Suddenly Dering began speaking: "I forget if I told you that I am starting this very night for a long journey, and before doing so I want to ask you to do me a favour——"
His host became all pleased attention.
"Would you kindly witness my will? I have just come into a sum of money, and—and, though my will is actually being drawn up by a friend, who is also a lawyer, I have felt uneasy——"
"I quite understand. You have thought it wise to make a provisional will? Well, that's a very sensible thing to do! We medical men see much trouble caused by foolish postponement of such matters. Some men seem to think that making a will is tantamount to signing their own death-warrant!"
But no answering smile brightened Dering's fiercely set face; he did not seem to have heard what the doctor had said. "If I might ask you for a sheet of notepaper. I see a pen and blotting-pad over there——"
A sudden, instinctive misgiving crossed the other's mind.
"This is rather informal, isn't it? Of course, I have no call to interfere, Mr. Dering; but if a large sum is involved might it not be better to wait?"
Dering looked up. For the first time he smiled.
"I don't wish to make any mystery about it, Dr. Johnstone. I am leaving everything to my wife, and after her to sundry young people in whom we are both interested. If I die intestate, I understand that distant relatives of my own—people whom I don't like, and who have never done anything for me—are bound to benefit."
Even as he spoke he was busy writing the words, "To Louise Larsen (commonly known as Mrs. Philip Dering), of 9, Lady Rich Road, Bedford Park, and after her death to be divided equally between the children of my esteemed friend, James Wingfield, solicitor, of 24, Abingdon Street, Westminster, and the children of the late Mrs. John Hinton, of 8, Lady Rich Road, Bedford Park."
Short as was Dering's will, the last portion of it was written on the inner sheet of the piece of note paper bearing the doctor's address, and the two witnesses, Johnstone himself, and a friend whom he fetched out of his smoking-room for the purpose, could not help seeing what generous provision the testator had made for the younger generation.
As the doctor opened the front door for his, as he hoped, new friend, Dering suddenly pulled a notebook out of his breast pocket.
"I have forgotten a most important thing——" there was real dismay in his fresh, still youthful voice—"and that is to ask you kindly to look round at No. 8, Lady Rich Road, after your friends have left you to-night. I should think about twelve o'clock would do very well. In fact, Hinton won't be ready for you before. And, Dr. Johnstone—in view of the trouble to which you may be put——" Dering thrust another bank-note into the other man's hand. "I know you ought to have charged a lot more than that ten pounds——" and then, before words of thanks could be uttered, he had turned and gone down the steps, along the little path, through the iron gate which swung under the red lamp, into the darkness beyond.
Down the broad and now solitary High Road, filled with the strange brooding stillness of a spring dawn, clattered discordantly a hansom cab. There was promise of a bright warm day, such a day as yesterday had been, but Wingfield, leaning forward, unconsciously willing the horse to go faster, felt very cold.
At last, not for the first time during this interminable journey, he took from his breast pocket the unsigned telegram which was the cause of his being here, driving, oh! how slowly, along this fantastically empty thoroughfare, through the chill morning air, instead of lying sound asleep by Kate's side in his comfortable bed at home.
"Philip Dering is dead please come at once at once at once to eight Lady Rich Road."
Wingfield, steadying the slip of paper as it fluttered in his hand, looked down with frowning puzzled eyes at the pencilled words.
The message had been set off just before midnight, and had reached his house, he supposed, an hour and a half later, for the persistent knocking at his front door had gone on for some time before he or his wife realised that the loud hammering sound concerned themselves. Even then it had been Kate who had at last roused herself and gone downstairs; Kate who had rushed up breathless, whispering as she thrust the orange envelope into his hand:—"Oh, James, what can it be? Thank God, all the children are safe at home!"
No time had been lost. While he was dressing, his wife had made him a cup of tea, kind and solicitous for his comfort, but driving him nearly distracted by her eager, excited talk and aimless conjectures. It had seemed long before he found a derelict cab willing to drive him from Regent's Terrace to Bedford Park, but now—well, thank God, he was at last nearing the place where he would learn what had befallen the man who had been, next to his own elder boy, the creature he had loved best in his calm, phlegmatic life.
Wingfield went on staring down at the mysterious and yet explicit message, of which the wording seemed to him so odd—in some ways recalling Dering's familiar trick of reiteration. Then suddenly he thought of Hinton, the artist for whom both he and his friend had had reason to feel so deep if wordless a contempt, and yet whom they had both tried, over and over again, to help and set on his feet.
With a sudden revulsion of feeling, the lawyer folded up the telegram and put it back into his breast pocket—this mysterious, unsigned request for his immediate presence had obviously been despatched by Hinton, who might just as well have waited for morning. How stupid of him not to have realised this at once, the more so that No. 8, Lady Rich Road, was Hinton's address, not that of Dering. Quickly he raised his hand to the trap-door above his head; "Pull up at No. 8, not as I told you, at No. 9, Lady Rich Road," he shouted.
The radiance of an early spring morning, so kind to everything in nature, is pitiless to that which owes its being to the ingenuity and industry of human hands. Dr. Johnstone, standing opposite a police inspector in what had been poor Mrs. Hinton's cherished, if untidy and shabby, little sitting-room, felt his wretchedness and shame—for he felt very deeply ashamed—perceptibly increased by the dust-laden sunbeams dancing slantwise about him.
The inspector was really sorry for him, though a little contemptuous perhaps of a medical man capable of showing such emotion and horror in the face of death.
"Why, doctor, you mustn't take on so! How could you possibly have told what was in the man's mind? You weren't upset like this last year over that business in Angle Alley, and that was a sight worse than this, eh?"
But Johnstone had turned away, and was staring out of the bow window. "It isn't that poor wretch Hinton that's upset me," he muttered, "I don't mind death. It's—it's—Dering—Dering and Mrs. Dering." Reluctant tears filled his tired, red-rimmed eyes.
"I'm sorry, too. Very sorry for the lady, that is; as for the other—well, I'm pretty sure he'll cheat Broadmoor, and that without much delay, eh, doctor? Hullo! who's this coming now?"
The tone suddenly changed, became at once official and alert in quality, as the sound of wheels stopped opposite the little gate. When the front door bell pealed through the house he added, "You go to the door, doctor; whoever it is had better not see me at first." And Johnstone found himself suddenly pushed out of the room and into the little hall.
There he hesitated for a moment, looking furtively round at the half-open door which led into the back room fitted up as a studio, where still lay, in dreadful juxtaposition, the dead and the dying, Hinton and his murderer, alone, save for the indifferent yet watchful presence of a trained nurse.
From the kitchen beyond came the sound of eager, lowered voices, those of the two young servants who had of late coped with the difficulties of the Hinton household, and whose scanty wages had been paid, so Johnstone had learned in the last hour, by Mrs. Dering herself.
Another impatient peal of sound echoed through the house, and the doctor, walking slowly forward, opened the front door.
"Can I see Mr. Hinton? Or is he next door? I have driven down from town in response to this telegram. I was Mr. Philip Dering's oldest friend and solicitor——"
"Then—then it wasyouwho were making his will?"
The question struck Wingfield as unseemly. How had this young man, whom he took to be one of Hinton's dissipated friends, learnt even this one fact concerning poor Dering's affairs?
"Yes," he said shortly, as he walked through into the hall, "that was the case. But, of course—well, perhaps, you will kindly inform me where I can see Mr. Hinton?" he repeated impatiently. "I suppose he is with Mrs. Dering, at No. 9?" and the other noticed that he left the door open behind him, evidently intending to leave Hinton's house as soon as he had obtained a reply to his question.
For a moment the two men looked at one another in exasperated silence. Then, very suddenly, Johnstone did that of which he was afterward sorry and self-reproachful. But his nerve was completely gone; for hours he had been engaged in what had proved both a terrible and a futile task, that of attempting to relieve the physical agony of a man for whose state he partly held himself to be responsible. He wished to avoid, at any rate for the present, the repetition to this stranger of what had happened the night before.
And so, "Please come this way," he muttered hoarsely. "I ought perhaps to warn you—to prepare you for something of a shock." And, turning round, beckoning to the other to follow him, he opened the door of the studio, stepping aside to allow Wingfield to pass in before him.
But once through the doorway the lawyer suddenly recoiled and stopped short, so dreadful and so unexpected was the sight which met his eyes.
What Wingfield saw remained with him for weeks, and even for months, an ever-present, torturing vision, full of mingled horror and mystery, a mystery to which he was destined never to find the solution.
Focussed against a blurred background made up of distempered light green walls, a curtainless, open window, and various plain deal studio properties pushed back against the wall, lay, stretched out on some kind of low couch brought forward into the middle of the room, a rigid, motionless figure.
The lower half of the figure, including the feet, which rested on a chair placed at the bottom of the couch, was entirely covered by a blanket; but the chest and head, slightly raised by pillows, seemed swathed and bound up in broad strips of white linen, which concealed chin and forehead, hair and ears, while the head was oddly supported by a broad band or sling fastened with safety-pins—Wingfield's eyes took note of every detail—to the side of the couch. Under the blanket, which was stretched tightly across the man's breast, could be seen the feeble twitching of fingers, but even so, the only sense of life and feeling seemed to the onlooker centred in the eyes, whose glance Wingfield found himself fearing yet longing to meet.
To the right of the couch a large Japanese screen had been so placed as to hide some object spread out on the floor. To the left, watching every movement of the still, recumbent figure, stood a powerful-looking woman in nursing dress. Wingfield's gaze, after wandering round the large, bare room, returned and again clung to the sinister immobile form which he longed to be told was that of Hinton, and as he gazed he forced himself to feel a fierce gladness and relief in the knowledge that Dering was dead,—that in his pocket lay the telegram which proved it.
At last, to gain courage and to stifle a horrible doubt, he compelled himself to meet those at once indifferent and appealing eyes, which seemed to stare fixedly beyond the group of men by the door; and suddenly the lawyer became aware that just behind him hurried whispered words were being uttered.
"This gentleman is Mr. Dering's solicitor; perhaps he will be able to throw some light on the whole affair," and he felt himself being plucked by the sleeve and gently pulled back into the hall.
"It is—isn't it?—poor Hinton?" and he looked imploringly from one man to the other.
"Hinton?" said the doctor sharply. "He's there, sure enough—but you didn't see him, for we put him under a sheet, behind that screen. Your friend shot him dead first, and then cut his own throat, but he didn't set about that in quite the right way, so he's alive still, as you can see."
Wingfield drew a long breath of something like relief. The torturing suspense of the last few moments was at an end.
"And where is Mrs. Dering?" he spoke in a quiet, mechanical voice; and Johnstone felt angered by his callousness.
"We've just sent her back into the next house," he answered curtly, "and made her take the Hinton children with her. For—well, it often is so in such cases, you know—the presence of his wife seems positively to distress Mr. Dering; besides, the nurse and I can do, and have done, all that is possible."
"And have you no clue to what has happened? Has Dering been able to give no explanation of this—this—horrible business?"
Johnstone shook his head. "Of course he can't speak. He will never speak again. He wrote a few words to his wife, but they amounted to nothing save regret that he had bungled the last half of the affair."
"And what do you yourself think?"
Wingfield spoke calmly and authoritatively. He had suddenly become aware, during the last few moments, that he was talking to a medical man.
"I haven't had time to think much about it;" the tone was rough and sore. "Mr. Dering seems to have come into a large sum of money, and such things have been known to upset men's brains before now."
"Still, he might write something of consequence, now that this gentleman has come," interposed the inspector.
But when Wingfield, standing by that which he now knew was indeed his friend, watched the painful, laboured moving of the pencil across the slate which had been hurriedly fetched some two hours before from the young Hintons' nursery, all he saw, traced again and again, were the words:
"Look after Louise. Look after Louise ..." and then at last: "I mean to die. I mean to die. I mean to die."
"Yes; there; wives be such a provoking class of society, because though they be never right, they be never more than half wrong."—The TranterinUnder the Greenwood Tree.
"Yes; there; wives be such a provoking class of society, because though they be never right, they be never more than half wrong."—The TranterinUnder the Greenwood Tree.
The fact that it was Mrs. Rigby's Silver Wedding Day, and that she was now awaiting her only brother who was to be the fourth at the dinner she and her husband, the respected Town Clerk of Market Dalling, were giving in honour of the event, appeared to her no reason why she should sit in her parlour with hands idle in her lap. There was a large work-basket on a table close to her elbow, and with quick, capable fingers she was engaged in mending a pillow-case.
It was late June, and Mrs. Rigby sat by the widely open French windows which gave access to her garden—one of those fragrant walled gardens which still embellish the rear of the High Street in a very typically English market town.
Now and again the work would drop between her hands, and lie unheeded on her knee, while she looked out, focussing her dark, bright eyes on the distant figure of a woman who sat in a summer-house situated at the extreme end of the garden; and as Mrs. Rigby gazed thoughtfully at this, her other wedding guest, her whole face would soften—so might a mother look at a daughter whom instinct prompted her to love, and reason to condemn as foolish.
And yet the sitting figure was that of a contemporary of Mrs. Rigby, being, as a matter of fact, a certain Matilda Wellow, who had been her bridesmaid twenty-five years ago to-day, and who was now, in more than one sense of the term, the most substantial spinster of Market Dalling.
The sound of the door behind her quietly opening and shutting made Mrs. Rigby turn round, and a moment later she was looking up at a tall, straight, still young-looking man, who, clad in evening dress, stood smiling down at her. He was David Banfield, her half-brother.
"Why, you've put on all your war-paint!" she exclaimed in half-pretended dismay. "Didn't you know that there was only Matilda Wellow coming?"
"I don't know that I thought anything about it," he answered, more gaily than his sister was now in the habit of hearing him speak. "I dressed out of compliment to you, Kate, and because—well, I've got into the way of it lately. But pray don't let Matt think that he must needs follow my example!"
Then he sat down by Mrs. Rigby, and gazed out with quick, sensitive appreciation at the old walled garden.
"You're a wonderful gardener, Kate," he said suddenly.
"There's a lot of nonsense talked now about gardening," she said drily. "With the grand ladies you see such a lot of, Dave, it's just a passing fad."
Her brother made no answer; he looked down at her with uncritical and yet dissatisfied eyes. She was a handsome woman, and even now only forty-six, and yet she managed to convey an impression of age. This was partly owing to her unsuitable dress, for Mrs. Rigby was wearing a dark blue silk gown, chosen, not only to grace her silver wedding day, but also with a view to being her best dress during the coming autumn and winter.
Kate Rigby loved her half-brother, David Banfield, as only a childless woman can love the creature to whom she has stood for long years in the place of mother. David was twelve years younger than herself, and, with one exception, he had never caused her a moment's real unhappiness or unease. The exception, however, had been paramount, for with him had been connected Mrs. Rigby's only taste of sharp pain and sorrow, and, worse still, to such a woman as herself, of disgrace.
The young man's marriage to an Irish singer, which had taken place without his sister's knowledge, had proved disastrous. Rosaleen Tara—to give her the stage name by which her charming rendering of the old national ballads had made her widely known—had never liked, or been suited to, life as led at Market Dalling; and to make matters worse, she was a Roman Catholic.
After a few years' unsatisfactory married life, and the birth of one child, a girl, Mrs. David Banfield had returned, with her husband's grudging consent, to the musical stage. Then, on the very day Banfield had been expecting his wife home for a short holiday, there had come from her a letter telling him shortly, bluntly, cruelly, that she had been unfaithful to her marriage vow, and that she hoped he would forget her.
Had he forgotten her? No. It had only been owing to his sister's urgency, and to Matthew Rigby's more measured advice, that Banfield had at last consented to take the step of divorcing his wife.
This step Mrs. Rigby had not only never regretted, but—and in this she was more fortunate than her husband—no doubt had ever crossed her mind of its having been the wisest thing for her brother's happiness and peace. But Matthew Rigby, cautious member of a cautious profession, had learned very early in his married life the futility of disagreeing with the wife with whom Providence had blessed him.
Now Banfield lived in solitary state with his little girl, his household managed by the child's nurse, an old Irishwoman, who, if devoted to the child, was incapable of managing such a decorous household as should have been that of the Brew House.
Any day, any hour, Mrs. Rigby would have bartered her personal happiness for that of her half-brother, and yet the two seldom met—and they met almost daily—without the saying on her part of something likely either to wound or to annoy him.
"I suppose Rosy is well? I thought you meant sending the child in to see me to-day?"
"Didn't she come?" A look of worry and anger crossed Banfield's dark, mobile face. "I can't think what prevented it, unless—well, there's been rather an upset at the Brew House, and perhaps Mary Scanlan didn't like to go out."
"I heard there had been an upset," observed his sister drily, "for baker told cook. He said your housekeeper turned the younger maid, old Hornby's daughter, out of the house last night, and that the girl could be heard crying all down the street."
Mrs. Rigby let her work fall unheeded on the floor; quite unconscious of her action she clasped her hands tightly together.
"David! How long is this sort of thing to go on?" she asked, in a low, tense voice. "It's the talk of the whole town, and it can't be good for your child."
"But what would you have me do?" He had hoped that to-day—his sister's silver wedding day—his domestic trials would be forgotten, or, at any rate, not mentioned. "I can't dismiss Mary Scanlan now—she must stay on till Rosy goes to school. That won't be for very long, for, as you know, I promised"—he averted his face as he spoke—"to send the child to a convent school as soon as she was twelve years old."
The idea that her brother, the wealthy, highly-thought-of brewer of Market Dalling, should confess himself worsted by the old and ill-tempered Irishwoman, who, together with little Rosy, had been his wife's—his unfaithful wife's—only legacy to him, was horrible to his sister.
Even now, when bitter, disconnected thoughts crowded one on another, Mrs. Rigby, half-unconsciously, evoked in her mind the strong personality of the one human being who ever really "stood up" to her. She had had the notion, so curiously common in England, that your Irishwoman is invariably slatternly, untruthful, and good-natured; but in Mary Scanlan she had found a human being as scrupulously neat, truthful, and high-minded as herself, while at the same time far more ill-tempered, and equally determined to have her own way.
While Mrs. Rigby was allowing a flood of very bitter thoughts to surge up round her, David Banfield was watching her face, and awaiting her next words with some anxiety.
But when Kate Rigby at last spoke, she seemed to have forgotten the immediate question under discussion.
"I suppose," she said slowly, "that you have never thought, Dave, that there might be a simple way out of your difficulties?"
"You mean that I might marry again? Well, Kate, yes—I have thought of it. I suppose there's no man, situated as I have been these last four years, but thinks of a second marriage as a way out; but—but, apart from other considerations, I don't feel as if I could bring myself to do it."
"And why not, pray?" asked Mrs. Rigby in a low voice.
"Well, it's difficult to explain the way I look at it. Of course, no one can answer for another, and yet, Kate, if anything happened to Matt, I don't see you marrying again——?"
David Banfield was aware that he had not chosen a very happy simile with which to point his meaning, and perhaps, in his heart of hearts, he hoped that what he had said would put an end to a painful discussion. But any such hope was destined to be grievously disappointed, for his sister, with suddenly heightened colour, turned on him very sharply.
"Don't talk nonsense!" she exclaimed. "I'm an old woman, and you're a young man!" and she set back her vigorous, powerful shoulders.
"You know very well that if Matthew had dared to treat me as you were treated by Rosal——" something in her brother's face caused his wife's name to die away on her lips—"I should have felt myself free to do exactly what suited me best! Surely, when you go out among your grand county friends, you must meet nice young ladies who would be only too pleased to become Mrs. David Banfield, and to step into such a home as the Brew House?"
Mrs. Rigby looked eagerly, furtively, at her brother.
The way in which he had been welcomed, to a certain extent absorbed, in the rather dull county society round Market Dalling, had been, to his sister, a source of mingled pride and jealousy, the more so that it had begun in the days of his pretty wife, whose modest professional fame had preceded her, and made her a welcome addition to county gatherings and dinner-parties. Then had come the great break of the war, and in South Africa Banfield had been naturally thrown with the landowners of his own part of the world.
So it was that during the first few months which had followed on his return home, Mrs. Rigby had fully expected her brother to make another, maybe as disastrous a matrimonial experiment as before, and in a class which was as little his own as that of his Irish wife had been.
But time had gone on, and David Banfield had shown no disposition to make a second marriage, either in the county set, or in the little town world of Market Dalling, where the Rigbys themselves lived and had their important being.
"Kate—you don't understand," he said at last, and, even as he uttered the words, they seemed to him painfully inadequate. "In fact, you neverdidunderstand"—there came a sudden touch of passion into his voice, and he got up and walked up and down the room—"how I felt—how for the matter of that I still feel—about Rosaleen. But for the war—but for the getting clear away—I don't know what I should have done! Once, when I was out there in a little out-of-the-way station, I saw an old bill with her name on it, put up, of course, before I met her, when she was touring in South Africa. Well, I can tell you one thing—if we had been back in the days when a soldier could get killed so much more easily than he can now, you would never have seen me again. For days and days I couldn't get her out of my mind—she's never out of my mind now——"
Mrs. Rigby was frightened, almost awed, not so much by the violence of his feeling, as by the outspoken expression of that feeling.
She got up and walked quickly to him.
"Perhaps I understand more than you think," she said in a moved voice, "but now, David, you must turn your back on all that. For good or evil, it's over and done with, and your duty is to your child. I won't say a word against Mary Scanlan,—I know she's been a faithful servant to you,—but wouldn't it be better for Rosy if you had someone who could look after the house, as well as after her? Even you admit that you cannot go on at the Brew House as you've been doing lately. I know you can't feel to anyone else as you felt to—to Rosaleen, but surely it would be best for the child, to say nothing of yourself, to have some kind, nice woman about the place, instead of one who's only a servant after all."
"Of course, it would be better," he said sombrely. "Don't you think I know that? But where am I to find the 'nice, kind woman'? As for the girls I meet, it's out of the question."
As he spoke, he unconsciously glanced round the room in which he and his sister were standing. Mrs. Rigby had not inherited the good taste which had distinguished her Banfield forefathers. The Brew House was full of fine old furniture, furniture which some of the young brewer's "grand" friends envied him; but that which the Rigbys had gradually accumulated had the mean and yet rather pretentious commonness which belonged to the period in which they had married.
"There's one whom you've never thought of, but who often thinks of you," said Mrs. Rigby, her voice sinking to a whisper.
Banfield looked at his sister attentively. His fastidious mind passed in review the various young women who composed the little society of Market Dalling. He regarded them all with indifference, rising in some cases to positive dislike, and since his matrimonial misfortunes he had, as far as was possible, avoided every kind of social gathering held in his native place.
"I don't know whom you mean," he said at last with some discomfiture. "In the old days you were always apt to fancy that the girls were after me, and I can't say that you ever gave them much encouragement,"—he added with a rather clumsy attempt at playfulness.
"The person I have in my mind," persisted Mrs. Rigby, "isn't exactly a girl; she's just what we were talking about—a nice, kind woman—and you never seem to mind meeting her."
"Do you—can you possibly mean——"
"—Matilda Wellow? Yes, of course I do. It's astonishing to me, it's even surprising to Matthew, that you've never noticed how much she likes you. Why, she's the only person in Market Dalling who ever takes any trouble about little Rosy, or who ever gives the child anything; Rosy always calls her Auntie Tiddy."
"Matilda Wellow?" he repeated, honestly bewildered. "Why, of course I like her, and think well of her, but I've never thought of her—and don't believe she's ever thought of me, Kate—in that way!"
"Don't you?" she said drily. "There's none so blind as those who won't see."
Then, prompted by a shrewd instinct, she remained quite silent, and withdrew her anxious gaze from her brother's face.
Only to-day Banfield had received a letter from South Africa which had sorely tempted him to throw up everything and make a home in the country which, perhaps unfortunately for himself, held none of the glamour of the unknown. As a matter of fact, the letter was now in his pocket, and he felt guiltily aware of the angry pain with which his sister would regard the offer, especially if she guessed how tempting was its effect on his imagination.
But during their strange conversation he had realised, as he had never done before, that there were only two ways open to him—either to go away and make a new life, or to attempt some such solution of his troubles as that which his sister had just proposed to him.
So it was that during those moments of tense silence Matilda Wellow assumed in David Banfield's mind the importance of an only alternative. Perhaps the very fact that the young man was so familiar with her personality, while always regarding her as a contemporary of his sister, made it easier for him to come to a sudden decision.
To another important fact—never forgotten for a moment by Mrs. Rigby—namely, that Miss Wellow was the wealthiest spinster in Market Dalling, Banfield gave no thought, and it certainly played no part in his hurried, anxious self-communing.
"I confess," he said at last, "that this is a new idea to me—but that's no reason why it should be a bad idea. And if you really believe that it would be better for Rosy, and that Miss Wellow would not—" he hesitated awkwardly, "think it strange of me, I will do as you advise, Kate. But you must let me take my own time. Perhaps when she's heard what I've got to say, she won't feel about it as you believe she's likely to do. I cannot pretend that I—well, that I—" his lips refused to form the word—to him the infinitely sacred word—of love.
Mrs. Rigby was bewildered, awed into deep joy. No piece of good fortune which could have befallen herself would have given her so acute a feeling—it almost amounted to pain—of passionate relief, and David Banfield, dimly gathering that it was so, felt exceedingly moved. Surely it was worth almost anything in the way of self-sacrifice to have brought such a look to his sister's face?
They both moved more closely to one another and she, so chary of caress, put her arms round his neck.
"I'm quite sure," she spoke with a catch in her voice, "quite, quite sure that you will never regret it! After all, life does get smoothed out, doesn't it? I'll tell you something about myself that I've never told anybody. Before Matthew came along, there was someone else I loved—loved, maybe, just as dearly as you loved Rosaleen."
"I know," said her brother, wincing at the sound of his late wife's name, "you mean Nat Bower?"
"Why, how did you ever guess that?" she asked, surprised.
"Oh! he used to take me walks when I was a kid, and he always talked about you."
Had Mrs. Rigby left the matter there, she would have been a wiser woman, but something prompted her to draw a moral.
"And don't you think I'm glad now?" she cried. "Think of what that poor fellow has become, and what Matthew is now!"
But this was too much for David Banfield.
"I don't think that's fair!" he exclaimed. "What you ought to say is—'Think of what that poor fellow might have become if he had married me!' I don't believe any man could have helped going straight with you, Kate. If I'd been more like you——"
Then, to the young man's relief, his brother-in-law, Matthew Rigby, came into the room, with a smile on his thin lips, a joke on his tongue.
Mrs. Rigby went out into the garden. "Matilda!" she cried. "Tiddy dear, come in! Matt is here. Dinner will be ready in a minute."
But as the two women met, and together walked down the path, the hostess gave her guest no hint of the good fortune which lay in wait for her—indeed, in spite of, or perhaps because of, her moment of softening, she was sharply, almost cruelly, intolerant of Miss Wellow's sentimental references to that ceremony of which they were about to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary.
And now the Silver Wedding festivity was drawing to a close.
The dinner, in its old-fashioned way, had been really excellent, for Kate Rigby was a notable housewife; but not even that fact, nor the equally excellent champagne—for Matthew Rigby was too shrewd a man to drink bad wine—had had the effect of brightening the little party, and a certain constraint now sat on the four people who were linked so closely together.
The host, a man of equable temperament, felt faintly uncomfortable; as he looked from one to the other, he told himself that something was wrong.
His brother-in-law was certainly oddly unlike himself, yet surely David Banfield was too sensible, and by this time too well accustomed to his sister's ways, to have taken offence at anything she might have said concerning the well-worn subject of Brew House domestic difficulties. Mrs. Rigby was also unnaturally silent, and during the long course of the meal she uttered none of the sharp pungent sayings with which she generally enlivened each one of her husband's repasts and which, it must be admitted, never to him lost their savour. Last, but not least, Miss Wellow, whose flowered muslin gown was as much too youthful as that of her hostess was too old, seemed more sentimental and more foolish than usual.
Mr. Rigby told himself with much satisfaction that his Kate had certainly worn better than Tiddy Wellow. And yet——? Yet, twenty-five years ago, Tiddy had been such a pretty girl! Soft and round, with dewy brown eyes and pink dimpled cheeks. She still had the appealing, inconsequent manner which, so charming in a girl, is apt to be absurd in a woman—and then she had grown stout! Mr. Rigby liked a woman to have a neat trim figure—his Kate had kept hers—but Tiddy. Alas! Tiddy had not been so fortunate.
So it was that Mr. Rigby paid poor Miss Wellow but little attention, regarding her with a curious mixture of affectionate contempt and respect, the former due to his knowledge of her character, and the latter to his knowledge of her very considerable fortune.
Even to such a man as Matthew Rigby,—that is, to a man whose profession implies the constant hearing of family secrets, and the coming across of strange, almost inconceivable human occurrences,—the melancholy domestic story of David Banfield remained painfully vivid. On him had fallen all the arrangements which had finally resulted in the divorce, and, unlike his wife, he had sometimes doubted the wisdom of what he and she had brought about, for Banfield, left to himself, would never have severed the legal tie between himself and the mother of his child.
Even now, during the course of his Silver Wedding dinner, Matthew Rigby wondered uneasily whether his wife's constrained silence, and his brother-in-law's odd, abstracted manner, meant that any tidings had been received of the woman who had now so completely passed out of their lives. But Mr. Rigby was compelled to bide his time. He knew that whatever explanation there was would be given to him once he and Kate were alone together.
Sure enough, when the two men joined the ladies in the now twilit sitting-room, the hostess lost no time in unceremoniously turning her brother and Miss Wellow out into the garden.
And then, at once, Matthew Rigby realised that something of real importance and moment had indeed occurred. For the first time since the great day when her brother's divorce had become an absolute fact, Mrs. Rigby seemed inclined to be soft and tender in her manner to the man who, she would have been the first to admit, had been to her the most admirable of husbands.
There are certain human beings, men perhaps, more than women, who use those they love as princes of old used their whipping boys, and among these human beings Mrs. Rigby could certainly have claimed a high place. Matthew Rigby was, therefore, the more surprised, even, perhaps, a little relieved, when he noted the unwonted tenderness with which she slipped her arm through his; it couldn't be anything so very bad after all!
"I don't suppose I need tell you, Matt, what has happened—or what is just going to happen—to our David and Tiddy Wellow?" and she nodded her head significantly towards the two figures which were now disappearing into the rustic arbour, which, erected by Mrs. Rigby's father-in-law, some thirty years ago, had always vexed her thrifty soul as an extravagant and useless addition to her garden; just now, however, she would have admitted that even arbours have their uses.
"Phew——!" exclaimed Matthew Rigby, and had it not been for the presence of his wife, he would certainly have sworn some decorous form of oath to express his extreme surprise. His pause prolonged itself, and then, with a certain effort, he exclaimed: "You're an even cleverer woman than I took you for, Kate, and that's saying a good deal!"
Mrs. Rigby turned and looked at him steadily. Their heads were almost on a level, but even she could guess nothing from his expression. It was his tone, rather, that jarred on her very true contentment.
"Surely you think it's the best thing that could happen to him?" she asked, a note of wistful anxiety in her voice. "Why, you and I have talked it over dozens of times!"
"I've heardyousay that you thought Matilda Wellow was the very woman for him, time and again, but—but I don't think, Kate, you ever heardmesay so. Still, I daresay it's all right; you generally know best,"—and the husband spoke with less irony than might have been expected. Twenty-five years of married life had taught him that, on the whole, his wife generally did know best.
"And surely you think so, too?" and she pressed more closely to him, "surely, Matt, you don't doubt that Matilda Wellow will make him a good wife, and be kind to the child?"
"Of course, I've no doubt about that," he answered reassuringly. "But still, she's not exactly the woman I'd have chosen for myself, and, after all, David was very fond of that queer, cold little hussy."
Mrs. Rigby was given no time for a reply, for her brother and Miss Wellow were coming slowly towards the house. She turned up the gas with a quick movement, and when they approached the window a glance at her future sister-in-law's face was enough. She saw that David had spoken, but she also saw that he had had the power—and unconsciously her respect for her brother grew—to stifle in his companion the mingled emotions his offer of marriage had called forth.
Not till the long dull evening was over, not till Banfield and Miss Wellow were actually bidding the Rigbys good-night, did the young man say the word which let loose Matilda's incoherent words of pathetic joy, of rather absurd amazement, at the good fortune which had befallen her.
Mrs. Rigby bustled out the two men into the hall.
"Matilda! Don't be silly!" she commanded.
But her words had no effect.
"It's just a dream—" gasped Miss Wellow, "just a dream come true! I never thought, Kate, to be so happy—and dear little Rosy, too——"
The other woman checked her harshly.
"Don't be a fool, Tiddy!" she said in a low, stern voice; "if my brother were a different kind of man he'd make you remember this to your dying day. You're lowering yourself—and you're not raising him. Don't go behaving like a pullet that's just laid her first egg!"
Then, seeing the other's face redden into a painful blush, "There, there, I shouldn't have said that, I know. But I can't bear to see a woman cheapen herself to a man!"
Banfield and his new betrothed walked arm in arm through the now sleeping town to the garden gate of the old Georgian house where Miss Wellow had now lived for some five years in solitary spinster state, and where her forefathers had led lives of agreeable, if monotonous, respectability for over a hundred years.
When they reached the gate, each hesitated a moment. Miss Wellow longed to ask him in, but like most maiden ladies possessed of means, she had a tyrant, a Cerberus in the shape of a faithful servant who would now be sitting up waiting sulkily for her mistress's return. Banfield was awkwardly debating with himself whether Matilda expected him to kiss her; on the whole he thought—he hoped—not.
But he was spared the onus of decision concerning this delicate point; for suddenly he felt himself drawn on one side, and there, in the deep shadow of the wall, his companion threw her arms about him, murmuring, with a catch in her voice, "I know you don't love me yet, but—but—David, I'llmakeyou love me," and the face turned up to his in the half darkness was full of eager yearning.
Feeling a traitor—to himself, to Rosaleen, above all, to the poor soul now leaning on his breast—Banfield bent and kissed her; then he turned on his heel, leaving her to make her way as best she could up the trim path leading to her front door.
Hardly aware of what he was doing, he walked away quickly, taking the opposite direction to that of the quiet lane of houses which would have led him straight home. Instead he struck out, instinctively, towards the flat open country, for he had a fierce, unreasoning desire to be alone—far away from all humankind. As he strode along, his eyes having become so fully accustomed to the dim light that he could see every detail of the white-rutted road gleaming between low hedges, Banfield's feeling of bewilderment, even of horror, grew and grew, making him feel physically cold in the warm, scented night.
For the first time there swept over him that awful sense of unavailing repentance for the word said which might so well have been left unsaid, which most human beings are fated to feel at some time of their lives.
Not even over his divorce had he felt so desperate a passion of revolt, for that act, or so he had believed, was forced on him by Rosaleen herself. But to-night he realised that before doing what he had just done he had been free—free to remain free—and he now saw with a sense of impotent anger how deliberately he had given himself into slavery.
As he strode along, eager to escape from the material surroundings of his surrender, Banfield remembered each word of his talk with his sister, and so remembering, he was amazed at his own weak folly.
What were the trifling troubles connected with his Irish servant, Mary Scanlan, compared to those which lay before him?—to the awful knowledge that he was now the prisoner—henceforth the body and soul prisoner—of Matilda Wellow? How sluggish had been his imagination when he had thought of the woman, whose tears had but just now scalded his lips, as of a kind, unobtrusive lady housekeeper! He was now aware that there was another Matilda Wellow, of whom till to-night he had been ignorant, and it was this stranger who was demanding as a right, and indeed had the right to demand, that tenderness and devotion which he knew himself incapable of bestowing on any woman except on the elusive, cold-natured woman who had been his wife.
And then a strange thing happened to David Banfield.
The near image of Matilda Wellow faded, giving place to the distant, and yet in a spiritual and even physical sense poignantly present, personality of Rosaleen.
As far as was possible, Banfield till to-night had banished his wife's image from his emotional memory. But what he had just done—that is, his own lack of constancy—had the odd effect of making him feel lowered to the level to which those about him regarded Rosaleen as fallen. He told himself that now he and Rosaleen were quits—and deliberately he yielded to the cruel luxury of recollection.
His mind travelled back to the early days of their acquaintance, to the pretence at a "friendship" which on his side had so soon become overwhelming passion. Then had come his formal offer of marriage, and for a long time she had played with him, saying neither yes nor no. Then for a while he had flung everything to the winds in order to be with her—on any terms. He remembered with a pang of pain the trifling reasons which at last made her quite suddenly consent to become his wife. A quarrel with the manager of the concert company to which she then belonged, followed by a bad notice in the local paper of the town to which he, David Banfield, undeterred by more than one half-laughing refusal, had come to make what he intended should be a final offer—these, it seemed, had brought Rosaleen to the point of decision.
Even now, Banfield never heard the name of that little Sussex town without a leap of the heart, for it was there that had taken place their marriage, the quietest and least adorned of weddings, celebrated in a small, bare Roman Catholic chapel, the incumbent of which, a wise old man, had spoken to Banfield very seriously, asking him to give the young Irishwoman more time for thought, and impressing upon him the gravity of the promises which he, a Protestant, had consented to make concerning their future married life.
With regard to the latter, Banfield had been scrupulously honourable, going, indeed, out of his way to remind Rosaleen of her religious obligations, and at the time of the divorce acting, in the matter of their child's future education, according to the spirit rather than the letter of his promise....
With bent head and eyes fixed on the white road, David Banfield insensibly slackened his steps while his mind concerned itself with the five years he and Rosaleen had spent together at Market Dalling. They had been years of secret drama, on his part of almost wordless struggle for some kind of response to the passion which her mysterious aloofness—to so many men the greater part of a woman's attraction—evoked and kept alive in him.
He now remembered how during these years there had been minor causes of disagreement, trifling matters—or so he had considered them—to which Rosaleen attached far more importance than he had done.
The constant criticism and interference of his half-sister, the dislike and jealousy of those town folk who regarded themselves as having a right to the close friendship and intimacy of David Banfield's young wife, these were the things—forming such unimportant asides to the course of that hidden struggle—which Rosaleen had brought forward when begging her husband, with passionate energy, to allow her to go back to her profession.
But to-night, the grey fear with which he now regarded his own future life at Market Dalling brought to David Banfield a sudden understanding of what Rosaleen had felt, caged, as he had caged her, in the little town to which he was now reluctantly turning his laggard steps, and which had been, till so few years ago, the centre of his universe.
He told himself that had he had the courage, had he been possessed of the necessary imagination, to make another life for himself and for her, none of this need have happened.
But why torture himself uselessly? He and Rosaleen had now drifted as far apart as a man and a woman can drift. What he had done to-night was in its way as irrevocable as what she on her side had done—nay more, the very fact that he had Matilda Wellow so completely at his mercy made Banfield feel, as a less simple-hearted, generous-minded man would never have felt, how impossible it was for him to draw back....
While returning to what had now become his place of bondage, David Banfield made a determined effort to dam the mental floodgates through which had run so strange a stream of violent revolt and emotion, and he was so far rewarded that almost at once something occurred which had the effect of bracing him up, of hardening him in his determination to do what he believed to be right.
As he walked down the silent, shuttered High Street at the end of which stood the Brew House, he saw that his hall light had not been extinguished; and as he opened the front door, he was confronted with the spare form and the gaunt, though not ill-visaged countenance of Mary Scanlan, the elderly Irishwoman who had for so long waged triumphant battle with her master's sister, Mrs. Rigby. Utterly different as the two women were, they yet, as Banfield sometimes secretly told himself, not without a certain sore amusement, had strong points of resemblance the one with the other.
Impelled by some obscure instinct that thus was he certain to be strengthened in the course of action to which he had just pledged himself, Banfield invited the woman into the dining-room, which had been, since his first wife's departure, used by him as living and eating room in one.
Very deliberately he lit the gas, and then turned and faced his housekeeper. "I think it right that you should be among the first to know," he said, "that I am going to be married again—to Miss Wellow."
There was a moment's pause. Banfield expected either a word of sullen acquiescence or an outburst of anger; he had known Mary Scanlan in both moods, but now she surprised him by assuming a very disconcerting attitude.
"If that's the case," she said slowly, twisting and untwisting a corner of the black apron that she was wearing, "I will be getting ready little Rosy's clothes, for you will be sending her to the convent rather sooner, I reckon, than you meant to do. I make no doubt the nuns will let me stay there for a week or two till the child gets accustomed to the place—that is, if you have no objection, Mr. Banfield?"
Banfield looked at the woman in some perplexity.
"But I've no thought of sending Rosy to school yet!" he exclaimed—then added: "Of course, I mean to keep my promise to her mother, but—but the child's a little thing yet—too young to go to school."
Mary Scanlan was the only woman to whom Banfield ever spoke of his wife, and Mrs. Rigby would have been amazed indeed had she known how often these allusions and semi-allusions were made, for to Kate, much as he trusted and respected his sister, Banfield had never till that day bared his heart.
"I am going to ask you," he went on, "to stay in my service, simply to look after the child. I know well, Mary, how devoted you are to my little girl, and how good you've been to her. When Miss Wellow has become—" he hesitated awkwardly, and then with a certain effort, uttered the words "my wife—she will, of course, take charge of the house, and I suppose she will bring her own servants with her. I shall no longer have any need for a housekeeper—but I know she will be only too glad if you will stay on with Rosy."
"I don't think I can do that, sir."
Banfield moved uneasily. Mary Scanlan almost invariably called him "Mr. Banfield"; it was one of the woman's many Irish idiosyncrasies which irritated his sister.
"I don't think I can stay on here, sir," repeated Mary Scanlan in a low, hesitating voice. "I don't hold with a man, a gentleman I mean, having two wives. I can't say a word of excuse for my poor Miss Rosaleen—I beg your pardon, sir, I mean Mrs. Banfield. I know she behaved very wickedly and strangely, but still you see, Mr. Banfield, to my thinking and according to my holy religion, she's the woman who owns you, sir, and no one else can ever take her place."
"I know, I know," he said hastily. "But Mary, why don't you consult your priest? If you explain the circumstances to him, he may take a different view of the matter to what you do."
"No, that he wouldn't!" exclaimed Mary Scanlan, with a touch of her old passionate temper, "and if he did, I shouldn't be said by him!"
She hesitated, and then in a low tone asked the strange question, made the amazing suggestion, "I suppose you wouldn't be after seeing Miss Rosaleen, Mr. Banfield? Not if I gave you her address?"
Banfield made a nervous movement of recoil.
"Mary," he said sternly, "you forget yourself!" and turning, left her in possession of the room.
How describe the days that followed?—short days full of intense joy and looking forward to Matilda Wellow, long days filled with perplexed misgiving and self-reproach to David Banfield.
Men and women of British birth generally prefer to conduct their courtships in the way that best suits themselves, but those whom Mrs. Rigby collectively dubbed as "foreigners" have long ago realised the advantage of having so important an episode of human life as that of betrothal "stage-managed" by someone more experienced in such matters than the two most interested.
Mrs. Rigby had no kind of sympathy with foreign fashion, and in theory thoroughly disapproved of the way in which the French, for instance, arrange their matrimonial affairs. But this engagement of her brother David Banfield and of Matilda Wellow was one of the supreme exceptions which prove a rule, and so she stage-managed every entrance, every exit, and, to pursue the analogy to its bitter end, every bit of "business" connected with the affair.
Her stern eyes, her rough tongue, kept the bride-elect in order, but her watchful fear lest Matilda should get on David's nerves before she became securely bound to him for ever had one curious effect; it made Banfield sorry for his betrothed, and caused him to feel more kindly to her than he would otherwise have done.
Then he was touched and surprised by Matilda's great loyalty to himself; he soon discovered that, far from discussing him with his sister, she often irritated the latter by her assumption that already she, Matilda, and he, David, had a joint life in which Kate Rigby played no part. This angered Mrs. Rigby keenly, and it is a pathetic fact that the only tears Matilda Wellow shed during the course of her engagement were caused by the woman who was her oldest friend, and to whom she was dimly aware that she owed her good-fortune.
Blinded by that most blinding of master passions, jealousy, Mrs. Rigby actually came to believe that her brother was now attached, in a far truer sense than he had been to Rosaleen, to the fond, foolish woman who was so soon to become his wife.
"He's getting quite silly about her," she observed angrily to her husband; "he goes up there every evening, however busy he may be, or however much I may want to have him here. And now he says he won't go to that good London tailor for his wedding clothes! It's clear he doesn't want to leave Tiddy—even for three days!"
But Mr. Rigby, as was his prudent wont when he disagreed with his wife, only looked at her, and thoughtfully wagged his head.
"Why don't you say something?" she asked crossly.
"Why should David go to London?" observed Mr. Rigby mildly. "He's a personable fellow; any tailor could fit David. If I were you, Kate, I'd let him be." But Kate, to her lasting sorrow, did not let David be.
Both her husband and even Matilda Wellow herself could have told Mrs. Rigby that it was in London that her brother had spent his honeymoon with his wife; but though she had been made vividly aware of the circumstance—for it was from there that the news of his hasty marriage had reached her—that fact would not have seemed to her any reason why David should not now do the right and proper thing by his second bride.
Thus it was owing to Mrs. Rigby that Matilda was at last roused to a sense of what was due to herself. Banfield, with some discomfiture, discovered that Miss Wellow would take it ill of him not to pay her the compliment of going to the London tailor for his wedding clothes—"and then," had observed his sister briskly, "you'll be able to bring Tiddy back something handsome in the way of jewellery; for that's a thing you owe not only to her, David, but also to yourself."
David Banfield, just arrived in London, stood in an hotel bedroom overlooking the trees in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Staring out at the leafy screen, which seemed to him so lacking in country freshness, there came to his mind poignant memories of a very different room and a very different outlook not half a mile away from where he stood, for he and Rosaleen had spent the first days of their married life in one of those vast hotels which, overlooking the Embankment and the river, are filled with light and air, as well as instinct with a certain material luxury which had pleased his young wife's taste more than his own.
With a quick movement he pushed up the old-fashioned guillotine window as far as it would go, and leaned out dangerously far; then he drew back sharply, feeling, as he now often felt when he was alone, that he was living through an unreal, a nightmare stage of his life, one which was bound to come sooner or later to an abrupt end, but which now must be lived through....
With unseeing eyes and unthinking mind he walked across to the shadowed corner where had been placed his portmanteau. Slowly, indifferently, he turned the key in the lock and raised the lid,—then quickened into alert, painful attention.
Lying on the top of its neatly folded contents was an envelope so placed that it could not but attract his attention, and on it was written—in the sprawling, unformed handwriting which was, perhaps, the only marked betrayal of Mary Scanlan's early lack of education—the one word "Important."
At once there leapt into Banfield's mind the certain knowledge of what the envelope contained. If he opened it, there most surely would he find his wife Rosaleen's address. It was this, then, that the Irishwoman had in her thoughts when she had asked him the unseemly question to which he had given so short and stern an answer.
But Mary Scanlan had not understood the type of man with whom she had to deal.
As he stood there, longing with a terrible longing to verify his belief, telling himself, with a leap of the heart, that, if he were not mistaken, then Rosaleen must be living alone, for if this had not been so the old servant would never have thought of trying to bring them together again—the claims of others, especially those of the woman from whom he had only parted that morning, became paramount. He told himself that, from the point of view of those who loved him, and whom he respected, it was his duty to destroy unopened the envelope lying before him.
Banfield turned away, and once more walked across to the window; and then his agitation suddenly became puerile in his eyes.
What the Irishwoman had regarded as important when packing his bag might well be a trifling matter, something wanted, maybe, for the child. The uncertainty seemed to steady his conscience;he felt that he must know.
Bending down, he took up the envelope; the flap was open, and out of it there slipped into his hand a shabby little card on which was printed: