"When we were playing cards to-night you cheated."
For a moment there was silence. Then he laughed again--not an uneasy,
shameful laugh, but one of sheer amusement. It shocked her. At last
he said:
"Did you see it? Then why didn't you make a fuss about it?"
She was thankful, at any rate, that he had not lied to her. That was
what she had fearfully expected.
"I didn't want to give you away to the others."
"Why not? It wouldn't have been any news to them. They know that I
cheat already. That's why they're up against me. But that doesn't
worry me."
"I don't understand you. It seemed to me a horrible thing to do.
Can't you see that?"
"No, I can't. Perhaps I'm different. When I play I play to win."
"But that's the whole point. If you don't stick to the rules of the
game there's no credit in winning, is there?"
He was silent for a moment. Then, with an effort of the most
courageous honesty, he said: "Well, it feels the same to me. I like
winning--anyhow."
She hesitated for a moment.
"It makes it so that--so that we can't respect you," she said.
"Now I suppose you'll go and tell Dr. Considine. Just my luck."
"Indeed, and I shan't do anything of the sort. It's between us two,"
she replied.
He was silent.
"Well, it does no good talking about it," he said mournfully. "I'm
made differently, that's all. Do you want anything else?"
She didn't, and he left her in the dark.
This small incident and the conversation that followed opened her eyes
to the reality of the problem. She didn't indeed tell Considine what
had happened, but she did talk to him once or twice about the history
of Arthur Payne. He did not tell her much, for it was part of his plan
that his wife should not be mixed up in the business of the school.
These things, in his opinion, lay entirely outside a woman's province.
Her place was in the drawing-room and her position that of a hostess
or, providentially, that of a mother. For the present there were no
signs of her fulfilling the latter.
In spite of Considine's discouragement her interest in Arthur was now
fully aroused, and more eagerly for the very reason of the limits which
her husband had set to her activities. Life at Lapton Manor to a
person of Gabrielle's essential vitality was dull. The nature of the
surrounding country with its near horizons and lack of physical breadth
or freedom imprisoned her spirit. Even Roscarna in its decay had been
more vital than this sad, smug Georgian manor-house set in its circle
of low hills. Over there, in winter, there had been rough Atlantic
weather, and a breath of ice from the snowy summits of Slieveannilaun
or the mountains of Maamturk. Here, even in their more frequent
sunshine, the air lay dead, ebbing like a sluggish river, from Dartmoor
to the sea. In winter the county families went to sleep like dormice,
so that no strange-calling conveyances passed the lodge-gates at
Lapton, and the life of Gabrielle was like that of those sad roses that
lingered on the south wall beneath her bedroom window in a state that
was neither life nor death. If she had shared Considine's interest in
his profession things might have been different. No doubt she would
have thrown herself into it with enthusiasm; but her enthusiasm was of
a very different nature from the steady flame that burned in Considine.
No doubt he knew this, and felt that her sharing would be disturbing by
its violence. In the ordinary course of events I suppose he expected
that she would have another child, but as this interest was denied her,
she was thrown more and more upon her own resources.
Her promise to Mrs. Payne gave her a reasonable excuse for her growing
interest in Arthur. She had never returned to the card-playing
incident; but as time went on a number of others equally distressing
presented themselves. Having constituted herself his special
protectress and the saviour of his reputation she tackled each of them
with courage. In every case she found herself baffled by the fact that
arguments which seemed to her unanswerable made no appeal to him, not
because he wasn't anxious to see things with her eyes, but because they
came within the area of a kind of blind-spot in his brain. She soon
found that she couldn't appeal on moral grounds to an a-moral
intelligence. She would have appealed on grounds material, but it
seemed to be ironically decreed that material and moral grounds should
be rarely at one. Sweet persuasion was equally useless. And indeed,
how could she expect to succeed by her influence where maternal love
had failed so signally? Even so, she would not own herself beaten. It
was tantalising; for the more she saw of Arthur the better she liked
him, and in these days she was seeing a good deal of him.
The opportunity arose from Arthur's trouble. He had told her the truth
when he said his fellow-pupils at Lapton were already aware of his lack
of honour in games. Nothing is less easily forgiven by boys, and when
the others discovered that he cheated and lied, not so much by accident
as on principle, they began to treat him as an outcast from their
decent society. The Traceys went so far as to report his failing to
Considine. An unpleasant _contretemps_, but one that Considine had
expected. He explained to them that Payne was not entirely to blame,
and that his constitution was not normal. He advised them to take the
weakness for granted. Even when he did this he knew that such
distinctions were unlikely to be acceptable to a boyish code of honour.
On the other hand the special fees that Mrs. Payne was paying him were
essential to the development of his plans. As a compromise he decided
to keep Arthur apart from the others in their amusements in the most
natural way he could devise. Practically for want of a better solution
he handed him over to the care of Gabrielle.
Arthur resented this. He was fond of games and of sport. He liked
winning and he liked killing; he thought it humiliating to his manly
dignity to be relegated to Gabrielle's society. He wrote bitterly to
his mother about it, using the contemptuous nickname that the boys had
invented for Mrs. Considine.
"_I think old Considine,_" he wrote, "_must be thinking of turning me
into a nursemaid. I'm always being told off to help Gaby in the garden
or take her for drives in the pony-cart. Not much fun taking a woman
shopping!_"
But Gabrielle was glad of it. The new plan supplied her with the first
prolonged companionship of a person of her own age--there were less
than three years between them--that she had known. Little by little
Arthur accepted it, and they became great friends.
It was a curious relation, for though it must have been simple on his
side, on hers it was full of complication. To begin with his society
was a great relief from her loneliness. Again, she had already, for
want of another enthusiasm, conceived an acute interest in his curious
temperament, and her eagerness to get to the bottom of it, and, if
possible, to find a cure, was now fanned by something that resembled a
maternal passion. They spent the greater part of his spare time
together, and often, at hours when he would normally have been working
with Considine, she would ask for him to take her driving into Totnes
or Dartmouth, their two market towns. In the evenings they would walk
out together in search of air along the lip of the basin in which
Lapton Manor lay.
On one of these evening walks a strange thing happened. They had
climbed the hills and had sat for a few minutes on the summit watching
the sun go down behind the level ridges that lead inward from the
Start. While they were sitting there in silence, Arthur suddenly
slipped away over the brim of a little hollow full of bracken on the
edge of the wood. A moment later Gabrielle heard him laughing, and
walked over quietly to see what he was doing. She saw him crouched,
quite unconscious of her presence, among the ferns at the bottom of the
hollow. He had caught a baby rabbit, and now he was torturing the
small terrified creature, its beady eyes set with fear, just as a cat
plays with a mouse. He was watching it intently: letting it escape to
the verge of freedom and then catching it and throwing it violently
back. For a second it would lie motionless with terror and then make
another feeble attempt at escape. She watched this display of animal
cruelty with horror, and yet she could not speak, for she wanted to see
what he would do next. At last the rabbit refused to keep up the
heartless game any longer. It simply lay and trembled. Arthur prodded
it with his foot, but it would not move. This appeared to incense him.
He took a flying kick at the poor beast and killed it. It lay for a
moment twitching, its muzzle covered in blood. A little thing no
bigger than a kitten two months old----
Gabrielle ran to him flaming with anger. She picked up the mutilated
rabbit and hugged it to her breast.
"Why did you do that? You beast, you devil!" she cried.
She could have flown at him in her anger. Arthur only laughed. He
stood there laughing, staring straight at her with his wide honest eyes.
"It's dead. It's all right," he said.
Her fingers were all dabbled with the blood of the rabbit that twitched
no longer. She could do nothing. She dropped the carcase with a
pitiful gesture of despair and burst into bitter tears.
She sat sobbing on the edge of the hollow. She could not see him, but
presently she heard his voice, curiously shaken with emotion, at her
side.
"I say, Mrs. Considine," he said. "Don't--please don't--I simply can't
stand it."
"Oh, get away--leave me alone," she sobbed. "I can't bear you to be
near me. It was so little. So happy----"
He wouldn't go. He spoke again, and his voice was quite changed--she
had never heard a note of feeling in it before. "I can't bear it.
You--I can't bear that you should suffer. I swear I won't do a thing
like that again--not if it hurts you. On my honour I won't."
"Yes, you will. I suppose you can't help it. It's awful. You haven't
a soul. You aren't human."
His voice choked as he replied. "I swear it--I do really. I could do
anything for you, Mrs. Considine. I feel that I could. For God's sake
try me!"
She compelled herself, still sobbing, to look at him. She saw that his
face was tortured, and his eyes full of tears. But she could say no
more, and they walked home in silence.