SIR ROBERT’S SECRET
Safely housed at the Priory, Rhoda escaped much of the terrible
anxiety and distress which reigned at the Mill-house during the next
few days.
There was an inquest, but Rhoda happily escaped once more the trial of
being called as a witness. Her health had broken down under the strain
of the past few weeks, and although she was allowed to see Caryl for a
little while every day, she was kept very quiet and received no
visits, even from her own people.
The ladies at the Priory were, however, very kind to her, and did
their best to make her forget what she had gone through.
Nobody knew better than they what she must have suffered at the hands
of the exacting and capricious Lady Sarah, who, with all her charm,
had been a difficult person to live with.
At the inquest Jack Rotherfield was called as a witness, and he was
either lucky enough or clever enough to disarm every one by the depth
of his distress at what he had done.
He declared that, having had a little quarrel with Sir Robert
recently, he had been shy of coming to the house, but that, having met
Miss Pembury one day out of doors, he had been anxious for her to come
out and speak to him again, as he wished her to make his peace with
Sir Robert.
Not being able to attract her attention in any other way, he had on
seeing Miss Pembury, as he supposed, at her window, fired a revolver
which he always carried about with him; and to his horror, a scream
had told him that the bullet had struck the lady whom he had until
that moment believed to be Miss Pembury, but who he then discovered by
the voice to be Lady Sarah.
The story was not at all a probable one, but Jack was in such a state
of acute distress that he produced a favourable impression, and he was
let off lightly in examination and re-examination by the coroner and
jury.
Sir Robert was able to testify to the truth of the statement that
there had been a little quarrel between him and Rotherfield, and to
the certainty he felt that Jack would not willingly have injured Lady
Sarah.
The verdict brought in by the jury was one of death by misadventure,
and the threatened scandal was happily averted.
There was a good deal of gossip, there were rumours, there were
whispers, but no arrest was made, and the affair was hushed up, though
not without some trembling on the part of the families involved.
Autumn being now well advanced, there was a discussion as to what
should become of the usual holiday at the Riviera, and in the end it
was abandoned by Lady Eridge, who decided to remain at the Priory.
There Caryl was to stay also, and Lady Eridge told Rhoda that she had
questioned Sir Robert about his plans, and that he had decided to shut
up the Mill-house and to go abroad.
“I then suggested,” went on the marchioness, “that we should ask you
to stay with Caryl, and Sir Robert agreed. But really he seems to take
no interest in anything since the death of his wife.”
Rhoda was quite ready to fall in with this arrangement, and she hoped
that, before going away, the baronet would, on saying good-bye, show
her once more a little of his old kindness. For the remembrance of his
cold looks and harsh voice when he spoke to her on the night of Lady
Sarah’s death had made a wound which did not heal.
To her bitter disappointment, she was told one evening, when she
returned to the Priory after a walk into the town by herself, that Sir
Robert had called in her absence, had said good-bye to his boy, and
that he would start for Egypt that very evening.
Rhoda shed hot tears at the thought that he had gone away without one
word to her. She had revered him so long, had sympathised with him,
done her best to keep the difficult household going during the
lifetime of his wife, that she felt deeply hurt at this lack of
ordinary kindness which she had had a right to expect.
It prepared her for a future in which she would find herself cut off
altogether from the Mill-house and its inmates; for she did not doubt
that, when he returned in the spring, Sir Robert would send for his
son, and she would then get her dismissal.
Rhoda felt that Lady Eridge understood something of her feelings, for
the marchioness was very kind to her, and did her best to prove that
her services were appreciated.
Perhaps Caryl, young as he was, understood too that Rhoda had not been
treated quite well, for he said nothing to her about the farewell
interview with his father.
The winter passed quickly for all that. Rhoda and Caryl became so
devoted to each other that the thought of a possible parting, which
was ever present to the woman and which often occurred to the child,
grew more and more painful.
But at Christmas time there occurred one incident which afforded Rhoda
for the time a little consolation.
It was a visit from Jack Rotherfield.
He arrived at the Priory one afternoon just after luncheon, and had a
long interview with Lady Eridge in the drawing-room, at the end of
which the marchioness sent for Rhoda. The marchioness rose from her
chair, and, advancing towards the girl, who uttered an exclamation of
horror on seeing who the visitor was, said in her ear, “He has behaved
well to us, and he wishes to make some sort of apology to you.”
And with these words the marchioness left them together.
Jack, who was looking thin and ill, came frankly towards Rhoda. He did
not attempt to shake hands:
“I suppose you are surprised to see me, Miss Pembury,” he said. “But
as Lady Eridge sent for me to explain certain stories about poor Lady
Sarah and me, which had come to her ears, I thought I should like to
see you and to ask your forgiveness for my share in making you lose
your home at the Mill-house.”
Rhoda was not ready with an answer, and she murmured some indistinct
and rather cold words of acknowledgment.
“I know you did your best for her,” he said frankly; “and that you
were perfectly right in doing what I so much resented. All the same,
she would never have been happy with Sir Robert. And you know it. She
irritated him, and she got on his nerves. They were an ill-matched
pair from the first.”
“Why have you come?” asked Rhoda abruptly.
“Lady Eridge sent for me, as I told you. She had heard about those
interviews poor Lady Sarah and I had before she was married. I told
her everything. And I wanted to thank you for holding your tongue. You
might have done for me altogether if you had appeared at the inquest,
or if you had talked afterwards. I beg your pardon with all my heart
for any harm I have ever done you, or for any I, in my mad rage, may
have wished to do you.”
Rhoda could not but think that this frankness in a man of his
character came perilously near to effrontery. But she was not inclined
to stir up the ashes of dead resentments, and she told him that, if
Sir Robert could forgive him, she would not hold back.
“I am writing to him to-night,” said Jack.
The interview was not very long, but when it was over and Jack
Rotherfield had gone away, she fell to wondering what he would say
about her in his letter to Sir Robert.
Her heart was still very sore about the departure of the baronet
without a word of farewell to her, and she felt that he still
associated her unfairly in his mind with all his misfortunes.
It was true, indeed, that she had always been at the Mill-house when
they happened.
As the winter went on, Caryl, who received frequent letters from his
father, without one word in them of Rhoda, became more and more
disturbed as to his future.
He dictated his letters to Rhoda, who transcribed them for him; but,
although they both knew that the baronet must recognise her
handwriting, there was never any message in Sir Robert’s letters to
his son, to any one except the ladies of the marquis’s family, and the
head servants at the Mill-house.
These two, Rhoda and Caryl, began to talk about what they should do
when the spring came, and the boy told her he intended to ask his
father to let him go abroad with her, if she would not come back to
the Mill-house with him.
And so the weeks rolled by until winter was over, and the early days
of April found Caryl still at the Priory in the care of Rhoda.
There had been a long pause since Sir Robert’s last letter, and all at
the Priory were rather anxious as to his movements. He had said
nothing about coming home, had not answered a question put on the
subject by his son, and there was much perplexity as to the cause of
his silence.
It was now six months since the death of Lady Sarah, and the first
horror of the event had passed away.
Rhoda had been pushing Caryl’s wheeled couch about the grounds for him
to admire the early spring flowers in the borders, and the daffodils
among the grass on the slopes opposite to the house, and she had just
taken him indoors, when the fancy seized him that he would like a
bunch of daffodils to put in the big flower-vase in the old nursery
which had been given up to him as a sitting-room.
Rhoda went out to get the flowers, carrying on her arm a wooden trug
containing a knife to cut them with.
She had got into the winding walk that led to the grass slopes when
she suddenly became aware that there was a gentleman coming towards
her from the little gate that led through the plantation.
She stopped, her heart beating very fast. For it was Sir Robert
Hadlow.
He stopped too, and then he came towards her.
The joy she felt on seeing that he did not mean to avoid her got into
her head and rendered her so confused and excited that she was without
words when he came up.
Raising his hat rather formally, as she thought, but without the cold
sternness which had characterised his manner on the fatal night of
Lady Sarah’s death, he said:
“How do you do, Miss Pembury. I hope my unannounced arrival has not
caused you any alarm. All is well, I hope, with the ladies, and with
Caryl?”
“Oh, yes, they are all quite well. And Caryl, I think, is getting a
little stronger. The doctor spoke very promisingly indeed only two
days ago about him.”
“That’s excellent news. And you? Have you been well? I think, Miss
Pembury, you are looking thinner.”
Rhoda reddened. She was beginning to recover some of her lost
self-possession.
“I am glad to be able to say that you look better, much better. I
think your change must have done you a great deal of good.”
“Not the least doubt about it. Next winter, if all goes well, I think
I shall take Caryl with me if I go away.”
“You are longing to see him. Will you go in without preparing him? or
shall I tell him first?”
“Well, first I should like a little talk with you. Can you spare me
five minutes?”
“Oh, yes.”
She turned, and they walked in silence along the winding path,
bordered on one side by a well kept hedge which was as yet only
faintly green. He looked better and happier too, Rhoda thought, than
he had done in the old days at the Mill-house. Certainly he had then
led such a life of anxiety on account of his wife’s caprices and Jack
Rotherfield’s escapades that domestic tranquillity was out of the
question.
As the silence continued, Rhoda presently stole a glance at Sir
Robert, and found that he was looking at her intently.
“You have been very unfairly treated,” he said abruptly.
The blood rushed into her face.
“I have been very happy--with Caryl,” she answered in a whisper.
“Yes. But while you were at the Mill-house you had to suffer a great
deal, both from my wife and from me. Between the two of us the
situation, for a girl, must have been almost unendurable. But for your
feeling for Caryl you could not have borne it.”
“That’s all over now,” she said in a stifled voice. “I can remember
only the best part of it, your kindness, and Lady Sarah’s brilliant
charm.”
A shadow passed over his face.
“Yes,” he said solemnly. “That’s what I like to recollect. The best,
the brightest side.” He paused and then said abruptly:
“I’m afraid I was rather brutal to you on that last night, the
terrible night.”
Rhoda drew a long breath.
“Brutal! Oh, no. You couldn’t be that. You were cold, you even seemed
hard, but it was because you were not yourself, you
were--overwhelmed.”
He listened in silence, and there was a pause. They still walked along
the winding path, where there was just room for two, side by side.
“It wasn’t exactly that,” he said. “I have a confession to make, a
terrible confession.”
Rhoda’s cheeks blanched. What was he going to say?
“You were wounded, I suppose, that I went away without saying good-bye
to you, when you had been so good to my boy, so patient with my wife,
so conscientious for me?”
“Oh, pray don’t think about it. Of course, at such a time, after such
a tragedy----”
He cut her short.
“Tragedy! Yes, it was a tragedy. Can you guess, I wonder, what a
tragedy it was to me?”
“I think I can. Worshipping this lovely woman, in all her beauty and
charm, the effect upon you must have been stupendous, unimaginable.”
Sir Robert turned upon her suddenly, with a fire she had never before
seen shining in his eyes.
“That was not the worst part of it,” he said in a sonorous voice.
“What I was suffering from when that awful sight was suddenly
presented to my eyes was--self-reproach. Self-reproach so terrible, so
keen, that I could have cut off my right hand, drowned myself, shot
myself, in the depths of my own self-abasement.”
Rhoda almost thought he had lost his reason, so amazing, so
preposterous did such an attitude seem in the husband who had done so
much for a wife who neglected and despised him.
With a pained frown he went on:
“I have felt the need of confession for a long time, ever since, in
fact, and now I must make it and have done with it, once for all. The
sight of her dead white face struck me dumb with anguish, with self
remorse, not because I loved her, but--because I hated her.”
“Oh, no, no. It’s not possible. When you were so patient, so tender,
so indulgent!”
He turned to her quickly:
“And that was the reason why. I was not indulgent, but over-indulgent.
It was to salve my conscience, to stifle it. Heaven knows,” he went on
earnestly, “that I loved her passionately, desperately once. For years
she was my ideal; to the last in appearance she remained my model of
loveliness in a woman. But she had lost my heart long before she died.
She could have kept it easily enough had she wished. But she did not
wish. My affection bored her, and she killed it, killed it
deliberately. Knowing that the link between us was so slender that it
might at any moment snap, and wishing for Caryl’s sake to keep it
intact, I put up with everything, I yielded to her in everything. I
made sacrifices, I gave up my own wishes to hers. But,” and he turned
upon her again with fire in his quiet eyes, “I should not have been so
indulgent, so yielding, if I had loved her. It was the tragedy of it
that I had grown to hate her. When she lay dead I felt remorse,
excitement, horror. But of tenderness scarcely a trace. And,” he
lowered his voice as if in shame, “it was because I felt as I did feel
that I had to go away without seeing you, or speaking to you. I was
afraid that you would find me out. It would have shocked you. You
might have found out more too. So it was better that I should go as I
did go.”
Half-stunned, Rhoda turned and led the way back to the house.
“You must see Caryl,” she said hoarsely.
She could scarcely realise the secret with which she had been
entrusted. It was so hard, remembering his indulgence to his wilful
wife, to understand the motive which had prompted his excess of
kindness.
They went upstairs to Caryl’s room, after Sir Robert had met and
spoken to the ladies of the house.
The boy had seen him from his window, and was clapping his hands with
glee.
“Papa, papa,” cried he, “Oh, how glad, how glad I am!”
He seized his father’s hand, and received his kiss, and then he held
out his other hand to Rhoda.
“Come here, Rhoda, come here,” cried he.
Timidly, and as it were reluctantly, she came. Caryl put her hand into
that of his father, and held them together.
“Papa, you won’t let her go now, will you?” he whispered.
Rhoda was crying. Sir Robert looked at her very tenderly over the
little wheel-couch, and said in a low voice as he pressed her hand in
his:
“No, Caryl, I won’t let her go away again.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Florence Warden was the pseudonym of Florence Alice (Price) James.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ dinner-gong/dinner gong,
newcomer/new-comer, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Punctuation: quotation mark pairings and a missing comma.
[Chapter XII]
“though Lady Sarah _appared_ to be chattering idly to Jack” to
_appeared_.
[End of text]