In spite of her wetting Lady Ellington felt she had had a most
interesting day, when, an hour later, she drove back with Madge and her
maid to Brockenhurst. She was not in the least afraid of having caught
cold, because her physical constitution was, it may almost be said, as
impervious to external conditions as her mind. That frightful flash of
lightning, too, which had shattered the now leafless tree, had also, as
we have seen, been powerless to upset the even balance of her nerves,
and had only evoked a passing regret that so much electric force should
be wasted. She could, therefore, observe with her customary clearness
that something had occurred to agitate Madge, and though the
thunderstorm alone might easily account for this--where Madge had got
her nerves from she could not conjecture, there was nothing hereditary
about them, at any rate, as far as her mother was concerned--yet it
required no great exercise of constructive imagination to connect
Evelyn's sudden appearance with this agitation. She remembered also
Madge's refusal to see him the other day, and her rather unaccountable
postponement of the sitting. A few well-chosen questions, however, would
soon settle this, and these she delivered that evening after dinner,
firing them off like well-directed shots at a broad target. She did not,
to continue the metaphor, want to make bull's eyes at once, a few outers
would show her the range sufficiently well.
She had first, however, committed to writing on half-a-dozen sheets of
the hotel paper her impressions of the day and the conversation of Mr.
Merivale, in so far as it bore upon the simplification of life, and was
pleased to find how considerable a harvest she had gathered in. Lady
Ellington's literary style had in perfection those qualities of
clearness and sharp outline that distinguished her mind, and her
document might have been a report for an academy of science, so well
arranged and precise was it. There were no reflections of her own upon
the matter; it was merely a chronicle of facts and conversation. This
having been written, revised, and read aloud to Madge, she then marched
with her gun to her position in front of the target.
"It was odd that Mr. Dundas should have appeared so unexpectedly,
Madge," she said. "You must have had some considerable time with him if
he arrived before the storm began."
Madge had been rather expecting this, and she winced under her mother's
firm, hard touch.
"Yes, he had been there about an hour before you came in," she said. "I
think your account is quite excellent, mother."
This, if we consider it as an attempt to draw Lady Ellington off the
subject of Evelyn, was quite futile. She did not even seem to notice
that such an attempt had been made.
"And did you arrange about your further sittings?" she asked.
"I don't think any more will be necessary," replied Madge. "Philip
agrees with me too."
"And Mr. Dundas?"
"I don't think he will ask me for any more either."
Lady Ellington considered this a moment.
"But surely you had settled to have one more," she said, "the one which
you postponed."
"Yes, but I think we all agree now that as far as I am concerned the
picture is finished."
Lady Ellington was not exactly puzzled; it would be fairer to say that
though she did not quite know where this led, she was quite certain it
led somewhere. It was not a puzzle; it was rather a clue. So she got
behind a bush, as it were, and continued firing from there.
"He is a great friend of Philip's, is he not?" she said. "I suppose you
will see a good deal of him after your marriage?"
This sharp-shooting was frightfully trying to Madge's nerves; she never
knew where the next shot might be coming from. But in that it was now
quite clear to her that shooting was going on, it was the part of wisdom
to defend herself.
"Oh! I hope so," she said, "he is charming. I expect he will be
constantly with us."
This was a little disconcerting; Madge had distinctly had the best of
that exchange. But she was in the beleaguered position; she felt that at
any moment she might have to give in. She had a wild desire simply to
leave the room, for she wanted to be alone, and to think over all that
she now knew, but the clock inexorably pointed to half-past nine only,
and to say she was going to bed would simply strengthen whatever idea it
was in Lady Ellington's mind that prompted her questions. Maternal
anxiety and solicitude, though the point of view of the mother was
perhaps a little predominant, were the moving causes of them, if they
were referred back to primary motives; to put it more bluntly yet, Lady
Ellington merely wished for a guarantee that nothing of any sort had
occurred which might, however remotely, influence the matrimonial design
for her daughter which she had formed and Madge had agreed to carry out.
That she had fears that things were running otherwise than smoothly--by
smoothly being meant that the marriage would take place on the
twenty-eighth of the month--would be an overstatement of the idea that
prompted these questions, but she certainly wished for some convincing
word that she need have none.
Now, in the art of conversation as generally expounded, provision is not
made for one very important and common contingency. Of the two
conversationalists one may be willing to talk of anything in the world
except one subject, the other may for the time wish to talk about no
other than that, and thus conversation becomes difficult. But it would
often be a tactical error--a thing of which Lady Ellington was seldom
guilty--for the person who wishes to speak of one subject only to batter
the other with too many questions on it. It is often better to sit
quietly down and wait, refusing with what politeness there may be handy
to talk of anything else, and simply let silence do its stealthy
work--for awkward silences are wearing, and the wearing effect is
inevitably felt by the side which is willing to talk of any but the one
subject. Lady Ellington perhaps had never formulated this in all its
naked simplicity, but she had often before now put the theory into
practice with masterly effect, and she did so now. There was, so to
speak, but one gate through which the beleaguered garrison could make a
sortie: round that she concentrated her forces. The beleaguered
garrison knowing that, tried to make a sortie through every other gate
first.
A long silence.
"That was a terrible storm this afternoon," said Madge. "The rain fell
in bucketsfull. I saw there were quite deep channels across the road
along which we drove back here, which it had made."
"I did not notice them," said Lady Ellington.
Silence.
"Fancy Mr. Merivale cooking for himself and doing all the housework,"
said Madge.
"Fancy!" said Lady Ellington.
Silence.
"Shall we go up after breakfast to-morrow?" asked Madge.
"Unless you would like to go before," said her mother.
There is a terrible little proverb about being cruel only to be kind,
and this benignant sort of torture exactly describes the procedure of
Lady Ellington. Should there be--and she was quite sure there
was--something going on in Madge's mind with regard to Evelyn she was
quite convinced that it would be better in every way that she should
know about it. That was the ulterior kindness; the immediate cruelty was
apparent--for Madge was on the edge of a crisis of nerves; a very little
push might send her sprawling. If that then was the case, Lady Ellington
distinctly wished that she should sprawl; if, on the other hand, there
was nothing critical or agitating in her outlook, the little push would
do no harm whatever, for a mind at peace does not have its tranquility
upset by vague suggestions and indefinite suspicions.
But since poor Madge was far from owning just now that inestimable
possession of a tranquil mind, in the silence that followed her third
fiasco in making general conversation, she began to get restless and
fidgetty. She opened a book and looked blankly at a page, and shut it
again; she fingered the ornaments on the mantlepiece; she went to the
open window and looked out for a considerable time into the hot, wet
blackness, for the slow, steady rain was again falling, and the heavens
wept from a sullen sky. The ridge of the forest below which stood
Merivale's house was directly opposite the window--she had seen that
before night fell--and, like the thrush that came to his voiceless call,
so now her spirit sped there to one who called for her. That sudden
flash of lightning had not been more unexpected than Evelyn's
declaration to her that afternoon, nor had the thunder that followed it
come quicker in response than she had come. And now she wondered, half
with dread, half with a wild, secret hope, whether he had noticed that
momentary self-betrayal that she had made. She knew that before she
could think or control herself, a cry had been on her lips, her arms had
flung themselves wide. True, as soon as her conscious brain could work,
she had revoked and contradicted what she had done. But had he seen? How
terrible if he had seen! How terrible if he had not!
What had become, she asked herself, of all her sober and sane
conclusions of a week ago? She knew then that she loved him, that that
which had been a stranger to her all her life, no pleasant domestic
affection, but something wild, unbarred, almost brutal, yet how
essential now to life itself, had dropped into her heart, as a stone
drops into the sea, going down and down to depths unplumbable, yet still
going down until the bottom--the limits of her soul--was reached. And
he? Was she to him another such stone? Was she really sinking down and
down in his heart, so steadily and inevitably that all the tides of all
the seas might strive, yet could never cast that stone up again? It was
such a little thing, yet no power on earth, unless the laws that govern
the earth were revised and made ineffectual, could ever stay its course,
if it moved under the same command as she. Each had to settle in the
depths of the other. Once the surface was broken by the little splash,
down that would go which made the splash, and whether in a wayside
puddle or in the depths of mid-Atlantic, it would rest only where it
touched bottom. Such was the sum of her wide-eyed staring into the
blackness of the rain-ruled night. Then, still restless, she turned back
again into the room, and faced not the world of dreams and solitary
imaginings, of what must theoretically be the case, but the material
side of it all, which indubitably had its word to say. On the table was
the letter she had received an hour before dinner, forwarded from
London, and expressing the pleasure of the donor in sending a wedding
present; there too was her own answer of neatly-worded thanks, and,
above all, there was her mother, patiently adamant. And the beleaguered
garrison, though it knew that the enemy--that friendly enemy--awaited
it, went out on a sortie too forlorn to call a hope through the only
available gate.
Madge sat down in the chair she had occupied before.
"You have been asking me a lot of questions, mother," she said, "which
bear on Mr. Dundas. I suppose you think or have guessed that something
has happened. You are quite right; I think you are always right. He told
me this afternoon that he was in love with me."
Lady Ellington hardly knew whether she had expected this or not; at any
rate she showed no sign of surprise.
"What very bad taste," she said, "his telling you, I mean."
Madge had given a sudden hopeless giggle of laughter at the first four
words of this, before the explanation came. Lady Ellington waited till
she had finished.
"What did you say to him?" she asked.
"I hardly know. I think I said that one or other of us must leave the
room."
"Very proper; and he?"
"He--he asked me whether I hated him for it. And I told him I did not."
Then she broke; whether or no it was wiser to be silent she did not
pause to consider, for she could not be silent. There must be a crash; a
situation of this kind could not adjust itself in passivity, it was mere
temporising not to speak at once.
"Because I don't hate him," she said, now speaking quickly as if in fear
of interruption. "I love him. Oh! I have done my best; if he had never
spoken, never let me know that he loved me, I could have gone on, I
think, and done what it has been arranged for me to do. Philip knew, you
see, that I did not love him like that. I had told him. But I did not
know what it was. I almost wish I had never known. But I know; I can't
help that now."
Whatever Lady Ellington's gospel as regards the best plan on which to
conduct life was worth, if weighed as a moral principle, it is quite
certain that she acted up to it. She put a paper-knife into the book she
had taken up during Madge's aimless wanderings about the room to mark
the page of her perusal, and spoke with perfect calmness.
"And what do you propose to do?" she asked.
Madge had not up till that moment proposed to do anything; she had not,
in other words, considered the practical interpretation of this
bewildering discovery. The fact that her silent, secret love--a love
which she was determined to lock up forever in her own breast--was
returned, was so emotionally overwhelming that as from some blinding
light she could only turn a dazzled eye elsewhere. Her first instinct,
at the moment at which that was declared to her, was of rapturous
acceptance of it, but almost as instinctive (not quite so instinctive,
since it had come second) was a shrinking from all that it implied--her
rupture with Philip, his inevitable suffering, the pressure that she
knew would be brought to bear on her. Yet the thing had to be faced; it
was no use shrinking from it, and Lady Ellington's question reminded her
of the obvious necessity for choice. Her choice indeed was made; it was
time to think of what action that choice implied. But she answered
quietly enough.
"No, I have not yet thought of what I mean to do," she said. "I suppose
we had better talk about it."
Then Lady Ellington unmasked all her batteries. It was quite clear that
Madge already seriously contemplated breaking off her engagement with
Philip and marrying this artist.
"Indeed, we had better talk about it," she said. "But I want to ask you
one question first. Has Mr. Dundas the slightest notion that his feeling
for you is reciprocated?"
Madge thought over this a moment.
"He has no right to think so," she said. "I--I have told you what
occurred. The whole thing was but a few seconds."
"There are various ways of spending a few seconds," said her mother.
"But you think you spent them discreetly."
Madge looked up with a sort of weary patience.
"You mustn't badger me," she said. "It is no use. I did my best to
conceal it."
Then the bombardment began.
"Very good; we take it that he does not know. Now let us consider what
you are going to do. Do you mean to write a note to him saying, 'Dear
Mr. Dundas, I love you?' If that is your intention, you had better do it
at once. There is no kind of reason for delay. But if it is not your
intention, taking that in its broadest sense to mean that you will not
make known to him that you love him, dismiss that possibility
altogether. Pray give me your whole attention, Madge; nothing that can
occur to you in the whole of your life is likely to matter more than
this."
"But I love him," pleaded Madge, "and he loves me. Is not that enough?
Must not something happen?"
"I ask you whether you intend to do anything; that implies now that you,
without further action on his part, will show him that you love him. The
question just requires 'Yes' or 'No.'"
"And supposing I decline to answer you?" asked Madge, suddenly flashing
out.
"I don't think you can do that. You see I am your mother; as such, I
think I have a right to know what you propose to do."
Madge covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. The question had to
be answered; she knew that, and she knew also that unless Evelyn made a
further sign she could do nothing. If his love for her, as she doubted
not at all, was real, he must approach her again. Here then were all the
data for her answer.
"No," she said. "I shall do nothing, because there is no need. He
must----" And she broke off. Then she got up with a sudden swift
movement.
"You put it coarsely, you make cast-iron of it all, mother," she said,
"when you ask me if I intend to write to him and tell him. Of course I
do not."
"Nor see him?" pursued Lady Ellington.
"If he asks to see me I shall see him," said she. "And if his object is
to say again what he said to-day, I shall tell him."
Now to get news, even if it is not very satisfactory, is better than not
getting news. In uncertainty there is no means of telling how to act,
and whatever the contingency--a contingency known is like a danger
known--it can perhaps be guarded against, and it can certainly be faced.
How to guard against this Lady Ellington did not at the moment see, but
she knew that danger lay here.
"And from that moment you will break off your engagement with Philip?"
she asked.
There was no need here of any reply, and Lady Ellington continued:
"Now consider exactly how Mr. Dundas stands," she said. "He knows you
are engaged to a friend of his, that you will be married in a few
weeks, and he allows himself, left alone with you by accident, to make
this declaration to you. Does that seem to you to be an honourable
action?"
Then once again Madge flashed out.
"Ah, who cares?" she cried. "What does that matter?"
Lady Ellington rose.
"You have also promised to marry Philip," she said. "I suppose that does
not matter either? Or do I wrong you?"
"He would not wish me to marry him if he knew," said Madge.
Lady Ellington poured out her glass of hot water, and sipped it in
silence. She knew well that many words may easily spoil the effect of
few, and her few, she thought, on the whole had been well chosen. So
just as before she had refused to talk on any subject but one, so now,
since she had said really just what she meant to say, she refused any
longer to talk on it, but was agreeably willing, as Madge had been some
ten minutes before, to talk about anything else.
"I think there will be more rain before morning," she said.
Then Madge came close to her and knealt by her chair.
"Are you not even sorry for me, mother?" she said.
"I shall be if you act unwisely," replied the other, and Madge, there
was nothing else to be done, got up again.
There was a slightly chalybeate taste in Lady Ellington's hot water
to-night, and she remarked on it; this was more noticeable if the water
was hot than if it was cold, but the taste was not unpleasant. Then the
question of their train up to town the next day was debated, and it was
settled to leave that till to-morrow. Indeed, it was rather a pity to
come down into the country for so few hours, and their afternoon to-day
had really been spoiled by the rain. Another walk in the forest--it
would look beautifully fresh and green after the storm--would be very
pleasant to-morrow morning, if it was fine.
All this, delivered in her cool, well-bred voice, had a sort of
paralytic effect on Madge; she felt as if coils were being wound round
her that hampered her power of movement. She could scarcely picture
herself as in active opposition to her mother's will, and the picture of
herself triumphant over it was even more unthinkable. But, as usual, she
kissed her mother when she said "Good night" to her, and her mother
offered her bromide if she thought that the excitement and agitation
caused by the thunderstorm would be likely to prevent her sleeping.
Lady Ellington did not propose taking any bromide herself to make her
sleep; she did not, on the other hand, propose to attempt to go to sleep
just yet, for she had matters to weigh and consider, and perhaps take
steps consequent on her consideration, before she went to sleep. Like
all practical and successful people, she believed intensely in prompt
action; it was better in most cases to decide wrongly than not to decide
at all, and she intended before she slept to-night both to decide, and,
as far as the lateness of the hour permitted, to act on her decision.
The proposition, the thesis of her decision, was very soon rehearsed;
indeed, that was the thing that she took for granted, but had now to
prove and demonstrate. There was a house, so to speak, which she was
under contract to build and have ready in a few weeks, it was her bricks
and mortar she had to procure, and have the house solidly built and
ready by the required date. And the house to be built, it is almost
superfluous to remark, was the house which Madge and Philip would occupy
together.
Now, according to her lights, little lights, they may have been, "much
like a shade," she was convinced that Madge would be extremely happy in
the house she had to build, for she was a woman of sense, and fully
believed that everything that was sensible, even a sensible marriage,
was _ipso facto_ better than its corresponding equivalent with the sense
left out. Philip was in every way a suitable match; he was a gentleman,
he had all those solid qualities, the qualities that wear well, which
are so supremely important if they have to wear for the remainder of
mortal existence, and he was much devoted to Madge. Madge on her side
was much attached to him, and was quite certainly unemotional. It was
therefore only reasonable to suppose that her sudden ascent into these
aerial regions which had culminated in this evening's crisis were but a
Daedalus-flight; her wings, or the fastenings of them, would melt, and
she would, if she pursued the unwise course, come to earth with a most
uncomfortable and shattering bump. Evelyn, no doubt, possessed for her
something which she missed in Philip, or would have missed if she had
looked for it. But she had not looked for it, she had told him that she
brought him affection, esteem, respect, and he had been content. He was
content still, and Madge must be content too.
Browning says that it is "a ticklish matter to play with souls," but
Lady Ellington did not stand convicted over this. She did not play with
them at all; with a firm, cool hand, she shoved them into their places.
For weeks Madge had accepted, if not with rapture, at any rate with a
very sincere welcome, the future that had been planned for her, and it
was an insanity now to revoke that for the sake of what might easily be
a moment's freak. That there was something very attractive about this
irresponsible boy with his brilliant talent and his graceful presence,
Lady Ellington did not for a moment deny, even when she was quite by
herself. But to plan a lifetime that merely rested on these foundations
was to build a house upon sand. Madge had fallen in love with externals;
it was impossible that she should be allowed to make her blunder--for so
her mother regarded it--irreparable, and it was the means whereby this
should be rendered impossible that Lady Ellington had now to determine.
And since she was quite firmly convinced of the desirability of this
end, she did not, it must be confessed, feel particularly scrupulous
with regard to means.
All this time Lady Ellington's mind had not been only formulating but
also constructing, and her construction was now complete. Late though it
was, she drew her chair to the small writing-table, so conveniently
placed under the electric light, and wrote:
DEAR MR. DUNDAS.--My daughter has told me, as indeed she was bound
to do, what took place this afternoon when you arrived unexpectedly
at Mr. Merivale's house and found yourself alone with her. I feel
of course convinced that you must be already sorry for having
allowed yourself to take advantage of my girl's accidental
loneliness in this way, but since I gather from her that Mr.
Merivale and I returned almost at that moment, I am willing to
believe that you would not have----
Lady Ellington paused a moment; she wished to put things strongly.
--have continued to obtrude your presence and your speech on one to
whom it was so unwelcome.
I have no desire to add to the reproaches I am sure you must be
heaping on yourself, and I will say no more on this subject. It is
of course impossible that my daughter should sit to you again, it
is equally impossible that you should write to her or attempt to
see her, since you cannot possibly have anything to say except to
reiterate your regrets for what you have done. These it is better
to take for granted, as I am perfectly willing to do. We both of us
forgive you--I can answer for her as completely as I can answer for
myself--with all our hearts, and will maintain, you may rest
assured, the strictest silence on the subject.
I should like to have one line from you in acknowledgment of the
receipt of this.--Yours very truly,