THE HOUSE THAT STOOD UPON A ROCK
A week passed. In the fickle memory of the outer world the story of the
Gulf Rock lighthouse was becoming mellow with age. Men now talked of war
in Africa, of the Yellow Peril, of some baccarat squabble in a West-end
club. But its vitality lingered in Penzance. There were side issues
which Pyne's device had kept from the public ken, but which the town's
folk pondered. Lady Margaret Stanhope, obeying her son's behests,
tantalized her friends by smiling serenely and telling them nothing when
they pestered her with questions. That is to say, she spoke not one word
about the lady who was being nursed back to health in the
lighthouse-keeper's cottage, but filled their souls with bitterness when
she hinted at marvels concerning Constance and Enid.
In such a small place, where every man's affairs are canvassed by his
neighbors, it was impossible to prevent an atmosphere of mystery from
clinging to Mrs. Vansittart. Again, the gossips were greatly concerned
about Enid. For a young woman "in her position" to be engaged to an
officer in the Royal Navy and admitted to the sacred ranks of the
aristocracy was a wonderful thing in itself. But that she should be on
open terms of the greatest intimacy not alone with the elderly Mr.
Traill, but with his good-looking nephew, even calling the latter
"Charlie" and treating him as a near relative, was an amazing
circumstance only surpassed by the complacency with which Lady Margaret
and her son regarded it.
The actors in this comedy seemed to be sublimely indifferent to public
opinion. That was the worst of it. Enid was escorted about the town by
each and all of the men at all hours. Now she was at the hospital,
cheering Bates and Jackson or the injured people from the wreck, now
arranging for the departure of some of the poorer survivors when they
were able to travel, now flitting over to Marazion to see Jim Spence,
and once actually visiting Mr. Jones, the inn-keeper.
At last a part of the secret eked out. Enid went with her father to ask
how Mr. Emmett, the sick chief officer, was getting on. They found him
smoking in the front garden of the house in which Brand had lodged him.
He started when he saw them approaching, and his weather-beaten face
wore the puzzled look with which he regarded Enid one night on the
lighthouse stairs.
Traill noticed the sailor's covert glances at Enid, so he said:
"By the way, Mr. Emmett, you were on the _Britannic_ when my wife and
I, her sister, and two children, came to England before the _Esmeralda_
was lost?"
"Yes, sir." He paused.
During many an Atlantic crossing he and Mr. Traill had talked of that
last joyous journey, when he, a boy who had just joined the service, sat
at their table, as was the custom of junior officers in those years.
Mr. Traill smiled. He knew what was in the other man's mind.
"Do you see a likeness in this young lady to anyone you have ever
known?" he asked.
"Well, sir, I hope it will not hurt your feelings, and it's a good many
years ago now, but I could have sworn--well, I must out with it. She is
the living image of your wife."
"Indeed, that cannot hurt my feelings, as she is her daughter."
"Her daughter! Your daughter!" gasped Emmett.
A small serving-maid, with the ears of a rabbit, was listening
spell-bound at the open window. Here, indeed, was a choice tit-bit for
the milkman, and the postman, and the butcher's and grocer's boys. From
this lower current the stream of talk flowed upwards until it reached
the august drawing-room of Mrs. Taylor-Smith.
She drove in frantic haste to Lady Margaret's villa, and fired questions
broadside.
"Oh, yes," said Jack's mother, suavely. "It is quite true. Of course I
have known it from the first. According to present arrangements the
marriage will take place in the spring. Enid's marriage settlement will
be nearly quarter of a million."
Like most women, she loved that word. A million, even in fractions, is
so glib, yet so unattainable.
The only person who was slightly dissatisfied with the progress of
events was Pyne. Constance never appeared. She shared with Mrs. Sheppard
the care of her mother. Enid, blithe and guileless in the public eye,
did the house-keeping and represented the household.
Brand, too, save for a couple of visits to the hotel, remained
invisible. He did not mention Mrs. Vansittart's name. He was pale and
worn, a man at war with himself. The young Philadelphian--for Pyne's
family home was in the Quaker City, though his estate lay principally in
New York--was not pleased by the slight signs perceptible behind the
screen of Brand's reserve.
"Constance takes after her father," he told himself. "There may be
trouble about her mother. In the scurry I may get left. I must think
this out."
At last came a day of warm sunshine, when Enid announced that the
invalid, by the doctor's orders, was carried downstairs.
"Has Mr. Brand seen her yet?" asked Pyne.
"No," replied Enid, with a little cloud on her fair face. "He never
mentions her. And how we wish he would. He is suffering, but keeps
silent, and neither Constance nor I can make any suggestion."
"But what will be the outcome?"
"How can I tell? That night--after we left the hotel--he told us the
story of his married life. It did not seem to be utterly impossible to
straighten matters, but we knew nothing of her career during so many
years. Was she married again? I have asked my father. He believes she
was, but is not certain."
"Father" was Mr. Traill; Brand remained "dad." Thus did Enid solve the
difficulty.
"Is she aware that Constance knows she is her mother?"
"We think so. Indeed, we are sure. She has been so ill, and is yet so
fragile, that we dare not excite her in the least degree. So Constance
has been very careful, but every look, every syllable, shows that her
mother is in no doubt on that point."
"It's a pretty hard nut to crack," said Pyne. He blew cigar smoke into
rings. Seemingly the operation aided reflection.
"Say, Enid," he went on. "If the weather is fine tomorrow, do you think
Connie would come out for a drive?"
"I don't know. Certainly she needs some fresh air. What between her
anxiety and her mother's illness, they are beginning to look like
sisters."
"Just mention to Connie, in her father's presence, that if the sun
shines at eleven, I will be along in a dogcart. Mrs. Vansittart will be
downstairs by that time?"
"Yes."
"And if Connie comes out with me, you just find an errand in town. Rope
Jack into the scheme, or any old dodge of that sort. Take care Mr. Brand
knows of it. By the way, send Mrs. Sheppard out too."
"What in the world--"
"You're just too pretty to think hard, Enid. It causes wrinkles. Do as I
ask, there's a good girl."
Enid was delighted to find that Brand strongly supported the suggestion
that Constance should take the drive. Pyne, sharp on time, drew up a
smart pony in front of the cottage, and did not twitch a muscle when
Constance, veiled and gloved, ran down the pathway.
"Excuse me getting down," said Pyne. "I dispensed with a groom. I guess
you know the roads round here."
She climbed to the seat beside him.
"It is very good of you to take this trouble," she said, and when he
looked at her a slight color was visible through the veil.
"How is your mother?" he asked, abruptly.
He felt, rather than saw, her start of surprise.
She did not expect the relationship to be acknowledged with such sudden
candor.
"She is much better," she assured him.
"That's all right," he announced, as if a load were off his mind. And
then, somewhat to her mystification, he entertained her with the news.
Elsie and Mamie had quitted Penzance the previous evening, an aunt
having traveled from Boston as soon as the first tidings of the wreck
reached her.
"She was a young, nice-looking aunt, too," he said, cheerfully. "And I
was powerful fond of those two kiddies."
"The association of ideas might prove helpful," she suggested, with a
touch of her old manner.
"That is what struck Elsie," he admitted. "She said she didn't know why
I couldn't marry Aunt Louisa right off, and then we could all live
together sociably."
"Oh! And what did the lady say?"
"She thought it was a great joke, until I said that unfortunately I had
made other arrangements. Then she guessed her nieces had got a bit out
of hand."
"Have you seen the poor fellow whose arm was broken? Enid has not had a
moment to give me details of events since we landed."
From that point their conversation dealt with generalities. Soon the
girl perceived his intent. His sole desire was to place her at her ease,
to make her realize that no matter what troubles life held they could be
vanquished if faced with a smile. She responded to his mood, and
enlivened the drive with comments on the people they met and the houses
and villages they passed. For two hours the world went well because it
was forgotten.
Enid, the conspirator, waited until the pair in the dog-cart were out of
sight. Then she went to the little room at the back of the cottage where
Brand pretended to be busily engaged in compiling a scientific account
of his auriscope.
"I am going out, dad," she said, trying to appear unconcerned.
"All right," he answered, laying down his pipe.
"I only came to tell you because Mrs. Sheppard is out, too."
Obviously Enid was determined that if Pyne's calculations were worth
anything they should have fair play.
"Oh," he commented sharply, "but the maid is in?"
"Yes. She is such a stupid girl in some things. If--if our guest rings
you will hear her. Would you mind asking Mary what it is in case she
gets muddled?"
He glanced at her. She was pulling on her gloves, and vastly bothered by
a refractory button.
"If I hear the bell, I will inquire," he said, and she escaped, feeling
quite wicked.
When he was alone, he did not resume his task. In the next room,
separated from him only by a brick wall, was his wife. A wall! Why
should there always be a wall between them? It was not of his building.
Had she made it impassable during the long years? And what would be the
outcome, now that Constance was in daily communion with her mother? The
doctor, in kindly ignorance, had told him that Mrs. Vansittart was
convalescent and would be able to travel in a few days. In response to a
question, the doctor added that the lady herself asked when she might be
moved.
What was her plan? Mr. Traill, that day, had written him a sympathetic
letter, mentioning the fact that Mrs. Vansittart had voluntarily
rescinded her promise to marry him, and, indeed, judged by the light of
present knowledge, had determined on that course since she first knew
that her former husband was living.
Suddenly Brand pushed back his chair from the desk at which he sat.
"The young dog!" he growled. He had in fact followed the exact mental
process which Pyne mapped out for him. The letter, the drive, Mrs.
Sheppard's absence, Enid's uneasy wriggling at the door, were all parts
of an ordered plan. He was to be given an opportunity of seeing his wife
and disentangling the twisted strands of twenty years. He rose
impatiently, and paced the room, quietly withal, lest the woman in the
next room should hear him. A decision had been forced on him. He could
shirk it no longer.
"Pyne has contrived this," he muttered. "He thinks he can see more
clearly into the future than a man twice his age. Enid is in the plot,
too. And Connie! No, not Connie. Dear heart! She is worn with anxiety,
yet she has never once mentioned her mother to me since she carried her
into the house like an ailing child."
Back and forth he walked, wrestling with the problem. See his wife he
must, and before she quitted Cornwall. Was it advisable, in her present
state of health, to take her by surprise? Pyne evidently thought so. And
the doctor! Good Heavens! was the doctor in the thing, too?
At last, he tugged at the bell.
"Mary," he said, "ask Mrs. Vansittart if she feels able to see Mr.
Brand."
There; it was done.
Mary, rosy-cheeked and soft of speech, dreading only Mrs. Sheppard's
matronly eye, knocked at the door of the sitting-room. He heard her
deliver his message. There was no audible answer. He was lamenting his
folly, hoping against hope that no ill results might be forthcoming to
the invalid thus taken by surprise, when he caught Mary's formal
"Yes'm," and the girl came to him.
"Please, sir," she said, "the lady says she is anxious to see you."
He walked firmly to the door, opened it and entered. He had made up his
mind what to say and how to say it. It would be best to ask his wife to
discuss matters in a friendly spirit, and, for their daughter's sake,
agree to some arrangement whereby Constance should see her occasionally.
There need be no tears, no recriminations, no painful raking through the
dust-heaps of the vanished years. The passion, the agony, of the old
days was dead. Their secret had been well kept. It was known only to
those whom they could trust, and they might part without heart-burnings,
whilst Constance would be spared the suffering of knowing that her
mother and she were separated forever.
These things were well ordered in his brain when he looked at his wife.
She was seated near the window, and her beautiful eyes, brilliant as
ever, were fixed on his with harrowing intensity. They shone with the
dumb pain of a wounded animal.
He walked towards her and held out his hand. Her illness had brought out
certain resemblances to Constance. She looked younger, as some women do
look after illness. Surely he could not, even had he harbored the
thought, use cruel words to this wan, stricken woman, the wife whom he
had loved and for whom he had suffered.
"Nanette," he said, with utmost gentleness, "do not be distressed.
Indeed, there is no reason why our meeting should be painful. It is
better that we should have a quiet talk than that we should part again
in anger and bitterness."
She caught his hand in both of hers. Still she said nothing. Her large
eyes gazed up at him as if she sought to read in his face the thoughts
he might not utter, the memories he might not recall. Her lips
distended. He saw her mouth twitching at the corners.
"Nanette," he said again, though his voice was not well under control,
and something rose in his throat and stifled him. "I appeal to you not
to give way to--to emotion. You may--become ill again--and I would never
forgive myself."
Still clinging to his hand, she sank on her knees by his side. But there
was no wild burst of tears; her sorrow was too deep for such kindly aid.
"Stephen," she whispered faintly, "I cannot ask you to forget, but you
have spoken of forgiveness. Can you forgive?"
He bent over her and would have raised her; she clung to him with such
energy that he desisted.
"My poor wife!" he murmured, "who am I that I should deny that which I
hope to obtain from my Creator."
"But--" she panted, in that unnerving whisper--"I treated you so vilely.
I left you to join the man you had fought to save me. I deserted my
husband and my child for the sake of the money he bequeathed to me. In
the lust of wealth I strove to crush you out of my heart. And now that
God has humbled me I must humble myself. Stephen, I am not your wife. I
obtained a divorce--"
"Nanette," he cried, "I cannot bear to see you kneeling at my feet. I
ask no revelations. I forgive you any wrong you may have done me, fully
and freely, as I hope to be forgiven."
She yielded to his pleading and allowed him to raise her. For an instant
she was clasped to his breast.
"It would be happiness to die in your arms, Stephen," she said wildly.
"I do not deserve it, I know, but Heaven is merciful."
The dreadful idea possessed him that in her weak state this passionate
wish might be granted.
"Nanette!" he cried, "you must control yourself. If you will not promise
to sit down and talk quietly I will leave you."
She obeyed him instantly.
"I don't care how much you scold me," she said, "but you must not go
away. I meant to see you before I left Penzance. I came here that night.
I looked through the window. I saw my daughter and her adopted sister
listening to you and weeping because of a mother's shame. Then I must
have lost my senses. I ran away. I remember nothing else until I woke
up to find Constance caring for me--in your house."
He tried to break in upon the trend of her thought. This was by no means
the line he had intended to pursue. His hope was to soothe and calm her,
to part from her in amity and without giving her cause to deplore a loss
of dignity.
"I am only too pleased that when illness overtook you you were committed
to my care and to Constance. Poor girl! She thought you were dead."
"Did you tell her that?"
"No, but I allowed it to be assumed, which is the same thing."
"When did she know the truth?"
"In the hotel--after you left the room. I had to say something. It
was--better--for you--that I should say you were my wife."
"So, even in that trying moment, you strove to shield me from unjust
suspicions. Stephen, how could I have acted towards you as I did?"
Again he endeavored to lead her to talk of the future rather than the
past.
"There is one great surprise in store for you," he said. "But it is a
pleasant one in every way. Enid is Mr. Traill's daughter."
"I am glad," she said simply. "I do not understand, but you must tell me
another time. Just now, I can think only of you, and of myself. You
_must_ listen, Stephen. I will do all that you demand, hide myself
anywhere, but you must know everything. When we parted, when I deserted
you to nurse a dying man, I was foolish and wilful, but not wholly
abandoned. Nor have I ever been. I was rich enough to gratify my whims,
and, for a time, I lived in Paris, on the Riviera, in Florence and in
Biarritz. But I was always meeting people who knew you, and, although my
wealth, and perhaps my good looks, kept me in a certain set, I felt that
our friends invariably took your side and despised me. That embittered
me the more. At last your father died, and I saw some vague reference to
your disappearance from society. I employed agents to trace you. They
failed. Then I went to America and lived on a ranch in Nebraska, where I
obtained a divorce from you on the ground of desertion. Desertion,
Stephen! That was the plea I raised."
She gave a mocking little laugh. Brand, thinking it best to fall in with
her mood, sat in silence on a chair which he had drawn close to the
window. From his house he could see the wide sweep of Mount's Bay. The
Trinity tender was steaming out from the harbor. It struck him as an
extraordinary fact that this was the day of his relief had he served his
full two months on the rock.
Today, by his own design, the second era of his checkered career would
have come to a peaceful close. Within a little while he would have taken
Constance, and Enid, if unmarried, on that long-contemplated Continental
tour. But the hurricane came, when "the blast of the terrible ones is as
a storm," and the pillar, the refuge of his distress, became the centre
of influences destined to mold his life afresh.
What did it all mean? He bowed his face into his hands. He heard his
wife's low, sweet voice continue:
"I lived there nearly six years. Then my manager died. He was an
Englishman named Vansittart. Within a month his wife died. There was
some fever about the place, and I became frightened. A longing for the
old life seized me, and I went East, but not as Mrs. Brand, the name
which I always bore in Nebraska. I had done with it and with you, as I
thought--Constance never entered my mind save as a feeble memory--so I
became Mrs. Etta Vansittart."
Brand raised his head and looked at her again. She was speaking now in a
curiously subdued tone. She was giving evidence against herself, and
giving it truly.
"In Newport, Saratoga, and the Adirondacks in summer, in New York during
the winter, I lived in a drowsy content. People who take drugs must
reach that state, but their condition is pitiable when they are aroused.
Many men asked me to marry them. I laughed at the idea. At last I met
Mr. Traill. We were friendly for quite five years. I came to Europe, to
the Engadine, where I found that Mrs. Stephen Brand's troubled life was
forgotten, but Mrs. Vansittart, the rich widow, was popular. There I saw
Mr. Traill again. He offered me marriage, and I fancied it would be well
to ally myself with a man so distinguished and widely known on both
sides of the Atlantic. I did not love him. I respected and admired
him--that was all. I accepted him, but stipulated that I should go back
to the States and wind up my affairs there, returning to Paris for the
wedding. That was necessary, if I would maintain my deception. So,
Stephen, after a lifetime of vagary and wandering, this is the result. I
am bespattered by the mud of my own acts; I see my forgotten daughter
grown to beautiful womanhood; I meet my husband, whom I might have loved
and honored, patiently following the path into which my neurotic
impulses drove him. Stephen, do you think my punishment is completed?"
The bitter self-condemnation in her voice was not defiant but subdued.
She had traveled far in spirit through the Vale of Tears since the Gulf
Rock barred her onward progress.
Though she asked a question she seemed to expect no answer. Brand,
thinking to render her task less trying, was still looking through the
window and watching the steady churning of the tender towards Carn du
and thence to the lighthouse.
At last he spoke:
"When I entered this room," he said, "I meant to avoid a scene which
must have been as exhausting to you as it is painful to me. Yet as it
happens, it is well for both of us that you have lifted the veil from
what has gone before. Now it should be dropped--forever."
"Tell me what you wish me to do. I will obey."
"Don't you think it will be better if we defer a final settlement? You
have already taxed your frail powers beyond their limit."
"No, Stephen. Speak now. I will not faint nor yield to weakness. I will
live. Have no fear. Death does not come as a skilful healer of the
wounded conscience. It may be sought, and I have thought of that. But
Constance would suffer, and, if it will spare her pain, I will endure to
the end. Surely I owe her that reparation. I committed moral suicide
once in my life. Let it suffice!"
The fixed plan of the study, with its carefully arranged phrases, was
not so readily acceptable to the man now. What would become of his wife
if he drove her forth, this time of his own accord, to live in mournful
solitude, brooding over a wasted life and looking forward only to an
occasional visit from her daughter?
A host of impossible ideas jostled in his brain. He strove desperately
to find some easy way of suggesting the settlement which appealed to him
as the fitting one, but his soul revolted from the notion of formulating
a decree of banishment against this etherial, ghost-like creature who
had been thrust back into his very keeping from out the heart of the
storm.
He stood up and faced her, careless whether or not the stress of inward
conflict in his eyes belied the calm gravity of his words.
"Perhaps you are stronger than I," he said. "We must meet again,
tomorrow or next day. Some of the young people will be returning soon.
If you wish it, I will not tell them I have seen you."
"It is for you to decide, Stephen."
She seemed to be quite hopeless, resigned to any twist or turn of fate.
Here was a broken woman, indeed, and the spectacle was torturing. He had
never understood her as a bright young girl and a bride of nineteen. He
did not understand her now. A man of his oak-like qualities could not
grasp the nature of a woman who bent as a reed before each puff of wind.
It was hard to utter even a commonplace farewell. She held him by her
very helplessness. But the rapid trot of a horse caught his ears, and,
whilst he stood irresolute, he saw Constance alighting from the
dog-cart. His wife looked out, too. They heard their daughter laughingly
regret that she could not ask Mr. Pyne to luncheon--meals were irregular
events just then.
Brand felt a timid hand grasping his, and a choking sob proclaimed that
Constance's mother was crying.
He stooped with a motion that was almost a caress.
"Don't cry," he said. "I cannot bear it."
"I can bear anything, Stephen," she sobbed, "if only you will let me
stay with you forever."
"Do you mean that, Nanette?" he gasped, incredulously.
"I have prayed, yes, dared to pray, that it might be so ever since I saw
my child. She has brought us together again. Let us not part, for her
sake, and for mine, Stephen, if it is not too late."
So Constance, hastening up the garden path, could not believe her eyes
when she saw her father lift her mother into his arms and kiss her.
Mary, the maid, never ceased wondering why every other member of her sex
in Laburnum Cottage should be tearful yet ridiculously happy that
afternoon. Mrs. Vansittart wept, and Miss Constance wept, and Miss Enid
wept when she came in, whilst Mrs. Sheppard was weeping at intervals all
day.
Nevertheless they were all delighted in their woe, and Mrs. Sheppard,
although she cooked a tremendous dinner, never scolded her once.
It was also a remarkable thing that the invalid lady should insist that
she was strong enough to come downstairs that evening. She did not eat a
great deal, poor thing, but she looked ever so much better, and seemed
to find all her pleasure in gazing alternately at the master and Miss
Constance, and in listening to every word they said.
In the garden, next night, the moon being now very brilliant indeed,
Pyne said to Constance that the step-aunt idea having fizzled out he
guessed that the lady who figured in that unclassified degree of
relationship would pose more satisfactorily as a mother-in-law.
He said other things that have been said in many languages since men
began to woo women, but the phrases are hackneyed save to those who
listen, and need not be repeated here.
But why two marriages should take place after extraordinarily short
engagements, no one in all Penzance knew save Lady Margaret Stanhope,
and she, _mirabile dictu_ (being a woman), kept her counsel. It created
no end of a sensation when Constance was described in the London
newspapers as "only daughter of Sir Stephen Brand, Bart, of Lesser
Hambledon, Northumberland." Local gossip quickly exhausted itself, as
both weddings took place in London, the only available items being the
magnificence of the diamonds given to Enid and Constance by Mr. Traill,
and the fact that, in Constance's case, "the bride's mother" was
described as "looking charming in a silver-gray costume trimmed with
point d'Alencon lace."
Even when confronted with this momentous statement by Mrs. Taylor-Smith,
Lady Margaret only shrugged her shoulders and purred:
"A romance, my dear, a romance of real life."
On the day following the departure of two happy couples for the
Continent--Mr. and Mrs. Pyne to Italy, Lieut. and Mrs. Stanhope to the
Riviera, with intent to meet in Rome at Easter--a quieter and more
sedate couple took train at Waterloo for Southampton, bound for the Far
West.
Although a Nebraska decree of divorce does not hold good in English law,
Lady Brand wished to be married again in the State which sanctioned her
earlier folly. Her husband agreed readily. Everybody, including Mr.
Traill and Lady Margaret, had arranged to turn up at the north-country
mansion in May. Provided there were no hurricanes, Sir Stephen thought
his wife's health would benefit by the double sea voyage, and he was
personally delighted to see the New World for the first time in her
company.
Their steamer sailed from Southampton at 11 A.M. After dinner that night
they were abreast of the Gulf Rock, and Brand pointed out to his wife
its occulting gleam from afar.
"It makes me feel very humble," she said, after they had watched its
radiance darting out over the tumbling seas for a long time in silence.
"Why, sweetheart?" he asked.
"It is so solemn, so intense in its energy, so splendidly devoted to its
single purpose."
"Now, it is an odd thing," he replied, as watchful to check her
occasional qualms of retrospect as he had been during many a long night
to keep that same light at its normal state of clear-eyed brilliance,
"but it does not appeal to me in that way. It is winking portentously,
as much as to say 'You old humbug, there you are, leaving me after all
these years, and running away with your own wife.'"
THE END.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed.]