I awoke to find Lord Tawborough by my bedside, with Elise for chaperone.
The latter soon pieced things together for me. Gabrielle had found me
in a feverish half-unconscious state on the dining-room floor. She
had got me upstairs, and hastily sent to Caudebec for the doctor, who
pronounced me to be in a dangerous fever. Nobody seemed to connect my
illness in any way with Monsieur Traies' visit. In the anxiety and
fuss upon the family's return, Gabrielle had indeed forgotten even to
mention it--till next morning, when his crumpled visiting card was
found on the dining-room floor. Nor had any one seen him leave the
house or grounds. (Mauled and aching, his hands before his scarred
and kissed and bleeding face; crawling, slinking away.) My illness
had soon become dangerous; it was doubted whether I could live, and
Elise had sent urgent word to England. My Grandmother had written that
she was, alas, too frail and old to come, but that she was sending
her son-in-law, my Uncle, instead; she prayed the Lord in His mercy
to spare me. Monsieur Greeber had arrived--an odd little man, very
grateful for his reception--and had sat with me devotedly, all day
and half the night, through the worst days, days when I was racked by
the wildest fever, torn by ravings and prayers, nightmare cries and
supplications, and had indeed been with me alone, in a brief period
when the doctor and nurse were absent, at the moment in which I reached
the turning-point and for the first time recovered consciousness. I had
railed at Monsieur Greeber like a madwoman, suddenly become conscious,
and then as suddenly fallen into a calm unfevered sleep. He had hoped
to have stayed to see me well on the road to recovery, but word
reaching him the very same day that his own son in England was taken
ill, he had left hurriedly. The same critical day Lord Tawborough had
reached the house, summoned by the news Elise had urgently sent him.
Meanwhile, in Cardboard-World, big events had ripened. Elise talked
feverishly. I listened with mild interest. Who was Fouquier, anyway,
and what did it all matter?
I learnt how the Countess had had a mighty quarrel with him, and how
at last, after so many years, she had screwed up her courage to the
point of deciding to dispense with him, though not yet to the point of
telling him of her decision.
"And Suzanne?" I asked. "If she loves him as she did before, she may
take it ill."
"I don't know. For months I have seen nothing to make me think so.
Anyway, so far we have told her nothing. She knows nothing."
"And when the thunderbolt descends?"
"I am hopeful. The honour of the family...."
The days of my convalescence held a pleasure that banished the
nightmare past. Almost the whole day the Stranger was at my bedside.
Hour after hour I lay gazing at the dear distinguished face. I soon
found that they all thought me less wide-awake and nimble-minded than
I was, so I stared with impunity, imparting a touch of vacancy to my
stare: a shield-and-buckler vacancy. I lay bathed in a new delicious
sentimentality, worshipping him, drinking him in, idealizing him. He
was my Mother's little boy; he had loved her; he had given me the first
novel I had ever read, had shaped my first apprehension of nature's
beauty. To him I owed my education, my social raising, my life of
splendour here. For England he had kissed me Good-bye in the moment I
had left her. It was a tender exultant joy to watch his face. He was
hardly older than the Stranger of the Torribridge hillside morning
ten years ago; though his hair was turning grey, a proud and princely
grey. There was the same beloved countenance, manly yet gentle, clean,
clear-cut, slightly sharp-featured; the same eyes, quizzical-whimsical,
yet holding the kindness of all the world; the same intelligence,
culture, race; the same maddening purity and nobleness; the same Call
to Worship. With something added, not in him, but in me who regarded
him: a knowledge that he was a man, that he was dear and desirable
beyond other men, that nearness would be very beautiful. Sometimes,
swiftly, sentimentality would flood and transfigure my normal
consciousness. My heart would pass through the last Gate of Tenderness,
approach the portals of Love. Then in a crowding mystical moment the
Vision changed, and it was Robbie: Robbie and I, we were kissing
each other, radiantly; Christmas Night of long ago had become the
present once again. The Vision would fade, and leave me staring at the
Stranger, liking him, needing him, yet with my heart too full of the
Vision to be able to wonder what _loving_ him might mean.
Love, in its only and ultimate meaning, in the sense of the mystery of
this world, of Jordan morning, of the Holy Ghost, could only reach me,
I saw once again, through one human being on earth, Robbie of Christmas
Night. Who, where, how, what was he now?
My spirit would flag a little, and sink from the uttermost heights.
Once below the level of that very highest heaven of all, Love the
Madness passed, and the saner, warmer adoration for the Stranger
returned.
What were his feelings? I was not sure. The kindness of his eyes,
what was it? A kindness like that must be for every one, must hold a
universal message. No, must be for one person alone, could be lighted
only by the human soul he loved. Who? Had _he_ his Robbie-girl? There
were moments when I knew he loved me. More often and more surely, I
felt there was a sentiment and a sympathy akin to my own, but quieter,
nearer earth, less likely to stray up the steep Robbie-closed path to
LOVE.
Yet I would play with fire, and, on the level where Robbie was not
remembered, visualize myself loved by, wooed by, married by the
Stranger. Swiftly I was on a lower level still, where Snob-Mary could
wallow. To become a Peeress! "Not so very absurd," others might
think. "After all, they were cousins, his mother and her father were
first cousins, you know--though she was, of course, brought up rather
differently, with some Nonconformist (sic) relations on her mother's
side. However, blood will tell!" I knew better, knew that common Bear
Lawn Mary was the real Me. Or was it? Except for the kinship of memory,
how was she me at all? She was but a poor remembered Mary: what the I
of today would be to the person inhabiting this body ten years ahead.
There was no such thing as permanence of personality, there was no such
thing as anybody. Ever-different souls inhabit the same body; memory
alone connects them with their predecessors, instinct alone makes them
work for their successors. I must work for mine. I must try to deserve
well of the coming Marys, seek to marry them well. Lady Tawborough!
His talk, far beyond Elise's even, was a high delight. He spoke of
life, books, travels; of the South, which he knew the best, of the
seven cities of Italy, the seven hills of Rome. Of his plans and hopes:
how he would soon end his wandering and go back to Devonshire for good.
Of his schemes for his estates, the work he hoped to do in the country,
the book he might write, the position he might win for himself in the
House of Lords. Always there was something he did not say, seemed
to shrink from saying. Was it that he thought I was fond of him and
did not like to wound me by telling me there was some one else: his
girl-Robbie? Or was it--?
Those convalescent weeks rank among the gentlest memories of my life.
My French friends were kind to me beyond deserts or hopes. I was
restored to health in the daily companionship of a Vision of goodness
and delight. My chief Revenge had been achieved. The nightmare life was
away beyond the nightmare illness. Hate was now for ever behind me. I
was a tenderer Mary.