THE FINAL TEST
--"_I slew
Myself in that instant! a ruffian lies
Somewhere. Your slave, see, born in his place._"
--Browning.
In the closed room within there was a pause. The sound of weeping died
away, as though the master's voice had forced even anguish into the
silence of terror. Grover answered him at length in sudden haste, as
though anything would be better than to risk his anger. There followed
a muttering and murmuring, as though the maid were imploring her
mistress to command herself. Gaunt shook with rage and helplessness.
Thereafter the door was softly opened, elaborately closed, and Grover,
her own eyes suspiciously red, emerged and stood before him. For one
moment he hoped he might have been mistaken. "Was it you making that
noise?" he asked thickly; and as she hesitated, he added in haste:
"Give me the truth, please, Grover."
Perhaps something in his voice excited the woman's pity. At any rate,
she rejected the way out which his random words had suggested. It had
been on her tongue to say yes, it was she--she had conjured up
toothache, a fall downstairs, a family bereavement, wondering which
would sound the most convincing, and was forced to reject all.
"It was Mrs. Gaunt," she faltered baldly.
"Well, what's the matter? Out with it. What makes her cry like
that--eh?"
"She's had bad noos, sir. Noos of her little sister. She's fair
broken-hearted--it's awful to see her----" The kind soul's voice
failed, and she applied her handkerchief to her quivering mouth.
"Good heavens! The child's not dead, is she?"
"No, sir; but she's in agony, and calling for her sister. They seem to
think she can't live, sir--the treatment has made her worse----"
"Mrs. Gaunt's not strong enough to go to London," he broke in, for the
first miserable instant conscious only that he could not part with her.
"No, sir. She said you'd say so--that's what she's crying about,"
replied Grover, fairly breaking down, and turning away.
The man's face was white. "Stay where you are--wait--I am going in to
see her," he muttered. Grover made a movement, but shrank back again.
It was not for her to interfere with what her master chose to do.
The opening door brought Virginia to attention. She had been lying face
downward upon the sofa, which stood near the fire they always lit in
the evening. With a bound she was on her feet, and when she saw him she
gave a gasp of terrified surprise; then, with extraordinary swiftness,
her mood changed.
"It is you, is it?" she said in a voice that was hardly audible, so
husky was it with violent weeping. "Come and look! Come and see what
you have done. Oh, indeed you have got your wish! You have made me
suffer. Never in all your life can you have had to endure anything like
the torment--I say the torment--that I am undergoing now!" She stood
before him, defiant, tense with the force of the feeling in her,
wringing her little weak hands, clenching them over her labouring
breast. "Oh, why didn't I go on, why didn't I stay there at my
post--working, starving, loving them, till I dropped? If she had to
die, she could at least have had me with her. I could have been sure
that all was done that could be done. She wouldn't have had to die
crying for a sister that never came. Oh!" she burst out with a final
effort of uncontrollable emotion, all the more distressing because it
could but just be heard, "why was I ever born to know such agony as
this? I thought God would let me bear it all--not her--not that little
thing! Oh, Pansy, Pansy, _Pansy_!"
She dropped again upon her sofa--her face hidden in the cushions,
trying to stifle the tearing sobs. Her husband made a gesture of
despair. He came near. He would have knelt beside her, but he dared
not. He was so overwhelmed with what he was feeling, and the
impossibility of expressing any of it, that for a moment he was choked
and could not speak. When he did, the curb he was using made his voice
sullen and without expression.
"Virginia, I am sorry. Let me help you. Please show me your letter, or
tell me what is in it."
Something unwonted--something she did not expect--must have spoken in
his repressed voice. She sat up, wiping away the blinding tears, and
tried to speak to him, but failed for weeping. At last, feeling that
her voice could not be controlled, she drew out a letter from the front
of her frock and held it to him.
He took it, warm from its late contact with her; and the thought made
him for a moment dizzy, so that words and lines swam before his eyes.
He read it through.
There was silence. When he had got to the end, he raised his heavy lids
and looked at her. Her face was now set, almost fierce. The dove-like
sweetness of her changeful eyes was gone. They showed like a stormy sea.
"You want to go?" he almost whispered.
She laughed bitterly. That she, Virginia the martyr, could laugh like
that! He reeled mentally with this fresh surprise of womanhood.
"_Want to go?_ I _am_ going," she said deliberately, her
huskiness giving almost the effect of hissing. "I have borne enough.
Now I don't care what happens. I am going to Pansy. If you try to
prevent me, I will scream and rouse the house. I will call upon your
butler to protect me; I will say you are mad, as I believe you are! But
somehow I will go to her. Then, afterwards, when I come back, you may
do as you like. You may cut me to pieces with a knife, and I won't
complain! But now I am rebel! Now you can't keep me! I am not afraid of
you any more!"
There were a thousand things to say, each more hopeless, each more
futile than the other. He could not say them. In profound humiliation
he took what she gave him, he accepted it all. A long moment ticked
past after her passionate challenge. Then he spoke humbly.
"Virginia--would it console you to go--to-night?"
She staggered on her feet as if his words overthrew her; then again she
laughed in derision. "To-night? Ah, but, of course, you are mocking!"
"As God hears me, I am not. There is an express which stops at Derby at
nine o'clock. You have an hour in which to pack and eat some dinner.
Grover must go with you--you will want her when you get to London. I
will call her now." He spoke with his watch in his hand.
Virgie caught her breath. She looked at him uncertainly....
Once, as a small child, during a visit to London, her father had taken
her with him upon a visit to the Law Courts. They had been in court
when sentence was passed upon a prisoner. She had completely forgotten
the crime and what its punishment was to be; but as she looked at her
husband, she recalled the expression of the prisoner in the dock, whose
doom had just been pronounced.
"For the first time--I thank you," she muttered chokingly.
Gaunt went to the door. With his hand upon the handle, he turned back.
"Promise me that you will now control yourself," he said frigidly. "No
more wild weeping. You have cried yourself hoarse."
"I promise," she said in answer, her eyes upon him, her thoughts
already far away in the nursing home with Pansy.
He went out, and she heard him speaking to Grover in the passage.
* * * * *
An hour later, having forced herself to eat something, and having
accomplished her packing, she came down into the hall, equipped for her
journey.
The new motor, which had arrived only two days before, stood at the
door in charge of a chauffeur, who was to stay a month and train
Ransom, the coachman, to drive.
Gaunt awaited her in the hall, his hat in his hand. Her face changed.
"Don't be alarmed," he told her, coming near and speaking so low that
only she could hear. "I am coming to Derby only. There are things I
must tell you, and there was no time before starting. We shall only
just do it. Jump in."
She obeyed. He briefly directed Grover to sit by the chauffeur, and
they were off.
For a few minutes they sat in silence. The car slipped down the avenue,
the lamplight dancing upon the pine-trunks, and came out into the open
road, where it crossed the moor, and the day had not wholly faded from
the sky. Then Gaunt spoke.
"Does your travelling-bag lock? Have you a key?"
"Yes."
"Then take these notes." He told her what sum he had given her, opened
the packet and made her verify it. She obeyed almost mechanically.
"Now," he went on, "when you get to London, drive straight to the
Langham Hotel. I have written it down for you on this paper. Give my
name, and they will see that you have a comfortable room, with one for
Grover close by. In the morning, as soon as you are rested, telephone
to Dr. Danby at this address in Cavendish Square. Let me make a
confession, Virginia. He is the man I ought to have called in at first.
When I knew him he was a young chap just through his hospital training,
who came down here one summer as _locum tenens_. It was the year
of my own accident. I owe it to that man that I did not lose my leg.
Now he is a great specialist, at the top of his profession. When we
were arranging about your little sister, I would have mentioned him to
you; but I found you full of the idea of this new treatment, and I own
that I cared so little for the child, or what became of her, that I
thought it best you should have your own way. But if there is any hope
for her, Danby is your man. If you believe this, do as I say. Override
etiquette; take him straight to see Pansy. If there should be any
difficulty, refer every one to me; but Danby can advise you how best to
proceed; you are safe with him. You will probably have to move the
patient, if she is strong enough to stand it. Danby's nursing homes are
to be trusted. Take her where he tells you. I think you have your
cheque-book, have you not? You can write a cheque for any fees that are
necessary. I will pay in money to the bank to meet your demand. Then
you can stay at your hotel, and be with your little sister as much as
is practicable. Are you taking in what I say?"
"Yes, I am. I--I--don't know what to answer. Thank you. You are
being--so--unlike yourself. I feel bewildered. I am sorry I was so rude
to you just now, upstairs, and said such things----"
The meek, hoarse voice was so pitiful that he felt tears start to his
eyes. "That's all right," he muttered hurriedly. "One thing you have to
promise me. You will take care of your own health. Remember, you owe it
to me to." He broke off. What did she owe to him but misery? However,
she accepted the situation with a simplicity which was to him frankly
awful.
"I know. I will try to do what I think you would wish. I realise that I
have caused trouble and--and expense, already. It is generous of you to
let me go like this. Please tell me, how long may I stay?"
"Virginia!" he said, and dropped his forehead on his hands. She looked
at him in dim surprise, but with a mind too full of her own trouble to
conceive of his.
"How long?" she persisted gently. "A week?"
"How can I decide how long?" he asked, lifting his haggard face again.
"It depends upon the child. I must leave it to you. Stay as long as she
needs you. I can say no more than that."
"Oh!" she murmured, "you are so good!"
He made no sound, but his lips set themselves in a line of pain. Ah, if
only his brutality, his savage treatment of her did not lie between
them! If it had been simply that she had come to him without love, yet
longing for tenderness and protection! This would have been the moment
to take her in his arms, to enfold her with sympathy and devotion that
asked as yet no recompense.
She leaned back in her corner, while the car rushed easily through the
country, and the yellow harvest moon came up to show him more clearly
the glimmering pearly oval that was her face. She was pondering over
his directions, and every now and then put some little question which
showed how practical was her mind, how bent upon the enterprise which
lay before her. At last, after a prolonged silence, she spoke
unexpected words.
"I believe that being so miserable makes me understand a little bit
better; understand you, I mean. When I think of my Pansy, I could find
it in my heart to kill that wicked woman, her nurse, who let her be
hurt when she was a little helpless child. I could almost torture this
doctor, who has made her worse when he claimed to make her better; and
I seem to see how it has happened--how being miserable for so many
years has made you want to hurt somebody.... But the dreadful thought
is, that it would do no good--no good at all! If I could kill the
wicked nurse and the unskilful doctor it would not make my darling one
bit better! And to make me unhappy won't help you, either, even though
you think it will! I can't give you back the unhappy years, the lost
years! It is all no good--no good!"
"Virginia--don't!" So much was forced out of him in his pain. He could
have told her that in one respect she was wrong--that it _was_ in
her power to restore to him the years that the locust had eaten--that
he was at her feet, conquered, submissive.
But he saw how small a fragment of her mind was really occupied with
him. She was eagerly looking forward--searching the horizon for the
first glimpse of the chimneys of Derby.
He mattered very little to her now.
* * * * *
They reached the station with six minutes in hand. Gaunt had sent a man
down to Monton to telegraph for a sleeping-carriage, and they found all
awaiting them.
Grover and she were duly installed in their luxurious quarters, the
guard had been liberally feed to look after them. Gaunt repeated some
of his directions, and ascertained that both she and Grover thoroughly
understood them. He took the maid aside for a moment, into the corridor
of the train, while he expressed to her, in a few terse, pointed words,
how unremitting must be her care, how keen her attention. Grover's
response was reassuring, if embarrassing.
"There, sir, I love her almost as well as you do yourself," she had
said. The words stuck for long days afterwards in the man's head. Until
he heard it put thus bluntly, he had hardly known that the keen emotion
which he experienced could be called by so divine a name as love.
It had, then, befallen him to love a second time, with a force which
made his first love seem crude and weak--mere counterfeit.
His impressions of the few final seconds were blurred. The guard went
along the train, closing doors. Gaunt was shut out, upon the platform.
Anxious to show her gratitude, Virgie stood by the open window of her
compartment, looking at him, trying to fix her mind upon him, but with
a fancy filled with far other visions. The image of her little sister's
face, the sound of her cries, was in her heart. She was picturing her
own appeal to this new doctor, this deliverer who had been brought to
her by no other hands than those of her husband. She looked down upon
his hand, clenched upon the sill of the door.
"Put up the window when the train starts," he was saying. "I am defying
the doctor in letting you go like this, upon my own responsibility. You
must justify me by taking all the care of yourself that is possible.
Remember, you have Grover to wait upon you, and you are to order
anything and everything you want. There is no necessity for you to do
anything but just sit with the child when she is well enough to wish
it."
Her face lit up gloriously. She smiled softly, pityingly, at the man
who could imagine a moment in which Pansy would not wish to have Virgie
with her.
A whistle sounded. He started and winced. Then, gripping the door a
moment, he leaned forward, his eyes burning in his head. "Remember," he
blurted out, "you are on your honour--on your honour to come back to
me. You have undertaken to return."
She stared at him in surprise as she stood a little back from the
window. The train began to move. "Of course I am coming back," she said
in astonishment. "You know I shall." For a moment she just smiled, but
in bitterness. "I am released on parole," she said; "I quite
understand."
For a few moments after the smoothly running express had slithered out
of the station, off upon her way south, Virginia was held by the memory
of the look upon Gaunt's face as she passed from his sight. It was
puzzling. He behaved almost as if he meant to be kind; which was
incredible. His face seemed to her to be altering, or to have altered,
since she first saw it.
Anyhow, he had let her go. Her mad outburst had borne fruit--her revolt
had been entirely successful. She was off, without him, going to
London, going to Pansy. Her return to bondage lay in the future, dim
and misty, not worth troubling about as yet. There were other far
weightier matters to occupy her. Before they had traversed ten miles
she had forgotten Gaunt, almost as though he did not exist.
He, poor wretch, having made his sacrifice, stood a moment with arms
tightly folded, wishing he had not been so altruistic. His eyes
followed the train till it disappeared, then he turned, and went
haltingly out of the station, back to the empty motor. He muttered
something to himself as he opened the door. "We shall see."
"Did you speak, sir?" said the chauffeur.
"No, no! I didn't say anything. Home, of course."
"Yes, sir."
The Silent Knight sped on, and was engulfed in the darkness, now
completely fallen.
Gaunt of Omberleigh sat down in the place which his wife had lately
occupied. His body was there in the motor; his heart, his mind, all
that was in him, was following her upon her journey. He leaned forward,
gazing upon nothing, while in his fancy he recalled the whole of the
late scene between them. Could he have done anything more? Could he
have let her see?... But no. To do that--to utter any plea--would have
deprived him of a wonderful opportunity. It was now in his power to
prove her to the uttermost.
He had let her go. She had plenty of money, and still more credit. She
was going to her own people, to her selfish, worldly mother, to her
little sister's love and devotion. It was not to be supposed that, once
back in their midst, she could refrain from telling her family some
part at least of what she had been made to suffer. Doubtless it would
all be poured out. Every kind of influence would then be brought to
bear upon her in order to shake her allegiance. It would be pointed out
to her that he was probably mad, a person whose morbid tendencies must
not be encouraged. She would be told that it was her duty not to return
to him. A hundred arguments were ready to hand.
As he faced the situation, he suddenly felt that it was too hard a test
which he had set her. Brave she was; single-minded he had found her;
honest she seemed, but if, in face of argument, in face of influence,
in face of love, in spite of fear, in spite of dreadful apprehension of
punishment, she returned to what she still believed to be a state of
slavery and subjection, of captivity and surveillance, then, indeed,
she was a paragon, a pearl of such price as he was not worthy to
possess.
It was too much to hope for! She was gone, and she would never return.
The scandal and the tragedy of his marriage would be in every one's
mouth in a very few weeks' time.
He had let her go.
Why?
Because it was not in his power to hold her. Even if he had followed a
certain wild, hateful impulse which bade him keep her, even by means of
locked doors and imprisonment, he would have held but the husk of her.
The lonely spirit which animated her, which was the thing he loved, and
met for the first time, would not have been there in her prison, but
away with the child she loved. His success would have been sheer
failure.
Whereas now, deep in his heart, not to be completely annihilated,
lurked the faint hope that his present failure might possibly, by some
scarcely conceivable good fortune, turn into success.
The miles flew past unnoticed, while he sat rapt within himself. As the
car came to a standstill before the dark porch of Omberleigh, he was
reflecting upon the strangeness of the fact that he had once thought
Virginia's resemblance to her mother so striking.
Already she had almost ceased to remind him of his former bitterness. A
wholly new image of her had grown up in his heart. Before it for the
last weeks he had been burning incense. He had placed it in a sacred
niche upon a pedestal.
To-night he had taken it out. He wanted to hold it in his arms, to make
it his.
What if it failed to pass the almost superhuman test which he had
devised for it?