"La langue des femmes est leur epee,
et elles ne la laissent pas rouiller."
The grounds of the house formed a parallelogram, of which the longer
sides were parallel with the river. In the north-east corner stood the
house itself, its front facing west. It was not a large house, as has
been explained. A conservatory was built against nearly the whole
length of the front. The lawns and flower-beds spread to west and
south, sloping down to the river's edge. The opposite angle was
occupied by stables, kitchen-garden, and boat-house. Gabriel Cassilis
approached it from the east. An iron railing and a low hedge, along
which were planted limes, laburnums, and lilacs, separated the place
from the road. But before reaching the gate--in fact, at the corner of
the kitchen-garden--he could, himself, unseen, look through the trees
and observe the party. They were all there. He saw Mrs. L'Estrange,
Phillis, his own wife--Heavens! how calm and cold she looked, and how
beautiful he thought her!--with half a dozen other ladies. The men
were few. There was the curate. He was dangling round Phillis, and
wore an expression of holiness-out-for-a-holiday, which is always so
charming in these young men. Gabriel Cassilis also noticed that he was
casting eyes of longing at the young lady. There was Lawrence
Colquhoun. Gabriel Cassilis looked everywhere for him, till he saw
him, lying beneath a tree, his head on his hand. He was not talking to
Victoria, nor was he looking at her. On the contrary, he was watching
Phillis. There was Captain Ladds. He was talking to one of the young
ladies, and he was looking at Phillis. The young lady evidently did
not like this. And there was Gilead Beck. He was standing apart,
talking to Mrs. L'Estrange, with his hands in his pockets, leaning
against a tree. But he, too, was casting furtive glances at Phillis.
They all seemed, somehow, looking at the girl. There was no special
reason why they should look at her, except that she was so bright, so
fresh, and so charming for the eye to rest upon. The other girls were
as well dressed, but they were nowhere compared with Phillis. The
lines of their figures, perhaps, were not so fine; the shape of their
heads more commonplace; their features not so delicate; their pose
less graceful. There are some girls who go well together. Helena and
Hermia are a foil to each other; but when Desdemona shows all other
beauties pale like lesser lights. And the other beauties do not like
it.
Said one of the fair guests to another--
"What do they see in her?"
"I cannot tell," replied her friend. "She seems to me more
_farouche_ than ever."
For, having decided that _farouche_ was the word to express poor
Phillis's distinguishing quality, there was no longer any room for
question, and _farouche_ she continued to be. If there is anything
that Phillis never was, it is that quality of fierce shy wildness
which requires the adjective _farouche_. But the word stuck, because
it sounded well. To this day--to be sure, it is only a twelvemonth
since--the girls say still, "Oh, yes! Phillis Fleming. She was pretty,
but extremely _farouche_."
Gabriel Cassilis stood by the hedge and looked through the trees. He
has come all the way from town to attend this party, and now he
hesitated at the very gates. For he became conscious of two things:
first, that the old feeling of not finding his words was upon him
again; and secondly, that he was not exactly dressed for a festive
occasion. Like most City men who have long remained bachelors, Gabriel
Cassilis was careful of his personal appearance. He considered a
garden-party as an occasion demanding something special. Now he not
only wore his habitual pepper-and-salt suit, but the coat in which he
wrote at his office--a comfortable easy old frock, a little baggy at
the elbows. His mind was strung to such an intense pitch, that such a
trifling objection as his dress--because Gabriel Cassilis never looked
other than a gentleman--appeared to him insuperable. He withdrew from
the hedge, and retraced his steps. Presently he came to a lane. He
left the road, and turned down the path. He found himself by the
river. He sat down under a tree, and began to think.
He thought of the time when his lonely life was wearisome to him, when
he longed for a wife and a house of his own. He remembered how he
pictured a girl who would be his darling, who would return his
caresses and love him for his own sake. And how, when he met Victoria
Pengelley, his thoughts changed, and he pictured that girl, stately
and statuesque, at the head of the table. There would be no pettings
and caressings from her, that was quite certain. On the other hand,
there would be a woman of whom he would be proud--one who would wear
his wealth properly. And a woman of good family, well connected all
round. There were no caresses, he remembered now; there was the
coldest acceptance of him; and there had been no caresses since. But
he had been proud of her; and as for her honour--how was it possible
that the doubt should arise? That man must be himself distinctly of
the lower order of men who would begin by doubting or suspecting his
wife.
To end in this: doubt so strong as to be almost certainty: suspicion
like a knife cutting at his heart; his brain clouded; and he himself
driven to creep down clandestinely to watch his wife.
He sat there till the June sun began to sink in the west. The river
was covered with the evening craft. They were manned by the young City
men but just beginning the worship of Mammon, who would have looked
with envy upon the figure sitting motionless in the shade by the
river's edge had they known who he was. Presently he roused himself,
and looked at his watch. It was past seven. Perhaps the party would be
over by this time; he could go home with his wife; it would be
something, at least, to be with her, to keep her from that other man.
He rose,--his brain in a tumult--and repaired once more to his point
of vantage at the hedge. The lawn was empty; there was no one there.
But he saw his own carriage in the yard, and therefore his wife was
not yet gone.
In the garden, no one. He crept in softly, and looked round him. No
one saw him enter the place; and he felt something like a burglar as
he walked, with a stealthy step which he vainly tried to make
confident, across the lawn.
Two ways of entrance stood open before him. One was the porch of the
house, covered with creepers and hung with flowers. The door stood
open, and beyond it was the hall, looking dark from the bright light
outside. He heard voices within. Another way was by the conservatory,
the door of which was also open. He looked in. Among the flowers and
vines there stood a figure he knew--his wife's. But she was alone. And
she was listening. On her face was an expression which he had never
seen there, and never dreamed of. Her features were distorted; her
hands were closed in a tight clutch; her arms were stiffened--but she
was trembling. What was she doing. To whom was she listening?
He hesitated a moment, and then he stepped through the porch into the
hall. The voices came from the right, in fact, from the morning
room,--Phillis's room,--which opened by its single window upon the
lawn, and by its two doors into the hall on one side and the
conservatory on the other.
And Gabriel Cassilis, like his wife, listened. He put off his hat,
placed his umbrella in the stand, and stood in attitude, in case he
should be observed, to push open the door and step in. He was so
abject in his jealousy that he actually did not feel the disgrace and
degradation of the act. He was so keen and eager to lose no word, that
he leaned his head to the half-open door, and stood, his long thin
figure trembling with excitement, like some listener in a melodrama of
the transpontine stage.
There were two persons in the room, and one was a woman; and they were
talking together. One was Lawrence Colquhoun and the other was Phillis
Fleming.
Colquhoun was not, according to his wont, lying on a sofa, nor sitting
in the easiest of the chairs. He was standing, and he was speaking in
an earnest voice.
"When I saw you first," he said, "you were little Phillis--a wee
toddler of six or seven. I went away and forgot all about you--almost
forgot your very existence, Phillis,--till the news of Mr. Dyson's
death met me on my way home again. I fear that I have neglected you
since I came home; but I have been worried."
"What has worried you, Lawrence?" asked the girl.
She was sitting on the music-stool before the piano; and as she spoke
she turned from the piano, her fingers resting silently on the notes.
She was dressed for the party,--which was over now, and the guests
departed,--in a simple muslin costume, light and airy, which became
her well. And in her hair she had placed a flower. There were flowers
all about the room, flowers at the open window, flowers in the
conservatory beyond, flowers on the bright green lawns beyond.
"How pretty you are, Phillis!" answered her guardian.
He touched her cheek with his finger as she sat.
"I am your guardian," he said, as if in apology.
"And you have been worried about things?" she persisted. "Agatha says
you never care what happens."
"Agatha is right, as a rule. In one case, of which she knows nothing,
she is wrong. Tell me, Phillis, is there anything you want in the
world that I can get for you?"
"I think I have everything," she said, laughing. "And what you will
not give me I shall wait for till I am twenty-one."
"You mean----"
"I mean--Jack Dunquerque, Lawrence."
Only a short month ago, and Jack Dunquerque was her friend. She could
speak of him openly and friendly, without change of voice or face. Now
she blushed, and her voice trembled as she uttered his name. That is
one of the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual state
known to the most elementary observers.
"I wanted to speak about him. Phillis, you are very young, you have
seen nothing of the world; you know no other men. All I ask you is to
wait. Do not give your promise to this man till you have at least had
an opportunity of--of comparing--of learning your own mind."
She shook her head.
"I have already given my promise," she said.
"But it is a promise that may be recalled," he urged. "Dunquerque is a
gentleman; he will not hold you to your word when he feels that he
ought not to have taken it from you. Phillis, you do not know
yourself. You have no idea of what it is that you have given, or its
value. How can I tell you the truth?"
"I think you mean the best for me, Lawrence," she said. "But the best
is--Jack."
Then she began to speak quite low, so that the listeners heard
nothing.
"See, Lawrence, you are kind, and I can tell you all without being
ashamed. I think of Jack all day long and all night. I pray for him in
the morning and in the evening. When he comes near me I tremble; I
feel that I must obey him if he were to order me in anything. I have
no more command of myself when he is with me----"
"Stop, Phillis," Lawrence interposed; "you must not tell me any more.
I was trying to act for the best; but I will make no further
opposition. See, my dear"--he took her hand in his in a tender and
kindly way--"if I write to Jack Dunquerque to-day, and tell the
villain he may come and see you whenever he likes, and that he shall
marry you whenever you like, will that do for you?"
She started to her feet, and threw her left hand--Lawrence still
holding the right--upon his shoulder, looking him full in the face.
"Will it do? O Lawrence! Agatha always said you were the kindest man
in the world; and I--forgive me!--I did not believe it, I could not
understand it. O Jack, Jack, we shall be so happy, so happy! He loves
me, Lawrence, as much as I love him."
The listeners in the greenhouse and the hall craned their necks, but
they could hear little, because the girl spoke low.
"Does he love you as much as you love him, Phillis? Does he love you a
thousand times better than you can understand? Why, child, you do not
know what love means. Perhaps women never do quite realise what it
means. Only go on believing that he loves you, and love him in return,
and all will be well with you."
"I do believe it, Lawrence! and I love him, too."
Looking through the flowers and the leaves of the conservatory glared
a face upon the pair strangely out of harmony with the peace which
breathed in the atmosphere of the place--a face violently distorted by
passion, a face in which every evil feeling was at work, a face dark
with rage. Phillis might have seen the face had she looked in that
direction, but she did not; she held Lawrence's hand, and she was
shyly pressing it in gratitude.
"Phillis," said Lawrence hoarsely, "Jack Dunquerque is a lucky man. We
all love you, my dear; and I almost as much as Jack. But I am too old
for you; and besides, besides----" He cleared his throat, and spoke
more distinctly. "I do love you, however, Phillis; a man could not be
long beside you without loving you."
There was a movement and a rustle in the leaves.
The man at the door stood bewildered. What was it all about? Colquhoun
and a woman--not his wife--talking of love. What love? what woman? And
his wife in the conservatory, looking as he never saw her look before,
and listening. What did it all mean? what thing was coming over him?
He pressed his hand to his forehead, trying to make out what it all
meant, for he seemed to be in a dream; and, as before, while he tried
to shape the words in his mind for some sort of an excuse, or a
reassurance to himself, he found that no words came, or, if any, then
the wrong words.
The house was very quiet; no sounds came from any part of it,--the
servants were resting in the kitchen, the mistress of the house was
resting in her room, after the party,--no voices but the gentle talk
of the girl and her guardian.
"Kiss me, Phillis," said Lawrence. "Then let me hold you in my arms
for once, because you are so sweet, and--and I am your guardian, you
know, and we all love you."
He drew her gently by the hands. She made no resistance; it seemed to
her right that her guardian should kiss her if he wished. She did not
know how the touch of her hand, the light in her eyes, the sound of
her voice, were stirring in the man before her depths that he thought
long ago buried and put away, awakening once more the possibilities,
at forty, of a youthful love.
His lips were touching her forehead, her face was close to his, he
held her two hands tight, when the crash of a falling flower-pot
startled him, and Victoria Cassilis stood before him.
Panting, gasping for breath, with hands clenched and eyes distended--a
living statue of the _femina demens_. For a moment she paused to take
breath, and then, with a wave of her hand which was grand because it
was natural and worthy of Rachel--because you may see it any day among
the untutored beauties of Whitechapel, among the gipsy camps, or in
the villages where Hindoo women live and quarrel--Victoria Cassilis
for once in her life was herself, and acted superbly, because she did
not act at all.
"Victoria!" The word came from Lawrence.
Phillis, with a little cry of terror, clung tightly to her guardian's
arm.
"Leave him!" cried the angry woman. "Do you hear?--leave him!"
"Better go, Phillis," said Lawrence.
At the prospect of battle the real nature of the man asserted itself.
He drew himself erect, and met her wild eyes with a steady gaze, which
had neither terror nor surprise in it--a gaze such as a mad doctor
might practise upon his patients, a look which calms the wildest
outbreaks, because it sees in them nothing but what it expected to
find, and is only sorry.
"No! she shall not go," said Victoria, sweeping her skirts behind her
with a splendid movement from her feet; "she shall not go until she
has heard me first. You dare to make love to this girl, this
schoolgirl, before my very eyes. She shall know, she shall know our
secret!"
"Victoria," said Lawrence calmly, "you do not understand what you are
saying. _Our_ secret? Say your secret, and be careful."
The door moved an inch or two; the man standing behind it was shaking
in every limb. "Their secret? her secret?" He was going to learn at
last; he was going to find the truth; he was going---- And here a
sudden thought struck him that he had neglected his affairs of late,
and that, this business once got through, he must look into things
again; a thought without words, because, somehow, just then he had no
words--he had forgotten them all.
The writer of the anonymous letters had done much mischief, as she
hoped to do. People who write anonymous letters generally contrive so
much. Unhappily, the beginning of mischief is like the boring of a
hole in a dam or dyke, because very soon, instead of a trickling
rivulet of water, you get a gigantic inundation. Nothing is easier
than to have your revenge; only it is so very difficult to calculate
the after consequences of revenge. If the writer of the letters had
known what was going to happen in consequence, most likely they would
never have been written.
"Their secret? her secret?" He listened with all his might. But
Victoria, his wife Victoria, spoke out clearly; he could hear without
straining his ears.
"Be careful," repeated Lawrence.
"I shall not be careful; the time is past for care. You have sneered
and scoffed at me; you have insulted me; you have refused almost to
know me,--all that I have borne, but this I will not bear."
"Phillis Fleming." She turned to the girl. Phillis did not shrink or
cower before her; on the contrary, she stood like Lawrence, calm and
quiet, to face the storm, whatever storm might be brewing. "This man
takes you in his arms and kisses you. He says he loves you; he dares
to tell you he loves you. No doubt you are flattered. You have had the
men round you all day long, and now you have the best of them at your
feet, alone, when they are gone. Well, the man you want to catch, the
excellent _parti_ you and Agatha would like to trap, the man who
stands there----"
"Victoria, there is still time to stop," said Lawrence calmly.
"That man is my husband!"
Phillis looked from one to the other, understanding nothing. The man
stood quietly stroking his great beard with his fingers, and looking
straight at Mrs. Cassilis.
"My husband. We were married six years ago and more. We were married
in Scotland, privately; but he is my husband, and five days after our
wedding he left me. Is that true?"
"Perfectly. You have forgotten nothing, except the reason of my
departure. If you think it worth while troubling Phillis with that,
why----"
"We quarrelled; that was the reason. He used cruel and bitter
language. He gave me back my liberty."
"We separated, Phillis, after a row, the like of which you may
conceive by remembering that Mrs. Cassilis was then six years younger,
and even more ready for such encounters than at present. We separated;
we agreed that things should go on as if the marriage, which was no
marriage, had never taken place. Janet, the maid, was to be trusted.
She stayed with her mistress; I went abroad. And then I heard by
accident that my wife had taken the liberty I gave her, in its fullest
sense, by marrying again. Then I came home, because I thought that
chapter was closed; but it was not, you see; and for her sake I wish I
had stayed in America."
Mrs. Cassilis listened as if she did not hear a word; then she went
on--
"He is my husband still. I can claim him when I want him; and I claim
him now. I say, Lawrence, so long as I live you shall marry no other
woman. You are mine; whatever happens, you are mine."
The sight of the man, callous, immovable, suddenly seemed to terrify
her. She sank weeping at his knees.
"Lawrence, forgive me, forgive me! Take me away. I never loved any one
but you. Forgive me!"
He made no answer or any sign.
"Let me go with you, somewhere, out of this place; let us go away
together, we two. I have never loved any one but you--never any one
but you, but you!"
She broke into a passion of sobs. When she looked up, it was to meet
the white face of Gabriel Cassilis. He was stooping over her, his
hands spread out helplessly, his form quivering, his lips trying to
utter something; but no sound came through them. Beyond stood
Lawrence, still with the look of watchful determination which had
broken down her rage. Then she sprang to her feet.
"You here? Then you know all. It is true; that is my legal husband.
For two years and more my life has been a lie. Stand back, and let me
go to my husband!"
But he stood between Colquhoun and herself. Lawrence saw with a sudden
terror that something had happened to the man. He expected an outburst
of wrath, but no wrath came. Gabriel Cassilis turned his head from one
to the other, and presently said, in a trembling voice--
"A fine day, and seasonable weather for the time of year."
"Good God!" cried Lawrence, "you have destroyed his reason!"
Gabriel Cassilis shook his head, and began again--
"A fine day, and seasonable----"
Here he threw himself upon the nearest chair, and buried his face in
his hands.