"Graceful as an ivy boughBorn to cling and lean,Thus she sat to sing and sew....When she raised her lustrous eyesA beast peeped at the door."—Christina Rossetti.
Mr. Askew stood at the window, watching the figure of the prospective bridegroom limping down the road. He turned his mild eyes back to the two ladies within the room with something like wonder in their depths.
"Miss Virginia, I congratulate you," he said almost reverently. "You have indeed found a generous husband."
"You think—you are of opinion—that his generosity is exceptional?" faltered Mrs. Mynors.
"Exceptional? But, mydearmadam, it is unheard of! Strong indeed must be the attachment! He told me," added the kind old man, with a smile of appreciation at the bride-elect, "that it was a case of love at first sight. Miss Virginia has made a conquest worth boasting of!"
Virginia stood gazing anxiously at the speaker. She longed to ask if he was quite sure that her future husband was sane; but such a question must appear too eccentric for her to venture upon it. Fortunately, the next words of the lawyer practically answered it.
"And such a grasp of business! Such a fine, keen intelligence! He tells me that he runs his estate at a profit, has all these new intensive culture ideas, and plenty of capital to carry them out. A fine fortune, indeed! One wonders how it chances that such a man has remained so long a bachelor!"
Mrs. Mynors bridled, but said nothing. Virginia absorbed the sense of the opinion just given with considerable relief. The information respecting Gaunt's scientific cultivation of his land interested her. Her own father, living on his hereditary acres, had been in like manner devoted to the soil. At Lissendean, however, the land had starved to supply the constantly increasing demands of the mistress of the house; and the shadow of the approaching, inevitable bankruptcy had paralysed all planning, and embittered the premature illness and death of a chivalrous and simple gentleman.
The thought that this free life, of tramping over fields and through spinneys, of riding across one's own acres, and watching the response of the earth to the hand of man, might once more be hers, went far to reconcile the new Andromeda to her lot. The manner and appearance of her suitor had rather puzzled than hurt her. He had pleaded solitude and boorishness as a reason for his extraordinarily abrupt tactics. If he atoned for his surprising rudeness in the matter (for instance) of her mother's ring by being good to his wife, and allowing her to have Pansy to stay with her, then she might be so nearly happy that she need waste little regret upon her own action in shutting upon her youth the gate of dreams. Softly she stole from the room, leaving her mother still in talk with Mr. Askew, finding out all she could as to the extent of her son-in-law's means; and privately speculating as to how far it would be prudent to exceed the miserable allowance which he proposed to make her.
Virginia went upstairs to Pansy's room to console the child for her disappointment in not having seen her future brother. Shyly the elder sister, when Gaunt was taking leave, had suggested a moment's visit to the little invalid. She had been curtly refused. He had barely time in which to catch his train to London. By way of comfort, Virgie now enlarged upon the big, beautiful garden at Omberleigh, wherein, of course, Pansy would ere long find herself installed. Eagerly the child noticed and remarked upon the beautiful ring which her sister wore. She had not previously seen it, and was naturally kept in ignorance of its somewhat humiliating history.
"I wonder what else he will send you, Virgie," said the child eagerly. "I expect that before long lovely wedding presents will begin to come. What dress shall you buy to be married in, darling?"
"I shan't buy any," was the calm reply. "We are to be married with nobody there but mother and Tony, at ten o'clock in the morning, and I shall have to travel back to Omberleigh afterwards. I shall just wear my frock that you are so fond of, with the chiffon tunic, and take a dust-coat to church with me."
Pansy was inclined to be disappointed, but Virginia showed her how impossible it was for her to spend money which they had not got, and how far more honourable she felt it to be going to her marriage in things which had been paid for.
Busy days they were for Virgie, for she had to engage a good, competent servant for Laburnum Villa, and also to make arrangements with their doctor for Pansy to try the treatment he had always been so eager to recommend. Everything had to be so ordered that it might be fully in train by the wedding day, that her mother should not feel too much inconvenienced by the departure of her devoted maid-of-all-work.
Perhaps the most difficult task of all that fell to the bride was the writing of her news to Miriam Rosenberg. Long did she sit with the tip of her penholder laid thoughtfully on her lip, her eyes gazing gravely forth, but seeing nothing. She felt the extraordinary circumstances needed some handling. She must try to put things in their most favourable light without actually violating truth. And it was only a few days before her day of doom that she finally achieved the following:
My dearest Mims,
I am writing a line to tell you a piece of news which will, I think, astonish you. I am going to be married! More surprising still, I am going to be married next Tuesday! It sounds wild, I know, considering that when I was with you there was no such idea; but it is not quite as sudden as it seems, for Mr. Gaunt is a very old friend, and knew mother before I was born. He is being most incredibly good, and is to provide for mother, Pansy and Tony. Is it not wonderful? Like a story in a book. He lives in Derbyshire, and has a big estate, so I shall be in the country, as in old days—and you know how I love a country life. When we are settled down, you must come and stay with us.
Nobody is invited to the wedding, Mr. Gaunt having no near relative. It is to be early in the morning, with only mother and Tony present, as we have a long way to go afterwards.
I send you much love, and I shall never forget all your goodness to me.—Your constant friend,
Virginia Mynors.
For the two days which followed the despatch of this letter Virginia lived in secret suspense. She did not really believe that there was any likelihood that Perseus, in the handsome person of Gerald Rosenberg, would arrive to unchain her from her rock; yet the tiny chance that he might fought and struggled within her. Each time the postman passed she felt her heart lift in her side. Each time the bell rang she wondered whether there might not be a tall figure waiting on the other side of the door.
As might have been expected, no such thing happened. A letter came from Mims by return of post, full of congratulation and excitement, and stating that a consignment of wedding presents had been despatched. In fact, Mr. Rosenberg, senior, was so transported with gratitude to Virginia for refraining from becoming his daughter-in-law that he bestowed on her a set of ermine furs fit for a princess. Mims sent a mirror in a silver frame; Gerald a pendant.
Except for a silver cream-jug from Mr. Askew, these were the only presents the girl received. Tony and Pansy almost broke their hearts at being unable to give anything, until Mrs. Mynors, roused to most unexpected generosity, allowed them to go shares with her in pressing upon Virgie's acceptance some articles of her mother's silver toilet set—brush, comb, and so on.
Small time had the bride for reflection, until the dawn of the fatal day.
The rain had changed the weather. The heat was no longer great—in fact, the day was chilly and grey, with a gusty little wind which blew up the dust in sudden puffs.
The bride's toilette, of pale blue over white, was extremely pretty. As she stood in the drawing-room awaiting the fly which would drive her, her mother and Tony to the church, Mrs. Mynors thought she had never seen a more perfect picture of girlish fairness. Excitement and nervous trepidation had chased the pallor with which a sleepless night had invested her. Up to the last moment she had been at work upon this and that—rearranging her own room to accommodate the professional nurse who would be in charge of Pansy during her treatment, trying to think out and plan everything so exactly that her mother would not be able to upset it afterwards. It was not until nearly two o'clock in the morning that she finished her own packing, and lay down to the thoughts of unspeakable dread with which she now knew that she regarded her approaching marriage.
Since the day of Gaunt's visit her mother had hardly spoken to her. Her silence was not exactly hostile, but it was very wounding. It was as though she had suddenly discovered that her daughter was not the girl she took her to be; as if the poor child was abandoning her home and duties to make a rich marriage—leaving her mother to pine in the little villa, cut off from all her own set. There was nothing to take hold of, nothing that Virginia could plead against; it was just an atmosphere of coldness, of pained surprise, but it seemed to the depressed girl to be the last straw.
With her usual patience she shouldered the burden and bore it. She guessed, with her quick, sensitive sympathy, that perhaps it hurt mamma less to adopt this attitude. Her daughter was sacrificing herself to her family. To admit this stunning weight of obligation must, of course, be painful. Mamma always shrank from painful things. She had discovered this pose of hers as a kind of refuge from humiliation. Virgie accepted it meekly. Nevertheless, the tears which it wrung from her in the darkness of her last night at home were bitter, and could not be checked for a long time.
The knowledge that Gaunt was in the town, that he had arrived by the last train the previous night, and was putting up at the Ducal Arms near the station, seemed to render sleep impossible. She could not tell why. Not till five o'clock had struck was she compelled by mere exhaustion to close her eyes.
All her life Virginia had been a poor eater, and the least excitement was wont to deprive her of appetite. As a result of this, she had eaten, during the past ten days, barely enough to keep her alive. There was nobody to notice what she ate, or whether she took a sufficient quantity. As she had been under-nourished for the last two years, with the sole exception of her fortnight with the Rosenbergs, during great part of which mental agitation had made it difficult for her to eat, she was in a state of real debility. Wholly inadequate did she feel for what lay before her—the new beginning, the effort to understand the unknown being whom she was to marry, the settling into strange surroundings. Her weakness and discouragement were so profound that, by the time she had arisen, dressed for church, and passed through the sharp and biting agony of her parting from Pansy, she was reduced to a state of passive endurance.
All the way to church she talked feverishly, eagerly to Tony of what they would do in the future. She would pay his pocket money out of her own allowance. He was to join the school O.T.C. at once, so that he might go into camp at the end of term....
In such plans as these lay her only anodyne.
Her mother was reduced to complete silence. Mrs. Mynors—in her own opinion—was the interesting and tragic heroine of this occasion. She, in all her beauty, all her desolation, had been passed by in favour of her inexperienced, immature daughter. The pathos of her position—left in Laburnum Villa while Virginia went to take up a place in county society—flooded her with self-pity. Never had she felt capable of such an intensity of emotion as upon this day, when she was carried helpless to church to give her daughter away. Never had she come so near to being primally and brutally elementary as at the moment when the carriage stopped at the church door, and Gaunt came forward, greeting her with:
"Good morning, my mother-in-law!"
She drew in her breath with a sound like a moan; but in a flash she had seen that she must make no manifestation. The time for that had gone by. As she moved up the church, side by side with her daughter, she realised two things, sharply and simultaneously. One, that she could and ought to have prevented this marriage; the other, that it was now too late.
What was Gaunt's plan she could not exactly know. If it was simply to mortify her, then she could not see why he should be unkind to Virgie. Yet she distrusted and feared him; and she had given no warning to the simple creature at her side, going like a lamb to the slaughter, blind to all life's mysterious issues, blind to the sinister motive which her mother so clearly saw behind Gaunt's eccentric marriage. For Virginia, the old truth held good, that at the actual moment one ceases to realise what is happening. The service struck her with a sense of detachment. She heard it with interest, almost for the first time. The vows were, indeed, comprehensive. One had, however, the comforting knowledge that the vowing was mutual. He promised things as well as she. There was a curious consolation in the reflection that he vowed to love, cherish, and even worship his wife. There seemed nothing detached about his own participation in the rite. He grasped her fingers so strongly as to be almost painful as he vowed "to have and to hold."
And now it was done, and there was no more use in wondering whether one had been right or wrong.
The bare and unadorned service was quickly over. The elderly vicar read a short and platitudinous address to the newly married out of a small pastoral book. Gaunt took his wife's hand, placed it on his arm, and marched her into a stuffy, small vestry, wherein she was to write for the last time her name, Virginia Mynors.
She wrote it; and turning, fixed her troubled gaze upon her mother with an expression so bewildered, so lost, that it pierced even through the crust of egotism. Mrs. Mynors began to gasp hysterically, but, after a momentary fight for composure, managed to say, "Osbert, Osbert, I conjure you! Be good to her! Be good to my Virgie!"
"My dear mother-in-law, I promise you that Virgie shall have the treatment she deserves," was his reply. "Come, Mrs. Gaunt, we must be off, if we are to catch the London train."
Virginia was now quite numb. She took his arm because he offered it, and because there seemed nothing else to do. They were at the church door. She broke away from Gaunt to fling her arms round Tony. The boy was radiant, showing her with glowing eyes a sovereign which his new brother-in-law had just bestowed. The sight did more to encourage the bride than might be supposed. She kissed her mother next, finding it out of the question to give any parting message or direction, because the attempt to articulate would let loose a flood of feeling hardly complimentary to her husband.
Then she was in the carriage, alone with the man who was to walk through life at her side. Still the merciful numbness held her.
Gaunt, in an unconcerned way, said he thought they had better lunch at the Savoy, and she agreed, not knowing what he meant. He made one or two other trifling remarks concerning the disposal of her luggage, which awaited them at the station.
They found the train, and he put her in, walking away himself, and returning with the news that all the trunks were safe, and in the van. He laid upon her lap a pile of magazines and one or two novels.
"I hate talking in a train," he remarked. She could have loved him for such marvellous consideration.
He had a small bag, stuffed with legal-looking documents, which he diligently perused. Virginia, thus released momentarily from strain, lay back against the cushions. The breeze fluttered into the carriage, sweet with the breath of summer. She tried to rest, and not to think. It was impossible not to think, however. Her thoughts were glued, as it were, to the consideration of this man to whom she was so strangely tied.
"He loved me at first sight. He guessed who I was. He got into communication with mother in order to be introduced. He suggested marriage there and then. When will he begin to woo me? What will he tell me? What shall I answer? Shall I be able to help flinching, from letting him see how abjectly afraid I am?"
He did not put her to the test. Was it possible that he divined her exhaustion, and respected it?
She was still wondering when the non-stop express ran into the terminus.
He put her into a taxi while he went and looked after their baggage. Then he rejoined her, and directed the driver to the Savoy Hotel.
They secured a table near the window, whence could be seen the waters of the Thames, the endless movement of the traffic on the Embankment and the brilliant flowers of the public gardens.
The beauty of it revived Virgie a little. She ate some lunch, drank a glass of champagne, and began to make small, shy comments upon the scene, to which her husband listened tolerantly, but not as though interested. She reflected that she must seem to him altogether young and childish.
Her slender grace and charm drew many eyes. As Gaunt glanced about him, he was keenly conscious of this. Presently he leant back with the smile that his mother-in-law hated.
"Glad you are pleased," said he. "Make the most of it. You are going to be buried in the heart of the country from to-day onward."
She laughed lightly. "That will be no hardship," said she. "What I should not like would be to be buried in the heart of London. The walls in London seem as if they must fall down and crush you—so near together. Have you ever felt that?"
"I don't like London."
"Then that is one taste we share," said she thoughtfully, leaning back to survey him. "How strange that I should know so little of your tastes! We shall have to begin at the very beginning, shall we not?"
"The beginning of what?" asked Gaunt.
"Of acquaintanceship," she answered.
"Pardon me. I know you through and through. You have not a taste, a habit, nor an idea that I am not intimately acquainted with. Gives me an unfair advantage, does it not?"
"If it's true, it does indeed; but I don't think it is true," was her frank answer.
He gave something between a grunt and a laugh. "You are not competent to form an opinion," he replied, looking at his watch. "It is now five minutes to two," he went on, "and our train leaves St. Pancras at four. What will you do? I am going to have a smoke. Perhaps you would like to lie down and rest a while—eh?"
It was so exactly what she craved that she thought his sympathy wonderful. That he was dismissing her to solitude on her wedding day, while he smoked, did not occur to her. She thanked him quite eagerly, a maid was summoned, and she was shown into a room with a deliciously downy bed. The maid removed her hat, took off her shoes, drew the blinds, and left, promising to call her in plenty of time.
She could not sleep, but the silence and the recumbent posture helped her. She went down to the entrance hall after her rest, feeling much more able to endure the remainder of her journey than she had dared to hope.
"'Sit fast—dost fear?—The moon shines clear—Fleet goes my barb—keep hold!Fearst thou?'—'Oh, no!' she faintly said;'But why so stern and cold?'"—Scott.
Virgie awoke, so to speak, from her numbness in the train, somewhere between London and Derby.
She was sitting, with her pile of light literature and fashion papers, opposite the man who had married her, and who was to all appearance immersed in the folios of blue foolscap, which he was marking here and there with red pencil. The documents, so far as she could judge, were leases.
The motion of the train had lulled her into a short nap, and it seemed as if quite suddenly she was wide awake, and pinching herself to make sure that it was not all a dream. Here was a man who had, as it were, leaped at a girl, and married her in such hot haste that there was no time for reflection. One argued, one assumed, the strong feeling which made such behaviour credible. Yet now he sat, as a man twenty years married might sit, marking passages in a lease with red pencil, while his few hours' bride, in all her delicate loveliness, faced him, neglected, ignored.
Surely this was puzzling!
Had she but known, her own demeanour was much more surprising to him than his could be to her. He was wondering when an outburst of wounded vanity would come, how much longer she could refrain from comment upon his behaviour. Surely she must be piqued beyond endurance, she who imagined herself to have captured his heart at a glance, and was doubtless pondering the question of exactly what her conquest represented, in money, luxury, and pleasure.
His seemingly absorbed attention had, as a fact, hardly wandered from her for an instant since they met that morning; and the results of his observations were not according to his expectation. So far, she had not merely been pliant, she had seemed grateful for kindness. Of course he knew her to be badly frightened. At the Savoy, for a few minutes, under the influence of gay surroundings and champagne, there had been, as he thought, a glimpse of the real woman—the coquette incarnate. It had vanished, however, the moment he set his heavy hand thereon.
Now she sat before him in her Dresden china daintiness, a picture of luxury, carefully tended down to her very finger-nails. While she slept he had perused the features that moved him so vitally—the well remembered breadth of brow and pointedness of chin, the deep setting of the shadowy eyes, the lines of the throat, the base of which rose milky from its setting of misty chiffon.
As soon as she stirred, he returned to his blue foolscap. Now she was returning his compliment—studying him.
Reluctantly she found that experience was confirming the judgment she had formed instantaneously at Hertford House. She did not like her husband's face, and could hardly say why this was so, since in a virile, somewhat rough-hewn fashion, his features were good. She was just saying to herself, "It is the expression that is wrong; it must be the expression," when he raised his head, met her eyes, and smiled in the way she was learning to dislike.
"Well, don't you think I am an ideal husband?" he asked.
She answered his smile. "That remains to be seen," she countered.
"At least," he said, "I fulfil the one essential condition, don't I? The one thing needful for husbands?"
"What is that?"
"Why, a long purse, of course."
She coloured warmly, and showed, by downcast eye and close-pressed lips, how this wounded. She felt that she had nothing to say in reply, except a low, reproachful, "Oh!" in the shock of such an unkindness.
"Not very tactful of me, was it, to taunt you with the amiable weakness which has procured me the lifelong privilege of your society?"
"Amiable weakness?" she repeated vaguely.
"The woman's desire for physical comforts, luxury, and so on, at any cost."
"Oh," murmured Virgie, "I don't think—indeed, I'm sure you don't understand."
"No? We must discuss the matter at greater length; but as I told you this morning, I dislike talking in the train. We shall be at Luton in a minute, and I telegraphed for a tea-basket."
The train slowed down as he spoke. He rose, leaned from the window, and took the tray from the boy who was waiting on the platform.
Virginia poured out the tea, and dispensed the bread and butter and cake with a sinking heart.
Of all the things she had anticipated, unkindness from her newly made husband had been farthest from her thoughts. Her maiden terrors had concerned themselves in the opposite direction. She had feared demonstrative display of feeling which as yet she must be unable to reciprocate. His attitude froze her timid efforts to make friends. The remaining words that passed between them during the journey were negligible, except for once, when he looked up suddenly—they were passing a lonely stretch of moorland, and he had been gazing from the window—and said:
"So you think you will like living in the country?"
"I know I shall. I have always lived in the country," she replied.
"Not with me," was his comment, while a faint smile crossed his eyes.
"No. Not with you," was her gentle answer.
She wanted to speak to him, to tell him how well she meant to keep her new-made vows, that though her marriage was, as he must know, a marriage of convenience, she intended to do her duty to the utmost limit of her powers. But he said he did not like talking in the train; and her spirits were so exhausted that she dare not risk a breakdown. She remained, therefore, rapt in the silence which seemed the sole alternative, until they reached their journey's end.
A brougham awaited them, drawn by a pair of fine horses. There followed a drive of more than five miles through country which grew each moment wilder and more beautiful. They came at last to a pine wood, set among swelling uplands. A lodge gate here flanked the road, and as the lodge-keeper's child opened it, and touched his forelock, Virginia guessed that they were in their own domain.
The trees were so thick and dark as to produce a premature twilight. Through this they drove for the best part of a mile. The name of Omberleigh could be well understood. It was, indeed, a place of shadows. The house stood in the depths of the wood, so far as the side from which they approached was concerned. It was a Georgian house, straight and square, with a classic porch of grey stone, supported upon columns.
The house door stood open, and revealed a dark hall, somewhat untidy, and furnished with big black cupboards, surmounted by foxes' masks, antlers, and stuffed fish. On its shabby turkey carpet stood an elderly man-servant, a middle-aged parlourmaid, and a grey-haired woman who was presumably a cook-housekeeper. All of them looked as though they were patiently trying to grapple with undeserved calamity in the shape of a new mistress.
"Mrs. Wells, this is my wife," said Gaunt, in tones that sounded as if he were trying to conceal his triumph.
"I am sure I wish you joy, ma'am," replied Mrs. Wells, with an implied despair of the fulfilment of any such wish.
Virginia was used to a large household. She slipped off her glove, and shook hands kindly with Mrs. Wells. "Thank you so much. I am sure I shall be happy in this beautiful place," said she cordially.
"This is Hemming, who has been with me a great many years," went on Gaunt, indicating the man-servant, who murmured, "Namely fifteen," as he glanced at the fair creature standing there, who looked, as he afterwards remarked, like a fairy strayed in from the woods.
"And this is Grover, who will wait upon you," he went on. "Grover, you had better take Mrs. Gaunt straight upstairs. Hemming, let the men carry up the luggage into Mrs. Gaunt's room forthwith."
"This way, ma'am," said Grover, distantly. She took the dust-cloak which Virgie had slipped off, flashing a glance of reluctant admiration as she did so at the pretty frock displayed. The staircase was on the dark side of the house, and the corridor above seemed very sombre to the girl as she followed her guide.
Her bedroom was big and old-fashioned, with three high sash windows, set deep in the walls. This lay on the other side of the house, and the bride stepped forward into the full glory of a sunset, far over land which sloped away downward in a wide prospect. The aspect of this side of the house was south with a touch of west.
Grover was pleased at the involuntary cry of pleasure which the new mistress gave as she went to one of the windows and gazed out. She thawed a little as she pointed out to the eager girl the fine hill which was the pride of their part of the county, Gladby Top.
The men brought up the boxes, and by the time she had arrayed Virginia in the frock which young Mr. Bent so much admired in Bryanston Square, Grover had laid aside the greater part of her resentment, and was inclined to think that very few of the neighbouring families could show anything in the way of a bride approaching the quality of the specimen just brought to Omberleigh.
"You can excuse him and understand him, if you take what I mean," she said later on in the kitchen. "Most times there's really no knowing what it is as takes their fancy when they get to his age. But with her—well, I don't see how he could help himself! If she was to be had, right he was to snap her up. What seems odd to me is that she should have taken him, for you can see she's a tip-topper—none of your soap-makers' daughters, but real gentry."
Grover showed the bride downstairs into the drawing-room with an uncomfortable feeling that it was not an adequate setting for so fair and youthful a presence. Virginia had not lingered over her dressing, and found that there was half an hour yet before the dinner would be served. She stood in the long, bare room, probably last re-furnished in the '60's, and gazed about her forlornly. This room was on the sunny side of the house, and its windows opened upon a paved terrace with an Italian balustrade in stone.
She strayed across the Brussels carpet to the window, and stood there gazing out upon the falling slopes of a garden—yes, a garden—but as it seemed to her a somewhat bare one. There was just enough bedding-out to make a meagre display; but when she thought of the flaming herbaceous flowers which ought to fill those long border edgings, of the Alpine plants which ought to bloom from every cleft in those limestone walls, she sighed at the thought of wasted opportunities. The tastes of the master of the house were not for horticulture, it appeared.
The thought of his sneer at her for a mercenary marriage rushed to her mind. This husband—this stranger—what manner of man was he? What was to be her fate at his hands? The doubt and terror turned her blood to water. She put her two hands to her throat to keep down the swelling sobs. Then she turned swiftly, instinctively backward, and saw that Gaunt had noiselessly entered, and stood just behind her.
"Well," he said, "it is done now. The trap has closed behind you, and you cannot get out. What do you think of your life-sentence?"
A sudden determination came to her not to show fear. His manner was that of one grimly jesting. She answered playfully, "I think my jailer likes to tease."
"Well," he went on, "you walked into the snare with your eyes open. You knew nothing of me, did you, beyond the one glorious fact that I am rich? Nothing else mattered. My negligence, my rudeness, my neglect, could not drive you from your purpose. True daughter of Virginia Sheringham, you have made your bed, and now you must lie upon it."
His wife's eyes flashed, and her answer came clearly. "Pardon me! You say that I knew nothing of you but that you were rich. That is not true. I knew that you were a man of whom my own mother thought so well that she engaged herself to marry you. I knew also—or guessed—that you were lonely and unhappy. I could see that you were—lame."
"What?" he cut her off short. "You have the assurance to tell me to my face that my infirmity was a reason for your marrying me? You thought that you could elude the vigilance of a lame man—was that it? But though I limp I am no cripple. In fact, I am particularly active—active enough to guard you very carefully, as I warn you."
Bewildered, roused to hot indignation though she now was, Virginia felt her spirits rise defiant to meet this bullying tone. "A husband should guard his wife, and I hope you will guard me," she replied promptly, "but you speak as though you intended to hold me captive. What do you mean by that?"
"I mean," he said, measuring his words, and keeping his eyes steadily upon her, "to undertake the task of your reformation. I am going to turn you into something human—into a feeling, breathing, and, if necessary, a suffering woman. I am going to take away your false standards, to humble your vanity, to mortify your avarice. You shall see yourself, Virginia Gaunt, as you really are! Your outward beauty, upon which you trade, as your mother traded, is nothing to me but a whip, reminding me of the fool I was in my youth. I saw you first, using your lure, casting your net, hoping to secure young Rosenberg as your escape from poverty and debt. You nearly succeeded; you would have succeeded had not your friend belonged to a race which likes to have its money's-worth. You blush—yes, that shows the truth of my surmise. He would doubtless have been a more congenial solution of your problem than I; but he, alas, was not available! So you took me! And so you were very careful about the settlements! But there were things for which you forgot to stipulate—and those you must learn to do without!"
She was white now. Only her force of will kept her upon her feet. The insulting words stormed at her brain, and filled her with despair.
"You say this to me—to your wife. Is it fair, do you think?... I have not deceived you. You never asked me to give you love. I mean to keep my promises, without the goad of threats.... If—if I did wrong, in accepting what you offered, I am sorry. I want to do my duty, if you will help me ... but don't make it too—difficult."
"Excellent!" he commented. "A picture of wifely submission! We shall make something of you yet—perhaps in time. Meanwhile, it is as well to warn you that yours is to be no life of luxury. You must work, my girl—work, do you hear?"
"That will be nothing new," she replied tremulously. "I am used to hard work."
He laughed out. She looked like a creature whom the weariness of toil had never touched. He was so convinced of her idleness and frivolity that he could see nothing else.
"Work? You look like it. Your mother looks like it too. She fluttered into her Dover Street Club, clad like Solomon in all his glory, and with no more concern about the cost of her finery than the lilies of the field. The only work that women like you understand is how to spend money. That's your vocation, the business of your life! How to catch some man and wring from him the means to indulge your desires."
He was mounted on his hobby now, and his words came with a sudden fluency for which his previous taciturnity made her unprepared. "She was quite young—young enough to have been unworldly, you would have thought—when she jilted a poor man to marry a rich one. In spite of that innocent exterior, she was as clever as a pickpocket, as cautious as a Jew. Afterwards I remembered how carefully she had questioned me as to the likelihood of my coming into this property. There was a life between me and it. She was not taking any chances!... But, after all, the life failed. I came into my inheritance not so many years after my jilting ... and, by the Lord! when she was a needy widow and I was a rich man, she would have married me, had I so much as held up a finger. Do you deny it?"
Virginia could hardly breathe. If the hands she had clutched when drowning had contracted about her throat and held her down under water, she might have felt something the same consternation. Love! Love at first sight! Why, the man loathed her.
"But," she brought out breathlessly, "if this—if this is what you think of me, why—why have you married me?"
"I'll tell you why. I married because I am siren-proof, and I am going to reform you. You're young; you may not be irreclaimable. We'll see if I can change your nature; but if I can't do that, I swear I will control your actions. For the first time in your life, you are going to be disciplined. The starting-point for your training is that you should be completely cut off from your past. Therefore, you will not again see any of the members of your family, either here, or elsewhere. You need not look so incredulous. I carry out the things I undertake. Don't suppose you can escape from me."
The hatred in his voice was the outcome of twenty years of morbid egotism. The very atrocity of his amazing tirade helped his wife to rally. All her dignity, all her good breeding, came now to her support.
She spoke low but steadily. "It is true that I cannot escape. I bound myself this morning, by vows which to me are more binding than cords. But let me remind you that you also took vows—to love and to cherish."
He bowed ironically. "Oh, be sure that I shall cherish my piece of perfection," he replied, "and, when I have broken her to harness, I may reward her with my affection."
Her face, as she met his look, merited study. She had found a source of consolation in her misery—the consciousness of her own immense height above him. Terror, which had been succeeded by disgust, now disappeared altogether in sheer contempt.
"You have made us quits," she said simply. "This morning I felt myself under a great weight of obligation. Now you have paid yourself in full, paid yourself in insult to a helpless woman."
"Take care! Take care what you say to me!" he cried, swayed by a tumult of inexplicable feeling.
She made no answer. Only she faced him, no longer afraid, but coldly critical. Her look was almost pitying. As they stood confronted, the man had a curious experience. Her wonderful likeness to her mother vanished utterly, and he saw a woman strange to him not only in person but in type—a type as yet unknown.
There was a pause, which was broken by the roll of the gong in the hall. Gaunt started. Hemming threw open the door and announced dinner.
Caught at such a moment, the master of the house, to his annoyance, was taken aback and hesitated. His wife did not seem to share his embarrassment. With her head held high she advanced the few steps which separated them, and laid her hand upon his arm.
Together they walked out into the hall, under the respectful but close observation of the butler, and entered the dining-room, a dark and gloomy apartment, on the wooded north side of the house.
Here dinner was laid, in the style of a half-century ago.
To Gaunt's surprise, his wife began to talk almost at once. She spoke of the glorious view from the window of her room, inquired the height of Gladby Top, and mentioned her own taste for gardening. After a few minutes of moody uncertainty, Gaunt joined in her attempt to keep up appearances; and it was not until Hemming and Grover had placed dessert upon the table and left the room that the inevitable silence fell.
"Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,Straight at the castle, that's best indeedTo look at, from outside the walls....And up, like a weary yawn, with its pulleys,Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis;And, like a glad sky the north wind sullies,The lady's face stopped its playAs if her first hair had grown grey."—Browning.
The final closing of the door upon Hemming, as he discreetly retired, seemed to the bride to fill the gloomy room with reverberations. The door was not banged, yet she heard its echoing dying away like a murmur in cavernous heights. She had an illusion of being in some dark sea-cave, into which the tide would slowly crawl and swallow her up. Her feet were cold, as though the first shallow waves already laved them.
All through the dinner she had been putting a strain upon herself. She was now near the breaking-point. Gaunt was pouring wine from the heavy, stumpy cut-glass decanter into a wine-glass. She heard the lip of the bottle clink, as though his hand were not quite steady.
As usual in moments of stress her appetite had forsaken her. She had seemed to help herself to the various dishes, and had played with her knife and fork, so that Gaunt, from his end of the table, did not notice that she ate practically nothing. Before leaving the room, Hemming had handed her a dish of fine strawberries. These she felt she could eat. She took some cream, broke the fruit with a fork, and ate with thankfulness that she had some mechanical process with which to fill in this hollow pause before the commencement of what she felt might be definite hostilities.
The moments lengthened. He did not speak nor raise his eyes; but as soon as she laid down her spoon, he lifted his head, and said abruptly:
"Come here!"
Virgie jumped. The attack was indeed sudden. For a moment she wavered, then rose and moved noiseless down the length of the floor, along the edge of the table, until she stood beside him.
He leaned back, contemplating her. More than ever she looked like the princess in a fairy-tale. Her dress was cut and fashioned with the mystic skill that belongs to very few of the daughters of our race. It was subtle; it had a disturbing effect. There was a general impression of charm—elusive and faintly fragrant—of a finished work of art, from the curve of the soft hair to the satin of the small shoes.
"You are quite as good an actress as I supposed," remarked her husband, with satisfaction.
She pondered this for a minute. Then: "You mean that I kept up appearances before the servants? That is second nature with me, I think—hardly acting. But I thought I was doing what you would wish?"
He placed his hands upon the table edge, pushing his chair back slightly on its hind legs, while he looked up at her. Again he had the air of one who grimly jests.
"Excellent! A wife who actually foresees her husband's wishes, and acts accordingly! Yes, I suppose it is best that it should be so. Pray continue to enliven my meals with your pretty prattle."
The colour sprang to her face at the gibe. "Perhaps you will give me more efficient support next time," she said quickly, speaking before reflecting.
He laughed as though he had scored a point. "I think I warned you against answering back," he softly reminded her.
She looked him full in the eyes—a look which apparently infuriated him. With a sudden forward movement he caught her by the waist, dragging her down upon his knee. "Here, drink to our good health and future happiness!" he cried, pushing the glass of wine towards her.
The unlooked-for assault made her so faint that she knew the wine would do her good, help her to maintain her self-command in this ghastly situation. She sat where he placed her, took the glass from his hand with both hers, and lifted it to her lips. "I drink to your good health," she said with dignity.
He gave a wrathful exclamation, snatched the glass from her, so that the remainder of the wine was shot over the carpet, and said: "Little hypocrite! You would sooner drink to my death!"
"Oh, no," said she, "I desire your health. You are a very sick man just now, in mind if not in body."
"Sick or well, I am your husband—in sickness or in health, you know."
She answered patiently. "Yes; I know. I am not likely to forget."
She took out a tiny handkerchief, wiping her trembling lips with it. The action drew his attention to the tourmalin ring she wore above her wedding-ring. He snatched at her hand, pulled off the ring, and flung it into the heart of the fire which glowed dully afar off in the old-fashioned steel grate, for the day had not been warm.
"An end of that," he said. "I only used it to get it out of your mother's hands."
She drew in her breath in a long sigh, but made no other demonstration, though she felt her head swim. He was holding her with both hands, and his touch seemed as if it seared. He looked as if he longed to provoke some sign of acute feeling.
"You are proud," he said, under his breath. "Proud as Lucifer. But I'll tame your pride."
There seemed no answer to this, and she attempted none.
"You are going to be the passive martyr, the persecuted victim, are you?" he went on. "That is the rôle you select? But don't try me too far, or you may provoke me tomakeyou show yourself in your true colours."
She raised her hands to her mouth with a little moan. "Oh!" she faltered, shaken with the storm of her wounded heart. "Isn't it enough for you to know me broken? Must you see the tears and hear the cries before you can be satisfied? Well, you will—very soon. I—don't feel as if I can bear much more. But to-night you have hit too hard. You have blunted all feeling. Icouldnot care, whatever happened. I have got past that."
With a sudden gasping for breath, she made an effort to rise. For a moment he seemed minded to constrain her, but almost immediately let her go. She stood, supporting herself a moment against the corner of the table, then tried a few uncertain steps, and collapsed softly in a little forlorn heap of silk and gauze upon the carpet, midway to the door.
Gaunt rose, his face dark with annoyance. This was altogether so unlike his own forecasts of the scene that he was bewildered. He had expected coaxings, blandishments, the pleadings and wiles with which Virginia the elder had made him so intimately acquainted. He remembered how, when in the old days his sullen temper had made him harsh, she had hung about him, how sweetly and pathetically she had put him in the wrong, how deftly she had smoothed his ruffled fur and achieved her own ends whatever they were.
Continually in his solitude, brooding over the wreck of his life, he had told himself that now he knew, now he was wise with the wisdom we garner from the fields of tragedy and disappointment. He was proof against the sirens, his ears were plugged with wool. Was he not the man to punish and reform a coquette?
He went and stood over Virginia; then knelt at her side, passed an arm under her, and arranged her in a more easy posture. She was in a dead faint. He stared doubtfully, rose, haltingly crossed the room, and laid his fingers upon the bell. He did not ring it. His hand fell away; he went to the table, poured some water into a glass, knelt and dabbed her temples. She did not move.
After a minute or two he rose, went softly to the door and peered out into the hall. There was no sound of Hemming or the coffee. Turning back he stooped, lifted Virgie with ease, carried her into the drawing-room, laid her on a sofa near the window, and opened the casement wide upon the night. The fresh, strong air revived her. She opened her eyes, and looking upward, saw the canopy of stars in the deep-blue velvet heavens.
Slowly coming back to the realisation of the present moment, she turned her head, and saw Gaunt stooping over the hearth, placing a fresh log upon the fire. She sat up, sick and shivering. He looked round quickly at her movement, but turned away again and did not speak. He stood gazing down at the leaping flames in brooding silence; then, facing about with one of his sudden, flinging movements, which sent her heart into her mouth, he marched across the room, opened the grand piano and sat down.
Virginia was conscious of great astonishment as he began to play. It was wild, Hungarian music, leaping and striking like lightning flashes. But it seemed the one thing she could have borne at the moment. With a sigh of utter fatigue, she let her head droop against the hard, uncompromising cushion of the old-fashioned sofa and listened. He had been playing about ten minutes, when Hemming and the coffee came in; and Virginia was able to sit up and help herself with composure.
"Hemming," said Gaunt, as the servant was leaving the room, "Mrs. Gaunt is overtired. Tell Grover she will be coming upstairs almost at once."
"Yes, sir."
The man departed, and again the closing of the door awoke those faint, mysterious reverberations which were like the last contact of the outside world with the tragedy of the isolated and rock-chained maiden. So might Andromeda have felt, when the smith had hammered into place the last rivet of her fetters, and she was left—left helpless and in an anguish of suspense, to await the oncoming of the monster.
Gaunt drank his coffee seated upon the piano-stool. Then he set down his cup and began once more to play. This time it was soft and gentle, a lullaby, like falling water. It brought the tears rushing to Virginia's eyes, so that she hid her face against the cushions, and covered her mouth to suppress her crying.
Oh for just one moment of the clinging of Pansy's arms; of the bear's hug from a leaping boy in pyjamas, declining to go to bed tractably, wasting his sister's time in the fashion in which she loved to have it wasted! What were they all doing now, at this hour? Caroline, the new maid, was just bringing up Pansy's cup of Benger's food. Was it properly made?—"thin, but not too thin," like Mr. Woodhouse's gruel? Virgie had taken pains to show Caroline exactly how to do it. She had seemed to understand.
Were they missing their sister? Would Pansy—intolerable thought—cry for Virgie's good-night kiss and tuck-in? Oh, no, surely not! They would all be lapped in their new comfort and security. They would be better cared for than she, with all her goodwill, had been able to accomplish, unsupported by funds.
Yet, oh, to be back, with that burden hanging over her as of old! To take up and shoulder the weight that had been crushing her, even if to do so meant death—a maiden death, a blessed release from this hard, difficult world.
She grasped, she clutched at the only consolation she had. Her present agony of terror and apprehension was just the price she had to pay for their safety and welfare. She had determined to pay it, and she would carry out her resolve. She must not flinch because it was turning out so much worse than she had thought possible. What did it matter—whatcouldit matter, what became of her? They were happy and secure; Gaunt was tightly bound down to go on helping them, even in the case of her own death. She felt so weak, so scared that night, that she thought for the first time in all her life of death as a thing which might conceivably happen to herself.
"What is the use of minding," she whispered, trying to reassure herself. "It doesn't matter—nobody but me will ever know."
Her sobbing ceased. Something in the music helped to soothe it. The flutter of harmonious notes was like the beating of wings. It suggested the flight of wild birds. She thought of the swans which used to cross the sky in autumn at Lissendean, flying to seek new spheres for themselves. There came to her mind that story of Hans Andersen, in which the princess has to weave coats of nettles for the princes, her brothers, in order to break the spell that binds them. Should she not gladly plait her nettle-coats, endure her doom, to lift from those two beloved heads the evil spell of poverty and sickness?
*****
The music stopped.
With it, her thoughts ceased as if shivered suddenly to fragments.
Her husband rose from the piano. Her heart was in her mouth, and she found herself shuddering in a panic terror which drove out every other sensation. He came up and stood looking at her, with a somewhat resentful expression.
"You seem quite done up," he observed. "You had better go to bed and to sleep. A good night's rest is what you want. To-morrow let us hope you will be more fit to take up your new duties."
She raised her wet eyes with a glance of incredulous gratitude. "I am sorry I gave way," she murmured. "I am not usually so weak. But you see, a great deal has happened ... and I hardly slept at all last night, and I am very tired." Slowly she stood up, eagerly but silently questioning him.
After a moment's embarrassment she held out her hand. He drew his own from his pocket to present in return. Half contemptuously, he threw a glance at the little girlish fingers lying in his square brown palm. "I'll give you another ring," he said brusquely, "but I couldn't stand seeing you wear that other. When we meet to-morrow morning, I hope you will be rested. Good night. Off with you."
She needed no second bidding.