"He smarteth most who hides his smart
And sues for no compassion."
After he had closed the door behind his cousin, Dick Wantele did not go
back to the little round table, its fruit and wine. Instead he began
walking up and down the dining-room, his hands clasped behind his back.
The reading of Jane Oglander's letter had brought with it sharp and
instant punishment.
Even to her dearest woman friend Jane had said little of her inmost
feelings, but the man who knew her with a far more intimate knowledge
than any other human being would ever know her, understood. Jane loved
Lingard. Loved him in a way he, Wantele, had not thought her capable of
loving, and the revelation hurt him horribly. Why had he failed where
another had succeeded with such apparent ease?
He felt a sudden hatred of the house he was in and of everything and
everybody in it. Feeling pursued, accompanied by mocking demons, he
hurried out of the dining-room and made his way into the square hall or
atrium, as old Theophilus Joy had called it. Each of the marble figures
there seemed alive to his humiliation and defeat.
Passing into a vestibule which led directly out of doors he put on a
light coat, for he was delicate, Mrs. Maule would have said over-careful
of himself--then he jammed a wide-brimmed soft hat on his head, and
quietly let himself out of the house.
It was a still, warm night, but the moist fragrant air was heavy with
the premonition of coming winter. Wantele walked a certain distance down
the broad carriage way, then he cut sharply to the left, among the
brambles and underwood, under high beech trees. Once there, he began to
walk more slowly, keeping to the narrow path by a kind of instinct.
He welcomed the tangible fact of solitude. Even were he urgently sought
for, it would be a long time before they could find him unless he
himself raised his voice and gave a hulloo. Richard, for once, must
spend his evening solitary.
Could she have seen Wantele's long thin face as it was now, serious with
the seriousness born of distress, Athena Maule would have been satisfied
that the news she had been at the pains to tell in so dramatic a fashion
had struck at the heart of at least one of her hearers.
Dick Wantele belonged to the type of man who achieves what he desires to
achieve because his desire is generally well within the measure of his
powers.
He had been confident that in time he would wear down Jane Oglander's
gentle resistance, and lately--all the very time she had been
corresponding with General Lingard, certainly receiving and perhaps even
writing love-letters--he had believed that she was making up her mind to
reward him for what had become his long fidelity. He had even gone so
far as to think that only Athena Maule's watchful antagonism stood
between Jane Oglander and himself.
To Wantele, the knowledge that he had been a fool stung intolerably. He
had one poor consolation, the consolation of knowing that he had hidden
successfully the various feelings provoked in him by the announcement,
both from the cruel eyes and from the kind eyes which had watched to see
how he took news which meant so much to him. But that, after all, was
but an ignoble consolation in his great bereavement.
Walking there in the darkness, with memory as his only companion, he
realised all too shrewdly what the disappearance of Jane Oglander from
his life would mean. Till to-night, Wantele had been wont to tell
himself bitterly that the existence he was forced to lead was one by no
means to be envied by other men of his age and standing. But he now
looked back to yesterday with longing, for yesterday still held a future
of which the major possibility was the fact that Jane might become his
wife.
He had first met Miss Oglander at a moment when he had just come through
a terrible secret crisis, one which had left him free of all the
familiar moorings of his early life.
He had touched pitch, and to his own conscience and imagination he had
been most vilely defiled. And yet circumstances had made it imperative
that he should not only pretend to be clean, but also that he should
affect complete ignorance of the pitch he had touched. Jane Oglander,
then a young, clear-eyed girl, with a certain tender gaiety, a
straightforward simplicity of nature which had strongly appealed to his
own more complex character, had helped him and indeed made it possible
for him to do this.
Then had come Jack Oglander's mad act and its awful consequences, and
even this had helped Dick Wantele further to obliterate the memory of
his own ignominious secret. He had thrown himself, with his cousin,
Richard Maule's, full assent, into the whole terrible business, and Jane
Oglander had found his dry sense and quiet, efficient help an untold
comfort. No wonder the ties of confidence and friendship between them
had grown ever closer and closer, seeming to justify the young man in
the hope that the time must come when Jane would become his wife.
To-night the news flung at him by Athena Maule wiped out the immediate
peaceful past, and phantoms which he believed himself to have banished
for ever sprang into being--dread reminders that no man can ever hope
to escape wholly from his past.
At last, with a feeling of lassitude and relief he came to a broad low
gate. The gate was locked, but he climbed over it, as he had often done
before. The path went on still under trees and among underwood till it
widened and became merged in a clearing, in the middle of which stood a
long low building still called by its old name of the Small Farm, and
now the home of one to whom Wantele often made his way in moments of
depression and revolt.
When Dick Wantele had first made Mabel Digby's acquaintance, she had
been a plain, observant, self-reliant little girl of nine, whose most
striking features were bright brown eyes set in a fair freckled face,
and masses of light yellow hair worn by her in two long pigtails. The
only child of a certain Colonel Digby, whose death had taken place when
she was sixteen, Mabel Digby had elected to go on living in the place
where her father had brought her motherless, seven years before, and
Dick Wantele had been largely instrumental in her settlement in the old
farmhouse which was on the edge of the Rede Place estate.
At first the governess who had brought her up, and who had educated her
in the old-fashioned, thorough, and perhaps rather limited way more
usual forty years ago than now, had lived with her; but when Mabel was
nineteen this lady had had to go back to her own people, and she had
had no successor.
To the scandal rather than to the surprise of the neighbourhood, Miss
Digby decided that henceforth she would live alone. She was well aware,
though those about her were not, that her father's old soldier servant
and his wife were really more efficient and vigilant chaperons than the
kind, gentle governess had been.
With Wantele the relations of Mabel Digby had always been of a
singularly close and sexless nature. She had naturally begun by looking
at him with her father's, the old Indian Mutiny veteran's eyes; that is,
she had been gently tolerant of his fads, while neither understanding
nor sharing them.
Then, as she grew older, as she read the books that he lent her and
talked over with her, she had moved some way from her father's--the
simple-minded soldier's--position, and she judged Dick Wantele rather
hardly, half despising him for having so contentedly, or so she thought,
sunk into the position of adopted son to his wealthy cousin. When she
had become aware that he desired to marry Jane Oglander, a fact of which
she had possessed herself by asking him the direct question, and
receiving an equally direct answer, she had at once decided that he was
not nearly good enough for the lady on whom he had fixed his affection,
and time had in no sense modified her first view.
Still, without her knowing it, Dick Wantele counted for much in Mabel
Digby's life. She was proud of his friendship and believed herself to be
the recipient of all his secrets. When he was attacked, as he often was
in her presence--for she was on the whole liked, and he was regarded by
the neighbourhood as "superior" and "supercilious"--she always took his
part.
Intimate as they were with one another, and with that comfortable
intimacy which knows nothing of the doubts or recriminations which lead
to what are significantly called "lovers' quarrels," there were subjects
on which neither ever touched to the other. Never since the day on which
Mabel Digby, at the time only fifteen, had asked him the indiscreet
question which she was now ashamed to remember, had either made any
allusion to Wantele's feeling for Jane Oglander. The other subject which
was taboo between them was Mabel Digby's relation to young Kaye.
Wantele was no schemer, but there was something in him which made him
aware of the schemes of others, even against his own will and desire. He
had become aware that Mrs. Kaye regarded Mabel Digby as a suitable
daughter-in-law elect, almost on the day that the thought had first
presented itself to the clergyman's wife and on Mabel's behalf he had at
once said to himself, "Why not?" But during the last year he had been
glad to believe that Mabel had so little suspected or assented to Mrs.
Kaye's wishes as to ignore her one-time playfellow's infatuation for
Athena.
* * * * *
His eyes had become accustomed to the star-lit darkness, and he could
see the straight stone-flagged path which led to the porch of the Small
Farm. As he walked up it a dog rushed out from its kennel and began
barking. "Be quiet," said Wantele harshly. "Be quiet, old dog! Keep that
sort of thing for your enemies and the enemies of your mistress--not for
me."
Then he walked on, the dog at his heels, till he got to the porch. There
he waited for a moment, for it had suddenly occurred to him that Mabel
Digby might not be alone; one of the tiresome people who lived in
Redyford--the village which had now grown into a town--might be spending
the evening with her. Before knocking at her door he must assure himself
that she was alone. Old friends as he and she were, he had never come
there before so late as this.
He walked on past the porch, till he stood opposite the uncurtained
window of the curious hall dining-room of the person he had come to see.
He remembered that Colonel Digby had hated curtains, and that his
daughter shared the prejudice.
Mabel Digby was dressed in the rather old-fashioned looking high white
muslin dress she generally wore in the evening when at home by herself.
Her fair hair was drawn back very plainly from her forehead, and coiled
in innumerable plaits. Colonel Digby had desired his girl to do her hair
in that way when she had first turned it up, and by a queer little bit
of sentiment in a nature which prided itself on its lack of sentiment,
Mabel had always remained faithful to her father's fancy.
Sitting on a low chair between the deep fireplace and the long narrow
oak table which ran down the middle of the room, Mabel Digby was now
engaged in burning packets of letters, and she was going through the
disagreeable task in the rather precise way which made her do well
whatever she took in hand. Her long and not very easy task was nearly at
an end, and Wantele saw clearly the few letters that remained scattered
on the table. He recognised the bold black handwriting, the large square
envelopes, the blue Indian stamps.
"How odd," he told himself, "that the child should have waited till
to-night to burn these old letters of Bayworth Kaye!"
Mabel had never made any secret of her correspondence with the young
soldier. Still, when one came to think of it, it was odd that she had
troubled to keep Bayworth's letters--odder still that now to-night, the
day of Bayworth Kaye's departure, she should be burning them....
After all, why should he go in and see her now? People have to bear
certain troubles alone. Mabel Digby had set him, in this matter, a good
example.
Wantele turned on his heel. He walked on to the grass and plunged into
the herbaceous border which still formed a fragrant autumn hedge to the
little lawn. His object was to get away without being seen or heard, by
the gate which gave on to the country road and which formed the proper,
orthodox entrance to the Small Farm. But as he was making his way to the
gate the front door opened, and Mabel Digby came out into the darkness.
"Aren't you coming in, Dick?" she called out. "I couldn't think what had
happened to you! I saw you at the window, and then you disappeared
suddenly. Why didn't you let yourself in? The door isn't locked, but the
gate is." Mabel Digby had a loud, rather childish voice, but now Wantele
was glad enough to turn and follow her into the low-pitched living room
of the old farmhouse.
As he walked through into the curious and charming room, at once so like
and so unlike the living-rooms of the smaller farms on his cousin's
estate, he saw that Mabel Digby had thrown a large, brightly-coloured
Italian handkerchief over those of the letters which still remained on
the table.
"The women in the cottages do that," she said, following the direction
of his eyes. "When they hear the step of a visitor at the door, they
throw a dishcloth over whatever it is they want to hide, the little drop
of comfort or what not, but it doesn't deceive the visitor--at least it
never deceives me! I always know what there is under the dishcloth. And
you know--I mean you saw, Dick, what there is under my dishcloth."
She spoke quickly, a little defiantly. Her cheeks were burning, her
brown eyes very bright. She also felt unhappy, moved out of her usual
self to-night.
Wantele walked over to the fireplace. He sat down in the ingle nook and
held out his hands. He was a chilly creature, and though he had been
walking fast he felt curiously cold.
Poor little Mabel! This was interesting and--and rather sad. He wondered
uncomfortably how much she had seen, guessed, of Bayworth's infatuation
for Athena Maule. She must have seen something....
"Yes," he said at last. "It's never much use trying to prevent one's
neighbours knowing what one's got under one's dishcloth. But there have
never been any letters under mine. As a matter of principle I always
burn any letters I receive, however temporarily precious they may be."
"There's a great deal to be said for your plan," she said. Then she
began tearing up each of the few letters which remained on the long oak
table, and threw the pieces, one by one, into the heart of the fire.
He watched her in uncomfortable silence. At last she came and sat down
opposite Wantele.
"I suppose you have heard the great news," he said abruptly. "I mean,
the piece of good fortune which has befallen the Paches?"
The girl looked up. Wantele was still staring into the fire, but his
expression told her nothing.
"No," she said indifferently, "what is it?"
"They've got General Lingard staying with them, and they're bringing him
over to dinner on Tuesday. Athena is going to ask you to meet him."
"Lingard?" cried the girl. "Not Lingard of the Amadawa Expedition! D'you
really mean that I'm going to meet him?"
A ring of genuine pleasure had come into the young voice which a few
moments before had only too plainly told a tale of dejection and
bitterness.
Wantele turned and looked at her. For the first time that evening he
smiled broadly, and there came into his eyes the humorous light which
generally dwelt there.
"I suppose you know all about him," he said dryly. "I suppose you
followed every step of the Expedition?"
"Of course I did!" she exclaimed. "How father would have loved to meet
General Lingard"--there came a touch of keen regret into her voice.
"I expect you'll meet your hero very often before you've done with him,
Mabel"--as he said the words he struck a match and lit a cigarette--"for
he and Jane Oglander are going to be married."
"General Lingard and Jane Oglander?" Mabel could not keep a measure of
extreme surprise and excitement out of her voice, but she was, what her
dead father's old soldier servant always described her as being, "a
thorough little lady," and after hearing Wantele's quiet word of assent
to her involuntary question, she refrained, without any seeming effort,
from pursuing the subject.
At last Wantele got up. "Well," he said. "Well, Mabel? This is a queer,
'unked' kind of world, isn't it?"
She nodded her head, and without offering him her hand she unlatched the
door.
When she knew him to be well away, she came back and, laying her head on
the table, burst into tears. She loved Jane Oglander--she rejoiced in
Jane's good fortune--but the contrast was too great between Jane's fate
and hers.
But for Athena Maule, but for the spell Athena had cast over Bayworth
Kaye, she, Mabel, would probably by now have been Bayworth's wife, on
the way to India--India the land of her childish, of her girlish
dreams.