SIR ROBERT SEEKS ADVICE
Sir Robert was watching the pair curiously: noting the feverish
gladness with which the boy clung to Rhoda’s hand, and the tenderness
with which she, in return, bent over him.
It cost him a sharp pang to think that this was just the sort of way
in which he should have liked his wife to bend over their invalid son.
There was a motherly kindness in Rhoda’s every look and touch, as she
smoothed the boy’s pillow or smiled at him, that realised completely
Sir Robert’s ideal of what a mother ought to be to her child.
Yet it was a stranger in blood who filled this office to the boy, and
the visits of Caryl’s mother were hasty affairs, undertaken in the
intervals of the serious business of life, motoring, tennis-playing,
dancing, travelling.
It was impossible that a bitter thought should not come into his mind
at the sight.
Caryl turned his head, with a smile, to his father.
“I thought it would be all right, papa,” said he, “when you came.”
Rhoda could scarcely suppress a sob. She knew something of what was
passing in Sir Robert’s mind, for he had often uttered words
expressive of his regret that Lady Sarah was not more domestic in her
tastes. That that aspiration chiefly concerned the delicate boy it was
not difficult to understand.
But now that the matter was settled, that Rhoda had promised to remain
at the Mill-house, there was another question to be answered. Why had
she been so anxious to go away? What, too, did she mean by these
words, uttered half-unconsciously, as it seemed, to the boy: “You
don’t know what you’re asking!”
Sir Robert had supposed, naturally enough, when Rhoda told him that
afternoon that she wished to leave the house, that it was the
unpleasant affair of the lost picture which had caused her so suddenly
to make up her mind to leave a house where she had been subjected to
such an alarming experience as that of the previous night. To a
nervous woman, the night alarm, followed by a mysterious and not yet
explained sequel, must have been quite sufficient to make her
disinclined to stay in a house where such things had happened.
Now, however, on overhearing these whispered words to Caryl, which
implied that she had something still to fear, Sir Robert was moved to
strong curiosity.
He looked at her intently, and Rhoda blushed under his scrutiny.
Meanwhile Caryl, delighted to have carried his point, was playing
affectionately with her right hand, and pressing it against his cheek.
Sir Robert was anxious to have an opportunity of putting some
questions to Rhoda, and, with that idea in his mind, he smiled down at
his little son and said:
“And now you’ve persuaded her to stay with you, Caryl, you mustn’t be
greedy, and expect to have her all to yourself. You must let mama see
a little of her too, and me.”
The boy looked up, smiling.
“I want her the most,” said he. “You’ve got your pictures, papa, and
mama’s got Jack.”
The words came quite naturally from the child’s mouth, but they
produced a most curious and painful impression upon his two hearers.
Sir Robert seemed for the moment stunned by them, as, glancing at
Rhoda, he saw upon her face an expression of dismay which was like a
sudden illumination to him.
“Yes, we’ve got Jack too, of course,” he said presently, recovering
himself although there was a change in his voice, “but he isn’t here
always.”
“Nearly always, when mama’s here,” persisted the boy simply. “And
you’ve always got your pictures, haven’t you? Anne says you’ve got
back the one you thought was stolen.”
Again there was a look upon Rhoda’s face which roused Sir Robert’s
keenest attention and interest.
“Yes, I’ve got my picture back,” said he. “Who told you about that?”
“Oh, I heard Anne talking about it to Mrs. Hawkes. That was this
morning. And then when Anne came in a little while ago she told me you
had got it back, nobody knew how.”
Rhoda turned her head away, feeling that there was a guilty look on
her face which Sir Robert’s unusually penetrating gaze seemed to
challenge. She did not want to meet his eyes again; ever since those
first words of the boy’s about Jack she had been conscious of an
excitement, a restlessness in Sir Robert’s demeanour, which were quite
unusual with him, and she dreaded the thought of a _tête-à-tête_
with him--which, however, she saw to be inevitable.
“By the bye, Miss Pembury, I should like to hear your account of the
return of the picture,” said the baronet in the gentlest of voices, as
Rhoda took the opportunity, when father and son were looking at each
other, to leave her post by the side of the couch, and to glide
hastily towards the door.
He had followed her and was holding the door open for her.
“Are you going to take Rhoda away, papa?” piped out the small voice
from the couch near the window.
“Not for very long. I’ll ring the bell for Anne to come back to you
for half an hour,” said Sir Robert.
But the boy pouted.
“I don’t want Anne,” said he. “I can wait here by myself till Rhoda
comes back. Don’t be long, don’t let papa keep you long,” he cried,
waving his thin hand as she went out.
Rhoda smiled back at him, with a trembling lip. She would have given
the world to avoid the interview which the baronet was determined to
force upon her. There was a gravity in his look quite different from
the calm serenity of his everyday expression; she knew that an ugly
thought concerning his wife and Jack Rotherfield had been obtruded
upon his mind for the first time.
Was it better that he should know the danger? Perhaps so. But in any
case it was a terrible thing for the girl that she had unconsciously
helped to bring it home to his mind. The boy’s innocent words might
perhaps have passed unheeded, but for the point she herself had all
unconsciously and unwillingly given them by her startled look.
And then, following that moment of revelation, there had come the
speech about the picture, and again she thought that her face might
perhaps have revealed some guilty knowledge concerning it.
They went slowly downstairs, Rhoda first, Sir Robert following in
silence. It was not until they reached the hall that Sir Robert,
taking a hat from the hall table, turned to her and said:
“Shall we take a turn round the garden? I want to speak to you.”
There was no help for it. She bowed her head, and they passed out
quickly by the garden-door, for she understood that his intention was
to avoid Lady Sarah and possible interruptions, to which they might
have been liable if they had gone straight to the study.
He led the way quickly to the water, crossed the rustic bridge, and so
reached a beautiful grass path which could not be seen from the house.
Here he slackened his steps, and then he said in a very gentle tone:
“Please don’t look so frightened, my dear Miss Pembury. I am not going
to ask any awkward questions, believe me. I may say at once that I
know you are shielding some one who was concerned in the disappearance
of my picture, but I am not going to press you for any details which
you may not feel inclined to give me. But I have had a rude shock
within the last half-hour, following on an anxious time in connection
with the disappearance of first the snuff-boxes and then the ‘Lady
Hamilton.’ And I am obliged to come to you for--for advice, and--for
guidance.”
“I’m afraid I’m too stupid to be able to advise any one,” said Rhoda
timidly.
He made a gesture of denial.
“No, no. I quite understand the difficulty you are in, and I hope I
shall not have to say anything to pain you. It is very hard on such a
young woman as you are to find herself in such a position as that you
are in. But you will help me if you can, I’m sure.”
“Of course I would help you in any way I could. You won’t press me to
betray any secrets, I’m sure.”
He looked at her quickly.
“Tell me,” he said quite sharply, “whether, as far as you can see, I
am neglecting any part of my duty to--to any member of my--my family.”
Rhoda drew a long breath, and then suddenly found courage. Turning her
blue eyes full upon him, she said, while the colour deepened in her
cheeks and her lips quivered:
“Yes, Sir Robert, I think you are.”
Although he had invited her to be candid, this speech evidently took
him by surprise. He stared at her apprehensively, and then said with
the utmost meekness:
“Will you tell me--to whom?”
“I think,” stammered the girl, her breath coming fast, “that you are
neglecting your duty to your wife.”
This was direct indeed. He stopped short, made her stop too, and faced
her roundly:
“How?” said he.
Rhoda knew that she must go on now, and she poured out all that was in
her heart, without more ado.
“I think,” she said, throwing out her words in little groups, with a
strange, staccato stop after every few syllables, “that you ought to
be with her more, not to let her go away without you, not to let her
choose her own companions and friends. I think you ought to insist
upon being her companion, her friend, yourself. Of course I know how
hard it would be--that you don’t care for the same things or the same
places. But since she won’t bend and give way, and do as she ought, I
think you ought to do it all for her. You ought not to yield to her
every caprice, to let her indulge every whim. If you go on running
down one path while she is running down one that isn’t even parallel
with yours, how can it end but in your finding yourselves some day, so
far apart that--that you can never come together again?”
It was plain speaking with a vengeance, and Rhoda would never have
ventured upon it in cold blood. But when she was thus unexpectedly
challenged by Sir Robert, she felt, honouring, respecting, loving him
as she did, that there was nothing for her but to be daring,
audacious, wholly, flagrantly honest, and to fling down thus before
him her own views, without hesitation, without pause, and then, if
necessary, ask for pardon.
But there was no need for that. In Sir Robert’s face, as he listened
to her, with head averted, tightly pressed lips, and eyes that seemed
at last to open to look out upon the world around him as it was, and
not as it ought to have been, there was a look which showed Rhoda
that, however painful her words might be to utter and to hear, she had
done right in speaking them.
Like a succession of blows her sentences fell upon him, each helping
to drive home to him the truth which he, good, kind-hearted, amiable
man that he was, had so long been in danger of ignoring.
He knew that there was no word of exaggeration in what she said, he
was conscious that she was, on the whole, merciful to him. But her
indictment was a severe one nevertheless, and at first he reeled under
it.
There was a long pause, during which poor Rhoda, recovering from the
impulse of passion which had urged her on, became more and more timid
and apologetic, until the light faded out of her eyes and the tears
welled up to them.
He, meanwhile, said nothing, but looked away to the hills, with the
setting sun behind them, and stood so still that she wondered whether
she had stunned him by her onslaught.
A sob escaped her, and then he turned slowly.
“That it should be left to you, a girl, to teach me my duty!” he said
most gently. “I’m ashamed of myself, as I ought to be. Pray Heaven I
haven’t left it too late. Don’t cry, child, don’t speak until you’ve
heard what I think. It’s just this: it’s a thousand pities I didn’t
know you as well as I do now half a dozen years ago. True, you were
very young then, but I dare say you had ten times more sense, even
then, in your head, than I have in mine now. Dry your eyes, child, dry
your eyes,” he went on in a brighter and more energetic tone: “You’ve
got more to tell me, more help to give. Tell me, what you would
advise? If it isn’t too late how shall I begin?”
Her timidity, her hesitation were gone again in a moment. Rhoda was so
desperately interested in him and his happiness that, as soon as an
opening came for her to help, her instinct came to her aid and once
more she said the right thing in the right way.
“Take her away,” said she. “Don’t let her go away by herself, but make
her travel with you. When you’re once away from your pictures and
curios you will have to depend upon her. And you must teach her to
depend upon you.”
The advice was so shrewd, so good, that he looked at her for a few
moments in silent admiration before he said:
“It’s excellent advice, but do you think I can take it? Where should
we go? I should be lost----”
“Ah!” cried Rhoda, putting up her finger warningly. “You mustn’t be.
That will be the hard part of it for you; in fact all the hardship
will be yours. But you will have to take it, for she won’t help you.”
He nodded in meek but vague acquiescence.
“And where am I to take her?” he asked submissively.
“Why not to Egypt for the winter?” said Rhoda boldly. “You will find
plenty to interest you there.” And already she saw a light of interest
in his eyes, “and the very novelty of the thing will be enough to
please Lady Sarah.”
He nodded appreciatively.
“It’s a good suggestion certainly. But there will be difficulties.”
“Plenty of them,” admitted Rhoda. “But nothing that you won’t be able
to get over, now that you see there is danger in leaving her too much
to herself and her own ways.”
“Yes, yes. And Caryl----”
“You can trust him with me, can’t you?”
The look of straightforward gratitude and trust on his face as he
exchanged looks with her was balm to her heart.
“And now,” he said, “I can’t thank you. I can only pray that--that
your advice has come--in time.”
The look of gravity on his face showed Rhoda, who shivered as she
glanced at him, that he appreciated the extent of the danger to which
his easy-going temper had brought him and his wife.
Rhoda dared not say any more; she was in terror now lest he should
proceed to question her about the picture and its restoration. But the
baronet’s whole attention was absorbed by the peril to his wife, and
he had forgotten everything else in the one theme.
So Rhoda was able to make her escape to the house, where she was met
on the stairs by Minnie, mocking, triumphant, stretching two long,
thin arms across to bar her passage.
“I told you you would have to stay, didn’t I?” asked she.
Rhoda felt almost shocked at the girl’s uncanny perspicacity.
“Oh, yes, yes, it wasn’t so difficult to predict that,” she said, as
she dived under one of Minnie’s arms, and fled upstairs.
It was not until dinner-time that Rhoda met Lady Sarah or Sir Robert
again; and she perceived, at the first glance, at Lady Sarah and Jack
that they were both on thorns as to what had happened during the
afternoon. They looked apprehensively from her to Sir Robert and back
again, as if knowing that there was something interesting for them to
hear.
Lady Sarah was most caressing and sweet to her husband, who received
her advances with his usual gentleness, but not without a certain
extra solemnity of manner which prepared her in some measure for what
was to come.
It was not until dessert was reached, and the servants had left the
room, that Sir Robert, glancing at his wife, and smiling in a manner
which was not quite spontaneous, said:
“My dear, I’ve been preparing a little surprise for you, and I should
like to know whether you will think it a pleasant one or not. Instead
of your going to the Riviera this winter with your aunt and cousins I
am going to take you to Egypt with me.”
“With you! You’re going to travel!” gasped Lady Sarah, quite openly
dismayed by the prospect.
A cloud appeared on her husband’s brow.
“Yes,” said he. “I’ve never been there myself, and I think I should
enjoy it as much as you would. I hope you won’t think my society will
spoil the trip for you.”
“Oh, no, of course, I shall be delighted to have you,” said the
beauty, in tones so cold and with such a vicious glance at Rhoda and
such a frown of dismay at Jack that it was impossible not to
understand that the announcement was a terrible shock to her. “And
when did you make up your mind to this? Rather sudden, isn’t it?”
“Not too sudden, I hope.”
“Oh, no, of course not. It will be delightful.”
Lady Sarah’s manner was not encouraging. She at once changed the
subject and began to talk about other things; and nothing more was
said about the proposed trip until the ladies left the room. Then Lady
Sarah seized Rhoda almost roughly by the arm, and asked:
“You had heard about this horrible Egypt trip, I suppose, before me?”
“Yes. Sir Robert mentioned it to me this afternoon.”
“Ah! You encouraged him in the wild idea, perhaps?”
“Oh, Lady Sarah, is it a wild idea on his part, to think that he would
like to spend the winter with you instead of away from you?”
“Oh, pray don’t expect me to be sentimental. There’s nothing I hate so
much. Egypt may be all very well for those who like it, and to play
Darby and Joan may be a very nice way of spending one’s time before
twenty-five and after fifty-five. But the years between those ages are
better filled one’s own way; and I can assure you that, if you are
leading Sir Robert to believe that he will find me a pleasant
travelling companion, you are making a sad mistake.”
The acerbity of her tones frightened Rhoda, who would fain have
believed the breach between husband and wife to be less wide than it
really was. She said nothing to this. Lady Sarah looked at her keenly.
She did not want to quarrel with Rhoda, who knew too much to be
treated anything but well.
“You are a dear creature,” she said suddenly, as Rhoda said nothing to
her tirade, “but I really do wish you would confine yourself to being
sweet to Caryl, and nice to Sir Robert, and that you wouldn’t try to
make silk out of spiders’ webs. That is what your labour is, when you
try to make a humdrum domestic animal of an insignificant insect like
me.”
She laughed lightly, and said no more about it. But Rhoda saw, as Lady
Sarah flitted across to the piano and began to play lively music with
her usual disregard of time and liberal allowance of wrong notes, that
she meant mischief.
Minnie was a silent spectator of this scene, although perhaps, being
curled up in an awkward position in a sofa at the far end of the
drawing-room, she did not hear all that the ladies said.
No sooner did the gentlemen come in than Lady Sarah sprang up from the
piano with a light in her eyes, and going straight to her husband led
him out into the conservatory, and thence through the library into the
study, where she stood up in front of him with her hands behind her,
and challenged him fiercely.
“Who put this silly Egypt idea into your head, tell me that?” she
asked imperiously, looking up with flashing brown eyes into his grave
face.
It was still much graver than usual, by the way.
“What does it matter how the idea came to me,” said he gently, “if it
be a good one?”
“But it isn’t. It’s a very bad one indeed,” said she hotly. “The
absurdity of your giving up your cosy home which you love, to travel
about with me! When you know very well I can take care of myself.”
Then he spoke with a sudden change of manner that silenced and alarmed
her.
“My dear,” he said, as he held her arm in a grip which made it
impossible for her to think of escape, “that is just what I am asking
myself: whether you can take care of yourself, such care as my darling
wife ought to take.”
“What--do you mean?” panted out the beauty, in sudden terror.
“I mean that it has been borne in upon me, by circumstances to which I
need not refer, that I have not been as mindful of your best interests
or my own, or our boy’s, as I ought to have been. I have begun to
realise that a woman as beautiful and charming as you are, one so much
younger, too, than her husband, ought not to be left so much to
herself as you have been left. I ask you to forgive me, and to help me
to do my duty better for the future.”
He bent down to kiss her, but she resisted him, holding herself
stiffly away and flashing indignant glances at him.
“I know who has put these absurd ideas into your head,” she cried
angrily. “I know who it is that has come between us, pretending to be
so very good, and filling your mind, poisoning it with her wicked
suspicions.”
“Suspicions!”
Sir Robert’s tone changed, grew hard, stern, alarming. Lady Sarah
looked up at him with sudden shyness.
“What has she said about me?” she asked in a trembling voice.
But he was staring down intently into her face, as if he would read
the very soul behind it.
“She has urged me to take more care of you, that’s all,” said he in a
strange, wistful tone.
“I knew it was to her interference that I owed this disgraceful piece
of impertinence,” she cried shrilly.
“Impertinence! Do you accuse me of that, in suggesting that I wish to
travel with you?”
“N--n--o, of course not,” whispered Lady Sarah. “I mean it is
impertinent of her to tell you wicked lies about me. It’s malicious,
infamous! What has she said?”
Suddenly she stood very erect, looking up with keen inquiry into his
face.
He took up the challenge at last.
“She has said nothing. But I see for myself that--you pass too much of
your time with Jack!”
He was ashamed of himself as he uttered the words; it was horrible to
have to hint at any fault in her. But he was driven into a corner, and
had not enough finesse to avoid blurting out the truth.
She burst into a broken, mirthless, angry laugh.
“Oh indeed! I see too much of Jack! I pass too much time with him! And
what of Miss Pembury? I don’t complain of your affection for her, or
of the way in which she has wormed herself into your confidence, until
your first thought is to take advice from her, even in a matter which
concerns your wife.”
He stammered, surprised at her swift retort. But she went on, volubly,
haughtily.
“If I don’t complain about your fondness for her, or about her
insinuating herself into your affections and those of my own child, I
really don’t see why you should make horrible insinuations about your
own ward.”
He silenced her sternly.
“You forget yourself,” said he in a voice which frightened her by its
sudden unexpected assumption of masculine powers and rights. “No one
knows better than you do that I am incapable of disloyalty to you,
that my only fault towards you has been my weakness in being unable to
resist or control you. Never let me hear a word of this trivial
pretence of jealousy again. You are not jealous, you could not be. God
forgive me for saying it, but I only wish you were!”
The heartfelt emotion which thrilled in these words would have
softened a woman less self-willed, less hardened in her own caprices
than Lady Sarah. As it was, she was only frightened, not touched to
tenderness. It was he who was ashamed of the feelings which threatened
to overpower him.
Ashamed of his own weakness, and fearing that he was only irritating
instead of softening her, he suddenly let her go, and raising her hand
to his lips, pressed one tender kiss upon it and then, turning sharply
away, felt in his pocket for the keys of his gallery and went out of
the study.
Lady Sarah listened a few moments, until she heard the key turn in the
gallery door, and knew that her husband had shut himself in with his
treasures for the evening.
Then she quickly dried her own eyes, arranged her slightly disordered
hair at a tiny gold-mounted mirror which she wore, with other pretty
trifles, on her long neck-chain, and with a sigh, found her way
quickly to the drawing-room, where Jack Rotherfield, looking rather
anxious and perturbed, was affecting to try to flirt with Minnie.
Lady Sarah beckoned him to her side as soon as she entered the room,
and with an angry glance at Rhoda, who was pretending to read a book
to hide the emotion from which she was suffering, whispered hurriedly:
“It’s she who has put him up to this. You must get round her!”