Egidia got out of the train at Barnard Castle, as Mrs. Elles had done,
months before. She took a fly, and drove four miles to Greta Bridge.
She knew every inch of the ground from the description which Rivers and
Phœbe had at different times given her of it.
She was full of purpose. Jane Anne Cawthorne was the worst enemy of the
two that she had taken under her protection--Jane Anne Cawthorne was
prepared to swear falsely--Jane Anne Cawthorne’s mouth must be stopped.
Egidia thought she could do it, fairly and squarely, and without this
girl’s evidence, so she gathered from the lawyers, the case against
Rivers and Phœbe would fall to the ground.
It was Jane Anne Cawthorne herself who came forward civilly when she
alighted at the door of “Heather Bell,” and asked for rooms. Egidia was
as urbane in manner as she could be towards the woman who cared for
Rivers, and was yet prepared to testify falsely concerning him.
“A low type!” she thought to herself, “a potential villain, but still
susceptible to moral influences. They have bribed her, but all the same,
she is doing this thing par dépit amoureux. Therefore an apt subject for
diplomacy. How low I feel! But if I can only get him out of this, I
don’t care what I do.”
She secured the very sitting-room that Rivers and Mrs. Elles had shared
together, and derived a melancholy pleasure from the idea that it was
so. There was the very rose-strewn table-cover, stained and splashed
with the dabbling of the artist’s brush; there was the piano on which
Mrs. Elles had played to him. But outside, in the wintry garden, the
dark dank earth lay heavy upon all the flowers and verdure that had
gladdened the eyes of the lovers. For in spite of Phœbe’s frivolity and
Edmund’s asceticism, she could read through Phœbe’s admissions and
falsifications, that for a brief space they had been lovers--the woman
in her had been genuinely stirred, the man in him. It had not lasted,
but it had been. But now it was winter, “the days dividing lover and
lover, the light that loses, the night that wins,” the season when no
man can paint, and loves that are ephemeral die down and are buried
under the wrack of autumn. There was no frost as yet, the December air
was mild and subdued, with only a prescience as it were of the snows and
disasters of January.
Egidia made a sad little pilgrimage to the scenes of this romance that
grieved her so. Brignal Banks under their winter aspect reminded her
somehow of a young and pretty woman after a long and devastating
illness. It was the same, and not the same, the warm tones had gone out
of the green, the ragged boughs seemed blotted in upon the sky; the
moist sides of the cliff, that no glow of sunset irradiated now, showed
hard and chill behind the streaky lines of the leafless creepers that
still hung on them. The water still bubbled and splashed over the
stones, but with an empty merriment. So it seemed to the sad woman who
stood by the river bank and looked at the bridge of stones made by human
labour, that was no longer continuous. There had been a storm or two,
and the rains had flushed the river bed, and the added flood had washed
the stones away. She would never dare to confess it to Rivers and Phœbe,
but she was at immense pains to gather up a heavy stone and try to drop
it into a place between two remaining ones, and thus make the bridge
passable. She would add her mite to Rivers’ bridge too. Phœbe Elles
should not be the only woman who had helped him.
She came away from there a prey to terrible depression, and resolved to
visit no more “mouldering lodges” of a past in which she had no share.
A fate seemed to be hanging over the whole world; to the sad Egidia, all
the inanimate things that he had seen and touched seemed instinct with
the foreboding of the particular disaster that threatened one man. And
Jane Anne, too, who waited on her entirely now, at this dull season,
when the personnel in the inn was necessarily diminished--was Jane Anne
sad, or was it only the accustomed heaviness of the lonely, empty-lived,
country girl?
Egidia had written her name, Miss Alice Giles, very clearly in the hotel
book, and, in brackets, her nom de guerre, which had a world-wide
reputation. She committed this solecism with a distinct purpose. Had her
name as a novelist reached Jane Anne’s ears? That was the point she
meant to work from.
Jane Anne certainly was full of the little civilities and attentions
which that name generally evoked among the celebrity hunters of superior
rank among whom Egidia’s ways were cast. Of taciturn habit though the
landlady’s niece unmistakably was, she yet beamed on the authoress on
every possible occasion, and lost no opportunity of insinuating herself
into her good graces as far as was consistent with perfect deference and
civility.
At the close of the second day she spoke and asked a question.
“If you please, ma’am,” she said, “might I venture to inquire if you are
going to make a book about this place? So many do.”
“But tell me why you think I am likely to?” asked Egidia, with the
elaborate indulgence of the conspirator.
“Because, ma’am, I happen to know that you are a writer. A gentleman
that comes here sometimes, he gave me one of your books once, and oh, I
do like it so! I got him to write my name in it, and who it was from! So
I got his too. May I bring it out and show you?”
With the gracious permission of the authoress Jane Anne fetched the
book. It was Egidia’s last novel but one, and on the flyleaf was Edmund
Rivers’ signature. The book had the peculiar sodden appearance of a
volume much and carefully read.
“The gentleman gave me lots of books,” Jane Anne went on. “And I have
read them all over--hundreds of times. But I like none so much as this.
I am so fond of novels! And if it was one written about here, why then I
should like it all the better.”
“But this is such a very quiet place. I should not think that anything
ever could happen here?”
“Oh, ma’am, don’t be too sure! Last summer now, something happened here,
that if you was to put it into a book, no one would believe it! And I am
in it too--leastways I shall be!”
“Tell me about it, if you have time,” said Egidia, “and then perhaps I
could work it into something.”
“It is something very serious,” said Jane Anne, her heavy brows coming
together. “It is a divorce case. I don’t know as I ought to tell it.”
“A divorce case is known eventually to all the world!” said Egidia
sententiously. “Besides, you need not tell me the names!”
“Oh, no, I needn’t then,” said the girl, relieved, “but they are sure to
slip out in the course of conversation. But then that won’t be my fault,
will it?”
“No,” said the other, concealing her amusement at Jane Anne’s morality.
“It will be mine--I hope. Come and sit down here, if you are not too
busy, and tell me about it!”
Jane Anne was a little thrown off her majestic balance by the
distinguished authoress’s condescension. She sat down, awkward,
handsome, interesting even, as a study, but----
“This creature presumes to love Edmund too!” Egidia thought, and hated
the mission she had set herself to accomplish, which involved converse,
and an assumption of intimacy with her.
“You see, ma’am, it is like this,” began Jane Anne, too humble and
modestly conscious of the capacity in which this interview had been
granted her, not to begin on it at once. “There is a gentleman, the
gentleman who gave me that book, he comes here every year and paints--he
always has done--he is not married, leastways we think not!--he is what
they call the co-respondent.”
She said correspondent, but it was not her mispronunciation that made
Egidia wince.
“Well, then,” Jane Anne went on, “last summer there comes a
lady--leastwise a very funny lady, to be a lady--to call herself one, I
mean--she was a foreigner, with painted cheeks, and something she did to
her hair, and she nivver let our Mr. Rivers alone! He didn’t run after
her, he really didn’t, but she had made up her mind to have him, and she
did. She was married!”
“This is very interesting, and extraordinary!” ejaculated Egidia.
“But she nivver telled him so, nor none of us. She called herself Miss
Frick, and first of all she wore a pair of blue spectacles, but trust
her, she couldn’t stick to that long, because, you see, he couldn’t
rightly see her face while she wore them, and so one fine day, she went
and left them off! That’s why Mrs. Popham will have it that she was a
spy! A spy! What for? She didn’t want to spy anything. She just wanted
Mr. Rivers, and she got him! They used to go jaunting into the Park at
all sorts of hours of the night, and loverish things like that!”
“Oh, then it is your opinion they were lovers?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do, and I am going for to say so. It is me that knows
best, the lawyer says so.”
“Whose lawyer?”
“Mr. Mortimer Elles’s lawyer! He’s been down to see me times out of
number. Aunt was dreadfully fashed; she said it put me out with my
work!”
“And this man--the lover--is he a nice man?”
“Oh--ma’am!”
“Very nice?”
“The nicest gentleman I ever saw, or ever shall see. I would have done
anything for him!”
“And she--is she nice?”
“Oh--ma’am!”
“You don’t like her so well, I see!”
“Ma’am, I should like to take and run this darning-needle into her.
Brazened painted-up creature, so rude spoken, too--and great staring
eyes, with black saucers round them---- ”
“Whatever she is, he will have to marry her now!” Egidia remarked
carelessly.
“Ma’am!”
“Oh, yes, as a man of honour, he is bound to, if she is to be divorced
on his account. Did not the lawyer tell you that? How very clever!
Perhaps he did not realise how a man of honour would feel under the
circumstances. The lover is a man of honour, is he not?”
“He’s a real gentleman, ma’am,” replied Jane Anne, translating Egidia’s
description into her own language.
“Well, then, I am sorry for him!”
“But, ma’am, I don’t see why? She is a married woman; she carries on
with him, her husband doesn’t like it--he can’t separate them, so he
calls in the law to help him.”
“Very nicely reasoned, Jane Anne! But the law only helps the husband to
get rid of the woman who has betrayed him, he has nothing to do with the
other man, who is of course bound to the woman who has lost her position
through him. If the man you speak of is a gentleman, he will do what is
usual, you may be sure of that!”
The girl was quite speechless with emotion for a moment, then said,
solemnly and sadly:
“Shall I be the one to force him to that, ma’am?”
“What do you mean? What have you to do with it?”
“Because the lawyer young gentleman says it is on my evidence they
chiefly rely, to prove the case against him!”
“Oh, then, you may consider that you have married her to him, when the
divorce is over! But what is your evidence?”
“I saw them,” stammered Jane Anne, “the lawyer says I must tell what I
know, and not swear falsely.”
“Certainly you must tell what you know to be true.”
She looked insistently at the girl, but not too insistently, lest she
roused her suspicions.
“But I should make as light of it as I could, if I were you, and wished
the man well, as you say you do!”
“Then if nothing is proved against him, he won’t have to marry her?”
inquired the girl eagerly.
“Obviously not. Her husband will have to take her back!”
“Oh,” said Jane Anne, “and Mr. Rivers be just where he was before?”
“Oh, is it Mr. Rivers? I know him slightly.”
“Do you? Do you? Ma’am, then if you know him, will you tell him that
Jane Anne Cawthorne is his friend, and wishes him well. Why, I would
like to die for him, I would indeed!”
“Then you had better lie for him a little!”
She looked keenly at the girl as she spoke, and with ever so slight an
accent on the word whose first letter she had altered, and she had the
satisfaction of seeing Jane Anne redden.
“Understate rather than overstate, you know!”
She now ventured to say this, seeing by the girl’s confusion that the
latter course was the one she had intended to take, or had perhaps even
been suborned by a lawyer over-zealous in Mortimer Elles’s behalf to do.
“Nothing extenuate--but naught set down in malice!” she went on. “Don’t
deny anything, or hold back anything, but make as light of what you did
see as possible!”
“I think I hear my aunt calling me!” Jane Anne exclaimed suddenly. “I
will just run and see what she wants, and be back in a moment.”
Miss Giles admired Jane Anne’s method of gaining time. Did she really go
to attend on her aunt, or did she simply stand outside the door for a
while? In five minutes she came back, looking somehow quite a different
woman, and said simply:
“I want you to tell me how I can help him, ma’am?”
“Say simply what you know, and no more!”
“Then,” said Jane Anne, her eyes downcast, “I had better write to Mr.
Perkins!”
“Who is he?”
“The lawyer gentleman who came here and saw me. He took down what I said
on a piece of paper.”
“Perhaps in what you said then you--exaggerated a little--did not you?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did,” replied the girl, hiding her eyes in the apron she
wore, and bursting into tears. “I was so angry with her and with him,
because he would not even speak to me that last day, but shook my hand
off his sleeve, that I said the worst I could. And truly I never saw no
worse than him and her walking up the Broad Walk yonder hand in hand. It
was the old lady saw him kissing her through the window, and standing by
his bedroom door in the middle of the night. I didn’t see that, but I
was there in the garden before,--it was I who took her to the window of
his room, but I didn’t look, I couldn’t bear to. But I invented worse,
and all I said, I told the lawyer I would swear to in Court.”
“How very awful!” said Egidia. “But if you write and say that you are
not prepared to swear this then the chances are that the case will fall
to the ground, and you will not have to appear in Court at all.”
“But then I shan’t even see him!” exclaimed Jane Anne.
“See him--no, not then, but if there isn’t any trial, you will have him
back here painting as usual next spring, I should think.”
Jane Anne seized Egidia’s hand and kissed it.
“Oh, ma’am, ma’am, you know I never wanted nothing but that. I knew well
enough he could never be anything to such as me, but I didn’t want him
to marry anyone else.”
* * * * *
“I did not expect him to marry me, but oh, I could not bear him to marry
any one else!”
That phrase of the country girl’s was in Egidia’s ears all day as the
train bore her southwards, her mission accomplished, and Phœbe Elles and
Rivers for ever divided, by her means.
She had done it, and for what motive? Now that it was done, the spirit
of self-analysis tormented the woman of letters skilled in the art of
heart-searching. The happiness of Rivers was her object, and that she
had been convinced lay in his continued celibacy. She herself had
nothing to gain by it, wished to gain nothing by it. “I do not, I do
not, if I have to go into a convent to prove it!” she said out aloud, in
the solitude of the railway carriage. “I am glad we are cousins!” she
added, mentally. “All women are dogs in the manger, when the man they
love is concerned!” was her reflection with reference to Jane Anne’s
pathetic speech. The devotion of the servant for the artist revolted
while it touched her. “I wonder how many more there are of us?” she
wondered bitterly. “And his method--indifference, and innate incapacity
to make any woman really happy. Those are the men who are beloved....
Phœbe Elles is saved--but she won’t think so. So is Edmund--but he won’t
admit it, perhaps. At any rate, I do not profit. If I did, I would kill
myself!”