LADY SARAH’S RECOGNITION
Rhoda was abashed and shocked by the expression on Lady Sarah’s
face. She had, indeed, felt rather nervous about the meeting, but she
had not expected that the sight of her would cause so much dismay to
Sir Robert’s wife.
There was not the least doubt that she recognised the girl in a
moment.
She forgot all about her child in her excitement at the meeting, and
it was not until Caryl had plucked at her sleeve three or four times,
that she bent over him again, and answered him.
“Yes, yes, dear. I know it is Rhoda,” she said.
She had recovered herself, and the next moment she had come round the
little bed, seized Rhoda’s hand, and was shaking it with warmth as
unexpected as her manifest horror had been.
“Miss Pembury! Why, of course, I might have remembered the name! But
for the moment I didn’t. It’s the Miss Rhoda Pembury who fell off her
bicycle and was brought in here by Sir Robert, years and years ago,
before we were married, isn’t it?”
“Ye-es,” stammered Rhoda, quite bewildered by this rapid change in the
lady.
“Why didn’t he tell me? I should have been so much interested. He
never said a word in his letters to let me know the pleasure in store
for me.”
This expression was rather a strong one, Rhoda thought, considering
that on the solitary occasion of her seeing Lady Sarah at the
Mill-house that lady had hardly condescended to address a single word
to her.
She hastened to give the reason for Sir Robert’s strange behaviour.
“He hasn’t recognised me, Lady Sarah,” she said.
“What!”
Lady Sarah paused a moment, in apparent incredulity, mingled with
evident embarrassment and misgiving. Then she asked, quickly:
“Why didn’t you remind him?”
“Well, I--I thought I’d wait till you came, to see whether you would
remember me,” she stammered.
“Of course I do. Although you have altered a great deal,” said Lady
Sarah, with a gracious smile. “You were rather a pretty girl then, but
you didn’t promise to develop as you have done.”
Rhoda smiled and blushed. Nothing, certainly, could be more engaging
than Lady Sarah’s manner, nothing more flattering than her words. But
still Rhoda could not but feel all the while that there was some
reason for this surprising and even uncalled for graciousness. From
all she had heard, Sir Robert’s wife, though a very charming and
beautiful woman, was far from being always sympathetic or amiable in
her own house, and there seemed to be no particular reason why she
should be so very nice.
Rhoda, while rather ashamed of her misgivings, felt them quite
strongly.
“I suppose you scarcely recognised the old place?” went on Lady Sarah,
still in the same tone of smiling good humour, quite forgetting the
small boy in his bed, who was lying with his eyes fixed upon Rhoda,
waiting for the ladies to come back to him.
“It is very much changed,” said the girl.
Lady Sarah laughed.
“Inside and out I’ve effected marvellous transformations, I flatter
myself. You know my family has suffered horribly from want of money,
as all decent families do now-a-days. If this horrid Budget with its
Land clauses passes, why, Papa and Mama will simply have to pack a
small handbag with necessaries, such as hair-dye and face powder, and
trudge off to the nearest workhouse.”
Rhoda laughed. But Lady Sarah affected to be shocked at her levity.
“Oh, it’s quite true, indeed,” she said. “However, that will explain
to you how I felt when I got married and found myself at last with an
occasional eighteenpence of my own. I went mad, mad, I really did. I
made up my mind to have a house I could live in comfortably, and I was
generous enough to let my husband have something he liked too. Do you
know, before he married me, fond as he was of his pictures and china
and things, it had never occurred to him to build a place to put them
in? But I changed all that. I practically rebuilt the house, as you
see; let in a little light and air into the musty corners; let him
have a gallery which has become the joy of his heart. And--well, I
didn’t forget myself either, while I was about it.”
And she laughed the merry, careless laugh of a happy child. It was all
put on, but so well that Rhoda was fascinated, sure as she could not
but feel that there was some reason for this lavish expenditure of
Lady Sarah’s fascinations upon a person so obscure as herself.
“Mama!” piped the small voice from the bed.
“Oh! Caryl! I’d forgotten him.”
Lady Sarah took Rhoda by the hand, and brought her to the bed, and
they both kissed the boy before they left him. He was as much
surprised, Rhoda could not but feel, as she herself was, at the warmth
of his mother’s manner to the newcomer in the household.
Lady Sarah turned with a most graceful movement to the girl as they
went out of the room.
“Nothing could have pleased me better,” said she quite earnestly,
“than to find he has some one with him to whom he can take a fancy.
It’s half the battle, with a poor child like Caryl, to have faces
about him that he likes.”
“It’s very kind of you to say so.”
“I suppose they didn’t show you my rooms?” she went on. “Really you
must see them. Come with me.”
“Oh, some other time, Lady Sarah. You must be dreadfully tired after
your journey!”
“Tired! Not a bit. I’m never tired. Come. I insist.”
She carried Rhoda off to her own suite of apartments; and the girl was
charmed, as indeed she was prepared to be, with the sumptuous elegance
and refinement of taste, which were everywhere apparent in the
furniture and fittings of the beautiful suite of rooms on the first
floor which were specially consecrated to the use of the mistress of
the house.
All was as different as possible from the richness and heaviness which
were the prevailing notes downstairs. Lady Sarah explained this by
saying that she had studied her husband’s taste in the fitting up of
the library, study and dining-room, as those were the only rooms in
which he took an interest.
“I didn’t like to part with all the old things. It would have broken
his heart, for one thing; and for another, the old furniture, though
of course it’s just not old enough, is not so bad after all, and its
mature years give a sort of dignity even to mahogany. But up here I am
queen, and I have everything just as I like it. Come and see these
sweet little French water-colours. Aren’t they too divy for words?”
She turned on the electric light with her own hands, and let a flood
of soft light upon the silk-panelled walls, pale blue and pink set in
white enamel; upon the exquisite mantelpiece with its picture above in
the manner of Fragonard; the dainty Sèvres clocks, all telling a
different time; the cushions, couches, boudoir piano in a painted
case, and all the other luxurious trifles that make up so much of the
happiness of women of Lady Sarah’s type.
Suddenly the dainty mistress of the place threw herself upon a couch,
and beckoned with pretty imperiousness to Rhoda to sit beside her.
“Come here,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”
She had not yet divested herself of her hat and scarf, though she had
thrown off her travelling cloak and given it to her maid as soon as
she entered the house, even before receiving the welcoming kiss of Sir
Robert.
Now she began to pull off her gloves, and as Rhoda slowly obeyed the
invitation and sat down beside her, Lady Sarah suddenly bent her head,
and said with infantile prettiness:
“Do help me to find the hatpins. I’ve been wearing this terrible hat
all day!”
The little task was performed without the least difficulty, as the
hatpins in question were huge discs of tortoiseshell and gold
impossible to overlook. Then Lady Sarah, thanking her profusely, put
the hat beside her on the couch, and ruffling up her dark hair with a
sigh of relief, put one little white hand sparkling with diamonds
through Rhoda’s arm, and said coaxingly:
“And now do tell me what made you think of coming to us?”
“Oh-ho!” thought Rhoda. “This, then, is the reason of my amiable
reception! You are curious.”
But all she said was:
“I was happy here, ten years ago, and Sir Robert saved my life. I
thought I should like to see the old house again, and when I got here,
and saw your dear little boy, I was delighted to stay.”
Lady Sarah was watching her with a piercing expression.
“Then when you came here you didn’t know whether you would stay or
not?”
“No. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know whether the house was
still inhabited by Sir Robert. There was no name given in the
advertisement.”
It was quite clear to Rhoda that Lady Sarah did not believe her, but
as her incredulity was not expressed in words, it was impossible to
meet and combat it. They were both silent for a few moments while Lady
Sarah smoothed out her gloves with a reflective air.
Suddenly Rhoda turned to her:
“Do you mind my coming? I wanted to know that.”
“Mind! I’m quite delighted to have you here. The great anxiety I had
about my boy was to get some one to be with him whom he could love,
and I could trust. Well, who could fill the post better than you? I am
delighted. And to find that you have been helping Sir Robert. He tells
me you copy his notes for him. It’s really too good of you, when he
writes such a shocking hand too! I shall have to take you away with me
when I go to town, on purpose to decipher his letters to me. I never
get much farther myself than the bottom of the first page.”
This was all she would say, and when Rhoda left her to dress for
dinner, which had been put off till her return, the girl felt
perplexed and uneasy.
For, while nothing could be more charming than her words and her
manner, Rhoda felt it was not possible that so much enthusiasm could
be quite genuine.
She would have felt still more puzzled if she could have overheard the
conversation which took place immediately afterwards between Sir
Robert and his wife. Lady Sarah went into her dressing-room, and,
being able to dress in the most surprisingly rapid fashion when she
chose, emerged thence a quarter of an hour later radiant and
refreshed, in a clinging gown of golden-brown satin, veiled in net of
gold thread, and trimmed with a huge bunch of red velvet flowers on
the left hand side of her bodice. With a butterfly of gold thread in
her dark hair, and a single row of big diamonds round her throat, Lady
Sarah looked as beautiful as a Princess in a fairy tale.
She glided quickly down the stairs before the dinner-gong sounded, and
presented herself in the study in a sort of whirlwind.
“Robert,” she said, “I have seen this lady whom you’ve engaged as
companion to Caryl. Do you know who she is?”
The baronet was taken aback. His wife’s manner was much more earnest
than usual; and he, accustomed to her little flippant ways and to her
manner of making light of everything, could not understand the change
in her.
“Who she is!” he repeated in a dazed way. “She’s a Miss Rhoda Pembury,
and a most amiable and obliging young lady.”
Lady Sarah stamped her pretty foot impatiently.
“Yes, yes, of course I know that. It’s her _métier_ to be obliging.
But do you know who she is, and that she has introduced herself into
the household on false pretences?”
Sir Robert looked amazed and incredulous.
“What false pretences?” stammered he at last.
She laid her hand impressively on his arm.
“Have you forgotten the girl who fell off her bicycle, the girl you
saved from being run over?”
An exclamation, which was one almost of relief, broke from the
baronet’s lips.
“Of course,” cried he. “Pembury, Miss Pembury! I knew I’d heard the
name, I was almost sure I’d seen the face. But till this moment I
confess I didn’t recognise her, though from time to time I felt sure
I’d seen her before. I wonder----”
He broke off, with a frown of annoyance and perplexity on his face.
His wife knew what he meant.
“You wonder what she wants here?” she said significantly. “Well, so do
I. I can’t help thinking it is a very strange thing to do to sneak
back into the house without making herself known, and I shall be very
much surprised if we are not made to regret her reappearance!”
Sir Robert, who was not at all quick of perception, being an
absent-minded, mild-natured man, wholly without suspicion or mistrust,
looked more perplexed than ever.
“Why should we regret it?” he said. “She has grown into a most
charming woman, gentle, sympathetic, and very clever and kind. I
cannot even now realise that such a woman has grown out of the shy,
lanky, white-faced girl who fell off the bicycle. I can’t see anything
wrong about her coming; and since I didn’t recognise her I don’t see
why she should have felt it necessary to remind me who she was. She
made no attempt at disguise, you know. I feel ashamed of my own
stupidity in having forgotten her name.”
The fact was that Rhoda Pembury’s first appearance at the Mill-house
was made at a time when the baronet, very much in love with Lady
Sarah, was not in a condition to receive vivid impressions of any
other person.
Lady Sarah brought him back to her point.
“Doesn’t it seem to you strange that she should have said nothing to
you about--about what happened here on the night she went away?”
Sir Robert’s brow clouded.
“She has too much tact,” he said, “to refer to anything so
disagreeable.”
“Oh yes, she has tact enough,” retorted his wife with vivacity. “I
hate to have to refer to this horrid subject, dear, but I warn you
that I mistrust this girl. I think it most mysterious that it should
have been impossible to get at her when she was wanted at the inquest,
but that she should turn up here in this mysterious fashion ten years
later, and worm herself into your confidence in the absence of your
wife.”
Sir Robert was still too much under the influence of his wife, on
those rare occasions when she took the trouble to fascinate him again,
not to be impressed by what she said. Nevertheless his gratitude to
Rhoda, modified though it was by shame at his own forgetfulness, was
strong enough to make him feel bound to stand up for her.
“I can’t think there is any harm in her,” he said gently. “What is it
you mean to suggest?”
Lady Sarah gave a little enigmatic shrug.
“Oh, I don’t suggest anything. Only don’t, like the unsuspicious,
kind-hearted old goose you are, trust her with too many of your
secrets. That’s all.”
“Secrets! Why, I haven’t any.”
Lady Sarah laughed.
“Well then, don’t encourage her to confide to you too many of _hers_!”
she said, as, at the sound of the dinner gong, she tucked her little
hand affectionately within her husband’s arm and led him away to the
dining-room.
Rhoda was waiting in the hall, having been apprised that she was
expected to join them at dinner. During Lady Sarah’s absence Sir
Robert had dined alone, and she had, by Caryl’s earnest request, dined
in the room adjoining his bedroom, with the door open so that he might
see her from his little bed.
In the first glance she exchanged with Sir Robert, Rhoda was shrewd
enough to see that the ingratiating Lady Sarah had made mischief for
her. Sir Robert was, indeed, more ashamed of his own obtuseness in not
having recognised in the accomplished woman the half-fledged girl of
ten years before, than imbued with his wife’s suspicions of her. But
what she had told him was enough to cause some alteration in his
manner, and poor Rhoda felt the difference keenly.
Sir Robert had a horror of anything that recalled the murder of
Langton, or the disagreeable rumours which had ensued. And the
consequence was that during dinner he was taciturn and appeared almost
morose, so that the conversation was left almost entirely to Lady
Sarah and Rhoda.
When the ladies left the room he remained in the dining-room, but Lady
Sarah, who was just as sweet as ever to Rhoda, excused herself from
another _tête-à-tête_ with the girl by saying that she knew her
husband was sulking about something, and that she must go and have it
out with him.
When Sir Robert, therefore, left the dining-room to join the ladies in
the drawing-room, he found himself intercepted by Lady Sarah, who,
sliding her hand along his sleeve in her most caressing manner, told
him she wanted a talk with him, and led him off to his study.
Sir Robert had been married long enough to the capricious beauty to
know that a raid of this kind always had its object. As soon,
therefore, as they had reached the large and lofty apartment known as
the study, he gently withdrew his arm, and placing an easy chair for
her, threw himself into another, and said, not unkindly, but with an
air of resignation:
“Well, and what is it you want now, my dear?”
Lady Sarah laughed with a very pretty appearance of confusion.
“Now, that’s unkind,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t want anything but
the pleasure of seeing how well and happy you look. I think, Bertie,
it suits you for me to be away!”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“I have to get used to it, don’t I? Well, and now what is it that has
brought you here to-night?”
“Won’t you believe, then, that I’m anxious to have one of our nice
little talks, after being all this time away?”
She crossed her feet, threw herself back in her chair, and putting one
pretty little white jewelled hand on each arm of her chair, smiled at
him bewitchingly.
It was impossible to resist her, and Sir Robert put one of his own
hands upon one of hers.
“My dear, it’s always a pleasure for me to talk to you,” he said.
Lady Sarah gave a pretty little sigh.
“That’s better,” she said. “And you know, Bertie, if I do have to ask
you for things, and of course I have to very often, it’s only because
you’re rich, and I’m poor, and because I’ve nobody to go to but you,
when I want money.”
Sir Robert had withdrawn his hand, but he could not help a little
amusement at the neatness with which she had come back to the
important point.
“Of course it’s perfectly natural and right that you should come to me
for money, and as long as I have it I always give it you, don’t I?”
Out of her half shut eyes she threw at him a reproachful glance. “You
have plenty,” she said plaintively.
“And I think I may truly say, dear,” replied he, in the gentlest of
voices, “that as long as I have plenty you have plenty too.”
Lady Sarah sat up quickly.
“I haven’t any now,” she said. “I’ve come back without a cent! Look
here. That’s my very last sovereign!”
And opening her great brown eyes with a charming plaintiveness, she
turned inside out a gold chain bag studded with pearls, which she wore
suspended round her neck at the end of a very long chain, and
displayed in triumph the solitary coin.
She was shrewd enough not to like the expression she saw on her
husband’s face. Yet it was in the kindest of voices that he said:
“Well, dear, give me your bills, and I will settle them for you.”
But this did not happen to be what Lady Sarah wanted. She frowned
petulantly.
“No, I’d rather have the money to settle them myself,” she said.
He shook his head.
“I gave you plenty of money to go away with. But I must see the bills
now.”
“Why?”
He hesitated.
“Well, my dear, you are just a little extravagant, aren’t you?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Am I?” she asked flippantly. “What _is_ being extravagant? Is it
buying new clothes when the old ones are worn out? Or is it,” and she
cast a glance, which was full of sly, mischievous humour, at her
husband’s grave face, “is it making an enormous collection of pictures
at fabulous prices, and of antiques which may or may not be genuine,
without being able to say whether, twenty years hence, they will have
gone up in value, or down?”
Sir Robert winced.
“At any rate my pictures are a better investment than your frocks,” he
said: “but we won’t quarrel about that. Ladies love pretty things, and
the prettier the lady the more she loves them. I recognise that and I
submit. So let me have the bills, and I’ll pay them.”
A furtive look of fear came into her face and died out again, and then
she said:
“It’s very good of you, Bertie, but I really do want some money for
myself too, money to spend as I like, to waste, perhaps. Won’t you let
me have a couple of hundred to do as I like with?”
Sir Robert shook his head with decision.
“It’s more than I can do just now, dear,” he said. “Twenty pounds is
the very utmost I can manage apart from the milliner’s bills, which, I
suppose, will not be light.”
An angry light flashed out of her beautiful dark eyes. Sir Robert was
the last man to be mistrustful or suspicious, but even he found a
vague fear intruding into his mind when he noted the seriousness of
her displeasure.
“Do you lose much money at bridge?” he asked quite suddenly.
She lost colour a little, but answered contemptuously:
“At bridge! No, of course not. I hate it, for one thing, and when I
have to play I always take care not to lose much.”
But Sir Robert’s suspicions once roused were not easily laid.
“Do you gamble on the Stock Exchange?” he asked abruptly.
A look of genuine horror appeared in her eyes.
“I think I would as soon play pitch-and-toss!” she answered lightly.
His tone became more imperative:
“Do you bet on horses, or what? The money must go somewhere.”
Again there was that same furtive look, but again she treated the
question with hilarious contempt.
“Of course I don’t do any of those things. However, if you won’t trust
me with a little money, I suppose I must submit. Never mind me and my
poor little wants now. Let us have a chat about you and your
pleasures. What have you been buying while I’ve been away? Some nice
pictures? Some queer old china figures? Some real bargains in
Chippendale chairs at twenty-five guineas a-piece? Come, let’s take a
walk through the gallery, and you shall show me the very latest
arrivals.”
Whether he believed in her interest or not, or whether he was glad
that her importunities had ceased, Sir Robert was quite ready to show
off his latest acquisition.
“I’ve got some lovely old French tapestries,” he said, “that even you
will admire, little Vandal that you are.” He felt in his pockets and
then exclaimed: “Oh, I haven’t got the key of the gallery. Miss
Pembury has charge of it now, for she’s begun to make me a catalogue,
and she is in there every morning before anybody else is up.”
“Ah!” said Lady Sarah sharply.
Sir Robert looked at her quickly, but she would give no explanation of
what was in her mind, and the expedition to the gallery was given up
for that evening.