The Autumn twilight was thickening with milky opal reflections when
they rolled through the heavy iron gates of the park. Gigantic trees
shadowed the curving drive; every now and then sending a swirl of
jewel-coloured leaves to join their brothers carpeting the soft turf.
They passed one copper beech, tinted like the understrands of
Ferlie's hair. But, though the grounds were obviously well
cared-for, nothing could relieve a brooding sense of desolation, due
to the over-luxuriant vegetation which darkened the surroundings of
an already dark, if beautiful, house.
Well-merited the name, Cyprian thought, as the solid old turret
towers rose at last, picked out in inky silhouette against the
flaming aftermath of sunset cloud.
Upon the flight of black marble steps a child was standing; a
miniature bull's-eye lamp in his hands. He had evidently been trying
to light it with the aid of a box of matches which would not strike.
A footman came down the stairs as the car drew up, and his expression
of surprise gave way to placid recognition of its lady-occupant.
"Her ladyship said she was expecting you, Madam, but did not think
that you would be arriving till Wednesday."
"I have brought a friend of hers with me," Miss Trefusis told him.
"Where is she?"
The man did not answer; he had turned back to speak to his
colleagues, now gathering about the limousine.
Jardine, the old butler, with the forceful impassive face, informed
them that her ladyship should be told. He left them before the hall
fire and glided away.
"I always regard him as a sort of Keeper of the Keys," whispered Miss
Trefusis, hysterical with fatigue and achievement.
Cyprian took out his watch as if suddenly reminded of something, but
he did not look at the time; only at the securing ring of a small
gold key dangling from the watch-chain.
"He has been in the Family so many years," went on Aunt Brillianna,
"that Ferlie says he believes himself a kind of Influence on the
Greville-Mainwaring destinies."
The child, whose lamp one of the footmen had lighted now, passed
through the hall, carrying it carefully. She called to him.
"Come here, John. Don't you know me to-day? Where is your mother?"
He was advancing towards her but checked himself at the inquiry.
"She said not to take no one up the stairs," he informed them with
emphasis. "She are having a key made for the door."
He spoke clearly and with only a slight slurring of the S's which
could not be described as a lisp but which gave a more human
childishness to his unnatural gravity.
Scarcely concealing the effort it cost, Cyprian raised his head and
looked at him. Yes. That hair, also, would have flaunted a
rebellious crop of sunny waves had they been allowed to grow. He was
too white and frail-looking for prettiness but it was with his
mother's wide steady gaze that he returned Cyprian's survey which
shifted first.
"Nonsense!" said Aunt B. on a low quaver of amusement, "you can't
afford to be jealous of Ferlie's son."
Cyprian replied with a vexed laugh,
"Don't read me so clearly out loud. There are some things a man
wishes to hide from himself."
She rose, holding out her hand to John.
"Take us to the foot of the stairs, laddie. I do not want you to go
up. We may hear Mother coming down."
John hesitated, but, finally, led the way, vouchsafing one piece of
news as he pushed back a nail-studded door.
"I have got a tricycle."
It gave Aunt B. her opening. At the foot of the stairs she turned
and gestured to Cyprian, standing behind her.
"The key is not yet made to lock you out," she reminded him in an
undertone. And aloud to John, "Show me the tricycle."
Was it not yet made? Cyprian asked himself; or, rather, would the
lock be too rusty for it to turn, after such long disuse?
Up and always up. And Ferlie climbed thus, daily, the ascent of her
lonely Purgatory for the little hour when she might unmask her
suffering, and face the truth that her soul was exceeding heavy.
It was a long time to Cyprian before he stood outside that door. It
had a heavy looped iron handle like that which turns the latch of a
church.
He paused but heard no sound within.
His hand grasping the ring was steady; the oaken panels swung back
easily under that strong pressure.
She was leaning against the Gothic window, and the lingering touch of
long sun-fingers rested upon her head in comforting caress.
He spoke her name in a whisper. Her head turned slowly but she did
not move. So often had he come to her at this time and, so often,
faded back into the gloaming.
His shoulders relaxed as dawned the explanation for her dumb
acceptance of his presence. He crossed the threshold with
outstretched hands.
"My dear ... Oh, my dear..."
She crumpled up in his arms, not unconscious, but sick with shock.
The last red ray withdrew from the turret, leaving them in the gloom
of a grave from which resurrection seemed very far away.
* * * * * *
The presence of Aunt B. made all the difference to the situation.
She effaced herself and entertained John, but lent a more commonplace
air to his visit than would have seemed possible, in the
circumstances.
The erratic arrivals and departures of Lady Greville-Mainwaring's
elderly aunt had ceased to be a matter for comment in the servants'
hall. Jardine palpably respected her uncompromising utterances; John
met her as an equal, and Cyprian and Ferlie, at peace in one
another's companionship along the garden walks, passionately blessed
her in their hearts. She had done wisely in warning Cyprian that
Ferlie's appearance must startle him. She wore the look of some
Inquisition victim whom the torturer's power had reduced to that
exhaustion which ceases to feel. Instead of the limp body, incapable
of further suffering, Ferlie betrayed a like condition of soul.
"Was this change of religion any use?" Cyprian asked her.
Her eyes might swiftly have become sightless as she replied, "There
was no 'change.' It had to be that or Father's way of thinking. And
I could not trust my small strength with Father's self-sufficient
philosophy. This represented one more cage, but a necessary one, if
I was to obtain enough self-discipline to enable me to live. You
know I am not being dramatic. Sometimes I thought of that way out,
only it did not seem quite fair to John, until he should be old
enough to understand about heredity and choose for himself."
"You--you don't make yourself exactly clear."
"No. Well, never mind! ... Peter, by chance, knocked up against a
clever Jesuit. I do admire that much-criticized sect, Cyprian.
Their hard logic; their cold positivity of thought. This one
thrilled one's sense of humour first by a speech made to a Church of
England padre, which, beginning on a note of toleration crashed to
conclusion on a chord of glorious bigotry. 'After all,' he assured
his vacillating companion, 'We both serve the same Master; you in
your way, I in His.'
"Later, this man was discussing the conversion of a well-known
statesman with Peter. 'He was too intellectual,' said the Jesuit,
'to be satisfied longer with less than all the Truth his brain could
assimilate.' That speech impressed Peter as, doubtless, it was meant
to do, with his tendency to brain-worship. He, also, began to be
sure that the World's Thinkers, among whom he would like to be
numbered some time, must, universally, find the Whole Truth here.
"And you know, Cyprian, he _is_ clever. They did not make the
mistake of approaching him on the sentimental, or even the
romantically beautiful side, of the religion. He is certainly a more
valuable ally to the Catholic Church than undoctrinal I."
"The thing has not yet interfered with Peter's instinctive love of
liberty," Cyprian pointed out. "Whereas, you and I are, surely,
threatened by its precepts."
He went no further. Not yet had he broached to her that which he
understood to be passing in Aunt Brillianna's mind; more tentatively
in his own. But Ferlie smiled with wistful understanding.
"There is no public cause for a divorce, that I know of," she said
quietly, "And, apart from Catholicity, isn't divorce rather
impossible as a solution for Us?"
She was placing her finger upon something which formed the basis of
their mutual pride. They did not give to take back again, whatever
the type of altar to which they had dedicated the gift.
The mockery of her marriage-service struck him afresh.... "That
theirs may be the love which knows no ending, Whom Thou for evermore
doth join in one...."
"Dear," and his voice was vibrant with pain, "How could you ever have
imagined that any public vows could unite you to him, who were
already part of..."
Habit of mind checked him; Ferlie was braver.
"Of you," she finished steadily.
They walked the whole length of the lawn before she added,
"You did not realize that, Cyprian, while there was time. If you had
realized it I should not have been free. There was no time to give
you time to weigh your love. When you held back my light seemed
clear."
"And I had no light," he said shortly.
"You haven't told me whether you now share these modern views about
divorce," she reminded him. "Even the Church you nominally belong to
is divided in its opinions on the subject. Its members talk very
fluently, and go on their way, self-convinced. Like Peter, who, at
nineteen, could talk himself into that sort of convinced state about
anything."
"There are exceptional circumstances..." Cyprian began, but she
stopped him then.
"And now you are going to do it! No, Cyprian. You must be either
'for' or 'against,' with principle at the back of you. Don't you see
that everybody's exceptional circumstances would always be his own?
That is how the Individual now dethrones God in favour of himself."
"Ferlie, you forget you have not yet told me your circumstances. And
I have a right to know."
He watched her clouded face and waited. Twice she seemed about to
speak but the constrained reticence of the past two years still
fettered her tongue.
"I have never told anyone," she said huskily. "I don't know how much
I ought to tell. I only believe that it may be a divorcing matter,
according to Law; if I had not put myself under Catholic discipline."
He placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down on to a
moss-upholstered bench near which, perched on a pillar, mocked a
laughing stone faun.
"You must tell me," he said. And took his place beside her, covering
her hand with his own.
Presently, with an obvious effort, she asked,
"You will not have forgotten Muriel Vane?"
His fingers contracted and she paused to reflect that if Cyprian had
not remained so true in the abstract to his First Vision he would
hardly have been Cyprian; and her god.
But she could not long mis-read the expression of raw disgust on his
face as she lifted hers. It puzzled her.
"Nothing would hurt now, Cyprian--if you knew. She is--not quite
normal now. Not since a long time has she----"
"I know all that." His tone was cruelly hard. "For a long while I
would not allow myself to believe those rumours.... And once I
thought to put her before you! It is that I shall never forget."
Even so does a man resent his mistakes on their object instead of on
himself.
"Cyprian, don't. Haven't the years taught you compassion?"
He shrugged that view away.
"What compassion is possible, or even right and decent?"
"You may feel inclined to shun a leper but, surely, you would desire
to help him, too?"
She surprised him.
"What makes you think of it that way?"
"Experience," said Ferlie, so low that he hardly caught the word.
She braced herself for explanation.
"You once met a woman called Ruth Levine." She went on without
heeding his start of acquiescence. "She has been very good to Muriel
Vane. Muriel's people separated; then her mother died. Her father
took to drugs, or something; they were a queer family, degenerating,
like--like so many. And Muriel developed into--what people said.
Ruth thought she had foreseen it and might have done something to
prevent it happening. I should have imagined that impossible; often
it is caused by heredity insanity. Anyhow, she saved Muriel from the
usual kind of 'Home.' It is always the woman, Ruth says, who is
judged; men so affected can often live undetected or screened from
public criticism.... Ruth knew Clifford before I married him and
when I concluded that, for John's sake--if only for that--there must
be a complete break between Clifford and myself, she came to ask me
to get divorced, as she had cared for him first. She was quite
matter-of-fact about it. I told her that I could not dream of using
the evidence she offered to supply. I told her that Clifford and I
had privately arranged to live apart but that I was a Catholic and it
was not in my power to unsay vows once spoken. I told her that I did
not think she understood why Clifford ought to be in other hands than
those of women. She looked at me as if I were crazy and went
away.... I--I don't know any more, Cyprian."
Ferlie's voice had almost vanished. Suddenly her head went down upon
her knees and her body shook with dry sobbing.
Cyprian, with half-closed eyes which did not wish to see, was
wondering whether he had understood.
She had conjured up dark visions the like of which had rarely crossed
his horizon. He was inclined, like many self-sheltered individuals,
to blink at the most sinister of Life's shadows, as if by so doing he
could blink them out of existence as easily as out of his thoughts.
His inarticulate prayer: "_Et ne nos indue as in tentationem!_" A
wise one with reference to the safety of his individual soul but
hardly conducive of expansive sympathy to others.
The horror he experienced in hearing this child, a score of years
younger than himself, approaching for commonplace--as indeed they
might be elsewhere in the world, for all he cared--issues which,
until now, he had always succeeded in pushing far from his own sphere
of action, hindered him from pressing her further.
* * * * * *
He might never have realized the immensities at stake for her, but
that Chance interfered to drive his newly-acquired knowledge home.
At that moment Jardine was seen to be coming across the lawn, a
silver salver in his hand.
Cyprian aroused Ferlie in time. When the old butler stood before
them, with the telegram, she was presentably calm.
"Mrs. Minchin sent me out with it, your ladyship; it was addressed to
her. His lordship wishes her to inform you that he is arriving
to-night and would like one of the cars to meet the 8.15." Mrs.
Minchin was the housekeeper.
Ferlie took the yellow envelope from the tray and, as she did so,
Cyprian wondered whether it were only in his imagination that a look
passed between mistress and man, electric with mutual warning.
Just the flash of an eyelid, and Jardine was pursuing his majestic
course over the grass, his back-view impervious to criticism and
comment. Not until the last glimpse of his black coat-tails had
disappeared behind the yew-bushes did Ferlie rise to her feet and
face Cyprian beside the laughing faun. Again that illusory
sightlessness filmed her dilated pupils. She looked through him and
beyond into a blank pall of darkness.
"Cyprian," the voice was dead like her face, "Take me away."
He fancied the half-human leering thing of stone stirred in evil
exultation. The twisted weather-beaten features made an unholy
contrast to those others of still soft flesh on a level with them.
"I have nothing more to say to you than that," she said, when he did
not answer. "I will tell you nothing more. Whether you go with us
or not, John and I leave here to-night--in time. You could not trust
me five years ago; can you trust me now?"
"It was not you five years ago; it was my own creed that I could not
trust."
"But now it is different, Cyprian. You have out-lived one stage of
self-mistrust now."
Did man ever arrive beyond the reach of that urging Power in a world
peopled with mortal flesh, he wondered.
Strange that, in forcing a decision upon himself concerning Ferlie's
future, Cyprian forgot the very existence of Hla Byu and his son. It
was not his intention to conceal from Ferlie the temporary loss of
will-power which had changed the tenour of his life during the last
two years. But the Burmese girl, received in a moment of sick
physical weakness and retained in pure apathy of soul, had existed so
mistily for the real Cyprian that, the practical arrangements for her
safe-keeping concluded, she simply slipped out of the picture. When
he did remember her she had become so superfluous among the host of
living memories he and Ferlie were storing up that he could not bring
himself to recall her, even by speech.
"I know too thoroughly by what means the latent forces of the body
can accomplish the spirit's murder"--she was speaking again and he
recollected himself--"But you and I have nothing to do with such
perishable links. Nor do we require witnesses to ratify a spiritual
marriage for which we should not have been prepared without these
last enforced years of disciplined control."
She stopped, confronted with his unyielding silence, and, all at
once, grew limp and human by that other inhuman watcher in stone.
Her shoulders relaxed, bowed and aged beneath their invisible burden.
"I am not playing the part of Eve. It is all right. I promised that
you should never need to ask me, a second time, to leave you. I
understand. I am going now, alone."
He drew towards her then.
"You are going with me. I am giving you no choice. Do you
understand? This decision is mine, not yours. You are going where I
shall take you and under whatsoever conditions I lay down, now, and
during your whole future. The responsibility is mine; you have got
to put your trust in me."
Was it credible that the ripple of breeze through the swaying stalks
of a bed of tall Madonna lilies drowned a satyr-laugh of derision?
Standing shoulder to shoulder they made no attempt to touch one
another's hands.
So might the Little Saint of Assisi have mythically wedded Poverty,
while Chastity and Obedience supported her on either hand.
Said Ferlie, "I have nothing to give you that you have not already.
Everything of yours has been guarded safely behind a locked door.
And, Cyprian, you have the key."
* * * * * *
To Miss Trefusis he outlined his scheme and found her a little
dubious.
"But, my dear man, this is the twentieth century. Why not meet this
fly-by-night lord and arrange matters with modern sanity over a
whisky and soda?"
"You are the only modern one of us three," he reminded her, amusedly
recognizing that her unusually broad views, contact with which he had
once feared for Ferlie, were responsible for their present re-union.
"Ferlie tells me that she has no evidence for a divorce, nor can she
seek it, in consideration of the Church she has joined."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Aunt B., exasperated that any Church
should continue to consider joined what she had been at such infinite
pains to put asunder. "Surely you, Cyprian, are old enough to smile
at sects and Churches! Ferlie would not be true to type if, at her
age, a cardinal did not seem too picturesque to be a liar. And,
believe me, the Pope was the only safe substitute for you."
"You, surely, are not advocating collusion?" asked Cyprian, tickled,
in spite of himself, at this feminine Juggernaut, the wheels of whose
common-sense responded to no brake till she had guided them
triumphantly past her goal.
"I don't believe there is 'no cause,'" she snapped: "If he is a
gentleman he will make one, since he has obviously admitted her right
to leave him. It can't affect the child's inheritance. An atom of
patience, and the whole affair might be straightened out with a
minimum of scandal."
"There is no necessity for even a perfectly respectable scandal,"
Cyprian assured her. "Ferlie is coming out to Burma with me, to live
there as my sister. After a time, the man can get his marriage
annulled if he wishes, on the ground of desertion; but that is
unlikely to affect us."
Miss Trefusis searched his face with an expression of mingled
admiration and incredulity on her own.
"Yes, I am afraid you mean what I think you mean," she said. "You
are more of a child than she is, and I'd like to shake you. I'd
almost rather you eloped healthily--without a new wedding-ring."
"I am so sorry to disappoint you," Cyprian said.
She laid a hand on his arm which he immediately imprisoned in his.
"Excelsior, then! Go and freeze to death upon your mountain top,
both of you. I have interfered enough in bringing your bodily forms
together. I dare not dig inquisitive fingers into your souls."
It was arranged that her chauffeur should return with them to the
coast so as to render negligible the chance of delay if any suspicion
were aroused.
"But there is no earthly reason why Clifford should want to argue it
out with me," said Ferlie.
* * * * * *
At the last moment she gave way to a curious attack of nerves, and
again Cyprian suspected that the incident was due to some secret
reminder conveyed to her by Jardine.
From the step of the limousine, into which the sleeping John had been
carried, she let go Cyprian's arm and darted back up the steps.
"Aunt B.! You will go home yourself to-night, won't you? Take the
Daimler!"
"Hurry, child! It is twenty minutes to eight. Yes. I am all ready
to start, and you can trust me to take care of myself."
"Come, Ferlie, don't waste any more time."
She ignored even that quiet voice, looking uncertainly at Jardine who
dropped his eyes with an almost imperceptible movement of his head.
"You will see my aunt comfortably off, Jardine?"
"Ferlie, don't be foolish! Since when have I needed dry-nursing?
Make her get in, Cyprian. There, darling! There. Shut the door.
That's right, Cyprian. Write to me, both of you. What is she
shaking about? I won't let Clifford eat me in any case. Good-bye.
Look after her, Cyprian. Good-bye! Good-bye!"
They were whirled out of her sight.
* * * * * *
Whereupon, the temptation of Eve descended upon Aunt B.
She had never met this husband of Ferlie's and, on reconsidering that
fact, it seemed that Ferlie herself had always intervened in the past
to prevent a meeting. There was really no need for her to hurry home
to-night; she might even serve the fugitives best by staying to
produce some plausible reason for Ferlie's sudden "journey to town."
Jardine, to her amazement, was respectfully inhospitable in his
opposition to this proposed change of plan. He made it unmistakably
clear that he wished to be rid of her. And the more insistently he
conveyed that impression, the more obstinately did Miss Trefusis
desire to see the owner of Black Towers.
To settle the matter out of hand she went to her room, unpacked a
dinner dress of silver-grey velvet, and came downstairs wearing it
and an assured air which discouraged argument.
Said Jardine to her in the hall where he was hovering like a
distressed bat among the chain-mailed ancestors.
"It is to be expected that his lordship will dine in his own
apartments, Madam. I have not put off the dinner hour to suit his
late arrival."
Therefore, at 8.15 precisely, Aunt B. found herself frustrated thus
far, at the end of the long table.
Half-way through the meal came the sounds of arrival: the footman's
hurrying steps and a man's voice in the hall.
She strained her ears, but silence soon followed the retreating feet
and then Jardine came in to ask if she would have coffee on the
terrace.
"Too chilly," was her cross verdict, and he agreed that the little
drawing-room and a fire would be more comfortable.
Even after she had drunk the coffee and was immersed in the
newspaper, she remained aware of the old servant's flitting presence.
He appeared to be finding matters to occupy him in the small
drawing-room and only after she had twice looked up inquiringly over
the printed page did he make reluctantly for the door.
She sat on when the paper, restlessly devoured, had slipped from her
knees to the floor. Soft radiance glowed about her through orange
silk shades, etherealizing the dignified feminine figure with its
close-fitting crown of silvery hair. The features, in repose not
unlike Ferlie's, were attractively gentle. She leant back in the
dark tapestried chair and thought of the lovers, of the long trail
which lay before them, of the spiritual courage supporting their rare
decision. Could a man and a woman live under such conditions, loving
as these two loved?
And something told her that it was just because they so loved that
the improbable became possible.
If they failed that Utopian ideal in the end-- She broke off her
reflections with a sigh.
"Who is to judge?" she asked aloud of the flames on the open hearth.
"Who is to judge These, or Any?"
A man on the terrace, rolling a cigarette with uncertain fingers,
heard the quiet question and paused in his occupation. His eyes
glittered oddly over the flickering match, just struck, and the face,
as he lifted it starwards, was not unlike the face of the deriding
faun, aged by the battering years into a very surely alive satyr.
* * * * * *
Cold, suffocating darkness in the hall, and the comforting impassive
bulk of old Jardine.
Later, a square of corpse-coloured light, and the black marble steps
making a row of ebony mirrors for the waning moon. Beyond them, the
blurred lines of Ferlie's Daimler, heralding escape to the dainty
simplicity of the lavender-scented garden and rooms sweet with the
pot-pourri of clean sane memories.
Finding her voice, she turned fiercely upon the man supporting her
trembling descent.
"And you knew--and remained silent, while she was facing That!"
His slow gesture was controlled but unyielding.
"For forty years, Madam, I have served the Greville-Mainwarings. As
their like dies out so does my like die out which has learnt the
lesson of silence."
He closed the door of the car upon her, adding with cold dignity,
"Her ladyship chose to become a Greville-Mainwaring."