“Poor little life that toddles half an hour,
Crowned with a flower or two, and there an end—”
Sir Godfrey’s device for diverting his wife’s mind from the morbid
fancies of the previous night answered admirably. She left Dorchester
in high spirits, after having invited her cousins to Cheriton for
tennis and lunch on the following day, and after having bade an
affectionate good-bye to Theodore, who was to start on his holiday
directly he could make an end of some important business now in hand.
His father told him laughingly that he might have gone a week earlier
had he really wanted to go.
“I believe there must be some attraction for you in Dorchester,
though I am not clever enough to find out what it is,” said Mr.
Dalbrook, innocently, “for you have been talking about going away for
the last fortnight, and yet you don’t go.”
Lady Carmichael had lingered in the homely old house till afternoon
tea, had lingered over her tea, telling her cousins all they wanted
to know about smart society in London, that one central spot of
bright white light in the dull, grey mass of a busy, commonplace
world, of which she knew so much, and of which they knew so little.
Janet and Sophia professed to be above caring for these things,
except from a purely philosophical point of view, as they cared
for ants, bees, and wasps; but they listened eagerly all the same,
with occasional expressions of wonder that human beings could be so
trivial.
“Five hundred pounds spent in flowers at Lady Drumlock’s ball!” cried
Sophy, “and to think that in a few more million years the sun may be
as cold as the north pole, and what trace will there be then of all
this butterfly world?”
“Did the Mountains cut a tremendous dash this season?” asked Janet,
frivolously curious about their immediate neighbours, county people
who went to London for the season. “Of course you know she had
thirty thousand pounds left her by an uncle quite lately. And she is
so utterly without brains that I dare say she will spend it all in
entertainments.”
“Oh, they did entertain a good deal, and they did their best,
poor things, and people went to them,” Juanita answered, with a
deprecating air; “but still I should hardly like to say that they are
_in_ society. In the first place, she has never succeeded in getting
the Prince at any of her dances; and in the next place, her parties
have a cloud of provincial dulness upon them, against which it is in
vain to struggle. He can never forget his constituents and his duty
to his borough, and that kind of thing does not answer if one wants
to give really nice parties. I’m afraid her legacy won’t do her much
good, poor soul, unless she gets some clever person to show her how
to spend it. There is a kind of society instinct, don’t you know, and
she is without it. I believe the people who give good parties are
born, not made—like poets and orators.”
Sir Godfrey looked down at her, smiling at her juvenile arrogance,
which, to his mind, was more bewitching than another woman’s humility.
“We mean to show them the way next year, if we take a house in town,”
he said.
“But we are not going to have a house in town,” answered Juanita,
quickly. “Why, Godfrey, you know I have done with all that kind of
frivolity. We can go to Victoria Street in May, and stay with our
people there long enough to see all the pictures and hear some good
music, and just rub shoulders with the friends we like at half a
dozen parties, and then we will go back to our nest at the Priory.
Do you think that I am like Lady Mountain, and want to waste my life
upon the society struggle, when I have _you_?”
It was after five o’clock when they left Dorchester. It was more than
half-past seven when they drew near Cheriton, and the sun was setting
behind the irregular line of hills towards Studland. They approached
the Manor by one of the most picturesque lanes in the district, a
lane sunk between high banks, rugged and rocky, and with here and
there a massive trunk of beech or oak jutting out above the roadway,
while the gnarled and twisted roots spread over the rough, shelving
ground, and seemed to hold up the meadow-land upon the higher level;
a dark, secret-looking lane it must have seemed on a moonless night,
sunk so deeply between those earth walls, and overshadowed by
those gigantic trunks and interlacing branches; but in this mellow
evening light it was a place in which to linger. There was a right
of way through Cheriton Chase, and this sunk lane was the favourite
approach. A broad carriage drive crossed the Chase and park, skirted
the great elm avenue that led to the house, and swept round by a wide
semi-circle to the great iron gates which opened on the high-road
from Wareham.
The steep gable ends of an old English cottage rose amidst the trees,
on the upper ground just outside the gate at the end of the lane. It
was a veritable old English cottage, and had been standing at that
corner of the park-like meadow for more than two hundred years, and
had known but little change during those two centuries. It was a good
deal larger than the generality of lodges, and it differed from other
lodges insomuch as it stood outside the gate instead of inside, and
on a higher level than the road; but it was a lodge all the same,
and the duty of the person who lived in it was to open the gate of
Cheriton Chase to all comers, provided they came in such vehicles as
were privileged to enjoy the right of way. There was a line drawn
somewhere; perhaps at coal waggons or tradesmen’s carts; but for the
generality of vehicles the carriage road across Cheriton Chase was
free.
A rosy-faced girl of about fourteen came tripping down the stone
steps built into the bank as the carriage approached, and was
curtseying at the open gate in time for Sir Godfrey to drive through
without slackening the pace. He gave her a friendly nod as he passed.
“Does Mrs. Porter never condescend to open the gate herself?” he
asked Juanita.
“Seldom for any one except my father. I think she makes a point of
doing it for him, though I believe he would much rather she didn’t.
You mustn’t sneer at her, Godfrey. She is a very unassuming person,
and very grateful for her comfortable position here, though she has
known better days, poor soul.”
“That is always such a vague expression. What were the better days
like?”
“She is the widow of a captain—in the mercantile marine, I think it
is called—a man who was almost a gentleman. She was left very poor,
and my father, who knew her husband, gave her the lodge to take
care of, and a tiny pension—not so much as I spend upon gloves and
shoes, I’m afraid; and she has lived here contentedly and gratefully
for the last ten years. It must be a sadly dull life, for she is an
intellectual woman, too refined to associate with upper servants
and village tradespeople; so she has no one to talk to—literally no
one—except when the Vicar, or any of us call upon her. But that is
not the worst, poor thing,” pursued Juanita, dropping her voice to a
subdued and sorrowful tone; “she had a great trouble some years ago.
You remember, don’t you, Godfrey?”
“I blush to say that Mrs. Porter’s trouble has escaped my memory.”
“Oh, you have been so much away; you would hardly hear anything
about it, perhaps. She had an only daughter—her only child—a very
handsome girl, whom she educated most carefully; and the girl went
wrong, and disappeared. I never heard the circumstances. I was not
supposed to know, but I know she vanished suddenly, and that there
was a good deal of fuss with mother, and the servants, and the Vicar;
and Mrs. Porter’s hair began to whiten from that time, and people who
had not cared much for her before were so sorry that they grew quite
fond of her.”
“It is a common story enough,” said Godfrey, “what could a handsome
girl do—except go wrong—in such a life as that. Did she open the gate
while she was here?”
“Only for my father, I believe. Mrs. Porter has always contrived
to keep a girl in a pinafore, like that girl you saw just now. All
the girls come from the same family, or have done for the last six
or seven years. As soon as the girl grows out of her pinafores she
goes off to some better service, and a younger sister drops into her
place.”
“And her pinafores, I suppose.”
“Mrs. Porter’s girls always do well. She has a reputation for making
a good servant out of the raw material.”
“A clever woman, no doubt; very clever, to have secured a
lodge-keeper’s berth without being obliged to open the gate; a woman
who knows how to take care of herself.”
“You ought not to disparage her, Godfrey. The poor thing has known so
much trouble—think of what it was to lose the daughter she loved—and
in such a way—worse than death.”
“I don’t know about that. Death means the end. A loving mother might
rather keep the sinner than lose the saint, and the sinner may wash
herself clean and become a saint—after the order of Mary Magdalene.
If this Mrs. Porter had been really devoted to her daughter she would
have followed her and brought her back to the fold. She would not
be here, leading a life of genteel idleness in that picturesque old
cottage while the lost sheep is still astray in the wilderness.”
“You are very hard upon her, Godfrey.”
“I am hard upon all shams and pretences. I have not spoken to Mrs.
Porter above half a dozen times in my life—she never opens the
gate for me, you know—but I have a fixed impression that she is a
hypocrite—a harmless hypocrite, perhaps—one of those women whose
chief object in life is to stand well with the Vicar of her parish.”
They were at the hall door by this time, and it was a quarter to
eight.
“Let us sit in the drawing-room this evening, Godfrey,” said Juanita,
as she ran off to dress for dinner. “The library would give me the
horrors after last night.”
“My capricious one. You will be tired of the drawing-room to-morrow.
I should not be surprised if you ordered me to sit on the housetop.
We might rig up a tent for afternoon tea between two chimney stacks.”
Juanita made a rapid toilet, and appeared in one of her graceful
cream-white tea-gowns, veiled in a cloud of softest lace, just as the
clocks were striking eight. She was all gaiety to-night, just as she
had been all morbid apprehension last night; and when they went to
the drawing-room after dinner—together, for it was not to be supposed
that Sir Godfrey would linger over a solitary glass of claret—she
flew to the grand piano and began to play Tito Mattei’s famous waltz,
which seemed the most consummate expression of joyousness possible to
her. The brilliant music filled the atmosphere with gaiety, while the
face of the player, turned to her husband as she played, harmonized
with the light-hearted melody.
The drawing-room was as frivolously pretty as the library was soberly
grand. It was Lady Cheriton’s taste which had ruled here, and the
room was a kind of record of her ladyship’s travels. She had bought
pretty things or curious things wherever they took her fancy, and had
brought them home to her Cheriton drawing-room. Thus the walls were
hung with Algerian embroideries on damask or satin, and decorated
with Rhodian pottery. The furniture was a mixture of old French and
old Italian. The Dresden tea services and ivory statuettes, and _capo
di monte_ vases, and Copenhagen figures, had been picked up all over
the Continent, without any regard to their combined effect; but there
were so many things that the ultimate result was delightful, the
room being spacious enough to hold everything without the slightest
appearance of over-crowding.
The piano stood in a central position, and was draped with a Japanese
robe of state—a mass of rainbow-hued embroidery on a ground of violet
satin almost covered with gold thread. It was the most gorgeous
fabric Godfrey Carmichael had ever seen, and it made the piano a spot
of vivid parti-coloured light, amidst the more subdued colouring of
the room—the silvery silken curtains, the delicate Indian muslin
draperies, and the dull tawny plush coverings of sofas and chairs.
The room was lighted only by clusters of wax candles, and a
reading-lamp on a small table near one of the windows. It was a rule
that wherever Sir Godfrey spent his evening there must always be a
reading-table and lamp ready for him.
He showed no eagerness for his books yet awhile, but seemed
completely happy lolling at full length on a sofa near the piano,
listening and watching as Juanita played. She played more of Mattei’s
brilliant music—another waltz—an arrangement of _Non è ver_—and then
dashed into one of Chopin’s wildest mazurkas, with an audacious
self-abandonment that was almost genius.
Godfrey listened rapturously, delighted with the music for its own
sake, but even more delighted for the gladness which it expressed.
She stopped at last, breathless, after Mendelssohn’s Capriccio.
Godfrey had risen from the sofa and was standing by her side.
“I’m afraid I must have tired you to death,” she said, “but I had a
strange sort of feeling that I must go on playing. That music was a
safety-valve for my high spirits.”
“My darling, I am so glad to see that you have done with imaginary
woes. We may have real troubles of some kind to face by-and-by,
perhaps, as we go down the hill, so it would be very foolish to
abandon ourselves to fancied sorrows while we are on the top.”
“Real troubles—yes—sickness, anxiety, the fear of parting,” said
Juanita, in a troubled voice. “Oh, Godfrey, if we were to give half
our fortune to the poor—if we were to make some great sacrifice—do
you think God would spare us such pangs as these—the fear—the
horrible fear of being parted from each other?”
“My dearest, we cannot make a bargain with Providence. We can only do
our duty, and hope for the best.”
“At any rate, let us be very—very good to the poor,” urged Juanita,
with intense earnestness; “let us have their prayers to plead for us.”
The night was warm and still, and the windows were all open to the
terrace. Godfrey and Juanita took their coffee in their favourite
corner by the magnolia tree, and sat there for a long time in the
soft light of the stars, talking the old sweet talk of their future
life.
“We must drive to Swanage and see Lady Jane to-morrow,” said Juanita
by-and-by. “Don’t you think it was very wrong to go to see my
people—only cousins after all—before we went to your mother?”
“She will come to us, dear, directly we give her permission. I know
she is dying to see you in your new character.”
“How lovely she looked at the wedding, in her pale grey gown and
bonnet. I love her almost as well as I love my own dear, good,
indulgent mother, and I think she is the most perfect lady I ever
met.”
“I don’t think you’ll find her very much like the typical
mother-in-law, at any rate,” replied Godfrey, gaily.
They decided on driving to Swanage next morning. They would go in the
landau, and bring “the mother” back with them for a day or two, if
she could be persuaded to come.
Juanita stifled a yawn presently, and seemed somewhat languid after
her sleepless night and long day of talk and vivacity.
“I am getting very stupid company,” she said. “I’ll go to bed
early to-night, Godfrey, and leave you an hour’s quiet with ‘Wider
Horizons.’ I know you are longing to go on with that book, but your
chatterbox wife won’t let you.”
Of course he protested that her society was worth more than all the
books in the British Museum. He offered to take his book up to her
room and read her to sleep, if she liked; but she would not have it
so.
“You shall have your own quiet corner and your books, just as if you
were still a bachelor,” she said, caressingly, as she hung upon his
shoulder for a good-night kiss. “As for me, I am utterly tired out.
Janet and Sophy talked me to death; and then there was the long drive
home. I shall be as fresh as ever to-morrow morning, and ready to be
off to dear Lady Jane.”
He went into the hall with her, and to the top of the stairs for the
privilege of carrying her candlestick, and he only left her at the
end of the corridor out of which her room opened.
She did not ring for her maid, preferring solitude to that young
person’s attendance. She did not want to be worried with elaborate
hair-brushing or ceremonies of any kind. She was thoroughly exhausted
with the alternations of emotion of which her life had been made up
of late, and she fell asleep almost as soon as her head touched her
pillow.
The bedroom was over the drawing-room. Her last look from the open
casement had shown her the reflection of the lights below on the
terrace. She was near enough to have spoken out of the window to her
husband, had she been so minded. She could picture him sitting at the
table at the corner window, in his thoughtful attitude, his head bent
over his book, one knee drawn up nearly to his chin, one arm hanging
loosely across the arm of his low easy-chair. She had watched him
thus many a time, completely absorbed in his book.
She slept as tranquilly as an infant, and her dream-wanderings were
all in pleasant places—with him, always with him; confused after the
manner of all dreams, but with no sign of trouble.
What was this dream about being with him at Woolwich where they were
firing a big gun? A curious dream! She had been there once with her
father to see a gun drawn—but she had never seen one fired there,—and
now in her dream she stood in a crowd of strange faces, fronting
the river, and there was a long grey ironclad on the water—a turret
ship—and there came a flash, and then a puff of white smoke, and the
report of a gun, short and sharp, not like the roar of a cannon by
any means, and yet her dream showed her the dark sullen gun on the
grey deck, the biggest gun she had ever seen.
She started up from her pillow, cold and trembling. That report of
the gun had seemed so real and so near, that it had awakened her. She
was wide awake now, and pushed back her loose hair from her eyes,
and felt under her pillow for her watch, and looked at it in the dim
light of the night-lamp on the table by her bed.
“A quarter to one.”
She had left the drawing-room a few minutes after ten. It was long
for Godfrey to have sat reading alone; but he was insatiable when he
had a new book that interested him.
She got up and put on her slippers and dressing-gown, prepared to
take him to task for his late hours. She was not alarmed by her
dream, but the sound of that sharp report was still in her ears as
she lighted her candle and went down into the silent house.
She opened the drawing-room door, and looked across to the spot where
she expected to see her husband sitting. His chair was empty. The
lamp was burning just as she had left it hours ago, burning with a
steady light under the green porcelain shade, but he was not there.
Puzzled, and with a touch of fear, she went slowly across the room
towards his chair. He had strayed out on to the terrace perhaps—he
had gone out for a final smoke. She would steal after him in her long
white gown, and frighten him if she could.
“He ought at least to take me for a ghost,” she thought.
She stopped transfixed with a sudden horror. He was lying on the
carpet at her feet in a huddled heap, just as he had rolled out of
his chair. His head was bent forward between his shoulders, his face
was hidden. She tried to lift his head, hanging over him, calling
to him in passionate entreaty; and, behold, her hands and arms were
drowned in blood. His blood splashed her white peignoir. It was all
over her. She seemed to be steeped in it, as she sat on the floor
trying to get a look at his face—to see if his wound was mortal.
For some moments she had no other thought than to sit there in her
horror, repeating his name in every accent of terror and of love,
beseeching him to answer her. Then gradually came the conviction
of his unconsciousness, and of the need of help. He was badly
hurt—dangerously hurt—but it might not be mortal. Help must be got.
He must be cured somehow. She could not believe that he was to die.
She rushed to the bell and rang again, and again, and again, hardly
taking her finger from the little ivory knob, listening as the shrill
electric peal vibrated through the silent house. It seemed an age
before there was any response, and then three servants came hurrying
in—the butler, and one of the footmen, and a scared housemaid. They
saw her standing there, tall and white, dabbled with blood.
“Some one has been trying to murder him,” she cried. “Didn’t you hear
a gun?”
No, no one had heard anything till they heard the bell. The two men
lifted Sir Godfrey from the floor to the sofa, and did all they could
do to staunch that deadly wound in his neck, from which the blood was
still pouring—a bullet wound. Lambert, the butler, was afraid that
the bullet had pierced the jugular vein.
If there was life still, it was only ebbing life. Juanita flung
herself on the ground beside that prostrate form and kissed the
unconscious lips, and the cold brow, and those pallid cheeks; kissed
and cried over him, and repeated again and again that the wound was
not mortal.
“Is any one going for the doctor?” she cried, frantically. “Are you
all going to stand still and see him die?”
Lambert assured her that Thomas was gone to the stable to wake the
men, and despatch a mounted messenger for Mr. Dolby, the family
doctor.
“He might have helped us more if he had run there himself,” cried
Juanita. “There will be time lost in waking the men, and saddling a
horse. I could go there faster.”
She looked at the door as if she had half resolved to rush off to the
village in her dressing-gown and slippers. And then she looked again
at that marble face, and again fell upon her knees by the sofa, and
laid her cheek against that bloodless cheek, and moaned and cried
over him; while the butler went to get brandy, with but little hope
in his own mind of any useful result.
“What an end to a honeymoon!” he said to himself despondently.