Miss Rosaleen Tara(The Colleen Bawn),18, Abbey Street,Westminster, S. W.
Miss Rosaleen Tara(The Colleen Bawn),18, Abbey Street,Westminster, S. W.
There followed for David Banfield three days of agonising struggle and temptation. All the feelings and instincts he had battened down, put determinedly from him for so long, sprang into life. Now that he knew where to find her, he became possessed by a deep, unreasoning longing to see Rosaleen once more—even if a meeting could only result in pain for him, in shame for her.
On the second day of his stay in London, he offered conscience a salve in the form of a fine ruby ring, which was despatched to Miss Wellow in lieu of the letter which he knew only too well she must be anxiously awaiting.
Had Banfield been a stronger man he would have left London. But that, or so he told himself, there was no need to do; and as the hours dragged on, bringing him closer to the moment which must see his return to Market Dalling—to Matilda Wellow—the fact that he and Rosaleen were in a material sense so near to one another began to affect his imagination in strangest and most poignant fashion.
Walking aimlessly along the hot airless streets of London in July, he found himself ever furtively seeking her.... Such chance meetings are not impossible; they happen every day. Why should such a thing not come to him as well as to another?
And so in the summer twilight, not once but many times, some woman's form—slender, graceful, light-footed as was Rosaleen's—would create for a moment the illusion that she was there, close to him, would bring the wild hope that in a moment his hungry heart would be satisfied, his conscience cheated. And then the woman in whom he had seen for a moment his poor lost love, would turn her head—and Banfield, cast down but undismayed, would again pursue his eager, aimless search.
On the last evening of his stay in London, this obsession became so intense that Banfield saw Rosaleen in every woman's shape that passed him by. He grew afraid; and after an hour spent in the peopled streets, he told himself that that way madness lay.
With eyes fixed on the dusty pavements, he made his way back to his hotel, and sitting down he wrote a letter—a kind, cheerful letter—to Matilda Wellow, telling her that he would be with her the next afternoon at five o'clock. And then, for the first time since he had known that Rosaleen was in London, his sleep was restful and unbroken. But in the early morning he dreamed a curious dream; Rosaleen, the beloved, the longed-for woman, was again with him,—elusive, mysterious, teasing as she had ever been,—and Banfield, waking in the early dawn, felt tears of joy standing on his face.
When he got up in the morning, and faced the day which was to see him go back to Market Dalling, he felt as must feel a man who sees stretching before him a lifelong period of servitude; but with that feeling came the gloomy belief that he had conquered the temptation that had so beset him, and this being so, he argued that he had at least a right to see the place where Rosaleen now lived.
Having come to this specious understanding with himself, Banfield felt his heart lighten. He told himself that he would wait till he was within some two hours of the time when he knew he must leave London, and, having so decided, he checked his impatience by various devices, packing his portmanteau, paying his bill, doing first one thing and then another, till the moment came for him to start walking along the Embankment to Westminster.
When at last he reached the broad, wind-swept space out of which he had been told turned Abbey Street, quietest and most sequestered of urban backwaters, he lingered for awhile, suddenly filled with an obscure fear of that for which he had so longed—a chance meeting with his wife.
After a few moments of indecision, he started walking slowly down the middle of the street, his footfalls echoing on the cobblestones.
Banfield looked about him curiously. To the right stretched the rough grey wall of London's oldest garden, framing a green oasis opposite the row of small eighteenth-century houses which stood on the other side of the street. They were quaint, shabby little dwellings, and against more than one fanlight was displayed a card bearing the word "Lodgings."
When Banfield came opposite No. 18, he stopped and looked up at the windows with beating heart and the colour rushed into his face, flooding it under the sunburn; following a sudden, an irresistible impulse, he stepped up on to the pavement, and with a nervous movement pulled the bell.
Then followed what seemed to him a long wait on the doorstep, but at last a thin, fretful woman came to the door and enquired his business.
"Does Miss Rosaleen Tara live here? Can I see her?"
"Yes, she lives 'ere right enough,"—the woman spoke with weary indifference,—"come this way."
Banfield paused; he had never thought the access to Rosaleen would be so simple, and he was bewildered by the ease with which this, to him so momentous a step, had been compassed.
He followed the woman up the narrow, wainscoted staircase to a tiny landing. "Stop," he said almost inaudibly, "I must tell you what to say—you must not show me straight in to her, like this."
But even as he spoke, there was another tinkle of the bell, and the woman began running heavily down the little staircase, leaving him standing in front of the door.
He knocked, but there came no answer, and at last he turned the handle, and walked into the room. It was empty of human presence, and yet his wife had stamped something of herself on the shabbily furnished sitting-room. Certain dainty trifles which he had known as hers were there, and before him, on the piano, was a music-case which he himself had given her.
The sight of this, his own gift, affected Banfield oddly, giving him a feeling that he had a right to be there. After a moment's hesitation, he walked over to the window, and looked out into the old Abbey garden. There he would wait patiently—for hours if need be—till Rosaleen came in.
Then, quite suddenly, there fell on his ear the voice which he had so often heard in dreams, and which he had of late so passionately longed to hear. He turned sharply round, and noticed for the first time that the door of the inner room was ajar. It was from thence that the light, indifferent tones floated impalpably towards him.
"Ah! but it's kind of you, doctor, to come so soon after Miss Lonsdale asked you to see me! I've only just come in, but I won't be a moment—I didn't expect you yet. Miss Lonsdale will be in long before you leave, I hope; she's almost as anxious about my voice as I am—and the faith she has in you, why, it's something wonderful!"
To Banfield, the words recalled, not Rosaleen his wife, but Rosaleen the girl, the dear bewitching stranger he had first known and wooed, though never won. Unconsciously he visualised the speaker; he seemed to see the quick, bird-like movements with which she was taking off her hat and smoothing her hair before the glass. He even saw her smiling—smiling as she used to smile at him in the very early days of their acquaintance.
He knew that he ought to cry out—tell her that it was he, her husband, David Banfield, who was there, and not the stranger whom she had apparently been expecting; but though he opened his lips, no word would come.
At last the door swung open quickly, and for a moment Banfield saw her face, lit up by that touch of wholly innocent coquetry of which your pretty Irishwoman seems to have the secret.
Then, as suddenly she realised the identity of the tall man standing between her and the window, a peculiar—to Banfield a very terrible—change of expression stiffened Rosaleen's face into watchful fear and attention.
"What is it?" she asked. "Tell me quickly, David! Is Rosy ill, or—or dead?"
"Rosy?" he stammered. "She's all right. I heard this morning——"
"—And I yesterday," she breathed quickly. Then she sat down, and Banfield let his eyes rest on her with a painful, yearning scrutiny.
He had thought to find her altered, coarsened by the experience he believed her to have gone through, but she had the same look of delicate, rather frigid refinement, which had first attracted him. He noted the perfection of her delicate profile, the determined, well-shaped mouth,—then saw with a pang that there were a few threads of white in the dark curly hair which, with her bright blue eyes, had always been Rosaleen's principal beauties; and yet she looked scarcely older than on the day he had last seen her—that on which he had accompanied her with a heavy heart to the station at Market Dalling to see her off to London.
Now, looking at her, it stabbed him to remember how even then she had shown an almost childish joy in leaving him. She had put her arms round his neck and kissed him in sign of gratitude. "It's kind of you to let me go, Dave!" she had whispered. He had often thought of those last words, the last he had heard her speak. Now he again remembered them. Alas! alas! why had he let her go?
She sat, looking away from him, her eyes fixed on the empty grate.
"You frightened me," she said plaintively. "Why did you come here, David, and frighten me like this? Why have you come here at all after—after what you did to me?"
"What I did to you?" he stammered confusedly, and there came over him the shamed fear that she had already heard of his coming marriage with Matilda Wellow.
"Yes, what you did to me—the documents you sent me—divorce papers they're called——" He felt, rather than saw, that his wife's eyes were filling, brimming over with indignant tears. "We don't have those things at home—in Ireland, I mean. And then reading out my letter—the mad letter I sent you—before a lot of men!"
Rosaleen had always possessed the wifely art of being able to make David Banfield feel himself in the wrong, and now, on hearing her last words, the man before her told himself with a pang that he had indeed acted in an unkind, even an unmanly, fashion to the fragile-looking woman who sat with her face averted from him.
"I thought—of course I thought"—he plucked up courage as he spoke—"that you wanted to be free. You said you hoped I should forget you."
"—And so I did," she said quickly, "I did wish to be free—not so much from you, as from the miserable, the stiflingly dull life you made me lead at Market Dalling. That's why I wrote that foolish—that wicked letter. I thought it would make you leave me alone. But, David," she made a restless movement, "I didn't understand. However, I've been well punished."
There was a short, strained silence. Then Rosaleen got up.
"I'm afraid I can't ask you to stay on much longer," she began nervously, "for I'm expecting a doctor who was very kind to me once when I was ill before. He's a friend of Carrie Lonsdale—you remember her, David? The truth is, my voice has given out, and I've been trying to give lessons, but Carrie thinks he will be able to make it come back again soon."
"And what will you do," asked Banfield in a very low voice, "if he fails?"
She turned and looked up at him, her eyes meeting his in direct challenge.
"Whatever I do," she said proudly, "you need not fear that I shall come to you for any help."
And then David Banfield felt shaken, overwhelmed by a fierce spasm of violent, primitive jealousy. The name of the other man had never been forthcoming; Rosaleen's letter had sufficed to win the undefended suit.
"I suppose," he said brutally, "that you can always depend on getting help from your lover?"
Rosaleen's eyes dropped, her face flushed darkly as she saw the change which came over her husband's face and as there came into his voice accents she had never heard there.
She sprang up. "How dare you insult me? You have no right to say such a thing to me! I am free to do exactly what I like and to go to whom I choose—you yourself made me free!"
But a very different man from the man she had believed David Banfield to be now stood before her.
Of the words she had said, the last alone remained with him. Free? Nay, nay, Rosaleen was in no sense free; his whole nature rose up and protested against such a statement. There could be no question of choice, for she belonged to him, only to him, solely to him, and that even if she had in a moment of aberration, of madness—his mind refused to follow the thought to its logical conclusion—not even in the most secret recess of his imagination had Banfield ever consented to dwell on what he believed had been. Not till the last few moments had he seen the torturing vision which almost always haunts the man who has been betrayed by a beloved woman.
He came yet closer, and put his hand on her shoulder.
"Rosaleen," he said hoarsely, "you don't understand. You want to know why I came here to-day? Well, I came to say that I am thinking of leaving Market Dalling. I came to ask you if you are willing to come back to me—to make a fresh start. You said just now that it was Market Dalling and our life there that you hated—not me. I've had a very good offer to go to South Africa, to Durban, and settle there. There's even a house waiting for us, and a convent school for Rosy. But whether I go or not depends on you, Rosaleen. If you are willing to come with us, we'll all go together—if not, I mean to stay at Market Dalling."
Rosaleen remained quite still. She made no effort to move away from his touch.
"Did you really come to ask me to do that, David, and that although you think so ill of me?" There was a wondering doubt, a softer, kindlier note, than Banfield had ever heard in his wife's voice.
He set his teeth and lied.
"Yes," he said, "that is why I came. Mary Scanlan gave me your address."
"Poor old Mary!" she exclaimed. "I suppose everyone at Market Dalling thinks I'm a bad woman? Your sister, of course, always hoped that I was a bad woman?"
She looked at him as if half expecting him to make some kind of denial. But he remained silent. What answer, what denial could he make? Of course, everyone at Market Dalling thought Rosaleen a bad woman. For the matter of that, none of them had ever thought well of her, not even his own people, not even his sister and her husband had made any attempt to understand her.
Rosaleen's imprudent question made yet another matter, one which Banfield had succeeded for a few moments in completely forgetting, become once more very present to him. With a feeling of terrible self-reproach there rose before him the helpless figure of Matilda Wellow.
"It's not only you," he said slowly, "but I myself who need to make a fresh start. I haven't so much right to blame you as you, Rosaleen, perhaps think—for I myself did a very wrong, a wicked thing——"
She slipped away from under his hand and got up, facing him.
"It's absurd for you to say that," she exclaimed petulantly, "why, you couldn't do anything wicked, David, if you tried! For the matter of that, I never could see—I never have seen—why people are—why people make——" she seemed to be seeking for a word, a phrase; and it was in a whisper that she added the words, "beasts of themselves."
Banfield stared at her, not understanding; for the moment he was too absorbed in his own feelings, in his own remorse, to take much heed of what she was saying.
"Well?" he asked, "well, Rosaleen, shall we both forgive each other—and make a fresh beginning?"
"Yes," she whispered, hanging her head as might have done a naughty child. With a gesture of surrender, she held out her hands. "I'm ashamed of what I did, David—and I'll try to be a better wife to you than I've been up to now."
Poor Banfield! As he took her in his arms his heart beat with suffocating joy; almost any other man would have felt her words, her implied prayer for forgiveness, curiously inadequate.
She looked at him with a peculiar, earnest look, as if trying to make up her mind to a certain course, and then, with a quick movement, she shook herself free and disappeared into the back room.
He heard the sound of a drawer opening, the fumbling of a key. A moment later she came back and thrust a small packet into his hand.
"There," she said, "open that, read what's inside, and then we'll burn it. Thank God, Rosy will never know now the shame you put on her mother. I've often thought how you would feel reading it, if I—died—before—you did!" and each word was punctuated by an angry sob.
The little packet which Rosaleen had placed in Banfield's hand was tied with blue ribbon, and on it was written: "In case of my death, to be forwarded to Mr. Banfield, The Brew House, Market Dalling."
It was Rosaleen's fingers which untied the knotted ribbon and which showed him, laid amid her little store of jewellery,—he had noticed that she still wore her wedding ring,—a sheet of notepaper on which was an attestation, sworn before a Commissioner of Oaths, that the letter which she had written to him, the confession which had sufficed to procure him his divorce, had been—false.
"But why?" he stammered. "Rosaleen—why?"
"Because I hated the life you made me lead at Market Dalling! I hate Market Dalling and the hateful people who live there! You wouldn't even let me play or sing on Sunday. And then, your sister Kate! She never gave me a kind word or look! D'you think that was pleasant?" she asked fiercely,—then more gently she added, "But I'm ashamed, I've always been ashamed of that letter, and I'd no idea, Dave, that it would make you do what it did."
The door behind them opened. Rosaleen turned around; she brushed the angry tears from her cheeks; there came over her tremulous mouth a charming, rather shy smile.
"Doctor," she said quietly, "you've just come in time to see my husband. David, this is Dr. Bendall, who was so kind to me when I was ill."
Banfield held out his hand....
It was the late afternoon of the same day, and Mrs. Rigby was sitting as she had sat on her silver wedding day, close to the window of her sitting-room, her busy hands engaged now, as then, in mending house-linen. Now, as then also, she was expecting her brother and Matilda Wellow to dinner, for before Banfield left for London it had been arranged that he and his betrothed should spend that evening with the Rigbys.
Mrs. Rigby allowed the work she was holding to fall on her lap. She looked into her garden with a preoccupied air. The month which had elapsed since her silver wedding day had brought with it great changes in her life, and what she saw before her seemed, in a sense, symbolic of those changes, for in spite of her careful watering and constant attention, the flower-beds, and above all the beautiful herbaceous borders of which she was so proud, were beginning to look parched and withered.
To-night more than ever Mrs. Rigby realised that the marriage of David and Matilda would alter her own life, and that not for the better. Why, in old days David would of course have come in to see his sister on his way from the station, and that even in the now forgotten time when Rosaleen was mistress of the Brew House. To-day her brother had evidently gone straight to Matilda Wellow....
But Mrs. Rigby reminded herself that, taken as a whole, her garden was incomparably fresher and greener than were those of her neighbours on either side; and as to David and Tiddy, she now told herself, almost speaking the words aloud in her anxiety to make them true, that she was pleased—very pleased—with the way everything was going on.
Thus she was glad that the rather absurd secrecy, so insisted on by her brother, would come to an end to-morrow. Of course a few old friends had been told in confidence of the engagement—but considering that this was so, the secret had been very well kept. It was not as if David were a real widower; Mrs. Rigby could not help hoping that he would be spared some of the silly remarks, the foolish congratulations, which fall to the ordinary engaged man. It must be bad enough for him, so the sister told herself, to put up with Tiddy's sentimental raptures. Still, it was a comfort to know that Matilda Wellow was well aware that she was in luck's way! How Tiddy studied David in everything—any other man would have been spoilt!
For the first time, a smile, not a very kind smile, came over Mrs. Rigby's shrewd, rather hard face.
During the last month, Matilda had actually given up eating potatoes and butter, because some fool had told her that in that way she might hope to regain the youthful slenderness of her figure! As for David, his betrothed's little attentions evidently touched him, and no one could say that he was not an attentive lover. Think of the ring he had sent Tiddy, the ruby ring which had arrived yesterday morning, and which must have cost—so Matt, who was learned in such things, declared—not a penny less than £50!
The exact date of the wedding would probably be fixed to-night, for it had been arranged that the marriage was to follow very soon after the announcement of the engagement. There was no reason for delay. Mrs. Rigby had herself chosen the 3rd of August as the best date, and she had little doubt that she would be able to persuade Dave and Tiddy that no other day would suit them so well.
Suddenly her quick ears caught the sound of footsteps treading down the path to the left, a path hidden from the place where she was now sitting, and a slight frown came over her face. Mrs. Rigby liked her husband to come straight in to her from the office; but lately, he had taken to the tiresome habit of going out by the back way, into the garden, and then suddenly popping round on her.
She looked out expectantly, but the sound of footsteps died away. It must have been one of the maids going down to the extreme end of the garden in search of some kitchen stuff.
Mrs. Rigby again took up her work and began sewing diligently. Yes, the marriage should take place quite quietly on the 3rd of August. Everything was ready—in fact, there was nothing left to wait for. Even Tiddy's wedding gown and headgear had come home.
David had showed himself oddly interested in this wholly feminine question of his bride's attire.
He had actually been to the trouble of choosing the material of which Tiddy's wedding gown was to be made; a white and grey stripe, a thin, gauzy stuff not nearly substantial enough—or so Mrs. Rigby had thought—for the purpose to which it was destined. And then he had persuaded Matilda to go to a new dressmaker, a Frenchwoman who had been lady's maid to one of his grand county acquaintances, and who had just set up for herself in Market Dalling. More wonderful still, David had made a rough drawing from some old picture that had taken his fancy of the hat he desired Matilda to wear on her wedding day! It was a white hat trimmed with long grey feathers, quite unlike Tiddy's usual style....
Suddenly looking up, Mrs. Rigby felt a thrill of something like superstitious fear, for there, making her way round the corner from the summer-house, came, walking very slowly, a woman at once like and unlike Matilda Wellow, clad in a silvery-looking gown and wearing a white hat trimmed with long grey feathers.
As the figure advanced down the path, it took unmistakable shape and substance; here, without a doubt, was Matilda wearing what were to be her wedding garments, and, as Mrs. Rigby suddenly became aware, a Matilda quite unlike her usual homely self!
Who would have thought that simply leaving off potatoes and butter for a month would have made such a change! Or was that change due to the art of the French dressmaker? The silvery-flounced skirt fell in graceful, billowy folds to the ground, for Miss Wellow was not even holding up her gown, as a more sensible woman would have done. The muslin kerchief edged with real lace, outlined the wearer's still pretty shoulders, and the hat—well, the hat was certainly becoming, especially now that Tiddy's cheeks were flushed—as well they might be, considering what a fool the woman was making of herself!
Mrs. Rigby felt rather cross at having been so startled; she got up, and walked out to meet her guest, determined not to be drawn into any praise of the becoming hat and gown.
"I hope David won't keep us waiting long," she said tartly. "I suppose he thought that he must put on his dress suit," and her expression showed clearly that in the matter of overdressing there was not much to choose between her brother and the woman who was to become his wife.
"David will not be here to-night, Kate. He came, but he has gone away again—back to London."
Miss Wellow spoke in a low, collected voice, and certain little irritating mannerisms with which she usually punctuated her words were absent. Perhaps it was the quiet, expressionless way in which she made her surprising statement that caused Mrs. Rigby, as she afterwards averred to her husband, at once to feel that something was wrong.
"Gone back to London?" the sister repeated. "Why, whatever has he done that for? What business took him back to London, to-day?" and she looked searchingly at the other's flushed face.
"Kate," said Miss Wellow, again speaking in the soft, emotionless voice which was so unlike her own, "I have got to tell you something which I fear will upset you—and make you very angry with poor David. Kate—he has gone back to Rosaleen."
Mrs. Rigby withdrew her eyes quickly from Matilda Wellow's face. She did not then realise that the words which had just been spoken would for ever spoil to her this fragrant, familiar corner of her garden. All she felt now was a fierce, instinctive wish to get under shelter,—to hear whatever shameful thing had to be heard within four walls,—and so she put out her right hand and pushed her visitor before her into the sitting-room.
Then, keeping her back to the window, she forced Miss Wellow to turn round.
"Now tell me the truth," she commanded, "and Tiddy—above all, don't let yourself be upset, and don't get hysterical! I know what it is—you and David have had some silly quarrel. I saw from the first that you were making yourself too cheap! He can't go back to Rosaleen; he divorced her—and she's with another man. Besides, David is my brother! He wouldn't dare do such a wicked thing! You have no right, Tiddy, to accuse him of such shameful behaviour!" She spoke with quick, savage decision.
But Miss Wellow faced her with a strange, untoward courage—"I won't have you speak so of him—of David, I mean!" she exclaimed passionately, "you're his sister and ought to take his part!"
Then her voice broke, and with a touch of her old feebleness she added, "If you had heard him telling me about it, even you, Kate, who are so hard, would maybe have understood and felt sorry for him.Ifelt very sorry for him——"
"You!"—said Mrs. Rigby, with what appeared to the other withering contempt, "you!——"
"He put it very beautifully," continued Miss Wellow; her voice was now almost inaudible, but Mrs. Rigby caught the word and repeated it with terrible irony:
"Beautifully!" she said,—"beautifully!"
Matilda shrank back as though she feared the other was about to strike her, but Mrs. Rigby did not see the gesture.
"And did he tell you when he proposes to bring——" she made a scarcely perceptible pause and then shot out the words—"his bride home. If it's to-morrow, I'll make Matt take me away to-night!"
"He's not going to bring her home," said Matilda, quietly. "He's never coming back himself; they are going right away—out of England."
"A good thing too!" said Mrs. Rigby.
"He says that will be more respectful to me; he has considered my feelings, Kate—he has indeed."
"Has he? Why——" she suddenly held up a warning finger, for there was a sound of footsteps in the passage; the sound stopped outside the door, and both women instinctively held their breath, united by a common fear of servants' gossip.
There was a long pause, and then the handle of the door was slowly turned, and Mr. Rigby came into the room, his ruddy colour gone, or rather lying in curious streaks across his face, a nervous smile hovering over his lips.
He shut the door behind him and looked, with a world of interrogation and anxiety in his eyes, at his wife.
"You needn't smile," she said sharply; "this is no smiling matter!"
His eyes fell; instinctively he turned to the other, the weaker vessel. But the reproof which Mrs. Rigby had just addressed to her husband penetrated Miss Wellow's brain.
"I'm afraid I do look rather silly!" she said nervously, "wearing this dress, I mean. But, you see, knowing that now I shall never wear it, I thought I would put it on to-night."
The odd collocation of her words passed unnoticed; indeed, Mr. Rigby, even had he wished to answer her, was not given time to do so, for his wife had turned on him and was avenging in his person the heaped-up wrongs of her sex.
"It's all your fault, Matt! You were always against David going to London from the first, and you ought to have prevented his doing so! But no—you stood aside and did nothing! I suppose you guessed he might meet that—that——" her lips snapped together she would not soil them by uttering the word which to her mind alone described Rosaleen.
As her husband did not answer, suspicion grew into certainty.
"Did you know that she was there? Did you think he would see her?" she demanded.
Mr. Rigby looked mildly at his Kate. "I didn't know anything, but I did just think it possible," he said.
But his triumph, if triumph it was, was short-lived.
"Why didn't you tell me then? A decent woman would never have thought of such a thing, but men have such disgusting minds!" cried his wife sharply. She added suspiciously, "But how did you learn what's happened? Did David write to you?"
"He came into the office on his way back to the station," said Mr. Rigby, briefly. "And, Kate—I've promised to see to things for him. Rosy will join them"—he gave a little cough—"the day after to-morrow, and they will all sail for South Africa as soon as matters can be settled up. It's better so, my dear."
Suddenly Miss Wellow bent down. Her hand fumbled blindly among the soft, voluminous flounces of her skirt.
"I've got something here," she said in a muffled voice, "that I want you to give Rosy, Matt. But though I know it's there, I can't find the pocket; you know I had one put in because David once said that he didn't like a woman without a pocket in her dress. I've found it—here it is!"—she took a step forward, and standing close to her old friend, thrust into his unresisting hand a small hard substance. He looked down and saw it was the ruby ring. "You can give this to the child," she said breathlessly, "I don't want to see her again—with love from Auntie Tiddy."
But this was more than Mrs. Rigby could stand.
"Well, it's a good thing," she exclaimed to her husband, "that Tiddy takes it like that! No man would ever have dared to treat me so! But as long as she doesn't care—still, she needn't take David's part against his own sister, who has the right——"
But what right David's sister had was never explained, for Miss Wellow suddenly swayed forward; she would have fallen to the ground had not Mr. Rigby caught her.
"Why, she's fainted!" he said pitifully; "she does care—more than you think, Kate. But she will come round soon—too soon," he muttered to himself.
It was the same night, or rather the next morning, for the dawn was beginning to make its grey way into the bed-chamber of Mr. and Mrs. Rigby; it threw into dim relief the large, almost square four-poster, under the chintz-covered canopy of which the husband and wife lay, rigid as if carved in stone.
"Kate," said Matt, "are you awake?"
He could just see her head lying on the other pillow beside him. Her still abundant hair was loosened and gave her a look of youth. Tears had made a furrow down her cheeks.
"Yes," said Mrs. Rigby, "I am awake, Matt. What is it you want?"
"I'm afraid, my dear, that you are very much upset." There were understanding, sympathy, ay, and tenderness expressed in the way Mr. Rigby uttered the homely word.
His wife, for the first time in their twenty-five years of married life, felt a responsive thrill. For the first time she was unfaithful to Nat Bower.
"It's of you I'm thinking," she whispered. "I've been trying all night to forget David,—my poor little David,—but it's terrible to me to think that you, Matt, married into a family that could be guilty of such shameful behaviour!"
James Tapster was eating his solitary, well-cooked dinner in his comfortable and handsome house, a house situated in one of the half-moon terraces which line and frame the more aristocratic side of Regent's Park, and which may indeed be said to have private grounds of their own, for each resident enjoys the use of a key to a portion of the Park entitled locally "The Enclosure."
Very early in his life Mr. Tapster had made up his mind that he would like to live in Cumberland Crescent and now he was living there; very early in his life he had decided that no one could order a plain yet palatable meal as well as he could himself, and now for some months past Mr. Tapster had given his own orders, each morning, to the cook.
To-night Mr. Tapster had already eaten his fried sole, and he was about to cut himself off a generous portion of the grilled under-cut before him, when he heard the postman's steps hurrying round the Crescent. He rose with a certain quick deliberateness, and going out into the hall, opened the front door just in time to avoid the rat-tat-tat. Then, the one letter he had expected duly in his hand, he waited till he had sat down again in front of his still empty plate before he broke the seal and glanced over the typewritten sheet of notepaper.
Shorters Court, Throgmorton St.,November 4th, 190—.Dear James,In reply to your letter of yesterday's date, I have been to Bedford Row and seen Greenfield, and he thinks it probable that the decree will be made absolute to-day; in that case you will have received a wire before this letter reaches you.Your affect. Brother,Wm. A. Tapster.
Shorters Court, Throgmorton St.,
November 4th, 190—.
Dear James,
In reply to your letter of yesterday's date, I have been to Bedford Row and seen Greenfield, and he thinks it probable that the decree will be made absolute to-day; in that case you will have received a wire before this letter reaches you.
Your affect. Brother,
Wm. A. Tapster.
In the same handwriting as the signature were added two holograph lines: "Glad you have the children home again. Maud will be round to see them soon."
Mr. Tapster read over once again the body of the letter, and there came upon him an instinctive feeling of intense relief; then, with a not less instinctive feeling of impatience, his eyes travelled down again to the postscript—"Maud will be round to see them soon."
Well, he would see about that! But he did not exclaim, even mentally, as most men feeling as he then felt would have done, "I'll be damned if she will!" knowing the while that Maud certainly would.
His brother's letter, though most satisfactory as regarded its main point, put Mr. Tapster out of conceit with the rest of his dinner; so he rang twice and had the table cleared, frowning at the parlour-maid as she hurried through her duties, and yet not daring to rebuke her for having neglected to answer the bell the first time he rang.
After a pause, he rose and turned towards the door—but, no, he could not face the large, cheerless drawing-room upstairs; instead, he sat down by the fire, and set himself to consider his future, and, in a more hazy sense, that of his now motherless children.
But very soon, as generally happens to those who devote any time to that least profitable of occupations, Mr. Tapster found that his thoughts drifted aimlessly, not to the future where he would have them be, but to the past—that past which he desired to forget, to obliterate from his memory.
Till rather more than a year ago few men of his age—he had then been sixty, he was now sixty-one—enjoyed a pleasanter and, from his own point of view, a better-filled life than James Tapster. How he had scorned the gambler, the spendthrift, the adulterer,—in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious,—not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side of life, and so inclining he had found contentment and great material prosperity.
Not even in those days to which he was now looking back so regretfully had Mr. Tapster always been perfectly content; but now the poor man sitting alone by his dining-room fire, only remembered what had been good and pleasant in his former state. He was aware that his brother William—and William's wife, Maud—both thought that even now he had much to be thankful for; his line of business was brisk, scarcely touched by foreign competition, his income increasing at a steady rate of progression, and his children were exceptionally healthy.
But, alas! now that, in place of a pretty little Mrs. Tapster on whom to spend easily-earned money, his substance was being squandered by a crowd of unmanageable and yet indispensable thieves,—for so Mr. Tapster voicelessly described the five servants whose loud talk and laughter were even now floating up from the basement below,—he did not feel his financial stability so comfortable a thing as he had once done.
His very children, who should now be, as he told himself complainingly, his greatest comfort, had degenerated from two sturdy, well-behaved little boys and a charming baby girl, into three unruly, fretful imps, setting him at defiance, and terrorising their two attendants, who, though carefully chosen by their Aunt Maud, did not seem to manage them as well as the old nurse who had been an ally of the ex-Mrs. Tapster.
Looking back at the whole horrible affair, for so in his own mind Mr. Tapster justly designated the divorce case in which he had figured as the successful petitioner, he wondered uneasily if he had done quite wisely—wisely, that is, for his own repute and comfort.
He knew very well that had it not been for William—or rather for Maud—he would never have found out the dreadful truth. Nay, more; he was dimly aware that but for them, and for their insistence on it as the only proper course open to him, he would never have taken action. All would have been forgiven and forgotten had not William—and more especially Maud—said he must divorce Flossy, if not for his own sake, ah! what irony! then for that of his children.
Of course he felt grateful to his brother William and to his brother's wife for all they had done for him since that sad time. Still, in the depths of his heart, Mr. Tapster felt entitled to blame, and sometimes almost to hate, his kind brother and sister. To them both—or rather to Maud—he really owed the break-up of his life, for, when all was said and done, it had to be admitted (though Maud did not like him to remind her of it) that Flossy had met the villain while staying with the William Tapsters at Boulogne. Respectable London people should have known better than to take a furnished house at a disreputable French watering-place—a place full of low English!
Sometimes it was only by a great exercise of self-control that he, James Tapster, could refrain from telling Maud what he thought of her conduct in this matter, the more so that she never seemed to understand how greatly she—and William—had been to blame.
On one occasion Maud had even said how surprised she had been that James had cared to go away to America, leaving his pretty young wife alone for as long as three months. Why hadn't she said so at the time, then? Of course, he had thought that he could leave Flossy to be looked after and kept out of mischief by Maud—and William. But he had been—in more than one sense, alas!—bitterly deceived.
Still, it's never any use crying over spilt milk, so Mr. Tapster got up from his chair and walked round the room, looking absently, as he did so, at the large Landseer engraving of which he was naturally proud. If only he could forget—put out of his mind for ever—the whole affair! Well, perhaps with the Decree being made Absolute would come oblivion.
He sat down again before the fire. Staring at the hot embers, he reminded himself that Flossy, wicked, ungrateful Flossy, had disappeared out of his life. This being so, why think of her? The very children had at last left off asking inconvenient questions about their mamma——
By the way, would Flossy still be their mamma after the Decree had been made Absolute?—so Mr. Tapster now suddenly asked himself. He hesitated perplexed.
But yes, the Decree being made Absolute would not undo, or even efface, that fact. The more so, though surely here James Tapster showed himself less logical than usual—the more so that Flossy, in spite of what Maud had always said about her, had been a loving and, in her own light-hearted way, a careful mother. But though Flossy would remain the mother of his children—odd that the Law hadn't provided for that contingency—she would soon be absolutely nothing, and less than nothing, to him, the father of those children. Mr. Tapster was a great believer in the infallibility of the Law, and he subscribed whole-heartedly to the new reading, "What Law has put asunder, let not man join together."
To-night Mr. Tapster could not help looking back with a certain complacency to his one legal adventure. Nothing could have been better done, or more admirably conducted, than the way the whole matter had been carried through. His brother William, and William's solicitor, Mr. Greenfield, had managed it all so very nicely. True, there had been a few uncomfortable moments in the witness-box, but everyone, including the Judge, had been most kind.
As for his Counsel, the leading man who makes a specialty of these sad affairs, not even James Tapster himself could have put his own case in a more delicate and moving fashion. "A gentleman possessed of considerable fortune," so had he been justly described, and Counsel, without undue insistence on irrelevant detail, had drawn a touching—and a true—picture of Mr. Tapster's one romance, his marriage eight years before to the twenty-year-old daughter of an undischarged bankrupt. Even the Petitioner had scarcely seen Flossy's dreadful ingratitude in its true colours till he had heard his Counsel's moderate comments on the case.
This evening Mr. Tapster saw Flossy's dreadful ingratitude terribly clearly, and he wondered, not for the first time, how his wife could have had the heart to break up his happy home!
Why, but for him and his offer of marriage, Flossy Ball—that had been his wife's maiden name—would have had to have earned her own living! And as she had been very pretty, very "fetching," she would probably have married some good-for-nothing young fellow of her own age lacking the means to support a wife in decent comfort,—such a fellow, for instance, as the wretched "Co." in the case. While with Mr. Tapster—why, she had had everything the heart of woman could wish for, a good home, beautiful clothes, and the being waited on hand and foot. A strange choking feeling came into his throat as he thought of how good he had been to Flossy, and how very bad had been her return for that kindness.
But this—this was dreadful! He was actually thinking of her again, and not, as he had meant to do, of himself and his poor, motherless children. Time enough to think of Flossy when he had news of her again. If her lover did not marry her—and from what Mr. Greenfield had discovered about him, it was most improbable that he would ever be in a position to do so—she would certainly reappear on the Tapster horizon; Mr. Greenfield said "they" always did. In that case, it was arranged that William should pay her a weekly allowance. Mr. Tapster, always, as he now reminded himself sadly, ready to do the generous thing, had fixed that allowance at three pounds a week—a sum which had astonished, in fact quite staggered, Mr. Greenfield's head clerk, a very decent fellow, by the way.
"Of course, it shall be as you wish, Mr. Tapster, but you should think of the future and of your children. A hundred and fifty pounds a year is a large sum; you may feel it a tax, sir, as years go on——"
"That is enough," Mr. Tapster had answered, kindly but firmly; "you have done your duty in laying that side of the case before me. I have, however, decided on the amount named; should I see reason to alter my mind, our arrangement leaves it open to me at any time to lower the allowance."
But though this conversation had taken place some months ago, and though Mr. Tapster still held true to his generous resolve, as yet Flossy had not reappeared.
Mr. Tapster sometimes told himself that if he only knew where she was, what she was doing,—whether she was still with that young fellow, for instance,—he would think much less about her than he did now. Only last night, when going for a moment into the night nursery,—poor Mr. Tapster now only enjoyed his children's company when he was quite sure that they were asleep,—he had had an extraordinary, almost a physical, impression of Flossy's presence; he certainly had felt a faint whiff of her favourite perfume. Flossy had been fond of scent, and though Maud always said that the use of scent was most unladylike, he, James, did not dislike it.
With sudden soreness Mr. Tapster now recalled the one letter Flossy had written to him just before the actual hearing of the divorce suit.
It had been a wild, oddly-worded appeal to him to take her back, not—as Maud had at once perceived on reading the letter—because she was sorry for the terrible thing she had done, but simply because she was beginning to hanker after her children. Maud had described the letter as shameless and unwomanly in the extreme; and even William, who had never judged his pretty young sister-in-law as severely as his wife had always done, had observed sadly that Flossy seemed quite unaware of the magnitude of her offence against God and man.
Mr. Tapster, who prided himself on his sharp ears, suddenly heard a curious little sound—he knew it for that of the front door being first opened and then shut again, extremely quietly. He half rose from his chair by the fire, then sat down again, heavily.
By Maud's advice he always locked the area gate himself, when he came home each evening. But how foolish of Maud—such a sensible woman too,—to think that servants and their evil ways could be circumvented so easily! Of course, the maids went in and out by the front door in the evening, and the policeman—a most respectable officer standing at point duty a few yards lower down the road—must be well aware of these disgraceful "goings on."
For the first two or three months of his widowerhood (how else could he term his present peculiar wifeless condition?) there had been a constant coming and going of servants, first chosen, and then dismissed, by Maud. At last she had suggested that her brother-in-law should engage a lady housekeeper, and the luckless James Tapster had even interviewed several applicants for the post after they had been chosen—sifted out, as it were—by Maud. Unfortunately they had all been each more or less of his own age; and plain—very plain; while he, naturally enough, would have preferred to see something young and pretty about him again.
It was over this housekeeper question that he had at last escaped from Maud's domestic thraldom, for his sister-in-law, offended by his rejection of each of her candidates, had declared that she would take no more trouble about his household affairs! Nay, more; she had reminded him with a smile which she had honestly tried to make pleasant, that there is, after all, no fool like an old fool—about women! This insinuation had made Mr. Tapster very angry, and straightway he had engaged a respectable cook-housekeeper, and, although he had soon become aware that the woman was feathering her own nest,—James Tapster, as you will have divined ere now, was fond of good workaday phrases,—yet she had a pleasant, respectful manner, and kept rough order among the younger servants.
Mr. Tapster's sister-in-law only now interfered where his children were concerned. Never having been herself a mother, she had, of course, been able to form a clear and unprejudiced judgment as to how children, and especially as to how little boys, should be physically and mentally trained.
As yet, however, Maud had not been very successful with her two nephews and infant niece, but this was doubtless owing to the fact that there had been something gravely amiss with each of the five nurses who had been successively engaged by her during the last year.
The elder of Mr. Tapster's sons was six and the second four; the youngest child, a little girl named unfortunately Flora after her mother, was three years old. There had been a fourth, Flossy's second baby, also a girl, who had only lived one day. All this being so, was it not strange that a young matron who had led, for some four years out of the eight years her married life had lasted, so wholly womanly and domestic an existence as had fallen to the lot of Flossy, should have been led astray by the meretricious allurements of unlawful love?—Maud's striking thought and phrase this.
And yet Flossy, in spite of her frivolity, had somehow managed the children far better than Maud was now able to do. At the present time, so Mr. Tapster admitted to himself with something very like an inward groan, his two sons possessed every vice of which masculine infancy is capable. They had become—so he was told by their indignant nurses—the terror of the well-behaved children who shared with them the pleasures of the Park Enclosure, where they took their daily exercise; and Baby, once so sweet and good, was now very fretful and peevish.
Again the train of Mr. Tapster's mournful thoughts was disturbed by a curious little sound—that of someone creeping softly down the staircase leading from the upper floors.
Once more he half rose from his chair, only to fall heavily back again with a look of impotent annoyance on his round, whiskered face. Where was the use of his going out into the hall and catching Nurse on her way to the kitchen? Maud had declared, very early in the day, that there should be as little communication as possible between the kitchen and the nursery; but Mr. Tapster sometimes found himself in secret sympathy with the two women whose disagreeable duty it was to be always with his three turbulent children.
Mr. Tapster frowned and stared gloomily into the fire; then he suddenly pulled himself together rather sharply, for the door behind him had slowly swung open. This was intolerable! The parlour-maid had again and again been told that, whatever might have been the case in her former places, no door in Mr. Tapster's house was to be opened without the preliminary of a respectful knock.
Fortified by the memory of what had been a positive order, he turned round and nerved himself to deliver the necessary rebuke; but instead of the shifty-eyed, impudent-looking woman he had thought to see, there stood close to him, so close that he could almost have touched her—Flossy, his wife, or rather the woman who, though no longer his wife, had still, as he had been informed to his discomfiture, the right to bear his name.
A very strange feeling, and one so complicated that it sat uneasily upon him, took instant possession of Mr. Tapster—anger, surprise, and relief warred with one another in his heart.
Then he began to think that his eyes must be playing him some curious trick, for the figure at which he was staring remained strangely still and motionless.
Was it possible that his mind, dwelling constantly on Flossy, had evoked her wraith? But, no; looking up in startled silence at the still figure standing before him, he realised that not so would memory have conjured up the pretty, bright little woman of whom he had once been proud. Flossy still looked pretty, but she was thin and pale, and there were dark rings round her eyes; also her dress was worn, her hat curiously shabby.
As Mr. Tapster stared up at her, noting these things, one of her hands began playing nervously with the fringe of the dining-table cover, and the other sought the back of what had once been one of her dining-room chairs.
As he watched her making these slight movements, nature so far reasserted itself that a feeling of poignant regret, of pity for her—as well as, of course, a much larger share of pity for himself—came over James Tapster.
Had Flossy spoken then,—had she possessed the intuitive knowledge of men which is the gift of so many otherwise unintelligent women,—the whole of Mr. Tapster's future, to say nothing of her own, might have been different, and, it may be suggested, happier.
But the moment of softening and mansuetude slipped quickly by, and was succeeded by a burst of anger, for Mr. Tapster suddenly became aware that Flossy's left hand, the little thin hand resting on the back of the chair, was holding two keys which he recognised at once as his property. The one was a replica of the latch-key which always hung on his watch-chain, while the other and larger key, to which was attached a brass tab bearing the name of Tapster and the address of the house, gave access to the Enclosure Garden opposite Cumberland Crescent.
Avoiding her eager, pitiful look, Mr. Tapster set himself to realise, with a shrewdness for which William and Maud would never have given him credit, what Flossy's possession of those two keys had meant during the last few months.
This woman, who both was and was not Mrs. Tapster, had retained the power to come freely in and out ofhishouse! She had been able to make her way, with or without the connivance of the servants, intohischildren's nursery at any hour of the day or night convenient to herself. With the aid of that Enclosure key she had no doubt often seen the children during their daily walk! In a word, Flossy had been able to enjoy all the privileges of motherhood while having forfeited all those of happy wifehood!
His mind hastened heavily on—what a fool he must have looked before his servants, how they must have laughed to think that he was being so deceived and taken in! Why, even the policeman who stood at point duty outside must have known all about it!
Small wonder that Mr. Tapster felt extremely incensed; small wonder that his heart, hardening, solidifying, expelled any feeling of pity provoked by Flossy's sad and downcast appearance.
"I must request you," he said, in a voice which even to himself sounded harsh and needlessly loud, "to give up those keys which you hold in your hand. You have no right to their possession, and I grieve to think that you took advantage of my great distress of mind not to return them with the things of which I sent you a list by my brother William. I cannot believe"—and now Mr. Tapster lied as only the very truthful can lie on occasion—"I cannot believe, I say, that you have taken advantage of my having overlooked them, and that you have ever before to-night forced yourself into this house! Still less can I believe that you have taught our—my—children to deceive their father!"
Even when uttering his first sentence he had noticed that there had come over Flossy's face—which was thinner, if quite as pretty and youthful-looking as when he had last seen it—an expression of obstinacy which he had once well known and always dreaded. It had been Flossy's one poor weapon against her husband's superior sense and power of getting his own way, and sometimes it had vanquished him in that fair fight which is always being waged between the average husband and wife.
"You are right," she cried passionately; "I have not taught the children to deceive you! I have never come into this house until I felt sure that they were asleep and alone, though I've often wondered that they never woke up and knew that their own mother was there! But more than once, James, I've felt like going after that Society which looks after badly-treated children—for the last nurse you had for them was so cruel! If she hadn't left you soon I should havehadto do something. I used to feel desperate when I saw her shake Baby in her pram; why, one day, in the Enclosure, a lady spoke to her about it, and threatened to tell her—her mistress——"
Flossy's voice sank to a shamed whisper. The tears were rolling down her cheeks; she was speaking in angry gasps, and what she said actually made James Tapster feel, what he knew full well he had no reason to feel, ashamed of himself.
"That is why"—she went on—"that is why I have, as you say, forced myself into your house, and why, too, I have now come here to ask you to forgive me—to take me back—just for the sake of the children."
Mr. Tapster's mind was one that travelled surely if slowly. He saw his chance and seized it.
"And why," he said impressively, "had that woman—the nurse, I mean—no mistress? Tell me that, Flossy. You should have thought of all that before you behaved as you did!"
"I didn't know—I didn't think——"
Mr. Tapster finished the sentence for her. "You didn't think," he observed impressively, "that I should ever find you out."
Then there came over him a morbid wish to discover—to learn from her own lips—why Flossy had done such a shameful and extraordinary thing as to be unfaithful to her marriage vow.
"Whatever made you behave so?" he asked in a low voice. "I wasn't unkind to you, was I? You had a nice, comfortable home, hadn't you?"
"I was mad," she answered with a touch of sharp weariness. "I don't suppose I could ever make you understand, and yet"—she looked at him deprecatingly—"I suppose, James, that you too were young once, and—and—mad?"
Mr. Tapster stared at Flossy. What extraordinary things she said! Of course he had been young once; for the matter of that he didn't feel old—not to say old—even now. But he had always been perfectly sane—she knew that well enough! As for her calling herself mad, that was a mere figure of speech. Of course, in a sense she had been mad to do what she had done, and he was glad that she now understood this, but her saying so simply begged the whole question, and left him no wiser than he was before.
There was a long, tense silence between them. Then Mr. Tapster slowly rose from his armchair and faced his wife.
"I see," he said, "that William was right. I mean, I suppose I may take it that that young fellow has gone and left you?"
"Yes," she said, with a curious indifference, "he has gone and left me. His father made him take a job out in Brazil just after the case was through."
"And what have you been doing since then?" asked Mr. Tapster suspiciously. "How have you been living?"
"His father gives me a pound a week." Flossy still spoke with that curious indifference. "I tried to get something to do"—she hesitated, then offered the lame explanation, "just to have something to do, for I've been awfully lonely and miserable, James. But I don't seem to be able to get anything."
"If you had written to Mr. Greenfield or to William, they would have told you that I had arranged for you to have an allowance," he said, and then again he fell into silence....
Mr. Tapster was seeing a vision of himself magnanimous, forgiving,—taking the peccant Flossy back to his heart, and becoming once more, in a material sense, comfortable! If he acceded to her wish, if he made up his mind to forgive her, he would have to begin life all over again, move away from Cumberland Crescent to some distant place where the story was not known,—perhaps to Clapham, where he had spent his boyhood.
But how about Maud? How about William? How about the very considerable expense to which he had been put in connection with the divorce proceedings? Was all that money to be wasted?
Mr. Tapster suddenly saw the whole of his little world rising up in judgment, smiling pityingly at his folly and weakness. During the whole of a long and of what had been, till this last year, a very prosperous life, Mr. Tapster had always steered his safe course by what may be called the compass of public opinion, and now, when navigating an unknown sea, he could not afford to throw that compass overboard, so——
"No," he said. "No, Flossy. It would not be right for me to take you back.It wouldn't do."
"Wouldn't it?" she asked piteously. "Oh! James, don't say no like that, all at once! People do forgive each other—sometimes. I don't ask you to be as kind to me as you were before; only to let me come home and see after the children!"
But Mr. Tapster shook his head. The children! Always the children! He noticed, even now, that she didn't say a word of wanting to come back tohim; and yet he had been such a kind, nay, if Maud were to be believed, such a foolishly indulgent, husband.
And then Flossy looked so different. Mr. Tapster felt as if a stranger were standing there before him. Her appearance of poverty shocked him. Had she looked well and prosperous, he would have felt injured, and yet her pinched face and shabby clothes certainly repelled him. So again he shook his head, and there came into his face a look which Flossy had always known in the old days to spell finality; when he again spoke she saw that her knowledge had not misled her.
"I don't want to be unkind," he said ponderously. "If you will only go to William, or write to him if you would rather not go to the office,"—Mr. Tapster did not like to think that anyone once closely connected with him should "look like that" in his brother's office,—"he will tell you what you had better do. I'm quite ready to make you a handsome allowance—in fact, it's all arranged. You need not have anything more to do with that fellow's father—an Army Colonel, isn't he?—and his pound a week; but William thinks, and I must say I agree, that you ought to go back to your maiden name, Flossy, as being more fair to me."
"And am I never to see the children again?" she asked.
"No; it wouldn't be right for me to let you do so."
He hesitated, then added, "They don't miss you any more now,"—with no unkindly intent he concluded, "soon they'll have forgotten you altogether."
And then, just as Mr. Tapster was hesitating, seeking for a suitable and not unkindly sentence of farewell, he saw a very strange, almost a desperate, look come over Flossy's face, and, to his surprise, she suddenly turned and left the room, closing the door very carefully behind her.
He stared after her. How very odd of her to say nothing! And what a queer look had come over her face! He could not help feeling hurt that she had not thanked him for what he knew to be a very generous and unusual provision on the part of an injured husband.... Mr. Tapster took a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and passed it twice over his face, then once more he sought and sank into the armchair by the fire.
Even now he still felt keenly conscious of Flossy's nearness. What could she be doing? Then he straightened himself and listened.
Yes, it was as he feared; she had gone upstairs—upstairs to look at the children, for now he could hear her coming down again. How obstinate she was—how obstinate and ungrateful! Mr. Tapster wished he had the courage to go out into the hall and face her in order to tell her how wrong her conduct was. Why, she had actually kept the keys—those keys that were his property!
Suddenly he heard her light footsteps hurrying down the hall; now she was opening the front door,—it slammed, and again Mr. Tapster felt pained to think how strangely indifferent Flossy was to his interests. Why, what would the servants think, hearing the front door slam like that?
But still, now that it was over, he was glad the interview had taken place, for henceforth—or so at least Mr. Tapster believed—the Flossy of the past, the bright, pretty, prosperous Flossy of whom he had been so proud, would cease to haunt him.
He remembered with a feeling of relief that she was going to his brother William; of course she would then, among greater renunciations, be compelled to return the two keys, for they—that is, his brother and himself—would have her in their power. They would not behave unkindly to her—far from it; in fact, they would arrange for her to live with some quiet, religious lady in a country town a few hours from London. Mr. Tapster had not evolved this scheme for himself; it had been done in a similar case—one of those cases which, in the long ago, when he was still a single man, had aroused his pitying contempt for husbands who allow themselves to be deceived.
Then Mr. Tapster began going over each incident of the strange little interview, for he wanted to tell his brother William exactly what had taken place.
His conscience was quite clear except with regard to one matter, and that, after all, needn't be mentioned to William. He felt rather ashamed of having asked the question which had provoked so wild an answer—so unexpected a retort.
Mad? What had Flossy meant by asking him if he had ever been mad? No one had ever used the word in connection with James Tapster before—save once. Oddly enough, that occasion also had been connected with Flossy in a way; for it had happened when he had gone to tell William and Maud of his engagement.
It was on a fine day nine years ago come this May, and he had found William and William's wife walking in their garden on Haverstock Hill. His kind brother, as always, had been most sympathetic, and had even made a suitable joke—Mr. Tapster remembered it very sadly to-night—concerning the spring and a young man's fancy; but Maud had been really disagreeable. She had said, "It's no use talking to you, James, for you're mad—quite mad!" He had argued the matter out with her good-temperedly, and William had supported him in pointing out that he was doing an eminently sane thing in marrying Flossy Ball. But Maud again and again had exclaimed, in her determined, aggravating voice, "I say you are mad. They don't let lunatics marry—and just now youarea lunatic, James!"
Strange that he should remember all this to-night; for, after all, it had nothing to do with the present state of affairs.
Mr. Tapster felt rather shaken and nervous; he pulled out his repeater watch; but, alas! it was still very early—only ten minutes to nine. He couldn't go to bed yet. Perhaps he would do well to join a club. He had always thought rather poorly of men who belonged to clubs,—most of them were idle, lazy fellows; but still, circumstances alter cases.
Suddenly he began to wish that Flossy had remained a little longer.
He thought of all sorts of things—improving, kindly remarks—he would have liked to say to her. He blamed himself for not having offered her any refreshment; she would probably have refused to take anything, but still, it was wrong on his part not to have thought of it. A pound a week for everything! No wonder she looked half starved. Why, his own household bills, exclusive of wine or beer, had worked out, since he had had this new expensive housekeeper, at something like fifteen shillings a head—a fact which he had managed to conceal from Maud, who "did" her William so well on exactly ten shillings and nine-pence all round!
It struck nine from the neighbouring church where Mr. Tapster had sittings,—but where he seldom was able to go on Sunday mornings, for he was proud of being among those old-fashioned folk who still regard Sunday as essentially a day of rest,—and there came a sudden sound of hoarse shouting from the road outside.
Though he was glad of anything that broke the oppressive silence with which he felt encompassed, Mr. Tapster found time to tell himself that it was disgraceful that vulgar street brawlers should invade so quiet a residential thoroughfare as Cumberland Crescent. But order would soon be restored, for the sound of a policeman's whistle cut sharply through the air.
The noise, however, continued. He could hear the tramp of feet hurrying past his house, and then leaving the pavement for the other side of the road. What could be the matter? Something very exciting must be going on just opposite his front door—that is, close to the Enclosure railings.
Mr. Tapster got up from his chair, and walked in a leisurely way to the wide window; he drew aside the thick red rep curtains, and lifted a corner of the blind.
Then, through the slightly foggy haze, he saw that which greatly surprised him and made him feel actively indignant, for a string of people, men, women, and boys, were hurrying into the Enclosure garden—that sacred place set apart for the exclusive use of the nobility and gentry who lived in Cumberland Crescent and the adjoining terraces.
What an abominable thing! Why, the grass would be all trampled down; and these dirty people, these slum folk who seem to spring out of the earth when anything of a disagreeable or shameful nature is taking place—a fire, for instance, or a brawl—might easily bring infectious diseases on to those gravel paths where the little Tapsters and their like run about playing their innocent games. Some careless person had evidently left the gate unlocked, and the fight, or whatever it was, must be taking place inside the Enclosure!
Had this been an ordinary night, Mr. Tapster would have gone back to the fire, but now the need for human companionship was so strong upon him that he stayed at the window, and went on staring at the curious shadow-filled scene.
Soon he saw with satisfaction that something like order was to be restored. A stalwart policeman—in fact, his friend the officer who was always at point duty some yards from his house—now stood at the gate of the Enclosure, forbidding any further passing through.
Mr. Tapster tried in vain to see what was going on inside the railings, but everything beyond the brightly-lighted road was wrapped in grey darkness. Someone suddenly held up high a flaming torch, and the watcher at the window saw that the shadowy crowd which had managed to force its way into the Park hung together, like bees swarming, on the further lawn through which flowed the ornamental water. With the gleaming of the yellow, wavering light there had fallen a sudden hush and silence, and Mr. Tapster wondered uneasily what those people were doing there, and what it was they were pressing forward so eagerly to see.