THE WORK OF A WEEK.
Much went to spoil the stay at Dieppe, but the only overt trouble was
the feeble health of the Baron von Geltschmidt. The old man had rapidly
made his way into the liking of his new acquaintances. Semingham found
his dry, worldly-wise, perhaps world-weary, humour an admirable sauce to
conversation; Adela Ferrars detected kindness in him; his gallant
deference pleased Lady Semingham. They were all grieved when the cold
winds laid hold of him, forced him to keep house often, and drove him to
furs and a bath-chair, even when the sun shone most brightly. Although
they liked him, they implored him to fly south. He would not move,
finding pleasure in them, and held fast by an ever-increasing uneasy
interest in Willie Ruston. Adela quarrelled with him heartily and
energetically on this score. To risk health because anyone was
interesting was absurd; to risk it on Ruston's account most
preposterous. "I'd be ill to get away from him," she declared. The Baron
was obstinate, fatalistic as to his health, infatuated in his folly;
stay he would, while Ruston stayed. Yet what Ruston did, pleased him
not; for the better part of the man--what led him to respond to kindness
or affection, and abate something of his hardness where he met no
resistance--seemed to be conspiring with his old domineering mood to
lead him beyond all power of warning or recall.
A week had passed since Ruston paid his first visit to Mrs. Dennison in
the cottage on the cliff. It was a bright morning. The Baron was feeling
stronger; he had left his chair and walked with Adela to a seat. There
they sat side by side, in the occasional talk and easy silences of
established friendship. The Baron smoked his cigar; Adela looked idly at
the sea; but suddenly the Baron began to speak.
"I had a talk with our friend, Lord Semingham, this morning," said he.
"About anything in particular?"
"I meant it to be, but he doesn't like talk that leads anywhere in
particular."
"No, he doesn't," said Adela, with a slight smile.
The Baron sat silent for a moment, then he said,
"May I talk to you, Miss Ferrars?" and he looked at her inquiringly.
"Why, of course," she answered. "Is it about yourself, Baron? You're not
worse, are you?"
He took no notice of her question, but pointed towards the cliff.
"What is happening up there?" he asked.
Adela started. She had not realised that he meant to talk on that
subject.
He detected her shrinking and hastened to defend himself.
"Or are we to say nothing?" he asked. "Nothing? When we all see! Don't
you see? Doesn't Miss Valentine see? Is she so sad for nothing? Oh,
don't shake your head. And the other--this Mrs. Dennison? Am I to go
on?"
"No," said Adela sharply; and added, a moment later, "I know."
"And what does he mean?"
"He?" cried Adela. "Oh, he's not human."
"Nay, but he's terribly human," said the old Baron.
Adela looked round at him, but then turned away.
"I know what I would say, but I may not say it," pursued the Baron. "To
you I may not say it. I know him. He will take, if he is offered."
His voice sank to a whisper.
"Then God help her," murmured Adela under her breath, while her cheeks
flamed red.
"Yes, he will take, and he will go. Ah, he is a man to follow and to
believe in--to trust your money, your fortune, your plans, even your
secrets to; but----"
He paused, flinging away his extinct cigar.
"Well?" asked Adela in a low tone, eager in spite of her hatred of the
topic.
"Never your love," said he; and added, "yet I believe I, who am old
enough to know better, and too old to learn better, have almost given
him mine. Well, I am not a woman."
"He can't hurt you," said Adela.
"Yes, he can," said the Baron with a dreary smile.
Adela was not thinking of her companion.
"Why do you talk of it?" she asked impatiently.
"I know I was wrong."
"No, no. I mean, why do you talk of it now?"
"Because," said the Baron, "he will not. Have you seen no change in him
this week? A week ago, he laughed when I talked to him. He did not mind
me speaking--it was still a trifle--nonsense--a week ago; if you like,
an amusement, a pastime!"
"Well, and now?"
"Now he tells me to hold my tongue. And yet I am glad for one thing.
That girl will not have him for a husband."
"Glad! Why, Baron, don't you see----"
"Yes, I see. Still I am glad."
"I can't go on talking about it; but is there no hope?"
"Where is it? For the time--mind you for the time--he is under that
other woman's power."
"She's under his, you mean."
"I mean both. She was a friend of yours. Yes. She is not altogether a
bad woman; but she has had a bad fortune. Ah, there she is, and he with
her."
As he spoke, Mrs. Dennison and Ruston came by. Mrs. Dennison flung them
a glance of recognition; it was hardly more, and even for so much she
seemed to grudge the interruption. Ruston's greeting was more
ceremonious; he smiled, but his brows contracted a little, and he said
to his companion,
"Miss Ferrars isn't pleased with me."
"That hurts?" she asked lightly.
"No," he answered, after a short pause, "I don't know that it does."
But the frown dwelt a little longer on his face.
"Sit down here," she said, and they sat down in full view of Adela and
the Baron, about twenty yards off.
"She's mad," murmured Adela, and the Baron muttered assent.
It was the time of the morning when everybody was out. Presently Lord
and Lady Semingham strolled by--Lady Semingham did not see Maggie
Dennison, her husband did, and Adela caught the look in his eye. Then
down from the hill and on to the grass came Marjory Valentine. She saw
both couples, and, for a perceptible moment, stood wavering between
them. She looked pale and weary. Mrs. Dennison indicated her with the
slightest gesture.
"You were asking for her. There she is," she said to Willie Ruston.
"Well, I think I'll go and ask her."
"What?"
"To come for a walk."
"Now?"
"Why not?" he asked with a surprised smile.
As he spoke, Marjory's hesitation ended; she joined Adela and the Baron.
"How rude you are!" exclaimed Mrs. Dennison angrily, "you asked me to
come out with you."
"So I did. By Jove, so I did! But you don't walk, do you? And I feel
rather like a walk now."
"Oh, if you prefer her society----"
"Her prattle," he said, smiling, "amuses me. You and I always discuss
high matters, you see."
"She doesn't prattle, and you know it."
He looked at her for a moment. He had gone so far as to rise, but he
resumed his seat.
"What's the matter?" he asked tolerantly.
Maggie Dennison's lip quivered. The week that had passed had been a
stormy one to her. There had been a breaking-down of barriers--barriers
of honour, conscience, and pride. All she could do to gain or keep her
mastery she had done. She had all but thrown herself at his feet. She
hated to think of the things she had said or half-said; and she had seen
Marjory's eyes look wondering horror and pitying contempt at her. Of her
husband she would not think. And she had won in return--she knew not
what. It hung still in the balance. Sometimes he would seem engrossed in
her; but again he would turn to Marjory or another with a kind of
relief, as though she wearied him. And of her struggles, of the great
humiliations she suffered, of all she sacrificed to him, he seemed
unconscious. Yet, cost what it might, she could not let him go now. The
screen of Omofaga was dropped; she knew that it was the man whose life
she was resolute to fill; whether she called it love for him or what
else mattered little; it seemed rather a mere condition of existence,
necessary yet not sweet, even revolting; but its alternative was death.
She had closed her eyes for a moment under the stress of her pain. When
she opened them, he was looking at her. And the look she knew was at
last in his eyes. She put up her hand to ward it off; it woke her
horror, but it woke her delight also. She could not choose whether to
banish it, or to live in it all her life. She tried to speak, but her
utterance was choked.
"Why, I believe you're--jealous," said Willie Ruston. "But then they
always say I'm a conceited chap."
He spoke with a laugh, but he looked at her intently. The little scene
was the climax of a week's gradual betrayal. Often in all the hours they
had spent together, in all the engrossing talks they had had, something
of the kind had appeared and disappeared; he had wondered at her
changefulness, her moods of expansion and of coldness--a rapturous
greeting of him to be followed by a cold dismissal--an eager sympathy
alternating with wilful indifference. She had, too, fits of prudence,
when she would not go with him--and then spasms of recklessness when her
manner seemed to defy all restraint and mock at the disapproval of her
friends. On these puzzles--to him, preoccupied as he was and little
versed in such matters, they had seemed such--the present moment shed
its light. He recalled, with understanding, things that had passed
meaninglessly before his eyes, that he seemed to have forgotten
altogether; the ambiguous things became plain; what had been, though
plain, yet strange, fell into its ordered place and became natural. The
new relation between them proclaimed itself the interpretation and the
work of the bygone week.
Her glove lay in her lap, and he touched it lightly; the gesture
speaking of their sudden new familiarity.
Her reproach was no less eloquent; she rebuked not the thing, but the
rashness of it.
"Don't do that. They're looking," she found voice to whisper.
He withdrew his hand, and, taking off his hat, pushed the hair back from
his forehead. Presently he looked at her with an almost comical air of
perplexity; she was conscious of the glance, but she would not meet it.
He pursed his lips to whistle.
"Don't," she whispered sharply. "Don't whistle." A whistle brought her
husband to her mind.
The checked whistle rudely reflected his mingled feelings. He wished
that he had been more on his guard--against her and against himself.
There had been enough to put him on his guard; if he had been put on his
guard, this thing need not have happened. He called the thing in his
thoughts "inconvenient." He was marvellously awake to the inconvenience
of it; it was that which came uppermost in his mind as he sat by Maggie
Dennison. Yet, in spite of a phrase that sounded so cold and brutal, his
reflections paid her no little compliment; for he called the revelation
inconvenient all the more, and most of all, because he found it of
immense interest, because it satisfied suddenly and to the full a sense
of interest and expectation that had been upon him, because it seemed to
make an immense change in his mind and to alter the conditions of his
life. Had it not done all this, its inconvenience would have been much
less--to him and save in so far as he grieved for her--nay, it would
have been, in reality, nothing. It was inconvenient because it twisted
his purposes, set him at jar with himself, and cut across the orderly
lines he had laid down--and because, though it did all this, he was not
grieved nor angry at it.
He rose to his feet. Mrs. Dennison looked up quickly.
"I shall go for my walk now," he said, and he added in answer to her
silent question, "Oh, yes, alone. I've got a thing or two I want to
think about."
Her eyes dropped as he spoke. He had smiled, and she, in spite of
herself, had smiled in answer; but she could not look at him while she
smiled. He stood there for an instant, smiling still; then he grew
grave, and turned to walk away. Her sigh witnessed the relaxation of the
strain. But, after one step, he faced her again, and said, as though the
idea had just struck him,
"I say, when does Dennison come?"
"In a week," she answered.
For just a moment again, he stood still, thoughtfully looking at her.
Then he lifted his hat, wheeled round, and walked briskly off towards
the jetty at the far end of the expanse of grass. Adela Ferrars, twenty
yards off, marked his going with a sigh of relief.
Mrs. Dennison sat where she was a little while longer. Her agitation was
quickly passing, and there followed on it a feeling of calm. She seemed
to have resigned charge of herself, to have given her conduct into
another's keeping. She did not know what he would do; he had uttered no
word of pleasure or pain, praise or blame; and that question at the
last--about her husband--was ambiguous. Did he ask it, fearing Harry's
arrival, or did he think the arrival of her husband would end an awkward
position and set him free? Really, she did not know. She had done what
she could--and what she could not help. He must do what he liked--only,
knowing him, she did not think that she had set an end to their
acquaintance. And that for the moment was enough.
"A woman, Bessie," she heard a voice behind her saying, "may be anything
from a cosmic force to a clothes-peg."
"I don't know what a cosmic force is," said Lady Semingham.
"A cosmic force? Why----"
"But I don't want to know, Alfred. Why, Maggie, that's a new shade of
brown on your shoes. Where do you get them?"
Mrs. Dennison gave her bootmaker's address, and Lady Semingham told her
husband to remember it. She never remembered that he always forgot such
things.
The arrival of the Seminghams seemed to break the spell which had held
Mrs. Dennison apart from the group over against her. Adela strolled
across, followed by Marjory, and the Baron on Marjory's arm. The whole
party gathered in a cluster; but Marjory hung loosely on the outskirts
of the circle, and seemed scarcely to belong to it.
The Baron seated himself in the place Willie Ruston had left empty. The
rest stood talking for a minute or two, then Semingham put his hand in
his pocket and drew out a folded sheet of tracing-paper.
"We're all Omofagites here, aren't we?" he said; "even you, Baron, now.
Here's a plan Carlin has just sent me. It shows our territory."
Everybody crowded round to look as he unfolded it. Mrs. Dennison was
first in undisguised eagerness; and Marjory came closer, slipping her
arm through Adela Ferrars'.
"What does the blue mean?" asked Adela.
"Native settlements."
"Oh! And all that brown?--it's mostly brown."
"Brown," answered Semingham, with a slight smile, "means unexplored
country."
"I should have made it all brown," said Adela, and the Baron gave an
appreciative chuckle.
"And what are these little red crosses?" asked Mrs. Dennison, laying the
tip of her finger on one.
"Eh? What, those? Oh, let me see. Here, just hold it while I look at
Carlin's letter. He explains it all," and Lord Semingham began to fumble
in his breast-pocket.
"Dear me," said Bessie Semingham, in a tone of delicate pleasure, "they
look like tombstones."
"Hush, hush, my dear lady," cried the old Baron; "what a bad omen!"
"Tombstones," echoed Maggie Dennison thoughtfully. "So they do--just
like tombstones."
A pause fell on the group. Adela broke it.
"Well, Director, have you found your directions?" she asked briskly.
"It was a momentary lapse of memory," said Semingham with dignity.
"Those--er--little----"
"No, not tombstones," interrupted the Baron earnestly.
"Little--er--signposts are, of course, the forts belonging to the
Company. What else should they be?"
"Oh, _forts_," murmured everybody.
"They are," continued Lord Semingham apologetically, "in the nature of a
prophecy at present, as I understand."
"A very bad prophecy, according to Bessie," said Mrs. Dennison.
"I hope," said the Baron, shaking his head, "that the official name is
more correct than Lady Semingham's."
"So do I," said Marjory; and added, before she could think not to add,
and with unlucky haste, "my brother's going out, you know."
Mrs. Dennison looked at her. Then she crossed over to her, saying to
Adela,
"You never let me have a word with my own guest, except at breakfast and
bedtime. Come and walk up and down with me, Marjory."
Marjory obeyed; the group began to scatter.
"But didn't they look like tombstones, Baron?" said Bessie Semingham
again, as she sat down and made room for the old man beside her. When
she had an idea she liked it very much. He began to be voluble in his
reproof of her gloomy fancies; but she merely laughed in glee at her
ingenuity.
Adela, by a gesture, brought Semingham to her side and walked a few
paces off with him.
"Will you go with me to the post-office?" she said abruptly.
"By all means," he answered, feeling for his glass.
"Oh, you needn't get your glass to spy at me with."
"Dear, dear, you use one yourself!"
"I'll tell you myself why I'm going. You're going to send a telegram."
"Am I?"
"Yes; to invite someone to stay with you. Lord Semingham, when you find
a woman relies on a man--on one man only--in trouble, what do you
think?"
She asked the question in a level voice, looking straight before her.
"That she's fond of him."
"And does he--the man--think the same?"
"Generally. I think most men would. They're seldom backward to think it,
you know."
"Then," she said steadily, "you must think, and he must think, what you
like. I can't help it. I want you to wire and ask a man to come and stay
with you."
He turned to her in surprise.
"Tom Loring," she said, and the moment the name left her lips Semingham
hastily turned his glance away.
"Awkward--with the other fellow here," he ventured to suggest.
"Mr. Ruston doesn't choose your guests."
"But Mrs.----"
"Oh, fancy talking of awkwardness now! He used to influence her once,
you know. Perhaps he might still. Do let us try," and her voice trembled
in earnestness.
"We'll try. Will he come? He's very angry with her."
And Adela answered, still looking straight in front of her,
"I'm going to send him a wire, too."
"I'm very glad to hear it," said Lord Semingham.