Roger, however, though he commented little on the episode of the assault, and felt in every way the least said, soonest mended, borrowed his father-in-law's riding-horse and rode early one morning over to Tilehurst. He entered the factory, of design, just as Mr. Baines was about to take his seat in the office and run his eyes over the day's orders. "Oh, don't be alarmed!" he said to Mr. Baines, who was instinctively about to withdraw, guessing his visitor's identity. "I'm not a violent heathen like your wife. Sit down and let us talk this over like sensible men."He then put the matter very plainly before Mr. Baines.Mrs. Baines, summoned by half-fearful, half-exultant Eliza, had "locked herself in her bedroom, she 'ave an' ast me to go for the police!""Then you, too," said Roger to the startled Eliza, "remain and hear what I have to say. Since your termagant of a mistress refuses to come, you shall repeat my words to her. You are, from what my wife tells me, an old and trusted servant of the family" (Eliza bridled and pleated the hem of her apron). "When she returns to sanity, you may get a chance of saying a word to your mistress in season, even if her husband has not the courage to do so. Tell her then, if she ever annoys or slanders or upsets my wife in any way I will leave no stone unturned to punish her. And if she appears at Church Farm or anywhere else again with the intention of assaulting my wife I will knock her on the head like the mad dog she is. Now you can leave us. But I trust also to you as an honourable woman and one who was sincerely fond of poor John Baines, who ought never to be connected with these hateful sayings and doings, not to chatter about this business outside this house."And Eliza did not. She was much impressed by Brentham's appeal. The interview with John's father even ended in a kind of reconciliation. He heard from Brentham for the first time the whole story, so far as it was known, of the circumstances which led up to the attack on the station, John's death, and Lucy's journey to the coast; of how her baby had died and how ill she had been; of the Stotts, and of Ann Jamblin's obstinacy. Roger purposely prolonged the interview. It was doing the miserable father good, and was keeping Mrs. Baines a prisoner in her bedroom just when she wanted to be busy at house-work.Maud on her return from visiting the Joslings tightened her lips and "went for" her father as he had never been truth-told before; so Mrs. Baines, if she did harm to Lucy's good name and gave her nervous system a nasty shock, also provoked good in other directions. A disturbance of the kind seldom fails to clear the air and create a fresher atmosphere. Maud reproached her father bitterly with his incivility to his eldest son's wife; with his general indifference to the well-being of his children, his selfish absorption in his archæological work, his unfairness to them in lavishing on it funds which should have been their patrimony. She even issued a sort of ultimatum: the subsidies to the Silchester Excavation fund must cease; the curate at Farleigh must be given his congé and the Vicar—still able-bodied—carry out his own Church duties:orshe would go away and earn her own living as a secretary or something or other. And she was at once, and on his authority, to ask Lucy to stay—with Roger, of course—for at least a month. He gave in. Maud had deeper plans hidden under this surface wrath. Roger was in difficulties with the Foreign Office, she guessed. He had resigned from the Indian Army. He might at any time have to forge a new career for himself and would want a little capital to start with. She reckoned that her father having originally been a well-to-do man and her mother having come to him with a substantial dowry, there ought to be a least twelve thousand pounds to be divided between the four of them. If that left her father almost entirely dependent on his income—about five hundred a year—from the twin benefices of Farleigh and Cliddesden, that would serve him right. He had no business to squander his children's money—as it really was—on a work of excavation which the County or the Nation should finance.A little repentant and more than a little rheumatic—(besides, Roman Silchester was turning out so distressingly Christian and so little Pompeian and Pagan)—he agreed at any rate to look into the matter. The letter was sent to Lucy, and she came, now quite restored to health. She found in Maud the selfless friend and good adviser she had long needed. All she begged and prayed of Roger was that he might leave her at Farleigh for a time and not frighten her and upset her nerves by requiring of her the going out into smart Society, where she was ever on the twitter for fear of being questioned as to her birth and bringing-up and the circumstances of her life in Africa.Roger rather ruefully consented. Maud would gradually cure her of her nerves and her rusticity. Meantime he would now tackle Sibyl. Sibyl had taken no notice of his card and call; but about three weeks afterwards had written to Maud, picturing herself as having now emerged from a swoon of grief and being ready to see Roger for afewminutes if he wouldpromiseto move gently and speak in a level voice, asthe least thingupset her. Pressed to be more definite, she consented to see him—and him only—at Engledene on a certain Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock.He found her in a little boudoir, which was draped with pleated lavender-mauve cashmere and shaded to a dim light. She was dressed in black, not having as yet the hardihood to discard widows' weeds, still less some diaphanous, filmycoiffe, some ghost of a widow's cap. Queen Victoria was still a great power in Society and kept Peeresses in order. If you were too daring you might be banned at Court and then where would your social and political influence be?"Wheel up, or better stillliftup—I can't bear theslightestjar, just now—that small armchair, Roger—the purple velvet one—and put it near enough for me to hear and speak without effort; but nottoonear, because I notice you have a very powerful aura. I've only just learnt about auras, and I realize nowwhata difference they make!...""All right," said Roger, obeying these instructions, "but what's an aura? Is it the smell of my Harris tweeds, or do you doubt my having had a bath this morning?""Don't be so perfectly horrid ... and coarse.... You neverusedto be coarse, whatever you were—I suppose it comes from marrying a farmer's daughter; but for the matter of that, what amI? My poor dear dad is trying hard to be a farmer after spending his best years in the Army. I didn't mean anything much about your 'aura,' except, I suppose, that as I'm only recently widowed all my relations with men-visitors should be a little frigid. But I'm simply talking nonsense to gain time, to remember what I wanted to say to you." (A pause.) ... "Roger! Yourdreadfulletter from that Gouging place, coming just on top of poor Francis's death,knocked me over. The doctors put it all down to Francis, of course ... I don't deny that his deathdidupset me.... But I'd been expectingthatany time within the last six months.... The doctors told medefinitelylast winter his heart was very unsound and that he must not over-exert himself in any way or be contraried or argued with....Thatwas why I gave up the orange-velvet curtains and general redecoration of the dining-room at 6A, Carlton House Terrace—which is dingy beyond belief. I shall do it now.... It's too early for tea ... won't you smoke?" (Roger: "Thank you.") "Well, there's everything on that little table.... No. Not those ones; they've got the wee-est flavour of opium.... Obliged to dosomethingfor my nerves.... Well, now, about your Gouging letter.... I mean about your marriage.... MydearRoger!Whatagaffe! I mean, howcouldyou?""Could I what?""Ruinyour hopes and mine?""Well, I did hope to marry Lucy ... for at least six months before the knot was tied.... Ever since her husband's death. Somyhopes were fulfilled. And as to you, I never prevented you from marrying Lord S. So where the ruin comes in, I can't see.""Oh," wailed Sibyl, "whybeat about the bush? You must have known that I always hoped if anything happened to poor Francis—and anythingmightwell have done so—after all, you or I might be in a railway accident or break our necks out hunting. In such case youmusthave known Icountedon you ... I mean, on our being happyat last.... Don't interrupt! ... And just think! Francis loved me awfully. I reallywas perfectly sweetto him and did my duty to himin every way. His gratitude for that boy ... for a direct heir! ... Well, after Clithy was born he made his will! ... Don't be silly ... and don't joke about things I regard almost as sacred.... I meanFrancisre-made his will; and left me sole guardian of the boy and sole trustee, soleeverything; and mistress for my life of Engledene, and of 6A, till Clithy came of age ... and a jointure of £10,000 a year to keep them up. Clithy has also the Silchester house which is let and which I intend tokeeplet till he comes of age, the moors in Scotlandandthe shooting lodge. Of course he has the reversionary rights ofeverythingafter my death. And equally of course he has fifteen thousand a year, which I control till he is twenty-one or until he marries...."Justthinkwhat I could have done for you, out of all this—if you'dwaited! Ifonlyyou'd waited!..." (buries her face in the mauve silk cushions and cries a little or pretends to). (Roger fidgets on his chair. An exquisite little purple Sèvres clock on the white mantelpiece ticks ... ticks ... ticks.)Roger: "Look here, Sibyl. You're altogether on the wrong tack, believe me. You might have married me in '86. I was quite ready then and fancied myself in love with you. But if you had we mightn't have got on. My seven hundred a year would have been nowhere to give you surroundings like this...." (And he looks round the boudoir "done" in white, lavender, mauve and purple, with its exquisite bits of furniture, its velvet-covered armchair and Charles II day-bed, and pillow covers of mauve silk; and looked also at the sinuous figure of the woman coiled on the day-bed in her filmy black dress, with her face half buried in the silk cushions, and one disconsolate arm lying listlessly along her side, and at the magnificent rings of emeralds and diamonds on the pink fingers.) "You werequiteright: you couldneverhave stood the strain of Africa. I'll tell you by and bye some of the things Lucy and I went through." (At this hint of comradeship with Lucy, the little black velvet shoes gave angry thumps on the frame of the day-bed.) "I know," continues Roger, "you used to throw out mysterious hints after you were married that I might wait till some far-off date when you were free; I mean after Lord Silchester was dead. But what decent man would have taken you at your word? Why, Silchester might well be alive now. He did not die of old age...."Sibyl(in a muffled voice): "N-no; he ... he ... didn't. He—overrated his strength. He—he—oh,howcan I tell you? He was so anxious to play a great part in public affairs ... but he had lost all his energy...." (Sitting up with flushed cheeks—damnably good-looking, Roger feels.) "Well! What can I do for you? You've failedme. But I suppose you've come here to ask me to help you in some way. Men don't generally waste their time on afternoon calls without a motive. What is it? I've got no influence anywhere since Francis died" (a sob). "So it's no good askingmeto write to Lord Wiltshire or to Spavins. I hear you are out of favour at the F.O. It's notmyfault, is it? It's all due to your gallivanting after missionaries' wives...." (Roger looks sullen.) ... "Heigh ho! I expect with all this crying and tousling among cushions, to hide Iwascrying from your cynical eyes, I'd better go into my room and bathe my face before the butler brings in the tea....There!you can pull up two of the blinds—when I am gone—my eyes are so red—and you can look at some of my new books till I come in to make the tea. You mustn'tdreamof going before we've had tea and finished our talk.""I suppose," said Sibyl a quarter of an hour later when they were discussing tea and tea-cake and pâté-de-foie sandwiches and assorted cakelets, "what you really came to ask was would I present this Lucy-pucy of yours at Court. But, mydear, I shall be in mourning for a year, and the Queen——""Lordno! Such a thing never entered my head. It would scare Lucy into fits. I hope before next season comes round I shall be back in Africa—or somewhere. So far as I connected Lucy with this visit I might have intended to ask you to let me bring her here one day, and for you to be kind to her ... not frighten her, as you very well could do, pretending all the time to be her best friend...."Sibyl: "Well: I'll tell you what you shall do. You must remember I'm in mourning, of course.... We always have to think of what the servants will say.... And—ah! Did I tell you? Aunt Christabel is here. I sent her out the longest drive I could think of, so that we might have our afternoon alone; still, she's staying here till I emerge from the deepest of my mourning.... By the bye she'shorrifiedat your marriage, just as she used to be horrified at the idea of your marryingme.... Well, bring your Lucy over one day at the end of July and I'll just have a look at her. And then, in the autumn—say October—you and she, and of course if you like to have them, Maurice and Geoffrey too, could come here for the shooting.Of courseI shan't have a regular party; but somebody must come and shoot the pheasants. The Queen couldn't object to that. I've asked a man—I did before Francis's death—to come. You might like to meet him: a Sir Willowby Patterne.... Dare say you've heard of him?"Roger: "I've heard nogoodof him....""Oh, what tittle-tattlers and scandal-mongers you men are! I think he's so amusing, and every one says he's a splendid shot.... However, we will make up just atinyparty and you and Lucy shall entertain for me. I shall purposely be very little seen and shall give out my cousins have come over to help me with my guests.... And,Roger! If I am to help you you must helpme. The doctor says I positivelymusttake up my riding again unless I am to drift into being an invalid. Couldn't you—sometimes—whilst you're down in this part of the world—come over and ride with me? I can 'mount' you. You could ride poor Francis's cob ... not showy but very steady.""I will, when I come back from town," said Roger, and took his departure, not at all dissatisfied with his afternoon.Two days afterwards he thought it might be prudent to see how things were going at the Foreign Office. So he went up to town, changed into town togs at Hankey's (where their flat was becoming a white elephant, owing to Lucy's dislike to London, so he arranged to give it up), and betook himself to Downing Street, and asked to see Mr. Bennet Molyneux. "Mr. Bennet Molyneux," he was presently told, "is very sorry, sir, but he is much engaged this morning; would you go into the Department and see one of the young gentlemen there?"The Department was a large, long room with a cubby-hole at its further end for the accommodation of the senior clerk, a sort of school prefect who had to keep order among the high-spirited juniors and therefore required to work a little apart from them. When Brentham entered the main room, announced by the office messenger, he recognized two friends of yore and several new, ingenuous faces. There also emerged from the cubby hole a man whom he had known as a junior three years previously: an agreeable gentleman of agricultural and sporting tastes, who, because of his occasional remonstrances and enforcement of discipline, was known as "Snarley Yow or the Dog Fiend." Then there were "Rosie" Walrond and Ted Parsons. (The others do not matter in this narrative: they merely served as chorus and acclaimers of the witticisms of the elder boys. They were all nice to look at, all well-mannered and all well-dressed.) "Rosie" Walrond was a young man—older than he looked—with wavy flaxen hair and mocking grey eyes, and an extremely cynical manner overlying an exceedingly kind heart.Walrond: "Hullo! Here'sBrentham, the rescuer of beleaguered Gospellers. We've got a grudge against you. You came here months ago and were closeted with Spavins and never gave us a look-in. And we were dying to hear all about the elopement and its sequel. We were prepared to subscribe to a wedding present for a teller of good stories...."Then he added: "D'you admire my grotto?"Brentham, after the necessary greetings and introductions, strode up to "Rosie's" desk. Its ledges and escarpments were piled with rock specimens on which tattered, brown, and half-decipherable labels had been pasted."My mineral specimens... from" (he checked himself) ... "from East Africa! Then youneversent them on?""Mydearchap! Where was I to send them to? The Consular Mail bags—two of them—arrived here all right, addressed to me, but nary a letter with them or any directions. Also two skulls which, as you see, decorate our mantelpiece, and which I am proposing to have mounted in silver at Snarley's expense for our Departmental Dinner. Meantime, I have arranged my desk as a grotto, in spite of the office cleaner's objections...."Brentham: "I suppose the letter of directions went astray. I asked you to send the rocks to the School of Mines and the skulls to the Natural History Museum. However, I'll take them all away presently in a cab.""Butnotthe skulls, I beg, just as we were being initiated into Devil worship by Snarley, who has learnt the Black Mass....""Yes, the skulls, too. They're most important——""But so arewe," said Parsons.Then followed half an hour of chaff, out of which Roger gleaned no grain of information as to his own probable fate and was too diffident to ask outright if any decision as to his return had been arrived at. He accepted an invitation to dine with the Department at the Cheshire Cheese and meet Arthur Broadmead; then drove to the School of Mines in Jermyn Street, handed in his rocks and asked the Curator for a report on them, at his leisure. After that, Professor Flower and the skulls; which were those of two men of that Hamitic race colonizing the Happy Valley. He had found them lying about on the outskirts of a village and had received the careless permission of the villagers to take them away. They might serve to determine the relationships of this incongruous type.CHAPTER XVISIBYL AS SIRENIn August, 1889, Lucy conveyed to Roger her belief that she was going to have a child."But that is no reason you should not come down with me to Sibyl's place in Scotland. You can't be going to have a baby till—till well on in the winter, and meantime a stay in the Highlands will brace you up. Of course as Sibyl is in mourning she can only have a very small house party—just two or three men like myself to shoot the grouse, rabbits and stags. I don't suppose there will be any women there except her aunt and you." Lucy acquiesced unwillingly.She was living once more with her parents, while Roger's plans were so unsettled. The rooms at Hankey's had been given up, and on his frequent journeys to London—mainly on Sibyl's business—he slept at Aunt Pardew's Hotel in Great Ormond Street, where they made him very comfortable. He had taken Lucy over to Engledene twice in July—once he had left her there a whole afternoon,tête-à-têtewith the still languid young widow. On that occasion he had purposely ridden over to Tilehurst to see Mr. Baines with more news—sent on by Callaway from Unguja—about Ann Anderson and the restoration of Hangodi station, and what the Mission proposed to do in regard to a memorial grave-stone. It tickled his sense of humour that he should improve his acquaintance with John's father and thus allay any local feeling against Lucy: his visits there not only cheered the Aerated Waters' manufacturer, but they enraged Mrs. Baines.She was obliged all the time to keep locked up in her bedroom, and this caused Eliza to get out of hand.But so far, the hope of a friendship growing up between his wife and his one-time sweetheart had little encouragement from either. Sibyl, not wishing to fall out with Roger, declared shetriedto like Lucy. Yet when other people were present she somehow brought out her rusticity and simplicity, or she adopted towards her a patronizing manner which was evident even to the not very acute senses of Roger's wife.The visit to Glen Sporran Lodge did not improve their relations. Lucy in matters of dress was by no means without taste or discernment, but she was quite ignorant of the modernest modes. She had no idea that a stay in the Highlands—even in 1889—involved a special wardrobe: short, kilted skirts and high-buttoned leggings, boots, or spats for the day's adventures—going, to meet the guns, tramping over the moors, picnics when the wet weather permitted, and all the shifts for facing a good deal of rain without looking forlorn or ridiculous. Trailing skirts and wet weather were irreconcilable; so were yachting and a silk dress. Perpetual sitting indoors in a town dress, over a turf fire, and reading novels provoked sarcasms not only from Sibyl but from the tart tongue of Aunt Christabel; who wasn't at all inclined to spare Lucy.What had that good-looking Roger withsucha career before him had in his mind that he should throw himself away on this village schoolmistress? She did not care, either, for Sibyl's new infatuation for Roger; would have liked to keep them well apart. The distant cousinship was not through her or her sister, Mrs. Grayburn, but through Roger's mother and Colonel Grayburn. Sibyl, when her year of mourning was up, had much better marry again into the peerage; and if she wanted a smart man as Agent—for land-agents of the middle-class-bailiff type were "passés de mode" on allbigestates ... well, there was Willowby, Willowby Patterne (a nephew-in-law of Aunt Christabel), who really might very well do for the post. Willowby had been very wild, had run through much of his own money and his unsuitable wife's—they were never asked out together. But he was a first-class shot, had been to Canada with the Duke of Ulster, knew a lot about blood-stock, had tried farming and ranching and would be quite all there helping Sibyl entertain her house parties and giving an eye to the manly education of James—Aunt Christabel did not countenance Sibyl's silly freak of imposing the name of "Clitheroe" on the little Lord Silchester.Lucy had the greatest regard for economy and always wanted to save Roger from any unnecessary expenditure. She remembered that she had come to him without a dowry and that his future financially was very uncertain. So that she had not taken him at his word, "Spend what you like," at the Sloane Street shops when they were last up in town together. She had only brought two evening dresses with her to Glen Sporran, and one of them a plain black silk. After they had become familiar to the eye, Sibyl had offered to lend some ofhergowns, but had done it in such a way that Lucy's pride was touched and she declined, with an unwonted sparkle in her eye and a turning of the rabbit on the stoat. Sibyl then, half amusedly, dropped this method of annoyance and openly praised Mrs. Brentham for her simplicity of life and regard for economy.All this was rather amusing to the speculative and speculating Sir Willowby Patterne who arrived at Glen Sporran a fortnight later than Roger and Lucy. He must then have been about thirty. As you surmise from his name, he was descended from a famous mid-nineteenth century baronet. His grandfather (in diplomacy) married a Russian lady of the Court after the Napoleonic wars when Russians were in the fashion. But I think it wholly unfair to attribute to this alliance the curious vein of cruelty which ran through his descendants and which in Willowby's father was slaked by the contemporary British field sports. This father died from the envenomed bite of an impaled badger, and in Willowby's case there was a long minority; so that he started at twenty-one—already a subaltern in the Guards—with quite a respectable fortune to "blue." He had been a vicious, tipsy boy at Eton and did not improve as he grew older. One thing that developed with him into a mania was the love of killing. He had seen a little service in the Sudan, but disgusted his brother officers by his exultation over the more gory episodes in skirmishes (he generally kept out of battles), and by his interest in executions and floggings. Owing to family influence he was for a very brief time in the suite of a travelling Royalty; but an episode in the garden of a Lisbon hotel, when he with a friend was seen worrying a cat to death with two bull-terriers—and laughing frenziedly the while—put an end to that appointment. He had had some success on the turf and in steeplechase riding, and over shooting pigeons at Monte Carlo; had betrayed quite a number of trusting women—including his wife; but nevertheless was rather popular still in Society, especially the society of rich, idle women, seeking after sensation without scandal. What there was about him, save his faultless tailoring and evil reputation to attract women, a man like Brentham could not understand. His face was thin and he had those deep ugly lines around the mouth, that tightness of skin over the temples and jaw, the thin lips and thin hair, aquiline nose, and thin capable hands that go with cruelty and pitilessness. But that womendidrun after him, there was no denying; though at this time his wife was shudderingly seeking grounds for divorce, or at any rate separation, which would satisfy a male judge and jury.Roger enjoyed the shooting with rifle and shot-gun, and his dislike of Willowby was a little tempered by the latter's unwilling admiration of his marksmanship. I forget whether in August-September you fish for salmon in Scotland with a rod and line, but if so you may be sure Captain Brentham, to whom field sports of all kinds came as second nature, displayed no less prowess in that direction. Moreover Willowby tried to be civil to his deputy host because he was very much drawn to big-game shooting in East Africa and thought Roger could put him up to the right place, right time of year, and right strings to pull.But when the day's sport was done and they had bathed and changed and laid themselves out for a jolly evening, Roger began to be nervous and sensitive about Lucy: sometimes to wish she would not open her mouth; at others to yearn for her to show some brilliance in conversation. Her little naïvetés of speech and turns of phrase which seemed so amusing and even endearing in Africa, or to an admiring, bucolic audience at Aldermaston, or an indulgent sister-in-law at Farleigh Vicarage, here withered into imbecilities under the mocking glance or the bored incomprehension of Sibyl, and the cool, eyeglass stare of Willowby Patterne. Sibyl, also, was afflicted with deafness when Lucy ventured her inquiries at breakfast as to health or the state of the weather.Out of fear of Queen Victoria, Sibyl thought to make friends at Court and attest at the same time the "smallness" and "quietness" of her house party by inviting for a week a lady of the Royal Household who was off duty and at all times not unwilling to eat well and sleep softly at some one else's expense. But she, also, was disconcerting (though no doubt a pyramid of flawless chastity). She wore a single eyeglass through which everything and everybody was scanned. At first she was disposed to be very much interested in Roger, until she gathered he might not be returning to Africa. She had friends who were casting in their lots with Cecil Rhodes's ventures. To her mental vision, Africa was about the size of an English county. A man in East Africa ought at any moment to run up against that perfectly delightful creature, Rhodes, ... "the dear Queen is gettingsointerested in him" ... "was there gold by the bye where Captain Brentham had been employed?" But when she learnt that Sibyl's cousin was probably not resuming his post there and that this very dull, oddly dressed woman was not Sibyl's secretary but Roger's wife, a former missionary in East Africa, she quietly gave them both up as much too much outside her own track through life ever to be of use or interest again.Another guest for a brief time was the Rev. Stacy Bream. Mr. Bream even in those distant days was not—and did not behave like—the conventional clergyman. He was the incumbent of some Chapel Royal or Chaplaincy somewhere, wholly in the Royal gift and generally bestowed on some one who had been for a brief period a bear-leader or College tutor to a princeling going through a make-believe course of study at Oxford or Cambridge. Mr. Bream, in order to take a line of his own, plunged boldly into the world, even the half-world, for his congregation and his confidants. He confessed and absolved the leading ladies of the stage when they reached that period of ripe middle age in which husbands began to be unfaithful and lovers shy and the lady herself felt just the slightest dread of a hereafter. He came forward to marry, when re-marriage was legal but not savoury—sooner than that the poor dears should live in sin. He dealt—I dare say very kindly and considerately—with scabrous cases of moral downfall that no one else would touch. He was a well-known first-nighter and his evening dress so nearly unclerical that you might have been pardoned for not spotting him at once, in the crush room, for a parson, and he would have been the first to pardon you. He always went where Society did in order to be able at once to render first aid where morals had met with an accident. He left town consequently in time for the grouse, occasionally handled a gun—quite skilfully—and was very fond of games of chance in the evening if the stakes were not too high.Bridge had not then reached Great Britain. Where they would have played Bridge ten years ago they played Baccarat, or Unlimited Loo, or Nap, or Poker. Lucy only knew "Pope Joan" and had a horror of losing money over cards and no capacity for mastering any card game, not even Snip Snap Snorum. The Rev. Stacy Bream—who as much as any cleric might, stood in lieu of a Spiritual director to Lady Silchester—called Lucy once or twice "My dear che-ild" and then found her so uninteresting and inexplicable that he ceased to study her any more.So Lucy at last, in dread of snubs if she entered the battledore and shuttlecock conversation or of revealing her utter ignorance of the ways of smart society, fell silent at meal-times and after meals. When the others played cards or roulette on a miniature green table, she would read a book in a corner or steal away up to bed before the maids had done her room for the night. And gradually she developed the red, moist nose that comes to a woman who cries in secret, and there were wrought other changes in good looks and figure attend ant on her condition. And then one day, early in September, Roger, returning to his dressing-room for a cigarette-case and to ascertain if Lucy was ready to start on an excursion, found her on her bedroom sofa in a crisis of weeping. Sibyl had summed up her makeshift costume—for a day's yachting—in one short phrase.... This on top of having completely overlooked her existence at yesterday's picnic lunch, and left her cupless and tealess at the late tea which followed their return. "R—Ro—ger, oh dear Roger,letme go home! I'm only inevery one'sway here. I never felt so stupid in my life before.I can'tthink what's the matter with me—it's the feeling they alldespise me—and—and—pity you for having made a fool of yourself. Let me go home to mother—and Maud!..."Roger consented at once. He felt full of remorse and pity, promised soon to join her in the south, escorted her as far as Carlisle, and arranged that kind Maud should meet her at Euston and take her home to Aldermaston. The others were too utterly uninterested in her to listen much to his explanation with its discreet allusion. She was a bore and a wet blanket out of the way, and they could now settle down to enjoy themselves. Sibyl, to keep up the fiction of being in mourning, wore black and absented herself from most of the pleasure outings; going about instead alone with Roger, to show him the ins and outs of the estate and enable him to formulate plans for its profitable development.Early in October, Captain Brentham saw young Lord Tarrington (heir to the Earldom of Pitchingham and précis-writer to Lord Wiltshire). He was told that Lord W. had given careful attention to his case. His Lordship thoroughly appreciated his painstaking work for a year or more as Acting Consul-General, but thought that under the circumstances it was better he should not return to the scene of his former labours on the mainland. H.L., however, though Captain Brentham had scarcely been more than an officer selected for special service in Africa, would be pleased to consider him favourably for the consular posts of Bergen or of Baranquilla."I suppose you know where Bergen is?" added Lord Tarrington. "A little bit near the North Pole—or is it North Cape? I always mix the two. But it's inNorway, verybracing climate,awfullygood sea-fishing, and £350 a year. Or if you prefer heat, there's Baranquilla, northern South America,nota good climate, but the last man stood it for two years before he succumbed to yellow fever ... and it's £550 a year and two years count for three in service. Which is it to be? Make up your mind soon, 'cos lots of fellows are on the waiting list—snap at either."Tarrington's tone, for all its bluff good nature sounded final. Roger seeing his dreams of an African empire fade in that dingy room, all its tones having sombred with twenty years' fog and smoke into shades of yellow white and yellow brown, felt at first inclined to refuse haughtily either consolation for the loss of Zangia. But a married man and prospective father with very slight resources cannot permit himself the luxury of ill-temper. So he replied civilly that he would think if over and let Lord Tarrington know.As he left the first floor of the building he crossed the path of the august Secretary of State himself walking probably round the quadrangle to the India Office. There was no look of recognition in his deep-set eyes. How different from two and a half years ago when he had been hailed by this statesman as an authority on East Africa far better worth listening to than Mr. Bennet Molyneux, now noting down complacently in his room below the fact that the Consulate at Zangia with its seven hundred pounds a year was to be offered to the acting man, Mr. Spencer Bazzard.Brentham went down that evening—pretending he didn't care in the least for this definite set-back—to Reading, and, chartering a fly, drove out to Engledene. A rather late little dinner with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel was followed by a long consultation with Sibyl in the Library.Lady Silchester's plans had long been ready, though she seemed to develop them as she spoke. "Become my agent, Rodge-podge, in place of old Parkins. He's an out-of-date duffer. I'll either pension him off, or better still send him to live on the Staffordshire property. He's let that go down very much; it ought to yield twice its present rents. I'll give you £700 a year, and there'll be all sorts of legitimate pickings as well. You can have the Lodge at Englefield to live in. I'll do it up for you. Lucy can live there and go on having babies for the next ten years. I'm sureIdon't want to ask her to dinner or to anything else, if she doesn't want to come. She needn't curtsy to me if we meet, if it'sthatshe dislikes...."But you'vegreatabilities, Roger. You've beenshamefullytreated by Lord W.... He's always tried to snubme...Idon't know why ... I'll tell youwhat. I'llrunyou. After all, I am a rich woman ... now. You shall get into Parliament ... and be a great Imperialist, as that seems to be going to become the fashion. What ...what... WHAT a pity you married like that, all in a hurry! And you see it's done you no good with the Nonconformist conscience and those stuffy old things at the F.O. However, it's no good crying over spilt milk.I'llmake a career for you!" And she looked at him with shining eyes, betraying her palpable secret...."This is awfully good of you, Syb," said Roger, not meeting her look. "But do you think it is fair on others? Why not put in your father——? Or one of your brothers?""Rubbish! Dad would make just as great a mess of the Silchester estates—only on a far bigger scale—as he is doing over his three hundred acres at Aldermaston. I think we'll send him up to care-take at Glen Sporran and make him sell up the Aldermaston place. Helping him with loans is like pouring money into—what do you pour it into when it runs away? A sieve? And the two boys have both got jobs and are none too bright, at that. Besides, it's no fun working with brothers, and I'm going to throw myself heart and soul into the development of the Estate. It'll be ... it'll be ... what's two and a third from twenty-one? Well, at any rate, more than eighteen years before Clithy comes of age. In that time we'll have raised the annual value of the property to twice what it is now, and incidentally we'll have a glorious time, influencing people, don't you know, getting up a new opposition in Parliament, and making ourselves felt....""Well, in any case, it's awfully good of you ...awfully... somehow I don't deserve it....""You don't, after the way you threw me over. But stick to me now, through thick and thin, and"—she was going to have added impulsively, "Oh,Roger, Idolove you, I can't help it," and perhaps have flung herself on to a sofa with a burst of hysterical tears to salve all his scruples, but quickly thought better of this and added rather tamely, "And we'll make a great success of our partnership. And now we must go and play backgammon or bezique or something with Aunt Christabel, or she will come poking her nose in here to see what we're up to. How tiresome the old are! It's only on account of what the Queen would say that I keep her on here. She thinks you're 'dangerous' to my peace of mind, Roger. But if I had mother here instead she would be equally boring, and father can't bear to be separated from her, and the two of them would beunthinkable."Though some instinct told Roger Sibyl's scheme would never work, without damage to his peace of mind and his conjugal relations, he felt her Circe influence already. He accepted her offer—at any rate for one year. At the end of that time she and he should be free to cancel the arrangement. He decided for the present to lodge with his wife's parents and ride backwards and forwards till Lucy had had her baby. At the utmost he would have a bedroom at the Lodge and the Parkinses—Mrs. Parkins, at any rate—should not vacate it definitely till Lucy was able to set up house there. He wrote civilly but briefly to Lord Tarrington declining to go either to Norway or to Colombia, and resigned "with much regret" his commission for Zangia.About this time he received two letters which gave him much to think about, but which he put at the back of his mind. I will give the shortest first:—To Captain Brentham, F.R.G.S.,H.B.M. Consul for Zangia.School of Mines,Jermyn Street, S.W.October5, 1889.DEAR SIR,—You will remember calling here in last July, just before I took my holiday.You left with me for examination a series of rock specimens and some sediment of lake water from East Africa.Of the rock specimens, at least six give indications of great interest. Those two labelled "Iraku I" and "Iraku II" are so rich in gold that their importance must have been apparent to yourself—unless you mistook the gold for iron pyrites, an inverse of the customary deception, which is generally the other way about. The specimen labelled "Marasha" is simply coal—rather shaley coal, probably a surface fragment. There are two specimens, unfortunately with their labels missing or indecipherable, which are a hard bluish green serpentine rock, obviously related to the "blue ground" of South Africa and probably diamondiferous. A fifth specimen yields evidence of wolframite, and in three other samples there is much mica. The lake sediment is being further examined by a colleague of mine. He believes it to be an indication of the formation of phosphates in the lake bed or shores which should be of great importance to agriculture as a constituent of chemical manure. These phosphates might be derived from birds' dung in great quantities, from guano in fact.I assume you have duly registered the exact geographical localities of these specimens? Otherwise, they are very tantalizing, for they evidently indicate—if they come from one region and not from a wide area of travel—one of the wealthiest of African territories.Pursuant to your wish, however, I shall treat the matter as confidential. But if you can at any time supply me with the exact geographical information I require I shall be pleased to write a report on the collection for the Petrographical Society or for the confidential information of the Government: whichever you prefer.
Roger, however, though he commented little on the episode of the assault, and felt in every way the least said, soonest mended, borrowed his father-in-law's riding-horse and rode early one morning over to Tilehurst. He entered the factory, of design, just as Mr. Baines was about to take his seat in the office and run his eyes over the day's orders. "Oh, don't be alarmed!" he said to Mr. Baines, who was instinctively about to withdraw, guessing his visitor's identity. "I'm not a violent heathen like your wife. Sit down and let us talk this over like sensible men."
He then put the matter very plainly before Mr. Baines.
Mrs. Baines, summoned by half-fearful, half-exultant Eliza, had "locked herself in her bedroom, she 'ave an' ast me to go for the police!"
"Then you, too," said Roger to the startled Eliza, "remain and hear what I have to say. Since your termagant of a mistress refuses to come, you shall repeat my words to her. You are, from what my wife tells me, an old and trusted servant of the family" (Eliza bridled and pleated the hem of her apron). "When she returns to sanity, you may get a chance of saying a word to your mistress in season, even if her husband has not the courage to do so. Tell her then, if she ever annoys or slanders or upsets my wife in any way I will leave no stone unturned to punish her. And if she appears at Church Farm or anywhere else again with the intention of assaulting my wife I will knock her on the head like the mad dog she is. Now you can leave us. But I trust also to you as an honourable woman and one who was sincerely fond of poor John Baines, who ought never to be connected with these hateful sayings and doings, not to chatter about this business outside this house."
And Eliza did not. She was much impressed by Brentham's appeal. The interview with John's father even ended in a kind of reconciliation. He heard from Brentham for the first time the whole story, so far as it was known, of the circumstances which led up to the attack on the station, John's death, and Lucy's journey to the coast; of how her baby had died and how ill she had been; of the Stotts, and of Ann Jamblin's obstinacy. Roger purposely prolonged the interview. It was doing the miserable father good, and was keeping Mrs. Baines a prisoner in her bedroom just when she wanted to be busy at house-work.
Maud on her return from visiting the Joslings tightened her lips and "went for" her father as he had never been truth-told before; so Mrs. Baines, if she did harm to Lucy's good name and gave her nervous system a nasty shock, also provoked good in other directions. A disturbance of the kind seldom fails to clear the air and create a fresher atmosphere. Maud reproached her father bitterly with his incivility to his eldest son's wife; with his general indifference to the well-being of his children, his selfish absorption in his archæological work, his unfairness to them in lavishing on it funds which should have been their patrimony. She even issued a sort of ultimatum: the subsidies to the Silchester Excavation fund must cease; the curate at Farleigh must be given his congé and the Vicar—still able-bodied—carry out his own Church duties:orshe would go away and earn her own living as a secretary or something or other. And she was at once, and on his authority, to ask Lucy to stay—with Roger, of course—for at least a month. He gave in. Maud had deeper plans hidden under this surface wrath. Roger was in difficulties with the Foreign Office, she guessed. He had resigned from the Indian Army. He might at any time have to forge a new career for himself and would want a little capital to start with. She reckoned that her father having originally been a well-to-do man and her mother having come to him with a substantial dowry, there ought to be a least twelve thousand pounds to be divided between the four of them. If that left her father almost entirely dependent on his income—about five hundred a year—from the twin benefices of Farleigh and Cliddesden, that would serve him right. He had no business to squander his children's money—as it really was—on a work of excavation which the County or the Nation should finance.
A little repentant and more than a little rheumatic—(besides, Roman Silchester was turning out so distressingly Christian and so little Pompeian and Pagan)—he agreed at any rate to look into the matter. The letter was sent to Lucy, and she came, now quite restored to health. She found in Maud the selfless friend and good adviser she had long needed. All she begged and prayed of Roger was that he might leave her at Farleigh for a time and not frighten her and upset her nerves by requiring of her the going out into smart Society, where she was ever on the twitter for fear of being questioned as to her birth and bringing-up and the circumstances of her life in Africa.
Roger rather ruefully consented. Maud would gradually cure her of her nerves and her rusticity. Meantime he would now tackle Sibyl. Sibyl had taken no notice of his card and call; but about three weeks afterwards had written to Maud, picturing herself as having now emerged from a swoon of grief and being ready to see Roger for afewminutes if he wouldpromiseto move gently and speak in a level voice, asthe least thingupset her. Pressed to be more definite, she consented to see him—and him only—at Engledene on a certain Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock.
He found her in a little boudoir, which was draped with pleated lavender-mauve cashmere and shaded to a dim light. She was dressed in black, not having as yet the hardihood to discard widows' weeds, still less some diaphanous, filmycoiffe, some ghost of a widow's cap. Queen Victoria was still a great power in Society and kept Peeresses in order. If you were too daring you might be banned at Court and then where would your social and political influence be?
"Wheel up, or better stillliftup—I can't bear theslightestjar, just now—that small armchair, Roger—the purple velvet one—and put it near enough for me to hear and speak without effort; but nottoonear, because I notice you have a very powerful aura. I've only just learnt about auras, and I realize nowwhata difference they make!..."
"All right," said Roger, obeying these instructions, "but what's an aura? Is it the smell of my Harris tweeds, or do you doubt my having had a bath this morning?"
"Don't be so perfectly horrid ... and coarse.... You neverusedto be coarse, whatever you were—I suppose it comes from marrying a farmer's daughter; but for the matter of that, what amI? My poor dear dad is trying hard to be a farmer after spending his best years in the Army. I didn't mean anything much about your 'aura,' except, I suppose, that as I'm only recently widowed all my relations with men-visitors should be a little frigid. But I'm simply talking nonsense to gain time, to remember what I wanted to say to you." (A pause.) ... "Roger! Yourdreadfulletter from that Gouging place, coming just on top of poor Francis's death,knocked me over. The doctors put it all down to Francis, of course ... I don't deny that his deathdidupset me.... But I'd been expectingthatany time within the last six months.... The doctors told medefinitelylast winter his heart was very unsound and that he must not over-exert himself in any way or be contraried or argued with....Thatwas why I gave up the orange-velvet curtains and general redecoration of the dining-room at 6A, Carlton House Terrace—which is dingy beyond belief. I shall do it now.... It's too early for tea ... won't you smoke?" (Roger: "Thank you.") "Well, there's everything on that little table.... No. Not those ones; they've got the wee-est flavour of opium.... Obliged to dosomethingfor my nerves.... Well, now, about your Gouging letter.... I mean about your marriage.... MydearRoger!Whatagaffe! I mean, howcouldyou?"
"Could I what?"
"Ruinyour hopes and mine?"
"Well, I did hope to marry Lucy ... for at least six months before the knot was tied.... Ever since her husband's death. Somyhopes were fulfilled. And as to you, I never prevented you from marrying Lord S. So where the ruin comes in, I can't see."
"Oh," wailed Sibyl, "whybeat about the bush? You must have known that I always hoped if anything happened to poor Francis—and anythingmightwell have done so—after all, you or I might be in a railway accident or break our necks out hunting. In such case youmusthave known Icountedon you ... I mean, on our being happyat last.... Don't interrupt! ... And just think! Francis loved me awfully. I reallywas perfectly sweetto him and did my duty to himin every way. His gratitude for that boy ... for a direct heir! ... Well, after Clithy was born he made his will! ... Don't be silly ... and don't joke about things I regard almost as sacred.... I meanFrancisre-made his will; and left me sole guardian of the boy and sole trustee, soleeverything; and mistress for my life of Engledene, and of 6A, till Clithy came of age ... and a jointure of £10,000 a year to keep them up. Clithy has also the Silchester house which is let and which I intend tokeeplet till he comes of age, the moors in Scotlandandthe shooting lodge. Of course he has the reversionary rights ofeverythingafter my death. And equally of course he has fifteen thousand a year, which I control till he is twenty-one or until he marries....
"Justthinkwhat I could have done for you, out of all this—if you'dwaited! Ifonlyyou'd waited!..." (buries her face in the mauve silk cushions and cries a little or pretends to). (Roger fidgets on his chair. An exquisite little purple Sèvres clock on the white mantelpiece ticks ... ticks ... ticks.)
Roger: "Look here, Sibyl. You're altogether on the wrong tack, believe me. You might have married me in '86. I was quite ready then and fancied myself in love with you. But if you had we mightn't have got on. My seven hundred a year would have been nowhere to give you surroundings like this...." (And he looks round the boudoir "done" in white, lavender, mauve and purple, with its exquisite bits of furniture, its velvet-covered armchair and Charles II day-bed, and pillow covers of mauve silk; and looked also at the sinuous figure of the woman coiled on the day-bed in her filmy black dress, with her face half buried in the silk cushions, and one disconsolate arm lying listlessly along her side, and at the magnificent rings of emeralds and diamonds on the pink fingers.) "You werequiteright: you couldneverhave stood the strain of Africa. I'll tell you by and bye some of the things Lucy and I went through." (At this hint of comradeship with Lucy, the little black velvet shoes gave angry thumps on the frame of the day-bed.) "I know," continues Roger, "you used to throw out mysterious hints after you were married that I might wait till some far-off date when you were free; I mean after Lord Silchester was dead. But what decent man would have taken you at your word? Why, Silchester might well be alive now. He did not die of old age...."
Sibyl(in a muffled voice): "N-no; he ... he ... didn't. He—overrated his strength. He—he—oh,howcan I tell you? He was so anxious to play a great part in public affairs ... but he had lost all his energy...." (Sitting up with flushed cheeks—damnably good-looking, Roger feels.) "Well! What can I do for you? You've failedme. But I suppose you've come here to ask me to help you in some way. Men don't generally waste their time on afternoon calls without a motive. What is it? I've got no influence anywhere since Francis died" (a sob). "So it's no good askingmeto write to Lord Wiltshire or to Spavins. I hear you are out of favour at the F.O. It's notmyfault, is it? It's all due to your gallivanting after missionaries' wives...." (Roger looks sullen.) ... "Heigh ho! I expect with all this crying and tousling among cushions, to hide Iwascrying from your cynical eyes, I'd better go into my room and bathe my face before the butler brings in the tea....There!you can pull up two of the blinds—when I am gone—my eyes are so red—and you can look at some of my new books till I come in to make the tea. You mustn'tdreamof going before we've had tea and finished our talk."
"I suppose," said Sibyl a quarter of an hour later when they were discussing tea and tea-cake and pâté-de-foie sandwiches and assorted cakelets, "what you really came to ask was would I present this Lucy-pucy of yours at Court. But, mydear, I shall be in mourning for a year, and the Queen——"
"Lordno! Such a thing never entered my head. It would scare Lucy into fits. I hope before next season comes round I shall be back in Africa—or somewhere. So far as I connected Lucy with this visit I might have intended to ask you to let me bring her here one day, and for you to be kind to her ... not frighten her, as you very well could do, pretending all the time to be her best friend...."
Sibyl: "Well: I'll tell you what you shall do. You must remember I'm in mourning, of course.... We always have to think of what the servants will say.... And—ah! Did I tell you? Aunt Christabel is here. I sent her out the longest drive I could think of, so that we might have our afternoon alone; still, she's staying here till I emerge from the deepest of my mourning.... By the bye she'shorrifiedat your marriage, just as she used to be horrified at the idea of your marryingme.... Well, bring your Lucy over one day at the end of July and I'll just have a look at her. And then, in the autumn—say October—you and she, and of course if you like to have them, Maurice and Geoffrey too, could come here for the shooting.Of courseI shan't have a regular party; but somebody must come and shoot the pheasants. The Queen couldn't object to that. I've asked a man—I did before Francis's death—to come. You might like to meet him: a Sir Willowby Patterne.... Dare say you've heard of him?"
Roger: "I've heard nogoodof him...."
"Oh, what tittle-tattlers and scandal-mongers you men are! I think he's so amusing, and every one says he's a splendid shot.... However, we will make up just atinyparty and you and Lucy shall entertain for me. I shall purposely be very little seen and shall give out my cousins have come over to help me with my guests.... And,Roger! If I am to help you you must helpme. The doctor says I positivelymusttake up my riding again unless I am to drift into being an invalid. Couldn't you—sometimes—whilst you're down in this part of the world—come over and ride with me? I can 'mount' you. You could ride poor Francis's cob ... not showy but very steady."
"I will, when I come back from town," said Roger, and took his departure, not at all dissatisfied with his afternoon.
Two days afterwards he thought it might be prudent to see how things were going at the Foreign Office. So he went up to town, changed into town togs at Hankey's (where their flat was becoming a white elephant, owing to Lucy's dislike to London, so he arranged to give it up), and betook himself to Downing Street, and asked to see Mr. Bennet Molyneux. "Mr. Bennet Molyneux," he was presently told, "is very sorry, sir, but he is much engaged this morning; would you go into the Department and see one of the young gentlemen there?"
The Department was a large, long room with a cubby-hole at its further end for the accommodation of the senior clerk, a sort of school prefect who had to keep order among the high-spirited juniors and therefore required to work a little apart from them. When Brentham entered the main room, announced by the office messenger, he recognized two friends of yore and several new, ingenuous faces. There also emerged from the cubby hole a man whom he had known as a junior three years previously: an agreeable gentleman of agricultural and sporting tastes, who, because of his occasional remonstrances and enforcement of discipline, was known as "Snarley Yow or the Dog Fiend." Then there were "Rosie" Walrond and Ted Parsons. (The others do not matter in this narrative: they merely served as chorus and acclaimers of the witticisms of the elder boys. They were all nice to look at, all well-mannered and all well-dressed.) "Rosie" Walrond was a young man—older than he looked—with wavy flaxen hair and mocking grey eyes, and an extremely cynical manner overlying an exceedingly kind heart.
Walrond: "Hullo! Here'sBrentham, the rescuer of beleaguered Gospellers. We've got a grudge against you. You came here months ago and were closeted with Spavins and never gave us a look-in. And we were dying to hear all about the elopement and its sequel. We were prepared to subscribe to a wedding present for a teller of good stories...."
Then he added: "D'you admire my grotto?"
Brentham, after the necessary greetings and introductions, strode up to "Rosie's" desk. Its ledges and escarpments were piled with rock specimens on which tattered, brown, and half-decipherable labels had been pasted.
"My mineral specimens... from" (he checked himself) ... "from East Africa! Then youneversent them on?"
"Mydearchap! Where was I to send them to? The Consular Mail bags—two of them—arrived here all right, addressed to me, but nary a letter with them or any directions. Also two skulls which, as you see, decorate our mantelpiece, and which I am proposing to have mounted in silver at Snarley's expense for our Departmental Dinner. Meantime, I have arranged my desk as a grotto, in spite of the office cleaner's objections...."
Brentham: "I suppose the letter of directions went astray. I asked you to send the rocks to the School of Mines and the skulls to the Natural History Museum. However, I'll take them all away presently in a cab."
"Butnotthe skulls, I beg, just as we were being initiated into Devil worship by Snarley, who has learnt the Black Mass...."
"Yes, the skulls, too. They're most important——"
"But so arewe," said Parsons.
Then followed half an hour of chaff, out of which Roger gleaned no grain of information as to his own probable fate and was too diffident to ask outright if any decision as to his return had been arrived at. He accepted an invitation to dine with the Department at the Cheshire Cheese and meet Arthur Broadmead; then drove to the School of Mines in Jermyn Street, handed in his rocks and asked the Curator for a report on them, at his leisure. After that, Professor Flower and the skulls; which were those of two men of that Hamitic race colonizing the Happy Valley. He had found them lying about on the outskirts of a village and had received the careless permission of the villagers to take them away. They might serve to determine the relationships of this incongruous type.
CHAPTER XVI
SIBYL AS SIREN
In August, 1889, Lucy conveyed to Roger her belief that she was going to have a child.
"But that is no reason you should not come down with me to Sibyl's place in Scotland. You can't be going to have a baby till—till well on in the winter, and meantime a stay in the Highlands will brace you up. Of course as Sibyl is in mourning she can only have a very small house party—just two or three men like myself to shoot the grouse, rabbits and stags. I don't suppose there will be any women there except her aunt and you." Lucy acquiesced unwillingly.
She was living once more with her parents, while Roger's plans were so unsettled. The rooms at Hankey's had been given up, and on his frequent journeys to London—mainly on Sibyl's business—he slept at Aunt Pardew's Hotel in Great Ormond Street, where they made him very comfortable. He had taken Lucy over to Engledene twice in July—once he had left her there a whole afternoon,tête-à-têtewith the still languid young widow. On that occasion he had purposely ridden over to Tilehurst to see Mr. Baines with more news—sent on by Callaway from Unguja—about Ann Anderson and the restoration of Hangodi station, and what the Mission proposed to do in regard to a memorial grave-stone. It tickled his sense of humour that he should improve his acquaintance with John's father and thus allay any local feeling against Lucy: his visits there not only cheered the Aerated Waters' manufacturer, but they enraged Mrs. Baines.
She was obliged all the time to keep locked up in her bedroom, and this caused Eliza to get out of hand.
But so far, the hope of a friendship growing up between his wife and his one-time sweetheart had little encouragement from either. Sibyl, not wishing to fall out with Roger, declared shetriedto like Lucy. Yet when other people were present she somehow brought out her rusticity and simplicity, or she adopted towards her a patronizing manner which was evident even to the not very acute senses of Roger's wife.
The visit to Glen Sporran Lodge did not improve their relations. Lucy in matters of dress was by no means without taste or discernment, but she was quite ignorant of the modernest modes. She had no idea that a stay in the Highlands—even in 1889—involved a special wardrobe: short, kilted skirts and high-buttoned leggings, boots, or spats for the day's adventures—going, to meet the guns, tramping over the moors, picnics when the wet weather permitted, and all the shifts for facing a good deal of rain without looking forlorn or ridiculous. Trailing skirts and wet weather were irreconcilable; so were yachting and a silk dress. Perpetual sitting indoors in a town dress, over a turf fire, and reading novels provoked sarcasms not only from Sibyl but from the tart tongue of Aunt Christabel; who wasn't at all inclined to spare Lucy.
What had that good-looking Roger withsucha career before him had in his mind that he should throw himself away on this village schoolmistress? She did not care, either, for Sibyl's new infatuation for Roger; would have liked to keep them well apart. The distant cousinship was not through her or her sister, Mrs. Grayburn, but through Roger's mother and Colonel Grayburn. Sibyl, when her year of mourning was up, had much better marry again into the peerage; and if she wanted a smart man as Agent—for land-agents of the middle-class-bailiff type were "passés de mode" on allbigestates ... well, there was Willowby, Willowby Patterne (a nephew-in-law of Aunt Christabel), who really might very well do for the post. Willowby had been very wild, had run through much of his own money and his unsuitable wife's—they were never asked out together. But he was a first-class shot, had been to Canada with the Duke of Ulster, knew a lot about blood-stock, had tried farming and ranching and would be quite all there helping Sibyl entertain her house parties and giving an eye to the manly education of James—Aunt Christabel did not countenance Sibyl's silly freak of imposing the name of "Clitheroe" on the little Lord Silchester.
Lucy had the greatest regard for economy and always wanted to save Roger from any unnecessary expenditure. She remembered that she had come to him without a dowry and that his future financially was very uncertain. So that she had not taken him at his word, "Spend what you like," at the Sloane Street shops when they were last up in town together. She had only brought two evening dresses with her to Glen Sporran, and one of them a plain black silk. After they had become familiar to the eye, Sibyl had offered to lend some ofhergowns, but had done it in such a way that Lucy's pride was touched and she declined, with an unwonted sparkle in her eye and a turning of the rabbit on the stoat. Sibyl then, half amusedly, dropped this method of annoyance and openly praised Mrs. Brentham for her simplicity of life and regard for economy.
All this was rather amusing to the speculative and speculating Sir Willowby Patterne who arrived at Glen Sporran a fortnight later than Roger and Lucy. He must then have been about thirty. As you surmise from his name, he was descended from a famous mid-nineteenth century baronet. His grandfather (in diplomacy) married a Russian lady of the Court after the Napoleonic wars when Russians were in the fashion. But I think it wholly unfair to attribute to this alliance the curious vein of cruelty which ran through his descendants and which in Willowby's father was slaked by the contemporary British field sports. This father died from the envenomed bite of an impaled badger, and in Willowby's case there was a long minority; so that he started at twenty-one—already a subaltern in the Guards—with quite a respectable fortune to "blue." He had been a vicious, tipsy boy at Eton and did not improve as he grew older. One thing that developed with him into a mania was the love of killing. He had seen a little service in the Sudan, but disgusted his brother officers by his exultation over the more gory episodes in skirmishes (he generally kept out of battles), and by his interest in executions and floggings. Owing to family influence he was for a very brief time in the suite of a travelling Royalty; but an episode in the garden of a Lisbon hotel, when he with a friend was seen worrying a cat to death with two bull-terriers—and laughing frenziedly the while—put an end to that appointment. He had had some success on the turf and in steeplechase riding, and over shooting pigeons at Monte Carlo; had betrayed quite a number of trusting women—including his wife; but nevertheless was rather popular still in Society, especially the society of rich, idle women, seeking after sensation without scandal. What there was about him, save his faultless tailoring and evil reputation to attract women, a man like Brentham could not understand. His face was thin and he had those deep ugly lines around the mouth, that tightness of skin over the temples and jaw, the thin lips and thin hair, aquiline nose, and thin capable hands that go with cruelty and pitilessness. But that womendidrun after him, there was no denying; though at this time his wife was shudderingly seeking grounds for divorce, or at any rate separation, which would satisfy a male judge and jury.
Roger enjoyed the shooting with rifle and shot-gun, and his dislike of Willowby was a little tempered by the latter's unwilling admiration of his marksmanship. I forget whether in August-September you fish for salmon in Scotland with a rod and line, but if so you may be sure Captain Brentham, to whom field sports of all kinds came as second nature, displayed no less prowess in that direction. Moreover Willowby tried to be civil to his deputy host because he was very much drawn to big-game shooting in East Africa and thought Roger could put him up to the right place, right time of year, and right strings to pull.
But when the day's sport was done and they had bathed and changed and laid themselves out for a jolly evening, Roger began to be nervous and sensitive about Lucy: sometimes to wish she would not open her mouth; at others to yearn for her to show some brilliance in conversation. Her little naïvetés of speech and turns of phrase which seemed so amusing and even endearing in Africa, or to an admiring, bucolic audience at Aldermaston, or an indulgent sister-in-law at Farleigh Vicarage, here withered into imbecilities under the mocking glance or the bored incomprehension of Sibyl, and the cool, eyeglass stare of Willowby Patterne. Sibyl, also, was afflicted with deafness when Lucy ventured her inquiries at breakfast as to health or the state of the weather.
Out of fear of Queen Victoria, Sibyl thought to make friends at Court and attest at the same time the "smallness" and "quietness" of her house party by inviting for a week a lady of the Royal Household who was off duty and at all times not unwilling to eat well and sleep softly at some one else's expense. But she, also, was disconcerting (though no doubt a pyramid of flawless chastity). She wore a single eyeglass through which everything and everybody was scanned. At first she was disposed to be very much interested in Roger, until she gathered he might not be returning to Africa. She had friends who were casting in their lots with Cecil Rhodes's ventures. To her mental vision, Africa was about the size of an English county. A man in East Africa ought at any moment to run up against that perfectly delightful creature, Rhodes, ... "the dear Queen is gettingsointerested in him" ... "was there gold by the bye where Captain Brentham had been employed?" But when she learnt that Sibyl's cousin was probably not resuming his post there and that this very dull, oddly dressed woman was not Sibyl's secretary but Roger's wife, a former missionary in East Africa, she quietly gave them both up as much too much outside her own track through life ever to be of use or interest again.
Another guest for a brief time was the Rev. Stacy Bream. Mr. Bream even in those distant days was not—and did not behave like—the conventional clergyman. He was the incumbent of some Chapel Royal or Chaplaincy somewhere, wholly in the Royal gift and generally bestowed on some one who had been for a brief period a bear-leader or College tutor to a princeling going through a make-believe course of study at Oxford or Cambridge. Mr. Bream, in order to take a line of his own, plunged boldly into the world, even the half-world, for his congregation and his confidants. He confessed and absolved the leading ladies of the stage when they reached that period of ripe middle age in which husbands began to be unfaithful and lovers shy and the lady herself felt just the slightest dread of a hereafter. He came forward to marry, when re-marriage was legal but not savoury—sooner than that the poor dears should live in sin. He dealt—I dare say very kindly and considerately—with scabrous cases of moral downfall that no one else would touch. He was a well-known first-nighter and his evening dress so nearly unclerical that you might have been pardoned for not spotting him at once, in the crush room, for a parson, and he would have been the first to pardon you. He always went where Society did in order to be able at once to render first aid where morals had met with an accident. He left town consequently in time for the grouse, occasionally handled a gun—quite skilfully—and was very fond of games of chance in the evening if the stakes were not too high.
Bridge had not then reached Great Britain. Where they would have played Bridge ten years ago they played Baccarat, or Unlimited Loo, or Nap, or Poker. Lucy only knew "Pope Joan" and had a horror of losing money over cards and no capacity for mastering any card game, not even Snip Snap Snorum. The Rev. Stacy Bream—who as much as any cleric might, stood in lieu of a Spiritual director to Lady Silchester—called Lucy once or twice "My dear che-ild" and then found her so uninteresting and inexplicable that he ceased to study her any more.
So Lucy at last, in dread of snubs if she entered the battledore and shuttlecock conversation or of revealing her utter ignorance of the ways of smart society, fell silent at meal-times and after meals. When the others played cards or roulette on a miniature green table, she would read a book in a corner or steal away up to bed before the maids had done her room for the night. And gradually she developed the red, moist nose that comes to a woman who cries in secret, and there were wrought other changes in good looks and figure attend ant on her condition. And then one day, early in September, Roger, returning to his dressing-room for a cigarette-case and to ascertain if Lucy was ready to start on an excursion, found her on her bedroom sofa in a crisis of weeping. Sibyl had summed up her makeshift costume—for a day's yachting—in one short phrase.... This on top of having completely overlooked her existence at yesterday's picnic lunch, and left her cupless and tealess at the late tea which followed their return. "R—Ro—ger, oh dear Roger,letme go home! I'm only inevery one'sway here. I never felt so stupid in my life before.I can'tthink what's the matter with me—it's the feeling they alldespise me—and—and—pity you for having made a fool of yourself. Let me go home to mother—and Maud!..."
Roger consented at once. He felt full of remorse and pity, promised soon to join her in the south, escorted her as far as Carlisle, and arranged that kind Maud should meet her at Euston and take her home to Aldermaston. The others were too utterly uninterested in her to listen much to his explanation with its discreet allusion. She was a bore and a wet blanket out of the way, and they could now settle down to enjoy themselves. Sibyl, to keep up the fiction of being in mourning, wore black and absented herself from most of the pleasure outings; going about instead alone with Roger, to show him the ins and outs of the estate and enable him to formulate plans for its profitable development.
Early in October, Captain Brentham saw young Lord Tarrington (heir to the Earldom of Pitchingham and précis-writer to Lord Wiltshire). He was told that Lord W. had given careful attention to his case. His Lordship thoroughly appreciated his painstaking work for a year or more as Acting Consul-General, but thought that under the circumstances it was better he should not return to the scene of his former labours on the mainland. H.L., however, though Captain Brentham had scarcely been more than an officer selected for special service in Africa, would be pleased to consider him favourably for the consular posts of Bergen or of Baranquilla.
"I suppose you know where Bergen is?" added Lord Tarrington. "A little bit near the North Pole—or is it North Cape? I always mix the two. But it's inNorway, verybracing climate,awfullygood sea-fishing, and £350 a year. Or if you prefer heat, there's Baranquilla, northern South America,nota good climate, but the last man stood it for two years before he succumbed to yellow fever ... and it's £550 a year and two years count for three in service. Which is it to be? Make up your mind soon, 'cos lots of fellows are on the waiting list—snap at either."
Tarrington's tone, for all its bluff good nature sounded final. Roger seeing his dreams of an African empire fade in that dingy room, all its tones having sombred with twenty years' fog and smoke into shades of yellow white and yellow brown, felt at first inclined to refuse haughtily either consolation for the loss of Zangia. But a married man and prospective father with very slight resources cannot permit himself the luxury of ill-temper. So he replied civilly that he would think if over and let Lord Tarrington know.
As he left the first floor of the building he crossed the path of the august Secretary of State himself walking probably round the quadrangle to the India Office. There was no look of recognition in his deep-set eyes. How different from two and a half years ago when he had been hailed by this statesman as an authority on East Africa far better worth listening to than Mr. Bennet Molyneux, now noting down complacently in his room below the fact that the Consulate at Zangia with its seven hundred pounds a year was to be offered to the acting man, Mr. Spencer Bazzard.
Brentham went down that evening—pretending he didn't care in the least for this definite set-back—to Reading, and, chartering a fly, drove out to Engledene. A rather late little dinner with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel was followed by a long consultation with Sibyl in the Library.
Lady Silchester's plans had long been ready, though she seemed to develop them as she spoke. "Become my agent, Rodge-podge, in place of old Parkins. He's an out-of-date duffer. I'll either pension him off, or better still send him to live on the Staffordshire property. He's let that go down very much; it ought to yield twice its present rents. I'll give you £700 a year, and there'll be all sorts of legitimate pickings as well. You can have the Lodge at Englefield to live in. I'll do it up for you. Lucy can live there and go on having babies for the next ten years. I'm sureIdon't want to ask her to dinner or to anything else, if she doesn't want to come. She needn't curtsy to me if we meet, if it'sthatshe dislikes....
"But you'vegreatabilities, Roger. You've beenshamefullytreated by Lord W.... He's always tried to snubme...Idon't know why ... I'll tell youwhat. I'llrunyou. After all, I am a rich woman ... now. You shall get into Parliament ... and be a great Imperialist, as that seems to be going to become the fashion. What ...what... WHAT a pity you married like that, all in a hurry! And you see it's done you no good with the Nonconformist conscience and those stuffy old things at the F.O. However, it's no good crying over spilt milk.I'llmake a career for you!" And she looked at him with shining eyes, betraying her palpable secret....
"This is awfully good of you, Syb," said Roger, not meeting her look. "But do you think it is fair on others? Why not put in your father——? Or one of your brothers?"
"Rubbish! Dad would make just as great a mess of the Silchester estates—only on a far bigger scale—as he is doing over his three hundred acres at Aldermaston. I think we'll send him up to care-take at Glen Sporran and make him sell up the Aldermaston place. Helping him with loans is like pouring money into—what do you pour it into when it runs away? A sieve? And the two boys have both got jobs and are none too bright, at that. Besides, it's no fun working with brothers, and I'm going to throw myself heart and soul into the development of the Estate. It'll be ... it'll be ... what's two and a third from twenty-one? Well, at any rate, more than eighteen years before Clithy comes of age. In that time we'll have raised the annual value of the property to twice what it is now, and incidentally we'll have a glorious time, influencing people, don't you know, getting up a new opposition in Parliament, and making ourselves felt...."
"Well, in any case, it's awfully good of you ...awfully... somehow I don't deserve it...."
"You don't, after the way you threw me over. But stick to me now, through thick and thin, and"—she was going to have added impulsively, "Oh,Roger, Idolove you, I can't help it," and perhaps have flung herself on to a sofa with a burst of hysterical tears to salve all his scruples, but quickly thought better of this and added rather tamely, "And we'll make a great success of our partnership. And now we must go and play backgammon or bezique or something with Aunt Christabel, or she will come poking her nose in here to see what we're up to. How tiresome the old are! It's only on account of what the Queen would say that I keep her on here. She thinks you're 'dangerous' to my peace of mind, Roger. But if I had mother here instead she would be equally boring, and father can't bear to be separated from her, and the two of them would beunthinkable."
Though some instinct told Roger Sibyl's scheme would never work, without damage to his peace of mind and his conjugal relations, he felt her Circe influence already. He accepted her offer—at any rate for one year. At the end of that time she and he should be free to cancel the arrangement. He decided for the present to lodge with his wife's parents and ride backwards and forwards till Lucy had had her baby. At the utmost he would have a bedroom at the Lodge and the Parkinses—Mrs. Parkins, at any rate—should not vacate it definitely till Lucy was able to set up house there. He wrote civilly but briefly to Lord Tarrington declining to go either to Norway or to Colombia, and resigned "with much regret" his commission for Zangia.
About this time he received two letters which gave him much to think about, but which he put at the back of his mind. I will give the shortest first:—
To Captain Brentham, F.R.G.S.,H.B.M. Consul for Zangia.
October5, 1889.
DEAR SIR,—
You will remember calling here in last July, just before I took my holiday.
You left with me for examination a series of rock specimens and some sediment of lake water from East Africa.
Of the rock specimens, at least six give indications of great interest. Those two labelled "Iraku I" and "Iraku II" are so rich in gold that their importance must have been apparent to yourself—unless you mistook the gold for iron pyrites, an inverse of the customary deception, which is generally the other way about. The specimen labelled "Marasha" is simply coal—rather shaley coal, probably a surface fragment. There are two specimens, unfortunately with their labels missing or indecipherable, which are a hard bluish green serpentine rock, obviously related to the "blue ground" of South Africa and probably diamondiferous. A fifth specimen yields evidence of wolframite, and in three other samples there is much mica. The lake sediment is being further examined by a colleague of mine. He believes it to be an indication of the formation of phosphates in the lake bed or shores which should be of great importance to agriculture as a constituent of chemical manure. These phosphates might be derived from birds' dung in great quantities, from guano in fact.
I assume you have duly registered the exact geographical localities of these specimens? Otherwise, they are very tantalizing, for they evidently indicate—if they come from one region and not from a wide area of travel—one of the wealthiest of African territories.
Pursuant to your wish, however, I shall treat the matter as confidential. But if you can at any time supply me with the exact geographical information I require I shall be pleased to write a report on the collection for the Petrographical Society or for the confidential information of the Government: whichever you prefer.