brought in from Mrs. Brent, announcing her arrival that afternoon, and
asking Mrs. Grant to take her in, as there was nobody at the Castle. She
also asked Mrs. Grant to meet her at Burport, which seemed to indicate
that she had something of importance to disclose to her.
She looked scared and unhappy as she greeted her friend on the platform.
"I hope you didn't mind my asking you to put me up," she said. "I
believe she's coming back to-morrow, and I wanted to have a long talk
with you first."
By "she" Mrs. Grant understood her to refer to Lady Brent, whom she
seldom referred to in any other way. "I'm very glad to have you," she
said. "I hope nothing is wrong. Have you seen Harry?"
"I'll tell you when we get into the carriage."
When they were settled and driving away, she said: "Have I seen Harry?
I think you'll be surprised when I tell you how and where I've seen him.
I've never had such a shock in my life. I don't know what to do about
it. I had to come straight down to see her. She must deal with it. I
can't; it's beyond me. I only hope it won't be beyond her. I must tell
you all from the beginning."
She entered into a long explanation of how she had written to Harry at
Wilbraham's flat where he was staying. He had come to see her, and had
been kind but had seemed annoyed with her for coming up to London when
he had not expected it. He had told her that he was very much engaged,
and could not see much of her before he went abroad. He had not
vouchsafed any account of how he was engaged, but had come to see her
once again, in the morning, but had refused to stay to lunch or to make
any engagement for the evening. She spoke with some resentment, and not
as she had ever spoken about Harry before. It was as if she felt more
annoyed at being neglected than sorry at not having him with her.
Mrs. Grant sat silent, and she entered on another long explanation about
the Bastians, and her early friendship with Bastian's wife. Then Mrs.
Grant began to be extremely interested.
"What possessed me to find out all about them just at this time, and go
to see the girl, I can't think," she said. "I think it was Providence
leading me. I'd forgotten all about Mrs. Clark, the woman they lodge
with, being Mrs. Ivimey's sister, and fortunately--or unfortunately--she
didn't open the door to me. The maid said she was in, but had a young
gentleman with her. She looked rather knowing as she said it, and I
thought it would be amusing to see what the young gentleman was like.
You can imagine what I felt when she showed me into the room and I found
Harry there."
She looked as if she expected an exclamation of surprise at this climax;
but Mrs. Grant had already been prepared for it by her rigmarole. "That
explains a great deal," she said. "I suppose they had met here."
"Yes, two years ago, when Harry was a boy--hardly more than a child.
Could you believe it of him, and keeping it secret all that time, and
ever since?"
"What happened?" asked Mrs. Grant, adjusting her thoughts to many
things.
"They were sitting side by side on the sofa. I never had such a shock
in my life. I could only stand there and stare. She jumped up, of
course. I hadn't given my name, and she didn't even know who I was.
Harry looked very black, and stood up too. It was as if a sword was
piercing my heart to see my son look at me like that."
She paused for a moment. It occurred to Mrs. Grant that she had
rehearsed her tale beforehand, and that phrase had come to her as an
effective one. It did not seem to represent what she was actually
feeling, though it may have represented what she thought she ought to
feel.
"I could only gasp out, 'Harry! You here!' He said, 'Yes, mother!'
Then he took hold of the girl's hand, and said, 'This is Viola. We have
loved each other for a long time.' That was absolutely all he said, and
she said nothing, but just looked at me, as if she was frightened, as I
dare say she was."
"Oh, I hope you----"
She did not continue. Mrs. Brent would tell her what she had done.
She did not tell her at once, and Mrs. Grant's heart sank as she
expatiated further on what she had felt. "The very thing," she said,
"that we'd all sacrificed ourselves to prevent, during the whole of
Harry's boyhood. I was absolutely _stunned_. There they stood hand in
hand in front of me, and waited for me to say something. And what
_could_ I say? Harry--my boy! And a girl like that! Oh, I shall never
get over it. And I can't think what _she'll_ say, though there's one
thing--she can't blame me for it."
Mrs. Grant had been thinking rapidly. She had heard about Viola from
Mrs. Ivimey. Her impression of her had been of a very young and
beautiful girl, of whom nice things were said naturally. It needed some
little effort of imagination to connect her with Harry, and certainly it
was rather surprising that Harry, of all people, should have cherished
that kind of secret. But the picture of the pair of them standing there
hand in hand waiting for the speech which she dreaded to be told had not
come rose before her. "Oh, he couldn't have gone on loving her for two
whole years unless she was sweet and good," she said.
Mrs. Brent bridled in offence. "That didn't come in when _I_ was
married," she said. "She's no better than I was. Her mother wasn't
brought up as I had been, though there was nothing against her. It
simply can't be allowed. _I_ can't do anything. Harry won't listen to
me. This girl has taken him away from me. Of course it's all explained
now--why he was so different to me when he came home--oh, and why he
didn't write, and everything. He wrote to her. He _is_ different.
She's made him so. He isn't like my son any more. I'm only thankful
that it didn't happen, or at least I didn't know about it, while I was
living down here."
It seemed probable that she was congratulating herself that the whole of
her interests in life were no longer bound up in Harry. This was no
very comforting thought to Mrs. Grant. "I wish you'd tell me how it
ended," she said.
"It ended in Harry being very unkind to me," she said, with the first
signs of real emotion. "He said that if I had taken the girl as my
daughter--as if I could have done that!--all the difficulties would have
been ended. As it was he would not see me again before he went to
France. Young people are very cruel. I'm his mother who have been
everything to him, and now I'm nothing. I came away and left him there.
It's all over for me. I've lost my son, and this girl who isn't fit for
him has got him. But I don't think she'll be allowed to keep him. I
shall see her to-morrow. She won't be pleased at the end of all her
plotting and scheming. But I shall be surprised if she doesn't think of
_something_ that will put an end to it."
*CHAPTER XXVI*
*LADY BRENT SPEAKS*
"Yes," said Lady Brent, "I will certainly do something."
Mrs. Brent had told her story. Lady Brent had come home from Poldaven
earlier than she had expected. She had gone up to the Castle and found
her, somewhat to her surprise, in her business room. Surrounded by that
ancient magnificence she had seemed even more aloof and forbidding than
on the last time Mrs. Brent had interviewed her there. But this time
she had felt herself supported by a sense of conciliation in herself.
The fact that after all her struggles and resentments against her
mother-in-law she was now, in the crisis of affairs, putting herself in
her hands, appealing to her for help, and a decision where she could do
nothing herself, would surely soften her. From this interview she at
least had nothing to fear for herself.
But the stiff face and the silence with which she listened to the story
brought a sense of discomfort. Mrs. Brent ended on a note more appealing
than she had intended to use. "He won't listen to me," she said, "but
I'm sure he would to you. Can't you do something?"
lady Brent moved in her chair for the first time. "Yes," she said, with
a frown, and in a voice that did nothing to remove the discomfort. "I
will certainly do something. I will go up to London this evening."
"By the night train," said Mrs. Brent. "Shall I come with you?"
"I think you had better stop here. You have done enough mischief
already."
"Mischief! I? What do you mean?" She was surprised and greatly
offended, but also a little frightened.
Lady Brent leant towards her accusingly. "He won't do anything for you,
you say. Why should he, when you treat him as you do? A vain selfish
fool, thinking of yourself all the time and your own mean little
pleasures and dignities! Serve you right if you've lost his love for
the rest of your life."
All Mrs. Brent's resentments flared up. Lady Brent had been
conciliatory towards her of late, with an evident desire to avoid
conflict, and she had taken advantage of it and lost some of her awe of
her; she had thought of herself almost as having the upper hand, and had
come to this interview prepared to treat with her amicably and be
generous in making some admissions. But she wanted a row, did she? Very
well then, she should have it. All her Cockney fighting spirit was
aroused. She had years of oppression to resent and to revenge. She was
not under her thumb now, to be browbeaten and kept in her place. She
leapt to the opportunity of striking and wounding.
"That's what you'd like," she said, "for me to lose his love. You've
tried to take him away from me all his life up till now, and you haven't
been able to do it. Now you'll make use of this, somehow, to get your
way. But you won't do it. If he won't listen to me, he won't listen to
you. I'm a fool, you say. Yes, I was a fool to come to you and think
you could do anything. You've worked and worked to have your own way,
and now it's ended like this. You'll suffer for it. You'll suffer for
it more than I shall."
Lady Brent listened to this, leaning back in her chair again. When she
spoke her voice was even, but her face was white and her hands lying in
her lap trembled ever so little. If Mrs. Brent's fury had not blinded
her, she might have noticed these signs and taken warning from them, for
they had never been shown before, even in the sharpest encounters
between them.
"Whatever suffering there is to be," said the low decisive voice, "I
shall no doubt feel more than you. You're a very poor creature, and as
long as you have something in life to amuse you you won't suffer much
through others. I've tried to make the best of you, for Harry's sake.
You've had your chance with him--a better chance than you could ever
have had but for me. Sometimes I've thought it had succeeded to have you
here, when I've wished with all my heart that you could be away. But
the test has come now, and you've failed. Yes, you've failed, much more
than you know. You're upset in your foolish way now, but you think I
have only to step in and do something, and it will be put right for you
again. It will never be put right."
Mrs. Brent had tried to break in once or twice in the course of this
speech, but the level voice had gone on till the end, and the eyes fixed
upon her had never wavered. She realized that nothing would be spared
her, that whatever dislike and hostility she might choose to express in
her anger would be met by a feeling at least as strong, which would find
expression now, after being kept under for years, with a force in
comparison with which her own powers of attack were as nothing. Already
she was affected by it. She glimpsed hatred of her behind the steady
utterance. She had talked freely of her own hatred, but it was a
terrifying thing to feel it returned.
"I don't know what you're thinking about," she said, half sulkily. "I'd
nothing to do with his meeting this girl. I did know her mother, as it
happened, but hadn't any idea that it was her mother. It isn't through
me any more than through you that he's got himself mixed up with people
like that."
"That's all that you can see in it, is it? People like that! You think
this girl is like you were, when my poor Harry came across you. I loved
my son, far more than you have it in you to love yours, but I know he
was weak and foolish; and he was fitly mated. This Harry isn't weak and
foolish. Do you think he'd be likely to do what his father did? Is
that all you know of him after all these years?"
She tried to control herself. "You may say what you like about me," she
said, in a voice that trembled a little. "I know you hate me and always
have, for marrying your son, and still more for being Harry's mother.
But say what you like, Harry is doing exactly what his father did. Why
should you take it for granted that this girl is any different to what I
was? It's just your spite against me. You haven't seen her."
"No, but you have."
That hit her like a blow in the face. Always battering at the gates of
her mind, to which she had never given it entrance, was the thought that
Viola was surprisingly different from herself, surprisingly unlike what
she would have expected her mother's daughter to be, though in feature
she resembled her.
Still it was true that Lady Brent had not seen her, and could not know.
"Her mother was an actress, no better than I was," she said, "--not so
good in many ways. Her father is a scene-painter in a theatre, and
drinks too. My father was a good man, though he may not have been what
you'd call a gentleman. That's what all your wonderful bringing up of
Harry has led to. If he'd been brought up more naturally, and not
everything and everybody sacrificed to keep him shut up down here, it's
very unlikely that this would have happened."
"You think that, do you, in your loving wisdom? You had the boy always
before you, and saw what he was growing into. So did I, and I trusted
him. You couldn't."
"I don't mind your sneers. At any rate, on the first opportunity he
does what any other boy might do. He meets a girl and falls in love
with her, and keeps it from us all the time he's meeting her, and
afterwards."
"Keeps it from you, I suppose you mean."
"Keeps it from all of us, I said. Did you know any more than I did that
he had met this girl down here?"
"Of course I knew."
She could only sit and stare, with her mouth a little open. Whatever
she may have thought of, it had never been this.
Lady Brent did not treat her disclosure as a triumph to be dwelt upon.
"How could I help knowing?" she went on. "I loved Harry. Nothing could
have happened in his life to alter it that I shouldn't have noticed.
When I saw that something had happened I waited until it came to me what
it was."
"You knew, and you let it go on!" The revelation had taken all the
sting out of her. She was more interested than offended.
"Didn't I tell you that I trusted Harry? I knew what he was, if you
didn't. I should have known if he had taken a wrong turning in life,
and then I should have tried to influence him. When I did know what had
happened I knew well enough that he hadn't taken a wrong turning, by the
way he bore himself. You couldn't see that. You can't even see it
now."
Mrs. Brent's surprise was still strong enough to swamp her resentment at
wounding speeches. "Why didn't you do anything afterwards, when he went
away?" she asked. "You did do something. You got Sidney Pawle down
here. You hoped that she and Harry would fall in love with one another.
I know that. You thought they had. I know that too. I think you're
making yourself out cleverer than you are, though I don't deny you were
clever, if you found out what nobody else did."
"It matters very little to me," said Lady Brent, "what you deny or what
you accept. You've made yourself nothing and you are nothing. I
believe that this girl Harry loves is worthy of him, or he wouldn't have
gone on loving her. But they were both very young. It might have died
out of itself. I didn't know whether it had or not. I might have found
out, but I wouldn't take any steps to do that. And even if the girl is
worthy of him, there are objections otherwise. You have named them
yourself. There are no such objections to Sidney Pawle. I should have
been glad if Harry's first attachment had worn itself out and he could
have married her. Yes, I did hope that they might have fallen in love
with one another. You are right there. You are quite wrong in saying
that I thought they had. You may have thought so, who knew so little of
Harry. I knew very soon that there was something in the way."
Mrs. Brent was beaten. Even resentment no longer moved her. She wanted
to ward off further blows, and to propitiate. "When you go up to
London, shall you tell Harry that we are ready to recognize his
engagement to this Viola Bastian?" she asked.
Lady Brent seemed to take breath. She had given her explanation as to
one with whom she might have been talking on equal terms. But there was
still punishment to be dealt out, the smouldering fire of years of
dislike and contempt, which had been banked up so as only now and then
to show a flicker, but now could be allowed to burst into scorching
flame.
"Why should I tell you what I mean to do?" she said, with fierce scorn.
"Stay where you are till I've put right what you hadn't the sense or the
heart to do; and don't meddle. Then you can go where you like and do
what you like; only not here. For years I've had to live with you, and
bear with your ignorance and vanity and folly, and keep you from going
back on what you'd set your hand to of your own free will. I've
defended you from your silly selfish self, so that your own son
shouldn't see what a thing of naught you were. You've had your chance
up to the last moment. Directly it depends upon yourself you can only
strike the son you say you love in his tenderest place, and then come
snivelling to me to mend the damage you've done. You want me to put
myself on your side, and treat him as you did. Be very sure that I
shall treat him in no way as you have done. I've stood aside all these
years, so as not to take what was owing to you, as I might well have
done if I'd lifted a little finger. Now I'll take whatever I've earned.
Mend your own broken pieces if you can. I'll do nothing to help you.
Live your own useless selfish life. You shall have money for it. But
live it away from here. You told me once, in one of your foolish
discontented fits, that this house was like a prison to you. You're
free of your prison. Go; and do what you like with your liberty."
She rose suddenly, and went out. Mrs. Brent sat for a time where she
was, with a white frightened face. Then she went out of the room too,
and out of the house, weeping silently. She would not stay there
another minute. She would not run the risk of meeting that terrible
woman again, who had treated her so wickedly. She would never see her
again, and as for taking money from her--she would work her fingers to
the bone before she would touch a penny. She went down to the Vicarage,
where she poured out her outraged feelings to Mrs. Grant, and gained
some consolation from her. A strong cup of tea also did much to comfort
her, and after that she went to bed with a headache. Exhausted by the
emotions of the day she slept throughout the night, which Lady Brent
spent sitting upright in a railway carriage, her endless thoughts
running to the steady beat of the train.
Wilbraham met her in London very early in the morning and took her to
her hotel. "Harry went off yesterday," he told her. "I sent your
telegram on to him, but there has been no answer yet. There may be one
to my rooms this morning. But it doesn't very much matter, does it, as
long as he knows that you are going to see Viola?"
"If he should be killed!" she said. It was the thought that the iron
wheels had dinned into her brain all through the night. She could not
help giving it utterance; but she said immediately, "Oh, we mustn't
think of that. You have arranged that I am to see the girl this
afternoon?"
"Yes, I will take you there. You'll rest during the day, won't you?
You must be very tired."
He stole a look at her. She was looking as if the long journey had
tried her severely. He had never thought of her as getting old, but now
he did.
"Yes, I will rest," she said. "There is nothing else to do. Do you
know I haven't been in London for twenty years?"
She was looking out of the window of the taxi-cab, at the London streets
beginning to fill up with the day's traffic. She wanted a respite. The
innumerable questions he had to ask of her must wait.
He breakfasted with her in her private sitting-room, where they could
talk afterwards, if she was so minded, before he went off to his work.
She came to it refreshed, and was ready for him when they were alone
together.
"Tell me about the girl," she said. "I know she must be good and sweet,
and I know that she has helped Harry through his difficult time."
"I can't tell you more than that," he said, "except that she's
beautiful, and exactly what you'd want her to be, except perhaps in the
matter of her birth. I don't say anything against her upbringing, as it
has left her what she is. But you seem to know everything about her
already. I've known you for a good many years, but you're always full
of surprises. The greatest you've ever given me is when you wired that
you'd always known. You must have thought of me as a pretty large size
in fools during some of the conversations we used to have. How did you
find out, and when?"
She smiled at him. "I think you might have guessed that I knew," she
said, "when I let you come to London to find out about Harry, and to get
a message to him. I didn't particularly want you to know then, because,
to tell you the truth, I did rather hope that it wouldn't continue. I
saw that it had done him no harm, but it still might have been nothing
more than a pretty boy and girl love-making. Then I shouldn't have
wanted him to know that I had surprised his secret."
"No," he said. "You showed infinite wisdom, as you always do. But tell
me how you knew."
"Something had happened to Harry. I think I must have guessed it the
very first time he met her, or at least when he found out he loved her,
and I think that must have been the first time he met her, or why
shouldn't he have told us? I was always on the lookout for changes in
him, and you see I knew the signs of this change. Harry is much more
like my dear husband was, when he was young, than he is like his father.
It was only that kind of love that could have made him so happy and so
silent and so absorbed. Oh, I knew very soon, and of course I put two
and two together, and knew who it was. Afterwards, little pieces of
evidence came to me, but I didn't try to seek them, and I didn't need
them. Nobody guessed they had met. Nobody knew at Royd, except me--and
you."
He laughed ruefully, and told her how and when he had found out.
"Perhaps you guessed even before I did," he said. "Were you annoyed
with me for keeping it to myself?"
"I knew that you would have told me, if I had given you any
encouragement. I didn't want you to tell me. I knew too that you had
seen her and must have thought of her as I think now. If you hadn't I
think you would have told me anyhow."
He breathed a sigh of relief. "That's off my mind then," he said. "I
didn't like keeping anything from you. And I've told Harry more than
once that he had nothing to fear from you."
"He couldn't believe that, I suppose. He might have thought that I
would behave as Charlotte--that light fool--has behaved."
"You had Harry's letter before you saw her?"
"Yes, but the post is very late at Poldaven. I went home at once, and
saw her. On my way to Royd I thought how I could bring some of the
truth home to her. I think I made an impression."
Her voice was as quiet as before, but something in its tone caused him
to look up. "You didn't spare her, I suppose," he said.
"No, I didn't spare her. I think I was cruel. I know I meant to be.
But she's not worth troubling oneself about. Anger is a debasing
passion, and I'm not sure that mine was altogether righteous anger. I
wanted to make an end of her. I hope for the future I shall need to see
very little of her."
He looked grave. "Can't you forgive her, if things go right now?" he
asked.
"Oh, forgive her! If I know anything of her--and I ought to by this
time--she'll never forgive me. She'll hate me to her dying day, and I
care no more than if she loved me. What is the love of a poor thing
like that worth? She loved Harry, and what does that amount to?"
"She did love him, though. She did give her life up to him, in the only
way she could have done. It wasn't in her to make herself happy living
as she did--as we all did--at Royd. But she stuck to it for nearly
twenty years."
"Oh, yes. I kept her to that. I was fair to her; I gave her her
chance. It would have been an immense relief if she had gone away. If
I hadn't been fair to her I could have got rid of her easily enough.
She would have gone, and she would never have known that she hadn't gone
of her own accord."