood Frodsham of the stables, and his underlings, firmly her friends.
She looked up, beaming. “Oh, Frodsham; aren't they sweet? One of them tries to suck my finger. What are you going to call them? I do hope you mean to keep them all.”
“I doubt they're too many for the old bitch, Miss Percival. She'll not feed the lot of them. We'll be wise to duck the latest cast.”
“Oh, no,—please. I'll feed it—I will, really. I couldn't let you drown it. Now, what are their names to be?”
“There's Melpomeen, Miss Percival, and Melody, and Melchior, and Melchizedek. That's for the bitches.”
She quizzed him. “No, Frodsham, really that won't do. I'm not quite sure about Melchizedek; but Melchior was a man—he was a king—a king of the East. And I believe Melchizedek was an angel.”
Frodsham rubbed his chin. “May be you are right, Miss Percival. An angel, was he now? Wings to him? 'Tis a name for a bird, then. If we kept the hawks the old Squire used to love—there's a name for a peregrine! Melchizedek—a fair mouthful.”
“A Priest for ever,” mused Jacobs, a wizened elder, the kennel man, who yet bowed to the coachman in his own yard. “We may put him among the dogs, I believe. We've Proteus, and Prophet; but no Priest.”
Frodsham looked to Sanchia for direction, ignoring Jacobs. She flashed him a name. “Melisande, Frodsham. Call her Melisande, and save her life; and she shall be mine. I'll look after her. Please do.” He owned to the spell of her eyes, of the sun upon her hair. “Melisande she shall be, Miss Percival, and your own,” he said. “The Missus shall rear her if the old bitch won't. She's had six of her own, and knows what it is.”
Regretfully, one by one, she put the striving blind things down; then rose and went her way into the gardens about the house. Slowly through the kitchen gardens she passed. Glyde, thinning walled peach-trees, saw her, felt her go. She shed her benediction upon him—“Good morning, Struan,”—and went on. He watched her for a while, then turned fiercely to his affair. Through dense shrubberies, over drenched lawns her way was; it led her to the lily-pond, which lay hidden within rhododendron walls, with a narrow cincture of grass path all about it. Dark-brown, still and translucent like an onyx it lay before her. It was her haunt of election when she was troubled, as now she was, when she gave herself time to remember it.
She stood, her hands clasped before her, close to the water's brim, and looked over the shining surface. She had never yet squarely faced her difficulties. Her sceptre was slipping from her; her realm, usurped at first, hers by sufferance first, but then by love of them she ruled, could hold her but a little while more. The shadow of coming eclipse made her eyes grow sombre. Doubt of the unknown made lax her lips.
If Nevile's wife, with all her sins clotted on her, was dead, what was she herself going to do, or allow to be done? She had yielded to love—her first love and her last; but that had been long ago. Love, the fire, the trembling and the music in her heart; pride, the trust, the loyalty, the bliss of service; the wonder, the swooning, the glory like a sun upon her—all gone, burned out, or worked out. Why, how long had it lasted her? Her lips stretched to a bleak smile to think of it. Three months joy in herself, three months joy of him; then work, incessant and absorbing; and then the growth of a new pride, the pride of mind (for she found that she had a brain), and of a new love—for she found that she loved the creatures more than man. Education indeed! To draw from a child caught unawares the force and the brooding love of an Earth-Goddess.
In the beginning, she could have told herself (but never did), she was to be pitied, not blamed. Reticent among her free-speaking sisters, shy, what the maids call “a deep one,” rarely a talker, keeping always her own counsel, she had first been moved to utter herself by the extreme carelessness of Ingram whether she did so or not. The blame—if it is to be laid—must be upon her mother when she, knowing Ingram's story of miserable marriage and separation, allowed the man to continue a friend of the house, be much with her girl, and unfold himself under her clear young eyes. What she was about—that masterful, self-absorbed woman—there's no saying. It was always supposed that, with five beautiful daughters to market, she had pushed Welbore Percival—Thomas Welbore Percival, East India merchant of The Poultry—into lavish entertainment of his friends and acquaintance. Ingram, a squire and son of squires, was perhaps a shade above her degree; she may have required him to give a tone. This, considering that wretched marriage of his—a month's engagement in defiance of head-shaking, a blazing Hanover Square wedding, a year's bickering, one month's acrimony (done by letter) and Ingram's unquenchable hatred of the woman—this, I say, you may well doubt. But I can give no other explanation. He came, he talked in his high-voiced, querulous, bitter-humoured way, he saw and sought the grave young Sanchia, and he won her pitying heart directly he had engrossed her watching eyes.
She was a girl intensely interested in a hundred dawning things, to whom love had come late. Until she was near twenty you would have thought her sexless. Senhouse, her poetical friend and teacher—her only friend, her only confidant—had dubbed her Artemis; and it may well have been his adoring service of her pure flame which first turned it inwards, to scorch her heart. All that she had learned of this scholar gypsy she poured out as balm over the stricken Ingram, who swallowed it and her together. Then the truth about him was blared upon her suddenly, and she found that he was to be pitied. Guileless victim of a hateful woman as she believed him then, she found that she held a store of balm. She pitied him deeply, she opened, she poured out her treasure. Enthusiasm for the saving work captained her thereafter; nothing would turn her from her purpose. Ingram was to be saved by love: she gave him all.
To do him justice, a young man born to possess and command, he did his best to repair what was beyond repair. He told her the truth unasked by her; he confessed that he loved her, and owned that he had no business to do it. Nearness, circumstance, brooding on that which was true of both of them and must not be uttered by either, did the rest. Upon that evening in the drawing-room when they found themselves alone, each trembling under the god, they simply drifted together, and without effort to resist, mingled their natures through the lips. Discovery, earthquake and eclipse, her mother's chill rage, her father's tears, her sisters' dismay; all this and more she endured. She passioned like a young martyr. She admitted the facts without comment, and accepted the consequences without a falter. They might have whelmed a greater heart than hers; turned on to the town as she was to all intent, at two-and-twenty, a girl with the face and figure of a goddess, with fifty pounds between her and the devil. They might have sent her, at the least, weeping and trembling into Ingram's arms. But they did not. She was of finer clay. She took a lodging in Pimlico, and, to fit herself for employment, went to school. The commercial course which she chose was the shortest possible, but all that she felt she could afford. “My dear young lady, we can only promise you a smattering—really no more for the money.” “It must start me,” said Sanchia, and began. There was a month more to run when Ingram found her, and, glad as she was of him, doting and doted upon, in the first flood of youth and love, she persisted in it, finished it out, and got her diploma for what it was worth, before, as he put it, she would listen to reason.
It sounded extremely reasonable to him what he then proposed; and also to her, though Chevenix scorned its propounder. As Ingram put it to her, it attracted her newborn pride of knowledge. She was to flesh her steel, so to speak, in reality: in plainer words, she, with her smattering of accounts, was to manage a great house, an army of servants, possibly an estate. Excessively in love as she was, with all the music of it in her untried ears, she knew already in herself that her mind must have other food than her heart's rapture. I think, indeed, that she would have declined him altogether if he had proposed nothing more tangible to her than perpetual honeymoon. That was what Senhouse would certainly have proposed to her—she saw that in every look of his, and read it in every line he sent her; but that had never attracted her. She had given Senhouse her confidence, but not her heart. Ingram's proposals, therefore, pleased her. She had not a sweet enough tooth, nor the taste for flattery which the other involved. She was entirely without vanity. Therefore, however little honourable and however much a lover of his ease Ingram may have shown himself in making them, his reasonable proposals were gratefully received. It was he who suggested, but she who took the lead. She began immediately to plan her new career—was perfectly business-like. Ingram was to leave London at once, and go to Wanless—to his duties of the bench, his delights of the field, cares of the farm. He was to announce to his househould his intention of “settling down”; and he was to announce the advent of a housekeeper. In this very outset of his bliss he must needs do as she bade him. He went, and made her ways as smooth as they could be made. Her rooms were assigned to her; her duties mapped out, the exact range of her authority. Her wages were fixed, to be paid quarterly. She would take nothing else from him—no jewellery (she wore nothing but simple things, which had been given her by her parents or sisters—amber, a string of cowries, an agate heart, a bangle or two), no frocks. She was to have two hundred a year, and throughout her time to this present she had no more, and kept herself exquisitely upon it, with a sense of what was due to him, to herself, and to her position, which was admirable, unhesitating, and never at fault. In due time she arrived and entered upon her career. That which was unlawful seemed now justified; the secret intimacy, the wedded amity, the giving, which was the dearest gain she had. Discretion, on her side unsleeping, on his the more effective because he never seemed to have any, secured them. There was no open scandal among the neighbours; whatever the household may have suspected, very little was said. Within a year her servants were her slaves. The Rector, it is true, reproached her for not going to church. She deprecated his indignation, but didn't go.
Up to the day when we first met with her, her garden-hat in her hand, reading her telegram by the garden window, she had been eight years governor of Wanless—and for nearly two of those years alone. For the first two or three of them Ingram, revelling in his snug ease, with little to do but devise things—alterations, extensions, ventures into farming, and the like, which it was her delight to execute—never left the county, hardly cared to leave the estate. He entertained very sparingly: Chevenix came once or twice, his own brother, Maxwell Ingram; there were some other dinner-parties to the countryside, hunt-breakfasts, once a hunt-ball, at none of which ceremonies did she appear. He endured these wearinesses, shrugging them away as soon as he could, to hasten from a dinner of dry toast and knives and forks to his room—the Master's room—where supper, Sanchia, sweet intimacy awaited him. He spent thus by far the cleanliest and most sane years of his wayward life. She soothed, amused, stimulated him at once. He taught her all he knew of country-lore, gave her, as they say, “the hang” of landed estate; he learned by teaching, and might have become a wholesome gentleman.
But domestic business called him to London presently. He went, and was away three months, with lawyers, fierce threatenings from Claire, intermediaries, friends of both parties, and the rest of them. He was worried, flurried, put into a rage; exploded, put himself a thousand times in the wrong; finally, he came back to Wanless embittered and restless. He came back to find himself welcome, but not excessively so. At least he thought not. His extensions, suggested in that first wonderful time—a range of glass-houses, new heating apparatus, acetylene gas installations, were well advanced. Sanchia's brows were often knit over estimates, specifications, and bills. He had to pay for novelties from which the salt had evaporated; he was never very fond of paying, and now, it seemed, he wasn't very fond of what he had to pay for. Sanchia was kind to him, but there was a difference. She was as happy as the day was long, always at work, outdoors or in, had not a moment for him (business apart) until the very end of the day, when (at eleven or so) she dressed with care and went to him at his supper. Sanchia was perfectly happy; but he was not.
He stayed six months that year—from April to September; but then went to Scotland, deer-stalking, shooting pheasants. He was back for Christmas and brought a houseful of guests—all men. Again she welcomed him, again she was kind. He was now a little blunted to the fine shades of love, took his happiness as it happened to come, and could rub his hands over the household blessing she was. By-and-by, at the end of her fourth year, she took over the gardens as well as the house, was accepted by Mr. Menzies as his liege-lady and by young Clyde as much more than that. The estate-management, home-farm, woods, tenancies, were given up to her at the end of the fifth year, just before Ingram sailed for West Africa on a shooting expedition. By that time he had grown to depend upon her entirely for everything. She was become the faithful well-tried wife of standing, which in a man of Ingram's bone means that nothing remained of love but entire confidence and occasional gratification. After this, he left her for long periods together; for the whole of the eighth year he was abroad, “idiotically happy,” as he had told her.
During all this time no intercourse with her family—except those furtive letters from her adoring old father, which were pitiful to her, because they could not be answered as he would have had them; and nothing from her friend of the Open, who had at last got himself a mate. It seemed that she had made a clean break, and that nothing of what had made her dawning life sweet and sane was to mingle with the sweetness and sanity which she had brought into Wanless. And then—after eight years—she caught herself looking back. And now—here was an end of the dream.
If you are to ask me what had changed her regard for Ingram during that solitary year, so that she received him at the end of it as she did, I don't know that I can tell you. Slowly discovery—of herself, of him—came to her, slowly combustible stuff was heaped within her; it slowly kindled, and smouldered long. No doubt he himself blew it into clear flame by his let-drop news of Claire's death. She had not known that: she never read the newspaper, having neither time for the world's affairs nor interest in them. Suddenly, by that, she was offended; suddenly saw him as he really was, always had been, and always must be. Suddenly, also, she saw herself, as brimming with life, energy to live and to make live, at the end of her music-time. The folds fell from her eyes, she could see Ingram as a man, squalid. Nay, more: she could now see him as a beast, ravening. Thereupon he gave her horror, so that she dared not look back upon her hours of blindness.
Perhaps he had offended her by his silence—his two letters, which she had neither invited nor answered. That can hardly account for it, since she had not written to him of her own initiative. Their parting certainly had been discrepant: the clinging and wistfulness had been hers, though she had uttered nothing of complaint or misgiving. But perhaps he had been too gay and nonchalant, a little too much the husband secure. For a week she had shivered at her loneliness; then she had plunged anew into the flood of affairs, and had come out, as from a cold bath, braced and tingling. Round went the wheels of Wanless. The house was new-papered, painted, carpeted; every month brought new wonders to the garden. Under Glyde's tuition, seeing with his eyes, watching with his tensity of vision, she had come closely into Nature's arms. Perhaps she was unwise with the young man: the fact is she never stopped to consider him. She liked him and his queer, secret, passionate ways. She took a royal line of her own. She required much of him, and if he made much of it, she didn't know it. She dreamed no harm to him or to herself. Her absorption in the business of the moment, or the needs, was so manifest that not even the maids, who saw her frequently with the youth, could have thought harm for a second. It was just Miss Percival all over—as “keen as mustard.” Perhaps it was as much under Glyde's fostering as any other nurture that she came, during that year alone, to love the earth so well that she could appraise the worth of human love. I don't know. It was a critical year for her.
As she was anything but a fool, there's no doubt that she came, before the end of that year, to know what was the matter with Glyde. She had had experience—of herself and another—and he was utterly incapable of concealing his feelings. Of course she knew what was the matter with him, and was tenderly and quietly amused. She approached him gradually, let herself play elder sister, and let him play what he chose, within severe limits, never overstepped by him, never unwatched by herself. He was a passionate, sensitive, inarticulate creature, narrow-faced, sharp-eyed, scowling and thin. He always looked cold, mostly angry, and never seemed contented, even when his plants flowered themselves to death to please him.
A woman, any woman, knowing that a man covets her possession, stores her knowledge, exults in it in secret. It is a fund, a store against lean years or wry ones. You can see it throned sedately in her eyes, when she is with him, however much she may feel his absurdity or presumption. So it was with Sanchia. She was fully conscious of Struan's preposterous state, strictly the elder sister, never the patroness, for were they not bond-slaves both? She patronised nobody at Wanless, yet, with a steady eye for distances, kept a perfect length, varying with each oncomer. With Mr. Menzies, lord of the gardens, so far on she came; with Frodsham, master of horse and hound, so far; with the engineer so far; with Minnie nearer; nearest of all with Mrs. Benson: her attitude to the stout woman was that of favourite pupil to a family governess of immemorial service. She could wheedle Mrs. Benson, and often did. The elder sister attitude was kept for young Glyde; she admonished, scolded, preached to him high doctrine of duty and honour; there was something benignant, a sort of pitying care shed from above. To him she may have been like Cynthia, stooping to the dreamer on Latmos. Whether she knew that, she must have known a good deal. She knew, for instance, that he kept vigil; for she had met him at night, as you have been told. She knew where to find him. Nothing had ever passed between them, of course, of her relations with the Master. I don't think that she was aware of his sentry-go under the windows—first under Ingram's, then under hers. I am sure she was not, or he would have heard of it in plain terms, have seen her eyes grow hard, and her mouth stretch to bleakness. She was capable of royal, cold rage when she was offended. But that he hated Ingram must have been plain to her.
And now, as she stood at gaze, lonely and pensive by the black pond, she saw that it was over, her busy life. She was at the end of her tether, must lose her power and the sense of it. She was to begin the world again, starting with her fifty pounds, and without that which had made it a pride before. With a little shiver of self-pity, a half-sigh and a tightening of the lips, she accepted her fate. That was her way.
She regretted nothing, asked neither for mercy nor allowance. What she had done, she had done; if it was to be done with, she could not help that; she must go her way. Never for an instant did it enter her head that she could marry Ingram. Nothing that he had urged, or Chevenix counselled, made the smallest difference to her. She did not love Nevile any more; he was horrible to her: enough of that. Whatever her fate was to be, she would accept it: she chose it so. Without reasoning it out, that was final for her. She had always hadsic volofor her final cause.Stet pro ratione voluntas.Marriage, even nominal marriage, with Nevile was the accursed thing: none of it. And why? Because she chose it so.
This was very sublime. I sing, or Mr. Senhouse sings, a Goddess in her own Right. That is to be observed, or we fail. Persons have existed, and do yet exist, who are law unto themselves, deliberate choosers of their fate, deliberate allies of Atropos with the shears, who go what seems to us, shivering on the brink of things, a bright and bloodstained way, and furrow deeply into life, because it must be so, because so they will have it. Great ones of time, a Caesar or so, a Catherine, a Buonaparte, come handily to mind, who, wreaking countless woes, wrought evenly their own. And since greatness is a relative term, and time an abstraction of the mind, in their company, says Mr. Senhouse, was Sanchia Percival, and in her blue-clouded eyes was to be discerned seated, like a captain, foreknowledge of her own fate, and will to choose it. But, as for Mr. Senhouse himself, at this time of envisaging of ways I don't believe that he entered her head. Small blame to her, either, seeing that the man, having renounced her, or failed of her, as you please, had taken up with his Mrs. Germain, and found her to be a Fact, as I have related.
But to do wrong or right, the prerogative of choice: she arrogated that. So, I think, if the sister of the Far-Darter had ever stepped aside from the path of her lonely delight—as some have it she did on Latmos—she would have done it without shame. It would have been her pleasure and her choice; she would never change countenance or have to breast the flood of colour. It must be hers to take up or discard an empire, or a Nevile Ingram of Wanless Hall. So, in her degree, did Sanchia Percival—of the stuff of goddesses.
Mrs. Devereux having departed as impressively as might be expected of a lady with a sense of injury, there was little for Chevenix to do but to follow her; for whereas Mrs. Devereux considered herself badly treated by both parties in the house, the young man had to own that he had quarrelled with his host. “I laid for Nevile,” he told Sanchia, “and he don't let me forget it, either. He don't like commentators on his text—never did. So he's making Wanless too hot to hold me.”
Sanchia, with rueful eyes, feared that this was her fault. “I'm very sorry,” she said. “On all accounts I'm very sorry. I shall miss you. It was nice to see you again.”
“See me again,” cried Chevenix, “as soon as you please; but not here—unless you feel you can make up your mind to settle down, as we call it.”
She shook her head. “I don't think I can. I think it might be wicked—as things are.”
Chevenix raised his eyebrows. “That's you all over, my dear. Other people's Right is your Wrong. Why question the decrees of the police? They tell you that you may do what you please when you're married, but not before. But you won't have that. Of course, if you can't swallow Nevile, you can't—and there's an end of it. Only,” he added, “theremustbe an end of it. You're in a false position—now.”
“According to you I always was,” said the candid young lady, and made him change countenance. She shirked nothing.
“I did think so once; we all did, you know. Even your bare-footed friend, What's-his-name—”
“Mr. Senhouse.”
“Beg your pardon. Mr. Senhouse, of course. Well, he didn't take it sitting down, so to speak. Did he now?”
She considered. Her eyes grew gentle over the remembrances which this name always called up. “He knew that I was right. Oh, yes. I'm sure of that. But he was frightened. He lost his nerve because—”
“Because it was you, my dear,” said Chevenix briskly. She owned soberly to that.
“I shall see your people when I get to town,” he told her. “I shall make a point of seeing Vicky and your governor. And if I could drop in upon Senhouse, by George, I'd risk it. You don't know where he is just now, I suppose?”
“He was in the Black Forest when I last heard from him,” she said, “and was going to the Caucasus—to collect plants. That was a long time ago. Three years, I should think. He doesn't write now. He's married, you know.”
“Married?” he repeated, with open eyes. “I never knew that.”
“He married a Mrs. Germain—a widow.”
Chevenix stared, then slapped his leg. “Then that accounts for it! Didn't I tell you I met him when I went out to Brindisi to see Nevile off—met him on a steamer, with a pretty woman? That was Mrs. G.—hispretty woman. Good Lord, how rum!” He laughed, staring. Then, “What on earth did he do that for? She's not his sort. And I gave myself away—confoundedly—to each of 'em in turn. You'll never believe it, but I toldhimthat she'd always been in love with Tristram Duplessis, and then I gaveherto understand what had been the matter with old Senhouse.” He exploded, then grew mighty serious. “That's rather a bore. I was counting on him, you know. I thought you might want him.”
Sanchia made no reply. About the corners of her mouth there lurked the hint of a smile, which her wistful eyes belied. Chevenix watched her, but could make nothing of it.
“He was a rum 'un,” he continued. “The first time I saw him after you came up here, was when I ran against him by chance in Norfolk somewhere. Spread abroad he was—in flannels—all his things strewn about. He had a little fire going, and a little pot on it. Doing a job of tinkering, he said, to oblige a lady. There was the lady, too, if you please, sitting on a bank, smoking a clay. She had a beard, and an old wide-awake on her head. Senhouse introduced me, I remember. He told me he was on his way North—Wastwater, I think. A planting job up there—or something. Rum chap that! Oh, one of the very rummest! He asked me a lot about you. I didn't know how much he knew, so I went very pussy. The chap was as sharp as a needle. Spotted me. He said, 'My dear sir, I don't ask you what she is doing or where she is. I ask you if she is well.' Then I told him a lot—about you, and Nevile, and all this business. I let out, I tell you. I was fairly deep in the thing—you know that I felt pretty badly, because it was my fault that you ever knew Nevile at all. Don't you suppose I've ever forgiven myself that, Sancie; never you suppose it. No, no.”
He was much moved. She, by a sudden impulse, put out her hand to him. He wrung it, and said, “Thanks, Sancie; thanks, my dear.”
After a wrestling bout, he went on: “Do you know what that fellow said to me? I should like you to know it. Mind you, he was yours, body and soul, then—whatever he may be now. I think he's yours still, for that matter—butthen!He never concealed it—so far as I know—from anybody. Now, listen to me.” He heard me out, never said anything till I'd done. Then he looked out over the marshes into the weather, and he said, “No harm ever came to a good woman. I shall see her again, crowned. Now, what do you say to that? Queer, isn't it?”
Sanchia blushed deeply and bent her head. Chevenix marked her confusion, and varied his tone to suit the case. He became practical. “Now, what'll he say about this new state of affairs, do you suppose?”
She lifted her head. “He will think me in the right.”
Chevenix shrugged. “There's going to be trouble,” he believed. “There's bound to be, just on that account. Nevile can be a brute when he's in the wrong, and knows it.”
Sanchia squared her jaw for trouble.
“He wants you back, you know, awfully—because you won't come. And the more he wants you the less he'll say so. That's the pride of the cobbler's dog. If he's uncomfortable, he'll scratch until he's comfortable again. And he says, 'If you can't get the best take the next best'; and runs about with Mrs. Wilmot at his heels, and is bored all the time. That's Nevile all over.” His eyes grew rounder. “You'll have to go, you know.”
She admitted that. “Yes, I must.” Then she sighed. “I don't want to go. There's such a lot to be done here.”
“Yes, yes, my dear,” said Chevenix with some irritation. “No doubt there is. But you can't afford it.”
He stammered out his next. “I should like to say, Sancie, that there's nobody on earth I respect—for whom I have more respect than for you. I don't understand your point of view—don't pretend to. But I know a fine thing when I see it. I'm not much of a chap, I know—no brains, and all that—simple, rotten chap, I know; but if we're not going to be friends I shall be unhappy.”
“We are, I hope,” she said, smiling kindly at him. She gave him her hand.
“Right, Sancie. Look here,” he said sternly. “I'll punch Nevile's head for you, if you like.”
“I shouldn't like it at all,” she assured him.
“We're old acquaintance, you know. He'd take it from me better than from anyone else—like Senhouse.”
“Mr. Senhouse would never touch him,” she was sure. He dropped in Chevenix's estimation immediately.
“Quaker, eh? I didn't know that.”
Sanchia explained. “He can't be changed in those sort of things. He would only use force against wild beasts.”
“Well,” cried Chevenix, “what do you think Nevile's going to be? My advice to you is to get out as soon as you can. And when you're in town, command me.” They parted firm friends.
Mrs. Wilmot remained, against her inmost judgment, against her maid Purcell's clear advice, for one more day. The night of Chevenix's departure she was there, and on the morrow was to be conveyed to the Trenchards', across the county. Wanless had her steadily in its score pair of eyes for twenty-four hours, as Purcell, her maid, had foreseen. “You are doing a strange thing, ma'am, permit me to say.” Purcell was an elderly spinster, who only required her own permission to say what she pleased. “You will be watched and reported. I suppose I am not in the servants' hall for nothing.” Mrs. Wilmot said feebly that she supposed she was there for meals. Purcell stiffened her wiry neck. “Meals, ma'am! In the best houses there's a second table. The butler may be there, and perhaps the valet. The lady's maid, of course. But where there's no lady, one may put up with the cook, though the cook in such houses is rarely a female. But the housekeeper here! A Miss Percival! Dines alone—or is said to—and the cook sits at the head of our table. This is no house for you, ma'am.”
The lady gave a little cry and hoisted a white shoulder. “Oh, Purcell, you are hurting me dreadfully. Do be more gentle with me. You are tearing my hair out by handfuls. What can it matter to you where Miss—where the housekeeper dines?”
“Ho,” said Purcell, “little or nothing—to me, ma'am. I cannot help my thoughts. But I keep them to myself. Not one word in this house—downstairs—of Miss Percival. Not one word. They keep their mouths shut, I promise you, and their eyes open. But what you will, you will. As for Mr. Ingram, the less I say the better.”
“Much the better,” said Mrs. Wilmot, fretfully wriggling under the comb.
That fine afternoon—April budding into May—this lady listened to Ingram in the garden. Of all sounds in the world the sweetest music for her ear was made by a man's voice embroidering the theme—“You are lovely, you are cruel, I die.”Ingram's descant on the golden phrase was querulous, after his manner. He took his lover's smarts, as one must suppose them, hardly. As thus:“You are lovely—but what's that to me, if I can't touch you? You sting my eyes, you inflame, you wound—or I think you do; here am I, tied by the leg to a dead woman—for dead to me she is, the she-cat Sanchia—looking at you because I can't help myself. You are soft and lax, you purr when I stroke you; I could make a pet of you. Was ever a man of property and station in such a case?”
“You are cruel—because, though I could put out my hand and take you, yet you expect me to do it. That's all over, for me. I've done that sort of thing—Sanchia knows. Now I must trouble you to advance. I'm sick of life on these terms: you could make life worth living. I must really trouble you: sorry to seem languid, but Iamlanguid. You, with your fine sensibilities, ought to be the first to feel that; but no: you wait, looking exquisite, with eyes like blue-black water, and a mouth, a mouth like a flower. You soft gossamer beauty, I could crush you where you hover; but you won't come and be crushed. Certainly, you are cruel.”
I die.He avoided that. It was absurd. She thought for one moment that he hinted it when he said, shrugging off his ranges of hot-house—“Good of their kind, I fancy. But what good are they to me—a solitary beggar? I never go into 'em, you know. I thought I should take an interest when I had 'em put up. It looked like it—But now! who cares whether I go into 'em or not? Who cares whether I live or die?” There had been a pathetic ring there.
She had murmured a gentle rebuke; her eyes had brimmed, reproaching him. It was then that he had taken her hand, at the going-out from the fig-house. “Ruth,” he had said, “my kind, pretty Ruth.” Then he stooped his head and kissed her. Through three pairs of doors Glyde, in the peachhouse, had seen the act, and paused in his spraying. It was over in a minute. The pair strolled away and passed out of the walled-garden. Glyde, who had turned very white, compressed his lips and went back to his work—like a machine. Presently a light step made him start, look guardedly up, watch and wait. Sanchia, bare-headed, fresh anddebonnaire, came in, like a stream of west wind. Her eyes beamed her health and pleasure. “Oh, Struan,” she said, “do come and see theSusianas. They are on the very point of opening. Do come. There's nobody about. They've gone down to the river.”
He could not face her, knowing what he knew. But he could not resist her either. “I'll come,” he said, and followed her.
She went gaily and eagerly. “You've never done so well with them as this year. I counted a dozen. Huge! I felt rather miserable this morning; I've been worried rather. I thought I would just see what they would do for me. They made me feel ashamed of myself. Their strength, their contentedness—just to grow, and be strong and well! Nothing more. What else ought we to want? Food—the sun—strength to grow! Isn't that enough?” She was echoing Senhouse here, and felt an added glow to remember it. He had been much in her thoughts since her last exchange with Chevenix.
Out of the warm brown soil, sheltered by the eaves, the iris clump made a brave show. Its leaves like grey scimitars, its great flower-stems like spears. Stiffly they reared, erect, smooth, well-rounded, and each was crowned with the swollen bud of promise. She displayed them proudly, she counted them, made him check her counting. She glowed over them, fascinated by their virile pride. Struan watched her more than her treasures. He was pale still, and bit his lip; had nothing to say.
She knelt and took one of the great stalks tenderly in her hand. A kind of rapture, was upon her, a mystic's ecstasy. She passed her closed hand up and down, feeling the stiff smoothness: she clasped and pressed the bursting bud. “Feel it, Struan, feel it,” she said. “It's alive.” He turned, shaking, away.
“They say,” she went on, caressing the bud, “that this is really the Lily of the Annunciation. It's a symbol, I've read. Gabriel held one in his hand when he stood before Our Lady. Did you know that?”
Glyde broke out. “Don't. Don't. Come away. I must speak to you—quickly—if I dare. Come away from here.”
He spoke fiercely, meaning what he said. Grave, sobered, she rose and followed him. He drew her after him to the yew-tree walk, to the enclosure at its end, where the leaden Faun capered and grinned. There he faced her.
“You must leave this place,” he said shortly. She looked to the ground.
“I know,” she replied in a low voice.
“Every moment you stop here insults you, puts shame upon you. Shame! And on you! It's not bearable. It's not to be suffered. I'll not suffer it for one.”
At this she lifted her head and reproved him by a look. It was mild, queenly mild, but not weak. Remote from him and his world, it said, “I can't hear you.”
He understood it so. “Who says I may not speak to you? Who else is to speak to you if I don't? How can you bear yourself and speak nothing? Is it natural?” He seemed on the point of angry tears; with a gesture infinitely kind she bore with him. Her hand just touched his arm.
“Dear Struan,” she said, “I know how nice you mean to be to me; I am very grateful to you. Of course I am going away. I have brought everything on myself, and must bear the consequences by myself. But I have been happy here, lately, and shall be most unhappy to go. I have so many friends here.” Then, after looking at him, reflecting, she added, “Of course I know that you care.”
“Care!” he cried out, scornfully. “Do you think that I've watched you, in and out, for three years without caring? Do you think that I have schooled myself to put up with—with him—without caring? And when I thought that he was coming back here to—to prove himself an honourable man—I thanked the Lord. Yes, I did that. I was ready to go when I knew he was coming back for that. I told you I would go—and I meant it. I should have cut my heart out and left it here, and gone away—clean away, glorifying and praising God. But—oh, it's hideous, hideous! You are discarded—you! Cast off—you! Peerless as you are—you! Oh, my Saviour, what's this?” He broke away, and sobbed. He dashed his arm over his eyes in a rage with himself. She was very gentle with him now.
She put her hand on his shoulder, and though he shook it off, put it there again. “You hurt me, Struan, really. If you are my friend, you shouldn't doubt me. I don't feel about it as you do, you know.”
He lifted his head at the challenge. “Then you should,” he said. “Dog that he is. He's insulting you. He had better have died than do as he does. Damn him, he shall pay for it.” She shook her head, smiling rather dismally.
“I can't talk to you any more if you don't understand why I can't talk to you,” she said. “There are things which friends cannot do for each other—which we have to do alone.”
The lad gasped and made a step towards her. He could not control himself—he shook.
“Not you—never you. I'll die for you—and you know it.” She looked at him full, then left him.
Mrs. Wilmot stayed for the better part of a week longer than she had intended, and then, perceiving by subtle but unmistakeable signs that she would wiselier go, went. To Wanless that had been a week of strain; the air was charged with trouble. One could not have pointed to anything—it was beyond the range of weathercock or glass; but everybody felt it. Sanchia, graver than she was wont to be, pushed herself sharply from duty to duty, and avoided sympathy by a dry manner. Or she was obtuse, affecting a foolish interest in trivialities. She never went into the garden, and saw nothing of young Glyde. Mrs. Benson, glooming thunder from her brows, Minnie with scare in her russet eyes turned Purcell's feasts into fasts. The wiry tire-woman, to do her justice, was as uncomfortable as any of them; but loyalty spurred her to feats of endurance undreamed of by any but servants. They, in a world of their own, where speech is rare, and skins rarer, where everything must be done by glances and hints, are perhaps more aware of themselves than any other children of men. They are for ever judging their betters; how shall they escape from judgment of each other? Judge not, says the Book; but if you pry for vice, what can you be yourself but a prying-ground? So Purcell agonised, and felt her very vitals under the hooks. The case was past praying for. She suffered and was dumb.
At last the delicate beauty, seeing Adonis faint in the chase—for Ingram, as a lover, was languid and gloomy—was helped into her lacy draperies, helped into the carriage, driven to the station; and Ingram, on horseback, rode by her side. He helped her into the train, stored her with magazines, kissed her mouth, revolted at her tears, and returned sulkily, with hard-rimmed eyes, at a foot's pace to his halls. Midway of the carriage-drive, instinctively, he tightened the rein; for Glyde stepped out of the undergrowth some ten paces ahead, and stood, waiting for him. He was dressed, not for the garden (in shirt-sleeves and baize), but in his blacks, and had a soft felt hat on his head, basin-shaped, with the brim over his eyes. “Now what the devil does that chap want, play-acting here?” was Ingram's enquiry of the Universe.
Glyde, as the horse drew level, came within touch of his flank, and told Ingram that he wished to speak with him.
“Eh?” said Ingram; and then, “oh, what a nuisance.” He felt himself injured. “Well, what is it, Glyde?”
Glyde said, “I wish to give notice, if you please.” The manner of address was curt and offensive.
“Oh, do you?” Ingram said. “Well, then, you had better do it in the proper way. See Miss Percival about it, will you?” He pressed his knees in as if to continue his way.
Glyde, however, stood by the horse's head.
“I have seen Miss Percival about it, Mr. Ingram,” he said. “I saw her—a week ago. And now I've got to see you about it.”
Ingram looked at him sharply—a sudden stiffening of the spine; spine stiff and eyes sharp, acting together. What he saw made him the more alert.
“What on earth do you mean?” he asked.
“I'll tell you,” said Glyde. “I'm free of your service from this minute, so I'll tell you. I say that you are a damned scoundrel, and that you know it.” A concentration of many grudges, kept very still, as by white heat, characterised this remarkable speech.
Ingram blenched. “By George, my man,” he said, “you'll have to make that good.”
Glyde said, “And I will. You have behaved, you are behaving, like a dog in this house; and you're to take a dog's wages.”
Ingram jumped in his saddle, rose in his stirrups. “By God,” he said, “by God—” but he said no more.
Glyde sprang up at him where he stood above his saddle, unseated—sprang up at him, took him by the shoulders and then dropping, pulled him off his horse. The freed animal, startled, kicked out, shook his head, and cantered gaily homewards. Glyde, having Ingram on the ground, took him by the collar of his jacket and belaboured him with his open hand. He cuffed him like a schoolboy, boxed him about the ears and face, shook him well, and then cast him into the young bracken of his own avenue. “There's for you, seducer,” he said; and that done, he walked steadily up the road towards the lodge gates.
Ingram, on his feet, in a rage which was the most manly he could have suffered, went after him at a run, and caught him up. “You blackguard,” he said, and panted. “Turn and fight with me.”
Glyde stopped. “I'll not fight with you, Ingram,” was his measured reply, “because I've that in me which would kill you. No mercy for you there. You can go as you please; you can send me to gaol or not; but you shan't get me hanged. I've something to do with my life—as much of it as you leave me; and I want it.” As Ingram glared at him, crimson now, with bulging eyes and teeth at lips, the other went on. “I'm going no farther to-day than my lodging. Your police will find me there when you send 'em. I shan't fight them, because I can't afford it; and I shan't fight you, dog that you are, for the same reason.” Ingram cursed, and sprang at him, but Glyde stiffened his arm and held him off. Master was no match for man, and felt no better for the knowledge of that. It did serve, however, to bring him to his senses. He saw that he was making an ass of himself.
“You'll hear more of this,” he said, and turned and walked rapidly back to the house.
Mortification inflamed his rage; his furious walking blew into it a sense of incurable injury. Injury, shocked pride, and animal heat altogether made a devil of him. He went directly to his own room, and rang the bell. “Send Miss Percival to me,” he told Minnie, “at once.”
Then he waited for her, with a face like a rat.