REFORMATION.
In very truth the atmosphere at Nutley was heavy with threatening
clouds; unless a fair wind came to scatter them, the storm must soon
break. Isobel had fled within her feminine barricades--the barricades
which women are so clever at constructing and at persuading the
conventions of life to help them to defend. A woman's solitudes may not
be stormed; with address she can escape private encounters. In sore fear
of Harry because sore afraid of herself, she gave him no opportunity. In
sore fear of Wellgood, she shrank from facing him with a rupture of
their secret arrangement. Both men were tricked out of their stolen
interviews--Wellgood out of his legitimate privilege, Harry out of his
trespassing. Each asked why; in each jealousy harked back to its one
definite starting-point--Harry's to her suggestions about her relations
with Vivien's father, Wellgood's to Belfield's hints that, as a
companion, Isobel was needlessly good looking. To each of them matter of
amusement at the time when they were made, they took on now a new
significance; so irony loves to confront our past and present moods. But
Wellgood held a card that was not in Harry's hand--a card which could
not win the game, but could at least secure an opening. He was employer
as well as lover. Vivien's father could command the presence of Vivien's
companion--not indeed late at night, for that would be a scarcely
judicious straining of his powers, but at any reputable
business-transacting hour of the day. For two nights--and that day of
which the Nun had been a witness--he suffered the evasion of his rights;
then, with a suavity dangerous in a man so rough, he prayed Miss
Vintry's presence in the study for ten minutes (the established period!)
before dinner; there were ways and means to be discussed, he said,
matters touching the _trousseau_ and the wedding entertainment. Vivien
was bidden to run away and dress. "We're preparing one or two surprises
for you, my dear," he said to her, with a grim smile which carried for
Isobel a hidden reference.
Thus commanded in Vivien's presence, Isobel was cleverly caught between
the duty of obedience and the abandonment of her ostensible position in
the house. Her barricade was being outflanked; she was forced into the
open.
She was in fear of him, almost actual physical fear; whether more of his
fondness or of his roughness she could not tell; she felt that she could
hardly bear either. Since her avowal to Harry, her courage had never
returned, her weapons seemed blunted, she was no more mistress of all
her resources. Yet in the end she feared the fondness more, and would at
all costs avoid that. She summoned the remnants of her once brilliant
array of bravery.
Alone with her, he wasted no time on the artifice which had secured him
privacy.
"What's this new fad, Isobel? You're wilfully avoiding me. One evening
you turn faint; another you dodge me, and are off to bed! Though I don't
think I've ever made exacting claims on your time, considering!"
"I've been afraid--you'd better hear the truth--to speak to you."
"I should like the truth, certainly, if I can get it. What have you been
afraid to speak to me about?"
"Our engagement." She made the plunge, her eyes fixed apprehensively on
his face. "I--I can't go on with it, Mr. Wellgood."
He had schooled himself for this answer; he made no outburst. His tone
was mild; the cunning of jealousy gave him an alien smoothness.
"Sit down, my dear, and tell me why."
She sat facing him, his writing-table between them.
"My feelings haven't--haven't developed as I hoped they would."
"Oh, your feelings haven't developed?" he repeated slowly. "Towards me?"
"I reserved the right to change my mind--you remember?"
"And I the right to be unpleasant about it." He smiled under intent
eyes.
"I'll leave the house to-morrow, if you like," she cried, eager now to
accept a banishment she had once dreaded.
"Oh, no! I'm not going to be unpleasant. We needn't do things like
that."
"I--I think I should prefer it."
"I'm sorry you should feel that. There's no need; you shan't be
annoyed."
"That's good of you. I thought you'd be very, very hard to me."
"Would that be the best way to win you back? I don't know--at any rate I
don't feel like following it. But really you can't go off at a moment's
notice--and just now! What would Vivien think? What are we to say to
her? What would everybody think? And how are Vivien and I to get through
all this business of the wedding?"
"I know it would be awkward, and look odd, but it might be better. Your
feelings--"
"Never mind my feelings; you know they're not my weak spot. Come,
Isobel, you see now you've no cause to be afraid of me, don't you?"
"You're behaving very kindly--more kindly than perhaps I could expect."
Down in her mind there was latent distrust of this unwonted
uncharacteristic kindness. Yet it looked genuine enough. There was no
reference to the name she dreaded; no hint, no sneer, about Harry
Belfield. She rose to a hope that her tricks and her fencing had been
successful, that he was quite in the dark, that the issue was to his
mind between their two selves alone, with no intruder.
Wellgood's jealousy bade him be proud of his effort, and encouraged him
to persevere. The natural temper of the man might be raging, almost to
the laying of hands on her; it must be kept down; the time for it was
not yet. Rudeness or roughness would give her an excuse for flight; he
would not have her fly. A plausible kindness, a considerate
smoothness--that was the card jealousy selected for him to play.
"You shan't be troubled, you shan't be annoyed. I'll give up my evening
treat. We'll go back to our old footing--before I spoke to you about
this. I'll ask nothing of you as a lover--well, except not to decide
finally against me till the wedding. Only three weeks! But as my friend,
and Vivien's, I do ask you not to leave us in the lurch now--at this
particular moment--and not to risk setting everybody talking. If you
insist on leaving me, go after the wedding. That means no change in our
plan, except that you won't come back. That'll seem quite natural; it's
what they all expect."
Still never a word of Harry, no hint of resentment, nothing that could
alarm her or give her a handle for offence! Whether from friend or
lover, his request sounded most moderate and reasonable. Not to leave
the friend in the lurch, not to decide with harsh haste against a
patient lover who had been given cause for confident hope, almost for
certainty! He left her no plausible answer, for she could adduce no
grievance against him. He had but taken what for her own purposes she
had been content to allow--first in his bluff flirtation, then in his
ill-restrained endearments. There was no plausibility in turning round
and pretending to resent these things now. She dared not take false
points in an encounter so perilous; that would be to expose herself to a
crushing reply.
"If you go now--all of a sudden, at this moment--I can't help thinking
you'll put yourself under a slur, or else put me under one. People know
the position you've been in here--practically mistress of the house,
with Vivien in your entire charge. Very queer to leave three weeks
before her wedding! You may invent excuses, or we may. An aunt
dying--something of that sort! Nobody ever believes in those dying
aunts!"
It was all true; people did not believe in those dying aunts, not when
sudden departures of handsome young women were in question. People would
talk; the thing would look odd. His plausible cunning left her no
loophole.
"If you wish it, I'll stay till the wedding, on our old footing--as we
were before all this, I mean. But you mustn't think there's any chance
of my--my changing again."
"Thank you." He put out his hand across the table. She could not but
take it. Though he seemed so cool and quiet, the hand was very hot. He
held hers for a long while, his eyes intently fixed on her in a regard
which she could not fathom, but which filled her anew with fear. She
fell into a tremble; her lips quivered.
"Let me go now, please," she entreated, her eyes unable to meet his any
longer.
He released her hand, and leant back in his chair. He smiled at her
again, as he said, "Yes, go now. I'm afraid this interview has been
rather trying to you--perhaps to us both."
Of all the passions, the sufferings, the undergoings of mankind, none
has so relentlessly been put to run the gauntlet of ridicule as
jealousy. It is the sport of the composer of light verses, the born
material of the writer of farce--especially when it is well founded. It
is perhaps strange to remark--could any strangeness outlast
familiarity--that the supreme study of it treats of it as utterly
unfounded, and finds its highest tragedy in its baselessness. Ridiculous
when justifiable, tragic when all a delusion! Is that nature's view,
even as it is so often art's? Certainly the race is obstinate in holding
real failure in the conflict of sex as small recommendation in a hero,
imagined as the opportunity for his highest effect. King Arthur hardly
bears the burden of being deceived; on the baseless suspicion of it the
Moor rides through murder to a triumphant death--and a general
sympathy--unless nowadays women have anything to say on the latter
point.
Yet this poor passion--commonly so ridiculous,
even more commonly, among the polite, held ill-bred--must be allowed its
features of interest. It is remarkably alert, acute, ingenious, even
laborious, in its sweeping of details into its net. It works up its
brief very industriously, be the instructions never so meagre--somehow
it invites legal metaphor, being always plaintiff in the court of sex,
always with its grievance to prove, generally faced with singularly hard
swearing in the witness box. It has its successes, as witnessed by
notable phrases; there is the "unwritten law," and there are
"extenuating circumstances." The phrases throw back a rather startling
illumination on the sport of versifiers and the material of farce. But
the exceptional cases have a trick of stamping themselves on
phraseology. Most of us are jealous with no very momentous results. We
grumble a little, watch a little, sulk a little, and decide that there
is nothing in it. Often there is not. Likewise we are ambitious without
convulsing the world--or even our own family circle. So with our lives,
our loves, our deaths--history, poetry, elegy find no place for them.
Only nature has and keeps a mother's love for the ordinary man, and
holds his doings legitimate matter for her interest, nay, essential to
her eternal unresting plan. She may be figured as investing the bulk of
her fortune in him, as in three per cents.--genius being her occasional
"flutter."
Mark Wellgood was an ordinary man, and he was proud of the fact; that
must, perhaps, be considered a circumstance of aggravation. He refused
the suggestions of civilization to modify, and of sentiment to soften,
his primitive instincts; he was proud of them just as they were. If any
man had come between him and his woman--primitive also were the terms
his thoughts used--that man should pay for it. If there were any man at
all, who could it be but Harry Belfield? If it were Harry Belfield,
Wellgood refused to hold him innocent of an inkling of how matters stood
between Isobel and Vivien's father--he must have pretty nearly guessed,
even if she had not told him. At least there were relations between
Vivien herself and the suspected trespasser. Did they not give cause
enough for a father's anger, deep and righteous, demanding vengeance?
They gave cause--and they gave cover. The jealous suitor could use the
indignant father's plea, the indignant father's weapons. The lover's
revenge would make the father's duty sweet. He was not indifferent to
the wrong done to Vivien; yet he almost prized it for the advantage it
gave him in his own quarrel. It was not often that jealousy could plume
itself on so honourable and so useful an ally!
Single-hearted concern for Vivien would have let Isobel go, as she
prayed, and given Harry either his dismissal or the chance to mend his
ways in the absence of temptation. Jealousy imperiously vetoed such
suggestions. Isobel should not go. Harry should neither be dismissed nor
given a fair chance and a fresh start. If he could, Wellgood would still
keep Isobel; at least he would punish Harry, if he caught him. For the
sake of these things he compromised his daughter's cause, and made her
an instrument for his own purposes. And he did this with no sense of
wrong-doing. So masterful was his self-regarding passion that his
daughter's claim fell to the status of his pretext.
So he smoothed his face and watched.
But Isobel too was now on the alert. She was no longer merely resolved
that she would behave herself because she ought; she saw that perforce
she must. At least, no more secret dealings! Harry must be told that.
The hidden hope that his answer would be, "Open dealings, then, at any
cost," beat still in her heart, faintly, yet without ceasing. But if
that answer came not, then all must be over. Word must go to him of that
before he next came to Nutley. Such consolation as lay in knowing that
she would not marry Wellgood should be his also. Then, perhaps, things
would go a little easier, and these terrible three weeks slip past
without disaster. Terrible--yes; but, alas, the end of them seemed more
terrible yet.
Even had the post seemed safe, there was none which could reach Harry
before he was due at Nutley again. She had to find a messenger. She
decided on Andy Hayes. He was a safe man; he would not forget to fulfil
his charge. The very fact of that bit of knowledge he possessed made him
in her eyes the safest messenger; if he had not talked about that other
thing, he was not likely to talk about the letter; unlikely to mention
it in malice, certain not to refer to it in innocence or inadvertence.
And she knew where to find him. Andy had, with Wellgood's permission,
resumed his practice of bathing before breakfast in Nutley lake. The
stripes of his bathing-suit were a familiar object to her as he emerged
from the bushes or plunged into the water; from her window she could
watch his powerful strokes. His hour was half-past seven; before eight
nobody but servants would be about.
Andy, then, emerging from the shrubbery dressed after his dip, found
Miss Vintry strolling up and down.
"You're surprised to see me out so early, Mr. Hayes? But I know your
habits. My window looks out this way."
"I'm awfully careful to keep well hidden in the bushes."
"Oh yes!" she laughed. "I've not come to warn you off. Are you likely to
see Mr. Harry this morning?"
"I easily can; I shall be passing Halton."
"I specially want this note to reach him early in the morning. It's
rather important. I should be so much obliged if you'd take it; and will
you give it to him yourself?"
Andy stood silent for a moment, not offering to take the letter from her
hand. She had foreseen that he might hesitate, knowing what he did; she
had even thought that his hesitation might give her an opportunity.
Feigning to notice nothing in his manner, she went on, "I must add that
I shall be glad if you'll give it to him when he's alone, and if you
won't mention it. It relates to a private matter."
Andy spoke slowly. "I'm not sure you'd choose me to carry it if you
knew--"
"I do know; at least I never had much doubt, and I've had none since a
talk we had together at Halton. Do you remember?"
"I didn't say anything about it then, did I?" asked Andy.
She smiled. "Not in so many words. You saw a great piece of
foolishness--the first and last, I need hardly tell you. I'm very much
ashamed of it. In that letter I ask Mr. Harry to forget all about it,
and to remember only that I am, and want to go on being, Vivien's
friend."
It sounded well, but Andy was not quite convinced.
"It's some time ago now. Mightn't you just ignore it?"
"As far as he's concerned, no doubt I might; but I rather want to get it
off my own conscience, Mr. Hayes. It'll make me happier in meeting him.
I shall be happier in meeting you too, after this little talk. Somehow
that wretched bit of silliness seems to have made an awkwardness between
us, and I want to leave Nutley good friends with every one."
She sounded very sincere; nay, in a sense she was sincere. She was
ashamed; she did want to end the whole matter--unless that unexpected
answer came. At any rate she was--or sounded--sincere enough to make
Andy hold out his hand for the letter.
"I'll take it and give it to him as you wish, Miss Vintry. I'm bound to
say, though, that, if apologies are being made, I think Harry's the one
to make them."
"We women are taught to think such things worse in ourselves than in
men. Men get carried away; they're allowed to, now and then. We
mustn't."
The appeal to his chivalry--another wrong to woman!--touched Andy.
"That's infernally unfair!"
"It sometimes seems so, just a little. I'm sincerely grateful to you,
Mr. Hayes." She held out her hand to him. "You won't think it necessary
to mention to Mr. Harry all I've told you? I don't think he was so sure
as I was about--about your presence. And somehow it makes it seem worse
if he knew that you--"
"I shall say nothing whatever, if he doesn't," said Andy, as he shook
hands.
"Thank you again. I don't think I dare risk asking you to be
friends--real friends--yet; but I may, perhaps, on the wedding day."
"I've never been your enemy, Miss Vintry."
"No; you've been kind, considerate"--her voice dropped--"merciful. Thank
you. Good-bye."
She left Andy with her letter in his hands, and her humble thanks
echoing in his ears--words that, in thanking him for his silence, bound
him to a continuance of it. Andy felt most of the guilt suddenly
transferred to his shoulders, because he had told the Nun--well, very
nearly all about it! That could not be helped now. After all, it was
Miss Vintry's own fault; she should have done sooner what she had done
now. "All the same," thought chivalrous Andy, "I might give Doris a hint
that things look a good bit better."
Certainly Isobel Vintry had cause to congratulate herself on a useful
morning's work--Harry safely warned, Andy in great measure conciliated.
She felt more able to face Wellgood over the teapot.
The first round had gone in her favour; the zone of danger was
appreciably contracted. Her courage rose; her conscience, too, was
quieter. She felt comparatively honest. With Wellgood she had gone as
near to absolute honesty as the circumstances permitted. She had broken
the engagement; she had even prayed to be allowed to go away, with all
that meant to her. Wellgood made her stay. Then, so far as he was
concerned, the issue must be on his own head. If that unexpected answer
should come in the course of the weeks still left for it, it would be
Wellgood's own lookout. As for Vivien--well, she was perceptibly more
honest even in regard to Vivien. If she fought still, in desperate hope,
for Vivien's lover, she fought now in fairer fashion, by refusing, not
by accepting, his society, his attentions, his kisses. She would be
nothing to him unless he found himself forced to cry, "Be everything!"
She would abide no longer on that half-way ground; there were to be no
more sly tricks and secret meetings. The kisses, if kisses came, would
not be stolen, but ravished in conquest from a rival's lips. If sin,
that was sin in the grand manner.
At lunch-time a note came for Vivien, brought by a groom on a bicycle.
"Oh, from Harry!" she exclaimed, tearing it open.
Isobel, sitting opposite Wellgood, set her face. She had expected a note
to come for Vivien from Harry. She was on her mettle, fighting warily,
risking no points. No note should come to her from Harry, to be opened
perhaps under Wellgood's eyes; he had been known to ask to see letters,
in his matter-of-course way assuming that there could be nothing private
in them. Harry's answer to the note Andy delivered was to come to Isobel
through Vivien, and to come in terms dictated by Isobel, terms that she
alone would understand. She could always contrive to see Vivien's
letters; generally they were left about.
"He's so sorry he can't bring Mr. Foot to tennis with him this
afternoon; they're going to play golf," Vivien announced, rather
disappointed. But she cheered up. "Oh well, it's rather hot for tennis;
and I shall see him to-night, at dinner at Halton."
"Does he say anything else?" asked Isobel carelessly.
"Only that he's bored to death with politics." She laughed. "What's
worrying him, I wonder?"
For a moment Isobel sat with eyes lowered; then she raised them and
looked across to Wellgood. He was not looking at her; he was carving
beef. Then it did not matter if her face had changed a little when she
heard that Harry was bored with politics. Neither Wellgood nor Vivien
had seen any change there might possibly have been in her face.
That trivial observation about politics was the answer--the expected
answer, not that unexpected one. It meant, "I accept your decision."
Oddly enough her first feeling, the one that rose instinctively in her
mind, was of triumph over Wellgood. Had she expressed it with the
primitive simplicity on which he prided himself, she would have cried,
"Sold again!" She had got out of her great peril; she had settled the
whole thing. He had not scored a single point against her. She had
regained her independence of him, and without cost. There was no longer
anything for him to discover. He had no more rights over her; he had to
renew his wooing, again to court, to conciliate. He had no way of
finding out the past; Andy Hayes was safe. The future was again in her
hands. Her smile at Wellgood was serene and confident. She was
retreating in perfect order, after fighting a brilliantly successful
rearguard action.
Even of the retreat itself she was, for the moment at least, half glad.
Fear and longing had so mingled in her dreams of that unexpected answer.
To be free from that crisis and that revelation! They would have meant
flight for her, pursued by a chorus of condemning voices. They would
have meant at least days, perhaps weeks, of straining vigilance, of
harrowing suspense--never sure of her ground, never sure of herself;
above all, never sure of Harry. Who, if not she, should know that you
never could be sure of Harry? Who, if not she, should know that neither
his plighted word nor his hottest impulse could be relied upon to last?
Yes, she was--half glad; almost more than half glad, when she looked at
Vivien. In the back of her mind, save maybe when passion ran at full
flood for those rare minutes, the stolen ten that had come for so few
days, had been the feeling that it would be a terrible thing to be--to
be "shown up" to Vivien. The sage adviser, the firm preceptress, the
model of the virtues of self-control--how would she have looked in the
eyes of Vivien, even had the open, the triumphant victory come to pass?
Really that hardly bore thinking of, if she had still any self-respect
to lose.
She walked alone in the drive after lunch--where she had been wont to
meet him. Let it all go! At least it had done one thing for her--it had
saved her from Wellgood. It had taught her love, and made the pretence
of love impossible--the suffering of unwelcome caresses a thing unholy.
Then it was not all to the bad? It left her with a dream, a vision, a
thing unrealized yet real; something to take with her into that new,
cold, unknown world of strange people into which, for a livelihood's
sake, she must soon plunge--must plunge as soon as she had seen Harry
married to Vivien!
The sun was on the lake that afternoon; the water looked peaceful,
friendly, consoling. She sat down by the margin of it, and gave herself
to memories. They came thick and fast, repeating themselves endlessly
out of scant material--full of shame, full of woe; but also full of
triumph, for she had been loved--at least for the time desired--by the
man of her love and desire. Bought at a great cost? Yes. And never ought
to have been bought? No. But now by no means to be forgotten.
She was alone; everything was still, in the calm of a September
afternoon. She bowed her head to her hands and wept.
The Nun walked up the drive and saw the figure of a woman weeping.