"You're late!"
"I always am. I've been trying to make myself charming."
"That wouldn't be difficult."
"You think so?"
"I'm sure of it."
Mavis spoke lightly, but Harold's voice was eloquent of conviction.
"I'm sure of it," he repeated, as if to himself.
"Am I so perfect?" she asked, as her eyes sought the ground.
"In my eyes. But, then, I'm different from other men."
"You are."
"You needn't remind me of it."
"Isn't it nice to be different from others?"
"And wheel myself about because I can't walk?"
"Is that what you meant? Believe me, I didn't mean that. I was thinking how different you were to talk to, to other men I've met."
"You flatter me."
"It's the truth."
"Then, since I'm so exceptional, will you do something for me?"
"Perhaps."
"Never be later than you can help. I worry, fearing something's happened to you."
"Not really?"
"You are scarcely a subject I should fib about."
This was the beginning of a conversation that took place a fortnight after Mavis's first meeting with Harold by the sea. During this time, they had seen each other for the best part of every day when the weather was fine enough for Harold to be out of doors; as it was an exceptionally fine spring, they met constantly. Mavis was still moved by an immense hatred of the Devitt family, whom, more than ever before, she believed to be responsible for the wrongs and sufferings she had endured. In her determination to injure this family by making Harold infatuated with her, she was not a little surprised at the powers of dissimulation which she had never before suspected that she possessed. She was both ashamed and proud of this latent manifestation of her individuality—proud because she was inclined to rejoice in the power that it conferred. But, at times, this elation was diluted with self-reproaches, chiefly when she was with Harold, but not looking at him; then his deep, rich voice would awaken strange tremors in her being.
However much Mavis was occasionally moved to pity his physical misfortune, the recollection of her griefs was more than enough to harden her heart.
"Very, very strange that I should have run against you here," he went on.
"Why?"
"I was at home when your old schoolmistress's letter came about you. I remember she dragged in Ruskin."
"Poor Miss Mee!"
"I was always interested in you, and when I was in the South of France, I was always asking my people to do their best for you."
Mavis's eyes grew hard as she asked:
"You've kept your promise to me?"
"That I shouldn't tell my people I'd met you?"
"I made it because—-"
"Never mind why. You made it: that is enough for me."
Mavis's eyes softened. Then she and Harold fell to talking of Melkbridge and Montague Devitt; presently of Victoria.
"I hope she was kind to you at Melkbridge," said Harold.
"Very," declared Mavis, saying what was untrue.
"Dear Vic is a little disappointing. I'm always reproaching myself I don't love her more than I do. Have you ever met the man she married?"
"Mr. Perigal? I've met him," replied Mavis.
"Do you like him?"
"I scarcely remember."
"I don't overmuch. I'm sorry Vic married him, although my people were, of course, delighted."
"Why?"
"We're quite new people, while the Perigals are a county family. But, somehow, I don't think he'll make Vic happy."
"What makes you say that?"
"He's not happy himself. Everything he takes up he wearies of; he gets pleasure out of nothing. And the pity of it is, he's no fool; if anything, he's too many brains."
"How can anyone have too many?"
"Take Perigal's case. He's too analytical; he sees too clearly into things. It's a sort of Rontgen ray intelligence, which I wouldn't have for worlds. Isn't it old Solomon who says, 'In much wisdom there is much sorrow'?"
"Solomon says a good many things," said Mavis gravely, as she remembered how the recollection of certain passion-charged verses from the "Song" had caused her to linger by the canal at Melkbridge on a certain memorable evening of her life, with, as it proved, disastrous consequences to herself.
"Have you ever read the 'Song'?" asked Harold.
"Yes."
"I love it, but I daren't read it now."
"Why?"
"More than most things, it brings home to me my—my helplessness."
The poison, begotten of hatred, made Mavis thankful that the Devitt family had not had it all their own way in life.
When she next looked at Harold, he was intently regarding her. Mavis's glance dropped.
"But now there's something more than reading the 'Song' that makes me curse my luck," he remarked.
"And that?"
"Can't you guess?" he asked earnestly.
Mavis did not try; she was already aware of the fascination she possessed for the invalid.
For the rest of the time they were together, Mavis could get nothing out of Harold; he was depressed and absent-minded when spoken to. Mavis, of set purpose, did her utmost to take Harold out of himself.
"Thank you," he said, as she was going.
"What for?"
"Wasting your time on me and helping me to forget."
"Forget what?"
"Never mind," he said, as he wheeled himself away.
When Mavis got back to Mrs Budd's, she found a bustle of preparation afoot. Mrs Budd was running up and downstairs, carrying clean linen with all her wonted energy; whilst Hannah, her sour-faced assistant, perspired about the house with dustpan and brushes.
"Expecting a new lodger?" asked Mavis.
"It's my daughter, Mrs Perkins; she's telegraphed to say she's coming down from Kensington for a few days."
"She'll be a help."
Mrs Budd's face fell as she said:
"Well, miss, she comes from Kensington, and she has a baby."
"Is she bringing that too?"
"And her nurse," declared Mrs Budd, not without a touch of pride.
When Mrs Perkins arrived, she was wearing a picture hat, decorated with white ostrich feathers, a soiled fawn dust-coat, and high-heeled patent leather shoes. She brought with her innumerable flimsy parcels (causing, by comparison, a collapsible Japanese basket to look substantially built), and a gaily-dressed baby carried by a London slut, whose face had been polished with soap and water for the occasion.
After the dust-cloak had settled with the driver, it advanced self-consciously to the steps leading to the front door, the while it called to the London slut:
"Come along, nurse, and be careful of baby."
Mavis, who saw and heard this from the window of her sitting-room, noticed that Mrs Perkins greeted her mother, who was waiting at the door, with some condescension. When the last flimsy parcel had been taken within, Mrs Budd brought in Mrs Perkins and the baby to introduce them to Mavis. Mrs Perkins sat down and assumed a manner of superfine gentility, while she talked with a Cockney accent. Her mother remained standing. The dust-cloak lived in Kensington, it informed Mavis, "which was so convenient for the West End: it was only an hour's 'bus ride from town."
"Less than that," said Mavis to the dust-cloak.
"I have known it to take fifty-five minutes when it hasn't been stopped by funerals," declared Mrs Perkins.
Mavis looked at the dust-cloak in surprise.
"I always thought it took a quarter of an hour at the outside," remarked Mavis.
"For my part, when I go to London, I'm afraid of the 'buses," said Mrs Budd. "I always take the train to Willesden Junction. Florrie's house is only five minutes from there."
Mrs Perkins frowned, coughed, and then violently changed the subject. Mavis gave no heed to what she was saying. Her eyes were fixed on the baby, which Mrs Budd had put in her arms.
Passionate regrets filled her mind, while a dull pain assailed her heart. She held the baby with a tense grip as Mrs Perkins talked at her, the while the mother kept one eye self-consciously upon her offspring.
Baby that and baby this, she was saying, as Mavis continued to stare with dry-eyed grief at the baby's pasty face. Then blind rage possessed her.
"Why should this common brat, which, even at this early age, carried his origin in his features, live, while my sweet boy is beneath the ground in Pennington Churchyard?" she asked herself.
It was cruel, unjust. Mavis's rage was such that she was within measurable distance of dashing the baby to the ground. Perhaps the dust-cloak's maternal sensibilities scented danger, for, rather abruptly, it got up to go, giving as an excuse that it must rest in order to fulfil social engagements in Swanage. When Mrs Budd, her daughter and grandson, had gone, Mavis still sat in her chair. Her hands grasped its arms; her eyes stared before her. If, at any time, Harold's personality had caused her hatred of his family to wane, the sight of Mrs Perkins's baby was sufficient to restore its vigour.
Then it occurred to Mavis how her love for Perigal, which she had thought to be as stable as the universe, had unconsciously withered within her. It was as if there had been an immense reaction from her one-time implicit faith in her lover, making her despise, where once she had had unbounded confidence. This awakening to the declension that had taken place in her love gave her many anxious hours.
For some days Mavis saw nothing of Harold. She walked on the sweep of sea front and in the streets of the little town in the hope of meeting him, but in vain. She wondered if he had gone home, but persuaded herself that he would not have left Swanage without letting her know.
Mavis was not a little irked at Harold's indifference to her friendship; it hurt her self-esteem, which had been enhanced by the influence she had so palpably wielded over him. It also angered her to think that, after all, she would not be able to drink the draught of revenge which she had promised herself at the Devitts' expense.
All this time she had given no further thought to Windebank's letter; it remained unanswered. As the days passed, and she saw nothing of Harold, she began to think considerably of the man who had written to offer her marriage. These thoughts were largely coloured with resentment at the fact of Windebank's not having followed up his unanswered letter by either another communication or a personal appeal. Soon she was torn by two emotions: hatred of the Devitts and awakened interest in Windebank; she did not know which influenced her the more. She all but made up her mind to write some sort of a reply to Windebank, when she met Harold pulling himself along the road towards the sea.
He had changed in the fortnight that had elapsed since she had last seen him; his face had lost flesh; he looked worn and anxious.
When he saw her, he pulled up. She gave him a formal bow, and was about to pass him, when the hurt expression on the invalid's face caused her to stop irresolutely by his side.
"At last!" he said.
Mavis looked at him inquiringly.
"I could bear it no longer," he went on.
"Bear what?"
He did not reply; indeed, he did not appear to listen to her words, but said:
"I feared you'd gone for good."
"I've seen nothing of you either."
"Then you missed me? Tell me that you did."
"I don't know."
"I have missed YOU."
"Indeed!"
"I daren't say how much. Where are you going now?"
"Nowhere."
"May I come too?" he asked pleadingly. "I'll go a little way," she remarked.
"Meet me by the sea in ten minutes."
"Why not go there together?"
"I'd far rather meet you."
"Don't you like being seen with me?"
"Yes and no. Yes, because I am very proud at being seen with you."
"And 'no'?"
"It's why I wanted you to meet me by the sea."
"Why?"
"Can't you guess?"
"If I could I wouldn't ask."
"I'll tell you. When you walk with me, I'm afraid you notice my infirmity the more."
"I'll only go on one condition," declared Mavis.
"That—-?"
"That we go straight there from here."
"I'm helpless where you're concerned," he sighed, as he started his tricycle.
They went to the road bordering the sea, which just now they had to themselves. On the way they said little; each was occupied with their thoughts.
Mavis was touched by Harold's devotion; also, by his anxiety not to obtrude his infirmity upon her notice. She looked at him, to see in his eyes unfathomable depths of sadness. She repressed an inclination to shed tears. She had never been so near foregoing her resolve to make him the instrument of her hatred of his family. But the forces that decide these matters had other views. Mavis was staring out to sea, in order to hide her emotion from Harold's distress, when the sight of the haze where sea and sky met arrested her attention. Something in her memory struggled for expression, to be assisted by the smell of seaweed which assailed her nostrils.
In the twinkling of an eye, Mavis, in imagination, was at Llansallas Bay, with passionate love and boundless trust in her heart for the lover at her side, to whom she had surrendered so much. The merest recollection of how her love had been betrayed was enough to dissipate the consideration that she was beginning to feel for Harold. Her heart turned to stone; determination possessed her.
"Still silent!" she exclaimed.
"I have to be."
"Who said so?"
"The little sense that's left me."
"Sense is often nonsense."
"It's a bitter truth to me."
"Particularly now?"
"Now and always."
"May I know?"
"Why did you come into my life?" he asked, as if he had not heard her request.
"Why shouldn't I?"
"Why have you? Why have you?"
"You're not the only one who can ask that question," she murmured.
He looked at her for some moments in amazement before saying:
"Say that again."
"I shan't."
"If I were other than I am, I should compel you."
"How could you?"
"With my lips. As it is—-"
"Yes—tell me."
"My infirmity stops me from saying and doing what I would."
"Why let it?" asked Mavis in a low voice, while her eyes sought the ground.
"You—you mean that?" he asked, in the manner of one who scarcely believed the evidence of his ears.
"I mean it."
He did not speak for such a long time that Mavis began to wonder if he regretted his words. When she stole a look at him, she saw that his eyes were staring straight before him, as if his mind were all but overwhelmed by the subject matter of its concern.
Mavis touched his arm. He shivered slightly and glanced at her as if surprised, before he realised that she was beside him.
"Listen!" he said. "You asked—you shall know; whether you like or hate me for it. I love you. Women have never come into my life; they've always looked on me with pitying eyes. I would rather it were so. But you—you—you are beautiful, with a heart like your face, both rare and wonderful. Perhaps I love you so much because you are young and healthy. It hurts me."
His eyes held such a piteously fearful look that Mavis was moved in spite of herself. He went on:
"If my disposition were like my twisted body, it wouldn't matter. But I love life, movement, struggling. Were I as I used to be, I should love to have a beautiful, responsive woman for my own. I should love to have you."
Before Mavis knew what she had done, she had put her hand on his. Then he said, as if speaking to himself:
"What have I to offer besides a helpless, envious love? My wife would be a nurse, not a mistress, as she should be."
"Stop! stop!" she pleaded.
"No, I will not stop," he cried, as he bent over to hold her head so that her eyes looked into his. "You shall listen and then decide. I love you. If it's good enough, I'm yours. You know what I have to offer, and I ask you to be my wife because I can't help myself. Because—"
Mavis had closed her eyes for fear that he should read her heart. He passionately kissed the closed lids before sinking back exhausted in his chair.
"Listen to me," said Mavis after a while. "It's I who am to blame. Let me go away so that you can forget me."
"Forget you! forget you!" he cried. "No, you shall not go away; not till you've said 'yes' or 'no' to what I ask."
"When shall I answer?"
"Give yourself time—only—"
"Only?"
"Don't keep me waiting longer than you can help."
For three days, Mavis drifted upon uncertain tides. She was borne rapidly in one direction only to float as certainly in another. She lacked sufficient strength of purpose to cast anchor and abide by the consequences. She deplored her irresolution, but, try as she might, she found it a matter of great difficulty to give her mind to the consideration of Harold's offer. Otherwise, the most trivial happenings imprinted themselves on her brain: the aspect of the food she ate, the lines on her landlady's face, the flittings in and out of the front door of the "dust-cloak" on its way to trumpery social engagements, the while its mother minded the baby, all acquired in her eyes a prominence foreign to their importance. Also, thoughts of Windebank now and again flooded her mind. Then she remembered all he had done for her, at which gratitude welled from her soul. At such times she would be moved by a morbid consideration for his feelings; she longed to pay back the money he had spent on her illness, and felt that her mind would never be at ease on the matter till she had.
If only he would come down, and, despite anything she could say or do, insist on marrying her and determine to win her heart; failing that, if he would only write words of passionate longing which might awaken some echo in her being! She read and re-read the letter in which he offered her marriage; she tried to see in his formal phrases some approximation to a consuming love, but in vain.
She had never answered this letter; she reproached herself for not having done so. Mavis sat down to write a few words, which would reach Windebank by the first post in the morning, when she found that the ink had dried in the pot. She rang the bell. While waiting, a vision of the piteous look on Harold's face when he had told her of his love came into her mind. Accompanying this was the recollection of the cause of which her friendship with Harold was an effect. Hatred of the Devitts possessed her. She remembered, and rejoiced, that it was now in her power to be revenged for all she believed she had suffered at their hands. So black was the quality of this hate that she wondered why she had delayed so long. When the ink was brought, it was to Harold that she was about to write; Windebank was forgotten.
As Mavis wrote the day of the month at the head of the page, she seemed to hear echoes of Harold's resonant voice vibrating with love for her. She sighed and put down her pen. If only she were less infirm of purpose. Her hesitations were interrupted by Mrs Budd bringing in a letter for Mavis that the postman had just left. It was from Mrs Trivett. It described with a wealth of detail a visit that the writer had paid to Pennington Churchyard, where she had taken flowers to lay on the little grave. Certain nerves in the bereaved mother's face quivered as she read. Memories of the long-drawn agony which had followed upon her boy's death crowded into her mind. Mavis hardened her heart.
Upon a day on which the trees and hedges were again frocked in spring finery in honour of approaching summer, Mrs Devitt was sitting with her sister in the drawing-room of Melkbridge House. Mrs Devitt was trying to fix her mind on an article in one of the monthly reviews dealing with the voluntary limitation of families on the part of married folk. Mrs Devitt could not give her usual stolid attention to her reading, because, now and again, her thoughts wandered to an interview between her husband and Lowther which was taking place in the library downstairs. This private talk between father and son was on the subject of certain snares which beset the feet of moneyed youth when in London, and in which the unhappy Lowther had been caught. Mrs Devitt was sufficiently vexed at the prospect of her husband having to fork out some hundreds of pounds, without the further promise of revelations in which light-hearted, lighter living young women were concerned. Debts were forgivable, perhaps excusable, in a young gentleman of Lowther's standing, but immorality, in Mrs Devitt's eyes, was a horse of quite another colour; anything of this nature acted upon Mrs Devitt's susceptibilities much in the same way as seeing red afreets an angry bull.
Miss Spraggs, whom the last eighteen months had aged in appearance, looked up from the rough draft of a letter she was composing.
"Did you hear anything?" she asked, as she listened intently.
"Hear what?"
"The door open downstairs. Lowther's been in such a time with Montague."
"I suppose Lowther is confessing everything," sighed Mrs Devitt.
"Nothing of the sort," remarked Miss Spraggs.
"What do you mean?"
"No one ever does confess everything: something is always kept back."
"Don't you think, Eva, you look at things from a very material point of view?"
Eva shrugged her narrow shoulders. Mrs Devitt continued:
"Now and again, you seem to ignore the good which is implanted in us all."
"Perhaps because it's buried so deep down that it's difficult to see."
Half an hour afterwards, it occurred to Mrs Devitt that she might have retorted, "What one saw depended on the power of one's perceptions," but just now, all she could think of to say was:
"Quite so; but there's so much good in the world, I wonder you don't see more of it."
"What are you reading?" asked Miss Spraggs, as she revised the draft of her letter.
The scribbling virgin often made a point of talking while writing, in order to show how little mental concentration was required for her literary efforts.
"An article on voluntary limitations of family. It's by the Bishop of Westmoreland. He censures such practices: I agree with him."
Mrs Devitt spoke from her heart. The daughter of a commercial house, which owed its prosperity to an abundant supply of cheap labour, she realised (although she never acknowledged it to herself) that the practices the worthy bishop condemned, if widely exercised, must, in course of time, reduce the number of hands eager to work for a pittance, and, therefore, the fat profits of their employers.
"So do I," declared Miss Spraggs, who only wished she had the ghost of a chance of contributing (legitimately) to the sum of the population.
"There's an admirable article about Carlyle in the same number of the National Review," said Miss Spraggs presently.
"I never read anything about Carlyle," declared Mrs Devitt.
Miss Spraggs raised her straight eyebrows.
"He didn't get on with his wife," said Mrs Devitt, in a manner suggesting that this fact effectually disposed in advance of any arguments Miss Spraggs might offer.
Soon after, Montague Devitt came into the room, to be received with inquiring glances by the two women. He walked to the fireplace, where he stood in moody silence.
"Well?" said his wife presently.
"Well!" replied Devitt.
"What has Lowther confessed?"
"The usual."
"Money?"
"And other things."
"Ah! What were the other things?"
"We'll talk it over presently," replied Montague, as he glanced at Miss Spraggs.
"Am I so very young and innocent that I shouldn't learn what has happened?" asked Miss Spraggs, who, in her heart of hearts, enjoyed revelations of masculine profligacy.
"I'd rather speak later," urged Montague gloomily, to add, "It never rains but it pours."
"Why do you say that?" asked his wife quickly.
"I'd a letter from Charlie Perigal this mornin'."
"Where from?"
"The same Earl's Court private hotel. He wants somethin' to do."
"Something to do!" cried the two sisters together.
"His father hasn't done for him what he led me to believe he would," explained Devitt gloomily.
"You can find him something?" suggested Miss Spraggs.
"And, till you do, I'd better ask them to stay down here," said his wife.
"That part of it's all right," remarked Devitt. "But somehow I don't think Charlie—-"
"What?" interrupted Mrs Devitt.
"Is much of a hand at work," replied her husband.
No one said anything for a few minutes.
Mrs Devitt spoke next.
"I'm scarcely surprised at Major Perigal's refusal to do anything for Charles," she remarked.
"Why?" asked her husband.
"Can you ask?"
"You mean all that business with poor Mavis Keeves?"
"I mean all that business, as you call it, with that abandoned creature whom we were so misguided as to assist."
Devitt said nothing; he was well used to his wife's emphatic views on the subject—views which were endorsed by her sister.
"The whole thing was too distressing for words," she continued. "I'd have broken off the marriage, even at the last moment, for Charles's share in it, but for the terrible scandal which would have been caused."
"Well, well; it's all over and done with now," sighed Devitt.
"I'm not so sure; one never knows what an abandoned girl, as Miss Keeves has proved herself to be, is capable of!"
"True!" remarked Miss Spraggs.
"Come! come!" said Devitt. "The poor girl was at the point of death for weeks after her baby died."
"What of that?" asked his wife.
"Girls who suffer like that aren't so very bad."
"You take her part, as you've always done. She's hopelessly bad, and I'm as convinced as I'm sitting here that it was she who led poor Charlie astray."
"It's all very unfortunate," said Devitt moodily.
"And we all but had her in the house," urged Mrs Devitt, much irritated at her husband's tacit support of the girl.
"Anyway, she's far away from us now," said Devitt.
"Where has she gone?" asked Miss Spraggs.
"Somewhere in Dorsetshire," Devitt informed her.
"If she hadn't gone, I should have made it my duty to urge her to leave Melkbridge," remarked Mrs Devitt.
"She's not so bad as all that," declared Devitt.
"I can't understand why men stand up for loose women," said his wife.
"She's not a loose woman: far from it. If she were, Windebank would not be so interested in her."
Devitt could not have said anything more calculated to anger the two women.
Miss Spraggs threw down her pen, whilst Mrs Devitt became white.
"She must be bad to have fascinated Sir Archibald as she has done," she declared.
"Windebank is no fool," urged her husband.
"I suppose the next thing we shall hear is that she's living under his protection," cried Mrs Devitt.
"In St John's Wood," added Miss Spraggs, whose information on such matters was thirty years behind the times.
"More likely he'll marry her," remarked Devitt.
"What!" cried the two women.
"I believe he'd give his eyes to get her," the man continued.
"He's only to ask," snapped Miss Spraggs.
"Anyway, we shall see," said Devitt.
"Should that happen, I trust you will never wish me to invite her to the house," said Mrs Devitt, rising to her full height.
"It's all very sad," remarked Devitt gloomily.
"It is: that you should take her part in the way you do, Montague," retorted his wife.
"I'm sorry if you're upset," her husband replied. "But I knew Miss Keeves as a little girl, when she was always laughin' and happy. It's all very, very sad."
Mrs Devitt moved to a window, where she stood staring out at the foliage which, just now, was looking self-conscious in its new finery.
"Who heard from Harold last?" asked Devitt presently.
"I did," replied Miss Spraggs. "It was on Tuesday he wrote."
"How did he write?"
"Quite light-heartedly. He has now for some weeks: such a change for him."
"H'm!"
"Why do you ask?" said Mrs Devitt.
"I saw Pritchett when I was in town yesterday."
"Harold's doctor?" queried Miss Spraggs.
"He told me he'd seen Harold last week."
"At Swanage?"
"Harold had wired for him. I wondered if anythin' was up."
"What should be 'up,' as you call it, beyond his being either better or worse?"
"That's what I want to know."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, that it was more from Pritchett's manner than from anything else that I gathered somethin' had happened."
"So long as he's well, there's nothing to worry about," said Mrs Devitt reassuringly.
The late afternoon post brought a letter for Montague from his son Harold. This told his father that a supreme happiness had come in his life; that, by great good fortune, he had met and quietly married Mavis Keeves; that, by her wish, the marriage had been kept a secret for three weeks; it ended by saying how he hoped to bring his wife to his father's house early in the following week. Montague Devitt stared stupidly at the paper on which this information was conveyed; then he leaned against the mantelpiece for support. He looked as if he had been struck brutally and unexpectedly between the eyes. "Montague! Montague!" cried his wife, as she noticed his distress.
The letter fell from his hands.
"Read!" he said faintly.
"Harold's writing!" exclaimed Mrs Devitt, as she caught up the letter.
Devitt watched her as she read; he saw her face grow hard; then her jaw dropped; her eyes stared fixedly before her. When Miss Spraggs read the letter, as she very soon did, she went into hysterics; she had a great affection for Harold. The hand of fate had struck the Devitts remorselessly; they were stunned by the blow for quite a long while. For her part, Mrs Devitt could not believe that Providence would allow her to suffer such a terrible affliction as was provided by the fact of her stepson's marriage to Mavis; again and again she looked at the letter, as if she found it impossible to believe the evidence of her eyes.
"What's—what's to be done?" gasped Mrs Devitt, when she was presently able to speak.
"Don't ask me!" replied her husband.
"Can't you do anything?" asked Miss Spraggs, during a pause in her hysterical weeping.
"Do what?"
"Something: anything. You're a man."
"I haven't grasped it yet. I must think it out," he said, as he began to walk up and down the room so far as the crowded furniture would permit.
"We must try and think it's God's will," said his wife, making an effort to get her thoughts under control.
"What!" cried Devitt, stopping short in his walk to look at his wife with absent eyes.
"God has singled us out for this bitter punishment," snuffled Mrs Devitt, as her eyes glanced at the heavily gilded chandelier.
With a gesture of impatience, Devitt resumed his walk, while Miss Spraggs quickly went to windows and door, which she threw open to their utmost capacity for admitting air.
"One thing must be done," declared Devitt.
"Yes?" asked his wife eagerly.
"That Hunter girl who split on Mavis Keeves havin' been at Polperro with Perigal."
"She knows everything; we shall be disgraced," wailed Mrs Devitt.
"Not at all. I'll see to that," replied her husband grimly.
"What will you do?"
"Give her a good job in some place as far from here as possible, and tell her that, if her tongue wags on a certain subject, she'll get the sack."
"What!" asked his wife, surprised at her husband's decision and the way in which he expressed himself.
"Suggest somethin' better."
"I was wondering if it were right."
"Right be blowed! We're fightin' for our own hand."
With this view of the matter, Mrs Devitt was fain to be content.
It was a dismal and forlorn family party which sat down to dinner that evening under the eye of the fat butler. Husband, wife, and Miss Spraggs looked grey and old in the light of the table lamps. By this time Lowther had been told of the trouble which had descended so suddenly upon the family. His comment on hearing of it was characteristic.
"Good God! But she hasn't a penny!" he said. He realised that the prospects of his father assisting him out of his many scrapes had declined since news had arrived of Harold's unlooked-for marriage. When the scarcely tasted meal was over, Montague sent Lowther upstairs "to give the ladies company," while he smoked an admirable cigar and drank the best part of a bottle of old port wine. The tobacco and the wine brought a philosophical calm to his unquiet mind; he was enabled to look on the marriage from its least unfavourable aspects. He had always liked Mavis and would have done much more for her than he had already accomplished, if his womenfolk had permitted him to follow the leanings of his heart; he knew her well enough to know that she was not the girl to bestow herself lightly upon Charlie Perigal. He had not liked Perigal's share in the matter at all, and the whole business was still much of a mystery. Although grieved beyond measure that the girl had married his dearly loved boy, he realised that with Harold's ignorance of women he might have done infinitely worse.
"What are you going to do?" asked Mrs Devitt of her husband in the seclusion of their bedroom.
"Try and make the best of it. After all, she's a lady."
"What! You're not going to try and have the marriage annulled?"
It was her husband's turn to express astonishment.
"Surely you'll do something?" she urged.
"What can I do?"
"As you know, it can't be a marriage in—in the worldly sense; when it's like that something can surely be done," said Mrs Devitt, annoyed at having to make distant allusions to a subject hateful to her heart.
"What about Harold's feelin's?"
"But—"
"He probably loves her dearly. What of his feelin's if he knew—all that we know?"
"I did not think of that. Oh dear! oh dear! it gets more and more complicated. What can be done?"
"Wait."
"What for?"
"Till we see them. Then we can learn the why and the wherefore of it all and judge accordin'ly."
With this advice Mrs Devitt had to be content, but for all the comfort it may have contained it was a long time before husband or wife fell asleep that night.
But even the short period of twenty-four hours is enough to accustom people to trouble sufficiently to make it tolerable. When this time had passed, Mrs Devitt's mind was well used to the news which yesterday afternoon's post had brought. Her mind harked back to Christian martyrs; she wondered if the fortitude with which they met their sufferings was at all comparable to the resolution she displayed in the face of affliction. The morning's post had brought a letter from Victoria, to whom her brother had written to much the same effect as he had communicated with his father. In this she expressed herself as admirably as was her wont; she also treated the matter with a sympathetic tact which, under the circumstances, did her credit. She trusted that anything that had happened would not influence the love and duty she owed her husband. Harold's marriage to Miss Keeves was in the nature of a great surprise, but if it brought her brother happiness she would be the last to regret it; she hoped that, despite past events, she would be able to welcome her brother's wife as a sister; she would not fail to come in time to greet her sister-in-law, but she would leave her husband in town, as he had important business to transact.
Some half hour before the time by which Harold and his wife could arrive at Melkbridge House, the Devitt family were assembled in the library; in this room, because it was on the ground floor, and, therefore, more convenient for Harold's use, he having to be carried up and down stairs if going to other floors of the house.
Devitt was frankly ill at ease. His wife did her best to bear herself in the manner of the noblest traditions (as she conceived them) of British matronhood. Miss Spraggs talked in whispers to her sister of "that scheming adventuress," as she called Mavis. Victoria chastened agitated expectation with resignation; while Lowther sat with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. At last a ring was heard at the front door bell, at which Devitt and Lowther went out to welcome bride and bridegroom. Those left in the room waited while Harold was lifted out of the motor and put into the hand-propelled carriage which he used in the house. The Devitt women nerved themselves to meet with becoming resolution the adventuress's triumph.
Through the open door they could hear that Mavis had been received in all but silence; only Harold's voice sounded cheerily. The men made way for Mavis to enter the library. It was by no means the triumphant, richly garbed Mavis whom the women had expected who came into the room. It was a subdued, carelessly frocked Mavis, who, after accepting their chastened greetings, kept her eyes on her husband. When the door was closed, Harold was the first to speak.
"Mother, if I may call you that! father! all of you! I want you to hear what I have to say," he began, in his deep, soothing voice. "You know what my accident has made me; you know how I can never be other than I am. For all that, this winsome, wonderful girl, out of the pity and goodness of her loving heart, has been moved to throw in her lot with mine—even now I can hardly realise my immense good fortune" (here Mavis dropped her eyes), "but there it is, and if I did what was right, I should thank God for her every moment of my life. Now you know what she is to me; how with her youth and glorious looks she has blessed my life, I hope that you, all of you, will take her to your hearts."
A silence that could almost be heard succeeded his words; but Harold did not notice this; he had eyes only for his wife.
Tea was brought in, when, to relieve the tension, Victoria went over to Mavis and sat by her side; but to her remarks Harold's wife replied in monosyllables; she had only eyes for her husband. The Devitts could make nothing of her; her behaviour was so utterly alien to the scarcely suppressed triumph which they had expected. But just now they did not give very much attention to her; they were chiefly concerned for Harold, whose manner betrayed an extra-ordinary elation quite foreign to the depression which had troubled him before his departure for Swanage. Now a joyous gladness possessed him; from the frequent tender glances he cast in his wife's direction, there was little doubt of its cause. Harold's love for his wife commenced by much impressing his family, but ended by frightening them; they feared the effect on his mind when he discovered, as he undoubtedly must, when his wife had thrown off the mask, that he had wedded a heartless adventuress, who had married him for his money. At the same time, the Devitts were forced to admit that Mavis's conduct was unlike that of the scheming woman of their fancies; they wondered at the reason of her humility, but did not learn the cause till the family, other than Harold, were assembled upstairs in the drawing-room waiting for dinner to be announced. When Mavis had come into the room, the others had been struck by the contrast between the blackness of her frock and the milky whiteness of her skin; they were little prepared for what was to follow.
"Now we are alone, I have something to say to you," she began. The frigid silence which met her words made her task the harder; the atmosphere of the room was eloquent of antagonism. With an effort she continued: "I don't know what you all think of me—I haven't tried to think—but I'm worse—oh! ever so much worse than you believe."
The others wondered what revelations were toward. Devitt's mind went back to the night when Mavis had last stood in the drawing-room. Mavis went on:
"When I was away my heart was filled with hate: I hated you all and longed to be revenged."
Mavis's audience were uncomfortable; it was an axiom of their existence to shy at any expression of emotion.
The Devitts longed for the appearance of the fat butler, who would announce that dinner was served. But to-night his coming was delayed till Mavis had spoken.
"Chance threw Harold in my way," she went on. "He loved me at once, and I took advantage of his love, thinking to be revenged on you for all I believed—yes, I must tell you everything—for all I believed you had done against me."
Here Mrs Devitt lifted up her hands, as if filled with righteous anger at this statement.
Mavis took no notice, but continued:
"That is why I married him. That was then. Now I am punished, as the wicked always are, punished over and over again. Why did I do it? Why? Why?"
Here a look of terror came into her eyes; these looked helplessly about the room, as if nothing could save her from the torment that pursued her.
"He is ill; very ill. His doctor told me. How long do you think he will live?"
"Pritchett?" asked Devitt.
"Yes, when he came down to Swanage. What he told me only makes it worse."
"Makes what worse?" asked Devitt, who was eager to end this painful scene.
"My punishment. He thinks me good—everything I ought to be. I love him! I love him! I love him! He's all goodness and love. He believes in me as he believes in God. I love him! How long do you think he'll live? I love him! I love him! I love him!"