Margaret was not a very good subject for morphia. True it relieved her
pain, set her mind at rest, or deadened her nerve centres for the time.
But when the immediate effect wore off she was intolerably restless, and
although the bromide tided her over the night, she drowsed through an
exhausted morning and woke to sickness and misery, to depression and a
tendency towards tears. She was utterly unable to see her lover, she
felt she could not face him, meet him, conceal or reveal what had
happened. Dr. Kennedy came up and she told him exactly how she felt. She
told him also that he must go to the station in her stead. She said she
was too broken, too ill.
This unnerved and weakened Margaret distracted Peter, and he thought of
every drug in the pharmacopœia in the way of a pick-me-up. He said that
of course he would go to the station, go anywhere, do anything she asked
him. But, he added gloomily, that he would probably blunder and make
things worse.
“He would ever so much rather hear it from you if it must be told him,”
he urged. “He’ll guess you are ill when you are not at the station.
He’ll rush up here and see you and everything will be all right. He has
only got to see you.”
Dr. Kennedy then begged her to go back to bed, but without effect.
Fortunately the only drug to which he could ultimately persuade her was
carbonate of soda! That and a strong cup of coffee helped to revive her.
Stevens had the qualities of her defects and insisted later upon beef
tea. Margaret, although still looking ill, was really almost normal when
four o’clock came bringing Gabriel. Her plan of Peter Kennedy meeting
him miscarried, and she need not have feared his anxiety when she was
not at the station. Gabriel had caught an earlier train than usual. Ever
since Tuesday his anxiety had been growing, notwithstanding her letters
and reassurances.
He was dismayed at seeing Dr. Kennedy’s hat in the hall. Little more so
than Margaret was when she heard the wheels of the car on the gravel and
learnt from Peter, at the window, that Gabriel was in it. They were
unprepared for each other when he walked in. Yet if Peter had not been
there all might still have been well. It was Dr. Kennedy’s instinct to
stand between her and trouble, and his misfortune to stand between her
and Gabriel Stanton.
“You are ill?” and
“You are early?” came from each of them simultaneously. If the doctor
had slipped out of the room they would perhaps have found more to say.
But he stayed and joined in that short dialogue, thinking he was meeting
her wishes.
“She has had an attack of angina, a pretty hot one at that. I gave her a
morphia injection and it did not suit her. She is simply not fit for any
emotion or excitement. As a matter of fact she ought not to be out of
bed today.”
“Has my coming by an earlier train distressed you?” Gabriel asked
Margaret, perhaps a little coldly. Certainly not as he would have asked
her had they been alone. Nor were matters improved when she answered
faintly:
“Tell him, Peter.”
Her lover wanted to hear nothing that Peter Kennedy might tell him. He
was startled when she used his Christian name. He had a distaste at
hearing his fiancée’s health discussed, a sensitiveness not unnatural.
From an older or more impersonal physician he might have minded it less;
or from one who had not admitted to him, and gloried in the admission,
that he was in love with his patient.
“I don’t want to hear anything that Dr. Kennedy can tell me,” was what
he said, but it misrepresented his mind. It sounded sullen or
ill-tempered, but was neither, only an inarticulate evidence of distress
of mind.
“Surely, Margaret, your news can wait....” This was added in a lower
tone. But Margaret was beyond, and Peter Kennedy impervious to hint. The
only thing that softened the situation to Gabriel was that she made room
for him on the sofa, by a gesture inviting him to seat himself there.
Almost he pretended not to see it, he felt rigid and uncompromising.
Nevertheless, after a moment’s hesitation, he found himself beside her,
listening to Dr. Kennedy’s unwelcome voice.
“You knew, didn’t you, that there had been a man hanging about the
place, trying to get information from the servants? Margaret first heard
of this last Tuesday....” Gabriel missed the next sentence. That the
fellow should speak of her as “Margaret” made him see red. When his
vision cleared Peter was still talking. There had been some allusion to
or description of cook’s weakness, and the discursiveness was a fresh
offence.
“What she told him in her amorous moments we have no means of knowing,
but that it included the information that you had stayed in the house
there is not much reason to doubt. And down came this woman like a ton
of bricks on Wednesday morning and flung a bomb on us in the shape of a
demand for a thousand pounds.”
“What woman?”
“The man’s employer. She had set him on to it.”
“Who?”
“This blackmailing person.”
The “us” tightened Gabriel’s thin lips and hardened his deep-set eyes.
Had they been alone he might have remembered what Margaret must have
suffered, what a dreadful thing this visit must have been to her. As it
was, and for the moment, he thought of nothing but of Peter Kennedy’s
intervention, interference.
“Why did you see her?” he asked Margaret.
“I thought she came from Anne,” she faltered.
“From Anne!”
“She is the Christian Science woman,” Peter explained.
And now indeed the full force of the blow struck him.
“Mrs. Roope?” he got out.
“No other,” Peter answered. “Crammed choke-full of extracts from Mrs.
Eddy. James Capel is her husband’s cousin. At least so she says. And
that he never wanted to be divorced from his wife, and would welcome a
chance of stopping the decree from being made absolute. She said the
higher morality bade her go to him. ‘Husband and wife should never
separate if there is no Christian demand for it,’ she quoted. But help
toward the Christian Science Church, or movement, she would construe as
‘a Christian demand.’ She asked for a thousand pounds! Mrs. Capel,” this
time for some unknown reason he said “Mrs. Capel” and Gabriel heard
better, “was quite overwhelmed, knocked to pieces by her impudence.
That’s when I came on the scene. I told the woman what I thought of her;
you may bet I didn’t mince matters. And then I offered her a
hundred....”
Gabriel got up suddenly, abruptly, his face flushed.
“You ... you offered her a hundred pounds?”
“Well! there was not a bit of good trying for less. It was a round sum.”
“You allowed Mrs. Capel to be blackmailed!”
“What would you have done? Of course I did.”
“It was disgraceful, indefensible.”
“Gabriel.” She called him by his name, she wanted him to sit down by
her, but he remained standing. “There was no time to send for any one,
ask for advice....”
“It was a case of ‘your money or your life.’ The woman put a pistol to
our heads. ‘Pay up or I’ll take my tale to James Capel’ was the
beginning and end of what she said. I got her down finally to £250.”
“You gave the woman, this infamous, blackmailing person, £250?”
“And cheap enough too. Wait a bit. I can guess what you are thinking.
I’m not such a fool as you take me for. She only had a hundred in cash,
the other is a post-dated cheque, not due until the decree is made
absolute. Then I ran her out of the house.”
“Who wrote those cheques?” The flush deepened, Gabriel could hardly
control his voice.
“I wrote them and Mrs. Capel signed them. She was absolutely bowled
over, it was as much as she could do to sign her name.”
Gabriel was beside himself or he would not have spoken as he did.
“You did an infamous thing, sir, an infamous thing. You should have
guarded this lady, since I was not here, sheltered her innocence. To
allow oneself to be blackmailed is an admission of guilt. The way you
sheltered her innocence was to advise her practically to admit guilt.”
He was choked with anger.
“Gabriel,” she pleaded.
“My dear,” never had he spoken to her in such a way, he seemed hardly to
remember she was there, “I acquit you entirely. You did not know what
you were doing, could not be expected to know. But _this_ fellow, this
blackguard....” He actually advanced a step or two toward him,
threateningly. “Her good name was at stake, mine as well as hers, was
and is at stake.”
“And I saved it for you, for both of you. I’ve shut Mrs. Roope’s mouth.
You’ll never hear a word more....”
“Not hear more?” Gabriel was deeply contemptuous. “Did you ever know a
blackmailer who was satisfied with the first blood? You have opened the
door wide to her exactions....”
“You are taking an entirely wrong view, you are prejudiced. Because you
don’t like me you blame me whether I am right or wrong.”
“You don’t know the difference between right and wrong.”
“I wasn’t going to have my patient upset,” he said obstinately.
“Gabriel, listen to me, hear me. Don’t be so angry with Peter. _I_
wanted the woman paid to keep quiet. I insisted upon her being paid.”
And then under her breath she said, “There is such a little time more.”
“There is all our lives,” Gabriel answered in that deep outraged voice.
“All our lives it will be a stain that money was paid. As if we had
something to conceal.”
His point of view was not theirs, neither Peter’s nor Margaret’s. They
argued and protested, justifying themselves and each other. But it
seemed to Gabriel there was no argument. When Margaret pleaded he had to
listen, to hold himself in hand, to say as little as possible. Toward
Peter Kennedy he was irreconcilable. “A man _ought_ to have known,” he
said doggedly.
“He wanted to ward off an attack.”
Dr. Kennedy went away ultimately, he had that amount of sense. By this
time he was at least as antagonistic to Gabriel Stanton as Gabriel to
him.
“Stiff-necked blighter! He’d talk ethics if she were dying. What does it
matter whether it was right or wrong? Anyway, I got rid of the woman for
her, set her mind at rest. I bet my way was as good as any _he’d_ have
found! Now I suppose he’ll argue her round until she looks upon me as
the villain of the play.” In which, as the sequel shows, he wronged his
lady love. “Insufferable prig!” And with that and a few more muttered
epithets he went off to endure a hideous few days, fearing for her all
the time, in the hands of such a man as Gabriel Stanton, whom he deemed
hard and self-righteous.
But he need not have feared. The two men were poles apart in
temperament, education, and environment. Circumstances aided in making
them intolerant of each other. Their judgment was biased. Margaret saw
them both more clearly than they saw each other. Her lover was the
stronger, finer man, had the higher standard. And he was right, right
this time, as always. Yet she thought sympathetically of the other and
the weakness that led him to compromise. The Christian Scientist should
not have been paid, she should have been prosecuted. Margaret saw it
now,—she, too, had not seen it at the moment. She confessed herself a
coward.
“But our happiness was at stake, our whole happiness. In less than three
weeks now....”
Now that they were alone Gabriel could show his quality. The thing she
had done was indefensible. And he had hardly a hope that it would
achieve its object. He, himself, would not have done evil that good
might come of it, submitted, admitted ... the blood rushed to his face
and he could not trust himself even to think of what had practically
been admitted. But she had done it for love of him to secure their
happiness together. What man but would be moved by such an admission,
what lover? He could not hold out against her, nor continue to express
his doubts.
“Must we talk any more about it? I can’t bear your reproaches. Gabriel,
don’t reproach me any more.” She was nestling in the shelter of his
arms. “You know why I did it. I wish you would be glad.”
“My darling, I wish I could be. It was not your fault. I ought to have
come down. You ought not to have been left alone, or with an
unscrupulous person like this doctor.”
“Peter acted according to his lights. He did it for the best, he thought
only of me.”
“His lights are darkness, his best outrageous. Never mind, I will not
say another word, only you must promise me faithfully, swear to me that
if you do hear any more of this woman, or of the circumstance, from this
or any other quarter, you will do nothing without consulting me, you
will send for me at once....”
Margaret promised, Margaret swore.
“I want to lean upon your strength. I have so altered I don’t know
myself. Love has loosened, weakened me. I am no longer as I was, proud,
self-reliant. Gabriel, don’t let me be sorry that I love you. I am
startled by myself, by this new self. What have you done to me? Is this
what love means—weakness?”
When she said she needed to lean upon his strength his heart ran like
water to her. When she pleaded to him for forgiveness because she had
allowed herself to be blackmailed rather than delay their happiness
together, his tenderness overflowed and flooded the rock of his logic,
of his clear judgment. His arms tightened about her.
“I ought to have come to you whether you said yes or no. I knew you were
in trouble.”
“Not any longer.” She nestled to him.
“God knows....”
He thrust aside his misgivings later and gave himself up to soothing and
nursing her. Peter Kennedy need have had no fear, but then of course
this was a Gabriel Stanton he did not know.
Gabriel would not hear of Margaret coming down to dinner nor into the
drawing-room. She was to stay on the sofa in the music room, to have her
dinner served to her there. He said he would carve for her, not be ten
minutes away.
“All this trouble has made me forget that I have something to tell you.
No, no! Not now, not until you have rested.”
“I can’t wait, I can’t wait. Tell me now, at once. But I know. I know by
your face. It is about our little house. You have seen a house—our
house!”
“Not until after dinner. I must not tell you anything until you have
rested, had something to eat. You have been too agitated. Dear love, you
have been through so much. Yes, I have seen the house that seems to have
been built for us. Don’t urge me to tell you now. This has been the
first cloud that has come between us. It will never happen again. You
will keep nothing from me.”
“Haven’t I promised? Sworn?”
“Sweetheart!” And as he held her she whispered:
“You will never be angry with me again?”
“I was not angry with you. How could I be?”
She smiled. She was quite happy again now, and content.
“It looked like anger.”
“You focussed it wrongly,” he answered.
* * * * *
After they had dined; she on her sofa from a tray he supervised and sent
up to her, he in solitary state in the dining-room, hurrying through the
food that had no flavour to him in her absence: he told her about the
little house in Westminster that he had seen, and that seemed to fit all
their requirements. It was very early eighteenth-century, every brick of
it had been laid before Robert Adam and his brother went to Portland
Place, the walls were panelled and the mantelpieces untouched. They were
of carved wood in the drawing-room, painted alabaster in the library and
bedrooms, marble in the dining-room only. It was almost within the
precincts of the Abbey and there was a tiny courtyard or garden.
Margaret immediately envisaged it tiled and Dutch. Gabriel left it stone
and defended his opinion. There was a lead figure with the pretence of a
fountain.
“I could hardly believe my good luck when first I saw the place. I saw
you there at once. It was just as you had described, as we had hoped
for, unique and perfect in its way, a real home. It needs very careful
furnishing, nothing must be large, nor handsome, nor on an elaborate
scale. I shall find out the history, when it was built and for whom. A
clergy house, I think.”
She was full of enthusiasm and pressed for detail. Gabriel had to admit
he did not know how it was lit, nor if electric light had been
installed. He fancied not. Then there was the question of bathroom. Here
too there was a lapse in his memory. But that there was space for one he
was sure. There was a powder room off the drawing-room.
“In a clergy house?”
“I am not sure it was a clergy house.”
“Or that there _is_ a powder room!”
“It may have been meant for books. Anyway, there is one like it on the
next floor.”
“Where a bath could be put?”
“Yes, I think so. I am not sure. You will have to see it yourself. Nurse
yourself for a few days and then come up.”
“For a few days! That is good. Why, I am all right now, tonight. There,
feel my pulse.” She put her hand in his and he held it; her hand, not
her pulse.
“Isn’t it quite calm?”
“I don’t know ... _I_ am not.”
“I shall go up with you on Monday morning, or by the next train.”
He argued with her, tried to dissuade her, said she was still pale,
fatigued. But the words had no effect. She said that he was too careful
of her, and he replied that it was impossible.
“When a man has been given a treasure into his keeping ...” She hushed
him.
They were very happy tonight. Gabriel may still have had a misgiving. He
knew money ought never to have been paid as blackmail. That the trouble
should have come through Anne, Anne and her mad religion, was more than
painful to him. But true to promise he said no further word. He had
Margaret’s promise that if anything more was heard he would be advised,
sent for.
When he went back to the hotel that night he comforted himself with
that, tried to think that nothing further would be heard. Peter
Kennedy’s name had not been mentioned again between them. He meant to
persuade her, use all his influence that she should select another
doctor. That would be for another time. Tonight she needed only care.
He had taken no real alarm at her delicate looks, he had lived all his
life with an invalid. As for Margaret, there were times when she was
quite well, in exuberant health and spirits. She was under the spell of
her nerves, excitable, she had the artistic temperament _in excelsis_.
So he thought, and although he felt no uneasiness he was full of
consideration. Before he had left her tonight, at ten o’clock for
instance, and notwithstanding she wished him to stay, he begged her to
rest late in the morning, said he would be quite content to sit
downstairs and await her coming, to read or only sit still and think of
her. She urged the completeness of her recovery, but he persisted in
treating her as an invalid.
“You are an invalid tonight, my poor little invalid, you must go to bed
early. Tomorrow you are to be convalescent, and we will go down to the
sea, walk, or drive. I will wrap you up and take care of you.
Monday ...”
“Monday I have quite decided to go up to town.”
“We shall see how you are. I am not going to allow you to take any
risks.”
Such a different Gabriel Stanton from the one Peter Kennedy knew! One
would have thought there was not a hard spot in him. Margaret was sure
of it ... almost sure.
The morphia that had failed her last night put out its latent power and
helped her through this one. The dreams that came to her were all
pleasant, tinged with romance, filled with brocade and patches, with
fair women and gallant men in powder and knee-breeches. No man was more
gallant than hers. She saw Gabriel that night idealised, as King’s man
and soldier, poet, lover, on the stairs of that house of romance.
The next day was superb, spring merging into summer, a soft breeze, blue
sky flecked with white, sea that fell on the shore with convoluted
waves, foam-edged, but without force. Everything in Nature was fresh and
renewed, not calm, but with a bursting undergrowth, and one would have
thought Margaret had never been ill. She laughed and even lilted into
light song when Gabriel feared the piano for her. Her eyes were filled
with love and laughter, and her skin seemed to have upon it a new and
childish bloom, lightly tinged with rose, clear pale and exquisite.
Today one would have said she was more child than woman, and that life
had hardly touched her. Not touched to soil. Yet beneath her lightness
now and again Gabriel glimpsed a shadow, or a silence, rare and quickly
passing. This he placed to his own failure of temper yesterday, and set
himself to assuage it. He felt deeply that he was responsible for her
happiness. As she said, she had altered greatly since they first met. In
a way she had grown younger. This was not her first passion, but it was
her first surrender. That there was an unknown in him, an uncompromising
rectitude, had as it were buttressed her love. She had pride in him now
and pride in her love for him. For the first and only time in her life
self was in the background. He was her lover and was soon to be her
husband. Today they hardly held each other’s hand, or kissed. Margaret
held herself lightly aloof from him and his delicacy understood and
responded. Their hour was so near. There had been different vibrations
and uneasy moments between them, but now they had grown steady in love.
Margaret went up to town with Gabriel on Monday. She forgot all about
Peter Kennedy eating his heart out and wondering just how harsh and
dogmatic Gabriel Stanton was being with her. They were going first to
see the house.
“I must show it you myself.”
“We must see it together first.”
They were agreed about that. Afterwards Margaret had decided to go alone
to Queen Anne’s Gate and make full confession. She had wired, announcing
herself for lunch, asking that they should be alone. Then, later on in
the day, Gabriel was to see her father. In a fortnight they could be
married. Neither of them contemplated delay. The marriage was to be of
the quietest possible description. She no longer insisted upon the
yacht. Gabriel should arrange their honeymoon. They were not to go
abroad at all, there were places in England, historic, quite unknown to
her where he meant to take her. The main point was that they would be
together ... alone.
The first part of the programme was carried out. The house more than
fulfilled expectations. They found in it a thousand new and unexpected
beauties; leaded windows and eaves with gargoyles, a flagged path to the
kitchen with grass growing between the flags, a green patine on the Pan,
which Margaret declared was the central figure in her group of
musicians. Enlarged and piping solitary, but the same figure; an almost
miraculous coincidence. A momentary fright she had lest it was all too
good to be true, lest some one had forestalled them, would forestall
them even as they stood here talking, mentally placing print and
pottery, carpeting the irregular steps and slanting floors. That was
Gabriel’s moment of triumph. He had been so sure, he felt he knew her
taste sufficiently that he need not hesitate. The day he had seen the
house he had secured it. Nothing but formalities remained to be
concluded. She praised him for his promptitude and he wore her praise
proudly, as if it had been the Victoria Cross. A spasm of doubt may have
crossed her mind as to whether her father and stepmother would view it
with the same eyes, or would point out the lack of later-day luxuries or
necessities; light, baths, sanitation. Gabriel said everything could be
added, they had but to be careful not to interfere with the main
features of the little place, not to disturb its amenities. Margaret was
insistent that nothing at all should be done.
“We don’t want glaring electric light. We shall use wax candles....” He
put her into a cab before the important matter was decided. Privately he
thought one bath at least was desirable, but he found himself unable to
argue with her. Not just now, not at this minute when they came out of
the home they would make together. Such a home as it would mean!
Mrs. Rysam was less reticent and Margaret persuadable, but that came
later. Her father and stepmother were alone to lunch as she had asked
them. And she broke her news without delay. She was going to marry
Gabriel Stanton. There followed exclamation and surprise, but in the end
a real satisfaction. The house of Stanton was a great one. More than a
hundred years had gone to its upbuilding. Sir George was the doyen of
the profession of publisher. He was the fifth of his line. Gabriel,
although a cousin, was his partner and would be his successor. And he
himself was a man of mark. He had edited, or was editing the Union
Classics, and had contributed valuable matter to the Compendium on which
the whole strength of the house had been employed for the last fifteen
years, and which had already Royal recognition in the shape of the
baronetcy conferred on the head of the firm.
“Of course it should have been given to Gabriel,” Margaret said when she
had explained or reminded them of his position. Naturally she thought
this. They consoled her by predicting a similar honour for him in the
future. Margaret said she did not care one way or the other. She did not
unbare her heart, but she gave them more than a glimpse of it. That this
time she was marrying wisely and that happiness awaited her was
sufficient for them. Edgar B. looked forward to seeing Gabriel and
telling him so. He promised himself that he would find a way of
forwarding that happiness he foresaw for her. Giving was his
self-expression. Already before lunch was over he was thinking of
settlements. Mrs. Rysam, a little disappointed about the wedding, which
Margaret insisted was to be of the quietest description, was compensated
by talk about the house. Margaret might arrange, but her stepmother made
up her mind that she would superintend the improvements. Then there were
clothes. However quiet the wedding might be a trousseau was essential.
From the time the divorce had been decided upon until now Margaret had
had no heart for clothes. Her wardrobe was at the lowest possible ebb.
Father and stepmother agreed she was to grudge herself nothing. And
there was no time to lose, this very afternoon they must start
purchasing, also installing workmen in The Close, for so the little
house was named. A tremendous programme. Margaret of course must not go
back to Pineland, but must stay at Queen Anne’s Gate for the fortnight
that was to elapse before the wedding. Margaret demurred at this, but
thought it best to avoid argument. It was not that she had grown fond of
Pineland, or that Carbies suited her any better than it did. But the
atmosphere of Queen Anne’s Gate was not a romantic one, and her mood was
attuned to romance. Father and stepmother were material. Mr. Rysam gave
her a cheque for five hundred pounds and told her to fit herself out
properly. Mrs. Rysam promised house linen. Margaret could not but be
grateful although the one spoke too much and shrilly, and the other too
little and to the point.
“What is his income?” Edgar B. asked.
“That’s what I’ve got to learn and see what’s to be added to it to make
you really comfortable.”
“We shall want so little, Gabriel doesn’t care a bit about money,”
Margaret put in hastily.
“I daresay not.”
“And neither do I,” she was quick to add. Edgar B. with a twinkle in his
eye suggested she might not care for money but she liked what money
could buy. He was less original than most Americans in his expressions,
but unvaryingly true to type in his outlook.
What an afternoon they had, Margaret and her stepmother! The big car
took them to Westminster and the West End and back again. They were
making appointments, purchasing wildly, discussing endlessly. Or so it
seemed to Margaret, who, exhilarated at first, became conscious towards
the end of the day of nothing but an overmastering fatigue. She had
ordered several dozens of underwear, teagowns, dressing-gowns,
whitewash, a china bath, and electric lights! They appeared and
disappeared incongruously in her bewildered brain. She had protected her
panels, yet yielded to the necessity for drains. Her head was in a whirl
and Gabriel himself temporarily eclipsed. Her stepmother was
indefatigable, the greater the rush the greater her enjoyment. She would
even have started furnishing but that Margaret was firm in refusing to
visit either of the emporiums she suggested.
“Gabriel and I have our own ideas, we know exactly what we want. The
glib fluency of the shopmen takes my breath away.”
Mrs. Rysam urged their expert knowledge. Whatever her private opinion of
the house, its size or position, she fell in easily with Margaret’s
enthusiasm.
“You must not risk making any mistake. Messrs. Rye & Gilgat or
Maturin’s, that place in Albemarle Street, they all have experts who
have the periods at their fingers’ ends. You’ve only got to tell them
the year, and they’ll set to work and get you chintzes and brocades and
everything suitable from a coal scuttle to a cabinet....”
Margaret, however, although over-tired, was not to be persuaded to put
herself and her little house unreservedly into any one’s hands. She was
not capable of effort, only of resistance. Tea at Rumpelmayer’s was an
interregnum and not a rest. More clothes became a nightmare, she begged
to be taken home, was alarmed when Mrs. Rysam offered to go on alone,
and begged her to desist. When the car took them back to Queen Anne’s
Gate, Gabriel had already left after a most satisfactory interview with
her father. Edgar B., seeing his daughter’s exhaustion and pallor, had
the grace not to insist on explaining the word “satisfactory.” He
insisted instead that she should rest, sleep till dinnertime. The
inexhaustible stepmother heard that Gabriel had been pleased with
everything Margaret’s father had suggested. He would settle house and
furniture, make provision for the future. Whatever was done for Margaret
or her children was to be done for her alone, he wanted nothing but the
dear privilege of caring for her. Edgar appreciated his attitude and it
did not make him feel less liberal.
“And the house? How about this house they’ve seen in Westminster? Is it
good enough? big enough? He said it was a little house, but why so
small?”
“They are just dead set on it. Small or large you won’t get them to look
at another. It’s just something out of the way and quaint, such as
Margaret would go crazy on. No bathroom, no drains, but a paved
courtyard and a lead figure....”
“Well, well! each man to his taste, and woman too. She knows what she
wants, that’s one thing. She made a mistake last time and it has cost
her eight years’ suffering. She’s made none this time and everything has
come right. He’s a fine fellow, this Gabriel Stanton, a white man all
through. One might have wished him a few years younger, he said that
himself. He’s going on for forty.”
“What’s forty! Margaret is twenty-eight, herself.”
“Well! bless her, there’s a lifetime of happiness before her and I’ll
gild it.”
“The drawing-room will take a grand piano.”
“That’s good.”
“And I’ve settled to give her the house linen myself.”
“No place for a car, I suppose. In an out-of-the-way place like that
she’ll need a car.”
So they planned for her; having suffered in her suffering and eclipse,
and eager now to make up to her for them, as indeed they had always
been. Only in the bitter past it proved difficult because her
sensitiveness had baffled them. It was that which had kept her bound so
long. All that could be done had been done, to arrange a divorce _via_
lawyers through Edgar B.’s cheque-book. But James Capel, when it came to
the end, proved that he cared less for money than for limelight, and had
defended the suit recklessly with the help of an unscrupulous attorney.
The nightmare of the case was soon over, but the shadow of it had
darkened many of their days. This wedding was really the end and would
put the coping stone on their content.
Neither Edgar B. nor his wife heard anything of the attempt at
blackmail. Gabriel, of course, did not tell them. Margaret, strange as
it may sound, had forgotten all about it! Something had given an impetus
to her feeling for Gabriel: and now it was at its flood tide. She had
written once, “Men do not love good women, they have a high opinion of
them.” She would not have written it now, she herself had found goodness
lovable. Gabriel Stanton was a better man than she had ever met. He was
totally unlike an American, and had scruples even about making money.
Her father and he, discoursing one evening upon commercial morality, she
found that they spoke different languages, and could arrive at no
understanding. But she discovered in herself a linguistic gift and so
saw through her father’s subtlety into Gabriel’s simplicity. She knew
then that the man who enthralled her was the type of which she had read
with interest, and written with enthusiasm, but never before
encountered. An English gentleman! With this in her consciousness she
could permit herself to revel in all his other attractions, his lean
vigour and easy movements, shapely hands and deep-set eyes under the
thin straight brows. His mouth was an inflexible line when his face was
in repose. When he smiled at her the asceticism vanished. He smiled at
her very often in these strange full days. The days hurried past, there
was little time for private conversation, an orgy of buying held them.
Margaret, yielding to pressure and inclination, stayed on and on until
the week passed and the next one was broken in upon. Now it was Tuesday
and there was only one more week. One more week! Sometimes it seemed
incredible. Always it seemed as if the sun was shining and the light
growing more intense, blinding. She moved toward it unsteadily. This
semi-American atmosphere into which she and her lover had become
absorbed was an atmosphere of hustle, kaleidoscopic, shifting.
“If they had only given me time to think I should have known that the
clothes and the house-linen, the carpets and curtains, the piano and the
choice of a car, could all wait until we came back, could wait even
after that. But they tear along and carry us after them in a whirlwind
of tempestuous good-nature,” Margaret said ruefully in the five minutes
they secured together before dinner that Tuesday evening.
“You are doing too much, exhausting your energy, using up your strength.
And we have not found time for even one prowl after old furniture in our
own way, that we spoke of at Carbies.”
“They are spoiling the house with the talk of preserving it. Today
Father told me it was absolutely necessary the floors should be
levelled....”
“I know. And he wants the kitchen concreted. Some wretched person with
the lips of a day-labourer and the soul of an iconoclast told him the
place was swarming with rats....”
“We wanted to hear mysterious noises behind the wainscot.”
They were half-laughing, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness in
their complaining. They and their house were caught in the
torpedo-netting of the parental Rysams’ strong common sense. Confronted
and caught they had to admit there was little glamour in rats and none
at all in black beetles. Still ... concrete! To yield to it was
weakness, to deny it, folly.
“I have lost sight of logic and forgotten how to argue. There is nothing
for it but to run away again. Gabriel, I have quite made up my mind.
Tomorrow, I am going back to Carbies. There are things to settle up
there, arrange. Stevens is coming back with me, and we are going before
anybody is up. Every day I have said that I must go, and each time
Father and Mother have answered breathlessly that it was impossible,
interposed the most cogent arguments. Now I am going without telling
them.”
“I am sure there is nothing else to be done. And stay until next week.
Let me come down Saturday. We need quiet. I feel as if I had been in a
machine room the last few days.”
“‘All day the wheels keep turning,’” she quoted.
“Yes, that expresses it perfectly. Run away and let me run after you.
Saturday afternoon and Sunday we will be on the beach, listen to the
sea, and forget the use of speech.”
“The use and abuse of speech. I’ll wear my oldest clothes. No! I won’t.
You shall have a treat. I really have some most exquisite things. I’ll
take them all down; change every hour or two, give you a private
view....”
“You are lovely in everything you wear. You need never trouble to
change. Think what a fatigue it will be. I want you to rest.”
“How serious you are! I was not in earnest, not quite in earnest. But I
can’t wait to show you a teagown, all lacy and transparent, made of
chiffon and mist....”
“Grey mist?”
“Yes.”
“I love you in grey.”
She laughed:
“You have had no opportunity of loving me in any other colour. Not
indoors at least. But you will. I could not have a one-coloured
trousseau. I’ve a wonderful beige walking-dress; one in blue serge,
lined with chiffon....”
“Tell me of your wedding-dress. Only a week today....” Before she had
told him her stepmother bustled in, her arms full of parcels that
Margaret must unpack, investigate, try on immediately after dinner, or
before. Dinner could wait. Margaret had already been tried on and tried
on until her head swam. She yielded again and Gabriel and her father
waited for dinner.
Nothing was as they had planned it. So, although they were too happy to
complain, and too grateful to resent what was being done for them, the
scheme that Margaret should return to Carbies without again announcing
her intention was hurriedly confirmed between them and carried out.
* * * * *
This time Margaret did not complain that the place was remote, the
garden desolate, the furniture ill-sorted and ill-suited. She was glad
to find herself anchored as it were in a quiet back-water, out of the
hurly-burly, able to hear herself breathe. Wednesday she spent in
resting, dreaming. She went to bed early.
Thursday found her at her writing-desk, sorting, re-sorting, reading
those early letters of hers, and of his; recapturing a mood. She
recognised that in those early days she had not been quite genuine, that
her letters did not ring as true as his. She saw there was a literary
quality in them that detracted from their value. Yet, taking herself
seriously, as always, and remembering the Brownings, she put them all in
orderly sequence, made attempts at a title, in the event of their ever
being published, wrote up her disingenuous diary. All that day, all
Thursday and part of Friday, she rediscovered her fine style, her gift
of phrase. The thing that held her was her own wonderful and beautiful
love story. And it was of that she wrote. She knew she would make her
mark upon the literature of the nineteenth century, had no doubt of it
at all. She had done much already. She rated highly her three or four
novels, her two plays. Unhappiness had dulled her gift, but today she
felt how wondrously it would be revived. There are epigrams among her
MS. notes.
“All his life he had kept his emotions soldered up in tin boxes, now he
was surprised that they were like little fish, compressed and without
life.” This was tried in half a dozen ways but never seemed to please
her.
“Happiness, true happiness, holds the senses in solution, it requires
matrimony to diffuse them.”
It seemed extraordinary now that she should have found content in these
futilities. But it was nevertheless true. She came down to Carbies on
Wednesday and it was Friday before she even remembered Peter Kennedy’s
existence, and that it would be only polite to let him know she was
here, greatly improved in health, on the eve of marriage. Friday morning
she telephoned for him. When he came she was sitting at her
writing-table, with that inner radiance about her of which he spoke so
often, her soft lips in smiling curves, her eyes agleam.
Peter had known she was there, known it since the hour she came. He had
bad news for her and would not hurry to tell her, not now, when she had
sent for him. In the presence of that radiance he found it difficult to
speak. He could not bear to think it would be blurred or obscured. If
the cruellest of necessities had not impelled him he would have kept
silence for always.