Rosamond Gerardine and Aspasia Cuningham lay back, silent, each in her corner of the railway carriage, while the English landscape flew by them, wet and green and autumn brown, gleaming in a fugitive yellow sunlight.
Aspasia still felt the pressure of Bethune's unconsciously hard hand-grip. His image, as he had stood bareheaded looking after the moving train, was still vivid before her eyes. His last words: "It is not good-bye," were ringing in her ears. His face had looked wistful, she thought; his cold glance had taken that warm good look she claimed as her own. She was glad it was not good-bye. And yet, as they steamed away, she, watching him as long as she could, saw, and could not hide it from herself, that it was upon Lady Gerardine his eyes were fixed at the last—fixed with an expression which had already become familiar to her. "One would think he hated her—sometimes," said shrewd Baby to herself, "and yet, when she's there, he forgets me. I might as well be dead, or a fright."
This puzzled her and troubled her, too, a little. She glanced across now at her aunt's abstracted countenance. "I am sure," she thought, in loyal admiration, "if he were madly in love with her, it would be only natural. But it's not love—it's more like hate and a sort of pain." With all her sageness, Baby was only eighteen.
How completely had Raymond Bethune passed from Lady Gerardine's mind—even before he had passed from her sight!
She had nearly reached the end of her journey. The burning land she had left behind her—once the land of her desire—seemed now but a place visited in long evil dreams, where she had undergone unimaginable sufferings during the bondage of sleep. The humid air of England beat upon her face through the open window with a comforting assurance as of waking reality.
She had told herself she was travelling with her dead. Never for one hour of her long journey had she forgotten the meaning of that box under Jani's care. But, with every sunrise that marked a wider distance between her and India, she drew a freer breath. With every stage she felt herself less Lady Gerardine, wife; and more Mrs. English, widow. There was beginning to be an extraordinary restfulness in the sensation.
They sped through the New Forest glades, sodden after the rain, now flashing gold-brown with that shaft of sun; now black-green, cavernous, mysterious, where the pines grow close. And then came the moorland stretches, reaching up to a pale-blue cleft in the storm-weighted clouds. How cool it all was! How soft the colours! How benign the wet sky, how different from the metal glare of the land that had betrayed her!
And, by-and-by, white gleams of sunshine began to deepen into primroses and ambers; towards the west the sky grew ever clearer, and the leaden wrack, parting, showed an horizon like to a honey sea against the rising mists of evening. How beautiful was England!
When they got out at the little country station, in the rural heart of Dorset, the day was closing in. The vault of the heavens brooded over the earth with a cup-like closeness. November though it was, the air struck upon their cheeks as gently as a caress, all impregnated with the fragrance of wet green indefinably touched with the tart accent of decay.
Rosamond drew a long deep breath; it had a poignant pleasure in it; tears sprang to her eyes, but, for the first time in God knew how many years, there was a sweetness in them. Jani at her elbow shivered with an aguish chatter of teeth. With one hand she clutched her shawls across her little lean figure; with the other she held on fiercely to a battered tin box.
Oh, Aunt Rosamond, cried Aspasia, ecstatically, as they got into the vehicle awaiting them, "it's a fly, it's a fly! Aren't you glad? Do you smell the musty straw? Oh! doesn't it bring back good old times? Don't you wish you may never sit in a state carriage again?"
It was a long drive, through winding lanes. Sometimes they strained uphill, sometimes they skirted the flat down; sometimes the branches of the overhanging trees beat against the roof of the carriage or in at the open window. At first the whole land was wonderfully still. They could hear the moisture drip from the leaves when the horses were at the walk. And, by-and-by, there grew out of the distance the faint yet mighty rumour of the sea. Within such short measure, then, this small, great England was meeting her salt limits! Across the upland down, presently, even on this silent evening, there rose a wind to sing of the surf. The trees by the roadside, in the copses amid fields, on the crest, etched against the glimmer of the sky, had all that regular inland bent that tells of salt winds.
At last the rickety fly began to jingle and jolt along a road that was hardly more than a track. The way dipped down an abrupt slope and then branched off unexpectedly into a side lane. Rosamond leaned out of the window; she felt they were drawing near her unknown home.
Are we there? cried Aspasia, entering into a violent state of excitement as they came to a halt before a swing gate.
Rosamond did not answer. She was looking with all her eyes, with all her heart. Sudden memories awoke within her—words, never even noted to be forgotten, began to whisper in her ears: "You never saw such a place, love. It isn't a place, it's a queer old house dumped down in a hollow of the downs. And the avenue—there isn't an avenue, it's a road through the orchard, and the orchard comes right up to the house—and you never saw such a bunch of chimney-stacks in your life. But such as it is, I love it. And some day we'll go and live there, you and I...." Here, then, were the orchard trees, twisted shapes, stretching out unpruned branches to them as they passed!
I almost plucked an apple, cried Aspasia, from her side, with a childish scream.
The sky was rift just about the horizon—the afterglow primrose against the sullen gloom of the cloud banks. Cut into sharp silhouette against this pallid translucence, rose the black outline of the house and right across it the fantastic old-time chimney-stack, at sight of which Rosamond laughed low to herself as one who recognises the face of a friend. "You never saw such a bunch of chimney-stacks in your life!..."
A faint column of smoke ascended pale against the gloom where the chimneys lost themselves in the skies. As Rosamond noted it, her heart stirred; all was not dead then—the old house, his house, was alive and waiting for her!
They drew up close to the stone porch, open to the night, flush with the level of the out-jutting gables, and the driver, plunging into the black recess, sent the jangle of a bell ringing through inner spaces. In the waiting pause all was very silent, save the stealthy patter from the overgrown ivy clumps that hung across the entrance. There was a rustle, the hop of an awakened bird, quite close to Rosamond's ear, as she leaned out with the eagerness that had been growing upon her ever since her landing.
Then came steps within: the door was opened first but a little space, with the habitual precaution of the lowly caretaker, then suddenly drawn wide. A square of light that seemed golden was cut out of the darkness, and:
You're welcome, ma'am, cried old Mary, tremulously smoothing her apron.
Lady Gerardine passed with fixed eyes and straight steps into the hall, but she turned quickly as the words struck her ear. Aspasia, following, saw her face illumined by a smile that was almost joy. And the girl became secretly a little alarmed; her aunt's ways had been all inexplicable to her of late.
Rosamond's heart was crying out within her, and it was with actual joy. "Welcome, ma'am," had said his servant—to old Mary the mistress of Saltwoods was Captain English's widow—even to herself might she not now cease to be Lady Gerardine for a brief respite? Oh, then would the manor-house be home indeed!
A great sense of peace, accompanied by a sudden lassitude, fell upon her; she sank into an armchair, flinging her arms wide with a gesture of relief. Opposite to her was a sturdy oaken table, upon which the housekeeper had just placed a hand-lamp. The light fell full upon a rack displaying a hunting-crop, a couple of rough walking-sticks; above, there was the sketch of a boy's face. Her gaze wandered, without at first taking in the meaning of what it saw.
Noise resounded from the porch; it was Jani, struggling with the coachman for the possession of the old regimental case.
Rosamond looked quickly up again at the bright living presentment on the wall; then she rose to her feet and staggered blindly through the nearest door. There, in sheltering darkness, Aspasia promptly overtook her, and was terrified, as she clasped her warm young arms round her aunt's figure, to find it torn by sobs.
Let me be, let me be! exclaimed Lady Gerardine, pushing the girl from her, "it is good to give way at last."
And Aspasia, pressing her face in wordless attempt at consolation against her aunt's cheek, found it streaming with a very torrent of tears.
* * * * *
Ah, said old Mary, shaking her head, as Miss Cuningham presently besought her for the feminine panacea of tea, "poor lady, it's no wonder: he was a grand young gentleman!"
It was, indeed, evident that here Lady Gerardine could never be anything but Captain English's widow.
The manor-house was very old and very solid. It held nothing of any high value, perhaps, but it held nothing cheap or weak. It was complete before the days of machine-made furniture and of so-called ?sthetic art, and those that had ruled over it since had been withheld by innate taste or a happy lack of means from adding to it either within or without. Thus it had remained at a standstill through an extraordinary lapse of years, and all was now beautifully, frankly old; it stood in its simplicity, perfect in antique shabbiness. Only without, the creepers flung ever new shoots about the sturdy strength of the stones. Only within, it was haunted by a memory, by a presence; and this presence was young even to boyhood. And the young ghost harmonised with the aged house, seemed to belong to it as surely as—year by year—the spirit of spring to the ancient garden.
Rosamond, whose life purpose had so long been to avoid the haunting of the past, awoke in the dawn of her first day at Saltwoods to find herself in a very habitation of memories; nay, more, to feel, in some inexplicable manner, that the dead were more alive in this house than the quick, and yet—strange mystery of the heart—that she was glad of it. She watched the dawn wax as on one memorable morning in her far-off Indian palace; not here on beetle's-wing green and eastern glow of carmine and purple, but upon brown of wainscot oak and dim rosebud of faded chintz. And, as the lights spread between the gaps of the shutters, there grew upon her from the panelled wall a strong young face with bold wide-open eyes—eyes very young, set under brows already thoughtful. A very English face, despite the olive of the cheek, the darkness of the hair, close-cut, that still had a crisp wave under the cock of the Sandhurst cap.
I felt I was not alone, said Rosamond, half in dream, supporting herself on her elbow to look more nearly, "and so it was you!"
But the eyes were gazing past her, out on life, full of eagerness. And the close lips were set with a noble determination. What great things this boy soldier was going to make of his future!
Rosamond let herself fall back upon her pillows, something like a sob in her throat. Then, opposite to her, between the windows, she met full the glance of the same eyes that had but now avoided hers. They were child's eyes this time, gazing, full of soft wonder, out of a serious child's face, framed by an aureole of copper curls—the wonderful tint that is destined to turn to densest black.
Rosamond stretched at ease, resting her eyes on those of the lovely child's—childless woman, who had never desired children, began to picture to herself how proud a mother would be of such a little son as this. And then her mind wandered to the mother, who, lying where she now lay, had feasted her waking heart and gratified her maternal pride, so many mornings with this vision.
Then something began to stir in her that had not yet stirred before; an inchoate desire, an ache, a jealousy; yes, a jealousy of the dead woman who had borne such a child! She turned restlessly from the sight of the two pictures, flung herself to the far side of the bed, and sent her glance and thought determinedly wandering into the recess of an alcove where night still kept the growing light at bay.
A drowsiness fell over her mind again; with vague interest she found herself speculating what might the different objects be that the darkness still enwrapt partly from her sight.
Here was a high chair of unusual shape—a Prie-Dieu? Here was a gothic bracket, jutting from the wall above; thereon something glimmered palely forth; a statuette perchance, or alabaster vase of special slender art? Nay, not so, for now she could distinguish the wide-stretched arms, the pendant form; it was the carven ivory of a crucifix. The late Mrs. English's shrine, her altar? Rosamond's interest quickened—she had heard of this unknown relative's goodness from the son's lips, but had never heard this goodness specified as regarded religion. His mother, then, had been High Church ... Roman Catholic perhaps? Rosamond was almost amused, with the detached amusement of one to whom religion means little personal.
Under this impulse of curiosity she rose from her bed, pulled the window shutters aside to let in the day, and then went back to examine the alcove.
It held a shrine indeed, an altar to inevitable sacrifice, to the most sacred relics. Beneath the pallid symbol, figure of the Great Renunciation, was placed a closed frame. And all around and about, in ordered array, the records of a boy's life: medals for prowess in different sports; a cup or two; a framed certificate of merit; in front of the frame, a case bulging with letters. Upon each side of the altar hung shelves filled with books, some in the handsome livery of school prizes, some in the battered covers of the much-perused playroom favourite.
Rosamond stood and looked. A moment or two she hesitated, then she began to tremble. There was within her the old desire of flight, the old sick longing to hide away, to bury, to ignore. But something stronger than herself held her. The day was past when she could deny herself to sorrow. The cup was at her lips and she knew that she must drink.
She would open that letter-case, she would gaze at the face in the closed frame; her coward heart was to be spared no longer.
She took up a volume. As it fell apart she saw the full-page book-plate engraved with the arms of Winchester School and the fine copperplate inscription:
Anno S?culari 1884
Pr?mium in re Mathematica
Meritus et consecutus est Henricus English.
(H?c olim meminisse juvabit).
The life of Christopher Columbus.... It was bound in crimson calf, and the gilt edges of its unopened pages clung crisply together.
She replaced it on the shelf and, with the same dreary mechanical determination, drew forth another. The "Boy's own Book"; a veteran, this; from too much loving usage, dogs'-eared, scored with small grimy finger-prints; its quaint woodcuts highly coloured here and there by a very juvenile artist.
To Henry English, on his ninth birthday, from his affectionate mother, ran the dedication, in a flowing Italian hand. A gift that had made a little lad very happy, some twenty-five years ago.
And now Rosamond's fingers hovered over the case of letters. Well did her heart forebode whose missives lay treasured there. Nevertheless, the sight of the handwriting struck her like a stab. Not yet could she summon strength to read those close-marked pages. Nay—were they even hers to read?
Darling old Mammy— this was not for her.
Yet she turned the sheets over and over, lingering upon them. Here was an envelope, endorsed in the same fair running hand as the book: "My beloved son's last letter." And here, on a card, was gummed a piece of white heather—memorial of God knows what pretty coquetry between the stalwart soldier and his "darling old Mammy."
What things must people live through—people who dare to love!
Rosamond had never loved. Had she not done well? When love offered itself to her she had been too young to know its face. And now.... She dropped the case from her hands as if it burnt her, and stood, poised for flight; then, as if driven by an invincible force, seized upon the closed frame, almost with anger. Fate held her, she could not escape.
Harry English, looking at her! Not the child, not the adolescent, but Harry the man as she, his wife, had known him. Even through the incomplete medium of a photograph, the strong black and white of his colouring, the bold line of his features, the concentrated purposeful expression, was reproduced with an effect of extraordinary vitality.
It seemed almost impossible to think of him as dead who could look at her so livingly from this little portrait.
* * * * *
Old Mary came in hurriedly.
Here I am, ma'am, here I am! I heard you call.
Rosamond lifted dazed eyes. It took a perceptible space of time for the meaning of the words to filter to her brain. Then she said with vague impatience:
I did not call.
But you wanted me, surely, said the woman. Her glance wandered from the portrait in her new mistress's hand to the disorder on her old mistress's altar. "Surely you wanted me, ma'am."
She took a warm wrapper from the bed and folded it round Lady Gerardine. She supported her to an armchair and placed a cushion to her feet. The ministering hands were warm and strong; and Rosamond felt suddenly that in truth she was cold and weak, and that these attentions were grateful to her. She looked up again at the withered face, ethereally aged, at the blue eyes that seemed illumined from some source not of this world.
Perhaps I did want you, she said.
A thin, self-absorbed, silent woman was old Mary. She regarded the world as with the gaze of the seer and moved within the small circlet of her duty wrapped in a mystic dignity of her own. Some held her in contempt, as madwoman; others in awe, as having "seen things."
If the manor-house had the reputation of being haunted, it was doubtless due to Mary's ways. No one from the neighbourhood would have consented to inhabit the ancient place with her. But fortunately Mary had a stout niece of her own, who averred that ghosts were indigestion, and who slept the sleep of the scrubber and the just, no matter what else might walk.
The housekeeper's strange eyes softened as she looked down into the fair pale face of her young master's widow.
My dear lady that's gone, she said, "must be glad to know that there is another heart keeping watch here."
Her voice was soft and had a muffled sound as of one used to long silence. The tone seemed to harmonise with the singularity of the words. A small cold shiver ran over Rosamond; she stared without replying.
The day the news came, proceeded the housekeeper, dreamily, "she set up that altar to him. And there she found peace."
As old Mary spoke, the habit of the trained servant was still strong upon her. She stooped to tuck in the fold of Rosamond's dressing-gown closer round her feet.
There she prayed, she went on, as she straightened herself again, "and then, he came back to her in peace."
Rosamond closed the frame in her hands with a snap. She felt every impulse within her strike out against the mystic atmosphere that seemed to be closing round her.
What are you saying? she cried sharply. "In Heaven's name what do you mean? Who came back—the dead?"
Old Mary smiled again. She bent over the chair.
Why, ma'am, she said, as if speaking to a frightened child, "you don't need to be told, a good lady like you: to those that have faith, there is no death."
No death! echoed Rosamond. "All life is death. Everything is full of death."
There was a strangling bitterness in her throat that broke forth in a harsh laugh. The placid room seemed to swim round with her; when she came to herself the servant was holding her hands once more. Her voice was falling into her ears with a measured soothing cadence:
Not here. There is no death in this house. Don't you feel it, ma'am? It's not death that is here. Why, her that is gone, she passed from me there, in that bed, as the night passes into day. That is not death. Not an hour before the summons came for her she was wandering—as the doctor called it. I knew better. She saw him and was speaking to him. 'Ah, Harry,' she says, joyful, 'I knew you were not dead.' And then she turns to me. 'He is not dead, Mary,' she says, 'it was all a mistake.'
Rosamond listened, her pale lips apart, her gaze dark and wondering.
Why, ma'am, went on old Mary. "Haven't you felt it yourself, this night; didn't you feel his sweet company the minute you set foot in the house? I think it was my lady's great love that brought him back here. And now that she is gone, he's still here. And it's strange, he's here more than she is. She does not come as he does."
Her eyes became fixed on far-off things. Still clasping Rosamond's hand she seemed to transmit a glow, a warmth that reached to the heart. Rosamond's sick and cowering soul felt at rest as upon a strength greater than her own.
His company! Was that not what she had felt? Was it not that to which she had awakened? Ay, the old woman was right: it was sweet!
There is no death, asserted old Mary, once again, "no death unless we make it. It's our fault if our dead do not live for us; it's our earthly bodies that won't acknowledge the spirit. It's we who make our dead dead, who bury them, who make corpses of them and coffins for them, to hide them away in the cold earth."
Rosamond wrenched her hands from the wrinkled grasp. She sprang to her feet, seized by a sudden anguish that was actual physical pain.
Go, go! she cried wildly. She was caught up as in a whirlwind of unimaginable terror. What had she done? Had she laid Harry English in the grave? Was he dead to her through her own deed, he that had lived on for his mother? Had she in her cowardice hammered him into his coffin, and would he always be a corpse to her because she had made him dead?
Through the inarticulate voices of her torment, she heard the door close and felt she was alone. And then she found herself upon her knees before the shrine, the photograph case still clenched between her fingers, praying blindly, madly, inarticulately—to what? she knew not. To the white Christ on the cross, who had risen from the dead? Or to the strong soldier whose image she held, and for whom there could be no rising again?
When the storm passed at length she was broken, chilled, and unconsoled. Old Mary's words came back to her: "She prayed there and she got peace." Well, the mother may have found peace in prayer. But for the wife, there was none! "He came back in peace"; he had not come back to her—to Rosamond, his wife!
A wave of revolt broke over her; against the God who had invented death for his creatures, or against stupid blind fate disposing of those human lives that have no God.
She rose slowly to her feet; her glance swept the homely room—the bed where the mother had died—to end once again upon the altar. What right had she, the old woman, to lay claim to Rosamond English's husband? The babe, the boy, may have been hers, let her have him! But the man—the man belonged to the wife. "And ye shall leave father and mother and cleave to one." "There is authority for it in your very scriptures," cried Rosamond, aloud. And, with fingers trembling with passionate eagerness she set to work to rob the frame of its treasure, the shrine of its chief relic.
Soon it lay in her hand, the clipped photograph. She carried it away, from the altar to the window, and stood a long, long while, devouring it with her gaze. So had he looked. No man had ever bolder, truer eyes. Ah, and no woman but Rosamond had seen them flame into passion—passion that yet then had had no meaning for her who saw! And those lips, folded into sternness, had any one known them to break into lines of tenderness as they were used for her? None at least, not even his mother, had heard them whisper what they had whispered to the wife—to the wife whose ears had been deaf, then, as a child's, because of her uncomprehending heart!
What was it old Mary had said? "It is we who make our dead dead." And had he lived on in this house because of the love of a withered heart, and should he not live again for her, his wife who was young and strong—and still virgin to love?
What she had buried she would dig out of the earth again, were it with bleeding fingers. That voice should speak once more, were each accent to stab her with its poignancy of loss. He should live, were it to be her death.
With dilated nostrils, panting for breath, her hair floating behind her, beautiful in her thrall of passion like some Valkyrie rising over blood and death, she rushed to the door and summoned Jani with ringing call. There is an exaltation of spirit to which pain is highest joy, and Rosamond ran now to her sorrow as the mystic to his cross.
Jani! she called. "Bring me Captain English's box."
The days dropped into the cup of time; measures of light and shade, of waxing and waning, ushered in with pale winter dawns, huddled away in rapid gloomy twilights, according to the precise yearly formula.
But to Rosamond these hours in the forgotten old manor-house on the moorlands, where the winds were the only visitors, brought so great a change that it was as if a gate had been shut upon her former road.
A common prate is that Time works the changes in us. And when we look from the child to the man, it would seem absurd even to raise the question. Yet it is not time that works the mightiest changes. Nay, in the world of the soul time but emphasises. The great upheavals that obliterate in our lives all familiar landmarks—that do alter everything down to our most intimate capacity of feeling, are sometimes but the work of one instant. It is not time that ravages, it is not time that draws the wrinkle seared into the heart; not to time do we owe the spread of the grey, instead of the gold that used to colour the web of existence. A man may carry the singing soul of his April to the death-bed of his old body. Yet again the heart may wither in a span so short as scarce to be measured.
And sometimes a change, so complete that even within our own soul we find ourselves suddenly on foreign ground, will come without any striking external event, without any apparent outside reason. In the life of the soul a crisis has occurred—and lo! the very world of God is different. Nay, God himself is another to us.
During these short wind-swept November days in the green and brown manor-house, there, amid the solitary downs, did such a change come to Rosamond. Had she tried, she could scarce have found her old self again. But she did not try; for this new self was at peace, was wrapped in dreams of great sweetness, and yet awake to a life hitherto not even guessed at.
* * * * *
In the attic room that had been Harry's own, she sat alone. A furious shower was pattering on the tiles close over her head, a drenched ivy spray was beating against the gable window like a frantic thing that wanted shelter, a pair of sparrows were answering each other with defiant chirrup. Far below in the house, Aspasia was lustily calling upon a recreant kitten. In the moorland silence these few trivial sounds became insistent, and yet seemed but to assert the silence itself.
She was seated at the wide battered old writing-table which schoolboy Harry English had scored with penknife and chisel, burned and inkstained. Before her a small writing-desk was spread open, and two or three letters lay loosely under her clasped hands. Her eyes were musingly fixed upon the rain-beaten pane with the knocking ivy branch; her lips were parted by a vaguely recurrent smile. And, as the smile came and went, a transient red glowed faintly upon her cheeks.... The world for her now was not upon the edge of winter: it was spring. She was not Rosamond Gerardine, out of touch with life, she was not Rosamond English, widow—she was Rosamond Tempest, maid once more, on the threshold of her life, at the April of the year. And Harry English was her lover. And yet she was a Rosamond Tempest such as he had never known—such a Rosamond Tempest as had never yet existed.
She took the letter that lay uppermost to her hand. It was dated Saltwoods. Written here—at this very desk, no doubt. Perhaps with this very ivory penholder, fluted, yellow, stained, while he sat in this same Windsor chair.... Unconsciously she caressed the worn wooden arms whereon his arms must have rested. Then again she set herself to read:—
Saltwoods, 19th April.
On that April 19, all those years ago, he was thinking of her, writing to her! And she—so many miles away, shut in by the dreariest prison walls fate had ever built round a young impatient soul—had then not the faintest hint of her deliverer's approach.
DEAR MISS TEMPEST,—I dare say you have quite forgotten me. I was the youngest griffin, just before the old Colonel's death. I hope you will not think it a great impertinence in me to write like this to you; but my leave is up in a week or so, and I don't like to leave England without having seen your father's daughter again. I can never forget how kind he was to me—and your mother too. It made all the difference to me; such a young fool as I was, and so new to India and everything. I find I know some of the fellows at Fort Monkton, and I'm going to stop there a few days. May I call—and if so, when? Yours sincerely, HARRY ENGLISH. P.S.—I've only just found out where you are.
To Rosamond—most unwilling inmate in a household where, if she was not actually a burden, the smallness of her pittance rendered her certainly no material gain—this letter had brought a sort of vision of the past, a gleam of bygone light which made the present even more intolerable by contrast. It had been something to her to think that she should meet some one at last belonging to her old life, some one who had known her in those glamorous years of her happiness, some one straight from the magic shores that had held her in her happy years.
From eight to sixteen had Rosamond Tempest spent her life between the little hill station, the refuge of their hot season, and the historic old northern town where her father's duty lay—a sort of little Princess Royal, with a hundred devoted slaves and a score of gallant young courtiers, the imperious favourite of the whole station, native and white alike.... Oh the rides in the dawn! oh the picnics by moonlight! the many-coloured, vivid days that went with such swing, where every man almost was a hero, where the very air seemed full of the romance of frontier fights, of raids, and big game hunts, of "Tiger, tiger, burning bright" in jungle haunts! ... It had been surely the cruellest stroke of fate that had thrust the little spoilt girl, the beloved only child, from this pinnacle of bliss and importance!
Between one day and another Rosamond had become the penniless orphan, whom nobody wanted ... whom it was so kind of Major and Mrs. Carter to escort back to England, whom it was almost superhumanly good of Uncle and Aunt Baynes to admit into their family.
A self-centered child, said Mrs. "General Baynes." "A cold-blooded little wretch," opined her cousins. Well, it was a fact that, during the four years that elapsed between her departure from India and the receipt of Captain English's letter, Rosamond had not given a human being one word, one look in confidence....
Late April on the Hampshire coast, with the gorse breaking into gorgeous yellow flame, honey-sweet in the sunshine; with the white clouds scurrying across a blue sky, chased by the merriest madcap wind that ever scampered; with the waves breaking from afar off, dashing up a thousand diamonds falling over and over each other in their race for the beach, roaring on the shingle in clamorous good-fellowship, the foam creaming in ever wider circles. And, across the leaping belt of waters, green and amber and white, the island, flashing too: the windows and roofs of the happy-looking town throwing back the sun glances, set in smooth slopes, mildly radiating green, like chrysoprase and peridot....
* * * * *
Rosamond had dropped the letter from her hand; again she was dreaming. Not the plaint of the November wind round the gable roof of Saltwoods in her ears, but the chant of this April chorus on Alverstoke beach. Not the monotonous ting of Aspasia's finger exercise from the room below, but the irregular boom and thud of gun practice far out at sea, brought in by the gust. And the voice that fell into silence so far away between the wild Indian hills was speaking to her again. And she heard, heard for the first time....
Rosamond Gerardine, virgin of heart through her two marriages, was being wooed! And the virgin in her was trembling and troubled, as womanhood awoke.... He held her hands and looked into her eyes. His cheeks were pale under their bronze, his lips trembled—"Could you trust me? Do you think me mad? I've only known you four days, but I've dreamt of you, all my life.... Rosamond!"
The sea wind was eddying round them, the grasses at Rosamond's feet were nodding like mad things in the gusts. Her hair was whipped against her face. So, on this English shore, with the taste of the salt in their mouths, with the wild salt moist winds all about them—this Englishman wooed this English girl, to come away and be his love in the burning East. Yes, she could trust him. Who could look into his true eyes and not trust him? But then it was the thought of the East, the East of her lost childhood's joy, that won her. Now, back in England's heart, from an East abhorred, to the loathing as of blood and cruelty, it was the lover, it was the love!
Again she felt the touch of his first kiss. He had sought her lips, but she had turned her cheek. Now—the blood rushed up into her face; her heart beat faster, almost a faintness crept over her. She dropped her head upon her outstretched arms, her burning cheek upon his letter ... again his strong arms held her.
* * * * *
Once more they parted at the gate of the house that was her prison. He was going back to India in ten days, and she would go with him, confidently, gladly!
She walked up the path between the straggling wallflowers, the pungent marigolds, into the mean narrow hall. Then her only thought had been of sailing away from that sordid genteel abode, back to fair India, the land of her dreams. Now—now, as across these years she re-lived that great day of her youth, her heart was swooning over the memory of his kiss; her brain was filled with a vision of his tender trembling lips; of the light in his eyes as he looked back at her, of the swing of his broad shoulders as he rounded the crescent towards the fort.
* * * * *
Miss Aspasia Cuningham was in a decidedly bad temper. To be home again, in England, to have unlimited opportunity of working out the Leschetizky method on a superfine Steinway piano, the most complete immunity from interfering uncles, from social duties, philistine secretaries and attaches, appeared a most delightful existence—in theory. But, in practice it was dull. Yes, dull was the word.
With four fingers pressing four consecutive notes while the remaining digit hammered away, vindictively, at the fifth; with pouting lip out-thrust, she had reached the point of telling herself that even India was better than this.
Horrid place, ran Baby's angry cogitation, while the finger conscientiously drummed, "nothing but those stupid trees and that deadly moor, and the birds' chirp, chirp, and not a neighbour within miles; or if there were, with Aunt Rosamond not wanting to see a soul; not even the curate—and he's got eyes like marbles!"
Aspasia gave a little titter and changed the drumming finger from the third to the fourth. This was a less elastic member; and she grew pink with unconscious energy, while pursuing the inner monologue.
I do think that disgusting Major Bethune might have given us some sign of life. People have no business to look into people's eyes like that, and press people's hands, and then go off and mean nothing at all. Not, said Baby, blowing out her nostrils with a fine breath of scorn, "that one ever thought of him in that way. But he—oh, he's just a horrid wretch like the rest! All the nice ones die, I think. At least, I've never met any."
She brought down the left hand in its turn, with a crash, on the five notes; and the fine discord seemed to have relieving effect. The reflections proceeded in a softer vein.
Harry English—he must have been a dear. She turned her head to look for the inevitable portrait. There was scarce a room in Saltwoods that did not hold two or three presentments of him; sketches, most of them, by the faithful, forcible hand of the artist mother; photographs, too, in well-nigh every stage of the boy's development. Even Aspasia, positive, practical, unimaginative, could not but have fallen under the influence of the haunting presence. And in her actual mood of disillusion with Raymond Bethune, the ante-room of her girl's heart, that airy space open to all the winds, where so many come, pause, and go, was now, half in idleness, half in contradiction, consecrate to the image of gallant Harry English.
How Aunt Rosamond could! she thought, as she dreamily fixed her eyes upon that charcoal sketch which held one panel of the drawing-room, and which had been Mrs. English's last work. It was a much enlarged copy of the photograph on the shrine, and, whether by some unconscious transcription of her own sorrow, or whether her mother eyes had discovered in the little picture some stern premonition of his own approaching fate, the artist had given the strong bold face an expression that was almost bitter in its melancholy.
How Aunt Rosamond could—— thought the girl, "when she had been loved by such a man, ever, ever have looked at any one else? Fancy—the Runkle!" Ah, if Aspasia had been loved by English, how nobly she would have borne her widowhood! Her heart, of course, would have been absolutely, completely broken; she would have gone about in deep, deep widow's weeds. And strangers, looking after her, noticing the sweet pale face amid the crape, would ask who she was and would be told in whispers: the widow of the hero of the Baroghil expedition. "Ah, it would have been sweet to have been loved by you, Harry English!"
Her hands fell from the piano; her soul was away upon a dream as vague and innocent as it was absorbing. Too often did the Leschetizky method end in this manner. The while Rosamond, high in her attic, dreamed that she was a girl once more, and that she had just been told that Harry English loved her.
There was sunshine enough without to have tempted the most obstinate recluse into the fields. But as little as she had heeded November rain did Rosamond now heed the brightness of this opening December. While the old attic room held her bodily presence, her soul was once again back in the past. The past ... where, after all, she had not lived, and which (strange poignant lesson of fate!) was now to become to her more living than the present.
Those letters, those early memorials, the very thought of which had once inspired dread, now drew her like a magnet. Scarcely could she give herself to the necessary facts of life, so impatiently did she long for those solitary hours in his room, with him!
Every trifling note of his was pored over, dreamt upon in its turn. She had it in her to have lingered days upon a single line. Yet there was the sweetness of a tender surprise in every fresh sheet she took into her hands. And now it was her first "love letter" that she held.
It had come to her in the morning after their meeting in the salt wind, amid the gorse; had been brought to her—in the ugly top bedroom—on a basket brimming over with flowers. She could see them again, breathe them again: hot-house roses, languid-white and heavy-headed yellow, a huge clump of heliotrope, lily of the valley bound by its pale green sheaths, sharp-scented, waxen ... then the narcissus, the jonquil, the darling commoner herd of spring things that had pushed their way in the open gardens! All this to Rosamond, starved of beauty, Rosamond who was wont to fill her vases with the budding boughs that the hedges give the gardenless! She had buried her face in the velvet coolness, drawn in the perfume as if she was drawing in the loveliness to her soul. Through the waste of those ten years she could again feel the touch of the petals on her cheek—she was back again, back again in her maidenhood and held her first love letter between her hands. Was it possible that the faded nondescript leaf that fell from between its pages had once been part of that exquisite basketful that could still bloom for her?
DARLING (wrote Harry English)—these are all I can send you. I wanted to send you roses, love, worthy of my Rose, the only Rose, of Rosamond, Rose of the World! I half dreamed of them last night, red, red, glowing, deep-scented like my love for you. I can find nothing but these pale mawkish things, far though I have hunted this morning! ...
This morning—and it was now but nine o'clock. How early he must have risen! It was not the Rosamond, the hard young untouched Rosamond of those old days, who thought thus with a mist before the eyes; it was the new Rosamond whose heart was beginning to teach her so many things.
Early had the lover risen indeed!
I could not sleep (went on the letter) for sheer tumult of happiness. I saw the dawn break over the water out on the sea bastion of this old fort. The sea was quite wrapt in mist, and I and my heart seemed first alone high up in the air, with the wash of the invisible waters below and the restless tapping of the flag line on the staff over my head. And then the dawn came. It seemed to me the first dawn I had ever beheld, I, who have marched through many an Indian night and seen such fires as England never dreams of. But I look upon the world with new eyes. The meaning of things has become clear to me. I never saw beauty before I saw you; and through you, all other beauty is fulfilled to me. Grey and dove-coloured and pearl, faint roses and yellows and opals—the mists first became impregnated with all lovely tints and then rolled away. Then there was a straight ray of sun across the sea at my feet, and the water was gold and green. Glorious! Why do I write all this to you? I have never even thought of such things before. Will you laugh at me? I, who have known you for such a little while? But I have waited for you all the years of my manhood—this much I know at least. And you, who are the meaning of everything to me now, you will know the meaning of my heart.
All the meaning of her lover to Rosamond Tempest, in the top room over the straggling back garden, had been that he was her deliverer from an existence of utter negation. She had read his words with the same pleasure with which she had gazed upon his flowers, inhaled their fragrance: it had represented a new atmosphere of colour and beauty!
But now, as she bent over that faded leaf and read those vivid words from a hand long dust, her whole being gave itself responsive to the love that still spoke.
* * * * *
In the garden below, under the nipped frost-bitten leaves, Aspasia poked about for hidden violets. From its bare brown stalks she had already culled the last dwindled chrysanthemum. When Rosamond and she, in the marshalled palace of Sir Arthur, had planned this homely occupation, it had seemed an almost deliriously joyful prospect of freedom. Now, such is the futility of the granted wish, Aspasia, as she flicked with impatient fingers among the wet foliage, was a prey to that abandonment of melancholy which is rarely known in its perfection after twenty. Indeed, poor Baby's outlook upon the world that December noon was a pitiable one. The only man she could have loved was dead before she had even known him! Another man, whom she was certain she could never have cared for, displayed the most reprehensible indifference as to whether he were as much as remembered. And those wonderful piano recitals of the gifted young genius, Miss Aspasia Cuningham, seemed hopelessly remote.
She could not even muster a smile for the kitten as it suddenly cantered across the path, every individual hair bristling, body contorted, and legs stiffened, to box a hanging leaf and fall prone on its back with four paws wildly beating the air. The very kitten was part of the general unsatisfactoriness of things. When she did have the heart to play with it, it was never to be found: but it had a Puck-like knowledge of the ripe moment when to mock her misery.
Indeed, the claims of the eager young life were somewhat neglected in this old home of dreams.
Aspasia walked, in royal dignity of dolour, back to the house, set the violets in two shallow vases, and the chrysanthemum in a high narrow one. She placed the portable easel upon the open leaf of the grand piano; she detached from its panel the portrait of Captain English with the sad stern face, propped it on the easel, arranged her flowers round it, all with the solemn air of one going through a religious rite. Then she sat down, heaved a noisy sigh from the depth of her little round chest, and began to play those throbbing strains of passion, yearning disappointment, and sorrow that, the legend says, came to Chopin one day, through the beat of raindrops against his window panes, as he waited for her who failed him.
Baby had begun to find out that even in so serious an art as music those paltry things, the emotions, will insist on finding expression. She was in a very pretty state of artistic woe when, with a sudden discord, the love notes fell mute. From the shadowy window-seat a tall figure had risen and come forward: eyes, ablaze with anger, were fixed upon her from a white and threatening face.
Aunt Rosamond! ... stammered the girl, too much startled to do anything but sit and stare.
How dare you? said Lady Gerardine, in a low voice, hardly above a whisper indeed, but charged with intense anger. She walked up to the piano and stood looking a second at the altar-like arrangement; then her eyes returned to Aspasia, who now blushed violently, guiltily, in spite of an irrepressible childish desire to giggle.
You shameless girl! said Rosamond. "How dare you! What have you to do with him?" She took up the picture. "He is mine," she said, "mine only!" Then, holding it clasped to her breast, she swept from the room.
Upon my word! said Miss Aspasia. "Good gracious goodness me!" Resentment got the better of amusement; her cheeks were flaming scarlet, she struck a series of defiant chords, as a sort of war cry in pursuit of the retreating figure. "Shameless girl, indeed; I've as much right to him, by this time, as anybody else, I should think. In heaven there's no marriage or giving in marriage ... and, if it comes to that, what about Runkle then?"
She plunged into the noisiest, most dishevelled Wagner-Liszt piece of her repertory; crashed, banged, and pounded till the staid old manor-house seemed to ring with amazement, and the exasperated player, with flying hands, loosened hair, empurpled countenance, and panting breath, could hardly keep her seat in the midst of her own gymnastics.
Henceforth there was one room in the manor-house without its presiding picture. And, opposite Rosamond's bed, where the tender child's face had once watched the mother's slumbers, the soldier now looked down sternly and sadly upon the wife.
Will you answer this for me, Baby?—Tell Major Bethune that we shall be glad to see him here this week, and for as long as he cares to stay.
Aspasia took the letter between disdainful finger and thumb, and turned it over to peruse. Rosamond, leaning her chin on her hand, looked away from the breakfast-table through the small-paned windows into the wintry garden, and was lost in some dream again.
Miss Cuningham's nostrils dilated with indignation as she read the brief dry lines in which Major Bethune informed Lady Gerardine that he would be glad if she could now furnish him with some of the promised material for his work, as he was at a stand-still. He could run down for the day, if it suited, and with kind regards to her niece—begged to remain, and so forth.
Kind regards to her niece, repeated that young lady to herself with an ominous tightness of expression. "Yes, Aunt," she said aloud, with some alacrity. "Leave it to me; I shall write to Major Bethune."
She finished her tea with a gulp and hurried to the corner of the drawing-room, where she had established her Lares and Penates, to undertake the congenial task.
Her dimples pointed deep satisfaction as she wrote. "Kind regards," indeed! This Major of Guides should be taught his proper place in the estimation of Miss Aspasia Cuningham.
DEAR MAJOR BETHUNE (she wrote)—My aunt bids me to say that she will be charmed if you can arrange your promised visit for next week. You did promise to come here, did not you? I positively forget. It seems such ages since that dreadful, dreary sea journey, that it was quite a surprise to hear from you this morning. We are having such a happy time here that India and all the rest of it seem never to have existed. We do enjoy being by ourselves. Kind regards from my Aunt, Yours very truly,
concluded Miss Aspasia with a vindictive flourish.
Having despatched this epistle in triumph, it was astonishing how much brighter became Miss Cuningham's outlook upon the world at large and the manor-house in particular. She developed a renewed interest in housekeeping details; not, as she was careful to explain, that it mattered really what they gave this gentleman to eat or to drink, only Aunt Rosamond was so fastidious.
She discovered that it was absolutely necessary for the entertainment of any visitor that a pony and cart should immediately be added to the establishment, and spent an exciting afternoon in scouring the countryside for the same.
It was, of course, the sense of duty well accomplished that gave such a sparkle to her eye and such an irrepressible tilt to the corners of her lips, as she sat waiting for the return of the above-mentioned vehicle from the station the day of Major Bethune's arrival. It had not been her intention to gratify him with a sight of her countenance so soon; but Lady Gerardine, after faithfully promising to be in attendance at the appointed time, had wandered off, in the vague way of which Aspasia was becoming resignedly tolerant, for one of her long solitary rambles; and the girl could not, for the credit of the house, but take on herself the neglected hospitable duty.
Alas for all the resolves of a noble pride! She had hardly been ten minutes in the company of the newly arrived guest before she had fallen into the old terms of confidential intimacy.
Afterwards she could not quite tell herself how it had happened; whether because of the good softening of his harsh face as he looked down at her, or of the warm close grasp of his hand which drove away at once the forlorn feeling which had possessed her poor little gregarious soul all these days; or whether it were the mollifying influence of old Mary's scones, the cosiness of the fragrant tea and the leaping fire in contrast to the dreary dusk gathering outside. Perhaps it was merely that her healthy nature could harbour no resentment, albeit the most justifiable. However it may have been, Major Bethune found his welcome at the manor-house sweet. Even the maidenly coldness of her first greeting pleased his fastidious old-fashioned notions; and the subsequent thawing of this delicate rime came upon him with something of the balm of sunshine on a frosty morning.
His face stiffened, however, at Aspasia's first confidence about her aunt, into which she plunged, after her usual manner, without the slightest preamble.
She's awfully good to me, always; sweeter to me than ever, these last few days—when we meet! But I scarcely see her, except at meals. And then we don't seem to be living in the same world. It's like talking through the telephone, cried the girl. "Of course, I am quite aware," she went on, "that the poor darling is suffering from neu—neurasth—well, whatever they call it; that her nerves are all wrong. 'Tisn't anything so very new either," she giggled, "'tis just too much Runkle—Runkleitis.... I know myself, even I, at times, have felt as if I could scream and tear out his hair by the roots. What must it have been for her! She kept up, you see; that's her way. And now that she's free of him for a bit, it's the reaction, I suppose."
He drank his tea in sips, listening to her, his head bent. The firelight leaped and cast changing lights upon his countenance. Baby thought he looked thinner, older, sterner; yet she could never be afraid of him. There was something extraordinarily pleasant in having him there. The very loneliness of the Old Ancient House added a zest. The unsubstantial image of Harry English faded like a ghost before the dawn in the strong man's presence. She edged her chair an inch closer.
I am sorry Lady Gerardine is no better, said he, formally, into the silence.
Oh, better! answered Aspasia. "Will you have another cup?" ("That makes the third." She was pleased; here was a tribute to her capacity.) "Better?—that's what is so funny, she's as well as possible. She looks young, young, with a bloom on her cheeks, and sometimes she walks about smiling to herself. It makes me creep. I can't think what she's smiling at. She comes down, singing softly to herself. Why, there are times when she looks just like a girl. No one could ever believe she's had two husbands," cried terrible Baby.
Major Bethune put down his cup, untouched. ("He didn't want it after all," commented she.) "It is rather strange," she went on aloud; "she's simply bloomed since she came here, and the whole house is full of Harry English. And she's shut up half the time, in his old rooms under the roof, routing among those old letters, you know—those letters there was all the fuss about. I thought we'd killed her over them between us," said Baby, with her little nervous laugh. "And now, I don't know, but I almost think I would rather see her cry and look pale as before. It would seem more natural. Really, I'm frightened sometimes."
Her pretty face, with its wide open eyes, took a piteous look in the firelight.
You don't think it means anything? she resumed. And the tears suddenly welled, the corners of her mouth drooped: she seemed no more than a child. He stretched out his arm and took her hand.
Mean? he said. "Why, Miss Aspasia, what should it mean? Something perhaps that your kind heart would find hard to understand. But it means, after all, nothing so very unusual. Lady Gerardine, and it is all the better for her, is of those who are quickly consoled. The country air is doing her good, and the old letters——" he dropped her hand, his tones grew incisive. "It is only when the past is more satisfactory than the present that memories are disagreeable."
Oh, cried Aspasia. She started to her feet. "What a funny way you have of saying that!" And as the meaning of his words forced itself upon her, "How unkind! I think you hate Aunt Rosamond."
I? said he, startled. He rose in his turn. "What an absurd idea!" He laughed, but his lips seemed stiff. "I?—I would not presume, how could I? to have any feeling for Lady Gerardine but that of distant respect."
The door opened and in came Rosamond.
In the dark! she said, looking upon them unseeingly after the light of the hall. "Is that Major Bethune?"
She came forward, while Aspasia, on her knees, violently poked the fire into a blaze.
Rose of the World, thought Bethune, as the ruddy glow fell upon the figure of his friend's widow. It was true she looked like a girl. Her cheek was rose-red from the cold wind. Her shadowed eyes brilliant. The light tendrils of her hair floated back from her white forehead.
You are welcome, she said, and mingled with her grace and sweetness there was a timidity which was as exquisite and as indescribable an addition to her beauty as the bloom to the purple of the grape or the mist to the line of the hills at dawn. He bowed over her hand. He felt angry with himself that he had no word to say.
Tea? said Aspasia. As he took the cup from her to pass it to Lady Gerardine, he heard the spoon clink against the saucer with the trembling of his own hand.
It is the post, Aunt, said Aspasia; "and a letter from Runkle."
She stood at the door of the attic, looking in upon them with something unfriendly in the expression of her eyes. The tone in which she announced Lady Gerardine's correspondent was not without a shade of malicious triumph.
Rosamond and Major Bethune were sitting one at each end of the old writing-table that had been Harry English's. Between them lay a pile of papers. From the landing, Baby had heard Bethune's voice uplifted in unwonted animation, and then the ring of her aunt's laugh.
As she entered, the man rose. But Lady Gerardine merely turned her head towards the intruder with an involuntary contraction of the eyebrows.
Dear child, she said, and Aspasia felt the impatience of interruption under the gentleness of the tone, "we are at work."
At work! It had sounded like it, thought the girl, ironically.
Runkle writes from Brindisi, she said, turning over in her hand the thin envelope with the foreign stamp. "We shall have him home directly."
If she had hoped to create a sensation with her news, here was a failure. Bethune stood impassive. Lady Gerardine had all the air of one to whom Sir Arthur's movements were the least of concerns. She turned with a little impatient gesture to Major Bethune!
Do sit down again, she said, "and go on. You have not told me whether Harry won the race. Oh, he must have won. I never saw any one ride as he did."
Aspasia's pretty, defiant countenance changed. Of late she had occasionally known an undefined lurking anxiety about her aunt—it now sprang out of ambush and seized her again. She put one hand over Rosamond's clasped fingers, and with the other held the letter before the abstracted eyes.
But you must read it, she said, half tenderly, half authoritatively.
Presently, said Lady Gerardine. And then, as if irritated by the disturbing document, seized it and laid it on one side. "Here, Baby," said she, "come and take your favourite place on the floor, and Major Bethune will begin his story again. You will like to hear how Harry took the conceit out of these Lancers who thought that nobody could ride a horse but themselves."
Baby flung a swift look at Bethune, half appeal, half fright. He was gnawing the corner of his moustache and staring under his heavy brows at Rosamond's lace—beautiful, unconscious, eager. He seemed perplexed.
But, my goodness, cried Aspasia, and for very little more she would have burst into tears, "you know what the Runkle is, both of you. Don't you see this is perfectly idiotic? Some one will have to read his letter and see what he's got to say."
Read it you, then, retorted Lady Gerardine, with sudden heat. Her eyes flashed, the blood rushed into her cheeks. She was as angry as the sleeper who is shaken from some fair dream that he would fain hold fast. Thereupon Baby's temper flamed likewise. She shrugged her shoulders, snapped the letter from the table, tore it open. Lady Gerardine began to sort the papers before her, once more determinedly abstracted from the situation. The girl flung herself down on the window-seat below the dormer, and, with pouting lips and scornfully uplifted eyebrows, set to work to peruse the marital document.
Poor Runkle hopes, she cried sarcastically, "that you have not been making yourself ill again with anxiety about him because he missed the last mail. (Fancy, if we'd only known dear Runkle missed the last mail!) You must forgive him, Aunt. Lady Aspasia insisted on being taken to Agra, to see the Taj.... Runkle will be in England almost as soon as this letter. (Oh, joy!) Lady Aspasia has insisted on his going to stay at Melbury Towers first. She is having all sorts of interesting people to meet him. (Aren't you jealous, Aunt?) When once she's got him, she doesn't mean to let him go—(Fancy, the Runkle!)—Oh——" She dropped her hands with the crinkling thin sheet and surveyed Lady Gerardine with some gravity: "He wants us to join him there!"
Who—where?
Us—you and me, Aunt Rosamond, at Melbury. We're to meet him there, he says, immediately, and stay over Christmas. Lady Aspasia will write.
I cannot go, said Rosamond, quietly, as if that decided the question.
Once again Aspasia hesitated in distress between the advisability of discussion with any one so unreasonable, and the danger of exciting a highly nervous patient. With a despairing shake of her fluffy head, she finally returned to the letter and read on in a voice from which all the angry zest had departed.
'I shall spend a couple of days in Paris. Lady Aspasia has implored me to give her my opinion upon some old furniture. I propose, however, to send Muhammed Saif-u-din—my native secretary, you remember—straight to you at Saltwoods. He has some important work to finish for me, and Jani will know how to look after him. He will arrive about the evening of the tenth.' That's to-morrow, said the girl, breaking off. "Lord, I'm glad you're here, Major Bethune! Gracious! This old place is creepy enough without having a black man wandering about the passages and the orchards.... Fancy us, all alone in the middle of the downs! He might cut all our throats, and nobody know anything, till the baker came. I do think our Runkle might keep his own blackamoors to himself."
Rosamond looked indifferent. She drummed the table softly with her fingers, as if in protest against the waste of time. Bethune still stood without speaking. His attitude had not changed a fraction, neither had his brooding face. Aspasia thought that she could have flung the inkpot at him with much satisfaction.
That's all, she concluded drily; "Runkle is his dear wife's devoted husband." She threw a hard emphasis on the words. Rosamond suddenly paled and set her lips close.
Oh yes! there's a postscript; he wants an answer immediately to Claridge's—and who do you think was their fellow traveller? Dr. Chatelard—he's to be at Melbury, too. It's all fish that comes to Lady Aspasia's net—evidently. Well?
Still there was silence.
It was a clear day. A shaft of wintry sunshine pierced in between the ivy sprays, and caught the girl as she sat; her crisp aureole of hair seemed palely afire; sparks of the same faint yellow flame enkindled her eyes, and even the ends of her long eyelashes. She sat stiff and stern, her face was somewhat pallid. Bethune glanced at her suddenly. The sky was blue through the little panes beyond: he thought she made a quaintly pretty picture.
Well! repeated Miss Cuningham, "you had better wire to Runkle, I think."
Lady Gerardine rose from her seat with so swift a movement that, startled, Baby jumped from her perch. The elder woman was passion white; her nostrils were dilated.
Leave me, Aspasia, she said, pointing to the door with a gesture at once dignified and incensed. "You disturb me."
Well, I never! exclaimed the ill-used girl. She checked herself suddenly and made a rush for the passage; if she spoke another word the tears would certainly come, and that (she thought) would be the last straw.
Quick as she was, Bethune was before her. He opened the door for her to pass. His air of detachment, the banality of the courtesy, seemed to her an insult; she flung a look of scathing reproach at him as she flounced by.
With Sir Arthur's letter clutched in her hand she sought refuge in her own room; and there on the small white bed shed some of the bitterest and angriest tears she had ever known. The thought of the two in the attic room galled her beyond endurance.
Hasn't she had two husbands already? sobbed she to herself, catching at the crudest conclusions with all the inconsequence of her years, "and couldn't she leave just this one man alone? ... 'You disturb me'—oh!"
Yet Bethune had remained in the attic scarcely a minute after Aspasia herself had left it. When he had returned to the table, Lady Gerardine had gazed at him a span or two with vague eyes—then she had passed her hand over her forehead, sighed wearily, and fallen into her seat.
I can do no more to-day! she had said. "Take those papers. You see I have copied out all in sequence, even the most trivial detail, till the Sandhurst examination. Make what use of them you like. I—forgive me, it is very stupid—but I feel troubled. And please—do not talk to me about this any more until I ask you to."
So she had dismissed him. And, dismissed, he returned to the study, which had been allotted for his use, and placed her voluminous notes with his own typewritten manuscript, pending the task of collation. Then he fell into a long reverie, and his thoughts were neither of Harry English nor of Miss Aspasia Cuningham.
* * * * *
But even in anger Baby was loyal; some instinct, rather than any positive train of reasoning, told her that Sir Arthur's arrival at the present juncture would inevitably precipitate matters to a most undesirable climax. On the other hand: how keep him away if his wife persisted in her attitude of indifference and silence? ...
Good gracious, we'll have Runkle turning up in a special train before the week's out! How to prevent it?
With much labour she finally concocted and despatched a telegram of Machiavellian artfulness to await arrival at Claridge's, taking further upon herself to sign it in Lady Gerardine's name:
Just received letter. Overjoyed return, trust you can make arrangements to join me here at once; unfortunate presence of guest prevents my leaving. Otherwise would meet you London before Melbury.
That will do it, I think, said the astute young lady. "If Runkle thinks that any one is trying to dictate to him or to interfere with his own sacred arrangements—the trick is done."
Before the two women met again, it was evening—the debatable hour, between light and darkness, which falls so quickly upon the December day. Rosamond had come in, wet and weary, from a walk alone on the downs; caught by reverie, she sat before the fire in her dressing-gown, her change of garb unfinished, her hair still loosened, gazing through those unsubstantial misty recent years to the past, which had grown so vivid.
Aspasia peeped in, half drew back, hesitated; then, as Lady Gerardine held out her left hand, without a word, the girl flew to her side and nestled down on the hearthrug at her feet, seizing the white hand with the unexpressed joy of tacit reconciliation. For a little while there was silence between them. Baby's eyes roved about the room; within her sunny head a host of new thoughts were humming like a hive of bees. All at once something unfamiliar to her touch about the fingers she was fondling drew her gaze with surprise.
Why, Aunt Rosamond?
Yes, Baby.
Lady Gerardine answered from the past, her voice far away and dreamy.
Why. The girl turned the inert hand now to the faint grey light of the waning day, now to the fireglow. "You have changed your rings. This is a new one I never saw before," and her plump fingertips felt the plain circle, so much rounder and narrower than that pompous gold band with which the great Sir Arthur had plighted his nuptial vow. The cry had almost escaped her lips: "You've never taken off Runkle's wedding-ring!" but she checked it with that new prudence circumstances were forcing upon her. She wished now she had not spoken at all. But Lady Gerardine was smiling.
Yes, said she, tenderly, looking down at her hand where the leaping wood flame flashed back from the narrow gold circlet and the tiny coloured gems of an antique ring that surmounted it. "I have changed my rings—this one was given me the night before my marriage. It all went so quickly, you see, Baby, that my engagement ring came only the day before the wedding-ring. It was hers," said Rosamond, looking over her shoulder at the bed where Mrs. English had died. "'Tis a very old trinket, you see. Red roses of rubies, green leaves of emerald, and a diamond heart. He said it was my heart—I said it was his."
She smiled again into space. Aspasia clasped her and kissed her. It was the first time since the voyage her aunt had spoken to her openly of her hidden thoughts. And now she spoke as if confidence had always existed between them, as if she were merely continuing the thread of an interrupted discourse.
Baby's heart began to sink with an uneasy sense of awe as before something unnatural, and of her own incapacity for meeting it. She wished her kiss could stop the lovely smiling lips from further speech. But Lady Gerardine went on:
We were married quite early, in the little Alverstoke church. I used to hate it when I went there Sunday after Sunday; but it was a new place to me that morning, holy and beautiful, all in the dewy freshness, grey amid the green, with stripes of sunlight yellow upon it, and the dancing shadows of the trees. The whole church was full of the smell of white narcissus; it was like incense. When I came up the nave, he turned where he stood at the altar rail, and looked at me. I can see him now, just as he looked; his eyes dark, dark, and his face quite pale for all it was so bronzed. Baby, I can smell the narcissus now, as I stood beside him and he put this on my finger.
She raised her hand and kissed the ring.
I shall never take it off, she said, as if to herself. And unhappy, practical Baby, could have laughed and cried together with the despairing ejaculation: "Poor Runkle!"
The night was pressing up against the windows; only the firelight now fought the darkness in the wainscoted room. Upon the panel opposite the bed, the life-size portrait of Captain English, in its strong relief of black and white, began to assume a ruddy tint; in the shifting of the shadows the expression of the face seemed to change. It assumed startling airs of life. Baby caught sight of this and gave a faint scream.
Oh, oh, she said, burrowing her face against Rosamond's neck, "he almost looks alive!"
Lady Gerardine had seen, too; but there was no terror in her soul.
Why should he not look alive? said she, in a soft confidential whisper, "he's not really dead, you know."
The astounding words had scarcely fallen upon Baby's alarmed consciousness, when there was a crunching of wheels below the window, as if the night without had suddenly engendered some ghostly visitor in state. A violent peal rang through the silent house; a new but very tangible fear was upon Aspasia. With a shriek she sprang to her feet.
As sure as eggs is eggs, it's Runkle!
She rushed helter-skelter to the door, while Rosamond sat still, clasping her ringed finger.
A minute later Aspasia burst into the room again. She was laughing violently in reaction, and brought a breath as of wet woods and winter winds into the warm room.
It's all right, she gasped. "It isn't Runkle, aunt, it's only——" with a fresh irrepressible gust, "it's only the 'native spring,' you know, the black man—the secretary who's writing up Runkle's monument!"
She leaned against the bed-post, puffing and fanning herself with her handkerchief.
What a turn he's given me—poor thing! I'm glad we've got Jani for him. He looked so forlorn, standing in the hall, staring about him with great sad eyes, like something pitchforked into a different world.
* * * * *
Jani carried a lamp into the small bare chamber allotted to Muhammed Saif-u-din, and set it on the table at which he was seated.
She turned up the wick, and was straightening herself from her task when her glance fell upon the man's hands and became riveted there. Even in their attitude of repose, folded one over the other in the oriental fashion, these dusky hands had a singular suggestion of strength and energy about them. They were larger, too, than might have been expected in a babu; but then was he not of the virile northern breed?
After a while, slowly, the woman's gaze travelled up to the broad breast, where it rested once more. Then, upon a sudden impulse, she tilted the green shade so as to throw the full light upon the bearded countenance. The secretary smiled and raised his eyes to look at her in return; but her action had cast her face into profound shadow.
So, said he, in her own tongue, "here we meet, children of the sun in the land of the mist. So far from home we should be friends."
I make no friend of your blood-stained race, said Jani, harshly.
Why, what harm have we done thee or thine, mother? asked Muhammed, his easy good-humoured tone contradicted by the relentless keenness of the gaze that still strove to pierce the gloom in her direction.
What harm, Pathan? shrieked Jani, suddenly, trembling with a sort of monkey fury. She flung out her hands as if waving off some threatening vision. "What harm, do you ask, have you done, you and your brothers of the mountain? Harm enough. See that ye do no more. Cross not my mistress's path."
Muhammed put his hand over his mouth, as if to conceal a yawn. Then, with an air of weary curiosity:
Your mistress? he echoed. "Nay, mother, my business is with your noble lord. How should even my shadow ever come between your lady and the sun?"
I will tell you, said Jani. She came closer to him, though still keeping in the darkness, and laid her fingers on his sleeve. "Your mountains once brought her great sorrow. She has forgotten, she is consoled. I would not that she remembered again. Why did you come here?" she cried, breaking into a wail. "My heart trembles. It is for no good!"
The man shrugged his shoulders, but she repeated in a sort of frenzy:
Keep out of the Mem Sahib's way. Wa?, that you should have come here to remind her! Her tears are dry.
Muhammed smiled again, a smile full of secret yet fierce irony.
I am here, said he, "upon the bidding of my most noble lord and master, the Governor Sahib, of splendid fame."
Great be his shadow! ejaculated the woman, with Eastern gesture of reverence. "Oh, you speak the truth; that is a noble and magnificent lord!"
Ay, quoth the secretary. Then, with a movement as sudden as her own had been, he lifted the shade altogether from the lamp. Jani again flung out both her hands.
Stay, he commanded, as she huddled towards the door; and she stayed, glancing at him with furtive, furious eyes like a frightened wild thing. "You love your lady then so deeply?" he queried, studying her dark face in the revealing glare.
The ayah's lips moved. She looked askance at her questioner, dropped her gaze upon his hands again, hesitated, and at last spoke:
I—I suckled her at this breast, she beat her withered bosom. "She is more beloved to me than the child of my flesh. When she weeps, it is as if my blood fell. She is happy, she is great, she is the lady of a high and magnificent lord. She reigns as a queen, she has jewels—oh, jewels—all her heart can wish."
What then? cried Muhammed, laughing loudly.
The sons of the mountain have made her weep enough, cried Jani, hoarsely. She was trembling as between a terror of pleading and an impotence of anger. "Woe to you if your shadow come between her and the sunshine! The dead are dead, past and done with; but the living she shall keep—and her greatness."
You speak in riddles, said the Pathan, coldly. "But doubtless you are a faithful servant. Faithful, but also foolish. I will not harm your mistress!"
Who harms my lord harms her, retorted the woman, sullenly.
Muhammed's eyes flashed.
And who would harm so just, so great, so beloved a master? You weary me, mother; begone.
He did not raise his voice, but there was that in it before which she shrank; creeping from the room thereafter stealthily, like a threatened dog.
Muhammed, his hands folded once more, remained seated long into the night, with the merciless light of the unshaded lamp upon his brooding countenance.
The law of change, of passage—the pressure of time, in fact—is so strong upon everything that comes under its law at all, that not even in memory can we remain stationary. Fain, fain, would Rosamond have lingered upon the first stage of that journey into the past she had so singularly engaged upon. But, in spite of herself, the wheels were turning, the moments dropping; from within as well as from without, she was forced on and on, and she knew that in a little while she must reach the parting of the ways.
It having been ruled for us that life is almost all change, and that change is mostly sorrow, it is a dispensation of mercy that we should be blind travellers along the road, and never know what lies beyond. But Rosamond, who had rebelled against the natural law, was now, with eyes unsealed, advancing fatally towards the way of sorrows she had already once traversed, refusing to mourn at her appointed hour.
Fain would she have walked in the sheltered valley, fain even called back the old sleep of coldness. In vain. Time was marching, and she must march. And two there were that drove her forward, besides the relentless invisible power—Bethune, with his expectant close presence, and Sir Arthur, unbearable menace from the distance.
* * * * *
And then, you know, the summons came, said she.
I know, he answered. Then there was silence between them.
Lady Gerardine had come to Major Bethune in the little library where he spent some hours each morning over his work. These last days she had shown an unaccountable distaste to his presence in the attic room. And he, studying her now, thought that, in this short week of his visit, she had altered and wasted; that the bloom had faded on her cheek, and that cheek itself was faintly hollowed. He had been poring over some old maps of the Baroghil district, pipe in mouth, when she entered upon him. And at sight of her, he had risen to his feet, putting aside the briar with a muttered apology. But she, arrested in her advance, had stood inhaling the vapour of his tobacco, her lips parted with a quivering that was half smile, half pain.
I like it, she had said dreamily. "It brings me back."
Awkward he nearly always felt himself before her, never more so than at these moments of self-betrayal on her part, when every glimpse of her innermost feeling contradicted the hard facts of her life. He stood stiffly, not taking up his pipe at her bidding. Then, pulling herself together, she had advanced again, ceremoniously requesting him to be seated. She had only come to bring him another note, which she had omitted to join to those annals of Harry English's life up to their marriage, already in his hands.
He had just glanced at it and flicked it on one side, and then at the expectancy of his silence, she had grown pale. There could be no turning back, she did not ask it, scarcely hoped for it. But, O God, if she might wait a little longer!
She sank into the worn leather armchair. It was a small room, lined with volumes, and the air was full of the smell of ancient bindings, ancient paper and print; that good smell of books, so grateful to the nostrils of one who loves them, mingled with the pungency of Bethune's tobacco.
The wild orchard came quite close to the window and across the panes, under an impatient wind, the empty boughs went ceaselessly up and down like withered arms upon some perpetual useless signalling. To Rosamond they seemed spectres of past summers, waving her back from their own hopeless winter. The room was warm and rosy with firelight, but in her heart she felt cold. And Major Bethune sat waiting.
I only had one or two letters from him, she faltered at last; "and then came the silence." Her lovely mouth twitched with pain; Raymond Bethune turned his eyes away from her face.
He joined us at Gilgit, he said, staring out at the frantic boughs. "I remember how he looked, as he jogged in, towards evening, with his fellows—white with dust, his very hair powdered."
She clasped her hands; the tension slightly relaxed.
You all loved him? she said softly.
Loved him! he gave a short laugh. "Well, he was a sort of god to me, and to the men too. Some of the subs thought him hard on them—so he was, hard as nails."
Astonishment filled her gaze.
Gad, said the man, "I remember poor little Fane—he went during the siege, fever—I remember the little fellow saying, half crying: 'I think English is made of stone.' But it was before he had seen him at the fighting. That was a leader of men!"
Hard! said Lady Gerardine. "Harry made of stone!" she gave a low laugh, half indignant.
Don't you know, said Bethune, "that here"—he tapped the jagged lines of the mountain maps—"you can't do anything if you're not harder than the rocks? And with those devils of ours," his own face softened oddly as he spoke; "they're hard enough—they're devils, I tell you—to lead them right, you've got to be more than devil yourself—you've got to be—an archangel."
Some vision of a glorious fighting Michael, with a stern serene face of immutable justice, featured with the beauty of the dead, rose before Rosamond. She flushed and trembled; then she thought back again and with anger.
Ah, but his heart, she said; "ah, you did not know him!"
He wheeled round upon her and gazed at her, his cold eyes singularly enkindled.
You forget, said he, and quoted "that every man 'boasts two soul sides, one to face the world with, one to show a woman when he loves her.'"
Ah! said Rosamond.—It was a tender cry, as if she had taken something very lovely to her heart and was holding it close. With an abrupt movement Bethune turned back to his table; his harsh face looked harsher and more unemotional than usual, and he began folding up his papers as if he thought the conversation had lasted long enough.
Perhaps to-morrow, he said, "you will be able to give me the beginning of the siege papers."
I will try, said Rosamond, catching her breath. And then, after a moment, she rose and left him without another word.
* * * * *
Rosamond felt restless; the walls of the house oppressed her; the sound of the piano in the drawing-room was maddening; she wanted to be out in the wide spaces with her overwhelming thoughts. She caught up a cape, drew the hood over her head, and went quickly forth to meet the December wind.
Down the grass-grown avenues, under the bereft and complaining orchard trees, she went, making for the downs. At the boundary gate she met the old one-armed postman toiling with his burden. He thrust a letter into her hand and passed on. She saw that it was addressed in Sir Arthur's writing, and bore the stamp of Melbury. She broke it open and read impatiently, eager to be back with her absorbing dream. Her husband was urgently summoning her to join him at once, under Lady Aspasia's roof. He expressed surprise, tinged with dissatisfaction, that Lady Aspasia's kind letter of invitation to her should have remained unanswered.
No doubt, dear, Sir Arthur wrote, "you are waiting until you can ascertain the date of your visitor's departure, but this must not be allowed to interfere." Here was a command. Rosamond gave a vague laugh.
Who is the guest, by the way? I am expecting a letter from you, forwarded from London. Probably you have written to Claridge's. I would gladly accede to your request and come at once to the manor-house.... She stared, as the phrase caught her eyes, then laughed again: "Poor man—what was he thinking of?"
She crumpled the sheet in her hand and walked on. The wind blew fiercely across the downs, every leaf and spray, every dry gorse-bush, every blade of rank grass was writhen and bent in the same direction. She struggled to the shelter of a hazel copse and sat her down.
Before her stretched the moorland, dun-grey and yellow, dipping to the horizon; above her head the sky was leaden grey, charged with cloud wrack—a huge bowl of storm. She thought of that glowing Indian morning, when he had told her he must leave her, and of the twenty-four hours that had elapsed between that moment and their parting. What tenderness, gentler than a woman's, had he not revealed to her then—Harry English, the hard man, fierce angel-leader of devils! And the words of Browning rushed back upon her, once again as a message of balm—
... two soul sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her.
Ah, nothing could rob her of that! She had been the woman he had loved, and the soul side he had shown to her, most generous, most sacred, most beautiful, was what no other being in the Universe could have from him, not even his God!
They had parted in the dawn, the Indian dawn, all shot with flame. Not once had he faltered in his resolute cheerfulness. He had kissed her and blessed her as she lay in bed. But at the door he had halted to look upon her a last time; and she was weeping. Then he had flung himself back beside her ... and now she closed her eyes and shuddered on the memory of his last kisses.
With the chill barren earth beneath her, the lowering winter sky above, the sun-warmth of his love again enfolded her. It was as if his presence brooded upon her. Oh, could she but die and be with him! "Harry, I am yours," she called to him in the passion of her soul, "yours only—love, take me!"
So strong seemed the atmosphere of his spirit about her, that she looked round wildly, almost feeling as if her soul-cry must have called back the dead. There stretched the iron earth, there hung the relentless skies—the world was empty.
The copse where she had chosen to rest was on the higher downs, and before her the land fell away gently yet so surely that the high chimney-stack of the Old Ancient House would scarcely have caught the eye against the opposite slope, save for its rising smoke columns, which the wind seized and tore to flakes.
As she gazed, unseeing, upon the desolate spectacle, a gleam of something unwonted, something like a huge crimson bird, moved vaguely tropical in all the duns and greys. She wondered awhile, and then realised: realised with a sudden sick spasm.
It was the red turban of Muhammed Saif-u-din. How sinister it looked, how unnatural a bloodstain under this pale English sky! Yonder son of the treacherous race that she could not banish from her life, even in this peaceful abode of her widowhood—Sir Arthur's secretary.... Sir Arthur! Her husband! The man to whom she had given the claim of what was left of her life! ... Thought followed on thought up to this culminating point. And then it was to Lady Gerardine as if some veil was rent before her mental vision, and she saw—saw at last—with that agony to the sight of sudden glare in the darkness, what she had done.
These last weeks she had lived in a dream, and every aspiration of her soul, every tendency of her life, had drifted always further away from the existence she and fate had chosen for herself. Now there was a gulf between Rosamond English and Rosamond Gerardine; and by the hot recoil of her blood she knew that it was unsurmountable. How could she ever go back; again be wife of the man she loved not, she who was widow of the man she loved!
She looked for the letter in her hand to cast it from her, and found that it had already escaped her careless hold. Upon the yellow grass at her feet the wind was chasing it; turning it mockingly over and over, a contemptible foolish thing, meanly out of place among the withered leaves, the naturally dying things of the fields.
So little place had Sir Arthur Gerardine in the life of Rosamond—Rosamond, the widow of Harry English!
Full winter seemed to have come in a night; everywhere rime lay white upon the land, every blade was a frosted silver spear. Not a leaf yet kept the summer green; shrunken, brown and yellow, they hung by their brittle stems; it was a still morning, and he who had ears to listen to nature sounds, all through the woods could have heard ever and anon the sigh of one, falling here and there. A dim blue winter sky held the world; the sunshine was serene and faintly warm, like the heart of a good old man. The air was like iced wine to drink, invigorating, tingling through the veins. It painted Aspasia's cheeks a splendid scarlet. It filled her with the spirits of all young things, foals and kittens and cubs; so that she could hardly keep from prancing down the iron path, from cutting steps on the stiff grass to hear it crackle beneath her feet.
As Bethune looked at her, he thought she was as pretty as a winter robin in her brown furs. Her eyes glistened as she flung quick glances at him; her dimples came and went; her teeth flashed as she chattered at headlong speed. They were going to Sunday service at the village church, a couple of miles away, and Baby was setting forth with a delightful sense of vigour and freedom.
Those whose fate binds them to cities can have no idea of the delicate joys of the country walk, with the beloved one—him or her—who fills the thoughts. Alas! for the poor wench that has no better pleasure than to tramp along the crowded street. What does she know of the loveliness of "solitude for two," of the dear sympathy of nature, perfect in every season with the heart that is of her clay?
Not, indeed, that Miss Cuningham acknowledged even to herself that Raymond Bethune was the present lord of her mind, much less her beloved. Nevertheless, the glamour of that hour that strikes but once in a lifetime was upon her. Love, first love, the only love, comparable but to the most exquisite mystery of the dawn, of the spring; happiness so evanescent that a touch will destroy it, so delicate that the scent of it is obliterated by fulfilment; so utterly made of anticipation, of unrealised, unformed desire, that to shape it, to seize it, is to lose it—is it not strange that we, to whom such a gift is granted, receive it, nearly all of us, not as we should, on our knees, but grossly, greedily, impatiently, ungratefully, hurrying through the golden moments, tearing apart the gossamer veil, grasping the flower from the stem before its unfolding? No wonder that to most the day that follows on this dawn should be so full of heat and burden; the fruit of this blossom so sour to the parent that the children's teeth are set on edge; that, behind the veil, the vision should prove dull, flat, and unprofitable!
Now Aspasia, though a very creature of earth and one that knew no transcendental longings, had kept the pure heart of her childhood; and therefore this hour of her first love, all vague, all unacknowledged, was wholly sweet.
They knelt, Bethune and she, side by side, in the small bare church. She flung him a look of comical anguish over the grunting of the harmonium and the unmelodious chants of the village choir. She struck into a hymn herself, in a high clear pipe, as true as a robin's song. A pale young clergyman, with protruding eyeballs, led the service with a sort of an?mic piety; grand old Bible words were gabbled or droned; grand old Church prayers, with the dignity of an antique faith still resounding in them—who, that heard, seemed to care? It was the Sunday routine, and that was all.
Bethune saw the girl's fingers unconsciously practising musical exercises on the ledge of the pew; when their eyes met once, she made a childish grimace. She, for one, was frankly bored. As for him, had he any faith? He had hardly ever thought even of putting the question. He went to the Church service of his country as a matter of course, as his grandfathers had done before him. It was part of the etiquette of his military life. Now and again he had been moved to a solemn stir of the feelings during some brief soldier's ceremony: the hurried funeral perhaps of an English lad far away from homeland. But so had he been moved by the bugle-call, by the hurrah on the field. Life and death, love and religion, what did they mean? What are we, when all is said and done, but the toys of a blind fate?
There is but one thing sure in the uncertainty, he told himself, but one staff in the wilderness, one anchor in the turmoil—duty.
The damp-stained wall at his side was starred with memorials. He began to contemplate them, idly at first, then with an enkindling interest. Here was an old stone slab commemorating, in half-obliterated words, some son of a Dorset house who had died for the country in far Peninsular days. "In the twentieth year of his age." A young existence, to be thus cut short! Yet, had he lived, and given life, his own sons would now be well-nigh forgotten.
Under this was a black marble tablet. The blood rushed to his face as he read, and then ebbed, leaving him cold:
To THE MEMORY OF
CAPTAIN HENRY ENGLISH,
OF HER MAJESTY'S INDIAN STAFF CORPS,
KILLED ON SERVICE IN THE PAMIRS. AGED 28.
Thus ran the sober inscription; followed the text, more triumphant than sorrowful:
He that loseth his life shall find it.
And then the words:
THIS TABLET WAS ERECTED BY HIS MOTHER.
Behind him, by just turning his head, he could see another memorial. A plate of flaming brass, this one; large, for it had to hold many names, and very new. It was scored in vermilion tribute to those yeomen—gentlemen and peasant—who, at the first breath of disaster, had hurried overseas from the peaceful district to uphold the mother country in a point of honour and had found quick honour themselves. In a little while these blood-red letters, too, would fade, but not so quickly as the memory of grief in the hearts of those who had sent their lads off with such tears, such acclamations. Bethune thought to himself, with a bitter smile, that there was not one of the churches dotted all over the wide English land where some such brand-new memorial had not been nailed this last year, and how, Sunday after Sunday, the eyes of the congregation would sweep past it, with ever-growing dulness of custom, until the record came to mean no more than the grey stones of the walls themselves. No less quickly than England, the moment of peril past, forgets those who rose to her call and fell for her name, does the thought of the brother, the comrade, the son, pass from the home circle! Not that he pitied the forgotten; not that he wished it otherwise with his country. It was well for England that her sons should think it a matter of course to give their lives for her. And it was what he could wish for himself, to die where his duty was, and be obliterated. Who, indeed, should remember him who had no ties of kinship and had lost his only friend? ... Who should be remembered when Harry English was already forgotten?
His lips curled, as he flung a glance along the aisles and wondered if any heart, under these many-coloured Sunday garments, still beat true to the lost lover; nay, how many comfortable widows had already brought a second mate to worship under the tablet that commemorated the first? Hold! yet the mothers remember—this was the church where Harry English had worshipped, beside his mother, the grand tender silent woman whom Bethune, too, had loved: the mother who had been alone, with himself, to mourn!
When he had set out on his way this morning he had been moved by the thought that to kneel where his friend had knelt was the last and only tribute he could pay that memory. The mountain torrent had robbed them of his grave; but in the shrine which sheltered his tablet, in this church of a communion that had rigidly severed the old fond ties between the living and the departed, no service could yet now be held that would not be in some sort a commemoration.
As the thoughts surged through his mind like wreckage on the waves of his feelings, he seemed to go back, with a passion that almost had something of remorse, to his old sorrow for English and to his old bitterness against the woman who had put another in his comrade's place.
In vision he placed the two men before him: Harry, stern, eager, true, with his rare beautiful smile—eagle of glance, clear of mind, unerring of judgment, swift of action; Harry English, the unrecognised hero of the deep strong heart; he whose courage at the crucial moment had maintained the honour of England; who, in saving the frontier stronghold, had, as Bethune knew, saved India from gathering disaster! And Sir Arthur Gerardine, the great man, with his fatuous smile, his fatal self-complacency, his ignorant policy. Sir Arthur Gerardine, in his high place, working untold future mischief to the Empire with inane diligence. Bethune almost laughed, as he pictured the Lieutenant-Governor to himself, one of the many of his order, busy in picking out stone by stone the great foundations planned by the brains of Lawrences, cemented by the blood of Nicholsons.
And yet, this Rosamond Gerardine, who had borne the name of English, could not be dismissed merely as one who, light-natured, had found it easy and profitable to forget. Sphinx, she had haunted his thoughts that Indian night as he had walked back from her palace, carrying with him her image, white and stately in the flash of her diamonds and the green fires of her emeralds ... the great lady, who knew the value of her smiles and gave the largess but with condescension. Sphinx she was even more to him now, whether hurrying from her walk to receive him, wide-eyed in the firelight, with the bloom of a girl on her cheek and an exquisite gracious timidity; or wan in her black robes—widow, indeed, it seemed—drinking in with speechless tenderness of sorrow every memory of the lost friend, as if no Sir Arthur Gerardine had ever stepped between her and her beloved.
Was this attitude but a phase of a sick woman's fancy, to be dropped when the mood had passed? Was not, in truth, Lady Gerardine in this freakish humour as false to Sir Arthur, who had given her affluence and position, as she had been to him who had given her his love and faith? Deep down under his consciousness there was a little angry grudge against her that she should not have accompanied them this morning. Were she now sincere, she would have felt the same desire as he himself to pray where the walls heralded Harry English's name. Bethune did not know, so little do even the most straightforward know themselves, that had she knelt by his side to-day it would have been perilously sweet to him: that had her footsteps gone with his along the frosted roads between the brown hedges, that way, to him, would have remained in fragrance as with a memory of flowers.
Didn't you think, asked Baby, "that Mr. Smith—his name is Algernon Vandeleur Smith, he's the curate—didn't you think his eyes would drop out of his head? They make me feel quite ill!" They were walking down the flagged churchyard path, and Baby was stamping her small cold feet. She was talking in a high irate voice, regardless of hearers. "Did you ever listen to such a sermon?"
She opened her bright eyes very wide and made a fish-like mouth in imitation of the Reverend Algernon: "And now, brethren, shortly, briefly, and in a few words, not wishing to detain you longer, I will endeavour to set before you with conciseness and brevity."—She was a born mimic, and had caught the dreary young divine's very intonation.
Bethune had no laugh for her: his heart was sore. For once the girl's mood jarred on him.
She was quick to feel the shadow of his thoughts. The dimple went out of her cheek, the spring from her step. The icy brilliancy of the day seemed suddenly dim to her. The walk before them, towards which she had been yearning with delicious anticipation, became instantly a grey project, a weariness.
This gossamer of early love—it needs but a breath of adverse wind to tear it apart and set it afloat in forlorn shreds, mere flecks to the caprice of the airs; it that has been a fairy bridge for the dance of the sunbeams! For a long while they trudged together in silence. But all at once, Bethune looking down upon her was smitten, not by any hint of her dawning sentiments towards him, but by the consciousness that he must have seemed surly towards a mirthful child.
God knows, he thought heavily, "the world gets sad enough, soon enough, to make it shame to cloud even one moment for the children." Himself, he felt old and sad, and miles away from her happy youth.
So silent? said he, turning upon her that softened look she loved.
She glanced up at him, forcing a smile, but over her frank eyes there was a wet shimmer which she winked away indignantly. Once again, as on that Indian evening when he had seen Lady Gerardine fit her slender hand into the death-prints of the burnt queens, it struck him that here, in this open-hearted, sweet-natured, gay-spirited girl, a man might find a companion for life to help and comfort—a piece of charming, wholesome prose, but ...
Raymond Bethune, in his lonely isolated life, had had dreams—dreams that his temper had been too narrow, too severely matter-of-fact, to bring into any connection with his actions. He had dreamed his dream as he had read his book of poetry, to lay it aside without a sigh and take up the moment's duty, as one lays aside a flower, a thing of fragrance, a passing pleasure, which has no further influence on life.
Now this woman, whom he despised, who had outraged the deepest feeling of his life, had become, in some inexplicable manner, the embodiment of these inconsequent dreams. Her deep eyes, shadowed with sorrow as the tarn by the mountain height; the trick of her sigh, the balm of her rare smile; the melody of her voice, those low tones that seemed as charged with mystery as the wind by the whispers of the forest depths, all were as
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fa?ry lands forlorn....
She was a vision of poetry that could be lived, that could become part of a man's very flesh and blood!
Of a sudden he realised it. His heart gave a great leap and then seemed to stand still; but the habit of years and the hard common sense of his nature asserted themselves in violent reaction. He coloured to the roots of his hair in shame at the monstrousness, the absurdity of the thought, to which his idle dissatisfied mood had led him.
The girl saw his emotion and innocently attributed it to quite another cause; connected it with the expression of his glance when it had rested upon her. The song awoke once more in her heart, circling higher and higher like a June lark. Renewed joy began to bubble from her lips in laughter and talk.
When they emerged from the copse to the top of the downs, where the road dipped into the hollow, she halted, with an exclamation.
See, she cried, "the grass looks all gold and silver! And oh! did any one ever behold anything so pale, pale, so blue, blue as the sky! Oh! isn't this better than India; don't you love it; wouldn't you like to put your arm round England and kiss her?"
England, the mother; India, the mistress, thought Bethune. Then, at a maddening tangent flight, his mind took wing. The words of Dr. Chatelard came back upon him. "Cold, that woman? Touch that coldness and be burnt to the bone!" He revolted from his own soul as it flamed within him. He would have liked to set off running across the frozen downs to that far violet line where washed the sea; to have plunged into the icy waves, into the bitter turmoil of the living waters, to wash the degrading madness from him.
Aspasia's fresh laugh brought his spirit back to her with a renewed revulsion.
Look, look, she cried once more, "there's Muhammed's turban going up and down, and up and down, the garden path! I wonder what he's thinking of? Not Runkle's monumental work, I'm sure. Ugh! I declare it's uncanny only to look at that absurd turban in this winter land. It's bad enough to have Jani chattering about the house like a human castanet, without having that creature tramping up and down outside the window, day after day. Major Bethune, I wish you'd speak to the creature—and find out what he is up to. I never saw anything so restless in my life."
Oh, we've had several conversations, answered Bethune, following with his eyes the movement of the red head-dress in the distant hollow. "That is to say, I have done a lively bit of talking to him, and he has given me mighty polite answers and said nothing at all. Those fellows, Miss Aspasia, are queer cattle, proud as Lucifer, secret as the tiger in the jungle. That one down there, however, is of the modern school—a sort of animal I don't profess to understand, but one, at any rate, I should not care to trust, myself. Sir Arthur would have done just as well to have left him in India."
Gracious! cried Aspasia. "Lord!" Her mind sprang: "Perhaps he's after Runkle! Oh, Major Bethune, you know what a mess poor Runkle is making of things out there; I shouldn't like him to be thugged! I always told him he was laying the seed of mutiny," said Miss Aspasia, with tragic emphasis.
Bethune gave his rare laugh.
Muhammed Saif-u-din would hardly have come over all the way to England to make his private mutiny when he could accomplish the matter with more kudos in India, and have a good chance of saving his own skin besides.
Aspasia shook her head, preferring to cling to her own dramatic inspiration.
Well, I'll give Runkle a warning, anyhow, said she. "There's something fishy about Muhammed. You may laugh at me, if you like; but the man is eaten up with some secret thought, some sinister thought. There's a look in his eyes that makes me shiver. And when he smiles—ugh! I do hate Easterns."
He glanced at her reflectively, then he smiled. Such a sentiment from any one else would have aroused his indignation; but it was impossible to take Miss Aspasia Cuningham's hatreds with seriousness. Only this morning he had seen her half strangle a protesting Jani in vehement embrace.
And as for Aunt Rosamond, went on the girl, comfortably, "it upsets her even to see the wretched being. That's the reason we keep him to the orchard, you know; her windows look out on the front. I had to tell him—it was an awful moment; he was so hurt and so grand. Then I explained it was on account of poor Captain English, you know. Oh, you know...!"
Do I? asked the man, with a faint raising of the brows.
Well, if it amuses you to pretend you don't, she snapped back. "Anyhow, Muhammed did. He may be a cut-throat, but there's something of a gentleman about it. He put his hand on his heart and bowed. 'The Lady Sahib's wishes are sacred,' he said. And I've seen the poor thing hide behind a tree when she is coming. Rather touching, don't you think?" said the inconsequent Baby.
Did Lady Gerardine ask you to speak to Muhammed?
No. Why do you want to know that?
Mere idle curiosity, he answered, striking at a gorse bush with his stick and watching the melted rime fly out in spray.
If you knew Aunt Rosamond better, you'd understand she'd never say such a thing as that. She keeps everything close. But we all know she does not want to be reminded of things.
He threw back his head with his mirthless laugh.
Even I know as much by this time, Miss Aspasia. It is perhaps a little difficult for a solitary man to understand you women; but one thing is quite evident: you never do anything heartless or selfish ... except from excess of feeling.
He could not keep the sneer from his tone, and Baby's quick temper was instantly aflame.
You never have a good word for Aunt Rosamond, she cried; "but you need not include me in your judgment, I think!"
Bethune laughed again, harshly.
I am very hard on Lady Gerardine, am I not? Then fixing his eyes upon her, broodingly; "and, as for you, I hope——"
He did not finish the sentence. But to her reading, his glance needed no word. She grew rosily shy and ran on ahead to hide it.
Well, I love the Eastern, said the man, abruptly going back to the origin of the dispute. "He's my trade. He will be the death of me one of these days, no doubt. But what of that? Does not the sailor love the sea that will swallow him. And besides, if they weren't always an uncertain quantity, where would be the spice of life out there? One might as well be in a broker's office. But I don't like your westernised Eastern," he said, with a change of tone, and took a first long step upon the downward way.
Aspasia skipped on before him.
Well, we're a pretty queer lot down there, in the Old Ancient House, she cried, in her high merry pipe. "What with the Thug plotting—I know he's a Thug, whatever you may say, and I know he's plotting," she gave her companion a challenging blink of her bright eye; "and what with crazy old Mary, who's lived so long in this old hollow that she's positively part of the timber and plaster of the house, and can hear the very stones talk. By the way, she's more creepy than ever now, and swears that her pet ghosts are walking with extra vigour. And what with Jani, running about after Aunt, with her dog eyes and poor chattering teeth! Nothing will ever make me believe that Jani has got a soul. And then, my poor aunt herself, with her hyper-what-you-call-'ems, and Runkle bombarding her with telegrams which she don't even notice, and which I have to answer as best I may. I say," said Aspasia, stopping reflectively, "there will be a fine row, I tell you, soon! For if I know Runkle, he'll pounce, one of these days. And Aunt Rosamond; well, you see for yourself what she is just now. Positively there's only you and I that are sane."
She sprang on again, to look back at him over her shoulder and laugh like a schoolgirl.
His eyes sank before hers. Could she but have guessed on the brink of what ignoble madness he—the sane man—was standing!
How rosy you look! said Lady Gerardine.
I've been driving Major Bethune in the cart. And the pony went like an angel on four legs, said Aspasia. "I suppose the wind caught my face."
She pressed the back of her hands to her cheeks, as she spoke, and her eyes danced above them. It was the rose of happiness and no evanescent wind bloom that glowed in her innocent childish countenance.
Women's glances are cruelly quick to read the tender secrets of each other's souls. Lady Gerardine's look hardened as she still fixed the girl; her own wounded inconsequent heart was suddenly aflame with anger against her. Not a fortnight ago had Aspasia been setting flowers before the portrait of Harry English and offering, in passionate love, melodies to that mystic presence. And it had been sufficient that this Bethune's everyday substantiality should show itself, for the fickle creature to change allegiance. She had dared to think she loved Harry English, and now she dared to desecrate this love!
They were in the drawing-room waiting the summons for lunch. Bethune had not yet appeared. With an air of embarrassment very foreign to her, Baby tossed off her hat and coat and moved restlessly to the piano. She wished pettishly, to herself, that her aunt would stop staring. But nothing could drive the lustre from her own eyes and the upward tilt from her lips. She had had such a lovely drive over the wet downs; they had watched the scolding, stamping squirrel in the hazel copse. His dark face had brightened so often. His gaze had rested on her so gently now and again. When he got down to open the wicket gate for her he had gathered a little pale belated monthly rose from the bush at the side, and had given it to her. She would always keep it, always.... Her fingers strayed unconsciously over the keys from one harmony to another. They fell into a familiar theme—the Chopin Prelude, with its sobbing rain-beat accompaniment. She forgot Lady Gerardine and her dry hostile tones, her cold violating look. Following the strong pinions of her art, her young emotions had begun to beat tentative wings, when she was brought down to earth, as once before, very suddenly and with no pleasant shock.
Whom is your music addressed to now, Aspasia? asked Lady Gerardine, leaning over towards her with folded arms on the piano.
The musician's fingers dropped from the notes.
To nobody that belongs to you! she cried rudely, with a flare of schoolgirl anger. Her face crimsoned.
Lady Gerardine's gaze was filled with a lightning contempt. She straightened herself and looked at the empty space on the wall, where Harry English's portrait had hung.
In truth, she said, "my dear, you don't take long to change."
Her voice was scornful.
Quite taken aback and in a hot rage, Aspasia bounced up from the music-stool. But before a coherent word could relieve her, Major Bethune came in upon them.
When her anger had somewhat cooled down—never a lengthy process with Aspasia—she began to feel a sort of wonder at herself. What, indeed, had become of the pale, gallant ghost that she had set up to worship in the shrine of her heart? Gone, gone after the way of ghosts, before the first ray of real sunshine—Bethune's hand-clasp, his softened glance, his rare smile. With the realisation of her own fickleness came another, so overwhelming in its suggestion, that all else was swept away by it. She was in love! ... In love for the first time, really, unmistakably, Aspasia Cuningham, who had meant to devote her whole life to her art.
Bethune wondered, in his blundering masculine way, what blight had fallen in the little dining-room, to render their wontedly harmonious meeting of the three at meals so constrained that day.
But when, later, Lady Gerardine and her niece found themselves once more alone, the memory of her curious resentment seemed to have faded from the elder woman's mind, to have been erased by a fresh tide of thought, as footprints on the sands are washed away by the waves.
Old Mary had been with her in the gloaming; old Mary, with her tender memories of the dead past, her mystic whispers of present hauntings.
Eh, ma'am, he's been very near to us, these days, she said. "Last night, now, I heard his step come down the passage, as plain, as plain as ever I heard anything. I always knew his step among a thousand, ma'am, from a child; a clean, clear step, with never a slur nor a slouch; not as most people walk."
Oh, Mary, cried Lady Gerardine, a thrill, half exquisite, half terrible, running through her, "why does he come back now?"
Why, ma'am, it's because of you, I'm thinking, said the old woman, simply. "You're just calling him back to you."
Oh, Mary!
Does that frighten you, ma'am? Doesn't it make you glad? Why, the other evening, they had not lit the lamps yet in the hall, and I felt him pass me—his own presence, just as I feel yours there. Nothing of the grave, of the cold about it, but warm, comfort—Heaven's warmth. Oh, God is good, ma'am! He makes all easy.
God is good, said Rosamond to herself, weighing the words, as she sat alone. "Is God good?"
And within her some voice of truth answered her: answered that God had been good, even to her; had meant well with her; very well, even in her bereavement, could she but have taken His ruling as these women of Harry's old home.
Thus, when she was found by Aspasia, there was no room in her heart for any lesser thought.