IF WE ONLY KNOW! IF WE ONLY KNOW!
Eleanor's face is seared with weeping.
For the last three days Philip has hardly spoken to her.
She has stayed indoors and avoided Giddy, but now a message comes from
the widow commenting on her non-appearance.
She pulls forward a sheet of paper, bites the end of her quill, and
cries great drops of tears on the blotting-book. In a straggling hand
she addresses an envelope to Mrs. Mounteagle, placing therein that
unlucky letter from Madame Faustine.
In as few words as possible she relates the scene on paper to her
friend.
"I am disheartened, dispirited, diseverythinged," she writes in
conclusion. "As Dick in 'The Light that Failed' says; 'I am down and
done for--broken--let me alone!'"
"Poor little wretch!" thinks Giddy, reading the sorrowful epistle. "I
must tell Carol. He shall see this forlorn-looking scrawl." She sighs
at the thought of some people's folly. "No sooner met, but they
looked," she quotes to herself, _apropos_ of Eleanor and Mr. Quinton.
"No sooner looked, but they loved; no sooner loved, but they sighed.
Ah! me, it's natural, very plain!"
* * * * *
Eleanor is not going out this afternoon, though the air is mild, the
sun shines, and all the world smiles.
She has more than one call to return, which should have been done
to-day, yet she sits alone in her pretty boudoir, neither reading,
working, nor writing.
Her expression renders her face even more beautiful than usual in the
subdued light. For a ray of winter sunshine, heralding the spring, has
quite dazzled Eleanor's eyes, till she draws the blind, and settles in
a cosy corner at the side of the fender.
In her hand is a letter, brief, yet to its owner teeming with news, so
significant the simple wording seems:
"Why this silence? Stay at home to-day. I _must_ see you."
It is neither commenced nor signed, but written in Carol Quinton's
familiar hand.
Surely there is something imperative about that "Stay at home to-day."
No "please," or "will you?" Merely the bare command. True the _must_
is underlined, and the question savours of anxiety as to her reticence
in writing or meeting him again.
"Well, he shall come, since this is to be the end."
Better face the matter out; it is dangerous dodging poisoned arrows.
She will try how her shield works, that is to glance them aside.
Determination is in her heart, and courage in her eye. Eleanor is
worked up into a fever of virtuous indignation at the remembrance of
all she has allowed Quinton to do and say in the past. This is to be
the turning point in her life. She will be loyal to her husband, and
her first pure love, she will show him that she is capable of
sacrifice, a woman to be trusted, looked up to, reverenced. Carol
Quinton shall never enter her doors again after this call, never see
her, hear from her, speak to her. She will fade from his life, as a
shadow, a phantom! The sting of sorrow, the bitterness of thus casting
a love she treasured to the wind, is subdued in a measure by a sense of
exhilaration, at the thought of her good resolve.
Already "virtue's own reward" seems in her grasp, her heart is lighter,
her spirit does not quail. She is tasting perhaps a shred of the
martyrs' joy, when they suffered in the cause of right, she is battling
down that weaker nature and gaining a victory in advance.
She is impatient for the moment to arrive when Carol shall stand before
her to learn his fate, his isolation, from her lips. No pity, no
glimpse of feeling, no suspicion of sentiment is to creep into this
day's farewell. He will leave her for ever with the ordinary
hand-shake of a casual acquaintance. Yes, she is nerved, strong, sure!
It has taken Eleanor three nights of sleepless vigil to overcome her
love and stamp it out. She has not reached this point without a
struggle.
She listens eagerly for him to come, longing for the interview to
commence and end, while a spirit of heroism is upon her, laying her
lower nature in the dust.
"Down! you shall never rise again," she cries. "Oh! why is he so long?
I want him _now_. I could do it _now_. After to-day I shall have
swept the temptation from my path, and made it impossible for Carol
Quinton to be my friend."
The bell rings--the outer bell. She staggers to her feet.
The brown chrysanthemum in her belt falls to the ground and lies
unheeded.
How she trembles! Her face, too, is deadly pale, revealed in the
mirror opposite. She sways like a flower blown in a gale. There is a
prayer on her lips, an angel knocking at her heart.
The door opens, and Sarah enters with the tea-tray.
Eleanor sinks on the sofa, the reaction leaving her faint and powerless
to speak.
She watches the tea-table brought forward, the hot scones placed by the
fire.
At last she regains her composure.
"Who was that at the front door, Sarah?"
"Mr. Quinton, ma'am."
"Mr. Quinton! Why did you not show him in?"
Eleanor leans forward breathlessly, looking Sarah up and down.
The maid crimsons, and replies:
"If you please, it was master's orders. He told me to say 'not at
home' when Mr. Quinton called."
A moment's pause, during which Mrs. Roche struggles with her
self-control.
Then in a calm voice she says:
"Very well, Sarah; that is all."
She raised the teapot with an effort, pouring out the brown fluid
jerkily.
As the door closes, she covers her face with her hands, rocking to and
fro.
[Illustration: She covers her face with her hands.]
"He does not trust me," she cries fiercely, all that is evil kindling
to life within her. "He slights and insults me, lowers me before my
own servants. He dares to shut his doors against my will, to the man
who is my friend. He treats me like a captive, a slave. Oh! Philip,
you do not know what you have done to-day? You do not guess how much
this want of faith may cost you. I was so strong, till you threw me
back, so sure, till you treated me like this!"
Eleanor realises how the shock of Philip's order has been the
death-blow to her good resolves. A sudden hatred of her husband leaps
into her heart and brain, choking her.
"A little confidence, a little love," she murmurs. "They are small
things to ask at Philip's hands, yet he holds them from me in his cold
reserve and suspicious dread."
Her eyes are dry and bright, her throat is parched, her forehead burns.
What will Carol think? Carol will be sorry, but not angry; Carol is
always kind, considerate, forgiving. The dangerous fascination of
imagination steals over her. Carol is at her side in a waking dream,
but the scene is very different to the one she had contemplated. She
fancies he is kneeling as once before by the same sofa, murmuring again
those wild, impassioned words. She bends to grasp his hands and raise
him from the grovelling adoration to her own level. They are just a
man and woman--soul to soul, clay; ah! yes, of the earth earthly.
She breaks into a low laugh which ripples round the room, and seems to
die away in something like a sob.
What is this rising tumult in her heart?
She cannot analyse her mood, it seems as if a certain knowledge has
broken in like a flood of light upon her dim reason.
"Who can prevent me loving him, who can hold me back if I will it, if I
choose?"
The door re-opens. Sarah enters with one of Mrs. Mounteagle's little
scented notes upon a salver.
DEAREST ELEANOR,--If you are in, just toddle round to tea like a
darling. I have some delicious toasted buns, and I want you to come
and eat them. Don't put on gloves.
Your all impatient,
GIDDY.
It is intolerable sitting in alone, fuming over her wrongs and acting a
drama with her imagination. Philip detests Giddy. She will pay him
out and go.
Glad of anything to divert the current of her thoughts, she snatches up
a small fur cap in the hall, which rests becomingly on Eleanor's wealth
of waving hair. Flinging a long red cloak around her, she slips out of
the house, and rings at the widow's door.
"I hope she is alone. I don't feel in the mood to compass Bertie's
inane conversation," thinks Mrs. Roche as the flaxen maid shows her in.
The twilight has gathered, but there is no lamp, as Giddy rustles
forward in a lavender tea-gown to greet Eleanor.
"You are a very bad child," she says holding up her finger, "but we've
found you out, and shown you up most shockingly. What right have you
to break hearts, as if they were only _bric-à-brac_, and say 'Not at
home' when you were probably gourmandising over the huge Buzzard cake
we ordered in town?"
Eleanor cannot speak, for Carol Quinton rises, and looks reproachfully
into her eyes. She feels like a hunted stag, and yet she is
glad--relieved.
"There! now you are in a hole," continues Giddy, laughing, "with no
time to invent a plausible excuse. But come and sit down and ask
forgiveness. I dare say Carol will get over it."
As yet Eleanor has not spoken. She walks like one in a trance to the
quaint old chair Mrs. Mounteagle draws forward. She sits down
mechanically and gazes at the colours in the carpet, just as she did
once before at the Butterflies' Club.
"What a poor little world it is!" she thinks, "just like a muddy,
narrow lane, through which its puppets drive or run, with the dirt
thrown up in their faces at every turn."
"Come! do not look so glum over it," coos Giddy, removing Eleanor's
cloak. "Carol knows as well as I do what a row you have been in, and
how rusty Mr. Roche has turned. We are both most terribly sorry for
you. I am sure I don't know how you stand him. It does so remind me
of my late husband, from whom I was separated by mutual agreement two
years before his death. Our quarrels began much in the same way. I
preferred a will of my own, and meant to have it. He would have
treated me like the chickens cooped up in the yard--a useful addition
to his table, only their part was the most enviable. I should not have
minded being cooked and roasted, for there my sorrows would have
ceased."
"Death must be very pleasant," says Eleanor slowly, her head turning
lightly to the alluring charms of suicide.
"No doubt, when you are old and ugly. But at present life is what you
have got to consider, my dear."
"Life and buttered buns," replies Eleanor drily, as Mrs. Mounteagle
hands the dish. "No, thank you, Giddy. I don't want any tea."
Her voice trembles with agitation, as Carol, who has never taken his
eyes off her, draws a little nearer.
"If you won't eat anything, dear," murmurs Giddy, "at least you must
drink something just to settle your nerves. Suction is so much more
romantic than mastication."
But Eleanor shakes her head.
"I am going to play peacemaker," declares Mrs. Mounteagle, "and leave
you two to make it up. I have an important letter to write, which must
catch the half-past five post. You owe Carol an apology, and that is
always difficult in the presence of a third party."
Eleanor is about to demur, when she catches Mr. Quinton's expression,
and his look withers the words on her tongue, and forces them back.
She only stammers, "Don't be long," and collapses into silence.
Giddy's important letter is addressed to the Fur Store. She orders the
muff.
* * * * *
If things have been going badly at "Lyndhurst" before the day on which
Philip makes his fatal error, they do not bear comparison with the bad
times that follow.
Even Erminie's sweet influence cannot bring peace to the
ill-conditioned home. True she does her best, coming frequently, and
spending long days in Eleanor's society. But though Mrs. Roche
entertains her charmingly, she refuses to discuss Philip, and flees
from good advice with the clever tact that can conceal rudeness and yet
repel in a breath.
"I don't know why," says Philip one day, in confidence to Erminie, "but
though I do all in my power to win back my wife's love, it seems I have
lost it for ever."
Erminie knows the reason, and so does he, only he dares not own it.
"She has tried me a good deal at times," he continues, "yet I love her
just as madly, and that is what makes me seem to her fiendishly cruel
occasionally, when the spirit of jealousy robs me of reason. I can't
bear it, Erminie, to see her restless and dissatisfied in my presence,
to feel her shudder from my kiss. An insurmountable barrier is rising
between us. Can you guess what it is?"
"Yes."
Erminie's answer startles Philip.
"Then, you, too, have noticed--all the world sees it? That man who is
trying to steal my wife from me is the curse, the foul fiend, the
shadow, the shame. I met him in the City only yesterday. He tried to
bow, but I looked him in the face and cut him dead. He paled and
shrank away."
"Then, perhaps," suggests Erminie hopefully, "Eleanor has broken with
him?"
"Not so long as she is in Giddy Mounteagle's clutches. For a while I
let my business alone, I stayed at home day after day to guard and
watch her. She divined the reason, and chafed against her cage, like a
bird bereft of song, whose wings are cut. Things went badly for me on
the Stock Exchange; I found I was losing hundreds, thousands, through
my absence. Finally I returned, and Eleanor's face grew brighter--_she
had seen him again!_"
"How do you know?"
"Don't ask me."
Philip turns away and wipes his brow. Erminie's true heart bleeds for
him as she thinks of the perfect sympathy and confidence reigning
between herself and Nelson.
"Your cloud may lift in time," she says, somewhat lamely seeking to
console him.
"It may deepen," he answers lugubriously.
"Supposing you were able to persuade Eleanor to go home for a visit; it
would be pleasant at Copthorne now the spring has come. Her parents
are good, honest people, the country life a healthy one. It might
strengthen her in body and mind, awaking memories of youth and
innocence, your courtship, her marriage! There is no tonic for a
diseased mind like fresh air and green fields. She said she longed to
see the dear old farm again only yesterday. It would put her beyond
the reach of Giddy Mounteagle, and you might run up and down several
times in the week."
"I will suggest it," says Philip.
* * * * *
The idea delights Mrs. Roche beyond measure when later on her husband
mentions it. She has frequently met Carol Quinton of late, and the
ardour of his passion and her own overpowering love have frightened her
at last.
The thought of escaping to the country to seek forgetfulness and avoid
temptation appeals to her.
She puts her arms softly and half timidly round Philip's neck, resting
her cheek against his, as she has not done for weeks.
He snatches her to his heart with a cry, smothering her face in kisses.
"Eleanor, can't we be better friends?" he whispers.
The tears course down her cheeks, the guilty love she is trying to
crush rises before her--jeering, taunting.
"I will try, Philip," she falters. "Only let me go home for a while,
and see the old scenes, the familiar faces."
He still holds her to him, his pulses thrilling at her softened tone,
as he answers, "Yes."
"I am really going back to the farm, Giddy," she says the following
day, "to vegetate, and grow young again among the primroses and
violets. The lawn will be yellow with crocus flowers, and I can almost
smell the hyacinths. I promised them faithfully I would return when
the birds began to sing!"
"You must give me your address," says Giddy. "I should like to write."
Eleanor looks at her shrewdly.
She has never quite forgotten the "Lady MacDonald" or "the party"
episode. It is the recollection of this that makes her state, with a
certain pride, the pleasure she feels in visiting her people.
"I will give it you on one condition," she replies.
"And that?"
"Promise me faithfully on _no_ account to pass it on to Carol Quinton."
"Why not?"
"Because I have gone too far, Giddy. I want to get away from his
influence. You know he dogs my footsteps, tracks, and haunts me. I
dare not trust myself. I am going away for a course of discipline,
simple living, and country pursuits. I know, if you promise, I can
trust you."
She holds out a paper on which her address is written, but keeps her
palm over the letter until Giddy shall make the promise.
"I swear," says Mrs. Mounteagle.