I
IN the shadow of a huge mulberry-tree, upon whose finger-like branches
already the very light green leaves were beginning to form a veil,
Katya Lascarides was sitting in a deck-chair. The expression upon her
face was one of serenity and of resigned contentment. She was looking
at the farmhouse; she was knitting a silk necktie, a strip of vivid
green that fell across her light grey skirt. With a little quizzical
and jolly expression, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of
cream-coloured overalls, Kitty Langham looked sideways for approval
at her aunt. She had just succeeded in driving a black cat out of the
garden.
They lived down there in a deep silence, Katya never speaking and
eliciting no word from the child. But already the child had made
concessions to the extent of clearing her throat or emitting a little
“Hem!” when she desired to attract her aunt’s attention; but her
constant occupation was found in the obstinate gambols of a pet lamb--a
“sock,” as the farm-people called it--which inhabited the farm-house,
bleated before the door, or was accustomed by butting to send the
garden-gate flying back upon its hinges.
This creature, about one-third the size of a mature ram, was filled
with obstinacies apparently incomprehensible; it was endowed with great
strength and a considerable weight. With one push of its head it would
send the child rolling several feet along the grass; it would upset
chairs in the dining-room; it bleated clamorously for milk at all meals
when Kitty had her milk and water.
Against its obstinacies Kitty’s was valiant but absolutely useless.
With her arms round its neck--a little struggling thing with dark eyes
and black hair, in her little white woollen sweater--she would attempt
to impede the lamb’s progress across a garden-bed. But the clinching
of her white teeth availed nothing at all. She would be dragged across
the moist earth, and left upon her back like a little St. Lawrence
amongst the flames of the yellow crocuses. And at these struggles
Katya Lascarides presided with absolute deafness and with inflexible
indifference; indeed, after their first meeting, when Ellida Langham
had brought the child with her nurse to the gloomy, if tranquil, London
hotel, where Katya had taken from Mrs. Van Husum a parting which lasted
three days, and ended in Mrs. Van Husum’s dissolving into a flood of
tears--at the end of that meeting Ellida had softly reproached Katya
for the little notice she had taken of what was, after all, the nicest
child in London.
But cool, calm, tall, and dressed in a grey that exactly matched her
eyes, Katya “took charge.” And, during the process, whilst she said,
“I shall want this and that,” or “The place must be on a hill; it must
face south-west; it must be seven miles from the sea; it must be a
farm, with plenty of live-stock but no children,” Ellida watched her,
silent, bewildered, and admiring. It seemed so improbable that she
should have a sister so professional, so practical, so determined. Yet
there it was.
And then they descended, Katya and Kitty alone, into the intense
silence of the farm that was found. It was on a hill; it faced
south-west; it was seven miles from the sea, and the farmer’s wife,
because she was childless, surrounded herself with little animals whose
mothers had died.
And there the child played, never hearing a word, in deep silence with
the wordless beasts. This had lasted three weeks.
The gate was behind Katya’s back as she smiled at the rolling hills
below the garden. She smiled because the night before she believed she
had overheard Kitty talking to the lamb; she smiled because she was
exhausted and quivering and lonely. She knitted the green necktie,
her eyes upon the April landscape, where bursts of sunlight travelled
across these veil-like films of new leaves that covered tenderly the
innumerable hedgerows.
And suddenly she leaned forward; the long fingers holding the
knitting-needles ceased all motion. She had heard a footstep--and she
knew every footstep of the farm....
He was leaning over the back of her chair; she saw, against the blue
when she opened her eyes, his clear, dark skin, his clear, dark
contemplative eyes. Her arms slowly raised themselves; her lips
muttered unintelligible words which were broken into by the cool of his
cheek as she drew him down to her. She rose to her feet and recoiled,
and again, with her arms stretched straight before her, as if she were
blind and felt her way, her head thrown back and her eyes closed, an
Oriental with a face of chiselled alabaster. And with her eyes still
closed, her lips against his ear as if she were asleep, she whispered:
“Oh, take me! Take me! Now! For good....”
But these words that came from her without will or control ceased,
and she had none to say of her own volition. There fell upon them the
silent nirvana of passion.
And suddenly, vibrant, shrill, and interrupted by sobs and the grinding
of minute teeth, there rose up in the child’s voice the words:
“Nobody must be loved but me. Nobody must be loved but me.”
They felt minute hands near their knees; they were parted by a little
child, who panted and breathed through her nostrils. They looked at
each other with eyes into which, very slowly, there came comprehension.
And then, over the little thing’s head, Katya repeated:
“Nobody must be loved but me. Nobody must be loved but me.” And with a
quick colour upon her cheeks and the wetness of tears in her eyes, “Oh,
poor child!” she said.
For in the words the child had given to her she recognized the torture
of her own passion.
That night quite late Katya descended the stairs upon tiptoe. She spoke
in a very low voice:
“The little thing’s been talking, talking,” she said, “the quaintest
little thoughts. I’ve seen it coming for days now. Sometimes I’ve seen
her lips moving. She’s the most precise enunciation in the world.”
“I wired Ellida this afternoon,” Robert Grimshaw said.
“Then Ellida will be down here by the last train?” Katya answered, and
he commented: “We’ve only got an hour.”
“But little Kitty,” she was beginning.
“No, no,” he interrupted. “Nobody must be talked about but us. Nobody
must be talked about but us. I’m as glad as you or Ellida or Paul could
possibly be about Kitty, but now that I have got you alone at last
you’re bound to face the music.”
“But little Kitty?” Katya said. She said it, however, only for
form’s sake, for Robert Grimshaw’s gentle face was set in a soft
inflexibility, and his low tones she knew would hold her to the mark.
She had to face the music. In the half-darkness his large eyes perused
her face, dark, mournful and tender. The low, long farmhouse room with
its cheap varnished furniture was softened by the obscure light from
the fire over which he had been standing for a very long hour.
“Is it the same terms, then?” he asked slowly, and she answered:
“Exactly the same.”
He looked down at the fire, resting his hand on the chimney-piece. At
last she said: “We might modify it a little;” and he moved his face, his
eyes searching the obscurity in which she stood, only one of her hands
catching the glow from the fire.
“I cannot modify anything,” he said. “There must be a marriage, by what
recognized rite you like, but--that.”
Her voice remained as level as his, expressing none of the longing, the
wistfulness, that were in her whole being.
“Nobody knew about mother,” she said. “Nobody seems to have got to know
now.”
“And you mean,” he said, “that now you consent to letting nobody know
it about you?”
“You did succeed,” she evaded him, “in concealing it about mother. It
was splendid of you! At the time I thought it wasn’t possible. I don’t
know how you managed it. I suppose nobody knows about it but you and me
and Ellida and Pauline.”
“You mean,” he pursued relentlessly, “you mean that now you consent to
letting nobody know it about you? Of course, besides us, my solicitor
knows--of your mother.”
“At the first shock,” she said, “I thought that the whole world must
know, and so I was determined that the whole world should know that I
hadn’t deserted her memory....” She paused for a wistful moment, whilst
inflexibly he reflected over the coals. “Have you,” she said, “the
slightest inkling of why she did it?”
He shook his head slowly; he sighed.
“Of course I couldn’t take you even on those terms--that nobody knew,”
he said, with his eyes still averted. Then he turned upon her, swarthy,
his face illumined with a red glow. The slow mournfulness of their
speeches, the warmth, the shadow, kept him silent for a long time.
“No,” he said at last, “there isn’t a trace of a fact to be found. I’m
as much in the dark as I was on that day when we parted. I’m not as
stunned, but I’m just as mystified.”
“Ah!” she said, “but what did you feel--then?”
“Did you ever realize,” he asked, “how the shock came to me? You
remember old Partington, with the grey beard? He asked me to call on
them. He sat on the opposite side of his table. He handed me the copy
of some notes your father had made for their instructions as to his
will. It was quite short. It ran: ‘You are to consider that my wife
and I were never married. I desire you to frame a will so phrased
that my entire estate, real and personal, should devolve upon my two
daughters, Ellida and Katharine, without revealing the fact that they
are illegitimate. This should not be difficult, since their mother’s
name, which they are legally entitled to bear, was the same as my own,
she having been my cousin.’” Grimshaw broke off his low monologue to
gaze again at her, when he once more returned his eyes to the coals.
“You understand,” he said, “what that meant to me. It was handed to me
without a word; and after a long time Partington said: f You understand
that you are your uncle’s heir-at-law--nothing more.”
Katya whispered: “Poor old Toto!”
“You know how I honoured your father and mother,” he said. “They were
all the parents I ever knew. Well, you know all about that.... And then
I had to break the news to you.... Good God!”
He drew his hands down his face.
“Poor old Toto!” Katya said slowly again. “I remember.”
“And you won’t make any amends?” he asked.
“I’ll give you myself,” she said softly.
He answered: “No! no!” and then, wearily, “It’s no good.”
“Well, I did speak like a beast to you,” she said. “But think what a
shock it was to me--mother not dead a month, and father not four days,
and so suddenly--all that. I’ll tell you how I felt. I felt a loathing
for all men. I felt a recoiling from you--a recoiling, a shudder.”
“Oh, I know,” he said, and suddenly he began to plead: “Haven’t you
injured me enough? Haven’t I suffered enough? And why?--why? For a mad
whim. Isn’t it a mad whim? Or what? I can understand you felt a recoil.
But ...”
“Oh, I don’t feel it now,” she said; “you know.”
“Ah yes,” he answered; “but I didn’t know till to-day, till just now
when you raised your arms. And all these years you haven’t let me know.”
“How did you know?” she asked. “How did you know that I felt it? But,
of course, you understand me even when I don’t speak.”
“It’s heaven,” he said, “to know that you’ve grown out of it. It has
been hell to bear the thought....”
“Oh, my dear! ...” she said.
“Such loneliness,” he said. “Do you know,” he continued suddenly,
“I came back from Athens? I’m supposed to be a strong-minded man--I
suppose I am a strong-minded man--but I turned back the moment I
reached Greece because I couldn’t bear--I could not bear the thought
that you might still shudder at my touch. Now I know you don’t, and ...”
“Ellida will be here soon,” Katya said. “Can’t you hear her train
coming down the valley ... there...? And I want to tell you what
I’ve found out about mother. I’ve found it out, I’ve made it out,
remembering what she said from day to day. I’ll tell you what it
was--it was trustfulness. I remember it now. It was the mainspring of
her life. I think I know how the very idea came into her mind. I’ve got
it down to little details. I’ve been inquiring even about the Orthodox
priests there were in England at the time. There wasn’t a single one!
One had just died suddenly, and there did not come a successor for six
months. And mother was there. And when she was a young thing, mother, I
know, had a supreme contempt--a bitter contempt--for all English ideas.
She got over it. When we children were born she became the gentlest
being. You know, that was what she always was to me--she was a being,
not a woman. When she came into the room she spread soothing around
her. I might be in paroxysms of temper, but it died out when she opened
the door. It’s so strong upon me that I hardly remember what she looked
like. I can’t remember her any more than I can conceive of the looks of
a saint. A saint!--well, she was that. She had been hot-tempered, she
had been contemptuous. She became what you remember after we were born.
You may say she got religion.”
Katya, her eyes full of light, paused; she began again with less of
exultation.
“I dare say,” she said, “she began to live with father without the
rites of the Church because there was no Church she acknowledged to
administer them; but later, she didn’t want them remember how she
always told us, ‘Trust each other, trust each other; then you will
become perfectly to be trusted.’ And again, she would never let us make
promises one to another. Don’t you remember? She always said to us:
‘Say that you will do a thing. Never promise--never. Your word must be
your bond.’ You remember?”
Grimshaw slowly nodded his head. “I remember.”
“So that I am certain,” she said, “that that was why she never married
father. I think she regarded marriage--the formality, the vows--as a
desecration. Don’t you see, she wanted to be my father’s chattel, and
to trust him absolutely--to trust, to trust! Isn’t that the perfect
relationship?”
Grimshaw said: “Yes, I dare say that is the explanation. But ...”
“But it makes no difference to you?” she pleaded. In the distance she
heard the faint grind of wheels.
“No,” he said, “not even if no one else knew it. I’m very tired; I’m
very lonely. I want you so; I want you with all my heart. But not
that--not that.”
“Not ever?” she said.
“No,” he answered; “I’ll play with my cards on the table. If I grow
very tired--very, very tired--if I cannot hold out any longer, well,
I may consent--to your living with me as your mother lived with your
father. But”--and he stood up briskly--“I’ll tell you this: you’ve
strengthened me--you’ve strengthened me in my motive. If you had
shuddered at me as you did on that day years ago, I think I should have
given in by now. But you didn’t any longer. You’ve come to me; you
raised your arms to me. Don’t you see how it has strengthened me? I’m
not alone any more; I’m not the motherless boy that I was.... Yes, it’s
heaven.”
Her hands fell by her side. The sound of wheels filled the room, and
ceased.
“If I’d repulsed you, you’d have given in?” she said.
The door fell violently back, and from the black and radiant figure of
Ellida came the triumphant cry: “Kitty’s spoken! Kitty’s spoken! You’ve
not deceived me!”
II
HE found Pauline Leicester in his dining-room upon his return to town.
Little and serious, and always with the tiny smile about her lips, she
was seated in his deep chair by the fireplace. He was happy and erect,
with Katya’s kisses still upon his lips, and for all the world he felt
a tenderness.
“I got your letter,” she said. “Miss Lascarides has come back; the
child has spoken. I suppose you are very happy?”
He feared to detect jealousy in her tones; he found only a
business-like precision.
“I was coming to dine with you,” he said. “Can’t you do with me?”
“Oh, we want you so much!” she said.
He had a sudden and black premonition.
“You’re not on bad terms with Dudley?” he asked.
“Tell me,” she said, “you were in town part of the time when Dudley was
all alone? Mother died, you know, a week after you left for Athens.”
“Oh, poor child!” Grimshaw answered.
Her lips moved a little.
“She suffered so much, poor dear; she was so brave.” She looked up at
him with a queer little smile. “I suppose were born to suffer. It’s up
to us to be brave.”
“Oh, but Dudley hasn’t been giving you trouble?” he asked. “You aren’t
on bad terms with him?”
“One could not be on bad terms with Dudley,” she answered. “But he’s
giving me trouble.”
“The hound!” Grimshaw answered.
“Oh, it isn’t what he does, it’s what he is,” she said quickly. She
rose and put her little hand upon his arm. “Tell me, Robert,” she said,
“what has happened to him He’s very ill.”
Grimshaw made a step back.
“Not tuberculosis, really?” he asked.
“I am sure he’s very ill,” she said, “mentally; he’s quite altered.
What’s to be done?”
“My poor girl,” Grimshaw voiced his tenderness and concern.
“Tell me,” she adjured him, “what happened to him? It’s something
that’s happened. He couldn’t do anything. Tell me the truth!”
“How should I know?” he asked. “How should I know?”
“Sometimes he’s quite the same; sometimes he’s gay--he’s too gay. And
then ...” She looked up. “He sits and thinks; he’ll sit silent for
hours. He’s not spoken a word all the morning. And then suddenly ...
he’ll shudder. And his eyes aren’t the same; they aren’t the same, you
understand. It’s as if he were afraid. Afraid! He cowers into a corner.
What is it, Robert? You know.”
Grimshaw was silent, pondering.
“Tell me!” she said. “You _shall_ tell me; you know. Is it
religious mania?”
Grimshaw shook his head.
“No, I don’t think it can be religious mania.” He added: “It might be
hypochondria--sheer anxiety about his health. He was always like that.”
“No,” she said, “he hasn’t been near a doctor. It can’t be that.” She
looked up at him with a little, birdlike gaze. “I know what it is,” she
said, “it’s another woman.”
Robert Grimshaw threw up his hands that were still gloved.
“You aren’t surprised,” she said, and there was about her whole figure
an air of a little and tender calmness. “It’s no good your feigning
surprise. I am sure you know all about it. Oh, I know what men are, and
women. I have been a nursery governess, you know. Isn’t it true that
there was another woman?” and, at his hesitation, she pleaded: “Tell me
the truth, there was!”
“Well, there was,” he said.
“And it was Etta Stackpole,” she accused him.
He saw her sit, looking down at the point of her umbrella.
“I’ve got to get him well,” she said. “Tell me the truth.”
“Yes, it was Lady Hudson,” he answered. “But you aren’t going to ...”
“Robert dear,” she said, with her little, clear, appealing voice.
“You can’t make such a mistake as to think that I am going to hamper
Dudley. It’s my task in life to keep him going. Think it out. I’m not
_really_ the girl to give ourselves away. I turned Dudley out of
my mother’s house. I ought not to have done it, but mother could not
bear him. Perhaps I valued mother more than Dudley--perhaps that was
wrong. But I’ve heard you say: ‘Do what you want and take what you get
for it.’ I’m taking what I get for it, and it’s easier to do it because
I know what men are.”
“It wasn’t Dudley’s doing,” Grimshaw said. “We can’t even tell...”
“Robert, dear,” she repeated, “I _have_ been a nursery-governess,
you know.”
“Oh yes,” he answered, “but you’re a woman too.”
“Oh yes,” she imitated him, “but I’m a woman of our class. Don’t you
see the two things I’ve learned? One is, that we can’t have what we
want. I may have wanted ... Well, that does not matter. But if I
couldn’t give, I could get--adoration. That’s all there is to it.”
Robert Grimshaw said suddenly: “Yes, you could make something out of
poor Dudley.”
“I won’t say that it doesn’t hurt,” she took him up: “it does. Or,
no, it doesn’t. Well, one can’t say.... Up in the nursery at the
Brigstocks’ there were great big clumsy boys. They adored me, and it
was my business to make men of them--at any rate, during the holidays.
Well, they’d disobey me. Sometimes they’d even deceive me--rather
meanly, in little things; and then they’d behave like Dudley. So that
I’m used to it on a small scale. It’s saddening that a man can’t be
quite true, even when he adores you; but he can’t. That’s all.”
She was buttoning up her little black gloves, and she stood up to go.
“Wouldn’t you like me,” Grimshaw asked, “to break it to him that you
know? I suppose he’s got to know it?”
“Of course he’s got to know it,” she said. “He’ll never be himself
as long as he’s trying to conceal it. But ... I think I’ll tell him
myself. You see, he might not like you to know; it might make him shy.
It’s best to drink one’s own black draughts.” But when she reached
the door she turned to say: “You might come along soon--quite soon. I
shan’t say more than three words to him. Your coming in might relieve
any strain. It would carry us over till bedtime.”
“I’ll be there well before lunch,” he said. “It’s twelve now.”
As they stood on the doorstep, he taking his farewell, she brought
out: “Mind, nobody’s to blame but me, from the beginning. If it hadn’t
been for mother, I don’t suppose I should have married Dudley. I knew
I could make a good wife for him; I know I can make a man of him, and
I know he adores me. But that isn’t everything. I can put him into the
sort of position he ought to occupy. But that’s only being a nursery
governess on a larger scale. It’s a good piece of work.... But--but
for mother ... oh, poor dear!”--she broke off, and the blue eyes that
gazed down the empty street were filmed over for a moment--“much it has
profited mother to have me off her hands. It’s five months now, and
she’s been dead thirteen days. Well, so long.”
She waved her hand minutely to him from the pavement, and exclaimed:
“Go in; you’ll take cold!” and then she seemed to be blown round the
corner into Curzon Street.
III
IN passing from the dining-room to his snuggery at the back of the
house, Dudley Leicester brushed against his tall hat. He took it from
the rack, and surveyed distastefully its ruffled surface.
“Saunders,” he called, “take this round to Tang’s. They’re to put a
band on it a half-inch deeper, and to iron it. I hate a hat that’s been
ruffled.”
“It _does_ mark a man off, sir,” Saunders said from the
dining-room door.
Saunders had been considering with his master the question of dark
shades in trousering, and the colloquial atmosphere seemed to remain in
the air.
“Now, what the devil do you mean by that?” Leicester asked. “Do you
mean it would help you to track him?”
“It helps you to place him, sir,” Saunders answered. He brushed the hat
with his sleeve, and surveyed it inscrutably. “If a gentleman doesn’t
know that his hat’s ruffled, it means that he’s something on his mind.
I mean, sir, it means that he belongs to the professional or merchant
class, or below that. It’s only gentlemen of leisure who can think of
their hats at all times.”
Dudley Leicester laughed.
“What an odd fish you are, Saunders,” he said. “Get along, man, with
the hat at once. I’m going to Mrs. Langham’s with your mistress just
after lunch.”
He lounged towards his snuggery, smiling to himself at the thought that
Katya Lascarides had again refused Robert Grimshaw, though he and she,
and Ellida and the child had been staying a week or more at Brighton
together.
“A funny job--what?” he said. He had developed the habit of talking
to himself whilst Pauline had been away. He looked at himself in the
rather smoky mirror that was over the black marble mantel of a gloomy
room. “What the deuce is it all about? She loves him like nuts; he’s
like a bee after honey. Why don’t they marry?”
Looking at himself in the mirror, he pulled down one of his eyelids to
see if he were not a little anæmic, for he had heard the day before
that if a man were at all anæmic, the inner flesh of the eyelid was
pale. A careful survey showed him that his eyelid was very red, and his
eyes watering. He muttered: “Cobwebs! That’s what it is! Cobwebs in the
brain....” He dropped himself into a deep, dark saddle-bag chair. In
twenty minutes it would be time for him to take his exercise. “Umph!
cobwebs!” he said. “Yes, I’ve had some of my own, but _I’ve_
broken through them. Poor old Robert! He hasn’t, though.”
He suddenly realized that he was talking aloud, and then the
telephone-bell rang at his elbow. He gave a grunt, swore, and switched
off the connection, so that it would ring in the butler’s pantry. And
when he had got over the slight shock to his nerves, he sat for some
time in silence. Suddenly he exclaimed: “What rot it was!”
He was thinking of what he called his cobwebs. It had all been a
trifle, except that Etta was a devil. He would like to flay her hide
with a whip. But he realized that it was impossible that Pauline should
have heard of it. At least, it was unlikely. If she had been going to
hear of it, she would have heard by now.
He stretched his arms behind his head, and rested his crown upon his
hands.
“Never felt so fit in my life,” he said, “never.”
Saunders--if Saunders knew--he wouldn’t go and blab to Pauline. What
good would it do him? Besides, Saunders was a decent sort; besides,
too, the fellow who had recognized his voice, probably he was a decent
sort, too. After all, blackmailers were not in his line. He doubted if
he had ever spoken to a real bad hat in his life for long enough to
let him recognize his voice.... And perhaps the whole thing had been a
trick of his nerves. He had certainly been nervy enough at the time.
“All cobwebs,” he said, “beastly cobwebs!”
Then all the dreadful fears that he had felt ... they were all nothing!
It would have broken Pauline’s heart.
“She’s had such rough times, little woman,” he said, “such beastly
rough times.”
But though his cobwebs had been imbecile enough, the remembrance of the
pain made him wince.
“By Jove! I was nearly mad,” he said.
He had felt insane desires to ask strangers--perfect strangers in the
street--whether they were the men who had rung up 4,259 Mayfair.
“By Jove!” he repeated again, “by Jove! And now it’s all over.”
He leaned back luxuriously in his chair; he stretched his long legs.
“Never so fit in my life,” he said; and he extended his long hand to
take from the desk at his side a little carved box that Pauline had
bought of a Japanese to hold his nail-scissors.
He had observed a little speck of dirt beneath the nail of his
forefinger. And in the pleasant well-being of the world he half dozed
away, the box held nearly to his nose. It exhaled a faint musky odour,
and suddenly his eyes opened as he jerked out of his day-dream.
“Etta!” he said, for the box exhaled the scent that Etta Hudson always
had about her--a sweet, musky, cobwebby odour....
“By God!” he said; and he crossed himself as he had learned to do in
St. Andrew’s, Holborn, where his wife worshipped.
The lines of his face seemed to decompose; his head fell forward; his
mouth opened. Pauline was closing the door after her silent entry. It
was a long, dusky slice of the rear-house, and he watched her approach,
wide-eyed and panic-stricken, as if she held an animal-trainer’s whip.
The little smile was about her lips when she stood over his huddled
figure in the light of the stained-glass window that had been put in to
hide the dreary vision of house-backs.
She held out her little gloved hand; her face was quite tranquil.
“She knows all about it,” he said, “Good God!”
“Dudley, dear,” she said, “I know all about it.”
IV
ROBERT GRIMSHAW was pushing the electric button beside the Leicesters’
entry when, hatless, the daylight falling on his ruffled hair, Dudley
Leicester flung open the door and ran down the street.
“Oh, go after him; go after him!” Pauline cried from the hall.
If Dudley Leicester had done anything at all in his life it was to run
at school. Thus it was a full minute before Grimshaw came to the door
of the little dark hat-ironing shop, in the middle of which Leicester
stood, leaning over the counter, holding by the waistcoat a small man
with panic-stricken blue eyes. Afterwards he heard that Leicester had
asked where his man Saunders was. But for the moment he had ceased to
shake the little hatter. And then, suddenly, he asked:
“Are you the chap who rang up 4,259 Mayfair?”
“Sir! sir!” the little man cried out. Dudley Leicester shook him and
shook him: a white band-box fell from the counter and rolled almost
into the street.
“Are you? Are you?” Dudley Leicester cried out incessantly.
And when the little man screamed: “No! no!” Leicester seized the heavy
rounded smoothing-iron and raised it to the height of his arm so that
it struck the brown, smoked ceiling. The little man ducked beneath the
counter, his agonized eyes gazing upwards.
But at Grimshaw’s cool, firm grasp upon his wrists, Leicester sank
together. He passed his hand so tightly down his face that the colour
left it, to return in a swift flush.
“I’ve got cobwebs all over my face,” he muttered, “beastly, beastly
cobwebs.”
He did not utter another word. Grimshaw, taking him firmly by the arm
above the elbow led him back to his house, of which the white door
still stood open.
The dark door of the snuggery at the end of the long passage closed
upon Leicester and Pauline, as if upon a deep secret. In the hall,
Robert Grimshaw remained standing, looking straight before him. It was,
perhaps, the first time that he had ever meditated without looking at
Peter, and the dog’s large and luminous eyes fixed upon his face were
full of uneasiness. Robert Grimshaw had always looked mature. In the
dreary illumination from the fanlight above the hall-door he seemed
positively old. The healthy olive colour of his clear, pale complexion
seemed to have disappeared in a deadly whiteness. And whilst he stood
and thought, and whilst, having gone into the dining-room, he sat deep
in a chair with Peter before him, the expression of his face deepened
gradually. At each successive progress of his mind from point to point,
his mouth, which was usually pursed as if he were pleasantly about to
whistle--his mouth elongated itself minutely, until at last the lips
turned downwards. He had been leaning back in his chair. He leaned
suddenly forward as if with fear and irresolution. His eyes saw nothing
when they rested upon the little brown dog that turned its quivering
muzzle up to his face.
He rose and stood irresolutely. He went setting down his feet very
gently on the marble squares of the hall. It was as if he crept to the
door of the room that held mystery. He could hear the voices of the
servants and a faint clicking of silver being laid upon a tray. But
from the room ... nothing!
He stood listening for a long time, then gently he turned the handle
and entered, standing near the door. Pauline Leicester was leaning
over her husband, who was sunk deep into his chair. He had an odd, a
grotesque aspect, of being no more than so many clothes carelessly
thrown down. She looked for a moment round at Robert Grimshaw, and then
again bent her tender face over her husband.
“Dudley, dear,” she said; “don’t you hear? It’s nothing. It’s all
nothing. Listen!” She raised her voice to repeat: “It is all nothing. I
have nothing against you.”
She remained seated on the arm of the chair, looking at him intently,
mournfully, almost as Peter looked at his master, and the little dog
paddling through the room stood up on its hind-legs to touch her hand
with the tip of its tongue. She began to speak again, uttering the
same words, repeating and repeating them, hoping that some at least
would reach his brain. He sat entirely still, hunched together, his
eyes looking as if they were veiled and long dead. Pauline had ceased
speaking again, when suddenly he passed his hand down his face from
brow to chin, and then, as if the sudden motion gave her the idea that
his brain might again have become alert, she repeated:
“Listen, Dudley dear....”
Her voice, clear and minute, continuing in a low monotone, had the
little flutings and little catches that so exactly and so exquisitely
fitted the small quaintnesses of expression. And to Robert Grimshaw she
appeared to look downwards upon Dudley, not as if she were expecting
him to answer, but with a tender expression of a mother looking at a
child many months before it can talk.
And suddenly she let herself down from the arm of the chair and glided
over to where, in the gloom, Robert Grimshaw was standing beside the
door. The little brown dog flapped after her over the floor.
“You had better go and get a doctor,” she said.
He answered hesitatingly: “Isn’t it a little early?” He added: “Isn’t
it a little early to take it that he’s definitely ill?”
“Oh, I’ve known that he’s been definitely ill for a long time,” she
answered. “I ought to have called in a doctor before, but I wanted to
consult you, so I waited. It was wrong. As it turns out, it was wrong,
too, my not letting you speak to Dudley instead of me. You think it
would hurt my feelings to hear a doctor say that he is actually mad.
But I’ve been through with it already. I know it. The only thing now is
treatment, and the sooner it begins the better.”
Grimshaw’s face set sharply in its painful lines.
“Don’t say that he’s mad,” he said, in the most commanding accent she
had ever heard him use.
“Just look at him,” she answered.
Dudley Leicester, with the air of a dissipated scarecrow ruined by
gambling, was gazing straight in front of him, sunk deep in his chair,
his eyes gazing upon nothing, his hands beating a tattoo upon the
leather arms.
“I won’t have you say it,” Robert Grimshaw said fiercely.
“Well, the responsibility’s mine,” she answered, and her tiny lips
quivered. “There’s my mother dead and Dudley mad, and I’m responsible.”
“No, I’m responsible,” Grimshaw said in a fierce whisper.
“Now come,” she answered; “if I hadn’t married Dudley, mother would
never have had her pony-chaise or got pneumonia ...”
“It was I that brought you together,” Grimshaw said.
“Oh! if you put it that way,” she answered; “there’s no end to who’s
responsible. You may say it was the Brigstocks. But the immediate
responsibility is mine. I ought to have called in a doctor sooner. I
ought not to have given him this shock. Don’t think I’m going to be
morbid about it, but that sums it up, and the only question is how the
thing is to be put straight. For that we want advice, and soon. The
only question is who’s to give it?”
“But what are the facts?” Robert Grimshaw asked.
“Oh! you know the facts,” she answered.
“I want a few details,” he responded, “to give to the man I go to. When
did it begin? Have you seen any signs of fever? Has he been off his
feed, and so on?”
Pauline opened the door gently. She looked over her shoulder to see
if Leicester had stirred. She held the door just ajar when she and
Grimshaw were outside.
“I used to think,” she said, “even when we were engaged, that there
was something a little strange about Dudley. It wasn’t an unpleasant
strangeness. No, it was an attraction. He used to be absent in his
manner at times. It was that gave me the idea that there might be
something in him. It gave an idea that he really had a brain that
stuck to something. Of course, when I twitted him with it, when I got
really to know him, I discovered--but that was only after we were
married--that he was only thinking about his health. But since we’ve
been married he’s beep quite different. I don’t believe you really know
Dudley. He is very quiet, but he does observe things, and he’s got a
little humour of his own. I don’t suppose anyone else has ever noticed
it, but it is there. His fits of strangeness before we were married
were very much like this. Not so wild, but still like this in kind.”
She opened the door and peeped in. Dudley Leicester was sitting where
he had been.
“As to fever--no, I haven’t noticed that he’s had any fever. He’s eaten
very well, except when these fits of gloom were on him; then it was
almost impossible to get him to the table. I don’t know when I noticed
it first. He came down for mother’s funeral, and it seemed to me to be
natural that he should be depressed. But in between these fits he’s
been so nice, so nice!”
“I’ll ‘phone to Sir William Wells,” Grimshaw said; “I’ll ‘phone at
once.”
“Oh, don’t ‘phone. Go!” she answered.
He hesitated markedly:
“Well, then, have Saunders with you in the room,” he said, “or just
outside the door.”
She looked up at him for a moment, her blue eyes wide.
“Oh, _that_!” she said. “You don’t need to have the least fear for
me. Don’t you understand--if he is mad, what it is that has driven him
mad?”
He looked down upon her with a deep tenderness.
“I suppose it’s the shock,” he said.
“Oh no,” she answered. “It isn’t that; it’s his feeling for me. Haven’t
you heard him say a hundred times: ‘Poor little woman! she’s had such
a beastly time!’ Don’t you understand? The quality of his love for me
was his desire to protect me. It’s funny, isn’t it?--funny enough to
make you cry. He thought I’d had such a bad time that it was up to
him to keep every kind of trouble from me. He’s done something--with
Etta Hudson. Well, and ever since he’s been dreading that it should
get to my ears--and me in mourning for dear mother, and he alone and
dreading--oh, _dreading_. And not a soul to speak to....”
Again she looked up into Grimshaw’s eyes--and he was filled with an
intolerable pity. She smiled, quaintly and bravely.
“You see,” she said, “he was not afraid of what I should do but of what
I should feel. I woke up and found him crying one night. Funny, isn’t
it? that anyone should cry--about me. But I suppose he was feeling all
that he thought _I_ should feel. He was identifying himself with
me. And now he’s like that, and I don’t feel anything more about it.
But,” she added, “that ought to satisfy you that I’m quite safe.”
“Ah,” he said, “but so often--these strong passions take exactly the
opposite turn. Do have Saunders handy.”
“Robert, dear,” she said, “if he’s mad enough for that, I should not
mind his killing me. I should be glad.”
“Oh, dear child,” he answered, “would that be the way to help you to
make a man of him?”
She reflected for a moment.
“Robert,” she said, “how right you always are! I seem to be so wise
to myself until you prove how wrong I always am. I thought it the
right way for me to speak to Dudley. If I only _had_.... And oh,
Robert,” she said, “how good you are to us! How could we get on without
you?”
He said suddenly, as if it were a military command:
“Don’t say that. I forbid it!” He added more softly: “I’ll go to Sir
William Wells at once. Katya says he’s the best man of the kind in
London.”
“She ought to know,” she said. “Yes; go quickly. I’ve kept you talking
only so as to let you know all there is to know. It’s difficult for a
wife to talk about these things to a doctor. He might not believe it
if I said that Dudley was so fond of me. But _you_ know, and you
may make him believe it. For it all turns on that.... But I will have
Saunders within call till you come back with him....”
She went into the room, and, having touched the bell, stood looking
down upon her husband with a contemplation of an infinite compassion.
In the light of the stained glass at the end of a long passage of
gloom she brought tears into Grimshaw’s eyes, and an infinite passion
and tenderness into his whole being. His throat felt loosened, and
he gasped. It was a passion for which there was neither outlet nor
expression. He was filled with a desire for action without having any
guidance as to what it was that he desired to do.
And the discreet Saunders, coming up the servants’ steps to answer the
bell, saw his master’s friend strike himself suddenly on the high white
forehead a hard blow with his still gloved hand.
“Ah! I thought it would come to that,” he said to himself.
V
“WELL, you aren’t looking very chirpy,” Etta Stackpole said.
“I’m not feeling it,” Robert Grimshaw answered.
He was leaning over the rails in the Row, and Etta Stackpole sat on a
huge chestnut that, its body motionless as a statue, its legs planted
wide apart, threw its arched neck from time to time into the air, and
dispersed great white flakes of foam.
“Time goes on, too,” he continued. “It goes on, and it’s only you that
it passes by.”
“Thanks,” she said, and she touched her hat with her crop.
With the clitter of stirrups and the creak of leather and the
indistinguishable thud of hoofs, the riders went by behind her in twos
and threes. Behind his back was the perpetual crushing of feet and
whisper of innumerable conversations, conducted in discreet undertones.
It was a place of a myriad rustlings and small, pleasant sounds; and
along the great length of the Row, vanishing into the distance, the
young green of the leaves swayed in the April breezes. A huge cloud
toppled motionless above the barracks, pink against the blue sky and
dull in its softened shadows.
Robert Grimshaw had walked along nearer the rails than was his habit
until he came to where Etta Stackpole--it was just as much her habit,
so that he had known where to find her--was talking to three men in
her brilliant way. And raising his head, Robert Grimshaw had inserted
himself between Hugo van Voss, a Dutch Jew beginning to show adiposity,
and Charles McDiarmid, who, with his grey peaked beard and slight lisp,
was asking why she hadn’t come to the Caledonian Market last Tuesday to
look for bargains in the bric-à-brac that is displayed there upon the
broad flagstones.
“Oh, I’m not a bit gone on bric-à-brac really,” she said, “and it’s the
most tiring thing in the world.”
“Well, Hugo there,” McDiarmid lisped slightly, in his gentle and
sibilant tones, “got a Chinese tapestry in scarlet silk as big as the
side of the Ritz, with realistic dragons and mandolines embroidered on
it in sky-blue and purple. He got it for thirteen and sixpence, and
he’s going to make dressing-gowns out of it.”
Van Voss protested inaudibly.
“Oh, you are, you know you are,” McDiarmid asserted gaily, “and we’re
going to carry you in triumph down the Mall. Get Van Voss to give you
one, Lady Hudson, and get Grimshaw here to drive you down to Bushey on
a coach labelled ‘Queen of Sheba.’”
“He doesn’t take me anywhere any more,” Etta Hudson said.
And Grimshaw answered desultorily:
“Only give me a chance.”
Etta Hudson sustained, with a brilliant indifference, the glances from
the half-closed eyes of McDiarmid and those of the dark, large, rather
insolent and inscrutable orbs of the stockbroker.
“Oh yes,” she said to Grimshaw. “You take me down to Bushey again. I’m
booked up three deep for the next six months, but I’ll chuck anybody
you like except my dressmaker.”
“Booked up?” Robert Grimshaw leant over the rails to say. “Yes, we’re
all booked up. We’re an idle, useless crowd, and we never have an
instant to do anything that we like.”
McDiarmid, reaching over a long claw, caught hold of the shiny
financier, and, hauling him off up the Row, seemed to involve him in a
haze of monetary transactions. He was, indeed, supposed at that moment
to be selling Van Voss a castle on the Borders, where the King had
stayed.
“Well, we used to be chummy enough in the old days,” Etta Hudson said.
“Yes, you take me down to Bushey again. Don’t you remember the time we
went, and Dudley stopped at home because he thought he was sickening
for the measles?”
It was then, after their eyes had encountered for a long minute, that
Etta Hudson had said that Robert Grimshaw wasn’t looking very chirpy.
Except for the moments when their eyes did meet--the moments when each
wondered what the deuce the other was up to--Etta Hudson flung out her
words with an admirable naturalness:
“Oh, take a pill, and don’t talk about the passing years,” she said.
“It’s the spring that’s crocking you up. Horses are just like that.
Why, even Orlando here stumbles at the fall of the leaf and about
Chestnut Sunday. Yes, you take me down to Bushey. You know you’ll
find me as good as a tonic. I should say you’re having an overdose
of too-brainy society. Doesn’t Dudley’s wife go in for charity
organization or politics? She’s a sort of a little wax saint, isn’t
she, got up to look like a Gaiety girl? I know the sort. Yes, you tell
me about Dudley Leicester’s wife. I’d like to know. That’s a bargain.
You take me down to Bushey and talk about Dudley Leicester’s wife all
the way down, and then you can talk about me all the way up, and we’re
quits.”
Robert Grimshaw raised his eyes till, dark and horseshoe-like, they
indicated, as it were, a threat--as it were, a challenge.
“If you put it up to me to that extent,” he said, “I’ll bet you a new
riding-habit that you look as if you could do with, that you won’t come
down and lunch in Bushey to-day.”
“What’s the matter with my habit?” she said. “I’ve had it six years.
If it’s been good enough for all that time, it’s good enough for now.
Give me time to say a word to old Lady Collimore. My husband wants me
to keep in with her, and she’s got a new astrologer living with her as
a P. G. I won’t be five minutes after I’ve spoken to her, and then I’m
your man.”
“You’ll come in these things?” Grimshaw said.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she answered. “It’s just popping into a
taxi-cab and getting out at the Park gates and walking across the
Park, and having lunch at one of those little ‘pub’ places, and then
I suppose you’ll let the taxi drop me at the door. You won’t turn me
adrift at the Marble Arch, or send me home by tram?”
“Well, you are like a man,” Robert Grimshaw said. “You look like a man,
and you talk like a man....”
She tapped her horse with her crop.
“Oh, I’m all right,” she said. “But I wish--I wish to hell I had been
one,” she called over her shoulder, whilst slowly she walked her horse
along by the railings, searching with her eyes for the venerable figure
and tousled grey hair emerging centaur-like from its bath-chair--the
figure of the noted Lady Collimore, who had mysterious gifts, who had
been known to make top-hats perform the feat of levitation, and whose
barrack-like house at Queen’s Gate had an air of being filled with
astrologers, palmists, and faith-healers.
And the first thing that, bowler-hatted and in her tight habit, Etta
Hudson said to Grimshaw in the taxi-cab was:
“Now tell me the truth. Is everything that I’m going to say likely to
be used as evidence against me?”
“Oh, come, come!” Robert Grimshaw said.
They were whirled past the tall houses and the flitting rails. They
jerked along at a terrific rate down through Kensington until, falling
into a stream of motor-propelled vehicles near the Albert Hall, their
speed was reduced to a reasonable jog-trot.
“Then you only want to know things,” Etta Stackpole said. “You see, one
never can tell in these days what who’s up to. There’s no reason why
you shouldn’t have fixed it up with Leicester’s wife. She can divorce
him and have you.”
“Oh, it’s nothing of that sort,” Grimshaw said.
She looked him up and down with her eyes, curious and scrutinizing.
“I should have thought,” she said, “that she would have preferred you
to Dudley. I’m only telling you this that you mayn’t think me mad,
suspecting the other thing, but I see you from my window going into
Dudley’s house, with your dog behind you. And I should have said that
that child preferred you to Dudley, or would jolly well find out her
mistake after she’d married him.”
“Oh, it’s nothing of that sort,” Grimshaw reiterated.
“I’ll take your word for it,” she answered. “So I expect it’s only
curiosity that brought you here. Why do you always want to know such
a jolly lot about people? It must give you a lot of trouble, and you
don’t make anything out of it.”
“My dear child,” Robert Grimshaw said, “why do you always...?” He
hesitated and she put in mockingly:
“Go in for cutting-out expeditions. That is what was on the tip of your
tongue, wasn’t it, Robert? I’ve heard you say that of me from half a
dozen sources. Well, I’ll tell you. I do what I do because I want to.
It’s a hobby.”
“And I do what I do because I want to,” Robert Grimshaw mocked her.
“It’s my hobby. We’re Eve and the serpent. You want the apple and I
want--I’ve got the knowledge.”
“You have, have you?” she said. And when Grimshaw answered in the
affirmative, she uttered a long and reflective, “Ah!” And then suddenly
she said, “But this isn’t in the contract. You ought to talk about
Dudley’s wife all the way down to Bushey. Tell me about her!”
They were whirling through the dirty and discoloured streets of
Hammersmith, while pieces of waste-paper flew up into the air in the
wind of their passage. It was a progress of sudden jerks, long, swift
rushes, and of sudden dodgings aside.
“Ah, Pauline Leicester!” Grimshaw said; “you haven’t got to fear her
on one side, but you have on another. She’s a quaint, dear, cool,
determined little person. I shouldn’t advise you to do Dudley Leicester
any more harm because, though she’s not in the least bit revengeful,
she won’t let you play any more monkey-tricks to damage poor Dudley.
Don’t you make the mistake of thinking she’s only a little wax doll.
She’s much more dangerous than you could ever be, because she doesn’t
spread herself so much abroad. You’ve damaged poor Dudley quite enough.”
A sudden light came into her fierce eyes.
“You don’t mean to say ...” she said.
“Oh, I don’t mean to say,” he answered, “Dudley’s perishing of passion
for you, and I don’t mean to say that you’ve spread dissension between
Dudley and Pauline. It’s worse than that ...”
“What is it; what the deuce is it?” she interrupted him.
“Ah,” he said, “that’s not in the contract! You shall hear as soon
as we’re in Bushey Park, not before. We’re going to talk of Pauline
Leicester all the way down.”
“I hear Katya Lascarides has come back,” she said. “Well, then, about
your Pauline.”
“Well,” Grimshaw said, “I’ve said you haven’t got to fear Pauline’s
taking any revenge on you, but you have got to fear that she’ll upset
your little game with Dudley Leicester.”
“What’s my little game with Dudley, anyhow?” she said. “I don’t want
him.”
“What Pauline’s going to do is to make a man of him,” Robert Grimshaw
said. “She’ll put some life into him. She’ll put some backbone into
him. He’ll end up by being a pretty representative County Member. But
your game has always been to make a sort of cross between a puppy and a
puppet out of him. It’s that little game that Pauline will spoil.”
She turned a furious red.
“Now, before God,” she said, “I’d have made a good wife to him. You
haven’t the right to say that to me, Robert Grimshaw.” And she picked
furiously at her thick riding-gloves with one hand after the other. “By
Jove, if I’d my crop with me, I think I should lay it over your back.”
“You couldn’t lay it over my back,” he said placidly, “because I’m
sitting down; but I’m not insulting you in that way. I dare say you’d
have been perfectly faithful to Dudley--faithful and probably furiously
jealous too; but you wouldn’t have made a man of him. He’d have lived a
sort of doll’s life under your petticoats. You’d probably have made him
keep a racing-stable, and drop a pot of money at Monte Carlo, and drop
another pot over bridge, and you’d have got him involved all round, and
he’d have dragged along somehow whilst you carried on as women to-day
do carry on. That’s the sort of thing it would have been. Mind! I’m
not preaching to you. If people like to live that sort of life, that’s
their business. It takes all sorts to make a world, but ...”
Lady Hudson suddenly put her hand upon his knee.
“I’ve always believed, Robert Grimshaw,” she said--“I always _did_
believe that it was you who made Dudley break off from me. You’re the
chap, aren’t you, that made him look after his estates, and become a
model landowner, and nurse the county to give him a seat? All that sort
of thing.”
“I’m the chap who did look after his estates,” Robert Grimshaw said.
“I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have influenced Dudley Leicester
against you; I didn’t, as a matter of fact. I never said a word against
you in my life; but it’s possible, of course, that my taking up his
land business, out of sheer meddlesomeness, may have influenced him
against you. Dudley’s got more in him than appears on the surface. Or,
at least, he can stick straight in a way if he is put into it, and just
about that time Dudley got it into his head that he had a duty to his
county and his country, and so on ...”
Etta Stackpole’s fingers moved convulsively.
“Oh, my man,” she said, “what the deuce’s business was it of yours? Why
couldn’t you have let him alone?”
“I’m telling you the worst of what I did to you,” Robert Grimshaw
said. “I didn’t take Dudley Leicester from you. I’ve never said a word
against you, but I probably kept him from coming back to you once he
had thrown you over. I don’t mean to say that I did it by persuasions;
he was dogged enough not to come back, but I dare say he would have
returned to you if he hadn’t had his mind occupied--if I hadn’t
occupied his mind with barn-roofs and rents and field-draining, and the
healthy sort of things that keep a man off women.”
“Oh, you devil!” Etta Hudson said.
“Who’d have thought you had it in you? Where do you get it from? You
look just like any other Park loafer.”
“I suppose,” Robert Grimshaw said speculatively, “it’s because I’m
really Greek. My name’s English, and my training’s been English, and I
look it, and smell it, and talk it, and dress the part; but underneath
I should think I’m really a Dago. You see, I’m much more my mother’s
child than my father’s. She was a Lascarides, and that’s a clan name.
Belonging to a clan makes you have what no Englishman has--a sense of
responsibility. I can’t bear to see chaps of my class--of my clan and
my country--going wrong. I’m not preaching; it’s my private preference.
I can’t bear it because I can’t bear it. I don’t say that you ought to
feel like me. That’s your business.”
“My _word_!” Etta Hudson said with a bitter irony, “we English are
a lost race, then!”
“I never said so,” Robert Grimshaw answered. “I said you were an
irresponsible one. You’ve other qualities, but not that one. But that’s
why I’ve been a sort of Dutch uncle to numbers of young men of our
class. Dudley’s not the only one, but he _is_ the chief of them.”
“And so you took him up, and dry-nursed him, and preached to him ...”
“Oh, I never preached to him,” Grimshaw said; “he had the intelligence
to see ...”
“To see that I’m an undesirable woman?” she asked ironically.
“To see, if it’s held under his nose, that it’s profitable and
interesting and healthy to do the best for the people that Chance,
Providence, whatever it is, has put under him in this world. It helps
them; it helps him. He’s got a desire by now to be a good landlord.
It’s a languid desire, but it’s as much a part of him as his desire to
dress well.”
Etta Stackpole said:
“By gum!”
They were dodging between a huge electric tram and the kerb of a narrow
street beside a grim and squalid brewery; they dipped down under a
railway arch; they mounted a rise, and ran beside a green, gay with
white painted posts and rails, and surrounded by little houses. Etta
looked meditatively in front of her with an air as if she were chewing
tobacco.
“By thunder, as Clemmy van Husum says,” she brought out at last, “you
dry-nursed him till he’s good enough for marrying a little person
you’ve kept in a nursery, and she----”
“She takes charge!” Robert Grimshaw said. “She’ll give him personal
ambition, or if she doesn’t do that she’ll make him act just as if he
had it, in order to please her. He’d kiss the dust off her feet.”
“Thanks,” she said spitefully. “_Rub_ it in.”
The cab swayed along in the gay weather.
“What a father-protector you are,” she said, “according to your own
account, and all because you’re a--what is it?--a Dago? Well, well!
you’ve got all the virtues of Greece and all the virtues of us too.
Well, well, well!”
“Oh, come, come,” Robert Grimshaw said. “I’ve given you your opening;
you’re quite right to take it. But I’ve not the least doubt that I’ve
got the Dago vices if any pressure came to bring ’em out. I dare say I
shouldn’t be straight about money if I were hard up. Fortunately, I’m
not. I dare say I should be untruthful if I ever had occasion to be.
I should be rather too tender-hearted and too slack to get on in the
world if I had to do it--at least, I suppose so.”
She said:
“Well, _well_! _Here’s_ a joke! Here we have--what is it?--a
Dago--a blamed Dago, as Clement P. would say.”
“You know the Van Husums?” Grimshaw interrupted her.
“Oh, I thought I’d tickle you,” she said. “Yes, I know the Van Husums,
and your Katya Lascarides was in their employment, wasn’t she? But I’m
not going to talk of your other flame, Mr. Robert Hurstlett Grimshaw.
You don’t play your Oriental harem trick in this taxi-cab. One man one
girl’s the motto here. I only introduced Clement P.’s name to stir you
up; you’re so _damn_ calm.”
“This is a fight,” Grimshaw said. “You score one and go on.”
“What are we fighting for?” she asked.
“Ah! that’s telling,” he said.
“If you only want to tell me I’m a bad, bad girl,” she said, “I know it
already. I’m rather proud of it.”
“You ought to be,” he said; “you play up to it well. But it’s not that
that would have brought me here. I’ve got an object.”
“Want to make me promise to leave your adopted nephew in peace?” she
asked.
“Oh, Pauline’s taken hold again,” Grimshaw said. “You aren’t going to
have another look in.”
“Oh, I’ve had all I want of him,” she said. “She can have the dregs.”
“That’s a pretty appropriate word at present,” he said. “A good word
for Dudley--dregs.”
“What the deuce do you mean?” she asked. “Anything happened to Dudley?”
“You’ll hear when we get to Bushey,” he said. “I’ll tell you when we
pass the fifth chestnut of the avenue.”
“What the deuce is it?” she asked.
He answered merely:
“Ah!”
Her hard eyes gazed straight forward through the screen of glass.
“Something happened to Dudley?” she said. “And it’s not that his wife’s
lamning into him about me.”
“Oh, Pauline takes it as the negligible thing that it was,” Grimshaw
said.
She uttered:
“Thanks!” still absently. Then “Dregs?” she repeated. Suddenly she
turned upon him and caught hold of his hand.
“It’s not ...” she began.
“You’ll hear when we get to Bushey,” he said. “It’s ten minutes still.”
“Oh, you devil!” she said--“you tormenting devil!”
He just lifted up one hand in token of assent.
“Yes, it’s the function of the devil to torment the damned. You’ve had
what you wanted in Dudley Leicester’s case; now you’ve got to take what
you get for it--from his best friend.”
“His wife’s best friend,” she said.
“And his wife’s best friend,” Grimshaw repeated calmly. They were
shooting fast over bad roads between villas. Etta Stackpole may have
shaken with laughter, or it may have been merely a “Thankee, marm” in
the road.
“Well, it’s a damn funny thing,” she said. “Here’s our Dago God
Almighty splitting himself to set up a bright and beautiful English
family upon its respectable legs. What a lark! I suppose it’s out of
gratitude to the land that gives him hospitality. He picks up a chap
without a backbone and turns him into a good landlord. Then, when
he’s made (I suppose you have made) perfectly sure of his morals, he
hands him over to a bright and beautiful English girl ‘of good family
and antecedents’ (that’s the phrase, ain’t it?), and she’s to run the
dummy along till it turns into a representative Cabinet Minister--not
brilliant, but a good household article. That’s the ticket, isn’t it?”
Grimshaw nodded his head slowly.
“And so the good old bachelor makes a little family for himself--a
little harem that doesn’t go farther than the tea-table--with what
he can get of Katya Lascarides for Sultana No. 1 and Ellida Langham
and child for No. 2. No. 2’s more platonic, but it’s all the same
little dilly-dally, Oriental, father-benefactor game; and No. 3’s
Pauline--little pretty Pauline. Oh, my eye!”
She regarded the gates of the Park flying towards them.
“What is it the Orientals allowed? Four wives and forty of the other
sort? Well, I suppose you’ve plenty of lesser favourites. Why not take
me on, too?”
“Oh, you!” Grimshaw said good-humouredly--“you’d always be upsetting
the apple-cart. You’d have to be bow-stringed.”
“I believe a sort of Sultan father-confessor would be good for me,” she
said, as she gathered her skirts together.
The car had stopped near the dingy yellow Park wall, whose high gates
showed the bourgeoning avenue and the broad, sandy road.
“Well, this has been what you might call a _conversation galante_
so far.”
VI
THEY passed the little weather-beaten and discoloured lodge, waited for
half a dozen deer that with delicate and nonchalant footsteps passed
from the light of the broad road into the shade of the avenue; then
they followed them into the aisle between the columnar trunks, the
vista stretching to an infinite distance. The deep silence of the place
seemed to render them both speechless. She walked, holding her long
skirts held high.
Suddenly Grimshaw said: “Here’s the fifth tree.”
She answered: “I don’t want to hear what’s happened to him.”
“Ah, but you’ve got to.”
She averted her face.
“I know,” she said.
“You’ve heard?”
Her voice was rather muffled when she said: “No. I prophesied it. He’s
had a panic. Perhaps he’s cut his throat. I don’t want to know. It
serves him right.”
“He is mad,” Grimshaw said slowly.
She stood quite still with her back to him. Her broad shoulders heaved.
“All right, it’s my fault,” she said. “You needn’t rub it in. Go away.”
“I’m not saying it’s your fault,” he said. “The point is whether he’s
curable or not. You might possibly help us.”
She stood quite still.
“Why should I want to help you?” she said.
He looked at her statuesque limbs. Beyond her the level grass stretched
out. The little company of deer wandered from a patch of cloud shadow
into a patch of sunlight. The boughs of a small enclosure, heightened
by vivid greens, shook in the April wind.
“Oh, don’t take it too hard,” he said. “I know what it’s like.”
She faced suddenly round upon him, her eyes rather staring.
“Who’s taking it hard?” she said. “Let him rot.” She added: “You devil,
to tell me not to take it hard! What do you know about it? Go and give
someone else hell. I’ve done with you.”
She began to walk away between the trees. After a while he followed her.
“Look here,” he said, “if ...”
She turned violently upon him, her eyes staring, her mouth drawn into a
straight line.
“By God!” she threw out, “if you follow me, I’ll throttle you!”
“Listen,” he said. He called after her: “I don’t believe it’s really
your fault. I’ll wait here and tell you why when you’re ready to hear.”
She walked away fast, and then, finding that he did not pursue her, she
wandered slowly and aimlessly between the tree-trunks. Close to him
a bole of one of the great trees formed a table about knee-high. He
took off his silk hat, and, holding it in his hand, sat down. His face
was an ashy white, and slowly little drops of sweat came out upon his
high forehead. He rose and went into the road, looking upwards along
the avenue. At a little distance she stood leaning one hand against a
tree-trunk, her head bowed down, her long skirt falling all around her
feet, a tall and motionless figure, shadowy and grey amongst the young
green.
He returned to his bole. After a long time another small company of
deer passed quite close at hand. Suddenly they quickened their pace,
their feet rustling on the turf.
“Well,” Etta Hudson said from close beside him, “what is it you want?”
He said: “It’s like this: three days ago Dudley Leicester seemed to
go mad. He assaulted a man after asking him an apparently senseless
question. We have had him under observation ever since. And he’s twice
stopped strangers in the street and asked them the same question.
When they’ve answered ‘No’ he attempts to assault them. He’s got an
attendant now, and if he’s headed off before he can ask the question
he’s calm enough; but he won’t speak a word.”
Etta said: “You might let me sit down there; I can’t stand.” And when
she was on the bole she asked expressionlessly: “What’s the question he
asks?”
“It’s always,” Grimshaw said, “whether the man--a perfect
stranger--rang up your telephone number.”
Etta Stackpole said: “Ah! ...”
She sat silent for a long time, looking down at the ground, Grimshaw
standing before her and looking musingly at her face.
“Well, what is it you want to know?”
“I want to know,” he said, “what happened on the night he saw you home.”
“I didn’t think,” she said expressionlessly, “that you could play the
cad as well as the private detective.”
Robert Grimshaw uttered sharply the one word, “Rot!”
“Well, it’s a cad’s question, and you must have played the private
detective to know that he saw me home.”
“My dear woman,” he said, “don’t the Phyllis Trevors know it, and Mme.
de Mauvesine, and Mme. de Bogota, and half London. I am not making any
accusations.”
“I don’t care a pin if you are,” she said.
“It’s merely a question of this sort,” he went on. “The doctor who’s
in charge of the case wants to know whether he had any shock on that
night. He wasn’t by any chance knocked down at a crossing? He didn’t
fall? The cab horse hadn’t been down?” She shook her head minutely.
“There wasn’t any violent scene? Your husband ...”
“Oh, he ...” she said. “Besides, he was in Paris.” Suddenly she broke
out: “Look here, you don’t know what this means to me. I don’t mean to
say that Leicester’s very much to me, but still, it’s pretty sickening
to have it happen to him.”
“Well”--Grimshaw conceded a point--“I’m not saying that it’s your
fault.”
“Oh, I’m not worrying about whose fault it is,” she said. “It’s him.
It’s the thought of him, poor harmless devil!” She looked up at
Grimshaw. “What doctor have you got? What does he say?”
“We’ve got a man called Wells,” he answered. “He doesn’t say much
either way. He says he can’t tell till he knows what happened.”
She scrutinized his face.
“Look here,” she said, “this _is_ true? You aren’t merely telling
me a tale to get things out of me?” Grimshaw did not even answer her
before she looked desolately down again. “Of course it’s true,” she
said; “you aren’t that sort.”
“And you knew I knew already that he saw you home and that he stayed
two hours,” Grimshaw said. “What I want to know is what gave him a
shock.”
“Ah! ... you’d get that from his servant,” she said. “He’d be sitting
up for Dudley. Well, I don’t care about that; I’d fight any case on
that.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Grimshaw said. “I promise you that Pauline ...”
“Don’t you,” she said suddenly, and clenching her hands, “don’t you
mention that little pink toad to me, if you want to get anything out of
me. I hate her and I hate you! You got Dudley away from me together.
Why, it’s been like devils and angels fighting for a man’s soul. That’s
what it’s _been_. I’m a religious woman, though you mayn’t believe
it. I believe in angels and the devil, too.” She pulled her skirt a
little up from the ground. “I expect you’ll say,” she began again,
“that you’re on the side of the angels. Well, see what you’ve made of
him, poor dear! This wouldn’t have happened if you’d left him to me.
It’s you that are responsible for it all--you, poking your nose into
what doesn’t concern you.”
“Ah!” he said slowly and rather mournfully, “perhaps it has turned
out like that if we get outside and look on. But as to which of us is
which--angel and devil--I should not care to say.”
She looked up at him.
“You wouldn’t?” she said.
“You see,” he said, and he shook his head slowly, “perhaps it’s only
a case of a square peg and a round hole. I don’t know. If you’d had
him you’d have let him be a loafer all his life. Perhaps that’s all
he’s really fitted for. Possibly, by shoving him on to do things,
Pauline and I--or I principally--have brought this sort of thing on.
Englishmen haven’t any sense of responsibility. Perhaps it’s bad for
them to have it aroused in them. They can work; they can fight; they
can do things; but it’s for themselves alone. They’re individualists.
But there is a class that’s got the sense of duty to the whole. They’ve
got a rudimentary sense of it--a tradition, at least, if not a sense.
And Leicester comes of that class. But the tradition’s dying out. I
suppose it was never native to them. It was forced on them because
_someone_ had to do the public work and it was worth their while.
But now that’s changing, it isn’t worth while. So no doubt Dudley
hadn’t got it in his blood.... And yet I don’t know,” he said; “he’s
shaped so well. I would have sworn he had it in him to do it with
careful nursing. And Pauline had it in her--the sense of the whole, of
the clan, the class, the county, and all the rest of it. Women have it
much more often than men. That’s why she isn’t going for you. Only the
other day she said to me: ‘I’m not the sort of girl to give ourselves
away.’”
“Now, look here,” she said, “what right have you, a confounded
foreigner, to run us down? We take you up; we let you be one of us,
and then you gas. There’s a great deal too many of you in the country.
Taken as you are, on your own showing, poor dear Dudley, that you
patronize--damn you--is worth a score of you. If you’re so set on the
public service why isn’t it you who’s standing for Parliament instead
of him? You’re ten times as rich. You’ve a hundred times more the gift
of the gab ...” and she broke off, to begin again.
“Whatever you can say of him,” she said “he doesn’t go nosing out
secrets and peeping and prying. He is straight and clear, and as
innocent as a baby, and as honest as a die....”
“If he’s as honest as a die,” Robert Grimshaw said, “why was he
carrying on an intrigue with you all that time? He must have been
pretty deep to keep it concealed from me.”
She looked up at him with pale fury.
“Oh, you horrible-minded man!” she said. “How dare you! How dare you!
You may kick me as much as you like. I am down. But you let Dudley
Leicester alone. He’s too decent to be jumped on by a man like you.”
Grimshaw displayed a sudden and incomprehensible agitation.
“Then he hadn’t been carrying on with you?” he said.
“Carrying on with me?” she mocked him, but with a bitter scorn. “Do you
mean to say that you suspected him of that? I suppose you suspected
him of fooling about with me before he was married to his Pauline, and
after? What an unspeakable toad of a mind you’ve got!”
Robert Grimshaw said, “Good God!”
She struck her hip with her clenched hand. “I see it,” she said,
“you thought Dudley Leicester had seized the chance of his wife’s
mother being ill to monkey about with me. You thought he’d been doing
it before. You thought he was going to go on doing it. You thought
he’d managed to conceal it from you. You thought he was a deep, dark
ne’er-do-well like yourself or any other man. But I tell you this:
Dudley Leicester’s a man in a thousand. I’m the only person that’s to
blame. I tell you Dudley Leicester hasn’t spoken a word to me since the
day we parted. I tell you I got him just that one night to show myself
what I could do. He couldn’t help being with me; he had to see me home.
We were all at the Esmeralda together, and all the rest of us were
married, or engaged or coupled up somehow. He _had_ to see me home
as we lived next door. He did it with the worst grace in the world. He
tried to get out of it. It was because he behaved so like an oaf that
I set myself to get him. I swear that it is true. I swear as I am a
religious woman. I believe in God and things.”
Again Robert Grimshaw said, “Good God” and his agitation grew on him.
“Well,” Etta Stackpole said, “what is there to get so upset about? It
doesn’t count in Dudley for dissoluteness. There isn’t a man in the
world, not even yourself, Robert Grimshaw, could get out of my having
him if I set myself to it at that time of night and after that sort of
evening. I’m not boasting about it. It’s the nature of the beast that
you men are. I set myself to do it because I knew it would mortify him;
because it would make him feel he was a dirty sort of dog next morning.
What are you in such a stew about?” she said. “It wasn’t anything to
do with Dudley’s real nature. I tell you he’s as pure-minded as a
sucking-lamb.”
Robert Grimshaw was walking nervously up and down, striking the side of
his trousers with his ebony stick.
“Oh,” she said with a sudden gibe, “I know what’s the matter with you;
you’re feeling remorse. You’re upset because you suspected Dudley of
being a mean hound. I know you, Robert Grimshaw. You were jealous of
him; you were madly jealous of him. You married him to that little
pink parroquet and then you got jealous of him. You _wanted_ to
believe that he was mean and deceitful. You wanted to believe that he
was going to turn out a bad hat. You wanted to believe it so that you
could take your Pauline off his hands again, and now you’re feeling
remorse because you suspected him. You knew in your heart that he was
honest and simple and pure, but your jealousy turned you mad; I know
you, Robert Grimshaw. Well, go on feeling remorse. Get all you can of
it. I tell you this: I got Dudley Leicester into my hands and I did
what I wanted with him, and nothing happened to shock him except when
the telephone bell rang and someone recognized his voice. I guess that
was shock enough for him. I thought he was in for something. I could
tell it by the look of his eyes, but that only proves the thorough good
sort he was. It wasn’t till then that he understood what he’d been up
to. Then he was knocked flat.”
“There wasn’t anything else at all?” Robert Grimshaw said. He had
pulled himself together and stood with his stick behind his back,
leaning upon it a little. “Yes I admit I misjudged Dudley; but it’s a
queer sort of world. You’re quite sure there wasn’t anything else?”
“What more do you want?” she asked. “Could a chap like that have had
anything more beastly happen to him? Besides, it’s indicated in the
form you say his madness takes. He’s always asking who it was who rung
us up. Doesn’t it prove that that’s what hit his brain? No, he wasn’t
thrown out of a cab. He didn’t stumble. My husband didn’t turn up, no.
Nothing of the sort. He was just knocked plumb-centre by that chap
saying: ‘Isn’t that Dudley Leicester speaking?’”
Robert Grimshaw’s face was the hue of wood-ash.
“My dear Etta,” he said with his gentle collectiveness. “It’s perfectly
obvious that you aren’t responsible for Dudley’s collapse. It was the
meddling fool at the other end of the telephone.”
“It was rather meddlesome when you come to think of it, but then
perhaps he didn’t know there was anything wrong in Dudley’s being where
he was.”
“Perhaps he didn’t,” Robert Grimshaw said. “Let’s go and have lunch.”
“Oh, I don’t want any lunch,” she said. “Take me home.”
She supported herself on his arm as they walked up the long avenue, for
her footsteps were not very steady.