In a character such as Mutimer’s there will almost certainly be found a
disposition to cruelty, for strong instincts of domination, even of the
nobler kind, only wait for circumstances to develop crude tyranny--the
cruder, of course, in proportion to the lack of native or acquired
refinement which distinguishes the man. We had a hint of such things in
Mutimer’s progressive feeling with regard to Emma Vine. The possibility
of his becoming a tyrannous husband could not be doubted by any one who
viewed him closely.
There needed only the occasion, and this at length presented itself in
the form of jealousy. Of all possible incentives it was the one most
calamitous, for it came just when a slow and secret growth of passion
was making demand for room and air. Mutimer had for some time been at
a loss to understand his own sensations; he knew that his wife was
becoming more and more a necessity to him, and that too when the
progress of time would have led him to expect the very opposite. He knew
it during her absence at Exmouth, more still now that she was away in
London. It was with reluctance that he let her leave home, only his
satisfaction in her intimacy with the Westlakes and his hopes for Alice
induced him to acquiesce in her departure. Yet he could show nothing of
this. A lack of self-confidence, a strange shyness, embarrassed him as
often as he would give play to his feelings. They were intensified by
suppression, and goaded him to constant restlessness. When at most a
day or two remained before Adela’s return, he could no longer resist the
desire to surprise her in London.
Not only did he find her in the company of the man whom he had formerly
feared as a rival, but her behaviour seemed to him distinctly to betray
consternation at his arrival. She was colourless, agitated, could
not speak. From that moment his love was of the quality which in its
manifestations is often indistinguishable from hatred. He resolved
to keep her under his eye, to enforce to the uttermost his marital
authority, to make her pay bitterly for the freedom she had stolen.
His exasperated egoism flew at once to the extreme of suspicion; he
was ready to accuse her of completed perfidy. Mrs. Westlake became his
enemy; the profound distrust of culture, which was inseparable from
his mental narrowness, however ambition might lead him to disguise it,
seized upon the occasion to declare itself; that woman was capable of
conniving at his dishonour, even of plotting it. He would not allow
Adela to remain in the house a minute longer than he could help. Even
the casual absence of Mr. Westlake became a suspicious circumstance;
Eldon of course chose the time for his visit.
Adela was once more safe in the Manor, under lock and key, as it were.
He had not spoken of Eldon, though several times on the point of doing
so. It was obvious that the return home cost her suffering, that it was
making her ill. He could not get her to converse; he saw that she did
not study. It was impossible to keep watch on her at all moments of the
day; yet how otherwise discover what letters she wrote or received? He
pondered the practicability of bribing her maid to act as a spy upon
her, but feared to attempt it. He found opportunities of secretly
examining the blotter on her writing-desk, and it convinced him that
she had written to Mrs. Westlake. It maddened him that he had not the
courage to take a single open step, to forbid, for instance, all future
correspondence with London. To do so would be to declare his suspicions.
He wished to declare them; it would have gratified him intensely to
vomit impeachments, to terrify her with coarseness and violence; but,
on the other hand, by keeping quiet he might surprise positive evidence,
and if only he did!
She was ill; he had a distinct pleasure in observing it. She longed for
quiet and retirement; he neglected his business to force his company
upon her, to laugh and talk loudly. She with difficulty read a page; he
made her read aloud to him by the hour, or write translations for him
from French and German. The pale anguish of her face was his joy; it
fascinated him, fired his senses, made him a demon of vicious cruelty.
Yet he durst not as much as touch her hand when she sat before him. Her
purity, which was her safeguard, stirred his venom; he worshipped it,
and would have smothered it in foulness.
‘Hadn’t you better have the doctor to see you?’ he began one morning
when he had followed her from the dining-room to her boudoir.
‘The doctor? Why?’
‘You don’t seem up to the mark,’ he replied, avoiding her look.
Adela kept silence.
‘You were well enough in London, I suppose?’
‘I am never very strong.’
‘I think you might be a bit more cheerful.’
‘I will try to be.’
This submission always aggravated his disease--by what other name
to call it? He would have had her resist him, that he might know the
pleasure of crushing her will.
He walked about the room, then suddenly:
‘What is that man Eldon doing?’
Adela looked at him with surprise. It had never entered her thoughts
that the meeting with Eldon would cost him more than a passing
annoyance--she knew he disliked him--and least of all that such
annoyance would in any way be connected with herself. It was possible,
of course, that some idle tongue had gossiped of her former friendship
with Hubert, but there was no one save Letty who knew what her feelings
really had been, and was not the fact of her marriage enough to remove
any suspicion that Mutimer might formerly have entertained? But the
manner of his question was so singular, the introduction of Eldon’s name
so abrupt, that she could not but discern in a measure what was in his
mind.
She made reply:
‘I don’t understand. Do you mean how is he engaged?’
‘How comes he to know Mrs. Westlake?’
‘Through common friends--some people named Boscobel. Mr. Boscobel is an
artist, and Mr. Eldon appears to be studying art.’
Her voice was quite steady through this explanation. The surprise seemed
to have enabled her to regard him unmoved, almost with curiosity.
‘I suppose he’s constantly there--at the Westlakes’?’
‘That was his first visit. We met him a few evenings before at
the Boscobels’, at dinner. It was then he made Mrs. Westlake’s
acquaintance.’
Mutimer moved his head as if to signify indifference. But Adela had
found an unexpected relief in speaking thus openly; she was tempted to
go further.
‘I believe he writes about pictures. Mrs. Boscobel told me that he had
been some time in Italy.’
‘Well and good; I don’t care to hear about his affairs. So you dined
with these Boscobel people?’
‘Yes.’
He smiled disagreeably.
‘I thought you were rather particular about telling the truth. You told
Alice you never dined out.’
‘I don’t think I said that,’ Adela replied quietly.
He paused; then:
‘What fault have you to find with Alice, eh?’
Adela was not in the mood for evasions; she answered in much the same
tone as she had used in speaking of Hubert.
‘I don’t think she likes me. If she did, I should be able to be more
friendly with her. Her world is very different from ours.’
‘Different? You mean you don’t like Rodman?’
‘I was not thinking of Mr. Rodman. I mean that her friends are not the
same as ours.’
Mutimer forgot for a moment his preoccupation in thought of Alice.
‘Was there anything wrong with the people you met there?’
She was silent.
‘Just tell me what you think. I want to know. What did you object to?’
‘I don’t think they were the best kind of people.’
‘The best kind? I suppose they are what you call ladies and gentlemen?’
‘You must have felt that they were not quite the same as the Westlakes,
for instance.’
‘The Westlakes!’
He named them sneeringly, to Adela’s astonishment. And he added as he
walked towards the door:
‘There isn’t much to be said for some of the people you meet there.’
A new complexity was introduced into her life. Viewed by this recent
light, Mutimer’s behaviour since the return from London was not so
difficult to understand; but the problem of how to bear with it became
the harder. There were hours when Adela’s soul was like a bird of the
woods cage-pent: it dashed itself against the bars of fate, and in
anguish conceived the most desperate attempts for freedom. She could
always die, but was it not hard to perish in her youth and with the
world’s cup of bliss untasted? Flight? Ah! whither could she flee? The
thought of the misery she would leave behind her, the disgrace that
would fall upon her mother--this would alone make flight impossible. Yet
could she conceive life such as this prolonging itself into the hopeless
years, renunciation her strength and her reward, duty a grinning
skeleton at her bedside? It grew harder daily. More than a year ago she
thought that the worst was over, and since then had known the solace of
self-forgetful idealisms, of ascetic striving. It was all illusion,
the spinning of a desolate heart. There was no help now, for she knew
herself and the world. Foolish, foolish child, who with her own hand
had flung away the jewel of existence like a thing of no price! Her lot
appeared single in its haplessness. She thought of Stella, of Letty,
even of Alice; _they_ had not been doomed to learn in suffering. To her,
alone of all women, knowledge had come with a curse.
A month passed. Since Rodman’s departure from Wanley, ‘Arry Mutimer was
living at the Manor. Her husband and ‘Arry were Adela’s sole companions;
the former she dreaded, the approach of the latter always caused her
insuperable disgust. To Letty there was born a son; Adela could not bend
to the little one with a whole heart; her own desolate motherhood wailed
the more bitterly.
Once more a change was coming. Alice and her husband were going to spend
August at a French watering-place, and Mutimer proposed to join them for
a fortnight; Adela of course would be of the party. The invitation came
from Rodman, who had reasons for wishing to get his brother-in-law
aside for a little quiet talk. Rodman had large views, was at present
pondering a financial scheme in which he needed a partner--one with
capital of course. He knew that New Wanley was proving anything but a
prosperous concern, commercially speaking; he divined, moreover, that
Mutimer was not wholly satisfied with the state of affairs. By judicious
management the Socialist might even be induced to abandon the non-paying
enterprise, and, though not perhaps ostensibly, embark in one that
promised very different results--at all events to Mr. Rodman. The scheme
was not of mushroom growth; it dated from a time but little posterior
to Mr. Rodman’s first meeting with Alice Mutimer. ‘Arry had been granted
appetising sniffs at the cookery in progress, though the youth was
naturally left without precise information as to the ingredients. The
result was a surprising self-restraint on ‘Arry’s part. The influence
which poor Keene had so bunglingly tried to obtain over him, the more
astute Mr. Rodman had compassed without difficulty; beginning with the
loan of small sums, to be repaid when ‘Arry attained his majority, he
little by little made the prospective man of capital the creature of his
directions; in something less than two more years Rodman looked to find
ample recompense for his expenditure and trouble. But that was a mere
parergon; to secure Richard Mutimer was the great end steadily held in
view.
Rodman and his wife came to Wanley to spend three days before all
together set out for the Continent. Adela accepted the course of things,
and abandoned herself to the stream. For a week her husband had been
milder; we know the instinct that draws the cat’s paws from the flagging
mouse.
Alice, no longer much interested in novels, must needs talk with some
one; she honoured Adela with much of her confidence, seeming to forget
and forgive, in reality delighted to recount her London experiences to
her poor tame sister-in-law. Alice, too, had been at moments introduced
to her husband’s kitchen; she threw out vague hints of a wonderful
repast in preparation.
‘Willis is going to buy me a house in Brighton,’ she said, among other
things. ‘I shall run down whenever I feel it would do me good. You’ve no
idea how kind he is.’
There was, in fact, an ‘advancement clause’ in Alice’s deed of
settlement. If Mr. Rodman showed himself particularly anxious to
cultivate the friendship of Mr. Alfred Waltham, possibly one might look
for the explanation to the terms of that same document.
There came a Sunday morning. Preparations for departure on the morrow
were practically completed. The weather was delightful. Adela finished
breakfast in time to wander a little about the garden before it was the
hour for church; her husband and Rodman breakfasted with her, and went
to smoke in the library. Alice and ‘Arry did not present themselves till
the church bells had ceased.
Adela was glad to be alone in the dusky pew. She was the first of
the congregation to arrive, and she sat, as always, with the curtains
enclosing her save in front. The bells ringing above the roof had a
soothing effect upon her, and gave strange turns to her thought. So had
their summoning rung out to generation after generation; so would it
ring long after she was buried and at rest. Where would her grave be?
She was going for the first time to a foreign country; perhaps death
might come to her there. Then she would lie for ever among strangers,
and her place be forgotten. Would it not be the fitting end of so sad
and short a life?
In the front of the pew was a cupboard; the upper portion, which
contained the service books, was closed with a long, narrow door,
opening downwards on horizontal hinges; the shelf on which the books
lay went back into darkness, being, perhaps, two feet broad. Below this
shelf was the door of the lower and much larger receptacle; it
slid longitudinally, and revealed a couple of buffets, kept here to
supplement the number in the pew when necessary. Adela had only once
opened the sliding door, and then merely to glance into the dark hollows
and close it again. Probably the buffets had lain undisturbed for years.
On entering the pew this morning she had as usual dropped the upper
door, and had laid her large church service open on the shelf, where
she could reach it as soon as Mr. Wyvern began to read. Then began
her reverie. From thoughts of the grave she passed to memories of her
wedding-day. How often the scene of that morning had re-enacted
itself in her mind! Often she dreamed it all over, and woke as from a
nightmare. She wished it had not taken place in this church; it troubled
the sacred recollections of her maiden peace. She began to think it over
once more, attracted by the pain it caused her, and, on coming to the
bestowal of the ring, an odd caprice led her to draw the circlet itself
from her finger. When she had done it she trembled. The hand looked so
strange. Oh, her hand, her hand! Once ringless indeed, once her own to
give, to stretch forth in pledge of the heart’s imperishable faith!
Now a prisoner for ever; but, thus ringless, so like a maiden hand once
more. There came a foolish sense of ease. She would keep her finger free
yet a little, perhaps through the service. She bent forward and laid the
ring on the open book.
More dreams, quite other than before; then the organ began its prelude,
a tremor passing through the church before the sound broke forth. Adela
sank deeper in reverie. At length Mr. Wyvern’s voice roused her; she
stood up and reached her book; but she had wholly forgotten that the
ring lay upon it, and was only reminded by a glimpse of it rolling away
on the shelf, rolling to the back of the cupboard. But it did not stop
there; surely it was the ring that she heard fall down below, behind the
large sliding door. She had a sudden fright lest it should be lost, and
stooped at once to search for it.
She drew back the door, pushed aside the buffets, then groped in the
darkness. She touched the ring. But something else lay there; it seemed
a long piece of thick paper, folded. This too she brought forth, and,
having slipped the ring on her finger, looked to see what she had found.
It was parchment She unfolded it, and saw that it was covered with
writing in a clerkly hand. How strange!
‘This is the last will and testament of me, RICHMOND MUTIMER--’
Her hand shook. She felt as if the sides of the pew were circling about
her, as if she stood amid falling and changing things.
She looked to the foot of the sheet.
‘In witness whereof I, the said Richard Mutimer, have hereunto set my
hand this seventeenth day of October, 187-.’
The date was some six months prior to old Richard Mutimer’s death.
This could be nothing but the will which every one believed him to have
destroyed.
Adela sank upon the seat. Her ring! Had she picked it up? Yes; it was
again upon her finger. How had it chanced to fall down below? She rose
again and examined the cupboard; there was a gap of four or five inches
at the back of the upper shelf.
Had the will fallen in the same way? Adela conjectured that thus it
had been lost, though when or under what circumstances she could not
imagine. We, who are calmer, may conceive the old man to have taken
his will to church with him on the morning of his death, he being then
greatly troubled about the changes he had in view. Perhaps he laid the
folded parchment on the shelf and rested one of the large books in front
of it. He breathed his last. Then the old woman, whose duty it was to
put the pews in order, hurriedly throwing the books into the cupboard as
soon as the dead man was removed, perchance pushed the document so far
back that it slipped through the gap and down behind the buffets.
At all events, no one has ever hit upon a likelier explanation.