"Who ever rigged fair ships to lie in harbours?"
Dick Wantele was driving back to Rede Place from Selford Junction. He
had been away for four days, and now he was very glad to be home again.
He very seldom left Rede Place unless Jane Oglander was there,--in fact,
this was the first time he had gone away leaving Richard Maule and
Athena alone together since they had returned, eight years before, from
what had proved so disastrous a winter in Italy.
Wantele had grown accustomed to his servitude, but there came moments
when the strain of the life he was leading became intolerable, and then,
suddenly, he would go away for a few days, sometimes to an old friend,
sometimes alone.
This time both Richard and Athena had pressed him to keep an engagement
he had made some weeks before. He had known Richard's motive--Jane was
to arrive during his absence, and Richard had wished him to be spared
certain difficult moments--those of bidding Jane welcome, of wishing
Jane joy.
As to Athena's motive in wishing him away, he had been less clear. None
the less had he been sure that she had a motive.
And so he had gone, this time to an old college friend, and he had
enjoyed the desultory talking, the indifferent shooting, and the lazy
reading, he had managed to cram into his short holiday. He had now come
back, as he always did, after a thorough change of scene and of
atmosphere, feeling, if not a new man, then patched in places, and once
more facing life in his usual philosophical, slightly satirical, spirit.
Now their old coachman was telling him all sorts of bits of news that
amused him; for a great deal can happen, in fact a great deal always
does happen, during four days, in a country neighbourhood.
The most exciting bit of news was that of an accident to the Paches' new
motor. The coachman told the tale with natural relish.
"The hind wheel just sank down in that deep rut by that there Windy
Common corner--you know, sir. The machine went over as gentle as a
babby! But they had a rare job getting the queer thing righted again, so
I'm told, sir."
"I hope no one was hurt, Jupp?"
"Miss Patty--she as caused all the mischief--escaped scot free. But
Squire Pache, so they say, was shook something dreadful! And as for Mrs.
Pache, why, her arm was quite twisted. There's some people as says
she'll never get it right again."
"Oh, but that's a dreadful thing!" exclaimed Wantele, rousing himself.
He felt suddenly ashamed of his long and deep-seated dislike of Mrs.
Pache and of poor Patty. He and Jane Oglander might drive over there
this afternoon to enquire how they all were.
Then the young man's fair, lined face became overcast. He reminded
himself bitterly that Jane's time and thoughts now belonged to someone
else. Lingard would naturally spend every moment he could escape from
the afflicted Paches at Rede Place; and when he, her lover, was not
there, Jane would be closeted with Athena, or occupied in amusing
Richard.
"They do say, sir, that Mrs. Pache is so bad that she says she'll never
ride in that dratted motor-car again."
"That's bad, Jupp, very bad! I'll go over and enquire to-morrow
morning----By the way, when did the accident happen?"
"The very day after you left, sir."
They were now within the boundaries of Rede Place. The rather fantastic
foreign-looking house lay before them, its whiteness softened by the
ruddy autumn tints of the trees.
Wantele, for the first time in his life, felt a sudden dislike of the
place and of its artificial beauty sweep over him. His existence there
had only been rendered tolerable, kept warmly human, by the coming and
going of Jane Oglander.
No doubt she would now be in the hall, waiting for him alone--she always
did instinctively the kind, the tactful thing. But for the moment he had
no wish to see her. There ran a tremor through him, and the young horse
he was driving swerved violently. He flicked the horse sharply on the
under side. How--how stupid, how absurd of him to feel like this!
While he had been away he had tried to forget Jane, but whenever he was
alone, and during the long wakeful hours of each night, his thoughts had
enwrapped her more closely than ever. It seemed so strange that she
would no longer be free to console him, to chide him, to laugh at and
with him.
From to-day everything in their relationship would be changed. Even now,
Jane was probably with her lover. Wantele averted his thoughts quickly
from the vision his morbid imagination forced upon him. Lingard looked
the man to be a masterful, a happy wooer.
In two or three days the famous soldier would be an inmate of Rede
Place--his visit had been arranged just before Wantele had gone away.
Richard Maule had himself suggested it. In fact, as Athena had observed
on the day following their first acquaintance with Lingard, it seemed
absurd that such a man should be staying with the Paches....
They were now close to the house, and the thought of an immediate
meeting with Jane became suddenly intolerable to Wantele.
"I'll get out here," he said hurriedly, throwing the reins to Jupp. "You
can take my bag round while I walk up through the arboretum and let
myself in by the Garden Room."
In '51, when crystal houses, as they were called for a brief span,
became a fashion, Theophilus Joy had built a large conservatory on to
one end of his country house. Ugly though it was, the Garden Room, as it
soon became called, had greatly added to the amenities of Rede Place.
Fragrant and cool in summer, warm and scented in winter, it was
considered a delightful novelty by the old banker's guests.
Those had been the days when the boy Richard, moving among the amusing
and amused worldlings who formed his grandfather's large circle of
acquaintances, had not known that there were such things as disease,
tragedy, and passion in the world. Let us eat and be merry--so much of
his grandfather's philosophy young Richard had imbibed, and no more.
The Garden Room was still a delightful place, with its marble fountain
brought forty years before from Naples, its flowering creepers, and the
rare plants which still made it the pride of the head-gardener of Rede
Place.
Yet it was but little used. Now and again on a rainy day Richard Maule
would drag his feeble limbs along the warm moist stone pavement for the
little gentle exercise recommended by his old friend and neighbour, Dr.
Mannet. But he never did this when his wife was at Rede Place, for
Athena's boudoir, the sitting-room which she had herself chosen and
arranged to her fancy soon after her first coming to England, was the
end room on the ground floor of the house, and so next to the Garden
Room.
Some years before, when a neighbouring country house had been burgled,
new locks had been fitted to the various doors giving access to the
gardens and the park, and now the door of the Garden Room was always
kept locked. There were three keys--Wantele and Athena each had one, and
the head-gardener kept the third.
As Wantele passed through into the house, he heard the murmur of voices
in the boudoir; Athena's clear voice dominated by a man's deep,
vibrating tones.
Yes, instinct born of jealous pain had served him truly--Lingard was now
at Rede Place. They were there--Jane and Lingard--behind that door....
He hurried the quicker to escape from the sound of voices. The broad
corridor which had been a concession to English taste was very airless,
for in deference to Richard Maule's state of health the house was always
over-heated. Athena, too, had a dread, a hatred of cold; in all
essentials she was a southerner.
Dick Wantele loved wild weather and chill winter. He hated the languor
and heat in which he was condemned to spend so much of each day.
At last, when in the hall, Wantele stayed his steps.
During his brief absences from home letters were not sent on to him, for
he was always glad to escape for a few days from his usual
correspondence, letters connected with his cousin's affairs and with the
estate, important to the senders if not to the recipient. But there was
always a moment of reckoning when he came back, and now he knew that
there must be many little matters waiting to be dealt with. He might as
well find out what there was before going on to see Richard in the Greek
Room.
Then, while walking across to the marble table where his letters were
always placed, the young man was astonished to see on the floor a large
half-filled postman's sack. The label on it bore General Lingard's name;
the Paches' address had been crossed out, and that of Rede Place
substituted.
Really, it was rather cool of Lingard to have his correspondence sent on
in this fashion! It was also a proof that he must be spending the major
part of each day at Rede Place. Heavens! what a correspondence the man
must have. That was a privilege of fame he could well spare his
successful rival.
He turned to his own letters. There were many more than usual. And
then, as he tore the envelopes rapidly open, it seemed to him that most
of his acquaintances within a certain radius had written to him during
the four days he had been away!
Each letter he opened--and this both diverted and angered Wantele--ran
on the same theme and contained the same request.
"Dear Mr. Wantele--I am writing to you because Mrs. Maule may be away.
We hear that General Lingard is staying with you for a few days. It
would give us such pleasure if you would bring him over, either to lunch
or dinner, whichever suits you best. It will be an honour as well as a
pleasure to make General Lingard's acquaintance. If you will send me a
line by return, we could manage to make any day convenient that would
suit you and General Lingard."
Old friends, new friends, people whom he had never met and whom he had
no intention of meeting--were each and all in full cry.
The last letter he opened was in Tom Pache's handwriting. The young man
had written at his mother's dictation, and the note contained a long
list of the people whom she had promised to invite, or had actually
invited, to meet her famous relative.
There was a postscript from Tom himself.
"It is most awfully good of Mr. and Mrs. Maule to have asked Hew Lingard
over a few days before they expected him. As you see, mother's plans
are all upset, and she is dreadfully worried about it all."
Then Lingard was already here? Wantele wondered how he was to answer
those absurd letters--how to put off these people. He made a point of
being on good, if not on very cordial, terms with his neighbours. He and
Richard both acknowledged a certain duty to the neighbourhood. In spite
of Mr. Maule's physical condition, Rede Place did its fair share of
quiet, very quiet, entertaining, generally when Mrs. Maule happened to
be away and when Jane Oglander happened to be there.
Athena had long ago decided that her neighbours were the dullest set of
people to be found in an English countryside, and that the receiving of
them at lunch or dinner bored her to tears.
Well! There was nothing for it now but to go and consult Athena as to
what should be done. After all, she was the mistress of Rede Place, and
Richard was in no state to be asked tiresome questions or required to
make tiresome decisions.
Holding the letters which had so perturbed him in his hand, Wantele
slowly retraced his steps. He might as well meet Jane now as at any
other time or in any other way.
Wantele knocked at the door of the boudoir. Since her arrival at Rede
Place, eight years ago, he had remained on very formal terms with his
cousin's wife.
There fell a sudden silence on the occupants of the room, and then,
after a perceptible pause, Athena called out in her clear, exquisitely
modulated voice, "Come in. Who is it?"
Dick Wantele slowly turned the handle of the door, and in a flash he saw
that Jane Oglander was not there.
There were but two people in the room. One was Mrs. Maule; she was
sitting on a low seat close to the fire, her lovely head bent over an
embroidery frame; the other, General Lingard, was standing, looking down
at her with an eager, absorbed expression on his face.
Athena was wearing a white gown, fashioned rather like a monk's habit.
It left the slender, rounded column of her neck bare.
The intruder, feeling at once relieved and disappointed, stared
doubtfully at the famous soldier. General Lingard looked a younger man
than he had done the other night--younger and somehow different, far,
far more vividly alive. Perhaps it was his clothes; rough morning
clothes are more becoming to the type of man Wantele now took Lingard to
be than is evening dress. Both he and Mrs. Maule looked most happily and
intimately at ease.
Wantele felt a pang of angry irritation. How like Athena to take General
Lingard away from Jane! And to keep him with her while her friend was
doubtless engaged in doing what should have been her own job--that is,
in looking after Richard.
But many years had gone by since Athena had even made a pretence of
looking after Richard. Had Wantele been just, which he was at this
moment incapable of being, he would have admitted to himself that
Richard would have given Athena small thanks for her company.
"Dick! Is that you? Why, I thought you weren't coming back till the
afternoon! Have you seen Richard?"
Athena had a subtle way with her of making a man feel an intruder.
But Wantele held his ground.
"I always meant to come back in the morning," he said shortly. "No, I
haven't seen Richard."
"I'm glad you've come, for Richard's worried about some tiresome letters
he's had this morning."
"Is Jane with Richard?" he asked abruptly.
It was odd of General Lingard not to have come forward and shaken hands.
The soldier had just nodded--that was all. He also seemed to feel the
young man's presence an intrusion.
"Jane hasn't come. Didn't you know? I thought she would have written to
you. She is staying a week longer with that tiresome friend of hers.
There's to be an operation now, it seems, and the woman's implored Jane
to stay with her till it's over. Oh, but ever so many things have
happened----"
Athena put aside her work and got up. "The poor Paches have had a motor
accident, and so we--I mean Richard and I--asked General Lingard to
come here at once instead of waiting till the end of the week. I'm
afraid he's had rather a dull time, though the Paches have very kindly
allowed us to use their motor car--the car wasn't hurt in any way--" she
turned to her guest and smiled. "But now that you're back, Dick, it will
be all right."
She sat down again, and again bent over the embroidery frame. Each of
the men looking down at her felt himself dismissed.
Together they left the room, and Dick Wantele could have laughed aloud
to see General Lingard's air of discomfiture.
He thought he could reconstitute the events of the last three days. No
doubt Richard had insisted on Jane's lover being asked over to stay, and
Athena, as was her way, had resented the trouble of entertaining
Richard's guest.
Mrs. Maule had no liking for a man on half terms. With her it must be
all or nothing--too often it was all that she received; seldom, as in
this case--nothing. Wantele felt a malicious pleasure in the knowledge
that for once Athena's spells would be powerless, that in this unique
instance there was stretched before her a gateless barrier. Hew Lingard
was the lover of her friend, and Athena, so Wantele acknowledged, loved
Jane Oglander with whatever truth was in her.
Such were his disconnected thoughts as he walked silently by the other's
side. Yes, Lingard seemed strangely unlike the man who had dined there a
week ago. Dick Wantele possessed an almost feminine power of
observation, of intuition. He would have been a happier man had he
lacked it.
"I must go and find my cousin," he said at last. "I haven't seen him
yet. But he won't keep me long."
"Please don't trouble about me. I've a lot of letters to write. Mrs.
Maule has been good enough to give me a sitting-room."
Lingard spoke with a touch of rather curt impatience. He had no wish to
be entertained by this odd, idle young man. Mr. Maule's heir did not
attract him; Dick Wantele took too much upon himself.
Lingard was already on excellent terms with his host--his poor, feeble,
afflicted host. As for Mrs. Maule--he thought of her as Athena, had she
not already asked him to call her Athena?--she was, if only as Jane
Oglander's intimate friend, already set apart on a pedestal. And then
Athena had said a word--only a word--of the painful position she
occupied in her husband's house, that of an occasional and not very
welcome guest. It had made Lingard seethe with unspoken, but the more
deeply felt, indignation.
There is something moving, to a generous masculine mind something very
pathetic, in the sight of a beautiful woman hardly used by fate. Lingard
already suspected that in this case Dick Wantele played the ugly part of
fate. True, Jane seemed very fond of the young man, and he had been
good to her in the terrible affair of her brother; but the taste of
women in the matter of men is not always to be trusted.
General Lingard, in spite of the qualities which made him a successful
leader of fighting men, had not troubled himself, indeed he had not had
the time, to probe or question certain accepted axioms.
As the two came into the hall, Lingard stepped aside and took up the
heavy mail bag.
"Please don't do that! It must be awfully heavy!" The host in Dick
Wantele was roused. "It ought to have been put in your sitting-room long
ago."
Lingard gave a short, not very pleasant, laugh. He was very strong and
Wantele looked delicate, languid--not the sort of man Lingard liked or
was accustomed to meet. It was a pity Wantele had come back so soon. The
three days alone with Richard Maule--and with Athena--had been very
pleasant....
Dick went on, with his quick, light steps, into the Greek Room. He had
again shouldered his burden, and it was pressing on him even more hardly
than usual. If only Jane had been there! He now longed for her presence
as a man longs for a lamp in dark subterranean places from which he
knows no issue.
With a shock of surprise he realised that the letters he had meant to
show Athena were still in his hand, and that he had said nothing to her
of their contents.
He found Richard Maule sitting, as he always did sit in any but the
hottest summer weather, crouched up in front of the fire; but when Dick
came in Mr. Maule smiled as a man smiles at his own son, and the other
saw that his cousin looked more vigorous, more alive, than usual. There
was even a little colour in his white drawn cheeks.
It was a long time since they had had any visitor, any man that is,
staying at Rede Place; and Wantele now asked himself whether they were
wise in leading so quiet a life. Richard was evidently enjoying General
Lingard's visit.
"He's a good fellow, Dick. He grows on one with acquaintance. I don't
know but that Jane----" He stopped abruptly. The thought in his mind to
which he had all but given utterance was that Jane Oglander, after all,
had done well for herself. "He's not a bit spoilt. And yet there must be
a lot of people running after him! Just look at these letters! We shall
have to do something about them. Eh? Some of these people will have to
be asked here to meet him, I suppose?"
And Wantele, again with mingled annoyance and amusement, saw another
pile of notes--far smaller, it was true, than his own--lying on the
reading-desk which was always close to his cousin's hand.
"The duke has written to me. They want to have him over there for a
couple of nights--if we can spare him."
Mr. Maule smiled, not unkindly.
"It's evident we can't hope to keep the hero all to ourselves. It's
lucky Jane Oglander isn't here! I thought it such a pity yesterday, but
now I'm glad. We may be able to ask a few people over before she
arrives--when she's here, Lingard won't want a crowd about. We might
begin with the Sumners--you see they ask themselves, it's very good of
them, for to-morrow!" he laughed outright, a thin, satirical and yet
again not an unkindly laugh.
Dick had never seen his cousin so animated, so interested, in a word, so
amused, for years. He was rather surprised.
"It'll be an awful bore," he said slowly, "and Richard--are you sure
that you wish it? I think I could manage to put off most of these
people--I mean without giving offence."
"No, no, Dick! I know it'll give you a certain amount of trouble"--the
older man looked attentively at the younger--"but I've felt lately that
we didn't see enough people. I don't see why my state and Athena's
selfishness"--he uttered the word very deliberately--"should force you
to live such an unnatural life as you've now been leading for so
long----" He waited a moment and then said, more lightly, "I'm afraid
that we both, you and I, have grown to believe that Jane Oglander's the
only young woman in the world."
Wantele gave him a swift look.
"She's the only woman in the world for me," he muttered. "Lingard may be
a good fellow, Richard, but I wish--I would give a good deal to know
what Jane sees in him." He also was trying to speak lightly.
"Ah, one always feels that!" Richard Maule lay back in his chair. The
short discussion had tired him. "Then will you see about it all, Dick?"
"Yes," cried Wantele hastily, "of course I will! I agree that we've been
too much shut up."
He went back to Athena, and this time she welcomed him graciously. She
also had received letters asking for a peep of their hero.
Wantele looked at his cousin's wife with reluctant admiration. He had
not seen her looking as animated, as radiant as--as seductive as she
looked now for a very long time.
"Don't you see the change in Richard?" she asked eagerly. "He's become
quite another creature since General Lingard came here. I've always
thought you kept Richard far too much shut up, Dick----"
"You never said so before," he said sharply.
She shrugged her shoulders. "It was none of my business."
Her face clouded, and with hasty accord they changed the subject, and
with exactly the same words: "Who had we better ask first?" And then
they stopped, and laughed. For the moment these two, Richard Maule's
heir and Richard Maule's wife, were on more cordial terms than they had
been for years.
"You have now got all the letters," she cried gaily--"Richard's, mine,
and yours! Look them over, and make out a list--I'm sure you're much
better at that sort of thing than I am!"
He left her to carry out her behest.
If there was anything like real entertaining to be done at Rede Place,
all kinds of arrangements would have to be made, and the making of them
must fall on Dick Wantele. Athena had told the truth when she had
described herself to General Lingard as only a guest in her husband's
house. But she had omitted to add that it was an arrangement which had
hitherto suited her perfectly, and the only one she would have
tolerated.