—"I slewMyself in that instant! a ruffian liesSomewhere. Your slave, see, born in his place."—Browning.
In the closed room within there was a pause. The sound of weeping died away, as though the master's voice had forced even anguish into the silence of terror. Grover answered him at length in sudden haste, as though anything would be better than to risk his anger. There followed a muttering and murmuring, as though the maid were imploring her mistress to command herself. Gaunt shook with rage and helplessness.
Thereafter the door was softly opened, elaborately closed, and Grover, her own eyes suspiciously red, emerged and stood before him. For one moment he hoped he might have been mistaken. "Was it you making that noise?" he asked thickly; and as she hesitated, he added in haste:
"Give me the truth, please, Grover."
Perhaps something in his voice excited the woman's pity. At any rate, she rejected the way out which his random words had suggested. It had been on her tongue to say yes, it was she—she had conjured up toothache, a fall downstairs, a family bereavement, wondering which would sound the most convincing, and was forced to reject all.
"It was Mrs. Gaunt," she faltered baldly.
"Well, what's the matter? Out with it. What makes her cry like that—eh?"
"She's had bad noos, sir. Noos of her little sister. She's fair broken-hearted—it's awful to see her——" The kind soul's voice failed, and she applied her handkerchief to her quivering mouth.
"Good heavens! The child's not dead, is she?"
"No, sir; but she's in agony, and calling for her sister. They seem to think she can't live, sir—the treatment has made her worse——"
"Mrs. Gaunt's not strong enough to go to London," he broke in, for the first miserable instant conscious only that he could not part with her.
"No, sir. She said you'd say so—that's what she's crying about," replied Grover, fairly breaking down, and turning away.
The man's face was white. "Stay where you are—wait—I am going in to see her," he muttered. Grover made a movement, but shrank back again. It was not for her to interfere with what her master chose to do.
The opening door brought Virginia to attention. She had been lying face downward upon the sofa, which stood near the fire they always lit in the evening. With a bound she was on her feet, and when she saw him she gave a gasp of terrified surprise; then, with extraordinary swiftness, her mood changed.
"It is you, is it?" she said in a voice that was hardly audible, so husky was it with violent weeping. "Come and look! Come and see what you have done. Oh, indeed you have got your wish! You have made me suffer. Never in all your life can you have had to endure anything like the torment—I say the torment—that I am undergoing now!" She stood before him, defiant, tense with the force of the feeling in her, wringing her little weak hands, clenching them over her labouring breast. "Oh, why didn't I go on, why didn't I stay there at my post—working, starving, loving them, till I dropped? If she had to die, she could at least have had me with her. I could have been sure that all was done that could be done. She wouldn't have had to die crying for a sister that never came. Oh!" she burst out with a final effort of uncontrollable emotion, all the more distressing because it could but just be heard, "why was I ever born to know such agony as this? I thought God would let me bear it all—not her—not that little thing! Oh, Pansy, Pansy,Pansy!"
She dropped again upon her sofa—her face hidden in the cushions, trying to stifle the tearing sobs. Her husband made a gesture of despair. He came near. He would have knelt beside her, but he dared not. He was so overwhelmed with what he was feeling, and the impossibility of expressing any of it, that for a moment he was choked and could not speak. When he did, the curb he was using made his voice sullen and without expression.
"Virginia, I am sorry. Let me help you. Please show me your letter, or tell me what is in it."
Something unwonted—something she did not expect—must have spoken in his repressed voice. She sat up, wiping away the blinding tears, and tried to speak to him, but failed for weeping. At last, feeling that her voice could not be controlled, she drew out a letter from the front of her frock and held it to him.
He took it, warm from its late contact with her; and the thought made him for a moment dizzy, so that words and lines swam before his eyes. He read it through.
There was silence. When he had got to the end, he raised his heavy lids and looked at her. Her face was now set, almost fierce. The dove-like sweetness of her changeful eyes was gone. They showed like a stormy sea.
"You want to go?" he almost whispered.
She laughed bitterly. That she, Virginia the martyr, could laugh like that! He reeled mentally with this fresh surprise of womanhood.
"Want to go?Iamgoing," she said deliberately, her huskiness giving almost the effect of hissing. "I have borne enough. Now I don't care what happens. I am going to Pansy. If you try to prevent me, I will scream and rouse the house. I will call upon your butler to protect me; I will say you are mad, as I believe you are! But somehow I will go to her. Then, afterwards, when I come back, you may do as you like. You may cut me to pieces with a knife, and I won't complain! But now I am rebel! Now you can't keep me! I am not afraid of you any more!"
There were a thousand things to say, each more hopeless, each more futile than the other. He could not say them. In profound humiliation he took what she gave him, he accepted it all. A long moment ticked past after her passionate challenge. Then he spoke humbly.
"Virginia—would it console you to go—to-night?"
She staggered on her feet as if his words overthrew her; then again she laughed in derision. "To-night? Ah, but, of course, you are mocking!"
"As God hears me, I am not. There is an express which stops at Derby at nine o'clock. You have an hour in which to pack and eat some dinner. Grover must go with you—you will want her when you get to London. I will call her now." He spoke with his watch in his hand.
Virgie caught her breath. She looked at him uncertainly....
Once, as a small child, during a visit to London, her father had taken her with him upon a visit to the Law Courts. They had been in court when sentence was passed upon a prisoner. She had completely forgotten the crime and what its punishment was to be; but as she looked at her husband, she recalled the expression of the prisoner in the dock, whose doom had just been pronounced.
"For the first time—I thank you," she muttered chokingly.
Gaunt went to the door. With his hand upon the handle, he turned back. "Promise me that you will now control yourself," he said frigidly. "No more wild weeping. You have cried yourself hoarse."
"I promise," she said in answer, her eyes upon him, her thoughts already far away in the nursing home with Pansy.
He went out, and she heard him speaking to Grover in the passage.
*****
An hour later, having forced herself to eat something, and having accomplished her packing, she came down into the hall, equipped for her journey.
The new motor, which had arrived only two days before, stood at the door in charge of a chauffeur, who was to stay a month and train Ransom, the coachman, to drive.
Gaunt awaited her in the hall, his hat in his hand. Her face changed.
"Don't be alarmed," he told her, coming near and speaking so low that only she could hear. "I am coming to Derby only. There are things I must tell you, and there was no time before starting. We shall only just do it. Jump in."
She obeyed. He briefly directed Grover to sit by the chauffeur, and they were off.
For a few minutes they sat in silence. The car slipped down the avenue, the lamplight dancing upon the pine-trunks, and came out into the open road, where it crossed the moor, and the day had not wholly faded from the sky. Then Gaunt spoke.
"Does your travelling-bag lock? Have you a key?"
"Yes."
"Then take these notes." He told her what sum he had given her, opened the packet and made her verify it. She obeyed almost mechanically.
"Now," he went on, "when you get to London, drive straight to the Langham Hotel. I have written it down for you on this paper. Give my name, and they will see that you have a comfortable room, with one for Grover close by. In the morning, as soon as you are rested, telephone to Dr. Danby at this address in Cavendish Square. Let me make a confession, Virginia. He is the man I ought to have called in at first. When I knew him he was a young chap just through his hospital training, who came down here one summer aslocum tenens. It was the year of my own accident. I owe it to that man that I did not lose my leg. Now he is a great specialist, at the top of his profession. When we were arranging about your little sister, I would have mentioned him to you; but I found you full of the idea of this new treatment, and I own that I cared so little for the child, or what became of her, that I thought it best you should have your own way. But if there is any hope for her, Danby is your man. If you believe this, do as I say. Override etiquette; take him straight to see Pansy. If there should be any difficulty, refer every one to me; but Danby can advise you how best to proceed; you are safe with him. You will probably have to move the patient, if she is strong enough to stand it. Danby's nursing homes are to be trusted. Take her where he tells you. I think you have your cheque-book, have you not? You can write a cheque for any fees that are necessary. I will pay in money to the bank to meet your demand. Then you can stay at your hotel, and be with your little sister as much as is practicable. Are you taking in what I say?"
"Yes, I am. I—I—don't know what to answer. Thank you. You are being—so—unlike yourself. I feel bewildered. I am sorry I was so rude to you just now, upstairs, and said such things——"
The meek, hoarse voice was so pitiful that he felt tears start to his eyes. "That's all right," he muttered hurriedly. "One thing you have to promise me. You will take care of your own health. Remember, you owe it to me to." He broke off. What did she owe to him but misery? However, she accepted the situation with a simplicity which was to him frankly awful.
"I know. I will try to do what I think you would wish. I realise that I have caused trouble and—and expense, already. It is generous of you to let me go like this. Please tell me, how long may I stay?"
"Virginia!" he said, and dropped his forehead on his hands. She looked at him in dim surprise, but with a mind too full of her own trouble to conceive of his.
"How long?" she persisted gently. "A week?"
"How can I decide how long?" he asked, lifting his haggard face again. "It depends upon the child. I must leave it to you. Stay as long as she needs you. I can say no more than that."
"Oh!" she murmured, "you are so good!"
He made no sound, but his lips set themselves in a line of pain. Ah, if only his brutality, his savage treatment of her did not lie between them! If it had been simply that she had come to him without love, yet longing for tenderness and protection! This would have been the moment to take her in his arms, to enfold her with sympathy and devotion that asked as yet no recompense.
She leaned back in her corner, while the car rushed easily through the country, and the yellow harvest moon came up to show him more clearly the glimmering pearly oval that was her face. She was pondering over his directions, and every now and then put some little question which showed how practical was her mind, how bent upon the enterprise which lay before her. At last, after a prolonged silence, she spoke unexpected words.
"I believe that being so miserable makes me understand a little bit better; understand you, I mean. When I think of my Pansy, I could find it in my heart to kill that wicked woman, her nurse, who let her be hurt when she was a little helpless child. I could almost torture this doctor, who has made her worse when he claimed to make her better; and I seem to see how it has happened—how being miserable for so many years has made you want to hurt somebody.... But the dreadful thought is, that it would do no good—no good at all! If I could kill the wicked nurse and the unskilful doctor it would not make my darling one bit better! And to make me unhappy won't help you, either, even though you think it will! I can't give you back the unhappy years, the lost years! It is all no good—no good!"
"Virginia—don't!" So much was forced out of him in his pain. He could have told her that in one respect she was wrong—that itwasin her power to restore to him the years that the locust had eaten—that he was at her feet, conquered, submissive.
But he saw how small a fragment of her mind was really occupied with him. She was eagerly looking forward—searching the horizon for the first glimpse of the chimneys of Derby.
He mattered very little to her now.
*****
They reached the station with six minutes in hand. Gaunt had sent a man down to Monton to telegraph for a sleeping-carriage, and they found all awaiting them.
Grover and she were duly installed in their luxurious quarters, the guard had been liberally feed to look after them. Gaunt repeated some of his directions, and ascertained that both she and Grover thoroughly understood them. He took the maid aside for a moment, into the corridor of the train, while he expressed to her, in a few terse, pointed words, how unremitting must be her care, how keen her attention. Grover's response was reassuring, if embarrassing.
"There, sir, I love her almost as well as you do yourself," she had said. The words stuck for long days afterwards in the man's head. Until he heard it put thus bluntly, he had hardly known that the keen emotion which he experienced could be called by so divine a name as love.
It had, then, befallen him to love a second time, with a force which made his first love seem crude and weak—mere counterfeit.
His impressions of the few final seconds were blurred. The guard went along the train, closing doors. Gaunt was shut out, upon the platform. Anxious to show her gratitude, Virgie stood by the open window of her compartment, looking at him, trying to fix her mind upon him, but with a fancy filled with far other visions. The image of her little sister's face, the sound of her cries, was in her heart. She was picturing her own appeal to this new doctor, this deliverer who had been brought to her by no other hands than those of her husband. She looked down upon his hand, clenched upon the sill of the door.
"Put up the window when the train starts," he was saying. "I am defying the doctor in letting you go like this, upon my own responsibility. You must justify me by taking all the care of yourself that is possible. Remember, you have Grover to wait upon you, and you are to order anything and everything you want. There is no necessity for you to do anything but just sit with the child when she is well enough to wish it."
Her face lit up gloriously. She smiled softly, pityingly, at the man who could imagine a moment in which Pansy would not wish to have Virgie with her.
A whistle sounded. He started and winced. Then, gripping the door a moment, he leaned forward, his eyes burning in his head. "Remember," he blurted out, "you are on your honour—on your honour to come back to me. You have undertaken to return."
She stared at him in surprise as she stood a little back from the window. The train began to move. "Of course I am coming back," she said in astonishment. "You know I shall." For a moment she just smiled, but in bitterness. "I am released on parole," she said; "I quite understand."
For a few moments after the smoothly running express had slithered out of the station, off upon her way south, Virginia was held by the memory of the look upon Gaunt's face as she passed from his sight. It was puzzling. He behaved almost as if he meant to be kind; which was incredible. His face seemed to her to be altering, or to have altered, since she first saw it.
Anyhow, he had let her go. Her mad outburst had borne fruit—her revolt had been entirely successful. She was off, without him, going to London, going to Pansy. Her return to bondage lay in the future, dim and misty, not worth troubling about as yet. There were other far weightier matters to occupy her. Before they had traversed ten miles she had forgotten Gaunt, almost as though he did not exist.
He, poor wretch, having made his sacrifice, stood a moment with arms tightly folded, wishing he had not been so altruistic. His eyes followed the train till it disappeared, then he turned, and went haltingly out of the station, back to the empty motor. He muttered something to himself as he opened the door. "We shall see."
"Did you speak, sir?" said the chauffeur.
"No, no! I didn't say anything. Home, of course."
"Yes, sir."
The Silent Knight sped on, and was engulfed in the darkness, now completely fallen.
Gaunt of Omberleigh sat down in the place which his wife had lately occupied. His body was there in the motor; his heart, his mind, all that was in him, was following her upon her journey. He leaned forward, gazing upon nothing, while in his fancy he recalled the whole of the late scene between them. Could he have done anything more? Could he have let her see?... But no. To do that—to utter any plea—would have deprived him of a wonderful opportunity. It was now in his power to prove her to the uttermost.
He had let her go. She had plenty of money, and still more credit. She was going to her own people, to her selfish, worldly mother, to her little sister's love and devotion. It was not to be supposed that, once back in their midst, she could refrain from telling her family some part at least of what she had been made to suffer. Doubtless it would all be poured out. Every kind of influence would then be brought to bear upon her in order to shake her allegiance. It would be pointed out to her that he was probably mad, a person whose morbid tendencies must not be encouraged. She would be told that it was her duty not to return to him. A hundred arguments were ready to hand.
As he faced the situation, he suddenly felt that it was too hard a test which he had set her. Brave she was; single-minded he had found her; honest she seemed, but if, in face of argument, in face of influence, in face of love, in spite of fear, in spite of dreadful apprehension of punishment, she returned to what she still believed to be a state of slavery and subjection, of captivity and surveillance, then, indeed, she was a paragon, a pearl of such price as he was not worthy to possess.
It was too much to hope for! She was gone, and she would never return. The scandal and the tragedy of his marriage would be in every one's mouth in a very few weeks' time.
He had let her go.
Why?
Because it was not in his power to hold her. Even if he had followed a certain wild, hateful impulse which bade him keep her, even by means of locked doors and imprisonment, he would have held but the husk of her. The lonely spirit which animated her, which was the thing he loved, and met for the first time, would not have been there in her prison, but away with the child she loved. His success would have been sheer failure.
Whereas now, deep in his heart, not to be completely annihilated, lurked the faint hope that his present failure might possibly, by some scarcely conceivable good fortune, turn into success.
The miles flew past unnoticed, while he sat rapt within himself. As the car came to a standstill before the dark porch of Omberleigh, he was reflecting upon the strangeness of the fact that he had once thought Virginia's resemblance to her mother so striking.
Already she had almost ceased to remind him of his former bitterness. A wholly new image of her had grown up in his heart. Before it for the last weeks he had been burning incense. He had placed it in a sacred niche upon a pedestal.
To-night he had taken it out. He wanted to hold it in his arms, to make it his.
What if it failed to pass the almost superhuman test which he had devised for it?
"My whole life is so strange: as strangeIt is, my husband, whom I have not wronged,Should hate and harm me."—The Ring and the Book.
As once before, when the doctor visited her, Joey Ferris was busy in the garden, cutting off dead blooms. Her little boys busily waited on her, each with his small barrow, in which they collected the faded flowers which she tossed upon the path, and ran off with them down the long walks to the rubbish heap, puffing and blowing to announce the fact of their being goods trains or expresses, or light engines, as the fancy took them.
It was nearly lunch time, and Ferris was going to bring home a man who had showed signs of interest in the lead-mine scheme. As the stable clock chimed a quarter to one, the mistress of Perley Hatch straightened her back, took off her gardening gloves, rubbed her nose reflectively, and wondered whether she "ought to change."
As the doubt crossed her mind, she looked up to see some one approaching across the grass, and with a vast surprise recognised Gaunt of Omberleigh.
"Why," cried she very heartily, advancing to meet him with hand outstretched, "Iamglad to see you! Didn't think you knew your way to this house! What's the news this morning? Better, I hope?"
"It seems to be astonishingly good. The change of treatment and my wife's presence, taken together, have worked a miracle. The child, who was dangerously ill, is making marked progress every day."
"Oh, well, that is some consolation for you, isn't it?" said Joey, her eyes full of sympathy, and her voice almost tender. "I think you are just the most unselfish man I have ever heard of—letting Virgie go off like that!"
"Please, Mrs. Ferris——"
"It's no use please-Mrs.-Ferrising me! Some men in your place would have said things! First she herself falls ill, and then, just as your love and care has brought her round, off she goes and leaves you on the All-alone Stone! Percy has been on the point of riding over to try and persuade you to come to us for a bit of dinner, but he has been so taken up over his mine."
"You are more than kind, Mrs. Ferris. I fear I've been a most unneighbourly neighbour for many years. Now I am going to turn over a new leaf. As a preliminary, will you give me some lunch to-day? I want to talk to Ferris about his mine. Dr. Dymock was telling me something of it."
Joey was overjoyed. "Need you ask?" she joyfully inquired. "Come to the house and wash your hands, while I tell Daniel to take your horse round. I conclude you rode over?" She fixed her guest with her shrewd, twinkling glance, and thought that he had done something to himself, she hardly knew what. Was it that he wore a new, very well-cut riding suit, with tan gaiters, and that his hair was trimmed more sprucely than usual? Or was he really younger, when you saw him close, than he appeared from a distance? Certainly he had altered in some subtle fashion, and for the better. He did not look well, though. There were black marks under his eyes, as if he had not slept.
Tom and Bill came rushing up at the moment, charging with their barrows. They were wholly untroubled with shyness, and loudly announced that Tom was a Midland express from Glasgow, and Bill a pilot engine. Gaunt stopped and gravely shook hands with each, holding the plump, earthy moist little fingers curiously in his brown, muscular grip. Then he picked up Bill by his waist, and seated him upon his shoulder. "Now you're in the look-out—the signal-box," said he. "Is the line clear?"
This was enchanting. Bill shouted to Tom to go and be the excursion and seized Gaunt's hand, drawing back his arm to represent a lever.
"I'm off'ring the 4.10 to Manton box!" he cried.
"Fancy your playing with them," said Joey, deeply gratified. "That's what Virgie did. Bill, you remember the pretty lady who came to tea and told you about little Runt? This is her husband, that she belongs to."
"Oh, are you?" cried the excursion train, turning right round upon the permanent way in horrifying fashion. "Tell us about little Runt again—do!"
"I don't know that story, Bill. I'll have to get the pretty lady to tell it to me, then perhaps I can pass it on."
"Where is she?" cried Tom. "Have you got her here?"
"No, Tom. She has gone to be with her own little sister, who is ill. I dare say she tells her stories, to pass the time while she has to be in bed, flat on her back."
"Flat on her back? Beastly!" said Tom.
"Why's that for?" asked his brother.
"Because her back was hurt when she was quite a baby. She was thrown out of a motor-car, and has always been ill."
"You'd better not let our baby go in the car, mummy," cried the little brother promptly; and Gaunt felt a movement of affection for the child whose feeling spoke so readily.
They moved across the grass towards the house, and suddenly Joey gave a pleased exclamation. "Here comes Percy!" said she brightly.
Ferris was advancing, accompanied by a young man who, though he wore a country suit, had the air of London about his hat and his boots. He was a distinguished-looking, tall fellow, and Gaunt, as he set Bill upon his feet upon the grass, knew that he had seen him before. As the stranger drew near their eyes met, and the same look of half-recognition appeared in both faces.
Ferris's cordial welcome to Gaunt was somewhat flamboyant. He wrung his hand a little too often and too vehemently. Then he introduced his friend, Mr. Rosenberg. That cleared up the mystery, as far as Gaunt was concerned. Instantly he saw the gallery flooded with summer sunshine, the glimmering floors, the mellow canvases, the figure of the beautiful girl, bending over the inscription at the foot of the marble cupid.
To Gerald Rosenberg memory had come without difficulty. The occasion when he first set eyes on Gaunt was a critical moment in his life—how critical he hardly knew at the time. The same picture was stamped upon his own brain: the picture of Virginia beginning to descend the staircase, and of his own turning of the head with a consciousness of being watched—of meeting face to face a pair of eyes, ironic, intent, challenging.
"This is our neighbour, Gaunt of Omberleigh," Ferris was jovially proclaiming. "Luckiest man in the county; just married the most lovely girl I ever saw in my life."
Gaunt!That was the name of Virginia's husband! She had said that her future home would be Derbyshire! Was this—this man—her husband? He grew quite pale.
"Was it you," he stammered, "youwho married Miss Mynors?"
Gaunt assented. The eyes of the two men once more met. "I saw you," slowly said Rosenberg, "at Hertford House, when I went there to meet my sister and her friend. You were in the Gallery."
"I was; and I saw Miss Mynors."
Gerald felt the blood rush to his head. "For the first time?"
Gaunt again assented mutely. He was filled with exultation. Unhappy and uncertain as he was, insecure as he knew his tenure of his prize, at least she was his at present, at least he might claim this one triumph.
"Fell in love at first sight, and no wonder!" cried Ferris, with enthusiasm. "Isn't he the luckiest chap on earth? I really don't think I have ever seen anybody quite as lovely as Mrs. Gaunt."
"You are right—that is the almost universal opinion. I congratulate Mr. Gaunt," said Gerald, rallying his composure.
How all the crises of our lives come upon us unaware! How little had he guessed, that day in the Gallery, that, although he had a good chance then, it was his last! His father, in persuading him to flee temptation, had urged the probability of a future recurrence of opportunity. "She won't run away," he had said. And behold! even as he spoke, the chain of gold was being forged to bind captive the innocent girl.
Gaunt was speaking to Joey. "Great as is Virginia's beauty," Gerald heard him say, "it is the least part of her charm. It is her character which is so fine, so exceptional. She is pure gold throughout."
Young Rosenberg looked at him with a lingering gaze of hatred. Had he known in what a crucible the gold of Virginia's nature had been and was still being proved, the hate would have intensified perhaps to the point of sending his fingers to the husband's throat. This man had apparently been certain, where he was doubtful.WasVirginia as fair within as without? Could she have wholly escaped the taint of her mother's ignoble nature? His father had thought not. In his indecision he had let slip the treasure which another man had promptly gathered. As they walked slowly towards the house, his mind was filled with the two ideas—first, that all was over, so far as he was concerned, and, also, that in the course of the next few hours he might possibly see her whose dove's eyes had haunted him ever since that fatal day in the valley of decision—the day when he had decided upon retreat.
Then he began by degrees to grasp what the others were speaking of. He learned that the sudden and dangerous illness of Pansy had called Virginia to London, and that Gaunt had allowed her to go without him. Also he learned that she had suffered with a bad knee, and that her husband was anxious lest she should now be doing too much. He listened as in a dream, his mind slowly assimilating all these rapid happenings; and by degrees he realised that, if she were in London without Gaunt, he could easily see her, if he could ascertain her address.
The conversation soon turned to the projected lead-mine, in which Mr. Rosenberg senior had been asked by a friend in the financial world to take a director's place. The party were to meet Mr. Rosenberg's own expert, and Ferris's, at Branterdale cavern that afternoon. Joey was coming too.
She drove their guest over in the car, Percy electing to ride with Gaunt, whom he was most anxious to propitiate. On the way, it was quite easy for Gerald to ask Joey where in London Mrs. Gaunt was staying.
"Well, I don't exactly know," said Joey. "She went up to the Langham, but directly her mother found that out, she determined that she would go there, too. I fancy the mother's a bit of a sponge, isn't she? Anyway, Virgie thought her husband wouldn't see keeping the two of them there, so she has gone into rooms with her mother, as being less expensive, and she always writes to me from the Nursing Home in Queen Anne Street."
"So she writes to you?"
"Yes. When they first married, Mr. Gaunt hadn't got a motor, so ours came in handy. I took her about a bit. She's a perfect angel. Hard on him, poor chap! having to let her go like this, isn't it? You can see how he is fretting!"
"Is he? He looks to me an ill-conditioned brute," said Gerald shortly.
"Oh, he's quite a good sort when you know him," replied Joey kindly.
"But as a husband for her——"
"Well, why didn't you chip in?"
"One can't always follow the dictates of the heart, Mrs. Ferris. I couldn't afford to marry for love."
"Well, of course, Gaunt is much too old for her, as far as years go; but," observed Joey, with one of her flashes of intuition, "he is absurdly young in the sense of not having used up his emotions. He was jilted in his youth, so they say, and ever since has imagined that he hated women—thought himself heart-broken, and shut himself up alone until one fine day he saw her. He has all the heaped-up love of a lifetime to pour out at her feet."
"I don't doubt his sentiments. The question is, will she have any use for them?" retorted Gerald, with bitterness.
*****
It was late when Gaunt reached Omberleigh that evening. It seemed to him as though he had been away a week, for the reason that this was the day when he usually heard from Virgie, and if she wrote in her usual punctual way, there would be a letter lying in the bag upon the hall table when he came in.
There was. He opened the bag with hands that shook so that he was afraid Hemming might notice; and when he drew out the letter, "he pounced on it, like a dog on a bone," as the servant afterwards related, "and was off with it into his study before you could count two."
The scrupulously business-like letters were little enough upon which to feed the fire of a consuming passion. The point was that in every letter she recognised, by implication, his hold over her. Before taking any step she consulted him, she awaited his permission. In a way it was torture; she never let him forget that he had bought and paid for her. On the other hand, since she maintained this attitude, surely she would come back to him!
She never used any form of address at the beginning of her letters. "Osbert Gaunt, Esq.," was written above, and then followed the body of the communication. She signed herself merely "Virginia," as though the second name were too horrible, or too distasteful to write. He had never seen her full signature since she became his wife. He hungered to see her written acknowledgment of her wifehood, and with this object he had set a trap for her. He wrote a cheque which would need her endorsement, and sent it to her. This expedient failed, for she returned the cheque, saying she was in no need of more money; she had enough, and more than enough.
Each of her letters contained a small statement of account, carefully balanced. The first he had received was the one that pleased him best. There was very much to tell. She had to relate her experiences—how she went first to see Pansy, and was horrified at the change in her; how she determined to act without delay, and informed the doctor over the telephone that she meant to have another opinion. He was not pleased, but was, as Dr. Danby foretold, obliged to consent. The doctors met, and differed gravely; upon which she had formally placed herself and the case in Dr. Danby's hands. Pansy was moved that day, and from the first few hours showed symptoms of relief. Then had come the difficulty with her mother. This she had solved without applying to Gaunt. She had gone to her mother's rooms in Margaret Street, found that she and Grover could both be taken in, and had moved thither accordingly. Her exact explanations made him smile and grunt, and brought a moisture to his eyes.
To this letter there had been a postscript. Under her signature these words had been scrawled, as if on impulse:
Thank you—oh, thank you!
He had dwelt upon those words until he had half persuaded himself that she must have perceived something of his remorse, and wished to reassure him. The following letters from her had not, however, done anything to foster this idea. He longed to write and tell her to go back to the Langham, and take her mother there, to bid her choose herself a fur motor-coat, and anything else she liked, but he restrained all these impulses. He meant her to come back, if at all, as she had departed, in the full persuasion of his cruelty and harshness, to come back because her crystal honesty would not allow her to break her promise, even to him.
With this end in view, he forced himself to write to her as curtly as possible, signing himself "O. G." merely.
The missive he now held in his hand was no exception to his wife's usual style. He read it, first with his customary feeling of disappointment and heart-hunger, then with the succeeding glow of reassurance, as he reached the little account of money expended. Somehow he could read between the lines what an effort it was to her to accept his help; it was done only because Pansy mattered so infinitely more than she did; because Pansy must not suffer merely for the reason that Virginia's pride would be hurt in the process of curing her.
What he hardly guessed was the constant vexation, of the pin-prick kind, which Virginia was then enduring from her mother. Grover was a good sort, but she was neither young nor active, and she did object to being maid to two ladies. Moreover, her own mistress, Mrs. Gaunt, was the most considerate of her sex, but Mrs. Mynors was "quite another pair of shoes." As usually happens in such cases, the considerate party was made the victim of the maid's ill-humour, while the inconsiderate brought her mending and renovating with smiling face and got it all done, free of charge, the while she made scornful comments upon Grover's attainments, and wondered how Virgie could stand such a woman about her for a moment.
The nursing home at which Pansy was now placed was just as expensive as the one she occupied formerly. Therefore it was surprising to Gaunt to find that, although both Virginia and her mother were now in town, not to mention Grover, instead of Mrs. Mynors alone, the total spent in a week was less than in those preceding by quite a noticeable amount.
The letter of to-day was an exception in containing a postscript. It was apparently of the least interesting description. A small item in the accounts was marked with an asterisk, and at the foot of the page Virginia had written:
When I come back, I can explain this.
The words sent a thrill through every nerve of the man reading.
"When I come back!"
He leaned forward, seizing old Grim by her ears, and rubbing his hands up and down her neck in the way she loved. "When she comes back, old girl," he whispered. Then he broke off. His eye had wandered round the dreary, untidy, ill-arranged den. Was it a home to which to bring such a bride as his? Was there anything he could do to improve it?
Slowly he rose, and limped into the little sitting-room which he had called hers. There were one or two small articles of her personal possessions left about in it. He wondered whether he could have it done up by the time of her return. He distrusted his own taste profoundly. What did girls like?
He remembered the drawing-room at Perley Hatch, which the Ferrises had recently repainted and papered. No! That was not his idea. He felt that Virginia would never like big bunches of floral decoration all over her walls.
Then he remembered the little room in which Mrs. Mynors had received him at Wayhurst. Tiny as it was, how its charm, its dainty elegance had impressed him! He closed his eyes and recalled its aspect. Ivory paint—yes, that was all right; and walls of a warm, sunny golden brown. How would that suit her? Acting on impulse he rang the bell, and said he wanted to speak to Mrs. Wells.
The housekeeper, when consulted, was delighted with the idea. It had apparently presented itself to the mind of the servants' hall long ago. She would send down a boy at once, to telephone from Manton into Derby for a man to come over the following morning to take the order.
"The furnishing I must leave until Mrs. Gaunt returns," said Gaunt, in a depressed way. "I can see that this stuff is all wrong, but I can't see what she would put in its place."
"Oh, as to that, sir. If it's a question of what Mrs. Gaunt would like—why, I can tell you that myself, and you won't have far to seek, for we've got it all in the house at this moment," was Mrs. Wells's surprising answer.
"Got it in the house?"
"In the lumber-room, sir. Your great-aunts, the Miss Gaunts, turned all the old things into the lumber-room, after their father died, about fifty years ago, and refurnished great part of the house, so I'm told. There's a great many things up there, and Mrs. Gaunt, when she saw them, she went into raptures over them. Said they was as old as Adam, which I could hardly believe——" She broke off abruptly, for Gaunt, her morose master, had laughed aloud, and the circumstance was startling.
"Adam's period," he hastened to apologise. "Yes, go on, please. If you showed the lumber-room to Mrs. Gaunt, why have you never mentioned it to me?"
The good woman's eyes grew very round. "Why, sir, you was here when I came," said she. "I concluded you knew all about it. My part was only to see as the things didn't perish, for I have a kind of liking myself for all them antiquities."
Gaunt's eyes were still dancing over the Adam joke; and his wandering gaze had strayed to the mantel, and realised that this was of the same period. Doubtless what made these walnut carved whatnots and arm-chairs look so wrong was their silent clash with the fine simplicity of the dental moulding. As his eye wandered over the faded pink wallpaper, with its brown, green and blue roses, he suddenly perceived, like a man whose eyes are newly opened, that the room was moulded for panels. It struck him that this was the treatment required.
"So Mrs. Gaunt liked the things?"
"Indeed, yes, sir. She said how she would like to use them. I can show you the exact pieces she picked out, sir."
"Come along," said Gaunt impetuously. Here was a glorious idea. Here was something to fill in blank days of waiting! Virgie should find her own room at least habitable; incomplete, of course, and waiting for her touch, but not impossible as at present. It would welcome her, when she came back—when she came back!
Would she come?