THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
"_Take back the love you gave, I claim
Only a memory of the same;
With this beside, if you will not blame,
Your leave for one more last ride with me._"--Browning.
For ten days more Virginia's life floated upon a summer sea. She had
Tony, she had Pansy, she had Gerald. She was away from Gaunt, and his
letters made no demand upon her. He never mentioned the date, or even
alluded to the fact, of her return. She had, however, set herself a
limit. When Pansy went to the seaside she must go back to her prison.
The nurse who was now in charge of the case would be permitted to
accompany the child, so that there would be no valid reason for
Virginia to go too. Mrs. Mynors, who was having the time of her life in
London, though she grumbled incessantly at the need to keep her
expenditure so rigorously within bounds, was not anxious for the move.
Her daughter, however, was scrupulously determined that it should take
place at the earliest date which Dr. Danby would sanction. She was very
grateful to her husband. Her gratitude had taken the edge off the
bitterness with which she regarded him. Her fear remained, but his
present generosity could not but do something to salve the wound his
cruelty had made. To take undue advantage of his kindness was what she
would never suffer herself to do.
Yet, when the time of parting drew near, it became evident to every one
that Pansy would fret so much at her sister's departure as to make it
likely that her grief might react disastrously upon her frail returning
health.
This distressed Virginia terribly. She hardly knew which way her duty
lay. It seemed almost as if she must stay with the child until she was
strong enough to be reasoned with. At least Gaunt's health would not
suffer from her absence. Yet the situation galled her. Here they all
were, living upon his bounty, while he waited alone in Derbyshire
bereft of his newly made wife. Had she loved him, all would have been
otherwise, she would have felt it natural that he should help her, and
she would not have hesitated to choose the path of duty, even if
absence from him had been a misery to her. As things stood, she was
uncomfortably aware that, so far, she had not fulfilled her share of
the contract. He had paid her price, but she was devoted, body and
soul, to Pansy and not to him.
That night she cried bitterly when alone in bed, while the conflict
raged in her heart; and strangely, that night, at Omberleigh, Gaunt had
the illusion that he heard her sobbing, as he had heard her upon the
night when she received the news of Pansy's danger. So vivid was the
impression that he got up, opened the door of her room, and stood a
long moment, in the moonlight, gazing at the smooth, empty bed and the
dim outlines of the furniture, before he could realise that she was not
there.
Next morning she wrote to him:
_I am in a difficulty. Pansy is making herself unhappy about going to
the sea without me. She has fretted so that Dr. Danby spoke seriously
to me yesterday, asking if I could not manage to stay a few days longer
just to settle her into her new surroundings. We have found rooms very
near the sea, not at Cliftonville, but at Worthing. The roads there are
so nice and flat that she can be wheeled out upon the Parade every day,
and the doctor says as soon as she is a little stronger she will lose
this silly fancy about my leaving her. I am ashamed to mention it to
you, when you have done and are doing so much. I will be guided by what
you wish. I had arranged definitely to go back to Omberleigh on Monday.
If you think I had better keep to that date I will do so. If I may
instead take Pansy to Worthing, and stay there with her till the
following Friday, returning to you on Saturday, I shall be most
grateful, but I feel guilty in asking for it, when I have already made
such large demands upon your patience._
The answer to this letter came by telegram:
_Stay as long as advisable.--Gaunt._
Tony brought this message round to the Home from Margaret Street in the
course of the morning, and great, indeed, was the joy it caused. Pansy
was a different creature when she learned that "that dear old trump of
an Osbert was going to let Virgie come to Worthing."
There was a tea-party in the little invalid's room that afternoon to
celebrate the occasion. Gerald Rosenberg was present. The journey was
to be made in his car, and he thought he would take a week's holiday at
Worthing, and have a run round the country thereabout.
It was a delightful plan, and in Virginia's eyes it had no drawbacks.
She was now wholly at ease with Gerald. Since that first day, he had
asked no awkward questions, trenched on no dangerous ground. He had
been the best of friends, and was apparently quite content to talk to
her mother for long periods during which she and Tony roamed together.
Under his auspices the removal to Worthing took place most
satisfactorily. The day was dull and chilly, but there was no rain, and
Pansy's spirits never flagged.
For the first day or two following their arrival, there was so much to
be done, the elder sister's time was so fully occupied in making all
the arrangements that were necessary, that she hardly realised how time
was flying. It was on Thursday morning that she awoke with a terrible
sensation of depression, amounting to horror. She had dreamed of Gaunt.
This had happened to her twice, and only twice, before. Once, upon the
night following their first wordless encounter at Hertford House. It
had been an oddly vivid dream, producing a feeling of excitement which
persisted after she awoke. The second occasion was at Omberleigh. It
occurred--though she naturally was unaware of the fact--on the night
during which her husband wandered through the park in an agony of
remorse. That dream too had left an impression which seemed
disproportionate. This last was, however, the most haunting of all.
In it she found herself searching through the house at Omberleigh,
looking for Gaunt, who could not be found. She went upstairs to the
garrets, where Mrs. Wells had once taken her, but the rooms seemed to
have been altered. In her dream she said: "If I come to the room with
the Sheraton furniture in it, I shall know where I am." She could not
find it, however, and after descending stairs which were the stairs of
the Hertford House Gallery, she ran along a passage in search of the
sitting-room she had been told she might call her own. That, too, had
vanished; in its place was something pale, dim, and shapeless. All
empty--Gaunt was not to be seen, and she had been made aware that it
was most important that she should find him. She passed out into the
garden, in a wet mist which hid everything from her sight, and she dare
not hasten for fear of stepping upon his dead body. Terror took her,
and she tried, as one tries in dreams, to run. Her feet were rooted to
the ground, she was incapable of movement; and out of the fog came
Gaunt, with his eyes closed. He was repeating words, but in so low a
tone that she could not immediately hear. She listened, first
attentively, then eagerly, because she knew that it was so tremendously
urgent that she should understand; and at last something reached her
consciousness. "Are you coming? No. I said you would not come. I never
dared to think you would. But you promised--you promised----"
She tried to say: "Here I am, do you not see me?" But she failed to
articulate, and awoke with the sound of his muttered words ringing in
her ears.
The morning scene upon which she looked out was gay. The sun shone
lazily over a calm sea, there was no wind, and the seafront was already
lively with the passing figures of those who had been out for an early
dip. When she went into Pansy's room she found that the child had slept
without awakening the whole night through; and was greeted with a smile
of content and freedom from pain which made her heart swell with joy
and gratitude.
This was Gaunt's doing! Without him, this marvellous recovery would
have been impossible. It was he who had not only furnished the funds,
but who had sent her to Dr. Danby, perhaps the one man in the world who
could have achieved so wonderful a result. For the authorities, at
first so grave, now began to talk of a cure. Lameness there would
always be, but the nurse was certain that the power of locomotion would
be recovered. Virgie knelt by the bed, her whole mind flooded with the
poignant memory of her pitiful dream. "Oh, Pansy blossom," said she,
"isn't it wonderful? What do we not owe to Osbert?"
"Yes," said Pansy, turning her head eagerly, "do you know, Virgie, I
was just thinking about that. Nurse talked to me a bit yesterday. She
said I must not be selfish. She said how good you had been to sacrifice
so much of your time to me; and how miserable it is for Osbert all
alone at Omberleigh. I feel rather ashamed of myself, darling, and I
can see quite plainly that I must let you go."
"Oh, Pansy!" cried Virginia brokenly, seeing her way thus unexpectedly
made clear. Was she glad or sorry? Her imagination took a peep into the
future, and for a minute sheer fright paralysed her. Then her dream
floated before her, and she almost heard the words: "Are you coming?
You promised! You promised!"
Yes, she was coming. She would keep her promise, as she had always
intended; but now, for the first time, she faced the terror of it. Once
away from her gaoler, in the insistence of the present moment, she had
been able to forget. Other things had filled her heart. Apprehension
for Pansy's safety had blotted out apprehension for Virginia's
happiness. Now with vehemence her panic fear resurged.
* * * * *
Down in the sitting-room, Mrs. Mynors, daintily attired in seaside
raiment and white shoes, had just rung for breakfast. Tony and Gerald,
who had been together for a swim, walked past under the window. Gerald
stopped and called up that he was going along to his hotel for
breakfast, and would be back in an hour, decently attired.
"Come in and have some breakfast with us, just as you are," urged Mrs.
Mynors, leaning from the open casement.
"Yes, yes," cried Tony, gripping his arm joyfully.
"Don't mind if I do," answered Gerald, and ascended the stairs
leisurely, while the boy dashed up to a higher floor, to put down his
towels. "Tony met a pal down on the sands," remarked Rosenberg, as he
shook hands with Virginia's mother. "I have taken two tickets on the
_char-a-banc_ for them to go to Arundel. If you will stay with
Pansy the arrangements are quite complete."
"That's a splendid idea," replied Mrs. Mynors with satisfaction. "You
are a good general, Gerald."
He looked somewhat doubtful, as though a cloud passed over his mood.
"I hate it," he said, "but I must do something. If I don't, she will go
back to that crazy beast to-morrow as sure as the sun rises, and what
can we do then?"
"My dear Gerald, why do you say that you hate it? You are not going to
do anything to which anybody could take exception!"
"No, but I am going to trick her with a put-up job. If she ever found
that out she would dislike it. I have seen so much of her lately, and
her sincerity and simplicity are almost terrible."
Virgie's mother smiled rather superciliously. "Yet she can keep her own
counsel," she remarked incisively. "I have done all that I knew to
secure her confidence, and never one word has she let slip. But for the
fact that she never mentions him and will not let me see letters from
him, I should hardly suspect----"
"You are sure?" He turned from the window with intent expression.
"Remember, I am going almost entirely upon what you tell me----"
"Gerald, it seemed to me that I must have some certainty, and I did a
thing which you will probably condemn. I looked at a letter from him to
her, which was accidentally left accessible. I made a copy of it to
show you. This is it, word for word. There was no more."
He grew scarlet. The pretty woman was approaching him with the bit of
paper. Was it taking an unfair advantage of Virgie to steal a march
upon her loyalty thus? He told himself that the end justified the
means. He was too deep in love now. He could not draw back. He took the
paper and read:
Omberleigh.
Tuesday.
_Yours of 5th duly recd. Glad journey satisfactorily accomplished.
Rooms seem reasonable. Suppose Mrs. M. will go back to Wayhurst in a
few days, leaving child in charge of nurse. Trust you have done as I
ordered you with regard to m.c. This is important.--O. G._"
"That is all--absolutely all--that was written on the sheet of paper,"
murmured Mrs. Mynors, watching him read.
"What is m.c., do you know?"
"Have no idea. A nice letter for a man to write to his few weeks'
bride, is it not?"
"It shows them to be on very peculiar terms," he admitted, with knit
brows. "Yes, you must be right. The man is a bit cracked. Was there no
beginning to the letter?"
"Nothing."
"Yet you think there is no chance of our being able to get him
certified as of unsound mind?"
"Not the least; because he is very sane, except on this point. Have you
asked Mr. Ferris what he thinks of him?"
"Ferris thinks him most able. Says he is the best magistrate in the
district. They all down there seem to suppose that he is quite devoted
to his wife. They laugh at him as an old bachelor hopelessly in love."
"That letter is the letter of a man in love, is it not?"
Gerald shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, I have been extremely
careful to keep off the subject with her," he said. "There is one
thing, however, which makes me horribly suspicious that you may be
right--that he is being actually unkind to her. I mean this. She seems
to believe that, when she leaves here, it is final. Now and then, when
she is off her guard, she seems to assume that she will never see any
of us again. I did what amounted to some pretty open fishing for an
invitation to Omberleigh the other day. She was wholly unresponsive."
"She did admit to me, in one letter, that she did very wrong to marry
him," slowly said Mrs. Mynors.
"She did?" he cried quickly.
"She practically admitted that her marriage was a failure as far as she
was concerned. I will show you that bit of the letter, though most of
it is private. I have it here."
Upon his eager assent she produced that letter from Virginia, which
Gaunt had intercepted, and read a paragraph to him:
_... 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 end of my own strength; I was at the
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 save you, and, Oh, mother, you can't, you simply
must not deny that I have done that!..._
Mrs. Mynors glanced at the young man's face. It was set and hard.
"You should have shown me that before. I think it conclusive," said he.
"Only a most unhappy woman could have written so." He broke off with a
catch in his breath. "And to think that I had failed her, that she was
in those desperate straits and I never knew! Oh, ye gods, how blind we
are! But you see, don't you, that the fact of my deserting her then
makes it more incumbent upon me to save her now, if I can? Mad or sane,
there can be no doubt that the brute must be desperately jealous. We
only want suspicious circumstances and somebody who will be sure to
mention them to him. If I mistake not, Mr. Ferris is the very man for
our purpose. The fact that he himself admires Virgie to the point of
fatuity will give the necessary edge to his malice."
"Have you heard from him? He is coming to-day?"
"Yes, that's all right," replied Gerald hastily. "No more now; I hear
her on the stairs."
Virginia came in. Happiness and returning health together had made her
radiant. She wore to-day a pale mauve frock, and a hat trimmed with a
garland of mauve and faint blue flowers. Like Mr. Bent on another
occasion, Gerald found himself distracted with the wonder as to which
of the two colours matched her eyes.
"What a day!" she said. "Oh, what a heavenly blue day, isn't it? Have
you come to breakfast, Gerald? How nice!"
"Gerald is afraid he may be obliged to go back to town to-morrow,"
remarked her mother, as they sat down to table. "He wants to have one
good day's motoring for the last, and as the driving does you so much
good, I have arranged to stay with Pansy and leave you free to go with
him."
"Tony and I! Oh, how splendid!" cried Virgie, sparkling. "I, too, must
leave to-morrow, and I want to have a really delightful day for the
last." She broke off a little abruptly, afraid lest what she said might
be by implication uncomplimentary to her husband. Both her hearers
remarked it, and they exchanged glances.
They did not say that Tony would not be going. Instead, Gerald produced
a map from his pocket, and spread it on a corner of the table.
"I have more or less thought out a route," said he. "I wonder if you
will approve. There were two places which you told me that you would
particularly like to see--one was Bodiam Castle. The other was the
Roman Pavement at Bignor. I have been talking to Baines (his
chauffeur), and he says it would be quite possible to do both. It is a
fifty-mile run to Bodiam--less than two hours. We could lunch on the
way back--say at Lewes--and go on to Bignor, where we could have tea,
and get back any time we like."
"How simply perfect!" laughed Virgie as she helped herself to marmalade
with an appetite which was so recent an acquirement that she herself
could not understand it. Nobody present noticed it. Mrs. Mynors would
never have known had her daughter starved herself to death under her
eyes. Across the girl's mind stole the thought of some one who had
watched every mouthful, had hectored and bullied her into eating.
She leant across to Gerald, and perused the map with attention. "What a
way it seems! Bodiam is in the very eastest corner of Sussex. And
Bignor is more than the whole way back--positively on the other side of
Worthing! Are you sure it won't be too far? I am so afraid Pansy will
miss me."
"You forget," put in her mother, "Pansy is going to have the first of
her electric baths to-day, and nurse says she will have to be very
quiet for some hours after it. Besides, it will accustom her to the
idea of being without you."
"Yes. That is true," was the reply, while a shadow crept over the
gladness of the face.
"I expect Osbert is beginning to be restive, isn't he?" asked her
mother, in order to gauge the effect of a sudden reference to Gaunt.
The effect, as always, was a momentary confusion, slight but evident.
She soon rallied. "He is very patient," she replied, while her thoughts
went obstinately back to the dream garden, veiled in mist, to the man
who approached her, groping blindly, to his words, "Are you coming
back? No!"
"It seems wonderful that he _can_ be patient under the
circumstances," observed Gerald drily. He did not pursue the subject.
He was folding up his map. "I told the chauffeur to be round in exactly
twenty minutes from now. I must bolt, and do a change. Can you be ready
in twenty minutes?"
She eagerly assented, and he caught up his hat and ran out of the room,
with a smile to her of glowing, eager anticipation which set her heart
dancing in response. What a dear fellow he was! How good he had been to
them all! He had saved quite a lot of Gaunt's money by taking them down
to Worthing in the car. She did not ask herself why it was terrible to
take her husband's money, but easy to take Gerald's.
She ran away upstairs, calling to Tony. He appeared from his room, got
up in a striped flannel suit, a soft linen collar, a most
_recherche_ tie, and a Panama hat--a real one.
"Why, Tony, you have made yourself a swell!" cried the girl.
"Pretty decent, isn't it?" was the gratified reply. "Left me any
brekker?"
"Plenty, but be quick, we have to start in twenty minutes."
"Not me, sis. I'm going with Mullins Major to Arundel."
"To Arundel! Oh, no, Tony, you are going with Gerald and me in the car!"
"Not much. This is heaps better. Good old Gerald bought us the
ticket--front places, and he has given me half a sov. for our grub.
Isn't he great?"
"Oh, Tony!" She stood back as the boy ran down the stairs whistling
gaily. "Did Gerald give you that suit, too, and that overwhelmingly
elegant hat?"
"He did. Took me into the town the first day we got here and rigged me
out."
Virgie burst out laughing. She was so glad that Tony should be
young--should put on a bit of "swank." How dear of Gerald to be so good
to him!
Money makes life very easy. The thought turned her grave once more. Am
I mercenary? she asked herself. Does love of money mean the desire to
obtain good doctors and nursing, to educate a boy well, to live cleanly
and keep out of debt? With a sigh she admitted that her marriage had
been mercenary. Yet how small a share of life's good things would have
prevented her from making so hideous a mistake--a mistake which as yet
she had hardly begun to pay for. Oh, why, why, had Gerald stepped aside
and failed her at the critical moment?
"If I had only had patience, if only I had waited," she told herself,
"it would have come right! He as good as told me so that first night we
dined together. I ought to have refused to do what I knew to be wrong,
and left the consequences to God."
She made herself ready for the drive, slipped into Pansy's room, and to
her relief found the child quite prepared for her going. "Gerald told
me yesterday that he should take you," she said sedately.
Gerald was then heard calling for Virgie, and with a hasty kiss she ran
off. Both the plotters heaved a sigh of relief when they found she took
Tony's defection in good part. The boy came down from his half-eaten
breakfast to see them off, and the car spun away, up to Broadwater and
Sompting, and on along the northern slopes of those magical South
Downs, the love of which can never fade from a Sussex heart.
Virgie's heart sang as the sunny miles whizzed past. She and Gerald
were together, and who knew what might come after? She caught herself
wishing that an accident might terminate the day, that she might be
fatally injured, and gasp out her life in Gerald's arms. Gaunt would be
legally compelled to continue the allowances to her family. The idea
fascinated her, so that at length, after a long silence, she said to
her companion: "Isn't there a piece of poetry about two people riding
together for the last time? The man said he wished the world would end
at the end of the ride--do you know it?"
"Can't say I do. I'm not much at poetry," he answered apologetically,
"but he was a wise chap if he wanted to end off at the best bit. So you
think we are in like case?" he stooped to look into her eyes.
She was shaken into remembrance, and stood on guard in a moment. "Oh,
no, of course not! What nonsense! I was only thinking to myself in the
silly way I sometimes do."
"Just so. For you the world is but just beginning. You are returning
to-morrow to the arms of the man who loved you so devotedly that for
the sake of calling you his own he was ready to come to the rescue of
your family. For me the case is very, very different. I don't know who
could blame me if I wished that this day should end my life."
She laughed. "But that is really nonsense. You are a man--you can go
where you like and do as you like. I must do as some one else wills all
my life long."
"You think that I can do as I like, Virgie?"
"Of course you can."
"If I did, you would be distinctly surprised. I should tell the
chauffeur to change his course--or, rather, to continue on, past Lewes,
to Newhaven; and I should carry you on board the first steamer that
sailed, and we should vanish across the sea and start life together in
some glorious new land, and you would be mine--all mine!"
He spoke half banteringly, but very tenderly, and she hardly knew how
to take him.
"As I am I, and as you are you, that is out of the question, you know,"
he went on, almost in a whisper. "You are not the girl to break your
oath and I am not the man to tempt you, even if I thought I could do it
with success. So all will go on as before. We shall be together to-day
and we shall part to-morrow; and for the rest of my life I shall be
fully occupied in resisting the temptation to cut Gaunt's throat."
Virgie decided that she was expected to laugh, and did so, but very
softly.
"Don't talk like that," she begged him wistfully. "Let us be quite
happy, and think about Pansy, and how wonderful it is that she should
be getting well."