new. But James got this off a friend that was short of money and wanted
to get rid of it. It’s as good as new.”
Agatha felt vaguely surprised at the idea of James having a friend. But,
when she thought it over, she could see no reason why he shouldn’t.
“Those cheap ones,” continued Dolly, “well, they wouldn’t do at all. We
didn’t like all that sort of scraping they made; you can’t seem to hear
the music. But this is just what we wanted. I’d play it to you now, only
James isn’t here. I expect he’ll turn it on after tea.”
“Oh, I do hope he will. What records have you got?”
“Not many yet. We haven’t had it so very long. We’ve got a lot out of
the ‘Messiah.’ That’s my favourite piece. I sung in it once in our
chapel choir at home. It’s grand! But I expect you’ve heard it often.
Then we’ve got a thing, I think it’s call ‘Chaconne,’ that James likes.
He heard it in Paris. And we have some comics for the children. And I
got ‘Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes,’ when I was over in Oxford once. I
think it’s a very pretty song, but James regularly has his knife into it
and broke it by accident. At least, he said it was. Sissy, lovey, just
look into the kitchen and see if the kettle’s boiling!”
Dolly spread an elaborately embroidered linen cloth, with a crochet
border, over the plush table cover and fetched out the Spode tea-things
which she had inherited from her grandmother. Sissy and Sonny were
invested with bibs and mouthed their grace with some promptings.
“You’ll have eggs with your teas,” pursued the hostess, “after this long
drive? James always gets eggs when he’s been working all afternoon. Oh,
yes, you must! How many would you like? Mr. Blair could do with two,
surely?”
She was very much put out at their refusal, but relented when they
described to her the meal which they would have to eat on returning to
Braxhall.
“Not really?” she exclaimed. “Then I don’t wonder you won’t eat much
tea. And I expect you ate enough lunch to feed a poor family for a week,
didn’t you? But—d’you mean to say they eat all that?”
“Eating’s nothing,” said Gerald. “You should see what they drink!”
“Oh, it is wasteful! I do think it’s shocking! Now, at Lyndon sometimes
I used to be surprised at all the food that got eat up in the dining
room. But that wasn’t nothing to this; and it was before the war too.
But these new gentlemen, like Sir Thomas, they don’t seem to mind what
they do. I don’t like all that waste. I wonder now how much butcher’s
meat goes into the housekeeper’s room?”
Agatha was unable to enlighten her on this point and a moment later she
laughed at herself for the question.
“It was a silly thing to ask, for I don’t believe, Agatha, that you know
that much about your own house.”
Gerald was intrigued by the manner of the two women toward each other.
It was not quite what he had expected. He had gathered that the family
thought Agatha too friendly with Dolly. But he had never been able to
imagine them on terms of perfect familiarity. He had always pictured
Agatha as the more assured of the two, smoothing, in her tactful way,
the small difficulties of intercourse. He saw now, however, that Dolly
dominated the alliance. He perceived in her manner, moreover, a hint of
mocking tenderness, a very guarded gesture of compassion. It was
possible to believe that she pitied Agatha for some reason, with purely
imaginary ills. He wondered if Agatha had confided to her simple bosom
some of the hidden disquiet of which he was now so poignantly aware. He
hoped that this was so. She could not have a better confidante. Since he
himself could not inquire into the trouble, since it would be dangerous
for him to try, he was glad that she had Dolly. But he would have
thought that the spectacle of so much conjugal serenity, such maternal
complacence, must be torture to a woman like Agatha, tardily reaping the
bitter fruits of her mistaken marriage. Her fortitude in enduring it
indicated a generosity of temper which rejoiced his loving heart.
The voice of James could be heard halloing through the house for his
tea. His wife called to him:
“It’s here! We’ve got company.” To the guests she explained: “We
generally get it in the kitchen when we are alone.”
The master of the house joined them. He was paler and a good deal fatter
than of old, and he walked with a decided limp. His large face creased
into joyful smiles when he saw his sister-in-law, and he greeted her
affectionately.
“You remember Mr. Blair, James?” prompted Dolly.
“Of course I do. You are Agatha’s friend, aren’t you? It’s a long time
since I’ve seen you, though. Where have you come from?”
“I’m staying at Braxhall,” said Gerald.
James looked very much surprised.
“What for?” he demanded.
“He has come down for the fresco lunch,” explained Agatha. “And I want
to know why you aren’t all coming. You certainly should, you know.”
A peculiar expression eclipsed the candid sweetness of James’s smile.
For a second he looked positively venomous. Then he became merely sulky.
“I’m never going near that place again,” he averred.
“But I thought the frescoes looked very nice,” persisted Agatha.
He regarded her closely and in some astonishment.
“Have you seen them?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve only had one little peep. I haven’t looked at them properly
yet.”
“No?” said James.
Then he turned to Gerald and demanded:
“You seen ’em?”
“Not yet.”
James assented, as though he had been quite sure of the answer. Dolly,
meanwhile, had been looking uneasy and now introduced a change of
subject:
“They’ve been looking at the gramophone, but we haven’t played it yet.
Henry! Don’t get putting your fingers in the jam! Now, if you do it
again you’ll get a good smack.”
James’s face cleared instantly.
“Oh, have you? Wouldn’t you like to hear it? Shall I play it to you
now?”
He put on a record of Mme. Clara Butt singing “I know that my Redeemer
liveth,” to which they all listened reverently while they ate their
bread and radishes. Upon the faces of Dolly and James was written a
complete, uncritical joy in their new possession. It was obvious that
they loved an excuse for playing their gramophone.
“It’s almost as good as real, isn’t it?” said Dolly.
Even Gerald, who hated gramophones, had to admit that this was the least
offensive that he had ever heard.
“Now we’ll have the ‘Chaconne,’” breathed James.
He had stopped smiling and a slight quiver ran all through his large
body. The others fell silent and in the hush of the small room Agatha
felt an instant’s pang of unreasoned fear of him. He fetched the record
and put it into place with the soft, mysterious gestures of a priest at
the altar.
Dolly and Agatha listened with the religious expression of women who are
making a genuine effort of intelligence. Dolly plaited her cotton skirt
into creased folds between a work-stained thumb and finger. Agatha sat
very still. Everything in the little parlour was like a dream,
unsubstantial as the thick yellow splashes of sunlight which dappled the
geraniums in the window and fell in sleepy pools on the carpet. In the
middle of its warm illusion the motionless solidity of James seemed to
melt, his brooding impassivity to shiver and break, until the vibrant
air was alive with his thoughts. As for Gerald, he was a thin flame
burning somewhere in the shadows of the room.
When the concert was over James was instructed to take Mr. Blair out to
the bench by the porch for a smoke. Dolly and Agatha retired upstairs to
the privacy of the conjugal bedroom, where Jimmy got his tea and Agatha
powdered her nose. The two women lingered some time, discussing the
technical side of the child’s arrival.
“I was laid up longer than the other two times,” said Dolly. “I wasn’t
back to work not inside three weeks. I don’t know what Auntie wouldn’t
have said to me. She’s always on to me for turning into a lady. Mrs.
Hickman, the woman that came in to do for me, was a low sort of person.
The dirt! You’d be surprised; just in that little time! ‘Well,’ I said,
when I came down, ‘the first thing I do is to have a good clean round.’
I was glad James was away at Braxhall most of the time doing those
frescoes. It would have been very uncomfortable for him, not getting his
meals nice like he’s used to.”
“Have you seen the frescoes, Dolly?”
“No, I haven’t! Not yet! And between you and I, Agatha, I’m worried
about them. He’s so funny. To begin with he was quite all right, just
like he always is over his things, you know. Quite taken up with them.
But then Sir Thomas kept writing and going on at him, saying they wanted
stained-glass windows, and this and the other, and I don’t know what
all, until he got quite disgusted. And I got afraid, really I did! For
you know he’s dreadful when he does lose his temper, which isn’t often,
thank goodness!”
“I rather gathered that the Bragges had been a little trying.”
“That’s right. And it isn’t only this. That Cynthia you know, well I
suppose I shouldn’t talk back at her as she’s James’s sister, but first
and last she’s been very nasty to us. Very nasty she’s been, just in
little ways. But she was never kind to James: he hasn’t told me the
half, I’m sure, but he remembers it all. He remembers too much, as I
often tell him. Because most of it happened when they was only children,
and I don’t like holding things up against people. It’s not Christian.
Quiet now, Jimmy, you greedy boy! You’ve had quite enough for one
while.”
“Let me have him for a bit.”
Agatha took the child while Dolly buttoned up her frock and put a few
pins into her hair. The room was very small and almost filled by the
double bed and the baby’s cradle squeezed against the wall. James’s
Sunday clothes, newly brushed, hung over the foot rail of the bed, and
Dolly now folded them neatly and put them away in the bottom drawer of a
little wardrobe. Agatha tried to imagine herself and John submitting to
the enforced propinquities of such a marriage chamber and felt dismayed
at the idea. It showed her how slender was the bond between them. Their
union would have been quite unendurable if they had been forced to live
as Dolly and James lived, as the majority of the human race have to
live, without the means for privacy.
Her mood of the moment was such that she was inclined to view her own
advantages over Dolly in the light of a calamity. She envied a
simplicity of existence which, at another time, might have struck her as
wanting in refinement. Seeing all things from her cousin’s standpoint,
and exaggerating, if possible, his distrust of those civilized amenities
which depend upon a large income, she found the Bramfield household an
admirable institution. She saw in the undecorated austerity before her a
symbol of that marriage which endures against accident, against shock
and change, because illusion has no part in its foundation. Such a
companionship she had once desired for herself: she believed that it
would mitigate the unbearable solitude of her spirit. But she and John
could never compass it. She had forfeited such hopes for ever and ever
when she became his wife.
“Do you know that a million married people are now living apart?” she
asked Dolly suddenly.
“What’s that?”
“A million married people are at this moment living apart in England
alone. And, dear knows how many more don’t want to.”
“Well, I never!” Dolly was shocked. “Is that really true? Isn’t it
awful? The papers is full of these divorces nowadays.”
“What’s the cause of it all, do you think? Why are there so many more
unhappy marriages than there used to be?”
“I don’t think there are any more than there used to be, I don’t. Only
people won’t put up with things, not like they used to. It’s the same
all round. Look at the way people used to have to work before there was
any Unions. Twelve hours a day, even for little children! It was awful!
Auntie used to tell me about when her mother was a young woman, away up
in Leeds; and you couldn’t believe that such things could have happened.
People must have taken things a sight more quietly than they do now.”
“Then you think there were always unhappy marriages, but people didn’t
rebel against them.”
“Yes, I think so. My mother! When I think of what she had to bear! No
woman wouldn’t stand it nowadays.”
“But isn’t it a good thing, don’t you think? Why should people endure
misery if they can escape from it? When a person rebels, it’s progress
really.”
“Well, I don’t know, Agatha. I see what you mean and I’m sure you are
right in a way. Only I get thinking sometimes. . . . It seems a
pity. . . . Sort of like this. The way we go on now, people act silly
and then find out new ways so as not to suffer for it. They don’t study
not to be silly. That isn’t going to make the world any better, not in
the long run.”
“But is anything likely to make the world better in the long run?”
“Godly living will,” said Dolly firmly, “and nothing will do instead of
that, not if it’s ever so.”
“Oh, Dolly! But what is godly living?”
“I should have thought you’d know that as well as I do. It’s obeying
what our conscience tells us.”
“But if you’ve made a mistake so that you can’t—you can’t—if you have
got yourself all into the wrong atmosphere. . . . What I mean is, you
can’t be godly or anything else genuine if you are absolutely out of
harmony with your life. Listen! Suppose a woman was married to a man who
wasn’t unkind or unfaithful or anything, but she just found she didn’t
love him, and felt that her life with him was absolutely at variance
with her conscience—and—and there was another man—whom she ought to
have married, who had the same ideals, with whom she could lead a better
life? Which do you think she ought to do, stay with her husband, or go
to this other man?”
“I wouldn’t like to say,” said Dolly, looking embarrassed. “How d’you
mean, lead a better life?”
“Well, if the other man had—say, a religion that she believed in and
that her husband couldn’t ever, ever understand. After all, it says in
the Bible ‘leave all and follow Me.’ I don’t want to be blasphemous, but
couldn’t it be a sort of—call?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. I never heard of any one getting a call that
way, though I’ve heard plenty of people telling about their religious
experiences.”
“But it might be.”
“Well, I suppose it might. Only it seems a funny idea. I think anybody’d
have a hard job to persuade themselves that it was right. Why, supposing
she had little children to care for?”
“Oh—I mean a woman without children.”
“Did you? But then there’d be her husband. What would he do? He’d have
to get another woman to look after him most likely. And she wouldn’t be
his wife, not unless he had enough money to divorce the first one. And
then they’d be living in sin.”
“I—meant—fairly well off people, who could afford divorce.”
“Oh, I see,” cried Dolly, enlightened. “You mean a lady, not any sort of
woman?”
“Y—yes. I suppose I do naturally think of a lady when I think of an
imaginary case.”
“Well, you see, I naturally don’t.”
“Is there so much difference?” said Agatha wonderingly. “But if it was
any woman, Dolly? Would you condemn her if she left her husband and went
to a man she loved better?”
“I couldn’t say unless I knew her. I would if I thought she was light.
But it isn’t only that kind that do such things.”
Through the window the smell of lilies was blown in from the garden and
the voices of Gerald and James murmured on in intermittent conversation.
The noise of the car in the lane reminded Agatha that she must get home
early. She began to tie her veils.
On the way home she said to Gerald:
“Dolly thinks that our much-vaunted civilization is too much occupied
with palliatives. She’s very strong upon the folly of substitutes for
godly living, as she calls it. She thinks we concern ourselves too much
with averting the consequences of our own acts instead of eradicating
folly and vice themselves.”
“Dolly’s views,” said he, “are so sound that they are apt to be a little
obvious. What desperate remedy was she referring to in particular?”
“It was divorce,” said Agatha, after a moment’s pause. “We were
discussing unhappy marriages and whether there were more now than
formerly.”
Gerald looked straight in front of him and said in a detached,
discursive tone:
“Nobody but the parties themselves can say what constitutes a happy or
an unhappy marriage. Evils which to one section of society, or one
generation, seem quite unbearable are beside the point to another. I
remember seeing that so strongly once when I was reading some letters
written by an old boy in the seventeenth century (I rather think it was
Halifax) to his daughter. He was obviously devoted to her; and his
advice about bearing ill-treatment from a husband comes as something of
a shock. I don’t think it referred to any special husband: I mean I
don’t think she was even grown up at the time. It was just on general
principle. He counsels the child as to the best way to endure brutality,
drunkenness, and flagrant infidelity as if they were inevitable, as they
probably were in those days. But he was a sane man, and very fond of the
girl, and one gets the impression that he quite expected her to be happy
and prosperous, as I’ve no doubt she was.”
“It’s very odd,” said Agatha. “I suppose it all depends upon what one
expects to get. In a way marriages of convenience must be much more
likely to be happy than marriages for love, because they are based on
less extravagant expectations. Either way, it’s a toss up.”
“It’s ultimately based, I fancy, upon the question of common ideals;
unity of outlook. Whether the pair concerned have the same conception of
their environment, the same purpose in life. The usual considerations
determining a love match don’t necessarily ensure that, any more than
would the business propositions behind a marriage of convenience. Look
at our present host and hostess! They are, to me, as good an example of
a happy marriage in one way as Dolly and James are in another. I can
imagine either making another partner miserable. But together they are
complete, and Braxhall is a wonderful expression of their joint
outlook.”
Agatha was silent, her mind busy with unspoken applications. She was
dismayed by the unconcealed bitterness of his tone toward Braxhall for
she felt that Lyndon fell under the same condemnation. The Bragges
merely proclaimed blatantly an ideal of life which, in her own
household, was discreetly and beautifully intimated. So, in the light of
their earlier encounters, did she interpret all his scornful remarks.
But she did him an injustice. He was long past criticizing anything that
was hers.
He changed the subject, feeling, with an obscure sense of
self-preservation, that matrimony, happy or otherwise, was no safe topic
for himself and Agatha. He said that he was intrigued by James and the
frescoes.
“I don’t understand him. There must be something behind it which nobody
can have understood. He spoke in such an odd way when I was sitting in
the garden with him. I shall go and have a look at the things as soon as
I get back.”
“What did he say?”
“He seemed almost apologetic about them. And yet defiant. He said that
he considered they were as good work as ever he’d done, and that Sir
Thomas could always whitewash the wall if he didn’t like it, but that
he, James, wouldn’t alter them for anybody.”
“Of course, they are all rather—bacchanalian, but I don’t think the
Bragges seem to mind.”
The car swung into the long road leading up to Braxhall valley. Beside
them the stream wound through the fields, and “Bragge’s Barracks”
frowned upon them from the heights. Agatha realized with a pang that her
afternoon of happiness and freedom was nearly over; she was returning to
a prison, and would soon be plunged afresh into that abyss of
irritation, suspicion, veiled criticism, secret conclaves, tactful
hints, and plain speaking. The clarity of mood, the singleness of mind,
which she could only achieve in Gerald’s company must inevitably be
shattered. She had looked forward to taking him to Bramfield; she knew
that he would like Dolly and James, and she revelled in the sense of
companionship, of comprehension, which had been theirs since childhood.
In her exaltation she could believe that they were both entire strangers
to Braxhall, travellers from another world, gayer, simpler and more
vital.
Anxious to prolong her reprieve, she suggested that they should walk up
through the gardens.
“We can cross by the footbridge,” she said, “and send the car up by the
road. There is plenty of time. It’s not six yet.”
He acquiesced and they stopped the car. A steep stile took them into a
square field peppered with mushrooms. Gerald, the glare of the collector
in his eye, immediately began to pick these, swearing mildly at
deceptive puff-balls. She watched him, still possessed by the
conviction, common to all lovers, that she had discovered the secret of
the universe. Her amusement was tender and beguiling.
“You are one of those people who can’t pass a mushroom. I know! My
mother is like that. She will walk ten miles carrying one.”
“Still,” he protested, “even one is nice in a stew.”
“They will be excellent in our hash to-night, I’ve no doubt. What will
you do with them? Which chef will you give them to?”
“It’s sheer waste to leave them.”
They crossed the little footbridge into the garden. Gerald held his hat
full of mushrooms in both hands, very carefully, like a chalice. The
silence and the sun absorbed and enfolded them; the extreme degree of
isolation in which they walked was intensified by the fact that they
were visible from every window on the south side of Braxhall. They
ascended toward that observant, many-eyed façade as adventurers approach
a hostile stronghold.
Slower and slower grew their pace as they mounted from terrace to
terrace; longer each pause as they turned to look down the valley.
Nothing stirred in the picture below them; not a cow or a sheep moved in
the unbroken green of the fields, and the heavy foliage on the opposite
hillside was as massive, in the strong sunlight, as a tapestried
picture.
“How warm and tame these woods look!” said Agatha suddenly. “You would
never think that at night they are full of lost souls.”
“Oh, those owls! Did you hear them?”
“They went on all night. They were worst about half-past two.”
“I know.”
Each had a vision of the other lying awake in those long haunted hours
when the valley echoed to strange cries and a low mist from the stream
lay over the fields. They resumed their climbing and did not pause again
until they had reached the topmost terrace of all and stood close
beneath the walls of Braxhall. Then Gerald spoke impulsively, in
obedience to a decision which he had just reached:
“I suppose lunch to-morrow will be over by three o’clock? I must get
away by the three-forty.”
“Oh, Gerald! You aren’t going? Not to-morrow?”
“Yes.” He spoke a little unsteadily this time and did not look at her.
“I think I ought to be getting back.”
She stared at him, an icy terror spreading over her, so that she
shivered in spite of the strong sun.
“I really oughtn’t to be away at all, just now,” he added. “But I wanted
to see—to see those frescoes, you know.”
He regarded his mushrooms unhappily. He had made up his mind that
another night of listening to the Braxhall owls would be as much as he
could bear. To himself he repeated in mental reiteration:
“Too risky! Altogether too risky!”
They moved on into the house. When they reached the marble corridor she
had collected herself sufficiently to remark: “Oh, yes. I suppose you
oughtn’t to leave your work for long.”
He nodded and began to mount the wide, shallow stairs. She watched him
until he had turned the corner. He was still carrying his hat
reverently, like a chalice.
4
He was scarcely out of sight before Lois came hurriedly through the
folding doors of the banqueting hall. She advanced in the greatest
agitation, calling softly to her sister-in-law. The pallor of her
tear-stained cheeks roused Agatha, for a moment, from the stupor of
misery which had overtaken her.
“What is it? What is the matter?” she cried.
Lois sank on to the bench beside her and began in a low voice:
“Oh, Agatha! It’s so dreadful! Listen! Hubert is come—and——”
She paused to give a loud sob.
“Dearest Lois! Tell me what it is. What can have——”
“Can you come into the hall for a minute? No, wait! I’d better tell you
first what has happened.”
“Have you had bad news?” asked Agatha, wondering if Hubert had been
speculating.
“No! No! He came, and I took him to see the frescoes. Oh, dear! Oh,
Agatha, did you see anything wrong with them?”
“My dear, I know absolutely nothing about pictures.”
“But you don’t need to, to see this. How can we have been so blind? It’s
incredible! I saw it directly he pointed it out to me. And you can’t
think how angry he is. He says I am absolutely incapable of looking
observantly at anything.”
“But what is it? What is wrong with them?”
“Oh, it’s perfectly wicked of James. It really is. He’s put in Tom and
Cynthia.”
“Put in?”
“Into the fresco. They are quite unmistakable. Hubert says he doesn’t
know when he’s seen anything more savage. He saw it the moment——”
“Oh, it can’t be. I don’t believe it. I saw the frescoes myself. Where
are they?”
“In the centre panel, over the dais. Don’t you remember those people
reclining at a sort of banquet—absolutely gorging?”
Agatha reorganized her memory and recalled with a shock of alarm an
incredibly aldermanic figure, which she had set down for Silenus, taking
his ease, if she remembered correctly, in the arms of a slender, blonde
hussy. . . . A horrible doubt was born in her mind.
“Let me look!” she cried, and then asked: “Who is in the hall?”
“Only Hubert. He’s the only person that knows, so far, except John. John
saw it at once when we told him, and he just wants to murder James. And
he said we’d better find you and consult what’s best to be done. So we
both went to look for you. I don’t know where he’s gone; up to your
room, I expect. I—I don’t think he knew you had gone out with Mr.
Blair. But I happened to look out of the window and saw you coming up
the hill. So I ran out to stop you.”
“I see,” said Agatha, too much preoccupied to notice that Lois was
blushing. “Let’s go into the hall.”
She followed Lois through the big doors. They discovered Hubert, in a
transport of fury, pacing up and down and viewing the unspeakable
paintings from every part of the room. Agatha looked at the panel over
the dais and turned pale. It was quite undeniable that the central
figures of the piece were more than reminiscent of Sir Thomas and Lady
Bragge.
She looked for a long time in shocked silence and then said faintly:
“I suppose it’s having no clothes on that makes one slow to recognize
them.”
“I suppose so,” said Hubert grimly. “But I found no difficulty in seeing
it the moment I came into the room.”
“But then, you know, the first time I saw it they were both here, with
their clothes and everything—it distracted one’s attention a certain
amount.”
“I see it more strongly every minute,” broke in Lois. “I’ve seen Cynthia
look like that a dozen times, when she is a little anxious what Sir
Thomas will say next. Late on in dinner, you know, when he’s rather
. . .”
“I’ll go down to Bramfield to-morrow and kill James,” said Hubert.
Agatha was looking intently at the piece and now asked: “What are all
those people doing on that little hill behind the group? What are they
building?”
“A temple?” suggested Hubert uncertainly.
“It’s Braxhall,” she vowed. “It’s this house as you see it from the
valley.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t signify. It isn’t nearly so
obvious as these people in the foreground. Among all these bosky
hillocks and leafy groves it will pass unnoticed very probably. The
other can’t.”
“I don’t think there are any other portraits,” said Lois, who had been
looking anxiously at the other panels. “Not of people we know, anyhow.
That’s some comfort.”
“I shall go round and kill him,” repeated Hubert with gathering venom.
“I wish you would,” muttered Lois.
“When you think it was on my recommendation. . . . Of course, I ought to
have known that he wasn’t to be trusted. I knew he was getting riled
with the way Sir Thomas went on, and I half suspected that he had some
dirty trick up his sleeve. But I depended on Lois to let me know if
anything was wrong. I ought to have known that she is about as much use
as a sick headache. I ought to have known, after all these years. . . .”
“But Lois wasn’t the only one,” interrupted Agatha. “We’ve all been
blind. Look at John! And my mother, and Lady Clewer, and the Bragges
themselves! You are the first person to notice it, Hubert, as far as I
know.”
“Well, I can’t understand it. You simply can’t have looked at the
thing.”
“No. I don’t think we did. That’s it. At least, it is in my case. There
is always something in James’s work which makes me very reluctant to
look at it. I couldn’t say why.”
“Of course,” said Hubert bitterly, “anybody could be excused for not
recognizing their own portraits; and I suppose that the rest of you were
so steeped in the Bragge atmosphere, don’t you know . . .”
He broke off with a shrug. He could not forgive them for not having
warned him. His taunt was directed at his wife but it stung Agatha
intolerably. Convinced that her cousin was fleeing from Braxhall because
he could endure it no longer, she resented any implication which would
put her in such a galley. It was an insult to say that she was steeped
in Bragge atmosphere. Confronted with this epitome of it, she found it
all as detestable as anybody could. Neither James nor Gerald could hate
it worse.
“But what about the party?” Lois was saying. “That’s what we wanted to
consult you about. What are we to do? Can it be put off? What shall we
say to the Bragges?”
“Couldn’t we persuade them to have lunch in the panelled room?”
“It wouldn’t hold half the people. Besides, the whole thing is got up
especially to exhibit the frescoes.”
“Well,” said Agatha, thinking swiftly, “we must let things take their
chance. I would suggest that we say nothing to any one. Not till after
the party. It can’t be put off now.”
“But supposing people see . . .” began Lois.
“Can’t we trust that the majority of the guests will be as unobservant
as we have been? I don’t see why not. They won’t expect it, you know;
and most people don’t see things they don’t expect. And they will all be
eating lovely food; food good enough to absorb their attention
completely. Besides, a lot of them will have their backs to that
particular panel.”
“I shall give myself away,” said Lois. “I shall blush whenever I look at
the thing.”
“If ever I do anything for that fellow again,” said Hubert, “I’ll be
boiled alive!”
“And for relations too!” cried Lois. “It’s simply disgusting! When we
have all been so . . .”
She was disconcerted by something in the faces of the other two, and did
not attempt to specify what his family had always been to James. Instead
she added:
“I’m sure we all recognize, now, that he is justified in his claims as
an artist.”
“I never heard him make any,” murmured Agatha.
Hubert was studying the fresco again and now commented: “I always did
think that Sir Thomas looked like a satyr. I remember it struck me the
first time I saw them sitting together under a tree. A satyr and a
nymph! Oh, yes—but it wasn’t Cynthia though, it was you, Agatha.”
“Cynthia or me!” thought Agatha. “It doesn’t matter which. We are both
the same type to James—and Gerald.”
“But even if we get through this awful lunch safely,” demanded Lois
tearfully, “what then?”
“We’ll have to see,” said Hubert. “I think I agree with Agatha. Since we
can’t postpone the lunch we must go through with it, and in that case
the fewer people who know the truth the better. Your mother doesn’t
know, Lois?”
“No. And what she’ll say when she finds out, I don’t know. She will make
James sorry.”
“What about your mother?” went on Hubert, turning to Agatha. “Should we
tell her? Would she help us to carry things off?”
“Heavens, no! On no account! She’s the very last person to tell. Though
she’s generally so quick that I can’t think why she needs telling. But
she would be so frightfully amused—you must forgive me for saying so,
Lois. It wouldn’t be safe. She wouldn’t be able to help telling people,
or at least prompting them to guess.”
“Oh well, then, in that case . . .”
“We must try to keep her very busy and animated all through lunch so
that she simply doesn’t look at the thing. . . .”
The dismayed trio stared at the thing and wondered how any one could
possibly be prevented from looking. They started guiltily as John flung
open the door at the end of the hall and slammed it behind him. He
joined them without a glance at the frescoes and addressed himself to
his wife.
“I didn’t know you had gone for a walk. I was looking for you.”
“I went over to Bramfield to see Dolly and James,” she replied in some
surprise.
His face, at the mention of James, grew a shade blacker. “Oh, yes? I
thought I saw you walking across the valley field just now.”
“We got out of the car by the footbridge and walked up the garden.”
“I know. I saw you from the staircase window.”
Hubert and Lois looked at each other, and Lois broke in:
“I found Agatha in the hall, John, and brought her in here. I didn’t
know you were still looking for her.”
“I wasn’t. I was coming down to fetch her when I met Sir Thomas, who
began to talk about his peach-house. I couldn’t get away.”
“About these frescoes . . .” began Hubert timidly.
“Eh? The frescoes?” asked John vaguely. Then he recollected himself and
exclaimed: “Oh, damn the frescoes. Do what you like about it. They are
no business of mine.”
And he turned again upon his wife a regard which said that here was a
business which touched him too nearly. Hubert seized Lois by the arm and
almost ran her out of the hall.
“Well, but,” she whispered as soon as the door had closed behind them,
“Agatha shouldn’t walk about in front of the windows with Mr. Blair just
when poor John is so ill.”
“She doesn’t know he’s ill,” returned Hubert violently. “It’s—it’s
unfair not to tell her. It’s——”
“Hush! Somebody will hear. Wasn’t it awful? I never saw anybody look so
angry. His face was quite blue. It must be very bad for him.”
“It’s not our business,” said Hubert firmly.
They stole away.
John, left alone with his wife, turned upon her furiously. “You went to
see Dolly and James, did you? Well, you won’t go again.”
“John! What is the matter with you? You’ve no business to lose your
temper like this. What do you mean? I shall certainly go if I please.”
“I won’t have it. I forbid you to go there again. You are not to see
James any more, or his wife. You must drop them, see? It’s the
encouragement you give them that lets us in for this sort of thing.”
He waved a hand at the frescoes.
“But I’m very fond of him,” she protested vaguely, still at a loss.
“You are fonder than is prudent of several of your relations, aren’t
you?”
She started, stared, and grew very pale. He was, indeed, appalled at
what he had said, and repented instantly. He had been stung beyond
endurance by the sight of that slow, intimate ascent through the
Braxhall gardens. He was determined to end, one way or the other, a
situation which was becoming intolerable. The irrevocable words now lay
between them like a flung gauntlet. Nothing could unsay them; but
Agatha, after a moment’s consideration, made a visible attempt to ignore
them.
“We’ll discuss James later,” she said. “The business before us now is
the frightful party to-morrow.”
But he thought that he might as well go on as he had begun. “The party
to-morrow won’t concern us,” he told her, “because we shall not be
here.”
“John?”
“We leave here first thing to-morrow morning.”
Her eyes questioned him and he flung the reason at her. “I won’t have
you driving about the country with that—that fellow. You will leave
Braxhall to-morrow and I won’t have you seeing him again.”
“Do you mean Gerald Blair?”
“I do.”
She considered this for a moment and then asked:
“And what makes you take this line? What cause have I ever given you?
What have I done?”
“You’ve lost your head over him. It’s perfectly obvious to any one. And
it’s enough. I’m not taking any risks.”
She opened her lips for a denial which would not come. Instead she cried
out:
“Risks! What risks? Do you want to insult me?”
“This sort of thing has got to stop,” he said doggedly.
“What sort of thing?”
“Your whole behaviour. I tell you I’m tired of it. You treat me like a
discarded lover.”
“Do I? Do I? Well, so you are!” she cried, her voice rising.
Disgusted at her loss of self-command and the vulgarity of such a scene,
she added in a lower voice:
“You are. You’ve never been anything more. Never a real husband. Not
more than Tom is to Cynthia. Our relationship may be legal, but it isn’t
marriage. Nothing can make it that.”
“Really? And what is it then?”
“It’s been my fault,” she conceded earnestly. “I ought never to have
married you. We have no ideals in common. I’ve never been a real wife to
you. Nothing more than a mistress; nothing more.”
“It’s a pity you feel like that,” he said bitterly. “But I’m afraid
you’ll have to put up with it.”
Then he burst out again:
“Oh, hell, Agatha! Can’t you speak the truth? Can’t you think straight?
You married me and you’ve got tired of me. And you’ve invented all this
humbug about common ideals to justify your infidelity. That’s the long
and short of it.”
At the word infidelity she swung round, her conscious innocence flaming
in her face.
“Never for a moment——” she began, and then broke off. “But it’s
horrible to have to make denials—to exculpate oneself! If you can
believe——”
Tears, the first he had ever seen her shed, choked her speech. Smarting
under a sense of undeserved insult, she stood before him weeping
silently. He beheld her beauty and her grief with a fierce throb of
satisfaction. To make her suffer was at least a reassertion of power. He
became dominant and calm.
“We go to-morrow,” he repeated.
She answered, very low:
“We needn’t—for the reason you mention. . . . He is going away
immediately after lunch.”
A spasm of anguish shook her and he heard himself saying coldly:
“Oh, I see. Is that why you are crying?”
His heart had begun to do strange things and it occurred to him that
this interview, if prolonged, might prove fatal to him. He had no wish
to die at Braxhall. Glancing at her from the door, before he left her,
he saw that she had not moved. She was still standing on the dais step,
both hands pressed to her bosom, while the fresco panel flamed above her
stricken head.
* * * * *
Gerald, upon reaching his room, had, in a thunderclap of energy, sat
down and written the opening pages of a paper upon “The experiments at
Nancy” which had been simmering in his brain for some time. He was
wonderfully relieved by his sudden decision to quit Braxhall upon the
morrow and to see his cousin no more. Anguish it might be, but it was at
least a termination of the conflict. He was able, for the first time in
many weeks, to lose himself in his work. He wrote, absorbed, for nearly
an hour, and then, pausing for an instant’s relaxation, recalled idly
the mysterious utterances of James about the fresco. He remembered that
he had meant to visit the hall immediately upon his return, and
accordingly he set off, descending by a small staircase, close to his
room, which gave him access to a door opening immediately on to the
dais. He was, therefore, precipitated within a few feet of Agatha before
either was aware of the other.
She was seated upon one of the chairs set round the dais. Her elbows
were on the table and her face in her hands. Her whole attitude bespoke
an abandonment of grief. She had evidently failed to hear his approach
over the thick dais carpet.
He stood poised for flight. Prudence inwardly counselled a prompt
withdrawal; passion impelled him forward. Lingering, he was lost, for
she raised her head and saw him. She betrayed no surprise, but fixed
upon him a regard of infinite sadness, and sat motionless in her chair,
the slow tears still rolling down her cheeks.
He was inured to women’s tears; he had seen too many of them. But all
his experience had never shown him a creature who could weep so
beautifully. No sobs shook her; she was composed, mistress of herself,
save for these silent, persistent signals of woe. He had, among his
patients, a reputation for complete immunity; no nervous collapse could
soften or alarm him in Harley Street. Had she brought her tears there it
is possible that he might have checked the flood with a few bracing
words and a glass of water. But affection had undone him, as it has
betrayed better men, and, instead of resorting to professional advice,
he was moved, he hardly knew how, to fling himself at her feet, to call
her by every endearing name which occurred to him, and finally, with a
sense of foundering rectitude, to clasp her to his heart and entreat her
to tell him her trouble.
Of the subsequent conversation neither retained any very clear
impression. It was an affair of mutual declarations, and in a very short
time they arrived at the conclusion that a further separation would be
impossible to them. They must defy all the forces which had divided them
ten years earlier, and this must be done at once. Agatha’s misery
appeared to both of them as something no longer to be borne, and they
believed that their immediate union would be almost certain to abate it.
“We must get married,” Gerald stated. “We ought, of course, to have got
married ten years ago. We’ll go abroad somewhere until Clewer divorces
you, and then we will be married.”
“But do you think that will be right?” demanded Agatha hopefully.
He looked surprised, and a little put out.
“Right? What do you mean exactly? I think it’s the wisest thing we can
do under the circumstances. And anyhow we are going to do it.”
“I mean, can you do it with an absolutely free conscience?”
“N—no, not exactly. I couldn’t say that.”
Agatha did not like this at all.
“You can’t do what you think wrong,” she said doubtfully.
“Oh, yes, I can,” he assured her.
“But it must be right,” she argued. “We were meant for each other. It
was my marriage that was wrong.”
He agreed, but said that he would, he thought, condemn behaviour like
theirs in any one else. He reminded her, a little shamefacedly, that he
had accepted John’s hospitality and was returning it by stealing his
wife. But she insisted that they were justified. He thought it rather
tactless of her thus to harp upon the most painful element in their
situation. He had overlooked, for a moment, a woman’s capacity for
sanctifying her passions by an ideal. She had succeeded in persuading
herself that flight from her husband was the only remedy for an enormous
wrong, the only means whereby she could release her better self for a
life of austere endeavour. Her natural aptitude for symbolism had led
her to perceive a deep significance in the events of the afternoon. The
impression of the fresco was strong upon her, and she believed that in
renouncing her married life, with all its luxuries, she was pledging
herself to a very noble path. She could only repeat, rather resentfully:
“It seems right to me.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” remarked her lover.
He took a short turn down the hall and returned to the dais step,
looking up at her.
“I don’t want you to deceive yourself,” he said anxiously. “I don’t want
you to be rushed into any course which you might afterward regret. I
should be a scoundrel if I took advantage of what appears to be a slight
confusion in your mind. I wish I knew what to do!”
“I thought we’d settled what to do.”
“Yes, but I want you to be quite sure. Think it over! Don’t decide now.
Tell me to-morrow. Remember I’m ready to take your word as final. I’ll
take you off at any moment if you like, or I’ll go away and never see
you again if you’d rather. But it must be either one way or the other.
I’m not going on like this: it’s unendurable. Think it over and tell
me.”
She realized that the abruptness of his speech was calculated. He was
deliberately trying not to appeal to her emotions, but to summon to
their aid those rational faculties still left to them. He tried to leave
her without further speech, but she called him back.
“Gerald! Are you quite sure that you want me to come? You aren’t being a
good Samaritan, are you?”
“Want you? Of course I want you! I always have. But that isn’t the
point. I’ve done without you up till now, and I can doubtless go on
doing without you, if I have to. But I won’t stand seeing you unhappy
like this. It’s more than any one could bear, loving you as I do.”
“But you could get on without me if you had to?”
“Why—yes—I suppose so.”
“Then I’ve no business to come. My justification——”
“Oh, Agatha dearest, can’t you think straight?”
At this point Mrs. Cocks burst in through the door at the end of the
hall. She glanced at the cousins, her eyes sparkling with instant
displeasure.
“Agatha!” she exclaimed. “Do you know that it is five minutes to eight?
Are you never going to dress this evening? I’ve been waiting for you,
upstairs, for at least three quarters of an hour.”
“Is it really so late, Mother?”
“Yes! Yes! Hurry, child! Hurry, Gerald!”
She swept them from the hall and carried her daughter upstairs.
Dismissing the maid, she declared that she would supervise the hasty
toilet herself.
“Pauline would be much quicker,” maintained Agatha.
“Perhaps. But I want to do some plain speaking which can’t be
accomplished before Pauline. What were you and Gerald quarrelling about
when I came in?”
“We weren’t quarrelling,” said Agatha after reflection.
“Weren’t you. You looked as if you were; you were looking defensive and
he reproachful. And, by the way, may I ask if you and he have been in
that hall ever since you came in this afternoon?”
“Oh, no! I was there with Lois and Hubert. And then John. Gerald had
only just come.”
“Oh, really? That’s not as bad as I thought. Still, you know, Agatha,
when I saw you coming up through the garden . . .”
“Good heavens!” cried Agatha impatiently, “how many more? Did everybody
in the house see me coming up through the garden?”
“I expect so. That’s where you are so silly, dear.”
“I never knew it was such a monstrous thing to do.”
“Now you are being even sillier. Tell me, who else has seen you?”
“Oh—Lois and Hubert—and John.”
“John! What did John say?”
Agatha made no reply, but dabbed powder on to her nose with shaking
fingers.
“You’ve put on too much,” observed her mother critically, and she
fetched a damp sponge and removed it all. “Now begin again. Tell me—is
John annoyed? Have you quarrelled with him?”
“He blames me,” began Agatha, and stopped with a gasp.
“What for?”
“For the same reason that Gerald blames me.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Cocks was at a loss. “But I thought you said you had not
quarrelled with Gerald.”
“Nor have I.”
“But you have quarrelled with John?”
“Yes. They both want to know if I can’t think straight.”
“What shoes will you wear? Is John jealous?”
Agatha was silent.
“It’s only natural,” continued her mother, as she folded up discarded
garments. “You can’t have it both ways. I’ve never seen a more devoted
husband. You wouldn’t like it if he got tired of you?”
“I shouldn’t mind.”
“Well, of course, if that’s your line, I don’t blame him if he does
resent it a little. In fact, I think he’d be justified in consoling
himself elsewhere. Do consider the possible consequences of such
behaviour, child. With a man like John, you can’t afford to run risks.”
“Thank you, Mother, I’d rather not discuss it.”
“Try to look at things a little more from his point of view. What, after
all, did he marry you for?”
“Oh, please, Mother, would you mind going? Will you please leave me
alone? I want to be by myself. I—I won’t come down to dinner, I think.”
“Good heavens! Child! Are you ill? Don’t go that colour! Sit down and
let me get you some sal volatile.”
“No. I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right. I only want to be by
myself.”
“But if you are too ill to come down to dinner, you are too ill to be
left alone. I shall stay with you and make it clear that you are really
unwell. I’m not going to have Marian saying that you are sulking after a
scene with John. Are you sure you can’t come down? It would look much
better if you could.”
“Well, yes,” said Agatha, whose colour was returning. “I will come.
Could you find my Spanish comb? And I’ll have that black lace shawl.
It’s somewhere in the wardrobe.”
“You are still very white. I should put on just a very little touch, if
I were you. You don’t want to go down looking conspicuously pale. Of
course, John is such a paragon of a husband. . . .”
The gong, heralding another of the endless Braxhall meals, reminded Mrs.
Cocks of the need for haste. She turned to the wardrobe without another
word.
5
Toward four o’clock upon the following afternoon Lois stood on the
topmost garden terrace, watching a car which sped along the valley road.
It contained the last of the guests who had lunched at Braxhall. She
stood attentive until it had turned the corner and then heaved a great
sigh of relief.
Hubert had been instructed to take Mrs. Cocks to some retired place and
keep her there. He had evidently done his duty, for nothing had been
seen of the pair of them for more than an hour and a half. Lois thought
he should be released and set off in search of him. She found them in
the sunken garden: they were sitting upon a stone bench by the fountain,
absorbed in animated conversation. Hubert, though sprightly, was, to the
practised eye of his wife, at the point of exhaustion; but his companion
was enjoying herself vivaciously.
“The guests have all gone,” said Lois, joining them.
“Gone? No! It must be very early!” cried Mrs. Cocks. “Nearly four? I
couldn’t have believed it! I’m afraid I’ve been very uncivil; I do hope
Cynthia won’t think so. I never meant to stay here so long. But your
husband has been telling me such killing stories, Lois.”
“Cynthia has gone up to rest, and Sir Thomas is having a cocktail
somewhere. I heard him calling for it.”
“But are they all gone? How annoying! There are several people I
particularly wanted to talk to. Why were you so amusing, Mr. Ervine?”
Hubert, who had been amusing because told to be so by Lois, said that he
was very sorry for it.
“I wanted to find out how many people have noticed that the Bragges have
set up a portrait gallery. Most original, I call it. I hear that you all
discovered it yesterday, and I think it most unkind of you not to point
it out to me.”
“Dear lady,” began Hubert, “we meant for the best.”
“Oh, I know you did. And you were perfectly right. But you see I never
noticed it until the middle of lunch. I pointed it out at once to Mr.
Chaytor, who was sitting next to me. But he was very crushing. He merely
said that he had already observed a resemblance, and changed the
subject. I think he was rather scandalized. And the man on my other side
was deaf. I was longing to find someone to laugh with about it. Do you
really mean to say that the Bragges don’t know?”
“Not yet,” sighed Lois. “But they’ll have to be told, I suppose.”
“James is really a wag. When will you tell them?”
“Oh, Mrs. Cocks,” interrupted Lois, “Agatha was looking for you
everywhere. She wanted to see you before she went. She told me to tell
you she’d left a note for you in your sitting room on the mantelpiece.”
“Went? Went where?”
“Away from here. Back to London, I suppose. She went by the
three-forty.”
“But they aren’t going till Saturday. We all go up to Scotland
together.”
“Oh, John hasn’t gone. Only Agatha. She went in a great hurry just after
lunch. She didn’t even have time to say good-bye to Cynthia. I met her
on the stairs taking leave of Sir Thomas, and she told me she had to run
because her car was round, and asked me to give you her message about
the note.”
“This is very strange!” exclaimed Mrs. Cocks, jumping up. “I can’t
understand this. I must find John.”
She hurried off toward the house, and Lois sank upon the stone bench
beside her husband and felt in his pocket for a cigarette. He lighted it
for her, and another for himself, remarking as he threw away the match:
“I suppose we can now say ‘Nunc Dimittis’ and what not.”
“You did nobly, dear! I felt that our only hope was to keep her away
from people. When I glanced across the table and saw by her expression
that she had seen, I thought all was lost. But your skill in keeping her
in seclusion has saved the day. What did you tell her stories about?”
“Oh, the Jews mostly. We began with the frescoes, of course, and I
propound my theory that art is in for a golden age because all the
profiteers are going to patronize it. This, I say, is due to the
prevalence of Semitism. Formerly the Jews pretended not to be Jews and
spent their money on baronial halls and portraits of Norman ancestors.
Nowadays, when the whole world is run by ’em, nobody’s ashamed of being
a Jew. They build their own houses and don’t waste money on second-hand
stuff. They patronize contemporary art. From that we got on to swapping
stories about our Jewish acquaintances.”
“But Sir Thomas isn’t a Jew.”
“No. But he meekly follows the beaten track of the leading profiteers
who mostly are. But tell me, how did this affair go as a whole? What was
the impression you got? How many people would you say spotted it?”
“Oh, a good many. But most of them were too well mannered to show it.
They were too much shocked and embarrassed to be amused.”
“Then on the whole it was better than it might have been?”
“I don’t know! It was pretty grim. I hope I’ll never have to live
through such another day.”
“So do I.”
“In the beginning I thought it was going off better than I could
possibly have supposed. I was astonished.”
“I know. When the thing was so blazingly obvious to me, I could not see
how they could miss it. And when we got to the joints without a hitch, I
began to be positively elated.”
“There is a good deal in what Agatha says. I think his work repels most
people. They have a sort of instinct not to look at it, and they don’t.”
“They certainly don’t. The lady on my right put up her lorgnettes and
had a very brief squint and then put them down with a click, and said:
‘I hear Mr. James Clewer is a great Socialist.’ I thought that this was
a new phase in Brother James, and said I didn’t know anything about his
political opinions. And she said wasn’t it true that he had married a
working-class woman and lived like an artisan? I said that I believed
that it was. She said that was what she meant, and that she detested
Socialists. I said I did too. Whereupon we talked Bolshevik atrocities,
and I don’t think James or the frescoes were mentioned again.”
“One of my neighbours asked me if Mr. Blair was James,” said Lois. “I
said no, and asked him why he thought so. He said because he looked so
miserable and out of it.”
“Blair certainly looked sorry for himself. And so, by the way, did M. le
Mari. But Agatha seems to thrive on it. I don’t know when I’ve seen her
looking more magnificent.”
“Perhaps she enjoys keeping two men miserable. She was in splendid
spirits—so very animated. She was laughing and talking away all through
lunch. Generally she leaves that to other people.”
“Well, to do her justice, I think she was making a genuine effort to
keep the family flag flying. She was the greatest support to us. No one
in her vicinity had eyes or ears for the frescoes.”
“That is so,” admitted Lois, “Yes, I really thought we were safe until
that awful moment when I caught sight of Mrs. Cocks’s face. It was lucky
that we had short-circuited her by putting her between the proper Mr.
Chaytor and the deaf Sir Nigel.”
“I know. And almost immediately afterward I became aware that a horrid
silence was stealing over the nearest of the trestle tables. And there
was Clewer, sitting perfectly mum, and not attempting to keep up the
conversation. He was a broken reed!”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever known him fail in his social duties.”
“Yes. He’s pretty cut up about Agatha, I really believe. I suppose there
was slaughter after we left them in the hall last night.”
“How long ago it seems!”
“Yes, we’ve lived through a lifetime of care and anxiety since, haven’t
we? It was quite a game to watch it spreading. It would have been funny
if it hadn’t been so grim. That look of incredulity dawning on one face
after another! Still we got off better than I expected.”
“Oh, but Sir Thomas’s speech was terrible! I thought it would be the
last straw. The manners of the English are incredible, as you say. One
can’t overstate their sense of decency. They just all looked a little
uncomfortable, for the most part. Very few exceptions.”
“And any one would look uncomfortable at any of Sir Thomas’s speeches.
His articulation was so uncommonly thick that I began to think of
strokes, didn’t you?”
“Oh, but when he proposed James’s health . . .!”
“Still he was so maudlin and incoherent by that time that most people
couldn’t have heard much of it.”
“Well, one or two who had behaved beautifully up till then began to get
a little hysterical. Is that Mother calling?”
Marian had come to the end of the terrace and was hailing them. Her
tones were significant and peremptory. When they joined her she inquired
in lowered accents:
“Have you heard?”
Lois nodded.
“It’s wicked! It’s monstrous!” broke out Lady Clewer. “Such a thing has
never happened in the family before.”
Lois and Hubert could well believe this.
“We shall never be able to hold up our heads again.”
“Very few people know as yet,” consoled Hubert. “And perhaps something
can be done?”
“I should hope that very few people did know! May I ask how you did? Who
told you?”
“As a matter of fact,” hesitated Lois, “we knew yesterday?”
“Yesterday!” shrieked Marian. “You knew yesterday?”
“Yes, but we thought it would be better not to distress you by speaking
of it until after the lunch party. We discussed it with Agatha. . . .”
“You discussed it with Agatha.” Marian was so much taken aback that she
could only whisper. “How could you discuss it with Agatha?”
“Well, we thought she would be a good person to talk it over with.”
Marian stared at them with her mouth open. At last she managed to ask:
“Did you begin on it, or did she?”
“We did. And she advised us to say nothing about it until after lunch
to-day.”
“I’ll be bound she did. But I simply cannot understand such disloyalty
in either of you. It was bare-faced connivance! You should have come to
me at once. And think of poor Tom and Cynthia having such a thing happen
in their house! It’s disgraceful! And now it’s probably too late to do
anything, though Mrs. Cocks is going off at once to see what she can
do.”
“Mrs. Cocks!” exclaimed the other two. And Lois added: “What can she do?
Where is she going? Not to James, surely?”
“To James? Of course not. Why should she? Lois! Hubert! You don’t mean
to tell me that James has had any hand in this affair?”
Lois and Hubert looked at each other, and Hubert said cautiously:
“Please, Lady Clewer, what are you talking about?”
“Why—this step of Agatha’s! Don’t you know? She’s gone away—run
away—with her cousin. With Mr. Blair. She has left John.”
It was now their turn to be speechless.
“She left a note, a wicked, cruel note, for John,” went on Marian with
rising indignation. “And one for her mother. Of all the horrible
things. . . . But what were you saying about James?”
“That’s nothing. Something quite different,” said Hubert. “This
frightful news—I can’t believe it. It can’t be true. There must be some
mistake.”
“I insist upon knowing at once,” said Marian sharply. “Lois, I command
you to tell me; what has James been doing?”
“Oh, Mother! That can wait! Are you sure that this about Agatha isn’t
all a frightful mistake? I knew they left by the same train; she made no
secret of it. But that doesn’t prove . . .”
“The note she left for John was perfectly unambiguous. He showed it to
me.”
Lois, to her extreme surprise, burst into tears. She was fatigued and
bewildered. Hubert and Marian, remembering her condition, became alarmed
and consoling, blaming each other for having subjected her to the shock.
She sobbed noisily upon Hubert’s shoulder for a few minutes, and then
collected herself sufficiently to ask:
“What did John say?”
“He said nothing. He was so frightfully moved that he couldn’t speak. He
just handed me the note and walked out of the room. He’d written on the
back of it, ‘I shall make no attempt to follow her, I am going down to
Lyndon to-night.’ This was just after the last of the guests had gone.”
Lois collapsed again.
“Oh . . . Oh . . .” she wailed. “Why must all this happen?”
“Lois, my darling, my precious, don’t. You’ll make yourself ill.”
“Oh, Hubert! I can’t bear it! After this awful day with James’s horrible
frescoes . . .”
“James? Will you tell me what this business of James is, please? Hubert!
You are evading me. I won’t have it!”
“Oh, well, it’s got to be,” sighed Hubert, and told her.
Her incredulity protected her for some time. Even after they had
revisited the hall and inspected the paintings she insisted that they
must have been changed since she last saw them. She maintained that she
could not have failed to recognize them. When, after long argument, the
truth assailed her, she became too deeply shocked for any
demonstrations. Lois and Hubert waited for a torrent of vituperation,
but she said nothing. In silence she left the hall and stumbled down the
marble corridor into the drawing room. They followed her, literally
clinging to each other in terror of what she would say when she once
began. She had sunk on to a chesterfield, and Hubert, really alarmed by
her gray colour, went in search of restoratives. She had barely reached
the point of interjections and gasps when Mrs. Cocks, a Bradshaw in one
hand and a fountain pen in the other, stormed into the room.
“There’s this five-fifty-five,” she began, and then exclaimed with some
commiseration: “Good heavens, Marian! How ill you look!”
“James . . . these frescoes . . . Tom . . . Cynthia,” began Marian
faintly.
“Oh, the frescoes? Oh, yes! I’m very sorry for you all about that
affair, indeed I am. But, listen, Marian. Can I speak to you privately
for a moment?”
“You needn’t mind Hubert and Lois. They know all about Agatha going, if
that is what you want to talk about.”
“Oh, indeed? I’m very sorry for it. Of course,” Mrs. Cocks turned to
them, “I know you will be discreet. It’s very important that this affair
should go no farther. I’m hoping to find Agatha in town this evening and
to bring her back with me. I beseech you, Marian, to say nothing of it
to any one else. Is it necessary to tell the Bragges?”
“They ought to know what has been going on in their house,” began Marian
firmly.
She was beginning to feel a little better.
“At least say nothing till we have seen what can be done,” entreated
Mrs. Cocks. “For John’s sake, I should have thought you’d wish to keep
it quiet. Just listen! If I take this five-fifty-five, I get to
London—let me see—I’ve lost the place. It’s quite tolerably early in
the evening, anyhow. I shall go straight to Harley Street and find out
where he is staying. They know I’m his cousin, so they’ll probably give
me his address if I’m a little pressing. Then——”
“But I must go over to Bramfield immediately! Immediately!” cried
Marian, starting up. “I must make James change that horrible thing. He
must paint it out. He must do a new one. I’ll make him. It’s
disgraceful. Hubert! can you order a car for me at once? . . .”
“Oh, Marian, do listen to me for a moment! What do the frescoes matter,
after all, compared with this? Could you see John for me and find out if
he . . .”
But Marian burst out afresh:
“Oh, why couldn’t you have told me yesterday? We could have hung a
curtain over that back panel.”
“Good God!” cried Hubert in horror. “You couldn’t have done that. It’s
the best panel of the lot. You can’t hide away work like that.”
“Don’t speak in that cynical way, Hubert!”
“I’m not being cynical, Lady Clewer. There are some things you can’t do,
and——”
“Can’t I? You wait and see what I can’t do! I tell you, if James won’t
alter that horrid thing I shall strongly advise Tom and Cynthia to
distemper it over.”
“Well, then, I wash my hands of it,” said Hubert furiously.
“It’s a pity you ever had anything to do with it, Hubert. It was you
persuaded them to have James. I was always against it.”
“Oh, Mother, how could Hubert know?”
“Marian, I don’t believe you want me to bring Agatha back. Can’t you see
that my business is urgent? Urgent! It can’t wait; I’ve no time to lose.
You can distribute the blame about the frescoes at your leisure after
I’m gone. You have no sense of proportion.”
“I’m sorry for you, Ellen. I pity you deeply. I see that it must be a
great shock to you . . . for you never would see. . . . Of course, it’s
less of a blow to the rest of us simply because we did recognize. . . .
But what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to speak to John and tell him I’ve gone after her. Tell him
I’m convinced it’s all nothing: all a mistake. Do try to persuade him to
be a little kind, if . . . when I bring her back with me. However much
he feels he has been in the right, do beg him to be generous! I expect I
shall take her back to South Kensington to-night, and to-morrow we will
come back here.”
“I will see him, Ellen, but I doubt if he will ever forgive her.”
“But perhaps he may find that he has not so very much to forgive. Do
entreat him to keep an open mind.”
“Very well. But it’s no use your bringing her back here to-morrow. He is
going down to Lyndon to-night, and I shall probably go with him.”
“Oh? Then we’ll come to Lyndon.”
“Oh!” cried Marian, wringing her hands. “When I think of my poor
Cynthia! So horribly insulted! Other people have scandals and
divorces—but this! It’s so unusual! Nobody—nobody ever had anything
like this in their family. And Cynthia of all people! She deserves it so
little. She has always been such a discreet child. Tom will be beside
himself. Unless—unless I can make James alter the thing before they
find out. Don’t tell them, any of you! Do be careful what you say to
them.”
“I will say nothing! Nothing!” said Mrs. Cocks, perceiving her
advantage, “if you will promise not to speak of this exploit of Agatha’s
until I have been to town. Please, Marian! Wait at least until
to-morrow.”
“If you like, Ellen. Though mind you, I don’t expect you will be able to
do much. But I must go to Bramfield and see James. Then I’ll go to
Lyndon. I needn’t tell Tom and Cynthia I’m going via Bramfield.”
“And I must pack if I’m to catch the five-fifty-five.”
Both matrons hurried from the room, their excited voices dying away as
they ascended the stairs. Hubert picked up the half-finished glass of
brandy and water which he had fetched for Marian. He offered it to Lois
and, when she resolutely refused it, drank it up himself.
“Do you think,” Lois whispered, “that Agatha really has . . .?”
“I’m afraid it looks hatefully like it,” he said gloomily.
“It’s a pity she didn’t know how ill John really is.”
“She ought to have been told.”
“I don’t believe she’d have gone if she knew, do you?”
“Oh, she couldn’t! A woman would have to be an absolute devil to be as
heartless as that. And she has a kindly nature, I think.”
“Yes, she is kind.” Lois was still too much shocked to be conventional.
“Poor Agatha! I’m very sorry for them all. Aren’t you, Hubert?”
Hubert was on the point of saying that he wasn’t particularly sorry for
Gerald Blair. But he had the wit to refrain, and remarked instead:
“Perhaps her mother will be able to bring her back. Look here, Lois! If
she’s going to town to-night, and your mother and John are going to
Lyndon, we shall be left alone with the Bragges. I bar that. I couldn’t
stand another meal in that hall. We’ll go too.”
“But, Hubert, where? We can’t go home to-night. They don’t expect us,
for one thing.”
“We’ll stop somewhere in town to-night, and go home to-morrow. We’ll get
that five-fifty-five Mrs. Cocks goes by. Look sharp and see to our
packing! We’ve just time. I’ll find Bragge and make our apologies.”
“But it’s so rude.”
“We’ve done enough for ’em for one day. I’m going, anyhow. If you like
to stay by yourself you can.”
“We’ll never have time.”
“Yes, we will, if we are quick. Do run, Lois. Just get together our
things for the night, and your woman can follow us with the rest of the
luggage when she’s packed it. I’ll give you dinner in any pub you like,
and you can choose your show afterward. I’ll take you to hear Wagner if
you want. Only do hurry!”
Lois yielded and ran upstairs to harry her maid through a hasty packing.
Hubert found Sir Thomas and manufactured a sufficiently credible excuse
for their sudden departure. In a very short time Braxhall was emptied of
its guests. The long table was removed from the dais in the hall and
replaced by a smaller one, suitable for two diners. There, in spacious
magnificence, Sir Thomas and his lady devoured their evening meal,
solemnly, slowly, and for the most part in silence. Occasionally the
owner of Braxhall broke into a monologue.
“Odd thing they all had to hurry off like that. But they were very sorry
to go. They said so. Hard luck on them, having to go. We sha’n’t have
any bridge to-night. However! I think they enjoyed themselves.
I-think-they-enjoyed-themselves. But we sha’n’t have any bridge
to-night. No! No bridge! You and I will have to get out the cribbage
board, Cynthie.”
Lady Bragge helped herself to iced asparagus.
“Went off very well indeed, the lunch did. Very well! Quite a new thing
in these parts, I should say. A unique experience for everybody there.
That’s what it was. A unique experience. I never heard before of an
American lunch in honour of a work of art. No more did any one else,
I’ll be bound. No! Quite a new thing. Pity James Clewer wasn’t there.
He’d have enjoyed it. I like to see people enjoying themselves. But I
proposed his health. I didn’t forget that. A good sort, James! I like
him. I-like-him. Blood is thicker than water, when all’s said and done.
I said so in my speech. A decent fellow. Weoughttoamadeimcome. . . .”
Tears stood in Sir Thomas’s eyes as he repeatedly averred how much he
liked his brother-in-law.
Cynthia said nothing but went on eating her dinner. Occasionally she
stared idly about her, at her food, at her husband, at the frescoes,
with the same exquisite, enigmatic contempt.