LADY ANGELA'S ENGAGEMENT
I dined that night at Rowchester. Lord Blenavon was sulky, and Lady
Angela was only fitfully gay. It was not altogether a cheerful party.
Lady Angela left us the moment Blenavon produced his cigarette-case.
"Do not stay too long, Mr. Ducaine," she said, as I held the door open
for her. "I want a lesson at billiards."
I bowed and returned to my seat. Blenavon was leaning back in his
chair, smoking thoughtfully.
"My sister," he remarked, looking up at the ceiling and speaking as
though to himself, "would make an admirable heroine for the
psychological novelist. She is a bundle of fancies; one can never rely
upon what she is going to do. What other girl in the world would get
engaged on the Thursday, and come down here on the Friday to think it
over--leaving, of course, her _fiance_ in town? Doesn't that strike you
as singular?"
"Is it," I asked calmly, "a genuine case?"
Lord Blenavon nodded.
"I do not think that it is a secret," he said, helping himself to wine
and passing the decanter. "She has made up her mind at last to marry
Mostyn Ray. The affair has been hanging about for more than a year. In
fact, I think that there was something said about it before Ray went
abroad. Personally, I think that he is too old. I don't mind saying so
to you, because that has been my opinion all along. However, I suppose
it is all settled now."
I kept my eyes fixed upon the wineglass in front of me, but the things
which I saw, no four walls had ever enclosed. One moment the rush of
the sea was in my ears, another I was lying upon the little horsehair
couch in my sitting-room. I felt her soft white fingers upon my pulse
and forehead. Again I saw her leaning down from the saddle of her great
brown horse, and heard her voice, slow, emotionless, yet always with its
strange power to play upon my heartstrings. And yet, while the grey
seas of despair were closing over my head, I sat there with a
stereotyped smile upon my lips, fingering carelessly the stem of my
wineglass, unwilling guest of an unwilling host. I do not know how long
we sat there in silence, but it seemed to me an eternity, for all the
time I knew that Blenavon was watching me. I felt like a victim upon
the rack, whilst he, the executioner, held the cords. I do not think,
however, that he learnt anything from my face.
With a little shrug of the shoulders he abandoned the subject.
"By-the-bye, Ducaine," he said, "I hope you won't mind my asking you a
rather personal question."
"If it is only personal," I answered quietly, "not at all. As you know,
I may not discuss any subject connected with my work."
"Quite so! I only want to know whether your secretarial duties begin
and end with your work on the Council of Defence, or are you at all in
my father's confidence as regards his private affairs?"
"I am temporary secretary to the Council of Defence only, Lord
Blenavon," I answered. "I know nothing whatever of your father's
private affairs. He has his own man of business."
I am not sure whether he believed me. He cracked some walnuts and
commenced peeling them.
"My father will never listen to me," he said, "but I feel sure that he
makes a mistake in becoming a director of all these companies. Politics
should be quite sufficient to engross his time, and the money cannot be
so much of an object to him. I don't suppose his holdings are large,
but I am quite sure that one or two of those Australian gold mines are
dicky, and you know he was an enormous holder of Chartereds, and
wouldn't sell, worse luck! Of course I'm not afraid of his losing in
the long run, but it isn't exactly a dignified thing to be associated
with these concerns that aren't exactly A1. His name might lead people
into speculations who couldn't altogether afford it."
"I know nothing whatever of these matters," I answered, "but from what I
have seen of your father I should imagine that he is remarkably able to
guard his own interests."
Blenavon nodded.
"I suppose that is true," he admitted. "But when he is already a rich
man, with very simple tastes, I am rather surprised that he should care
to meddle with such things."
"Playing at commerce," I remarked, "has become rather a hobby with men
of leisure lately."
"And women, too," Blenavon assented. "Rather an ugly hobby, I call it."
A servant entered and addressed Blenavon. "The carriage is at the door,
your Lordship," he announced.
Blenavon glanced at his watch and rose.
"I shall have to ask you to excuse me, Ducaine," he said. "I was to
have dined out to-night, and I must go and make my peace. Another glass
of wine?"
I rose at once.
"Nothing more, thank you," I said. "I will just say good-night to your
sister."
"She's probably in the drawing-room," he remarked. "If not, I will make
your excuses when I see her."
Blenavon hurried out. A few moments later I heard the wheels of his
carriage pass the long front of the house and turn down the avenue. I
lingered for a moment where I was. The small oak table at which we had
dined seemed like an oasis of colour in the midst of an atmosphere of
gloom. The room was large and lofty, and the lighting was altogether
inadequate. From the walls there frowned through the shadows the
warlike faces of generations of Rowchesters. At the farther end of the
apartment four armed giants stood grim and ghostlike in the twilight,
which seemed to supply their empty frames with the presentment of actual
warriors. I looked down upon the table, all agleam with flowers, and
fruit, and silver, over which shone the red glow of the shaded lamps.
Exactly opposite to me, in that chair now pushed carelessly back, she
had sat, so close that my hand could have touched hers at any moment, so
close that I had been able to wonder more than ever before at the
marvellous whiteness of her skin, the perfection of her small,
finely-shaped features, the strange sphinxlike expression of her face,
always suggestive of some great self-restraint, mysterious, and subtly
stimulating. And as I stood there she seemed again to be occupying the
chair, at first a faint shadowy presence, but gaining with every second
shape and outline, until I could scarcely persuade myself that it was
not she who sat there, she whose eyes more than once during dinner-time
had looked into mine with that curious and instinctive demand for
sympathy, even as regards the things of the moment, the passing jest,
the most transitory of emotions. A few minutes ago I had felt that I
knew her better than ever before in my life, and now the chair was
empty. My heart was beating at the imaginary presence of the vainest of
shadows. She was going to marry Colonel Mostyn Ray.
And then I stood as though suddenly turned to stone. Before me were the
great front windows of the castle. Beyond, eastwards, stretched the
salt marshes, the salt marshes riven with creeks. Once more my
unwilling hands touched that huddled-up heap of extinct humanity. I saw
the dead white face, which the sun could never warm again, and I felt
the hands, cold, clammy, horrible. Ray was a soldier, and life and
death had become phrases to him; but I--it was the first dead man I had
ever seen, and the horror of it was cold in my blood. Ray had murdered
him, fought with him, perhaps, but killed him. What would she say if
she knew? Would his hands be clean to her, or would the horror rise up
like a red wall between them?
"Will you take coffee, sir?"
I set my teeth and turned slowly round. I even took the cup from the
tray without spilling it.
"What liqueur may I bring you, sir?" the man asked.
"Brandy," I answered.
In a few minutes I was laughing at myself, not quite naturally, perhaps,
but only I could know that. I was getting to be a morbid, nervous
person. It was the solitude! I must get away from it all before long.
Fate had been playing strange tricks with me. Life, which a few months
ago had been a cold and barren thing, was suddenly pressed to my lips, a
fantastic, intoxicating mixture. I had drawn enough poison into my
veins. I would have no more. I swore it.
* * * * *
I tried to leave the castle unnoticed, but the place was alive with
servants. One of them hurried up to me as I tried to reach my hat and
coat.
"Her ladyship desired me to say that she was in the billiard-room, sir,"
he announced.
"Will you tell Lady Angela--" and then I stopped. The door of the
billiard-room was open, and Lady Angela stood there, the outline of her
figure sharply defined against a flood of light. She had a cue in her
hand, and she looked across at me.
"You are a long time, Mr. Ducaine. I am waiting for you to give me a
lesson at billiards."
I crossed the hall to her side.
"I thought that as Lord Blenavon had gone out--"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"That you would evade your duty, which is clearly to stay and entertain
your hostess."
She closed the door and glanced at me curiously.
"What has happened to you?" she asked. "You look as though you had been
with ghosts."
"Is it so impossible?" I asked, moving a little nearer to the huge log
fire. "What company is more terrifying than the company of our dead
thoughts and dead hopes and dead memories?"
"Really, I am afraid that Blenavon must have been a very depressing
companion!" she said, leaning her elbow upon the broad mantelpiece.
It was absurd! I tried to shake myself free from the miseries of the
last hour.
"I am afraid it must have been the other way," I said, "for your brother
has gone out."
"Yes," she said quietly, "he has gone to that woman at Braster Grange.
I wish I knew what brought her into this part of the country."
I looked round at the billiard-table.
"Did you mean that you would like a game?" I asked. "I am rather out of
practice, but I used to fancy myself a little."
"I have no doubt," she answered, sinking into a low chair, "that you are
an excellent player, but I am willing to take it for granted. I do not
wish to play billiards. Draw that chair up to the fire and talk to me."
It was of all things what I wished to avoid that night. But there was
no escape. I obeyed her.
"What your brother has told me is, I presume, no secret," I said. "I am
to wish you happiness, am I not?"
She looked up at me in quick surprise.
"Did Blenavon tell you--"
"That you had promised to marry Colonel Mostyn Ray. Yes."
"That is very strange," she said thoughtfully. "Blenavon is not as a
rule needlessly communicative, and at present it is almost a secret."
"Nevertheless," I said, turning slowly towards her, "I presume that it
is true."
"It is perfectly true," she answered.
There was silence between us for several minutes. One of the footmen
came softly in to see whether we required a marker, and finding us
talking, withdrew. I was determined that the onus of further speech
should remain with her.
"You are surprised?" she asked at last.
"Very."
"And why?"
"I scarcely know," I answered, "except that I have never associated the
thought of marriage with Colonel Ray, and he is very much older than
you."
"Yes, he is a great deal older," she answered. "I think that his
history has been rather a sad one. He was in love for many years with a
woman who married--some one else. I have always felt sorry for him ever
since I was a little girl."
"Do you know who that woman was?"
"I have never heard her name," she answered.
I found courage to lift my eyes and look at her.
"May I ask when you are going to be married?"
Her eyes fell. The question did not seem to please her.
"I do not know," she said. "We have not spoken of that yet. Everything
is very vague."
"Colonel Ray is coming down here, of course?" I remarked.
"Not to my knowledge," she declared. "Not at any rate until the next
meeting of the Council. I shall be back in town before then."
"I begin to believe," I said, with a grim smile, "that your brother was
right."
"My brother right?"
"He finds you enigmatic! You become engaged to a man one day, and you
leave him the next--without apparent reason."
She was obviously disturbed. A slight wave of trouble passed over her
face. Her eyes failed to meet mine.
"That I cannot altogether explain to you," she said. "There are reasons
why I should come, but apart from them this place is very dear to me. I
think that whenever anything has happened to me I have wanted to be
here. You are a man, and you will not altogether understand this."
"Why not?" I protested. "We, too, have our sentiment, the sentiment of
places as well as of people. If I could choose where to die I think
that it would be here, with my windows wide open and the roar of the
incoming tide in my ears."
"For a young man," she remarked, looking across at me, "I should
consider you rather a morbid person."
"There are times," I answered, "when I feel inclined to agree with you.
To-night is one of them."
"That," she said coolly, "is unfortunate. You have been over-working."
"I am worried by a problem," I told her. "Tell me, are you a great
believer in the sanctity of human life?"
"What a question!" she murmured. "My own life, at any rate, seems to me
to be a terribly important thing."
"Suppose you had a friend," I said, "who was one night attacked in a
quiet spot by a man who sought his life, say, for the purpose of
robbery. Your friend was the stronger and easily defended himself.
Then he saw that his antagonist was a man of ill repute, an evildoer, a
man whose presence upon the earth did good to no one. So he took him by
the throat and deliberately crushed the life out of him. Was your
friend a murderer?"
She smiled at me--that quiet, introspective smile which I knew so well.
"Does the end justify the means? No, of course not. I should have been
very sorry for my friend; but if indeed there is a Creator, it is He
alone who has power to take back what He has given."
"Your friend, then--"
"Don't call him that!"
I rose up and moved towards the door. I think that she saw something in
my face which checked any attempt she might have made to detain me.
"You must forgive me," I said. "I cannot stay."
She said nothing. I looked back at her from the door. Her eyes were
fixed upon me, a little distended, full of mute questioning. I only
shook my head. So I left her and passed out into the night.