HAROLD FRANCE
I
THE wedding took place early in September. Immediately after the
announcement of the duke’s intentions, France had rushed upstairs to
Julia and indulged in such an outburst of rage that she fled to another
part of the castle, and left him to wreak his vengeance on the
furniture. Having relieved himself, he was able to meet the relative,
for whom his lukewarm affection had turned to hatred, with his usual
glassy surface, and, silent at all times, save when delivering himself
of anecdotes, he was not in danger of betraying himself in the unguarded
word. He held out until a week before the wedding, and then had a heart
attack and parted from his sympathetic cousin for his semi-annual
pilgrimage to Paris.
“Of course we’ll have to get out of this,” he said to Julia as he was
leaving. “He wants us to stay, but you know what that means. Our day is
over, curse him. Nothin’ for us but White Lodge. Lucky I couldn’t rent
it again. _Luck!_ Mine’s gone. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Am really
goin’ to Paris this time. You go to Hertfordshire and settle yourself.
Make it comfortable, but no extravagance.”
“Couldn’t we take a flat in town?” asked Julia.
“Town? Not I. There’s good shootin’ and huntin’ in Hertfordshire, and
that’s all I’ve got left. Hate town. Thank heaven, I can chuck politics.
That’s my only comfort.”
“But you love society; at least, your position in it.”
“What’s the good without a fortune? Besides, we’re not an hour from town
at White Lodge, and there’s good enough society in the county. Mind you
return every call.”
Then, much to Julia’s delight, he took himself off.
The duke and his new duchess, a youngish aunt of Bridgit Herbert’s, who
had angled quietly for him ever since he had emerged from his seclusion
and entertained his neighbors, cordially invited Julia to remain at
Bosquith for the rest of the season, but she was anxious to get away and
readjust herself in solitude. Besides, her presence was necessary at
White Lodge; and it is hardly necessary to state that she won the duke’s
approval by doing the obvious thing.
In truth she was somewhat dazed, in no state for a display of
originality. The unexpected trick of fate had disconcerted her hardly
less than her husband, for not only had she grown into her position as
the future duchess of Kingsborough during the past five years, but she
was profoundly shocked to find that her mother’s planets had made a
mistake.
Nothing had occurred to disturb her belief in the ancient and romantic
science of astrology since her arrival in England. On the contrary, some
of the cleverest and most eminent men she had met professed tolerance of
it, and, she suspected, felt something more. On the other hand, she had
found England so full of other fads, with no possible scientific basis,
that her respect for astrology had grown rather than diminished. But she
could only conclude that the whole thing was a monstrous delusion. Like
many religions it filled a want, and its picturesque qualities had
captured men’s imaginations and enabled it to survive. She received
several incredulous letters from her mother on the subject of the duke’s
marriage, finally one filled with concentrated astonishment, fury, and
despair. This was some time later, when Julia had written that she must
cease to hope, as there was no doubt the new duchess would have a
family. Mrs. Edis ended her letter characteristically:—
“I have lived in a fool’s paradise for years. Now I simply exist until
my time comes to die. I might have endured this annihilation of my only
religion, but not of the crowning ambition of my life. In this matter I
feel that you are to blame. You should have had children. You should
have managed the duke so that he would never have thought of marriage,
instead of becoming a woman of an entirely different and alien
generation, as I find you in your letters. I should prefer that you do
not write to me until I write again. Of course I do not forget that you
are my child and the only one I have left, now that your wretched
brother and his wife are dead—for I do not count this fidgeting
grandchild I have on my hands—but so great is my disappointment in you
that I cannot face the prospect of your letters at present—filled as I
know they will be with that silly shallow modern philosophy which makes
the best of things in the shortest possible time.”
Julia felt sorry for her mother long before she received this letter,
but she soon discovered that this was her only regret, barring the fact
that she must see more of her husband. For a fortnight she was quite
alone at White Lodge, a charmingly situated property not far from the
village of Stanmore and facing a wild expanse of heath. The housekeeper
engaged the servants, leaving her young mistress to a complete liberty
and solitude for the first time in her life. As Julia wandered through
the thick woods of the little park between the garden and the heath, or
rode alone in the dawn, or explored the historic villages and romantic
lanes and properties of Hertfordshire, she realized how weary she was of
the pleasant uniformity of London society, of entertaining in the
country for sportsmen and statesmen; admitted once for all that to be a
great peeress of Britain would bore her to death. Whatever ambitions she
might develop, now that she was free to be an individual ignored by the
planets, to be a great lady was not of them, and during these delightful
weeks she dreamed of discovering some overlaid talent with which she
should achieve a real place in life.
It did not occur to her to leave her husband. Noblesse oblige would have
kept her at his side in his fallen fortunes, even had she not felt an
even keener sympathy for him than when he had struggled for life during
the early months of their marriage. She had ceased to fear him,
forgotten her prophetic moments, so secure did she feel in her power to
manage him, and so little, for the past year at least, had she seen of
him. She would console him to the best of her ability for the bitterest
disappointment such a man could feel, make White Lodge as brilliant as
possible, dress on fifty pounds a year, and ask nothing in return but
the liberty to study, and develop the talents she was sure she
possessed, deeply buried as they might be. Before a week had passed, she
had completely readjusted herself, and looked forward eagerly to several
years of comparative quiet during which her mind should mature and make
ready for the great discovery.
But a quiet life was not for Julia, then or ever.
II
JULIA, after the light supper which she had been thankful to substitute
for the long dinner of the past four years, wandered slowly through the
fields drinking in that peace which descends upon Hertfordshire at
nightfall, in all its perfection. She leaned her arms on a fence,
enjoying the Wordsworthian landscape: the wide fields with their
hayricks like houses, the quiet cattle, the slowly moving stream, the
soft masses of wood melting into the low sky. The red band had faded
behind the sharp church spire. The night moths fluttered. The stillness
was too soft to be profound, too sweet to inspire awe.
But although she loved this twilight beauty and peace of England, of
which she had had but a taste now and again, being usually at table
during the most poetical hour of the English day, she felt a sudden
antagonism to it to-night, as too perfect, too finished a thing for the
world to possess while so many of its dark problems were unsolved.
Although she had persistently refused to study the underworld under the
escort of Bridgit, turning instinctively from all that would shatter the
illusions among which she chose to live, she had not been able to shut
out bare knowledge, and Nigel’s second and fourth books had been even
more enlightening than his first. She smiled as she thought of Nigel,
whom she had not seen since the end of her first matrimonial vacation.
He had left England soon after and not returned. His father, incensed at
his avowed Socialism, and mortified at the conspicuous failure of his
third book, an exquisite bit of pure art, had definitely renounced him,
and he was living quietly and happily in picturesque corners of Europe.
Julia, knowing his passionate love of beauty, envied him the power to
gratify it, his complete surrender to the artistic life. She wondered
why he kept on writing of the grimy horrors of England, when he might
give the world his dreams of the wonderland beyond the Channel. To be
sure, that unique combination of the propagandist and the artist made
for greatness, but his last book, which she had finished only an hour
since, had darkened her mind, and unfitted her for surrender to the
beauty and peace of the English twilight.
Why was the enlightened class so stupid? Why did it not eliminate
poverty and the terrible pictures that must haunt every sensitive mind,
instead of waiting for mob rule, and its inevitable sequence of a
dictator and return to first principles? Socialism must come from above.
When the laboring classes used the word they meant democracy, in which
every man would have a chance to acquire riches; mere comfort and
security, with no opportunity to loot the universal till, had no charms
for them. Man is adventurous and greedy, and the lower his place in the
scale, the more insensate his dreams.
Nigel’s books, in their cold impersonal realism, did not inspire her
with any great respect or liking for the poor. She knew that he was
employing his art and his seductive story-telling faculty not only in
the cause of humanity, but to help avert a convulsion in which his own
class would go down. She knew that if it came to open war, a
blood-revolution, the theories and principles of which his reason
approved would fly off on the red winds and he would get behind the guns
on his own side. The intellectual aristocrat may serve the cause of
general humanity in entire honesty and conviction, but the moment class
is arrayed against class he will fight, not with the passions of his
brain, but of his instincts, and with that almost fanatical contempt and
hatred of the common people when daring to assert themselves he has
inherited with his brain cells. Nigel had admitted this freely to Julia,
confessed that while he was keen to devote every year of his life and
every phase of his talent to eliminating poverty, he never heard of a
laborer’s strike which inconvenienced the public that he did not burn at
their impudence and long for their annihilation.
“But it is this duality that makes the game interesting,” he had
concluded. “I only hope I shall never be put to the test. There are many
other things I should enjoy writing about far more, but I always feel
that I don’t matter in the least. If I was given a brain on top of my
instincts, it was to advance the cause of humanity and civilization. At
all events that is the way I see things, by such light as I possess.”
He had gone on to say that he had become an advocate of Socialism
because, so far, it was the best solution the human mind had evolved,
but that all the artist in him lamented its lack of appeal to any part
of man but his brain. Unpicturesque, dry, hard, but growing more
practical and expedient year by year, if it failed eventually, it would
only be through lack of a soul.
Would Nigel be the man to find this soul? He had a measure of genius;
why not? She felt proud of him that he could induce the thought, then,
in a moment of hardly realized sex jealousy, wished that it might be
discovered by some woman. Herself? Why not? But at this point she
laughed aloud, and turned her face toward home. Banish the ugly facts of
life. Enjoy this divine peace while it lasted.
She left the field and sauntered down the crooked lane full of sweet
scents and haunted by the white night moths. Skirting the wall that
surrounded White Lodge, she entered by the front gates, but, loath to
leave the twilight, mounted a stump and leaned her arms on the coping.
The heath, a wild rolling bit of nature, mysterious in the dusk, was
deserted but for a gypsy caravan. She remained out every night until
dusk had melted into dark, ravished by the serene beauty of this typical
bit of England, believing that in time it would help her to solve the
riddle of her mind. For her soul she asked nothing, believing her
capacity for happiness in any form to have been killed long since, but
demanding some mental compensation more personal and permanent than
books. If she dreamed long enough in this wonderful English twilight,
gave her imagination rein—who could tell? And there was something more
than a possibility that this liberty to dream and develop might spin out
indefinitely. Even if the war with those tiresome Boers should prove as
brief as the duke and her South African acquaintance predicted, Harold,
deprived of other diversions, might go out to South Africa for such
excitement and sport as the campaign would be sure to afford. And big
game might exert its fascinations for a year or more.
She lifted her head suddenly, then thrust it forward, and peered into
the shadows on the other side of the avenue. The trees of the park were
closely planted, and their aisles, dim at noon, were black at this hour.
But something moved, a shadow in a shadow! Julia, who had rarely known a
tremor of fear, felt her knees shake, her breath come short. It could
hardly be a poacher, for the preserves were behind the house, nearly a
quarter of a mile away; no poacher would be lurking by the park gates
when he could slip into the coverts at a dozen points. There was a lodge
at the gates, but it was untenanted. No one at the house could hear her,
no matter how loudly she might call, and—and—she watched the shadows
with dilating eyes—there was no doubt that a man moved within twenty
yards of her.
Suddenly it occurred to her that it must be one of the gypsies come to
beg, and watching for his opportunity. She caught at the tails of her
flying courage, and stepped out into the avenue.
“What do you wish?” she asked firmly. “If you have come to beg, I have
no money here, but you can go to the house and I will tell them to give
you food.” Then, as there was neither answer nor movement, she added
with a fair assumption of indifference, “You can follow me.”
She started up the avenue, walking deliberately, while filled with a
wild desire to run. For still there came no answer from the depths of
that black plantation, nor, for a moment or two, any movement. Then she
heard the soft crackling of twigs under a light foot, and, glancing
irresistibly over her shoulder, saw a moving shadow. She felt her skin
turn cold, and once more that insidious trembling attacked her limbs.
She realized with both horror and indignation that she was in the grip
of fear, she who had gone through earthquake and hurricane! For a moment
mortification routed terror, gave her a momentary respite, and she
halted and called sharply:—
“Why don’t you come into the avenue? Come out at once and walk ahead of
me.”
The steps halted. There was no other answer. “Peace!” That was no word
for a dark plantation at night! It was a silence so profound and so
awful that it seemed to shriek. Julia clenched her shaking hands, took a
step forward and peered into the wood. A shadow detached itself from the
darker background and swayed deliberately.
Courage fled. In full surrender to fear, the most awful sensation that
the human nerves can experience, she dashed up the avenue. In the
confusion of her brain she fancied that she was standing still, that her
feet had turned to lead, that her breath had left her body. Then the
confusion was cut by a flash of thought. It was no man there, but some
evil spirit that haunted the plantation. As every house on Nevis and St.
Kitts had its ghost, she had grown up in a firm and unconcerned belief
in the visits of the dead to their ancient haunts, and Bosquith boasted
seven ghosts. But she had never seen one, and to accept a popular creed
and find yourself pursued by a hollow visitant in a lonely park, far
from human support, induces mental states entirely unrelated. It might
even be a vampire! Julia shrieked, sobbed, almost leaped, as she heard
that light crackling of twigs not three yards behind her.
Suddenly the steps ran ahead of her. Her wide staring eyes saw that
shadow within a shadow, barely outlined, flit past among the trees, then
stop, sway again. She sprang back among the trees on her side of the
avenue. The shadow came slowly forward, then turned suddenly and ran
back into the depths. Julia crouched with chattering teeth. They were
plainly audible. So was her panting breath.
Again there was silence. Julia’s body, by a mere reaction independent of
her will, recovered its power of motion and darted up the avenue once
more. Again that light crackling of autumn leaves. But her will showed a
flicker of vitality, moved in the depths of her disorganized brain. She
visualized it, as she had once seen it in a diagram, dragged it upward,
ordered it to keep her from fainting, to hold her strength until she
reached the garden. She could see the lights of the house. Her mind grew
clearer. She realized that she was running like a deer. A few more
steps! Then she heard those behind bear down upon her with the swiftness
and noise of an express train. She was caught about the waist. As she
lost consciousness she heard a loud guffaw.
She opened her eyes, realized that she lay on a garden bench, that a
heavily breathing creature stood beside her. For a moment she dared not
lift her eyes, seized again with a fear that seemed to distend every
nerve in her body, even as she felt something vaguely familiar in the
form beside her. There was another burst of intense amusement. She
sprang to her feet with blazing eyes and confronted her husband.
“You!” she gasped. “You!”
France rocked to and fro with mirth. “Yes!” he finally ejaculated. “Gad!
I’m as much out of breath as you are—holdin’ my sides! What a lark!
Never knew it would be such fun to frighten anybody. Rippin’ sensation.
And you were frightened dumb, by Jove! Hardly believed it of you, but
suddenly thought I’d try.”
“You coward! You brute!” One has to be calm and detached to find
original phrases. In moments of real emotion the time-worn and the
ready-made dart out of the mind as naturally as thought of dinner above
hunger. “For anything that calls itself a man—”
“No insults, my lady, or I’ll do worse. It’s you are the coward—only
time I ever got a rise out of you! Didn’t know you had any kind of
excitement in you, by gad!”
“You brute! You brute!”
Julia, as much astounded as indignant, and vaguely alarmed, as she had
sometimes been in the early months of her married life, turned to walk
to the house in a dignified retreat. But France caught her in his arms.
“No you don’t, my lady. Give me a kiss.”
Then, for the first time, passion flamed in Julia. The twilight turned
crimson. She beat him on the chest, the face, the head. She kicked him,
and strove to unite her hands about his neck and choke him. She longed
for a knife, for a pistol. She seethed with hatred and the desire to do
murder. And France only laughed, and brushed off her hands with his
great hairy ones, while with one arm he clasped her hard and rained
kisses on her unprotected face. And he never ceased laughing with an
intense quiet amusement, his eyes glittering as they did when he went to
hangings, when he once had happened to witness natives tortured in the
Congo, as they did at certain performances in Paris calculated to
gratify the primitive lusts of man. France had always envied those
Eastern potentates that amused themselves with the death agonies of
their slaves just before heads were sliced off; but for him and his sort
there are still compensations to be found in the depths of civilization.
III
MRS. WINSTONE sat in her charming drawing-room in Tilney Street, by a
fire that cast a warm glow over her delicate good looks, further
enhanced by a tea-gown of violet Liberty velveteen and Irish lace. The
tea-table was beside her, and grouped about it were Mr. Pirie, Mrs.
Macmanus, and Lord Algy—reinstated in her affections after an interval
of fickleness; all were comfortably nibbling muffins and drinking their
horrid mess of tea and cream while looking as gloomy as possible.
It was “black week” of December, 1899. Methuen, Gatacre, and Buller had
met with humiliating reverses in South Africa, Sir George White was shut
up in Ladysmith with twelve thousand men, and the Boers were proving
themselves possessed of a generalship, which, combined with the stores
of ammunition they had been accumulating since the Jameson Raid, a
complete knowledge of their puzzling hills, the strategic devices they
had learned from the natives, and an indomitable spirit, had finally
succeeded in quenching optimism in Great Britain.
“Jove, you know,” said Algy, “it can’t be only that they’re on their own
ground—cursed ground, too, you know. Fancy the beggars knowin’ how to
fight.”
Mr. Pirie crossed his legs and smiled complacently. “I flatter myself
that I was one of the three or four men in England that anticipated
this. Wolsely warned us. Butler warned us. We wouldn’t listen. How could
we be expected to when the South Africans here never believed the Boers
would fight? And here we are!”
“I won’t believe it—that they can hold out a month longer,” said Mrs.
Macmanus, resolutely. “It’s only a temporary advantage, because no
British general would ever count upon a trickery of which he is
incapable himself. And what is life without hope? I hated the thought of
the war. Is it true that Bobs and Kitchener are to be sent out?”
“Beginning of Chapter II. Wish I were not too old to go out. You’ll be
volunteering, Algy, I suppose?”
Lord Algy looked up with something like animation in his pale eyes.
“Rather,” he said. “One more lump, please. Was accepted yesterday.” And
two months later, with as little fuss, he died at Pieter’s Hill.
“Oh, dear!” cried Mrs. Winstone. “What will become of us all? Fancy your
doin’ such a thing, Algy! All the men are goin’, whether they have to or
not. London will be too dull. Geoffrey Herbert’s regiment is under
orders, and such ducks are in it. I wonder if Bridgit cares?”
“She won’t miss him,” said Mrs. Macmanus, dryly. “She could hardly see
less of him there than here, but she’s got a heart and no doubt would
spare a tear if he fell.”
“I’ll tell you who cares,” said Pirie, “and that’s Jones. He’s loaded
down with Kaffirs, and is in a blue funk. Glad I unloaded when every one
else was rushin’ at ’em—thought the war would be over in two weeks, old
Jones did, ha! ha! He can’t get rid of a share.”
“Will it matter to Ishbel?” asked Algy.
“Not a bit,” said Mrs. Winstone. “She’s paid him off long since, and
opened a dressmakin’ establishment, besides her hat shop. It’ll be just
her luck to have all the smart people go into mournin’ at once.”
“Well, thank heaven the jingoes have shut up a bit—what is the matter?”
Mrs. Winstone had exclaimed, “How odd! I just saw Julia go up the
stairs.”
At the same moment a maid entered and announced that Mrs. France did not
wish any tea, but would wait upstairs until Mrs. Winstone was free.
“Tell her I’ll be with her presently, unless she’ll change her mind and
come down. Now, what can be the matter? Come to think of it, I haven’t
seen her since she went to White Lodge in August or September. Haven’t
got over my disappointment yet, and preferred to forget her for a while.
I do hope France hasn’t been misbehavin’ himself.”
“You may be sure he has,” said Mrs. Macmanus; “consolin’ himself for his
second facer—no doubt he’s heard the news from Bosquith.”
“What a bore,” exclaimed Mrs. Winstone. “Julia gave me the impression
when she first arrived in England that she’d rear at too heavy a bit;
but she should be well broken in by this time.”
“Do you think so?” asked Pirie. “That sort never is broken in.
High-spirited filly that runs all right under a light rein, but one cut
and she’s over the traces. She was clever enough to manage France as
long as he was satisfied, but doubt if she’ll have any resource except
open war when he’s been bored and disappointed long enough. Hope he’ll
volunteer and get himself killed with the least possible delay. Front’s
a good place for rascally husbands; and as they’re generally
automatically brave, no matter how degenerate, let us hope for a good
cleanin’ out of undesirable husbands before we polish off the Boers.
Good idea! It would reconcile even Hannah to war.”
“Rather. Poor Julia! You don’t mean to tell me, Maria, that you haven’t
looked after her these three months she’s been alone with France?”
“Looked after her?” cried Mrs. Winstone, indignantly. “She is a married
woman of nearly five years’ standing, and quite able to look after
herself. Why should I be annoyed? Do toddle along, all of you. I want to
hear the worst at once. Come back to dinner, Algy, and give an account
of yourself.”
She went slowly up to her bedroom after her guests had gone, endeavoring
to arrange her features into a semblance of cordiality. She deeply
resented Julia’s failure to capture the great prize which would have
been so useful to herself. One cannot remain young and fascinating
forever, and if one has not riches to substitute, the next best thing is
a wealthy relative in the peerage with whom one can always be on
intimate terms. She and the present Duchess of Kingsborough, a good
plain soul, but astute withal, would never hit it off. Surely, Julia, if
she had played her cards carefully, could have kept matrimonial ideas
out of the duke’s mind. No doubt she had antagonized him with her
independent notions and theories, which any really clever woman always
kept to herself. Julia, in her mind, was a failure, and Mrs. Winstone
detested failures.
But as she entered her bedroom and saw Julia standing by the hearth, she
said brightly, “So glad to see you, dear,” and kissed the cheek
presented to her. “Sorry you wouldn’t come in and meet my
cronies—why—what is the matter?”
Julia had turned her face to the light.
“Good heavens! Are you ill? Really, you must be careful—you were thin
and white enough already—and—and—” her irritation found vent. “Your
clothes are not put on properly.”
Julia, who had looked at her aunt with longing eyes, stiffened and said
coldly: “Probably not. You see, I had to run away, and I dressed in a
hurry. I could not make even the attempt until Harold had drunk a
certain amount—and it takes a good deal—”
“What on earth do you mean? Run away?” Mrs. Winstone sat down. “Surely
you can come to town when you choose.”
“I am forbidden to leave the grounds.”
“But—you know, you really shouldn’t run away—this is only a mood of
Harold’s. You should be careful to do nothing to make yourself
conspicuous. You are not in a position to afford it. No doubt many
ill-natured people have—laughed at you. You’ve had a frightful
come-down, and that sort of thing always delights spiteful women—who
envied you before. And Harold—poor thing—no doubt he guesses this—has
wanted to keep quiet for a time. Upon my word, I think it is rather the
decent thing to do. That is the reason I haven’t dug you out. And of
course he is horribly disappointed—”
Her fluent tongue halted, and she moved uneasily. Julia’s figure was
rigid, but although Mrs. Winstone had addressed the window, she felt
that those big disconcerting eyes she had never quite liked were fixed
upon her.
“Ah!” said Julia. “Disappointment? That is a mild word to apply to his
present frame of mind, or rather the one in possession until he began
upon his present course of consolation. His former was such that I am
forced to leave him.”
“Now—what do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I am married either to a maniac or a fiend, and that if I
remain with him long enough I shall either be killed or go mad.”
“Oh! You young things are so extravagant in your expressions—and you
never were quite like any one else. France is a bad lot more or less,
but you have managed him wonderfully. Go on managing him, but for
heaven’s sake don’t make a fuss.”
“I’ve left him, and I shall not go back. It would be impossible to
exaggerate. I haven’t enough imagination.”
“Do you mean that he—beats you?” Mrs. Winstone hesitated over the ugly
word. She did so hate the ugly things of life, even mere words. She felt
nothing of the morbid curiosity another woman might have felt, but as
long as she could not escape this confidence, better have it over as
soon as possible.
“No. For some reason he has not—yet. He locks me in a room and snaps a
whip at me by the hour, promising that at a given moment it shall cut
through my skin. Why he has not cut me to ribbons, I don’t know, except
that he enjoys tormenting me mentally, and defers the other pleasure. He
has practised every other form of mental torture he has been able to
conceive. He wakes me up twenty times a night, flashing a light before
my eyes, or shrieking in my ear. He makes me sit up in bed and listen to
the most awful stories, and the bloodcurdling ones are not the worst. He
threatens to pinch me from head to foot, but so far merely pretends
to—”
“For heaven’s sake hush! I can’t listen to such things. How does he
treat you before the servants?”
“Oh, always amiably.”
“I thought so. You haven’t a leg to stand on so far as the law is
concerned. He’d deny everything blandly, and you would be set down as an
hysteric.”
“I think he is insane.”
“Possibly. That may be the explanation of Harold France. But that will
do you no good, either, so long as he is able to hide it. Two alienists
must see him in a condition that is, unmistakably, insanity, and sign a
certificate to that effect. Only a short time ago the husband of an
American friend of mine acted at times in such an eccentric manner that
there was no doubt in the minds of those who saw him as to his state.
But he fooled the doctors. She feared for her life, and two of her
brothers had to come over and inveigle him on board an ocean liner—in
the United States, it seems, they are not so particular. And quite right
in this case, for the man is now raving.”
“Do you mean to say that the laws of England will not take care of me?”
“Not unless you can persuade him to beat you before the servants. Then
you might get a separation—not a divorce without infidelity. I think
you had best go back to Nevis.”
“I’ll not do that. Mother has been angry with me for a long time. Just
after the Tays were at Bosquith I wrote her I was unhappy and
disappointed—and horrified. You see, Daniel Tay made me feel almost a
child again, and I longed for my mother’s sympathy. She wrote back that
I was a romantic and ungrateful child; that I had enough to make any
girl happy; and that there was nothing really wrong. All men were
nuisances. She seemed afraid I might run away and spoil her plans. Since
then our letters have been stiff and infrequent—until the duke married,
when she was more angry with me still. Now we don’t write at all.
Besides, I never wish her to know of this. She may be hard, but she is
old, and she has had disappointments enough.”
“And what, may I ask, do you mean to do?”
“Surely the law—”
“The law will do nothing—as matters are at present. And for heaven’s
sake keep out of the courts.”
“Very well, then, I’ll go to work.”
“Work?”
“Yes. I intended to do that meanwhile, in any case. I went to Ishbel’s
on the way here, but Mr. Jones is ill and I couldn’t see her. So I
thought you would let me stay here—”
“Oh, of course. But I don’t like this silly idea of yours, at all. Much
better you go back to Nevis. That is the only real solution. People here
will think you have merely gone to pay a visit to your mother—natural
enough—and when you don’t return—well, people are soon forgotten in
London.”
“And I shall be comfortably buried! I shall, of course, go to Nevis
sooner or later, but not while I am in trouble. And I never could remain
there. After five years of England? I am as weaned as you are. I should
die of inanition.”
Mrs. Winstone got up and moved about the room restlessly. In her
well-ordered life few problems were permitted to enter, and not only did
she resent this sudden influx of deadly seriousness, but she practised a
certain form of cheap “occultism” much in vogue: avoiding everything
that contained an element of darkness, depression, and disturbance, and
everybody that persisted in having troubles. She manufactured an
atmosphere to keep herself young and happy much as she manufactured her
famous expression daily before the mirror, and anchored herself so
successfully in the warm bright shallows of life that what springs of
emotion she may originally have possessed had dried up long since. But
she could still feel intense annoyance, and she felt it now. Moreover,
she was puzzled. As the tiresome creature’s only relative in England,
she should be equally criticised if she refused her shelter and sympathy
in her trouble, or if she identified herself with her revolt. What in
heaven’s name was to be done? Well, this was December, and the world out
of London. And this war would fill everybody’s thoughts if it only
lasted long enough. She returned to her chair.
“My dear! Really! What shall I say? You know I only came up for a day or
two—on my way to a lot of visits. Came up to see Hannah, who is off for
Rome. There are only two servants in the house. I am off again
to-morrow; but of course you can stay here if you are sure he doesn’t
know where you are.”
“He’ll know nothing for a week.”
“Ah! I have it! How clever of me! I’ll write him that I’ve packed you
off to Nevis. That will gain time. Perhaps he’ll go there in search of
you—”
“I prefer that the law should free me fairly. I’m sick of lies.”
“The law will do nothing. Put that idea out of your head. Have you any
money in hand?”
“About thirty pounds.”
“The duke ought to make you a separate allowance. Possibly he would if
you told him how matters stand, and promised to keep quiet.”
“He would not believe me, not for a moment. It is his cherished fiction
that no member of the British aristocracy can do wrong, much less a
member of his family. He would preach, tell me that I had hysterical
delusions, and send for Harold. I prefer him to know nothing about it.”
“I won’t have you in a shop.”
Julia rose.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake sit down. Don’t let us talk about it any more.
Stay here for the present. Something is sure to turn up. You’ll find it
very dull—”
“Oh!”
“Did you bring any clothes?”
“A portmanteau, that is all.”
“Well! Better go to your room and rest. I’ll write at once to France,
telling him that you sailed to-day. If he doesn’t read it for a week, so
much the better.”
IV
JULIA slept the sleep of exhaustion that night. She awoke with a start,
screaming, and cowered, before she realized that it was Mrs. Winstone
who stood by her bed.
But that lady, true to her creed, pretended not to see. “It is eleven
o’clock,” she said lightly. “What a sleeper you are! I am off, but Hawks
has orders to take care of you. I’ll ring for your breakfast. I’ve left
my addresses for the next two months in my desk. But I hope you’ll get
on. Of course I could get you invited to any of the houses, but France
would hear of it, and my clever fiction would be spoiled—”
“I could not visit. I shall be very well here. You are too kind.”
Mrs. Winstone thought she was, particularly as there was not the least
prospect of reward. A cutlet for a cutlet. However, noblesse oblige. She
bestowed a kiss on Julia and sailed out.
After her bath and breakfast Julia made a careful toilet for the first
time in many weeks. Sometimes she had not brushed or even unbraided her
hair for days.
She telephoned to the house in Park Lane. Mr. Jones was better and Lady
Ishbel had gone to the shop. Julia left the house immediately and drove
to Bond Street.
There were several people in the show-room. She went up to the boudoir
which had witnessed so many gay little teas and so many confidential
chats. It was an hour before Ishbel came running up the stairs and flung
her arms about Julia.
“You dear thing!” she cried. “How I have worried about you. You wouldn’t
answer my notes. And you look like a ghost! I was afraid—”
“You are in trouble, too. You look worn out—”
“Oh, poor Jimmy! He’s ruined, and has had a stroke. There’s tragedy for
you. How he fought—and he hated to take my jewels, poor dear. I’m
hunting for a little house to take him to—he clings to me; it’s
pitiful. The doctor wants him to go to a nursing home, but I couldn’t!
I’ll do my best. And,” with a sudden dash into her more familiar self,
“all my beaux will go to South Africa; I shall have time for my invalid.
That’s all there is of my story. Tell me yours.”
“I’ve come to take you at your word—you once promised to teach me how
to trim hats—to help me earn my bread—”
“So! It’s come! Bridgit and I have been expecting it.”
Julia told her story, all that could be told, as briefly as possible.
She was, in truth, deeply ashamed of it, and, after her aunt’s rebuff,
felt no longer any yearning for sympathy. But Ishbel wept bitterly.
“How I wish we could have rescued you in the beginning, as we planned!
It was criminal of us to give it up.” She dried her eyes. “There! It has
done me good to cry. Literally I have had not a moment to shed a tear on
my own account. Of course I’ll put you to work at once, and when I get a
little house you will live with me. It will be too nice. I’ve never had
half enough of you. I suppose you could tear yourself away from Mrs.
Winstone. How did she receive you?”
“Oh, she’s frightfully cut up. ‘Scandal’—‘work’—I don’t know which she
fears most. But I could see she was relieved to learn that Harold had
kept himself inside the law.”
“She must feel as if she were the author of a book called ‘The lost
duchess!’ Well, we won’t mortify her publicly for some time. Of course
you must stay out of the salesroom for a while, or France would trace
you. In the workroom, no one, not even Mrs. Winstone, will be any the
wiser. Will you come house-hunting with me?”
A fortnight later, Ishbel, with that latent energy of which she betrayed
so little in manner and appearance, had furnished a villa in St. John’s
Wood, installed Mr. Jones and the servants, and turned over the house in
Park Lane to the creditors. As she was obliged to keep both a valet and
a nurse for Mr. Jones, there was no spare room for Julia, but there were
lodgings close by, and it was arranged that she was to dine every night
at the villa.
Perhaps there is no accommodation on this round globe as dreary as a
London suburban lodging, but Ishbel adorned the little rooms out of her
own superfluities, and Julia was so thankful to be alone and free that
she would have settled down to the dingy carpet and grimy furniture
without a murmur. And she had no time to mope or think. It would be long
before she recovered the buoyancy of her nature, for she had told Mrs.
Winstone and Ishbel little of the horrors of those three months alone
with her husband. But when indignities are too odious to take to the
most intimate and sympathetic ear, the only thing to do is to banish
them from the memory; and this Julia did to the best of her ability.
She found a certain fascination in working with her hands, although she
did not take kindly to the crowded workroom. Ishbel, who never drove any
of her people when she could avoid it, made her hours as few as
possible. But her seclusion was of short duration. France wrote to Mrs.
Winstone, threatening her with the law, but, taking her communication
literally, flung himself off to South Africa. After his departure Julia
spent a part of each day in the show-room, although she continued to
trim hats; her fingers proving nimble and apt, she was determined to
learn the business. In the show-room she met many of her old
acquaintances, and Mrs. Winstone waxed so indignant that communication
between them ceased. The duke, who never found politics amusing when his
party was busy exterminating mosquitoes, and who at the moment was
wholly absorbed in his wife and in his prospects of an heir, remained at
Bosquith for a year on end; if he thought about Julia at all, he
supposed her to be at White Lodge.
Her personal life flowed on peacefully for eight months. The past faded
into the limbo of nightmares. She made little more than enough to pay
for her rooms and two meals, but even had she found time to miss the
beautiful garments she had loved, she would have had no occasion to use
them. No one entertained. All England was in mourning. Hardly a family
of any size but had lost one or more of its men, particularly if the men
were officers. Ishbel’s milliners and dressmakers worked all day on
black, nothing but black. So constant, and always sudden, was the demand
for mourning trousseaux that she and Julia often worked at night after
the women, worn out, had gone home.
And those that had no men at the front to be killed were ashamed to
admit it, to be out of the fashion, and swelled the demands for
mourning. The Americans, resident in London, felt “out of it” in colors,
and even those come on their annual pilgrimage were advised to wear
black-and-white or dull gray. Ishbel and Julia laughed sometimes over
their work and speculated as to the origin of other fads, but they were
too busy and too tired for more than the passing jest. All England was
sad enough without pretence, and worrying not only for relatives and
friends at the front, but for the nation’s prestige. Julia and Ishbel,
at dinner, talked of little else but the news in the evening bulletins,
and often it was of a personal nature. Nigel Herbert had been among the
first to volunteer, had been wounded at Vaal Kranz, recovered, and was
fighting again, besides corresponding with one of the great dailies. Two
of Ishbel’s admirers had died at Ladysmith, one of enteric, the other in
a reckless sortie. Still another was in hospital with two bullets in
him; and beyond the brief despatch which conveyed this news to the
press, she had heard nothing. His going had solved a problem, but she
was thankful for her work. Geoffrey Herbert had been killed at
Paardeberg, and Bridgit had gone out to the Cape with hospital supplies.
Of France not a word was heard until June 12th, when his name was among
the list of wounded at the battle of Diamond Hill. Two months later
Julia read of his arrival in England.
V
ON these warm August evenings Ishbel and Julia had their dinner in the
garden under a beech tree. Ishbel’s bright courage seldom failed her,
but she was grateful for Julia’s companionship and help during this the
most trying period of her life, and Julia, glad to be necessary to some
one, above all to her favorite friend, responded without any of the
usual feminine fervors, and the harmony between them remained unbroken.
Mr. Jones, helpless in body and bitter in mind, demanded every moment
his wife could give him, but occasionally permitted Julia to take her
place and read the war news aloud.
Between the defeat of the Boer forces at Diamond Hill and the beginning
of Kitchener’s “drives,” there was less demand for mourning garments;
the war, indeed, was believed to be over. Ishbel and Julia rose later
and left the shop earlier. Both were haggard and needed rest. They made
a deliberate attempt to enjoy their evening meal, refusing to discuss
immediate deaths and hypothetical disaster, and tabûing personal topics.
There was still plenty to discuss, and so many reminiscences of officers
that had left their lives or their looks in the South African graveyard,
that it was easy to steer clear of private anxieties. But one evening
after the cloth was removed and they were alone, Julia said abruptly:—
“I had a letter from Harold to-day—directed to the shop. He had just
learned that I had not gone to Nevis. He did not say who gave him my
address—”
“Yes?” The word had a fashion of flying from Ishbel’s lips at all times.
Now she sat forward in alarm. “Yes?”
“He says that I am to return to White Lodge to-morrow.”
“But of course you will not!”
“Of course not. I consulted a solicitor some time ago. He cannot compel
me to live with him. On the other hand—”
“Yes?”
“As I am unable to get a legal separation I cannot prevent him from
forcing himself into my rooms, annoying me in a thousand ways. He might
even come to the shop and make a scene.”
“Well, it is my shop, and I can have him put out. Did you tell the
solicitor other things? Is there really no chance of a legal
separation?”
“He did not seem to think well of my reasons for wanting one. I could
not bring myself to tell him much, and I have kept it in the background
so long it seemed rather dim and flat—the little I did tell him. He
said that mental cruelty existed largely in women’s imaginations. Then
he consoled me by adding that if I refused to return, Harold might be
betrayed into some overt act before witnesses, perhaps later give me
cause for divorce. But I don’t think so. He is very cunning. His
instinct for self-protection is almost abnormal. I told the lawyer I
believed Harold to be insane, and he was quite shocked; said there was
too much talk already of insanity in the great families of Britain, and
it was doing them harm with the lower orders—intimated that it was my
duty to keep such an affliction dark if it really had descended upon the
house of France. When I told him I knew that at least two of Harold’s
ancestors had been shut up for years at Bosquith, and not so long ago,
he fairly squirmed. Then he advised me to conceal both my knowledge and
my suspicions if I hoped for a divorce. The law is far more tender to
its lunatics than to their victims. Harold, shut up for
twenty—thirty—forty years would continue to be my husband on the off
chance of his cure—while I consoled myself with the prospect of his
release! On the other hand, if left at large he may give me cause for
divorce. That was the only argument that appealed to me. My legal friend
ended by advising me to return to Nevis—this, I feel sure, in the
interests of the British aristocracy. I’d like to make over a few laws
in this country.”
“That is what Bridgit says. The women of the lower classes might almost
as well be slaves in the Congo. They can’t divorce a merely drunken
brute, and a legal separation does them little good. If a man wants to
desert his family all he has to do is to go to the Midlands or the North
and disappear in a coal mine, while his wife, unable to marry a better
man, sinks to the dregs in the effort to support herself, perhaps half a
dozen children. The laws in this country might have been made by Turks.
Who ever hears of a man being punished because he is the father of the
child a wretched girl has murdered? Oh—some day—let us hope—But we
have the present to deal with. Have you answered France’s letter?”
“Yes, I wrote him that I never should return to him, that I had had
legal advice, that I was able to support myself, that I wished never to
hear from him again. Also, that any further letters I received from him
I should return unopened to his club. I did not write a page, but I
fancy he cannot mistake my meaning.”
“I am afraid he will persecute you, but you must be brave. If necessary,
you might hide in the country for a bit, or go over to Paris for me—”
“I shall stay here at work. He can do his worst.”
But, alas, it was always Harold France’s good fortune to be underrated.
Julia, well as she knew him, had never yet gauged the depth and extent
of his resources. Some strange arrest in his mental development,
possibly a forgotten blow during boyhood, or a prenatal check, had left
him with a quick, cunning, malicious, scheming mind which otherwise
might have been brilliant, unscrupulous, and resourceful in the grand
manner. Possibly it might have been useful as well; and this may have
been the secret of those vague angry ambitions, always seething in the
base of his cramped brain. Whatever the cause, his mind required a
constant grievance to feed on, and whatever his limitations, they were
never too great to interfere with the success of his devilish purposes.
Three mornings later Ishbel and Julia arrived in Bond Street at a few
minutes before eleven. Royalty was expected at a quarter past, and as
they ascended the stairs they were not surprised to see the forewoman,
pale and trembling, standing at the turn. When royalty had
arrived—unheralded—the day before, she had almost wept, and her
assistant had succumbed and been obliged to leave the room. It was the
first time that royalty had honored the shop in Bond Street, smart as it
was, and when the princess left she had announced that on the morrow she
should return with her two girls. Ishbel had felt sure that her women
would not close their eyes during the night, and be quite unfit for the
strain of the second visit. Therefore, she laughed merrily as she saw
Miss Slocum’s twisted visage.
“Brace up! Brace up!” she cried. “You have nearly twenty minutes yet.
And am I not here? Mrs. France and I will wait on their royal
highnesses—”
“Oh, your ladyship,” wailed the woman. “It ain’t that—or, I mean I
could stand it much better to-day. I’d made up my mind. No! It’s worse!”
“Worse?”
The woman glanced up the half flight behind her. The door leading into
the show-room was closed. “Oh, your ladyship, there’s two awful
creatures in there, and their royal highnesses coming in ten minutes. I
told them to go—”
“But I don’t understand. Every one has a right to come here. I can’t
have any of my customers put out for royalty. I am not being honored by
a call. This is a shop—”
“Oh, yes, my lady, but you don’t understand. You’ve never had this
sort—”
“What sort?”
The woman’s voice quavered and broke. “Tarts, my lady. Regular
Piccadilly trotters, that’s what!”
Ishbel was as dismayed as the woman could wish. Followed by her equally
horrified friend she brushed the forewoman aside, ran up the stair, and
entered the show-room. The large windows, open to the gay subdued roar
of Bond Street, let in a flood of mellow sunshine. The square room, not
too large, and with a mere suggestion of the First Empire in its wall
paper and scant furniture, was a severe yet delicate background for the
most charming hats ever seen in London. Of every shape and size, but
each touched with a fairy’s wand, these harbingers of autumn, hopefully
prismatic, and mounted on slender rods, seemed to sing that woman’s face
was naught without its frame, and that in them alone was the problem of
the floating decoration solved.
But alas! no such fantasie was in the air this morning. “Creatures,” in
truth! Two females, loudly dyed, rouged, blackened, bedecked in cheap
finery, were overhauling hats, mantles, and chiffons, despite the
protests of the livid assistant. Ishbel went directly up to the largest
and most aggressive.
“I am so sorry,” she said with her sweet remote smile and her bright
crisp manner, “but I must ask you to go. Some other time I shall be most
happy to show you the things, but just now everything must be put in
order as quickly as possible. I am expecting patrons who are in town
only for the moment. As you see, this room is not very large. Be quick,
Jeannie, will you?”
She turned her back on the two women, but the largest walked
deliberately round in front of her.
“I say,” she said, “are you the boss?”
“I am—Jeannie—”
“I say. What’s a shop for if ladies can’t call and see things? Is this a
private shop for your friends?”
“No, but this morning is exceptional. I really must ask you to go—” she
glanced at the clock. It was nearly ten minutes past eleven, and royalty
was hideously prompt. “I dislike being rude, but I must ask you to go at
once.”
“Really, now!” The woman sat herself on the little sofa before the
mantel and spread out her gaudy skirts. “I ain’t going to be put out.
Brass is brass, and mine’s as good as any. Wot you say, Frenchie?”
“That’s what.” Her partner was holding a large hat on her uplifted arm,
and twirling it from side to side. “And I want a hat. Don’t mind trying
’em all on, one by one.”
“If you don’t go at once, I shall call the police.”
“Police? Wot for? Ain’t we behaving ourselves proper? I call that libel,
I do.”
At this moment the door, which Ishbel had taken care to close, flew
open, and royalty entered, followed by two slim young daughters. The
eyes of the lady on the sofa bulged, but her presence of mind did not
desert her. She sprang to her feet and threw her arm round Ishbel’s
waist.
“Your hats are too sweet, dearie,” she exclaimed. “I shall take four
to-day and come back to-morrow—”
At the same moment the other woman, who had dropped the hat, lit a
cigarette.
Royalty gasped, made a motion not unlike that of a mother hen when she
spreads her wings to protect her chicks from a sudden shower, then
shooed her girls out and down the stairs.
Ishbel made no motion to detain her. No explanation was possible. She
saw ruin, but she merely removed her waist from the embrace of the woman
and turned her white composed face upon both of the invaders.
“Will you explain what spite you have against me?” she asked.
“Oh!” cried Julia, passionately. “Can’t you see? France has sent them.”
“Right you are, dearie,” said the younger cocotte, smoking comfortably.
“And here we stay till you pack up and go home to your lawful husband.
Lucky you are to have one. Oh, yes, my lady, you can call in the
bobbies, but this is the middle of Bond Street, and we’ll raise such a
hell of a row as we’re being dragged out there won’t be anybody else
coming up here in a hurry.”
Julia turned to her. “If I leave this shop and promise never to return,
will you agree to do the same?”
“If you go back to your husband. If you don’t, here we, and more of us,
come every day, unless, of course, her ladyship has us put out! Your
leaving the shop won’t help matters any. You go back to White Lodge.
France is an old pal of mine, but it isn’t often we see his brass. Jolly
lark this is, too.”
“Very well,” said Julia. “I shall go.”
“You shall not!” cried Ishbel, passionately. “My business is ruined in
any case. We can go to America—”
“And leave Mr. Jones? He is dependent upon you for shelter. Your
business is not ruined. Of course the princess will not come again, but
you have powerful friends that will explain to her and prevent the story
from spreading—”
“Right you are. France ain’t aiming to spite her. But he’ll ruin every
friend you’ve got unless you go home, double quick.”
“I shall go this afternoon.” And Julia ran down the stairs and out of
the building before Ishbel could detain her.
VI
JULIA took a closed fly at Stanmore, and in the avenue of White Lodge
her eyes moved constantly from one window to the other. But on this
bright hot afternoon there was neither sound nor motion in the woods.
She feared that the house might be without servants, but as the fly
entered the garden she saw that the windows were open and that smoke
rose from the kitchen chimney. White Lodge was built round three sides
of a shallow court, and after dismissing the fly, she attempted to open
the door on her right, as it was close to the stair which communicated
with the hallway outside her own rooms. But this door was locked. So
apparently were the central doors, but the one opposite and leading into
the dining room was open, and not caring to ring and announce herself,
she crossed the court and entered; although this meant that she must
traverse the entire house to reach the comparative shelter of her own
apartment. The large rooms were full of light, but she was nearly ten
minutes arriving at her destination, for she opened every door warily,
and explored dark corridors with her eyes before she put her foot in
them. But even on the twisted stair she met no one, and the house was as
silent as the wood.
When she entered her boudoir, she saw that the door leading into her
bedroom was closed. For a moment she was grateful, as it was a room of
hideous memories, and she intended to sleep on her wide sofa as long as
she was obliged to remain at White Lodge. Then she remembered that its
inner door led into France’s rooms, and that she intended to move a
heavy piece of furniture across it.
She opened the door cautiously and looked in. This room was very dark
and close; the heavy curtains were drawn across the windows. By such
light as she had let in she could define nothing but shapeless masses of
heavy furniture, not an outline; it would have been difficult to tell a
man from a bedpost. She was about to close the door and ring for a
servant when the one opposite opened and the big frame of her husband
seemed to fill the sudden panel of light. There was not a key in the
boudoir, nor time to move furniture. Julia retreated behind a table.
France crossed the inner room at his leisure and entered. Julia almost
relieved the tension of her feelings by laughing aloud. Every man that
had come back from the Boer war looked ten years older, but she had seen
no one before that looked ridiculous as well. Not only were his stiff
hair and moustache gray and his bony face gaunt, but the copper color of
the tan he had acquired during the months preceding his weeks in
hospital clung to his pallid face in patches, making him look as if
afflicted with some foul disease; and he had lost a front tooth. His
glassy eyes, however, were less dull, and moved restlessly.
“Howd’y do?” he said. “Didn’t expect you till to-night or to-morrow.
Good girls! Good girls!”
He was about to turn the corner of the table when he paused abruptly and
his jaw fell. He found himself looking into the barrel of a small
revolver.
“Sit down,” said Julia. “I’m willing to talk to you for a few moments,
but if you come a step nearer, I’ll shoot.”
France made a movement as if he would spring. The pistol advanced, and
he stood staring into the thing. He was a brave man on the battlefield,
but he had never looked into the mouth of a firearm at close range, and
he disliked the sensation it induced. He gave a loud laugh and sat down.
“Oh, well, my lady, have your dramatics. I can wait. What’ve you got to
say? Seems to me you should have a good deal. Nice pair of liars you and
your aunt!”
Julia took the chair directly opposite his.
“I have come back—”
“Oh, I say! That thing will go off. Pistols were not made for women to
fool with.”
Julia put the pistol in her lap.
“I have returned to White Lodge to protect Ishbel, and for no other
reason. Your plot was fiendish, and you won out. But I win now. I shall
not leave you again, but I shall be my own mistress. I shall no longer
call you names nor attempt to make you understand how I loathe you, but
if you ever enter my rooms again or attempt to touch me, here or
elsewhere, I shall shoot you without further notice!”
“Oh, you will! And how long do you think you can keep that sort of
heroics up? You’ve got to sleep, and there’s not a key in your rooms.”
“There will be to-morrow. I left orders with the locksmith in Stanmore.
I need not sleep to-night, and I shall meet him when he comes, and stand
guard with this pistol. You interfere at your peril.”
“And do you think that keys can keep me out?”
“I shall use both keys and heavy pieces of furniture. You cannot enter
without making noise enough to rouse me. And if you succeeded, you would
gain nothing. I can always kill myself. I would boil in oil before you
should ever touch me again.”
“You are hard for such a young ’un,” muttered France. “Gad, your eyes
are like ice!” He made a motion as if to cover his own eyes, but they
flashed with exultation, and he dropped his hand.
“Look here,” he said. “You can’t get the best of me. I gave you to
understand there was to be no compromise. You were to come back to me,
or your Ishbel would be ruined. Well, that’s what I meant. You chuck
that pistol, and you do everything else I tell you to do, or I send
those tarts back to the shop.”
“I can do no more to protect Ishbel than I have done already. But I
shall not live to see my best friend disgraced and ruined.”
“Curse you!” shouted France. “Curse you!”
“Now suppose you listen to me a moment. Since you left England I have
consulted not only a solicitor but an alienist—”
“A—a—what—”
“I believe you to be mad—”
“Don’t! Don’t!” France’s face was gray and loose. His eyes rolled with
terror.
But Julia went on remorselessly, pressing the suggestion home.
“The doctor told me that it might be years before you would develop
acute mania. Unfortunately, your rotten spot has not developed the lust
to kill, or you would easily be got rid of. You can practise your former
methods of cruelty on me no more, but let this fact compensate you—keep
you quiet. Use it as a cud; chew on it and exult. It should satisfy you
for the rest of your life. This is it: you have destroyed my youth, you
have killed my soul, you have ruined my power of enjoyment in anything,
you have left me nothing but a mind to carry me through the rest of my
days. Even if you had died in Africa, I should never have given even a
thought to loving and being loved like other women. For me you symbolize
man and all the horrors that are in him. I live because my mind compels
it, and because my mother is still alive. If this statement does not
give you food for gloating, if you are incapable of understanding what I
mean, then—” She laid her pistol on the table again and tapped it
significantly.
But France took no notice of the pistol. He was staring at her with his
jaw relaxed, and his eyes still full of horror.
“Did—didn’t—he say I might never go mad?”
“So you have thought of it yourself?”
“No—no—not really. But out there when I lay all night on that cursed
veldt, and expected to die before they found me—I thought—thought—I
had gone pretty far here, even for me—No! No! _No!_ I never really
thought it—it was only when I came to in hospital I was jolly glad to
find that it had only been delirium—any one might mistake
delirium—curse you, you red-headed witch! I had forgotten all about
it.”
“And do you suppose that even if you had no inherited tendency to
insanity, you could go the pace you did, do the things you have done for
years, and not rot your brain—”
“How many men go the pace—”
“Not yours. If you hadn’t compelled me to return to you, I should have
had you watched—”
“You mean to say you’d lock me up—”
“I shouldn’t waste a minute. You ought to be locked up on general
principles. It’s a half-baked civilization that permits you and your
sort to be at large. Strange laws! Strange justice!”
France gathered himself together and stood up, but he leaned heavily on
the table. “You’ve got your revenge,” he said thickly. “Nothin’ I ever
did crueller to you or any one than tell a man his brain’s rotten—and
makin’ him believe it! Oh, God! Those eyes! If ever I do go mad, I’ll
see nothing else.”
“Better think no more about it.” Julia, having subdued her keeper, felt
a pang of remorse and pity. “Take my advice and go to Bosquith for the
shooting—”
“And see that brat?”
“The duke will think the more of you. Remember he is not compelled to
allow you a thousand a year. He has a sensitive vanity, and resents lack
of attention. Besides, the sport will do you good.”
“And you?”
“I shall stay here.”
“And never leave the place?”
“I shall go to London for the day whenever I choose, and I shall ride
and walk about the country. I have no desire to see any of my
neighbors.”
“Very well. I’ll go. I’ve got to pull myself together. I can’t do it
here. I’m still off my feed, or you wouldn’t have bowled me over like
this. Before I come back, I’ll have thought out how to deal with you—”
Julia tapped the pistol again. “I have five others. I shall conceal them
in different parts of the house, and carry this always.”
France gave a strangled cry and began to curse, with reviving
enthusiasm.
Julia rose and leaned across the table.
“Be careful,” she said softly. “Keep calm. You are forty-six, your heart
is not good, and blood cannot surge through your brain much longer with
impunity. Unless you choose to court apoplexy—”
But France had bolted from the room. An hour later he was on his way to
Bosquith.
VII
HE didn’t return for a month. During that time Julia did not go to
London. She was glad to be alone and to rest. For the first time she
realized how tired she was, and enjoyed lying in bed late and being
waited on. She felt as hard as she appeared to France, and cynically
made up her mind to select from life such of its physical and mental
pleasures as she could command and enjoy, since personality was denied
her. She saw no hope in the future except the preservation of her bodily
and mental integrity. Whatever else France might compel her to do, or
however live, she must submit, as she could not spend her life
flourishing a pistol. Now that she had found herself, knew that she no
longer feared him, she guessed that he would take no further pleasure in
frightening her; but the mere fact of his presence in the house year
after year was enough to turn her into a mere shell. That she was
already one she did not quite believe, despite her bitter declaration,
for she knew the tenacity of youth and the buoyancy of her nature; but
ten—twenty—thirty years!
And how long would her nerves last? To be forced to live under the same
roof with a man whose mere glance made her nerves crawl was bad enough,
but to sleep night after night, for months on end (save when she could
persuade him to visit), a few yards from a possible lunatic, must wear
down the stoutest defences of will and reason. There was a double cause
for sleeping with one pistol under her pillow and another under a book
on the table beside her bed. The situation had something of grim humor
in it as well as adventurous excitement, and Julia shrugged her
shoulders and felt grateful that she had inherited her mother’s nerves.
But she thought as little as possible, since thinking did no good.
Moreover, in years she was young, and although her spirit was curdled
and dark at present, its quality was fine and high; and for such spirits
life is rarely long enough to bury hope, save for brief moments, alive.
For the present she read and walked and rode, her surface contentment
increased by the cheering news from Ishbel that one of her powerful
aunts, who was a personal friend of the outraged royal lady, had made a
satisfactory explanation; and the princess, to signify her forgiveness
and sympathy, had ordered several hats sent to her for inspection. It
was not to be expected that she would risk a second shock by venturing
into the shop in Bond Street again, but she was a conscientious soul,
always recognizing the duties toward mere mortals imposed upon those of
divine origin; and as discretion was a part of her equipment, the story
never got about town. Ishbel’s business was saved. But it was a long
time before Julia dared to enter that shop again.
She heard France return, late one night. She rose at once, put on her
dressing-gown, and sat on the edge of her bed-sofa, waiting. But
although he made an even greater noise and fuss than usual, summoning
the entire staff of servants from their beds to wait on him, and spent
at least an hour in the dining-room, he did not pass her door.
She met him on the following day in the living-room, a few moments
before luncheon. He greeted her with an almost regal courtesy, asked
after her health, and then preceded her into the dining-room. During the
meal, although he looked the personification of serene amiability, he
did not address a remark to her. Julia, puzzled but relieved, noted that
he looked far better than when he had gone to Bosquith, that his hands
were steadier, and that he drank nothing. At the end of the meal he rose
with a slight bow as if dismissing her—from his thoughts, no
doubt!—and left the room without smoking. It was probable that he was
nursing his nerves.
The next day she learned that he had bought a string of hunters and a
pack of fifty couples. A corresponding number of grooms and helpers
appeared in the stables, as well as a pack huntsman, a kennel huntsman,
and whippers-in. Hunting is the most expensive luxury, counting out
dissipations, in which an Englishman can indulge, and Julia wondered at
his sudden extravagance. True, he had never stinted himself in anything,
and he was one of the best-dressed men in England, but, then, he had
always schemed to make some one else pay, and since his social
restoration his tailor had “carried” him. Relieved as she was at his
avoidance of her, and to be excused from making conversation at the
table, curiosity overcame her in the course of a week, and one night at
dinner, when the servants had left the room, she asked him if he had
joined the Hertfordshire.
“I have,” he said graciously.
“I thought hunting was so terribly expensive.”