"L'amour et la douleur sont parallels
Ces deux lignes-là vont à jamais ensemble."
Owing to the peculiar conditions of his life, a life led almost entirely
apart from the rest of his household, Richard Maule seldom had occasion
to see Hew Lingard and Athena together. But the owner of Rede Place
always realised a great deal more of what was going on than those about
him credited him with doing, and on his wife he kept a constant, secret
watch of which she alone became sometimes uncomfortably aware.
As the fine autumn days--to the stricken man the pleasantest time of the
year--wore themselves away, Richard Maule grew particularly kind and
considerate to Jane Oglander.
He was very susceptible to the physical condition of those about him,
and he noticed that she had altered strangely during the short time she
had been at Rede Place. She was pale and listless; and often when with
him she sat doing nothing, saying nothing.
Every time they were alone together--and that now was very often--the
past came back to Richard Maule, especially that time of his life when
he lay ill to death eight years ago in Italy.
Looking furtively at her strained, unhappy face, he would recall the
agony of rage and despair in which he had lain at a time when he had
been supposed by those about him to be absorbed in his physical
condition--if indeed conscious of anything at all.
In those days Athena had still preserved a simulacrum of regard, of
affection for her husband, and when she came into his room, when she
stood at the bottom of his bed looking with mingled repugnance and pity
at his distorted face, he longed to rise and destroy the wanton who had
been so adoringly loved and so wholly trusted.
* * * * *
They were sitting together now, Jane Oglander and Richard Maule, on the
afternoon of the day which had opened with the news of Bayworth Kaye's
death. It was warm and sunny, and the three others had gone out of doors
after luncheon--for Dick Wantele, Athena was well aware of it, had
fallen into the way of never leaving the other two alone together if he
could possibly prevent it.
Wantele could not understand Jane's attitude. Did she suspect her
friend's treachery? He found it impossible to make up his mind one way
or the other. In any case Jane and Lingard were not like normal
lovers--but Wantele had lived long enough in the world to know that
there is every variety of lover. Sometimes he thought Jane trusted
Lingard so implicitly as to be still blind.
A letter addressed to Miss Oglander was brought in to her.
"It's from Mrs. Kaye," she said quickly. "May I open it, Richard?"
She glanced through it:--
"Dear Miss Oglander" (it ran), "My husband and myself thank you
sincerely for your kind words of sympathy. Had I known you were the
bearer of your letter I would have seen you. I am writing to ask if you
will do me a kindness. I know that General Lingard is staying at Rede
Place, and I write to ask if it would be possible for me to see him on a
matter of business connected with my son. I venture to ask if he will
kindly come at eleven o'clock on Thursday. I cannot fix any time before
that day. I should have written to Mr. Wantele, but as I had to answer
your note, I thought I would ask you to arrange this for me."
She told herself with quivering lip that of course Hew should go and see
poor Mrs. Kaye. Hew was always kind. He would be patient and
understanding with the unhappy woman.
Jane got up. Perhaps she could go and settle the matter at once. She
looked at Richard Maule. He was turning over the leaves of a book.
Richard would not miss her. There came over her a despairing feeling
that no one now needed her, in any dear and intimate sense....
Once she had asked her small vicarious favour of Hew, she could write to
Mrs. Kaye, and take the note to the rectory herself. It would give her
something to do, and just now Jane Oglander was in desperate need of
things to do.
Athena had said something of showing General Lingard the walled gardens
which were all that remained of the old Tudor manor house from which
Rede Place took its name, and which had been left by Theophilus Joy as a
concession to English taste.
It was there, some way from the house, that Jane made her way, and there
that she at last found those she sought.
Mrs. Maule had suddenly become alive to the many and varied outdoor
beauties of her country home. All the nice women she knew were fond of
gardening. It was the feminine fad of the moment, and one with which she
had hitherto had very little sympathy.
Athena sincerely believed herself to be devoted to flowers, but she
preferred those varieties that look best cut and in water. Still, to be
interested in her garden, and in what grew there, belonged to the part
which was, for the moment, so much herself that she was scarcely
conscious of playing it.
Perhaps one reason why Mrs. Maule had never cared for gardening was
because her husband's cousin was so exceedingly fond of it. The old
gardens of Rede Place were to Wantele an ever-recurring pleasure, and,
what counted far more in the life he had to lead, an infinitely various,
as well as a congenial occupation.
As Jane walked through an arch leading to the pear orchard, she saw that
Dick was giving instructions to one of the gardeners; a small sack of
bulbs lay at their feet.
Hew Lingard and Athena Maule stood a little back, and as Jane came down
the path, Mrs. Maule, instead of coming forward, moved further away.
Instinct told her that Jane was seeking Hew Lingard with some definite
purpose in her mind--and she determined to thwart the other woman. To
allow Hew Lingard to continue his anxious deference to Jane were but
cruel kindness to them both.
She put out her gloveless hand and laid a finger on Lingard's arm--it
was the merest touch, but it produced an instant, a magical effect. He
turned, and in a moment gave her his entire, his ardently entire,
attention.
Wantele welcomed Jane with an eager, "What would you think, Jane, of
putting a mass of starch hyacinths over in that corner?"
She tried obediently to give her mind to the question, but it was of no
use, and she shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I--I can't
remember what was there before----"
And then she called out, "Hew!"
But Lingard did not hear the call.
She moved a little nearer to where he and Athena were standing. Again
she said her lover's name; but this time she uttered it in so low, so
faltering a tone that Lingard might indeed have been excused for not
hearing it.
She waited a moment for the answer that did not come, and then she
turned and walked slowly away, down to and through the arch in the wall.
To Wantele, witness of the little scene, what had just happened seemed
full of a profound and sinister significance.
As he had heard Jane Oglander utter Lingard's name, he had told himself
that he would have heard her voice--had it been calling "Dick"--across
the world. But Lingard was deaf to everything, to everybody, but Athena.
He had become her thrall.
With a last muttered word of instruction to the gardener, Wantele turned
and hurried out of the orchard. He glanced anxiously down each of the
straight walks, and peered through the leafless fruit-trees. It was
clear that Jane had already passed out of the walled gardens, and that
she had taken the shortest way of escape.
He started in pursuit, his one desire being--in some ways Wantele was
very like a woman in his dealings with his beloved--to assuage her pain,
to lighten her humiliation....
Suddenly he saw her. She was standing on a little pier which jutted
rather far out into the lake. Her slight figure was reflected into the
water, now dotted with yellow leaves, and she was staring down into the
blue, golden-flecked depths. Wantele felt afraid to call out, so
perilously near was she to the unguarded edge.
He began walking quickly along the path which, circling round the oval
piece of water, led to the pier, and Jane, looking up, became aware that
he was there.
Without speaking, she turned and made her way along the rough boards.
Nothing was changed since yesterday, since this morning, and yet in a
sense Wantele felt that everything was changed. Till now he had been
doubtful as to what she knew--almost of what there was to know. He
distrusted, with reason, his sharp, intolerable jealousy of Lingard.
He had spent a miserable hour after he had himself speeded the two to
the Oakhanger. There are no relations so difficult to probe as the
relations of lovers--even of those who have been and are no longer
lovers.
Jane put out her hand as if they had not met before that day, and Dick
took the poor cold hand in his and held it tightly for a moment before
he dropped it.
"D'you know what to-day is?" she asked abruptly. "I hadn't meant to
remind you of it, Dick--dear, kind Dick. To-day is the twenty-fifth of
October, the day my brother died."
He uttered an exclamation of dismay, self-rebuke. How could he have
forgotten? So well had he remembered the date last year that he had
written and urged Jane to come to Rede Place, and on her refusal to do
so he had gone up to London for two or three days; together they had
made the long, the interminable, journey to the suburban churchyard
where Jack Oglander had been buried.
Wantele's mind went back six years to that melancholy, that sordid,
scene in the prison infirmary. They had sent the sister away, reassured
her, told her there was a change for the better. And then suddenly young
Oglander had sunk--but he, Wantele, had been there, with him....
She was speaking again, in a low musing tone:--
"It's so strange----" she said, and then amended her words--"Isn't it
strange that death is so material, so horribly real a thing? It seems so
hard that there has to be so much fuss. If only one could slip away into
nothingness how much better it would be, Dick--wouldn't it?"
Her mind swung back to her brother. There came a gentler, a softer tone
in her sad voice.
"I wonder if you remember that you were the only one who did not bid me
rejoice that Jack was dead. I have never forgotten that. And you were
right, Dick. It was a great misfortune for me that he died. He would
have been out of prison by now--and we should have been together,
abroad----He was so clever, I think we should have been able to make
some kind of life--and you would have come and stayed with us
sometimes----But it's no use talking like that, is it? I know I'm
foolish, unreasonable, to-day, and you are the only person to whom I
ever talk of Jack."
She was putting up her dead brother as a shield between herself and her
distress, and Wantele respected the poor subterfuge.
"I know, I know," he said feelingly.
They walked on in silence for a while, then. "I think, Dick, that I had
better go away."
"No, no!" he cried. "Don't do that, Jane! Believe me, that would be a
very unwise thing to do. I take it that you and General Lingard"--he
brought out the name of her betrothed with an effort--"have other joint
visits to pay?"
She shook her head. "I haven't told anybody. Only the Paches know. He
thought he ought to tell them."
"If you go away, Jane, he will almost certainly stay on here. It would
be a pity for him to do that," Wantele spoke with studied calmness.
"Yes, I suppose it would," the colour rushed into her face. "I want to
tell you something, Dick. Hew was very noble about my brother. I told
him about it very soon after we first met one another. You see we became
friends so soon----" She sighed. "Just friends, you know."
Wantele turned and looked into her face with an indefinable expression
of shamed curiosity--an expression that seemed to ask a thousand
questions he had no right to ask.
"And then he began to write to me," she went on rather breathlessly, as
if answering some inward questioning of her own rather than of his. "I
was amazed when I received his first letter--it seemed such a strange
thing for him to write to me, and then he asked if he might come and see
me before he went away."
She waited a moment, and went on, "I was the only person to whom he
wrote while he was away. He's had a very lonely life, Dick,--no
brothers, no sisters, and his mother died when he was a little child."
There was a world of anxious apology, of excuse, underlying her
confidences.
When, at last, they went back into the house, they found General Lingard
sitting with his host, and it was in Richard Maule's presence that Jane
made her request--a request to which Lingard gave eager assent.
Of course he would go and see Mrs. Kaye, and bestir himself concerning
her son's affairs! He had been very much struck by Mrs. Maule's account
of Bayworth Kaye that morning. She had said other things of him to
Lingard, but he naturally made no allusion to these when discussing his
coming interview with Mrs. Kaye.
Athena had told Lingard, with angry scorn, of the way certain people in
the neighbourhood had talked of her friendship with the young soldier,
and he had felt that inarticulate rage and disgust which any decent man
would have felt on receiving Athena's confidences. Lingard's opinion of
the world had altered, and greatly for the worse, since he had made Mrs.
Maule's acquaintance.