THE LOST WEDDING-RING.
The morning after the ball, neither Mary nor Alice appeared at
breakfast, nor did they descend till nearly luncheon-time. Helen
Mayhew’s portly figure was filling up a goodly portion of the open
window, as she looked out on the terrace at Reginald playing with
Maurice.
“Come here, Alice,” she said, as Alice languidly entered the room. “Is
it not a pretty sight to see Reginald with his little boy?”
Alice approached and looked over her shoulder, and saw her husband
leaning against the balustrade and making a small boat for Maurice,
who, perched up beside him on the broad parapet, was watching his
proceedings with the most lively interest, occasionally making
suggestions and talking ceaselessly; the most thorough understanding
between the pair was evident. Both faces were equally intent on the
work in hand, and the resemblance between them was more striking than
ever. Suddenly Reginald glanced up and saw Helen; lifting Maurice in
his arms, he came closer to the window.
“Look at my boat,” cried Maurice, waving it towards her; “it’s going to
be painted blue, and I’m to sail it this evening--he is going to show
me;” ruffling up his father’s short locks with small tanned fingers.
Reginald set him down, and glanced from him to Helen with a smile of
unbounded pride, but catching sight of Alice the smile died away, and
nodding her a cool good-morning, he turned away and led Maurice up the
steps into the house.
“Why does he treat me so?” whispered Alice indignantly. “He never
speaks of the child to me, and scarcely notices him when I am present,
although he is my child--I am his mother; he spends hours with Maurice
alone, and Maurice adores him. What does he mean? Is he afraid I would
be jealous?”
“Ask him, my dear, ask him. Here he is, and here is luncheon,” she
answered gaily.
“What shall we do this afternoon?” was the question that went round the
table. “It’s too hot to ride, too hot for tennis. What shall we do?”
“Go and eat fruit in the garden,” suggested Geoffrey serenely.
“What, the _whole_ afternoon?” exclaimed Reginald aghast.
“Let us first gather some fruit, and then go for a walk up to the top
of Beecher’s Hill,” put in Miss Ferrars.
“Energetic young person! I admire, but I decline to emulate your
pedestrian powers,” said Geoffrey, putting up his eye-glass and gazing
at her with calm approval.
“To Beecher’s Hill we will go by all means,” assented Helen. “I am
quite in the humour for a nice stroll.”
“It’s a pretty steep stroll I can tell you! Don’t expect me to pull you
up the hill.”
“I never expect any politeness from _you_, Geoffrey,” she replied with
a smile. “What a lazy, good-for-nothing boy you are! Let us all go and
get ready; by the time we start it will be nearly four o’clock.”
“But it would be madness to start now,” expostulated Alice; “think of
toiling uphill in this broiling sun! Wait till it is a little cooler.”
“The walk in the sun will do Helen good. She wants severe exercise
badly,” said Geoffrey, looking at her dispassionately. “If you were to
put on a couple of sealskin jackets, Reginald’s poshteen, and my frieze
ulster, you would be wise.”
“You are raving, my good Geoffrey! Too much dancing has affected your
reason,” replied Mrs. Mayhew.
“I have method in my madness at any rate--the symmetry of your figure
at heart,” responded the young man, with an air of deep interest.
“I’m not a bit stouter than Mrs. Russell, whom you profess to admire so
much.”
“I don’t admire her at all! She is like a bolster tied in the middle,”
remonstrated Geoffrey vehemently. “She has a figure like a cottage
loaf.”
“You may as well make him a present of the last word, Helen,” observed
Alice, taking her by the arm and leading her out of the room. “There
is no use arguing with him, he has _such_ a tongue, and he is utterly
unscrupulous as to what he says.”
“People who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” shouted
Geoffrey.
“There!” exclaimed Alice, stopping with one foot on the stairs, “I knew
it! I told you he would have the last word. No one can silence him
but Reginald, and, to quote Geoffrey’s own language, he shuts him up
beautifully.”
Five o’clock found the walking party reclining in various luxurious
attitudes on the top of Beecher’s Hill--they had evidently but recently
arrived. Alice and Geoffrey had scooped out a comfortable nest in the
side of a haycock, without loss of time, and were resting after their
joint labours.
Under an adjoining “wind” were the remainder of the party. Helen,
much out of breath, was fanning herself with feverish energy; Mark
presented a grotesque appearance, with loosened necktie, his head
covered by a large straw hat, under which he had inserted an enormous
cabbage-leaf, which drooped gracefully over his eyes. Prone at his feet
lay Reginald, his hands clasped behind his head, his hat tilted far
over his forehead--he looked the very embodiment of lazy comfort. Alice
turned her attention for some time to the prospect that lay beneath
her eyes--a truly English scene. Their own park was immediately below;
beyond that, deeply embedded in trees, and merely discovering itself by
the smoke from its cottages, a pretty little hamlet tried to conceal
itself; then came golden corn-fields, the spire of a Norman church,
the steeple at Manister; a long low range of purple hills framed the
horizon. It was a lovely summer’s evening, the air was so clear one
could see for miles; it was so still, that various curious insects
in the grass and the booming of homeward-bound bees alone broke the
silence.
Something tickling her neck made Alice abruptly turn her head; it was
Geoffrey, of course, with a long piece of spear-grass, with which he
had been diligently chasing hay-spiders. “Alice,” he whispered, “let us
go over quietly and topple the whole of the haycock over them, it will
be no end of fun. I don’t know which will be the most furious, Reginald
or Helen. Come along,” holding out his hand encouragingly; “it is an
innocent pastime for an idle moment.”
“No, no, Geoffrey; you had better not, mind----”
“Well, will you promise to engage them in lively conversation whilst I
go behind and loosen the whole concern? When I cough I advise you to
move.”
“I’ll have nothing to say to it. Do you think I am a school-girl? I’m
too old for such nonsense!” cried Alice irritably.
“I think you are in one of your tempers, that’s what I think,” returned
her cousin in a tone of candid conviction.
“If you think so you are very much mistaken. You may dismiss _that_
notion from your mind.”
“I’m sincerely glad to hear it. What was that you were saying to
Reginald last night in the conservatory when I came on the scene? He
did not look a bit too well pleased to see me? Alice, have you ever
begged his pardon for the way you treated him once upon a time? Tell me
all about it; I know you are yearning to unbosom yourself to me,” he
added with an air of frank companionship, and sitting closer to her.
“Geoffrey, your impertinence is really intolerable!” exclaimed Alice
haughtily, and colouring with anger. “You quite forget yourself!”
“Ah, I thought you were in a bad humour just now,” he drawled; “I know
all the symptoms so well from sad experience; so does Reginald, I am
sure.”
“Don’t dare to speak to me, you have no _right_ to talk to me in such a
way, and I won’t listen to you!” exclaimed Alice with flashing eyes.
“Little Spitfire!” ejaculated Geoffrey, surveying her crimson cheeks
with calm derision.
Whereupon Alice indignantly turned her back upon him and withdrew
into her own corner of the nest, where she sat in silent, dignified
retirement. She could see that the others were spending their time far
more agreeably, and sincerely wished that she was one of the party,
but her pride forbade her to move. Mary was evidently telling them an
amusing story with much animation and gesticulation. A low but highly
appreciative laugh from Reginald, as the tale concluded, showed that
he had been an attentive listener. Raising himself on his elbow, he
contributed his share to the general entertainment in a few short
sentences; whatever he had said found entire favour with his audience,
and elicited peals of applauding laughter from all three, as he once
more subsided, and drew his hat over his eyes.
“He never thinks it worth his while to amuse _me_ now,” thought Alice,
with a half-envious, half-wistful glance in that direction.
“I’m being devoured alive by midges!” suddenly exclaimed Geoffrey,
jumping up and waving his handkerchief madly to and fro. “How you
can stand them I can’t imagine; they are in my hair!”--with frenzied
rubbing of his lint-white locks--“my ears, my eyes! I shall go out of
my mind if I stay here any longer! I say, Alice, can I speak to you
now?”
“Depends altogether upon the topic you are going to broach,” replied
Alice in a frosty tone.
“Don’t look so grumpy, my dear little girl,” reaching out a hand to
help her to rise, and of which she availed herself.
“And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain,”
quoted Geoffrey, dragging her into a perpendicular position.
“Come along down to the river and see if there are any trout rising.”
“There are none to rise.”
“There must be, it’s just their supper-time. Well, anything is better
than squatting in the hay for the delectation of the insect world; come
and look for a bees’-nest down in the bottom of the meadow.”
The hunt for the bees’-nest was fruitless. Alice, for one, brought
neither zeal nor energy to the task. As they dawdled slowly homewards,
Geoffrey suddenly said, as if struck by a brilliant idea:
“By Jove! next Tuesday the grouse shooting commences, the glorious
twelfth! I don’t know how I’m to break the news to you, Alice; but on
Monday we must part. Old Macfarlane has asked me this year, thank the
kind fates, and his moors and his shooting are simply--supreme. He
asked Rex too, and was awfully keen about getting him, knowing him to
be such a good gun--the old boy takes no end of pride out of his big
bags--and only fancy,” standing in the pathway, and declaiming, with
one waving arm, “he is _not_ going. Did you ever know such a duffer?
Imagine his refusing the primest shooting north o’ Tweed! And for what?
He gives no reason, and I can’t even hazard a guess. It certainly
can’t be on _your_ account,” contemplating his cousin with a cool,
deliberate, speculative stare.
“If the question baffles your acute imagination, of course it is
utterly beyond mine,” returned Alice, with an emphatic shake of her
lovely head and a perceptible increase of colour. “See, Geoff,” she
added eagerly, “the others are all going through the wood. We may as
well go too; I want some moss and ferns for the dinner-table.”
Having joined the rest of the party, a general search for ferns
commenced, and they were gradually moving homewards, when a masterly
manœuvre of Geoffrey’s left Alice and Reginald to bring up the rear
alone--a most unpremeditated _tête-à-tête_.
As they crossed a rustic bridge that spanned a small but rapid torrent,
they paused and looked down at the foam sailing along in solid-looking
blocks; at the wet and mossy rocks, and the small noisy waterfall.
“How I should like to go down there and dabble!” said Alice, taking off
her gloves.
In pulling off the left one she also drew off her wedding-ring, which
instantly disappeared in the current below.
She looked after it, or rather at the spot where it had fallen in, in
silent consternation; then, turning to her husband with awestruck face,
exclaimed:
“My ring is gone! What _am_ I to do?”
“I’m sure I can’t say,” he replied coldly.
“Can’t you fish it up some way--if you were to wade in?” she cried
excitedly.
“I don’t know what _you_ call wading, but the water there is at least
nine feet deep, and your ring is probably a quarter of a mile off by
this time,” he answered, with provoking indifference.
“But what am I to do for my wedding-ring?” she urged piteously, looking
down at her hand with burning cheeks.
“Buy another, I conclude; you can get one for a guinea or thirty
shillings. It depends upon whether you like them thick or thin. This
will be your _third_, so you must have quite a settled opinion on the
subject,” he replied, calmly aiming bits of gravel at a particular rock
in the torrent below.
Certainly this was not encouraging behaviour; nevertheless, she braced
up her courage, and determined to make one more attempt to recover her
original ring.
“Give me my own ring, Reginald.”
“I have already told you, Alice, that I will _not_,” he returned, still
pursuing his amusement.
“And will you never take me back as your wife?” she asked almost
inaudibly.
“What do you mean?” he inquired, arresting himself in the act of taking
aim, and turning towards her at last.
“What I say,” she replied with more firmness.
“I shall be only too glad to take you back, as you call it, now--this
instant.”
“Do you really mean it?”
“Yes, of course I do; but have you not something to say to me besides,”
he asked, looking at her anxiously.
Was ever anyone so blind to the right employment of great opportunities?
“No,” she replied innocently; “what more can I say than I have already
said? I have nothing to say.”
“Than what you have already said!” he cried indignantly. “You dare to
allude to it? you are not ashamed of it?”
“No,” she faltered, much bewildered.
Her husband scarcely heard her. His face was dark with passion; his
voice vibrated with intense emotion as he added:
“Such a gratuitous repetition of insult I never heard of. You want an
answer to your question; you want to know when I shall take you back?
I give it to you in one word: _never_”--a long pause, during which
Alice stood dazed and stupefied--she felt as if a dark wave of trouble
had overwhelmed her senses. “The day after to-morrow,” he proceeded
firmly, “I am going to Looton. I shall take Maurice with me, to keep
me company. You have had him for more than three years, remember,” he
replied to the remonstrance he saw in her eyes. “I will send him back
to you when I go down to Northampton, and you may keep him for the next
four years.”
“What do you mean, Reginald?” interrupted Alice, struggling hard for
composure, and fixing on him a strained, eager gaze.
“I mean that until Maurice is seven he may stay with you; after that
time I hope to have returned from India, and settled down at Looton,
and I intend to have him to live with me. I am not going to be a
wanderer all my life; I owe some duties to my people, as well as to my
country. You will not mind parting with Maurice. You have shown me
to-night plainly that you are utterly heartless.”
“Do I understand,” she faltered, supporting herself by the railing,
“that you will take Maurice from me in four years’ time?”
“Yes; legally I have a right to do so.”
“I don’t believe it,” she cried passionately. “No law could be so
wicked as to deprive me of my only child. What a cruel hard-hearted man
you are to say such things to me. Can you be the Reginald Fairfax I
married? Your voice and appearance are identical, but otherwise you are
as different as night and day. _He_ was only too good to me, he loved
me far better than I deserved.”
“He did indeed,” interrupted her husband grimly.
“You,” she pursued almost fiercely, “have a heart like stone, a tongue
like a sword. You are stern, harsh, implacable, tyrannical; you can’t
be the same.”
“You are right,” he answered decisively; “I am _not_ the original
Reginald Fairfax; I am an older and wiser, if not better man. My
illusions have been dispelled, my susceptibilities blunted, my eyes
rudely opened. I know _you_ to be an extraordinary combination of
caprice, obstinacy, and inconsistency.” He broke off, and looked at
her with a mixture of contempt and indignation; he dared not trust to
speech.
“I don’t know what you mean; I have abased myself sufficiently, my
conscience tells me,” she replied, with quivering lips. “You thrust me
aside with scorn, and even add that you will take my child from me.”
Here her grief overcame all considerations, and covering her face with
her hands she burst into tears.
There was a very dark look on her husband’s face as he surveyed her for
some moments in silence; he was extremely angry with her; he thought
she had befooled him again, played with his feelings as a cat with a
mouse. He was wounded to the heart and bitterly disappointed. Each day
he had been lingering on in hopes of one word of regret. With even
_one_ he would have been satisfied. To tell him she thought the same
as ever was too much; it was inconceivable, it was impossible, it
was maddening. “She must be a born actress,” he thought as he stood
opposite her. “This grief is all feigned.” Still, as he watched the
tears trickling through her fingers he relented somewhat. In the first
place he could not endure to see any woman crying, much less Alice.
She little knew what a powerful weapon she was using against him. As
he looked at her slight figure, heaving with half-suppressed sobs, his
conscience smote him. He _was_ hard, cruel, and tyrannical. After all
she was only a girl, and a very frail, delicate one too. Was this the
way to guard her as the apple of his eye, to restore her to health, to
study every wish?--scarcely.
“Alice,” he said, gently removing her hands, “don’t cry like this; I
can’t bear to see you.”
“Then, why do you make me cry?” she sobbed plaintively.
“I won’t do it again,” offering her his handkerchief; her own had gone
home in Geoffrey’s charge, filled with moss and roots. “I never saw you
cry before, and I hope I never shall again.”
“Then you won’t take Maurice from me,” she pleaded, raising her
tear-stained face to his, with a look of passionate supplication.
“No, but you will lend him to me sometimes.”
“Ye-es,” very dubiously; “but you can always come here to see him.”
“Pardon me, I never intend coming here again. Once I leave I shall
never return.”
“Never return!” The words seemed to echo and vibrate through the dim
leafy silence of the surrounding trees.
“Oh, Reginald!”
“Now, Alice, you are never going to be so foolish as to cry for
_that_,” he asked roughly.
Sobs. What was he to do with her?
“Alice, why are you crying? You promised me that you would not.”
They were now walking home; but Alice’s supply of tears seemed
unlimited. This was a new and alarming experience.
“Alice,” he repeated, “you promised me you would not cry any more.”
“Yes, but you promised”--gasp--“you would not make me cry”--gasp. “I
know you think me no better than a baby, but I can’t help it--I can’t,
indeed.”
More very bitter tears.
“Well,” said he, in despair, “if I come here for a few days at
Christmas, will you be satisfied?”
“Yes,” she faintly whispered.
“Then dry your eyes; don’t let me see another tear. You have had your
own way altogether, have you not?--tyrant as I am!”
“Yes,” she replied, with a sickly smile.
She looked so pale, dishevelled, and wan, that he felt absolutely
guilty as he gazed at her forlorn-looking face.
Silently and rapidly they pursued the woodland path, where barely two
might walk abreast. Above them the trees had laid their heads together,
and combined in league to keep out the sun. A stillness weighed on the
surrounding woods; the wind had died away; the birds were silent. Not
more silent than the bronzed young soldier and the pale agitated girl,
who walked together, side by side.
Alice was in hopes of reaching her room unseen. But no such good
fortune was in store for her. On the stairs she came face-to-face with
Geoffrey, who, calmly surveying her tear-stained cheeks, gave a long
and eloquent whistle, and chanted, as he passed downstairs:
“But, children, you should never let
Your angry passions rise,
Your little hands were never made
To tear each other’s eyes.”
On entering the library, he found Reginald making lame excuses for
Alice’s non-appearance to Helen, who was pouring out tea. He boldly
walked over to him and whispered right into his ear:
“You’ve been bullying her, I see.”
Reginald’s indignant negative was completely thrown away on Geoffrey,
who had already seated himself at the tea-table, under the shelter of
Helen’s protection. So ended this disastrous walk.
* * * * *
Alice’s reflections as she stood at her window in the gloaming were
not of a very rose-coloured hue. All that she most valued in this
world--her husband’s love--had slipped from her grasp. The efforts
she made to be reconciled were utterly in vain; a cool, determined
indifference met and repulsed all her advances; advances which she
afterwards blushed to remember, and propitiated her wounded pride by
increased haughtiness and reserve.
“It was hard to realise that he _was_ her husband,” she thought, as
very, very bitter tears welled up into her eyes. With what distant
politeness and formality he treated her! If he unintentionally touched
her, or brushed against her, he apologised as ceremoniously as if she
were a stranger. He treated her as such, even though he had promised
to be her friend. What would she not give to recall the reception
she had given him? Too late to think of that now! he had taken her
at her word--they were strangers. How would it all end? No matter
what occurred, she could not well be more miserable than she was--a
despised, disowned, detested wife!