"Oh, do not die, for I shall hateAll women so, when thou art gone,That thee I shall not celebrate,When I remember thou wast one."—Donne.
The otter hounds were out, and Mr. Ferris was driving his wife in the car to the meet. The gentleman was in capital humour, for he knew how acceptable a companion he would prove to everybody this morning; being, so far as he knew, the only person who had yet actually beheld the romantic creature who had conquered that hard and woman-hating bachelor, Gaunt of Omberleigh.
"I wonder if she'll hunt?" remarked Joey. "Gaunt's a good horseman in spite of his lameness. Just fancy seeing him about this winter with a pretty wife in tow! It's simply too rippin'—best news I've heard for a long time."
"Hallo! Who's this riding the wrong way?" said her husband suddenly. "If it isn't the doctor. Hallo, Dymock, where are you off to on such a grand morning?" he cried, stopping the engine.
"Give you three guesses," said Dymock, drawing rein with a grin on his clever, keen face. "But you won't guess in fifty."
"Got it in one," shouted Joey. "You're going to Omberleigh, I can see it in your eye."
"You're a wizard, Mrs. Ferris. Have you seen her, then?"
"What, the bride? You don't say you're going to see her?"
"I saw her yesterday," burst in Percy, "and she looked as well as—well, as health itself."
"Old Gaunt is not satisfied, however," replied Dymock. "It's probably nothing much, but he says she seems a bit run down. I suppose I must expect to be sent for if her little finger aches."
"Sure," laughed Ferris. "He looks as if he wishes he could cause her to become invisible when any one of the male sex is passing by. Just the age to make a fool of himself, isn't he? Well, if you're passing our way later, look in, won't you?"
"You'll be wasting your whisky, Ferris. I don't give away my patients."
Ferris grinned. "Welcome, anyway," he said, as he and his wife drove on.
Dr. Dymock pursued his road, his mind as he rode up through the pinewoods being filled with as lively a curiosity as even the couple from Perley Hatch confessed to feeling. What like was the girl—for Ferris said she was a girl, and beautiful at that—who could have married Gaunt?
Hemming showed him into the study. It surprised him vaguely to find the house as untidy and dingy as usual—the abode of a woman-hating bachelor, untouched by the coming of a fair young mistress. Certainly the affair had been very sudden.
Gaunt joined him almost at once, his own appearance just as normal and unchanged as that of his house.
"I must begin with hearty congratulations," observed the doctor, shaking hands cordially. "Ferris, it appears, caught a glimpse of Mrs. Gaunt yesterday, and he says she is perfectly lovely."
"Thanks. Yes, my wife is certainly pretty, but I fear she is not very strong. As I think I hinted to you in my note, she was bitten with the idea which infects many girls nowadays—this notion of taking up Work, with a capital W. She has been scrubbing floors and cooking meals—laying tables and lighting fires. It has been quite too much for her. She told me nothing of it, and I was inconsiderate enough to take her a long ramble over the estate yesterday. She was so done up afterwards that I persuaded her to stay in bed to-day until you had seen her."
It was frankly and quite pleasantly said. The doctor applauded the new-made husband's care, and was taken upstairs, under Grover's escort, to the room where his patient lay.
He was not a man observant of details, but it struck even him that these were curious surroundings for a modern bride.
Since his inheritance of the property from his great aunt, the survivor of four aged sisters, Gaunt had not thought of touching or altering anything.
The big bedstead on which Virginia lay was what used to be known as a "tester." It had a wooden canopy, and hangings of washed-out chintz.
There was an early Victorian mahogany wardrobe, big, heavy, ugly, and commodious. The rest of the furniture was in keeping. However, plenty of sunshine came in through the long windows, and there was a bunch of roses on a small table near the bed.
With her hair tumbling about her, Mrs. Gaunt looked like a child. He had a moment's horror as he met the nervous, shrinking dread in her lovely eyes. Was this a tragedy?
"I had no idea," stammered the patient, "no idea that my—husband had sent for a doctor. There is no need, I am well, I am only a little tired."
"Just what he told me," said Dymock good-humouredly. "I expect you are both right. You can't wonder at his being a bit anxious, can you?" He glanced up humorously at Grover, who had evidently had strict orders to remain, and who stood primly by the bed. She smiled, however, at his question.
"Indeed, sir, I think the master is quite right. Mrs. Gaunt is thoroughly overdone," said she. "I daresay he told you, sir, as he told us, that she has been going in for this here domestic science work. Young ladies like her, sir, is not fit for it. If you'll believe me, she has been actually washing clothes! That is, she says she had in a woman to help, but it's a sin, sir, for the likes of her. However, now we've put our foot down"—she cast a glance of real kindness at the wistful creature lying there. "There's plenty of us here, sir, to wait on her, hand and foot; and in a few days you'll see she'll be a different thing—a different thing altogether. It is her knees I want you to look at particular, sir, after you've took her pulse, of course."
*****
When the doctor came downstairs the bridegroom was standing at the hall door, his hands deep thrust in his pockets, gazing out gloomily over the thick and shadowy pinewood.
As Dymock approached, he turned, fixing his eyes upon him. The doctor stood, drawing on his riding gloves, and did not at first speak.
"Well?" said Gaunt at last, with an odd air of exploding.
"Well, I am a little puzzled. No doubt there is debility as a result of overwork, but there is more than that. To tell you the actual truth, your wife has been starving herself. You see, that is a queer, unnatural symptom. When a healthy girl starves herself, it means one of two things. Either her nerves are all to pieces—she is what we call hysterical—or in the alternative—why, she simply hasn't been able to get enough to eat. Now your wife shows no sign of hysteria that I can see, except for the undoubted fact that she is under-nourished. So——"
Gaunt folded his arms and looked away. "Dymock," he said unwillingly, "one's doctor keeps one's secrets—eh?"
Dymock raised his clear steady eyes and looked full at him. "I do," was all he said.
"Well, I fear it is true, that she is under-fed and over-worked. It has been cruel. I had no idea myself. She looks so, somehow, so unlike that."
"Yes, indeed. You mean that her over-exertion has been necessary?"
"I do."
"Well, I thought as much," replied Dymock, after a pause. "Some unscrupulous employer, I suppose. A good thing you rescued her. She is perfectly healthy and sound, but she won't be anything like robust for some time yet. I am forbidding solid food at present. She must have nourishment every two hours—eggs beaten up in milk, port wine, strong soup, Benger's food—things like that. In a few days her appetite will return. But meanwhile she must be left perfectly quiet, Gaunt—you understand?"
"I understand perfectly. I give you my word for that."
"It won't be for long," said Dymock consolingly. "She is young, and she will pick up fast in this good air; her convalescence will be twice as rapid if you are considerate. She is in a state of acute nervous tension, and must be soothed; kept happy and quiet."
"Perhaps," said Gaunt, after a long pause, "it would be better if I do not see her at all, just at present. What do you think?"
"It all depends. Does it excite her to see you?"
"It might. Our marriage was sudden, you know. She hardly knows me."
"I think it should depend upon what she would like. Might it not distress her that you should keep away?"
"Perhaps."
"In a few days," went on the doctor, "she ought to go out, if it can be managed without her putting her feet to the ground. You have no motor, have you?"
"No."
"See here, Gaunt—forgive me if this sounds like interference, but the fact of your never having had any ladies to the house—your well-known tastes, or distastes—make things a bit difficult for your wife. She is all alone—there's nobody to come and see her, or cheer her up. I am going to make a bold suggestion. Young Mrs. Ferris is simply bursting with hospitable intentions, and, though she is a bit of a rough diamond, she is one of the best. They have a motor, and she has nothing else to do. Let me send her round in a day or two to call upon Mrs. Gaunt?"
Gaunt's brow lowered. "A woman with a voice like a fog-horn——"
"No beauty, I grant you, but a real good sort, and your only near neighbour. Let her drive Mrs. Gaunt about, show her the Peak, take her shopping to Buxton, import some light literature from the circulating library—something to pass the time."
"It may be that you are right," replied Gaunt after some hesitation. "I don't want visitors yet, but if Mrs. Ferris would understand that she is quite an exception——"
"It would double her desire to be of use," laughed the doctor. "Well, good day. I'll send along a tonic, and I think I should like to see your wife again to-morrow."
"Come as often as you think wise."
The clatter of the hoofs of the doctor's mare died away along the wooded aisles. Gaunt remained standing, his head bent, his hands locked behind his back. He hardly knew what he felt, what dominating impulse would emerge out of the present confusion of a mind which for more than twenty years had been swayed by one sole idea.
The surroundings upon which his moody gaze was fixed were the scene of that accident which had done much to warp his temperament, to give a twist to a disposition which from birth had been passionate and what is known as "difficult." The kind of boy who would have been saved by the devotion of a mother who understood him, he had been left doubly an orphan at an age so early that he had but a confused memory even of his mother's face. His old great-aunts at Omberleigh knew nothing of boys. During his summer vacation he stayed with them and ran wild among the men servants.
He was about fifteen years old, a wilful, even violent-tempered lad, when he disobeyed a direct order by going for a ride upon the bailiff's horse, an uncertain-tempered brute, who could be controlled only by his master. Contrary to his own expectation, all had gone well. He was returning in triumph up the drive, off his guard, exulting in his successful bit of disobedience, when something white rushed across the road. It was a shirt, blown from an adjacent clothes-line by the fury of the gale, and flying upon the wind like some wild ghost, flapping, rolling, staggering. As if in sheer malice, it shot out from among the tree-trunks, and wrapped itself momentarily over the eyes of the outraged steed, which swerved, terrified, and bolted into the wood. Madly the creature strove to thrust itself in between the close-growing pines. Pluckily the boy clung to his seat, though knocked violently against one obstacle after another in his hurtling progress. Finally, the horse attempted to rush through a narrow space between two extra strong and large trees, and the rider came off, but not before one leg had been horribly crushed in the struggle.
His right knee proved to be so badly lacerated that amputation was at first thought inevitable. By the skill of the surgeon this was obviated, but the snapping of a tendon produced a life-long stiffness of the joint and for a year or two prevented his indulging in any kind of athletics.
The isolation of mind and body which resulted fostered his already existing tendency to morbidity. At Oxford he withdrew himself as much as he could from society, becoming more morose as his former friends, tired of being repulsed, left him by degrees more and more to himself. At Oxford, one Commemoration week, he met the beautiful Virginia Sheringham, and fell so violently in love that his natural reserve was swept out of sight, and he conquered by sheer force of will. This girl became his idol, his universe, his obsession. For her he would work unceasingly, remove mountains, make a name, make a fortune.
Perhaps he should have thought himself lucky that so fascinating a young lady endured a whole year of so unpromising an engagement. At first she was taken off her feet by the violence of his passion, the impetuosity of his wooing. Very soon, however, her natural prudence began to get the upper hand. What, she very properly asked herself, could be the outcome of this long-drawn affair? The love-letters which at first had been so irresistible, inevitably palled on repetition. Moreover, one cannot buy new frocks with love-letters. Perhaps she announced the end of it all too suddenly. Yet it is doubtful whether any preliminary hinting could have made Osbert believe that his adored one could possibly be contemplating the treachery of jilting him.
The thing was done. It had to be done, for Virginia had given her lover a whole year, and a maiden's market is short. Unfortunately, the young man involved belonged to that pitiable but happily small minority with whom to love seems final, who cannot rally from the blow given by the beloved hand.
Everything was against Gaunt's recovery. He had no friends. His nearest relatives were the old great-aunts at Omberleigh, who understood him not at all, and liked him but little. During his engagement he flung away every other interest, every other resource, to give himself up to the passion which filled him. His jilting was for him the end of all things. For the first few years he disappeared from England, became a special correspondent at out-of-the-way spots such as Valparaiso, visited such outposts of empire as the Solomon Islands. Then the last surviving aunt passed away from Omberleigh. He found that the place was his, and he decided to occupy it, since he had formed a plan which needed residence in England for its maturing.
He had thought, during those years of wandering, upon one subject only. The behaviour of Virginia Sheringham had been brought to the bar of his judgment. She had been tried, and found guilty on every count. She had been treacherous, light, covetous, cruel, selfish, and callous. For these things he decided that she deserved punishment. Why should he suffer as for years he had suffered, while the criminal went scot free?
He had money now. Money was power. One day his turn would come. He could wait for it.
As the waiting went on he grew used to it. He lived in an atmosphere of it. One day this long-planned thing would happen, this long-prepared design would materialise. He hardly noticed the flight of the years. He hardly noticed any material or outward circumstances, except the development of his land. He lived in the nursing, the contemplation, the fondling, of an idea of future vengeance and retribution, when Virginia Sheringham should be at his mercy, and should plead to him—and plead in vain.
When at last the scheme did really mature, when the mortgage fell in, he could hardly realise that this had actually happened. He felt dazed, like a man who has lived for years in the dark when he is faced with sudden daylight.
It was all happening so ludicrously as he had foreseen. Mrs. Mynors had found out who was the mortgagee, and she had made an appeal—just the kind of appeal he had expected. He found himself taking a ticket for a journey to London for the first time during years.
There was nothing to do in London. To wait patiently there was by no means the easy matter that it was in the country, in the midst of his own work upon his own land. To occupy himself he went and saw pictures. He had a taste for pictures, though he never indulged it by buying any.
This it was which brought him to Hertford House, and suggested to him a totally new idea—an idea so brilliant, and yet so horrible, that it attracted and repelled him both at once. The shock of the sight of Virginia the younger was so great as partially to unnerve him. Her daughter! He had never thought about her children, except when the death of her son and heir, by means of the motor accident, had appeared in the paper, and he had been glad.
Now here was something like a resurrection of the Virginia of twenty years ago. He contemplated her, considered her, appraised her. The whole appearance of her was to him the top-note of luxury, extravagance, affectation. Long residence in the country, avoidance of women, had made him unaccustomed to the growing call for elaborate taste in feminine attire. He had never seen anything like the slim perfection of Virginia. He listened while girl-like she prattled of the costumes of the pictured women on the walls. He heard her wonder gravely whether she could wear rose-colour and contrast her own style with that of her friend!
She stood, to the man who glowered upon her, for the incarnation of a type. She was the temptress woman, who would, as her mother had done, enslave and then forsake. Could he prevent the life-long unhappiness of some unfortunate man, by exerting his own will, his own wealth to get the siren into his power?
He marked the arrival of Gerald Rosenberg. His faculties, sharpened to the point of brilliance by his own keen personal hatred, discerned the situation between the two young people. Upon the upshot of it depended all his own plans. If Gerald hesitated—if he took time for reflection—then Gaunt would have a chance to carry out a scheme of retribution more complete than anything of which he had yet dreamed. In his pocket was a letter from his old love—a letter which he described to himself as loathsome. It told him, practically, that she was his for the asking. What a buffet in the face for her, if he should propose for her daughter! And what a hold upon the entire family if he could catch the mercenary young adventuress, and keep her caged, and mould her to his will!
And it had all happened so marvellously according to his plan.
He succeeded not merely as well as he hoped, but far more easily. He was met more than half-way, both by mother and daughter. Gerald Rosenberg had evidently hung fire. The dressed-up doll which looked so fair and innocent was ready to consent to the sale of herself—to the shameful bargain which he had proposed. So he had taken her hand—led her into the steel jaws of his trap. It had closed upon her, and she lay at the bottom, lacerated, helpless, awaiting the moment when her captor should come and devour her.
He felt as might a hunter, who, having laid a snare for a man-eating tigress, comes creeping through the woods at dawn, and finds the pit occupied by a strayed lamb.
From the moment of reading the two letters which yesterday had passed between the sisters, he knew that his weapon had broken in his hand.
The dreadful thing was that, having made captive this helpless creature, towards whom his ill-will was no longer active, he was unable to release her.
And what could he do with her?
He had saddled himself for life with a female companion, of whom he had no need at all. What satisfaction could be derived from asserting his mastery over one so weak, so submissive, so—so confoundedly childish? As to making friends with her, the prospects of that were not encouraging. His treatment of her yesterday must have made a deep impression. Besides, he felt within himself no hankering at all after arapprochement. Since his wife could not feed his hate, nor satisfy his vengeance, he had, quite frankly, no use for her.
Yet she was there. What was he to do with her?
As the endless complications—the annoying changes to be wrought in his life by the introduction of such trying persons as Joey Ferris into his hitherto unmolested retreat—as all this swept over him, he realised that he had overshot his mark and landed himself in unforeseen difficulties and vexations. Some gratifications still remained—for instance, the prospect of reading and of answering his mother-in-law's first letter, appealing for more money! Ah, that still lay in the future, along with her inevitable suggestion that she should come for a "nice long visit" to Omberleigh, and his blunt refusal of her company!
In her, at least, he had not been mistaken. It was only in the case of this artless, babyish creature upstairs that he had made such an ass of himself.
Shrugging his shoulders, he turned slowly away from the doorway, and betook himself to his study. There he sat down and wrote a message.
The doctor tells me you need rest, and should be left quite quiet. That being so, I feel sure that I had better keep away altogether. But there is something I have to say, so will you, for the sake of appearances, grant me a few minutes' conversation this afternoon. Choose your own time.—O. G.
"I was a moody comrade to her then,For all the love I bore her....... This had come to beA game to play, a love to clasp, a hateTo wreak, all things together that a manNeeds for his blood to ripen....... In those hours no doubtTo the young girl, my eyes were like my soul,—Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day."——D. G. Rossetti.
A pencil note was brought downstairs to the master by Grover, who wore a demure look, as though she guessed how novel and charming a pastime to the woman-hater was this playful exchange of love-letters.
He was seated at the lunch-table when the little envelope was handed to him, and a surly self-consciousness kept him from opening it until Hemming had retired, which conduct on his part caused amused nudgings between the servants outside.
Please come to tea at four.—Virginia.
Such was the extent of the "love-letter" when he had opened it.
He shrugged his shoulders. He did not want to have tea with her in the least. However, it would have a good effect upon the household—keep up the fiction of their mutual desire for each other's society.
At a few minutes after four, he knocked at her door. Grover had just arranged the tea-table close to the bed, and was putting away one or two things before leaving the room. Virginia blushed brightly as her jailer entered, but gave him a timid smile of welcome. She told Grover, with whom she was evidently on the best of terms already, to set a chair for him, directed the closing of one window, lest there be too much draught; and so did the honours until the maid, benevolently smiling, had disappeared.
The bride knew that even a minute's hesitation would make her too nervous to speak, so she said at once: "It was kind of you to send for the doctor, but indeed there was no need. I shall be well in a very few days. I feel rested already."
"That's right," he said briefly. "Proper treatment will bring you round sooner, I expect."
"I like Dr. Dymock," she said timidly.
"He's not a bad sort."
A silence ensued. How difficult it was to find things to say. Virginia made another effort. "Grover is so kind, she waits on me hand and foot!"
"It's her work to wait on you. What she's paid for. I don't know why you should call her kind."
"Don't you know," she asked earnestly, "the difference between the work you can pay for and the work you can't? Oh, but I am sure you must."
He grunted. Evidently he was not interested, but bored. She offered him more tea, and refrained from further efforts at talk, remembering his sneer at her "prattle."
They were too utterly out of sympathy for her to have any idea of how best to approach him.
He drank his second cup of tea in silence, his gaze travelling over the room, over the dressing-table with its dainty appointments, over the white silk kimono, embroidered in faintly coloured flowers, which his bride wore. The loose sleeve revealed the thinness of her arm and wrist, which her dresses had formerly more or less concealed. On her white flesh he remarked a row of round purple marks. Had she rubbed her arm on something dirty? What could have caused those stains? They looked like finger-marks. The memory of yesterday—of their tussle, and his snatching of the letter from her desperate grip—came suddenly to him.
Could it be true that he, Osbert Gaunt, with the upbringing and traditions of a gentleman, had left the marks of his hands upon a fragile girl? Self-disgust turned him for a moment almost sick.
Yet he would say what he had come to say. He cleared his throat.
"The doctor suggested to me that he should send our neighbour, Mrs. Ferris, to call upon you in a day or two. I don't suppose you will like her much, but she is about the only person available. She is one of nature's mistakes—daughter of a colonel, and ought to have worked in a factory. However, they tell me she is a good sort. She has a motor, and would take you for a spin. I want you to understand that, if you go out with her, it is only on conditions—that it would be of no use for you to attempt to escape."
Virgie was so surprised that she dropped the sugar-tongs. "To escape!"
"From me."
"I don't understand——"
"I think you do. If Mrs. Ferris motors you to any place where there is a railway station you might be tempted to take the train and go off. I ought to tell you that if you do, I shall bring you back."
"You suppose that I should—that I should let Mrs. Ferris into the secret of my—of your—of our——"
"What more likely?"
"If you think so," replied Virginia with shaking voice, "please don't let Mrs. Ferris come. I did not ask—you must not think I asked the doctor—for company or complained of loneliness. I am——" she could not go on.
"Have I your word that if I allow you to go about as you like you will make no attempt to leave me?"
"Would you take my word?" she cried vehemently; then checked herself, and seemed to hold herself quiet by an act of will.
"The doctor told me that you ought not to be distressed, that perfect rest was necessary for you," said Gaunt, rising abruptly from his seat. "Don't upset yourself, I didn't mean to bully. I will take it for granted that you will do as I wish, now that you know what my wishes are. Good afternoon."
She did not answer. She had turned her face inwards to the pillow, and her slight shoulders were shaking. He stood a moment, contemplating her in dark vexation. Then he went out of the room, annoyed with himself, but still more annoyed with her.
His mind was chaotic. He had just been wondering what he could do with her—how deal with the preposterous situation he had himself created—and hardly had the thoughts formed themselves before he was found threatening her with penalties in case she should attempt to disembarrass him of her presence. Dimly he descried the reason of this apparent inconsistency. It was that he knew her to be spiritually free of him. He could not bear that she should be actually free as well. After all, he had married her. He had his rights. He was her husband. But, Oh, ye gods, what a child she was—how easily cowed, how shrinking and timid and all the other things that he hated!
From the bottom of his heart he wished that he had never set eyes upon her.
*****
The following morning the post-bag, when it was brought to him at breakfast time, contained two letters for Virginia. One was addressed in the unformed, sprawling hand which he knew to be Pansy's. The other was inscribed with a flowing, ornamental script which once had power to illuminate the world for him, and now produced in his fermenting mind the most curious mixture of rage, bitterness, and gratification.
He had determined yesterday to abandon his cruel intention of overlooking his wife's correspondence. His perusal of Pansy's letter had been enough. This sight of his mother-in-law's writing, however, touched him upon the corrupt spot in his heart, and shook his resolution.
He laid the letter down among his own, before Grover, who waited near, had seen the address. The letter from Pansy he handed to her as it was, and joyfully it was received by its lawful recipient when it arrived upstairs upon her breakfast tray, the sanctity of its seal inviolate.
When he was alone, Gaunt leaned forward, his elbows propped upon the table, and held Mrs. Mynors' envelope in the steam of the spirit kettle which stood upon the silver tray.
It was easily opened. He drew forth the contents with a detestable eagerness, and read as follows:
My dearest girl,—
This is the first moment that I have felt able to write to you, so great have been my sufferings, so keen my humiliation over this mercenary marriage of yours. I feel as if I had been living in a nightmare ever since that fatal day when I went to town to meet the inhuman monster who almost blighted my young life, and has now fastened his claws into you instead.
Oh, Virginia! Sooner—far sooner—would I have gone to the workhouse than be obliged to think of you in Gaunt's power! But you knew that! Again and again did I assure you, did I not, how far I was from demanding this sacrifice at your hands? How is he using you? That is the question that forces itself upon me every hour—that keeps me awake at night with the horrors! Your letter to Pansy was more or less reassuring, I must own. Perhaps, when he finds how useful and domestic you are, he may be kinder than my fears suggest?
Meantime, I miss you every moment. You will know how I have always detested the petty meannesses of life, the half-pounds of cooking butter, the scraps for the stock-pot, the way the coal disappears, the price of fish—all the endless, nauseating haggling over pence! To this you have left me, after all that I have suffered. After the shattering blows of the death of my first-born, my widowhood, our ruin—you have taken the hand of a man who can give you life's good things, and you have left me to the slavery which you found so unbearable. But I must not reproach you, for you may be already suffering for your mistake. Do write me a few lines, and tell me frankly how he is treating you?
If I am wrong, if he is behaving kindly to you, it will be such a relief to know it. He may, of course, actually have fallen in love with your looks. You are, as all declare, absurdly like me. If this should be so, I know, my darling daughter, that you will use your opportunity to help me. You must see that the allowance secured to me is wretchedly inadequate. £300 a year is impossible. It will mean an existence of continual debt. £400—that is, a hundred pounds a quarter—might be conceivable. It is the very lowest upon which one should be called upon to live. If Gaunt is inclined to be indulgent—if you have managed to get on his blind side—do strike while the iron is hot, and have this matter arranged for me, won't you?
It is not as if I asked for riches. Think of what I have been used to? Think of me here in this odious little town, non-existent as far as the county is concerned—Me, Mrs. Bernard Mynors—a prouder name than that of many a peer. Think of this in your luxury, and spare a little pity for your wretched mother.
Virginia Mynors.
Before that letter, Gaunt sat with clenched hands. The veins in his forehead swelled. How right he had been—how fatally exact in his forecast as far as the mother was concerned! How far was he right, after all, about the daughter?
Could that letter of hers to Pansy have conceivably been written as a blind—in case he should read it? No. That was not possible—at least it was not possible that Pansy's letter to her sister could have been the result of any kind of premeditation. Besides, the doctor's evidence of his wife's starved condition. Yet here were reproaches for the girl who had been obstinately bent upon a mercenary marriage—a sacrifice which she seemed to have made against her mother's pleadings!
How did the rest of the letter harmonise with the outburst of maternal agony which began it? His lip curled, ever more and more, until all his teeth showed, as he read once more the suggestion that, if he had been successfully hoodwinked, he might be bled for an extra hundred a year! As he sat, staring at the paper, he knew one thing certainly.He must see the reply to that letter.Moreover, Virginia must write it under the impression that he wouldnotsee it.
He hardly knew himself as he carefully resealed the envelope, and satisfied himself that it bore no signs of having been tampered with. In that moment he felt that he recked neither of his honour nor of his manhood. He had no scruples. One thing only stood out in his mind as essential. He must know how far his wife was victim and martyr, how far a designing girl.
If she was, as her mother declared her to be—mercenary, then there were ways, plenty of ways, in which she might do penance for such fault. But, if it were true that she had been sacrificed for pure love, that her unselfishness was so wonderful, so unheard-of, that she really had laid down her all upon the altar of family affection—why, then, what would happen? He asked himself desperately, whatcouldhappen? The only solution that occurred to him at the moment was that he should hang himself.
*****
When Virginia's tea went upstairs that afternoon, her mother's letter lay upon the tray, as though it had arrived by the second post. With it was a note from Gaunt, to the effect that he was sorry to have to be out that afternoon. An accident had happened on the estate—a large tree had fallen, most unexpectedly, and the huge trunk had blocked the course of the trout-stream, and the water was flooding a meadow. He hoped to look in upon her that evening on his return. Then, below his initials:
For the future I waive my right to inspect your correspondence.
It was late when he came in, wet to the knees and tired out. He had a bath, changed for the evening, and then, before going downstairs, rapped on the door of communication between his own room and Virginia's.
Grover was not there, so there was nobody to see that the bride turned as white as a sheet. She had not known, for certain, that his room adjoined her own.
"Come in," she faltered. He pushed the door wide.
She was on a sofa, in the window, and the late evening light shone through her hair as she turned to him that face which might have been an angel's. It was the face that had stood for him for so many years as the expression of treachery incarnate. Now it gave him the most extraordinary sensation.
For the first time in their mutual acquaintance she did not smile. Her look as she faced him was grave and cold. It seemed that at last his repeated insults had quenched her timid impulse to friendliness. The thought affected him profoundly.
"I hope you haven't been too lonely this afternoon?" he asked haltingly, standing in the doorway.
"No, not at all. Mrs. Ferris came to see me."
"Ha! How did you like her?"
"She seems very kind." The tone was entirely noncommittal. It seemed to say, "Whether I liked her or not is no concern of yours."
"H'm! Did she say anything about taking you out in the motor?"
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I said I would rather not go."
"You would rather not go?"
She turned her eyes away from him, out to the garden, and did not speak. He remembered what he had said the previous day, and guessed how it must have hurt her, if she were really what he was beginning to believe.
His next words were utterly unpremeditated. "I'll buy a car and take you out myself."
"That would be safer," she replied gravely. Then she raised herself on her elbow, searched among her papers on a little table at her side, and held out a letter to him.
"Will you put that out to be posted, please?"
He limped across the room and stood quite near—near enough to take the envelope from her hand.
"You read what I said about your correspondence?"
"Yes." He thought he could detect an impulse to say "Thank you," and the determination not to yield to it. Thanks for the right to breathe! The right to be herself! He saw that she could not frame it.
The sound of the gong in the hall below was audible. He turned away—lingered, trying to put together some sentence expressive of his satisfaction that she should be on the sofa to-day, but he found the thing too difficult, and was off with a curt, "Well, good night!"
"Good night," she answered.
When he was back at the door, he turned again and looked at her. Her whole fair outline, supine upon the couch, was illumined in a rosy gilding. The room behind her lay shadowy; her own form on its dark side was blurred. But that outline against the purple misty garden without was like a thing of enchantment. So still—so very beautiful—he thought of an effigy upon a tomb. He closed the door with a hissing breath drawn between his teeth. In his hand he held the key to all his doubt—the reply to the letter he had read. When he had also read this he would know what he must do; he would be able to realise what he had already done.
He hastened downstairs feeling like a thief in his own house. He resented the fact of Hemming's quite natural presence in the hall, where the servant was busy removing the sticks, wet gloves, etc., which he had discarded upon his return home. He disappeared into his study, and sat down, wondering how his nefarious purpose could be best achieved, as there was no fire and no spirit-kettle handy. At first he thought he would have to wait until the following morning; but he believed that he should not sleep unless he had snatched the knowledge he so inordinately desired.
He dined morosely, and there was sympathy in the kitchen for his lack of appetite. It was not surprising to Hemming when he brought coffee to find it declined, and to be ordered to bring in the small spirit-kettle and the whisky decanter.
Alone at last, with the desired jet of steam, the monomaniac once more settled himself to his novel pursuit of tampering with seals. He had done so this morning without scruple. The letter he now held seemed to him far more sacred than the other. The blood rushed to his face, and his heart beat heavily as he peeled back the flap of the envelope. He felt almost as he might have felt had he intruded upon Virginia herself, as if he violated something pure and intact.
The letter was withdrawn. It lay under his relentless gaze. He took a peep into his wife's very soul.
Mother! Mother!
If you had known how it would hurt, you could not have written to me so! What can I say to you? Can I reproach my own mother with injustice? Yet I feel I cannot let you write as you do without telling you how unkind it sounds.
What I have done is wrong. I know that now. I half knew it all the time. But what else was there for me to do? I believe God knows I did it for the best. I was at the very end of all my own strength; I was at the very end of all our money; I had you all dependent upon me; and I knew I was going to break down.
I felt I had to serve you, and, oh, mother, you can't, you simply mustn't, deny that I have done that. Don't, for pity's sake, talk of my going off to be rich, and leaving you to the slavery that I found unbearable. That is not just, it is not true, but all the same it is torture to me that you should say it.
The unfairness of it gives me strength to write what perhaps I might not dare if I were not so indignant, but it has to be said. Never, never, under any circumstances, will I ask Osbert to do more for you than he has already done. Please understand that that is my last word. Last year we lived on less than £200, including Tony's school bills, which you will not now have to pay. With care, you ought to be quite comfortable on what you have.
I do not know whether Osbert means to make me any allowance. He has said nothing about it yet, and I cannot ask him. If he does, you shall have anything I can spare, you know how little I want myself. At least, I ought to be able to keep Tony in pocket-money, the darling has suffered so from not having any. At this moment I have five shillings in the world, which I must use to buy materials to embroider a kimono for my Pansy. I promised her that! It is to be blue, with pale pink embroidery. Tell her I have not forgotten; I will get it next time I go out shopping.
I have been resting all yesterday and to-day, and I think I shall soon pick up my strength; but not if you write me such cruel letters. Oh, mother, for father's sake, who told me always to take care of you, don't let me think that what I have done has been all in vain!
Virginia.