INSTANTANEOUS CONVERSION
"_I was a moody comrade to her then,
For all the love I bore her....
... This had come to be
A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
To wreak, all things together that a man
Needs for his blood to ripen....
... In those hours no doubt
To the young girl, my eyes were like my soul,--
Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day._"--
--D. G. Rossetti.
A pencil note was brought downstairs to the master by Grover, who wore
a demure look, as though she guessed how novel and charming a pastime
to the woman-hater was this playful exchange of love-letters.
He was seated at the lunch-table when the little envelope was handed to
him, and a surly self-consciousness kept him from opening it until
Hemming had retired, which conduct on his part caused amused nudgings
between the servants outside.
_Please come to tea at four._--Virginia.
Such was the extent of the "love-letter" when he had opened it.
He shrugged his shoulders. He did not want to have tea with her in the
least. However, it would have a good effect upon the household--keep up
the fiction of their mutual desire for each other's society.
At a few minutes after four, he knocked at her door. Grover had just
arranged the tea-table close to the bed, and was putting away one or
two things before leaving the room. Virginia blushed brightly as her
jailer entered, but gave him a timid smile of welcome. She told Grover,
with whom she was evidently on the best of terms already, to set a
chair for him, directed the closing of one window, lest there be too
much draught; and so did the honours until the maid, benevolently
smiling, had disappeared.
The bride knew that even a minute's hesitation would make her too
nervous to speak, so she said at once: "It was kind of you to send for
the doctor, but indeed there was no need. I shall be well in a very few
days. I feel rested already."
"That's right," he said briefly. "Proper treatment will bring you round
sooner, I expect."
"I like Dr. Dymock," she said timidly.
"He's not a bad sort."
A silence ensued. How difficult it was to find things to say. Virginia
made another effort. "Grover is so kind, she waits on me hand and foot!"
"It's her work to wait on you. What she's paid for. I don't know why
you should call her kind."
"Don't you know," she asked earnestly, "the difference between the work
you can pay for and the work you can't? Oh, but I am sure you must."
He grunted. Evidently he was not interested, but bored. She offered him
more tea, and refrained from further efforts at talk, remembering his
sneer at her "prattle."
They were too utterly out of sympathy for her to have any idea of how
best to approach him.
He drank his second cup of tea in silence, his gaze travelling over the
room, over the dressing-table with its dainty appointments, over the
white silk kimono, embroidered in faintly coloured flowers, which his
bride wore. The loose sleeve revealed the thinness of her arm and
wrist, which her dresses had formerly more or less concealed. On her
white flesh he remarked a row of round purple marks. Had she rubbed her
arm on something dirty? What could have caused those stains? They
looked like finger-marks. The memory of yesterday--of their tussle, and
his snatching of the letter from her desperate grip--came suddenly to
him.
Could it be true that he, Osbert Gaunt, with the upbringing and
traditions of a gentleman, had left the marks of his hands upon a
fragile girl? Self-disgust turned him for a moment almost sick.
Yet he would say what he had come to say. He cleared his throat.
"The doctor suggested to me that he should send our neighbour, Mrs.
Ferris, to call upon you in a day or two. I don't suppose you will like
her much, but she is about the only person available. She is one of
nature's mistakes--daughter of a colonel, and ought to have worked in a
factory. However, they tell me she is a good sort. She has a motor, and
would take you for a spin. I want you to understand that, if you go out
with her, it is only on conditions--that it would be of no use for you
to attempt to escape."
Virgie was so surprised that she dropped the sugar-tongs. "To escape!"
"From me."
"I don't understand----"
"I think you do. If Mrs. Ferris motors you to any place where there is
a railway station you might be tempted to take the train and go off. I
ought to tell you that if you do, I shall bring you back."
"You suppose that I should--that I should let Mrs. Ferris into the
secret of my--of your--of our----"
"What more likely?"
"If you think so," replied Virginia with shaking voice, "please don't
let Mrs. Ferris come. I did not ask--you must not think I asked the
doctor--for company or complained of loneliness. I am----" she could
not go on.
"Have I your word that if I allow you to go about as you like you will
make no attempt to leave me?"
"Would you take my word?" she cried vehemently; then checked herself,
and seemed to hold herself quiet by an act of will.
"The doctor told me that you ought not to be distressed, that perfect
rest was necessary for you," said Gaunt, rising abruptly from his seat.
"Don't upset yourself, I didn't mean to bully. I will take it for
granted that you will do as I wish, now that you know what my wishes
are. Good afternoon."
She did not answer. She had turned her face inwards to the pillow, and
her slight shoulders were shaking. He stood a moment, contemplating her
in dark vexation. Then he went out of the room, annoyed with himself,
but still more annoyed with her.
His mind was chaotic. He had just been wondering what he could do with
her--how deal with the preposterous situation he had himself
created--and hardly had the thoughts formed themselves before he was
found threatening her with penalties in case she should attempt to
disembarrass him of her presence. Dimly he descried the reason of this
apparent inconsistency. It was that he knew her to be spiritually free
of him. He could not bear that she should be actually free as well.
After all, he had married her. He had his rights. He was her husband.
But, Oh, ye gods, what a child she was--how easily cowed, how shrinking
and timid and all the other things that he hated!
From the bottom of his heart he wished that he had never set eyes upon
her.
* * * * *
The following morning the post-bag, when it was brought to him at
breakfast time, contained two letters for Virginia. One was addressed
in the unformed, sprawling hand which he knew to be Pansy's. The other
was inscribed with a flowing, ornamental script which once had power to
illuminate the world for him, and now produced in his fermenting mind
the most curious mixture of rage, bitterness, and gratification.
He had determined yesterday to abandon his cruel intention of
overlooking his wife's correspondence. His perusal of Pansy's letter
had been enough. This sight of his mother-in-law's writing, however,
touched him upon the corrupt spot in his heart, and shook his
resolution.
He laid the letter down among his own, before Grover, who waited near,
had seen the address. The letter from Pansy he handed to her as it was,
and joyfully it was received by its lawful recipient when it arrived
upstairs upon her breakfast tray, the sanctity of its seal inviolate.
When he was alone, Gaunt leaned forward, his elbows propped upon the
table, and held Mrs. Mynors' envelope in the steam of the spirit kettle
which stood upon the silver tray.
It was easily opened. He drew forth the contents with a detestable
eagerness, and read as follows:
_My dearest girl,--_
_This is the first moment that I have felt able to write to you, so
great have been my sufferings, so keen my humiliation over this
mercenary marriage of yours. I feel as if I had been living in a
nightmare ever since that fatal day when I went to town to meet the
inhuman monster who almost blighted my young life, and has now fastened
his claws into you instead._
_Oh, Virginia! Sooner--far sooner--would I have gone to the workhouse
than be obliged to think of you in Gaunt's power! But you knew that!
Again and again did I assure you, did I not, how far I was from
demanding this sacrifice at your hands? How is he using you? That is
the question that forces itself upon me every hour--that keeps me awake
at night with the horrors! Your letter to Pansy was more or less
reassuring, I must own. Perhaps, when he finds how useful and domestic
you are, he may be kinder than my fears suggest?_
_Meantime, I miss you every moment. You will know how I have always
detested the petty meannesses of life, the half-pounds of cooking
butter, the scraps for the stock-pot, the way the coal disappears, the
price of fish--all the endless, nauseating haggling over pence! To this
you have left me, after all that I have suffered. After the shattering
blows of the death of my first-born, my widowhood, our ruin--you have
taken the hand of a man who can give you life's good things, and you
have left me to the slavery which you found so unbearable. But I must
not reproach you, for you may be already suffering for your mistake. Do
write me a few lines, and tell me frankly how he is treating you?_
_If I am wrong, if he is behaving kindly to you, it will be such a
relief to know it. He may, of course, actually have fallen in love with
your looks. You are, as all declare, absurdly like me. If this should
be so, I know, my darling daughter, that you will use your opportunity
to help me. You must see that the allowance secured to me is wretchedly
inadequate. L300 a year is impossible. It will mean an existence of
continual debt. L400--that is, a hundred pounds a quarter--might be
conceivable. It is the very lowest upon which one should be called upon
to live. If Gaunt is inclined to be indulgent--if you have managed to
get on his blind side--do strike while the iron is hot, and have this
matter arranged for me, won't you?_
_It is not as if I asked for riches. Think of what I have been used
to? Think of me here in this odious little town, non-existent as far as
the county is concerned--Me, Mrs. Bernard Mynors--a prouder name than
that of many a peer. Think of this in your luxury, and spare a little
pity for your wretched mother._
Virginia Mynors.
Before that letter, Gaunt sat with clenched hands. The veins in his
forehead swelled. How right he had been--how fatally exact in his
forecast as far as the mother was concerned! How far was he right,
after all, about the daughter?
Could that letter of hers to Pansy have conceivably been written as a
blind--in case he should read it? No. That was not possible--at least
it was not possible that Pansy's letter to her sister could have been
the result of any kind of premeditation. Besides, the doctor's evidence
of his wife's starved condition. Yet here were reproaches for the girl
who had been obstinately bent upon a mercenary marriage--a sacrifice
which she seemed to have made against her mother's pleadings!
How did the rest of the letter harmonise with the outburst of maternal
agony which began it? His lip curled, ever more and more, until all his
teeth showed, as he read once more the suggestion that, if he had been
successfully hoodwinked, he might be bled for an extra hundred a year!
As he sat, staring at the paper, he knew one thing certainly. _He
must see the reply to that letter._ Moreover, Virginia must write it
under the impression that he would _not_ see it.
He hardly knew himself as he carefully resealed the envelope, and
satisfied himself that it bore no signs of having been tampered with.
In that moment he felt that he recked neither of his honour nor of his
manhood. He had no scruples. One thing only stood out in his mind as
essential. He must know how far his wife was victim and martyr, how far
a designing girl.
If she was, as her mother declared her to be--mercenary, then there
were ways, plenty of ways, in which she might do penance for such
fault. But, if it were true that she had been sacrificed for pure love,
that her unselfishness was so wonderful, so unheard-of, that she really
had laid down her all upon the altar of family affection--why, then,
what would happen? He asked himself desperately, what _could_
happen? The only solution that occurred to him at the moment was that
he should hang himself.
* * * * *
When Virginia's tea went upstairs that afternoon, her mother's letter
lay upon the tray, as though it had arrived by the second post. With it
was a note from Gaunt, to the effect that he was sorry to have to be
out that afternoon. An accident had happened on the estate--a large
tree had fallen, most unexpectedly, and the huge trunk had blocked the
course of the trout-stream, and the water was flooding a meadow. He
hoped to look in upon her that evening on his return. Then, below his
initials:
_For the future I waive my right to inspect your correspondence._
It was late when he came in, wet to the knees and tired out. He had a
bath, changed for the evening, and then, before going downstairs,
rapped on the door of communication between his own room and Virginia's.
Grover was not there, so there was nobody to see that the bride turned
as white as a sheet. She had not known, for certain, that his room
adjoined her own.
"Come in," she faltered. He pushed the door wide.
She was on a sofa, in the window, and the late evening light shone
through her hair as she turned to him that face which might have been
an angel's. It was the face that had stood for him for so many years as
the expression of treachery incarnate. Now it gave him the most
extraordinary sensation.
For the first time in their mutual acquaintance she did not smile. Her
look as she faced him was grave and cold. It seemed that at last his
repeated insults had quenched her timid impulse to friendliness. The
thought affected him profoundly.
"I hope you haven't been too lonely this afternoon?" he asked
haltingly, standing in the doorway.
"No, not at all. Mrs. Ferris came to see me."
"Ha! How did you like her?"
"She seems very kind." The tone was entirely noncommittal. It seemed to
say, "Whether I liked her or not is no concern of yours."
"H'm! Did she say anything about taking you out in the motor?"
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I said I would rather not go."
"You would rather not go?"
She turned her eyes away from him, out to the garden, and did not
speak. He remembered what he had said the previous day, and guessed how
it must have hurt her, if she were really what he was beginning to
believe.
His next words were utterly unpremeditated. "I'll buy a car and take
you out myself."
"That would be safer," she replied gravely. Then she raised herself on
her elbow, searched among her papers on a little table at her side, and
held out a letter to him.
"Will you put that out to be posted, please?"
He limped across the room and stood quite near--near enough to take the
envelope from her hand.
"You read what I said about your correspondence?"
"Yes." He thought he could detect an impulse to say "Thank you," and
the determination not to yield to it. Thanks for the right to breathe!
The right to be herself! He saw that she could not frame it.
The sound of the gong in the hall below was audible. He turned
away--lingered, trying to put together some sentence expressive of his
satisfaction that she should be on the sofa to-day, but he found the
thing too difficult, and was off with a curt, "Well, good night!"
"Good night," she answered.
When he was back at the door, he turned again and looked at her. Her
whole fair outline, supine upon the couch, was illumined in a rosy
gilding. The room behind her lay shadowy; her own form on its dark side
was blurred. But that outline against the purple misty garden without
was like a thing of enchantment. So still--so very beautiful--he
thought of an effigy upon a tomb. He closed the door with a hissing
breath drawn between his teeth. In his hand he held the key to all his
doubt--the reply to the letter he had read. When he had also read this
he would know what he must do; he would be able to realise what he had
already done.
He hastened downstairs feeling like a thief in his own house. He
resented the fact of Hemming's quite natural presence in the hall,
where the servant was busy removing the sticks, wet gloves, etc., which
he had discarded upon his return home. He disappeared into his study,
and sat down, wondering how his nefarious purpose could be best
achieved, as there was no fire and no spirit-kettle handy. At first he
thought he would have to wait until the following morning; but he
believed that he should not sleep unless he had snatched the knowledge
he so inordinately desired.
He dined morosely, and there was sympathy in the kitchen for his lack
of appetite. It was not surprising to Hemming when he brought coffee to
find it declined, and to be ordered to bring in the small spirit-kettle
and the whisky decanter.
Alone at last, with the desired jet of steam, the monomaniac once more
settled himself to his novel pursuit of tampering with seals. He had
done so this morning without scruple. The letter he now held seemed to
him far more sacred than the other. The blood rushed to his face, and
his heart beat heavily as he peeled back the flap of the envelope. He
felt almost as he might have felt had he intruded upon Virginia
herself, as if he violated something pure and intact.
The letter was withdrawn. It lay under his relentless gaze. He took a
peep into his wife's very soul.
_Mother! Mother!_
_If you had known how it would hurt, you could not have written to me
so! What can I say to you? Can I reproach my own mother with injustice?
Yet I feel I cannot let you write as you do without telling you how
unkind it sounds._
_What I have done is wrong. I know that now. I half knew it all the
time. But what else was there for me to do? I believe God knows I did
it for the best. I was at the very end of all my own strength; I was at
the very end of all our money; I had you all dependent upon me; and I
knew I was going to break down._
_I felt I had to serve you, and, oh, mother, you can't, you simply
mustn't, deny that I have done that. Don't, for pity's sake, talk of my
going off to be rich, and leaving you to the slavery that I found
unbearable. That is not just, it is not true, but all the same it is
torture to me that you should say it._
_The unfairness of it gives me strength to write what perhaps I might
not dare if I were not so indignant, but it has to be said. Never,
never, under any circumstances, will I ask Osbert to do more for you
than he has already done. Please understand that that is my last word.
Last year we lived on less than L200, including Tony's school bills,
which you will not now have to pay. With care, you ought to be quite
comfortable on what you have._
_I do not know whether Osbert means to make me any allowance. He has
said nothing about it yet, and I cannot ask him. If he does, you shall
have anything I can spare, you know how little I want myself. At least,
I ought to be able to keep Tony in pocket-money, the darling has
suffered so from not having any. At this moment I have five shillings
in the world, which I must use to buy materials to embroider a kimono
for my Pansy. I promised her that! It is to be blue, with pale pink
embroidery. Tell her I have not forgotten; I will get it next time I go
out shopping._
_I have been resting all yesterday and to-day, and I think I shall
soon pick up my strength; but not if you write me such cruel letters.
Oh, mother, for father's sake, who told me always to take care of you,
don't let me think that what I have done has been all in vain!_
Virginia.
Osbert Gaunt pushed back his chair. His face was ghastly, and the drops
stood on his forehead. He felt as if the house were too small, too
close, to contain him. With shaking hands he pushed the letter and its
envelope into a drawer, stumbled to his feet, hastened from the room,
snatched a hat from the hall, and went out into the moonlight.
He walked on blindly, striding fast, taking the direction that led him
down into the long avenue through the park, from which one approached
the house upon its southern side. He knew now what he had done. He had
immolated an innocent victim. He felt as if there might be blood upon
his hands. Stories are told of men who, having lost the use of a
portion of the brain, have had this restored by means of a sudden shock
or a terrific blow. Something of the kind had now happened to Gaunt. He
looked back upon the man whom he had been, whom he had gradually
become, during the past twenty years, as upon a leper. He shuddered at
the very idea of such a monster.
Always before the eye of his imagination was the outline of Virginia's
pale beauty, suffused with rose and gold. He recalled her patient
quietude, her dignity and sadness. He knew now what she had been
feeling. She had been quivering under the lash of her mother's
diabolical selfishness; she had just relieved the anguish of her soul
by writing that letter.
And he! What of the man who had tempted her?
A wild idea of crawling to her feet, of kissing them, of crying to her
for pardon, turned him about and sent him striding unevenly half a mile
upon his homeward way.
The futility of such a course suddenly struck him and once more turned
him back.
She might pardon. Yes. She was the sort of nature that would pardon.
How might that help their future together? He knew that there could be
no such thing as a future together for them. He hardly wished it.
His passion of pity and remorse was quite untinged with any passion of
desire. He thought of Virgie as of a saint, a creature apart, something
to be rescued from himself, if such an end could possibly be compassed.
If he spoke to her, if he begged forgiveness, he would have to confess
his own late action. He would have to say: "I am such a cad, so lost to
any sense of honour, that I first assured you of the safety of your
private correspondence, and then deliberately read it."
He could not do that.
To one emotion of the human soul this man had been for years a
stranger--tenderness.
The first invasion of his breast by the new-comer was torture. He had
not wept since he could remember. Now his lashes were thick with the
drops which the pathos of Virginia wrung from his unwilling spirit. He
contemplated her as a man may study the outstanding merits of his
patron saint, seeing her inner and her outward loveliness. Her
reticence--the way in which she concealed from her mother all that he
had made her bear! She made no complaint, left herself almost
completely out of sight, was only passionately anxious for reassurance,
to be consoled by the knowledge that her sacrifice had not been in vain
for _them_! Pity flooded him. When he had been walking a long way
he became aware that he was sobbing audibly.
This pain of unavailing compassion was maddening. What could he do? He
had humiliated this rare creature, laid rough hands upon her, borne her
off far from every one she loved. Yes, incredible though it seemed, she
actually loved that mother--that trivial wanton upon whom he himself
had lavished all that was best in him during the long, fruitless years
that the locust had eaten.
Frustration--misunderstanding--injustice--and helpless regret!
This is life, and the old Greeks knew it. He thought of the majestic
dramas of wrong and passion and irretrievable disaster. He thought of
Clytemnestra and Electra. They sound crude to us, the ancient
stories--crude and bloody. We do not slay our husbands with axes in
these days. Virginia Sheringham had not, in act, been an unfaithful
wife; but by her neglect, her lightness, her extravagance and
selfishness, she had ruined her husband financially, had contributed to
his early death....
... And she had handed over her daughter to Gaunt as calmly as
Clytemnestra handed over Electra to the swine-herd.
Human nature--ancient--modern! The setting different, the actions
different, the motives eternally the same.
* * * * *
It was nearly two o'clock when, weary and footsore, Gaunt let himself
in with his latch-key, through the door left purposely unlocked by
Hemming, who was wholly astonished at finding that his master was out
of doors when it came to shutting-up time.
Like a thief he crept to the study, re-sealed with infinite precaution
the envelope he had opened, and slipped it into the post-bag.
Later, as he lay rigid, open-eyed, in his bed, watching the dawn creep
on, it almost seemed to him as if the tumult and energy of his thoughts
must travel through the door and penetrate to the silent room
within--to the little golden head which, please God, was forgetting its
sorrows temporarily in dreams.
If he could but send her a wordless message--some deep impression of
penitence, of reverence, of his hunger to be forgiven!
Could this indeed be Gaunt of Omberleigh? Changed, the whole structure
of his character demolished in a few hours by mere contact with the
crystal honesty of a very simple girl!