“MOTHER used to say that when a girl was married she should wear a
bonnet and never jest with gentlemen. Mrs. Clutton’s hats are very
large, and her manner to Jim has always been flippant.”
Annie Jayne, her hair already thin at the temples, and her pretty
narrow brow seamed with a thousand solicitous premature creases, looked
down fondly at her second baby. Its legs had been unswathed; it was
kicking and gurgling on the drawing-room rug.
“She certainly is a little flippant--I must say that,” admitted Aunt
Sophy diplomatically, as she beamed at the rug, and gave vent to a
voluble string of infantile expletives.
“You never should have called on her,” Maria Furlonger cried
reproachfully. “And it did have boofy nickle legs, so it did.”
She, too, beamed at the baby. He returned her wide grin with a look of
stolid, pitying superiority. Annie, her eyes swimming with tenderness
as they rested on the naked, purplish limbs, said:
“Isn’t it _wonderful_, the way he takes notice?”
“She is no more married than you are--than I am,” Maria continued,
returning to the attack, and pulling her mouth back to its natural
limits.
Annie and Aunt Sophy froze a little after the manner of matrons. They
said instinctively and together:
“My _dear!_”
“A married man never sneaks home to his wife after dark when he has
been away for months,” Maria persisted. “It was past ten. Mrs. Daborn
was calling in her cat--the tortoiseshell she has had for sixteen
years. You know that Si Daborn’s cottage is just opposite the Buttery.
She saw him go in like a thief--not even a hand-bag.”
“A married man always has luggage. Mother used to pack father’s bag
herself. If there are buttons off or a thin place in the socks it
reflects on the wife.”
“I must say”--Aunt Sophy held out her finger for the child to
clutch--“that a gentleman doesn’t usually--return from South
America----”
“Without so much as a tooth-brush,” broke in Maria.
“He might have had it in his pocket,” Annie reminded her gently. “We
mustn’t condemn until we are certain.”
“They came down quite coolly to breakfast in the morning,” Maria
continued. “Not a word of explanation to Tryphena--Hone’s eldest girl;
the Hones of Marrow’s farm. I was always against Tryphena taking
service at the Buttery. The Hones are in my district.”
There was a little pause. The baby broke it by cooing. Then Maria cried
out suddenly:
“Good gracious! He can’t be the Birmingham murderer in hiding at the
Buttery. He may be her husband, after all--which makes it all the more
reprehensible. Mrs. Daborn tells me he looked a _most_ suspicious
character: one of those men with a bronzed face, bold eyes, and a suit
with a large check.”
“Mrs. Si Daborn is nearly blind with cataract.”
“You always try to make out a good case for people, Annie. Mrs. Si
Daborn can see a large-checked suit. She is a most respectable old
soul; I think a great deal of her judgment. Her eldest daughter married
a builder; he is in a large way of business at Walthamstow.”
“A murderer! Maria!” Aunt Sophy for once forgot to be diplomatically
gentle. “I must say that it isn’t wise to talk so wildly. You’ll
frighten Annie and upset the darling baby.”
“The Birmingham murderer! Is that the man who murdered his employer and
his employer’s six motherless children? Boiled them in the copper,
didn’t he?”
Annie put the questions quite calmly--as if they merely referred to a
family recipe for making pickled walnuts.
“Yes, that’s the man.”
“Then he can’t be at the Buttery. Jim brought home the evening paper
from Liddleshorn. There is a portrait of the murderer and his
victims--_before_ they went into the copper--poor things. He was
arrested. He committed suicide in his cell.”
The sweet, spiteful expression stole across Aunt Sophy’s face as she
glanced at Maria, who only said tartly:
“He wasn’t the only criminal in the country, after all. Read the papers
regularly, both of you, and see how many crimes there are which are
never fastened on to the right person.”
“I rather thought,” said Annie placidly, “that Pamela would come up to
tea. I told her that I was going to short-coat baby to-day.”
“Rather funny about her brother, wasn’t it?”
Maria had a faculty for starting aggressive subjects.
Aunt Sophy put on her best dignity air--the air she adopted toward
people who only kept one servant, who hadn’t a “conveyance,” who didn’t
get invited to the Vicarage.
“I used to think that he was courting Nancy,” Maria continued,
unabashed.
“My dear! What an extraordinary notion! Isn’t darling Maria’s brain
original, Annie? Nancy is almost engaged to Mr. Minns, the Liddleshorn
curate. He is an extremely intellectual young man. Naturally he was
drawn to Nancy, whose tastes are so literary.”
Pamela was slowly driving up the hill in her governess car. She was
startled by a sharp voice behind. It took little to startle her. Her
gray eyes had lately a vague, fixed look--they seemed to petrify as the
wedding-day grew near--a day not to be evaded.
“I thought that I should never make you hear.” Mrs. Clutton put one
hand on the cart and the other to her pulsing brown throat.
“I’m sorry. Jump in. Are you going to the Mount?”
“Not I. My reception wouldn’t be warm.” She laughed merrily. “You must
have heard the scandal.”
“What scandal?”
Pamela’s high voice seemed to whistle through her teeth; the reins
dropped slackly on Betsy’s back.
“About my husband, of course. He came home quite unexpectedly last
night; came just as he was from his club, where he is putting up until
we settle. I opened the door myself; Tryphena was in bed. He looked so
big and brown and self-assured--so prosperous--nothing of the flabby,
dubious, hard-up artist about him. He ate cold pork for supper, and
slept all night. No more dyspepsia, no more rows! He is a success--a
decent income assured us for life. He climbed some peak in America that
no one else has ever climbed. His book will be the sensation of the
season.”
She stopped, her black eyes snapping and gleaming.
“I’m very glad,” Pamela said, with a kind of sad heartiness. “Very glad
that someone is going to be happy.”
“Someone else, you mean. Your happiness is beyond question, though
happiness is only attitude. What alterations Mr. Jayne is making at
Folly Corner!”
“We couldn’t do without a new wing. A country house isn’t complete
without a billiard-room,” Pamela said, with her limp, forced air of
breeding, of doing the “correct thing.”
“And your brother will be bringing men down, week ends, no doubt.”
“Edred!” She caught the reins up tightly. “He will not come again.”
Mrs. Clutton looked at her shrewdly. Then she said:
“Tim and I are to live at Chelsea; one of those delightful new houses,
all white paint and wrought iron. He has gone back to town. He is much
too busy to stay. I am making all arrangements for leaving the Buttery
at the end of the week. He was so delighted with the oak. When I showed
him my notebook, full of rustic skeletons, he fairly shouted. It will
make a most sensational thing to run in an up-to-date paper: daily
installments, skillfully backed up by interviews, paragraphs,
photographs of the Chelsea house, when we are settled.”
“There is nothing scandalous in all this.”
“How discursive I am! Never mind. You will hear it all, from the proper
point of view, at the Mount. I can see them sitting in judgment! Annie
Jayne, quoting her mother; that horrid Maria Furlonger, an animated
sneer; dear Mrs. Turle, trying to pull both ways, enjoying the scandal
and yet not wishing to take sides against me, in case Tim should turn
out all right and be a vehicle for eligible bachelors. She has a fury
for marrying Nancy.
“A married man should come back with his halter round his neck. Tim
should have had the station fly full of boxes. He just walked in
without a word--without a clean collar or a nightshirt. I thought that
he was in Venezuela. When Tryphena saw us both come down next morning
she dropped the butter-dish--hand-painted willow--the little fool! Then
she sneaked off and told her mother. Mrs. Hone, very fat, very shiny
with outraged virtue, came back to say that she couldn’t allow _her_
girl to stay in such a place. _Her_ children had always been brought
up respectable. No one could say that one of _her_ daughters had been
compelled to marry in a hurry.”
“And you are going away? You won’t be here for my wedding--a week next
Thursday.”
“I’m afraid not. But you must come and see us in town. I’ve told Tim
all about you. He adores big, dun-haired girls. He likes women as he
likes wine--with body.
“I want you to go to Mrs. Hone’s,” she continued, “that is why I ran
after the cart. Say I’ll give her five shillings for that figure with
the skull in its hand. Tim thinks an exhibition of Staffordshire would
be a good idea.”
“Bert Hone’s?”
“Yes. He is dead. Queer old savage! Good-by. I’m going to talk to the
landlord of the Buttery.”
She turned off at the cross-roads. Pamela drove to Mrs. Hone’s, haggled
for the figure, wrapped it in newspaper, and put it in the cart. As she
did so she mentioned carelessly that Mrs. Clutton was going away.
“Be she now?” the doubled-up old woman cried. “Sure! London now. You
don’t say so, my dear soul. I shall miss her. When my man died she came
in to look at him. He worked up to the very last, although he was so
old--past eighty. He took his turn with the hayin’. He never wasted a
hour; it was Sunday when he died, so it was. She come and looked at
him a-layin’ in his coffin, and she shed a tear. The other ladies gi’
me black clothes. Young Mis’ Jayne up at the Mount brought the little
baby for me to see, and Mis’ Turle sent Miss Nancy down with a bottle
o’ doctor’s stuff--it’s nothin’ but camphor; jest smell it. But Mis’
Clutton brought a fine wreath like wax. He went down into his grave as
if he was a gentleman farmer. Nobody else thought o’ flowers; wreaths
aint for the likes o’ we.”
As Pamela turned the pony’s head she decided not to go to the Mount
that day. There were still moments when Annie’s impenetrability and
Aunt Sophy’s phlegm jarred.
She drove home across the common. It was a burning day--the last in
July. There was a ticking sound in the hot air, as the black seed pods
of the broom burst. High in the sky was an intense angry sun, swept now
and then by boding thunder-clouds. Across the common stretched a carpet
of heather, exquisite purple, just breaking into bloom. When she turned
off and drove down Waggoner’s Lane on the way to Folly Corner, the
hedges were full of blackberry blossoms, widely opened, and pale
heliotrope. There was a fishy smell of privet from a cottage garden,
and the soft, tearing swish of a scythe came from a field. The high
hedges were hung with butter-colored hay, which had caught in the
branches as the loaded wain toiled by. At Folly Corner, in her
garden, the long edgings of white pinks were dry, and brown, and
scentless, and sad. The elder tree which hung over the barn was shabby.
The leaves on the poplars rustled dryly, as they never had done in
June.
The newspaper, which the carrier brought daily from Liddleshorn, was on
the table in the corridor, neatly folded, tied with twine, and
addressed to Jethro. She carried it into the drawing-room and read it
listlessly. Politics didn’t interest her--foreign politics in
particular seemed singularly superfluous. But she read the art
notices and the reviews of new books as a matter of duty, and the
advertisements as a matter of interest. There were twelve pages to the
paper that day. One was taken up with an advertisement--the prospectus
of a new company. It was something about a ruby mine--it didn’t matter
much, anyhow. She was far too languid to read it all. Still, her eye
ran listlessly down. When she came to the names of the directors she
cried out. Edred Crisp, Esq., of Marquise Mansions, W., headed the
list.
That name brought everything back. She drove it into her brain letter
by letter. She stared at it so long, so fixedly, that her eyes played
pranks, and the one name, Edred Crisp, took up the whole sheet.
There was a barking of dogs, a grating grind of wheels outside,
Jethro’s voice. She jumped up, her face suddenly stern, desperate. She
looked out of the window, her head framed in fully-blown roses which
had shriveled and turned brown.
“Come in here,” she said metallically, looking at the spare figure and
keen, kind eyes. “I want to speak to you.”
“My boots are dirty.”
“Never mind. Come now; if you don’t, I may change again, and that will
be the worse for both of us.”
Until he came in at the door, stooping his head a little because it was
so low, she kept her throbbing eyes upon those words, “Edred Crisp,
Esq., Marquise Mansions, W.”
“I’ve been to Liddleshorn and seen Preece about the wedding-cake,” he
said.
“The wedding-cake!” she repeated blankly. “Oh, you need not have
troubled. It does not matter in the least.”
Jethro was looking puzzled--a little annoyed, too. Her unequal moods of
late vexed him. He was a short-tempered man, given to fits of silence
and _brusquerie_, just as his father had been. Men in the country are
often so; she had noticed that young Jim Jayne snubbed Annie. In towns
a man goes out and blows off his temper--at his club or a music-hall;
in the country he vents it on his women.
“Doesn’t matter? That sounds strange from you, Pamela.”
She laughed. The steady look in her eyes, the lambent light on
her face, struck him. She seemed swept, dominated by a sudden
fierce, irrevocable decision. The newspaper, wide open at the
page-advertisement of the new company, was on her knees. She put her
finger under Edred’s name and showed it to him.
“Umph! Well, he has never written a line since he went away--didn’t
even send the telegram. Still, I’m glad he’s getting on. Looks like
business, doesn’t it?” He read the name and address in a rather
awe-struck way. “There seems to be money in that. How much capital, do
they say? He hasn’t been long in making his fortune. Perhaps he’ll pay
me back the two hundred. It was understood between us to be only a
loan--if he succeeded. What are the Chinese beggars doing at----”
He lifted the paper to turn it. She drew it away.
“Never mind the Chinese. You will have time--your whole life--for
them.”
“My whole life!” He laughed. “By Jove! we mean to settle them in less
than a month--judging by the telegrams. Just let me have a look at the
summary, dear.”
“But I want to speak to you.”
“You have spoken. It was to tell me about Edred, wasn’t it?”
“About Edred--yes.”
“You haven’t had a letter from him? You don’t know anything but that?”
He pointed to the paper.
She shook her head.
“I’ve never had a letter from him since he left; but this,” she put her
finger on the words, “has decided me. The mere look of the letters put
together to form _him_ was enough. Can’t you guess, Jethro? You are not
stupid.”
“Guess!” An angry darkness suddenly overspread his face. “Guess what?”
“You don’t guess. You only suspect--and suspicion never decides a
woman’s fate. I shall have to tell you.”
She seemed to pull herself together, giving a last fierce look of
affection round the room and out of the window, at the flowers and the
fripperies that she was so fond of. Then she said coldly--with the
unerring cold, callousness of steel:
“Edred is not my brother. He was my lover in London. We were engaged to
be married. He got into trouble--some business affair. The others were
to blame. They got away and he had to pay the penalty. When I came here
he was in prison. I decided never to see him again; not to let him know
my address. He came to the back door with machines that day--that day,
dear; oh, Jethro, I’m so sorry--when you gave me the check for my
wedding things and asked me about the pet lamb. I can’t marry you; I
can’t stay. He doesn’t love me--as you do. He’ll be unkind to me: he’s
that sort of man. I’m a fool, a traitor--everything that is ignoble.
Why don’t you strike me?” She threw up her face and looked at him
mournfully--that wild, sharp face, which was just a mask for her
racking brain.
“Why don’t you curse me? I have spoilt your life--but it might have
been worse. If he came back, or sent a message saying he wanted me, I
should have gone. Yes, your wife, Jethro, would have gone. I’ve been
trying to cure myself. I saw his name, and it all came back. He was the
first man--no one else before had said or looked love, or kissed
me. I suppose that must be the reason. There can be no other--he is
worthless. You are a god compared to him. But he was first. I can’t
help it.” She shook her head hopelessly, the molten, heavy tears
rolling slowly down her face.
“That isn’t all. You shall know the very worst. Then you won’t care so
much. You’ll drive me away from Folly Corner--and forget. Marry some
good, even-minded girl--some girl without the horrible strength that I
have. I must tell you the rest. He did send a telegram. You were at the
Flagon House. He said he was coming back to fetch me. I waited under
the yew until past midnight. He never came. Until to-day, until I saw
this”--she touched his name--“I thought--I hoped that he might be dead.
He wouldn’t have any power over me then.
“You saw him kissing me in the waiting-room. Why didn’t you guess
then--why did you stop short--just suspecting? Suspicion is no good--it
is only a petty thing. If you had not driven us to the station I should
have gone to London with him. That day I kept changing my mind. Do
speak, Jethro. Don’t look at me in that queer way. You must be angry.
Show it. Strike me. Call me all the disgraceful names you are surely
thinking.”
He got up, giving himself a slow shake in the shaggy coat of homespun,
which was of a very light color and looked something like hairy
sacking.
“You must go to him,” he said simply, not a trace of anger on his face.
“It’s natural--I wouldn’t stand up against Nature for the world.
Nature mates us all--no good our meddling. Even with the cattle----”
“Never mind the cattle,” she broke in, her squeamishness asserting
itself even now--his speech was apt to be blunt enough when he spoke of
the simple facts which he had been accustomed to take as a matter of
course all his life.
“You can’t help it,” he continued, with superb generosity. “I don’t
blame you. He was first--you were meant for him. It isn’t your
fault--or his. I am the fool, the meddler. You can’t mate through the
newspaper. I ought to have known.”
He went toward the door, his head down, his face gentle and strong. She
started up.
“You are not going?”
“There is nothing to stay for.”
“You don’t say one word of blame----”
“It is no good, and I have no right. Go to him, dear.”
“You forgive me?”
“There is nothing to forgive. I should have done as you have done. Not
a woman in the world would hold me back from you, if you were free.”
“But the wedding? What will people say?”
“Let them say. That’s nothing.”
“Those things are everything. You are going to live and die in this
place. For your sake, not mine”--she looked lingeringly at the yellow
fields and rainbow flower-beds--“we must tell Aunt Sophy a plausible
story. I’ll write a note, tell her that Edred is ill--a long
illness--and wants me. Later on, by degrees, you can let them know that
I am never coming back.”
“You’ll tell her that Edred is ill--a long illness--and wants you,” he
repeated in a slow, painstaking voice, as if, for her sake, he was very
anxious to remember. “Very well, I’ll try not to forget. Would you like
me to drive you to the station this afternoon?”
He saw the lightening of her face.
“So soon! But I could be ready. I’ll start packing now.” She went
crisply across the room. “But not you. Let Daborn drive.”
“I’d rather come, if it’s the same to you. There’s a train at four.”
“Four. Very well.”
“We can have an early tea. You like your tea.”
“Tea--yes.”
“Take some flowers. There are plenty of eggs, too. Some of those early
pullets are laying already, although the old birds are on the moult. He
liked quince jam. Could you manage to pack a pot or so?”
“Jethro!” Her keen voice made the name more a shrill, birdlike cry than
a word. “I can’t bear to hear you talk so calmly. I would not mind so
much if you looked the martyr. But you sound so every-day--quince jam,
pullet eggs! And yet I know how bitterly you care.”
“I must try not to. I’ve made a muddle. I hurried things when I should
have let them alone.”
“You’ll forget,” she said, with miserable lack of conviction. “We
shall be--Edred and I--a bad dream. Never trouble to give us a
thought.”
“But I shall expect to hear from you; to see you, perhaps, if I go to
London. I’ve often thought of a week in London. I haven’t been since my
father died. We saw most of the sights, but missed the Doré Gallery.
Everyone ought to go there.”
She gasped.
“You could come up, see us together--man and wife. You can talk of the
Doré Gallery!”
“Why not? I mustn’t lose sight of you, my mother’s kin.”
“Kin!” she cried out, with bitter scorn for herself and Edred. “He
isn’t, at all events. His real name I don’t know; he was sentenced as
Edred Pugin. As for me! Very likely my father was not your missing
uncle at all. I hope not--for your sake. I’m no credit to you.”
“You must send me your address. If that ruby company is good and all
the shares are not allotted, I’ve money lying by--I shan’t need to
spend so much now----”
“You don’t know Edred. Never let him have another penny. He has done
you harm enough. You won’t want our address; we shan’t be creditable
people--for you to know. Up to-day and down to-morrow--I know the life
I’m going to lead. But I step into it with my eyes open,
because--because it will be with him. I want you to know the very worst
of me--you’ll be cured all the sooner. Your misery is nothing--compared
to him. My heart is all stone--until he dissolves it. He doesn’t
want me. But I’m glad, mad to go. Remember all this when I’m gone. Say
she was a callous, reckless, scheming, unprincipled creature--she is
well forgotten.”
She slipped past him, and out of the room, and up the stairs. Once he
thought he heard her sing and then stop abruptly. He went out and
tramped moodily across his acres, finding fault with everything,
swearing freely at the men, kicking his dog, and roughly ordering away
a party of children who were playing in the meadow.
Pamela packed. She said good-by to Gainah, who never troubled to lift
her head, tipped the two maids. When she told them, in a marked and
significant way, that her brother was dangerously ill, pretty Nettie
began to blubber.
When the wagonette was out of sight Gainah put her patchwork away
methodically. Then she went into the garden, looking at things
critically, speaking to Daborn in a sharp voice--the imperious voice of
old. She was a little cramped yet--mentally and bodily. But the fact
that Pamela had gone was beginning to glimmer in on her poor
intelligence. When she saw the housekeeping keys in the basket, she
picked them up and dropped them in her deep pocket with a cunning
chuckle. Then she marched solemnly into the kitchen.