FACING THE SITUATION
The gods were laughing at him; so it seemed to Arthur Lisle. They chose
to chastise his folly and his sin by ridicule. He whom the
catastrophe--the intrigue and the flight--had broken was chosen to break
the news of it. He must put on a composed consolatory face, preach
fortitude, recommend patience under the inevitable. He was plumped back
into his old position of useful cousin, the friend of both husband and
wife. Judith was that too. Why should not she carry the tidings? "No,
you'll be more sympathetic," she insisted, with the old touch of mockery
governing her manner again. "I should tell him too much of the truth
most likely." So he must do it. But this useful cousin seemed a very
different sort of man from the stricken sufferer, the jealous lover, of
overnight. Indeed it was pitiable for the forsaken jealous lover--denied
even a departure from the scene of his woes, condemned to dwell in the
house so full of her and yet so empty, the butt (so his sensitive fancy
imagined) of half the gossip and half the giggles of which to his ears
Hilsey Manor was already full. But the forsaken lover must sink himself
in the sympathetic kinsman--if he could; must wear his face and speak in
his tones. A monstrous hypocrisy! "Bernadette's run away, but, I'm sorry
to say, not with me, Godfrey." No, no, that was all wrong--that was the
truth. "Bernadette's left you for Oliver Wyse--unprincipled woman and
artful villain!" Was that right? Well, 'artful villain' was right
enough, surely? Perhaps 'deluded woman' would do for Bernadette. "Brave
woman and happy man!" the rude laughter of the gods suggested. "If we'd
either of us had half his grit, Godfrey!" All sorts of things impossible
to say the gods invented in their high but disconcerting irony.
"Well, I'm in for it--here goes!" thought Arthur, as he requested Barber
to find out from Mrs. Gates--who had been acting as nurse to her master
as well as to his little girl--when Mr. Lisle could see him.
Gossip and giggles there may have been somewhere, probably there were,
but not on the faces or in the demeanour of Barber and Mrs. Gates. Pomp,
funereal pomp! They seemed sure that Bernadette was dead, and that her
death was a suicide.
"I will ascertain immediately, sir," said Barber. He was really very
human over it all--a mixture of shockedness and curiosity, condemnation
and comprehension, outrage and excuse--for she certainly had a way with
her, Mrs. Lisle had. But his sense of appropriateness overpowered them
all--a result, no doubt, of the ceremonial nature of his vocation.
Mrs. Gates's humanity was more on the ample surface of her ample
personality. She made no pretence of not understanding what had
happened, and even went a little further than that.
"Lor, sir, well there!" she whispered to Arthur. "I've 'ad my fears.
Yes, he can see you, poor gentleman! I've not said a word to 'im. And
poor Miss Margaret!" She was bent on getting every ounce out of the
situation. Arthur did not want to kill her--she was a good woman--but it
would have relieved his feelings to jab a penknife into one of the wide
margins around her vital parts. "Why is she so fat?" he groaned inwardly
and with no superficial relevance. But his instinct was true; her
corpulence did, in the most correct sense, aggravate the present
qualities of her emotions and demeanour.
And so, in varying forms, the thing was running all through the
house--and soon would run all through the village. Mrs. Lisle--Mrs.
Lisle of Hilsey! Portentous, horrible--and most exciting! It would run
to London soon. Mrs. Lisle of Hilsey was not such a personage there--but
still pretty well known. A good many people had been at that party where
the Potentates had met. One of them had abdicated now and gone--well,
perhaps only as far as Elba!
All the air was full of her, all the voices speaking her name in unison.
The sympathetic cousin had great difficulty in getting on the top of the
defeated lover when Arthur entered Godfrey's room. And even anyhow--if
one left out all the irony and all the complication--the errand was not
an easy or a grateful one. If Godfrey had gone to bed sooner than
witness a flirtation, what mightn't he do in face of an elopement?
The invalid was sitting up in bed, supported by several pillows, smoking
a cigarette and reading yesterday's "Times." The improvement in his
temper, manifest from the moment when he took to his bed, seemed to have
been progressive. He made Arthur welcome.
"And I hope you've not come to say good-bye?" he added. Arthur had
mentioned to him too the call to London and to work.
"No, I'm going to stay on a few days more, if you can put me up. I say,
Godfrey----"
"Delighted to keep you--especially when I'm on my back. I hope to be up
soon, though, very soon. Er--Wyse is staying on too, I suppose?"
"He left this morning, early, by motor."
"Did he? Really?" He smothered his relief, but it was unmistakable.
"Rather sudden, wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was sudden. The fact is----"
"Why did he go? Is he coming back?"
"I don't know--well, I mean, he didn't say anything to me. No, he won't
be back."
"Oh, I suppose he told Bernadette about it. I thought I heard somebody
moving about the house. I'm a light sleeper, you know, especially when
I'm ill. About six o'clock, I think it was. I--I suppose Bernadette's
disappointed at his not staying longer?" The assumed indifference of his
question was contradicted by the eagerness of his furtive glance. Arthur
felt it on him; he flushed as he sat down by the bedside, seeking so
hard for a form of words, for an opening--something enlightening without
being brutal. Godfrey's eyes, sharpened by his ill-will and suspicion,
marked the flush and the hesitation; he guessed there was something to
tell. "Well?" he added, peevish at getting no immediate answer.
"She--she's gone away too this morning, Godfrey--early--before we were
up."
A lean hand shot out from the bed and grasped his wrist. "Arthur?"
"Yes, old chap, I'm sorry to say--it's a bad business."
"You do mean----? Arthur, you do mean----?"
"Yes, she's gone with him." He could not look at Godfrey; his speech was
no more than a mutter. He felt the grasp on his wrist tighten, till it
hurt him.
"The damned villain! I knew it! The infernal villain, Arthur!" Godfrey
cried querulously.
Clearly an assent was required. Arthur's was inadequate. "Awfully bad
business! Try to--to be calm, old fellow, while I tell you about it."
"Yes, yes, tell me!"
There was really nothing material left to tell, but Godfrey was greedy
for details; such as there were to tell or conjecture he extracted by
rapid questioning, even to the telegram which had come for Judith. Not
till the end did he relax his hold on Arthur's wrist and lean back again
on his pillows.
He lay silent like that for a long time, with Arthur silent beside him.
His rage against Oliver seemed spent almost in the moment of its
outburst; to his companion's relief he said nothing about Bernadette's
conduct. He lay pathetically quiet, looking tired now, rather than angry
or distressed. At last he gave a long sigh. "Well, we know where we are
now!" he said.
That piece of knowledge had come to more than one inmate of the house in
the last twelve hours.
"We must face the situation, Arthur. It's come to a crisis! I think I'm
equal to getting up and--and facing the situation."
"Well, you know, there's no particular use in your----"
"My feelings are--well, you can imagine them." ("More or less!" threw in
the gods, grimly chuckling.) "But I mustn't think of myself only.
There's Margaret and--and all of it. Yes, I shall get up. I shall get up
and sit in my chair, Arthur." He was silent again for a minute. "It
makes a great difference. I--I shall have to consider my course--what's
best in the interests of all of us. A terrible blow! It must be a blow
even to you, Arthur? You and she were such good friends, weren't you?
And she does this--she lets herself be seduced into doing this!"
"Yes, of course, it's--it's a blow; but it's you and Margaret we've got
to think about."
"No, I don't forget you, I don't forget you!" ("If only he would!"
groaned Arthur.) "Well, I must consider my course. Where did you say the
telegram was sent from?"
"Winchester."
"I expect they stopped to breakfast there."
"Very likely." Arthur rose to his feet; he did not enjoy a
"reconstruction" of the flight. The afflicted husband made no protest
against his movement.
"Yes, leave me alone for a little while. I have to think--I must review
the position. Tell Judith I should like to see her in about an hour's
time, and--and go into matters."
Happy to escape, Arthur left him facing the situation, reviewing the
position, considering his course, and determining to get up--to get, at
any rate, into his arm-chair--the better to perform these important
operations. The messenger of catastrophe came away with a strange
impression of the effect of his tidings. After the first
outburst--itself rather peevish than passionate--came that idle, almost
morbid curiosity about details from which he himself instinctively
averted his eyes; then this ineffectual fussiness, this vain
self-assertion, which turned to facing the situation only when there was
no longer anything or anybody to face, and to reviewing the position
only when it was past mending. Of smitten love, even of pride wounded to
the heart, there seemed little sign. All Arthur's feelings fought
against the sacrilegious idea, but it would not be denied an entry into
his mind--after the querulous anger, after the curiosity, mingling with
the futile fussiness, there had been an undercurrent of relief--relief
that nothing and nobody had to be faced really, that really nothing
could be done, nothing expected from him, no call made now on courage or
on energy--no, nor on a love or a sympathy already dead before Oliver
Wyse struck them the final blow.
That morning's flight, then, was not the tragedy, but the end of it, not
the culminating scene of terror and pity, but the fall of the curtain on
a play played-out. Whatever of good or evil in life it might bring for
Bernadette, for Godfrey it brought relief in its train. It was grievous,
no doubt, in its external incidents--a society scandal, a family
shame--but in itself, in its true significance to his mind, as it really
and closely touched his heart, it came as an end--an end to the strain
which he could not support, to the challenge which he dared not face, on
which he had turned his back in sulks and malingering--an end to his
long fruitless effort to be a satisfactory husband.
When Judith came down from her interview and joined Arthur in the garden
before lunch, she had another aspect of the case to exhibit, a sidelight
to throw on the deserted man's mind and its workings.
"How did you find him?" Arthur asked her.
"Oh, quite calm--and immersed in his account-books." She smiled. "Yes,
he's up, in his chair, and a pile of them on the table at his elbow! He
says that the first thing to do is to reduce his expenditure. He hopes
now to be able to pay off his mortgage in four or five years. She was
awfully extravagant, you know, and he hated mortgaging Hilsey."
"Do you think she knew he'd had to do it?"
"No, she didn't. He wouldn't let her know. He liked her to think him
richer than he was, I think."
"Then he has no right to grumble at her extravagance."
"I never heard him do that--and he didn't do it this morning. All the
same it worried him, and now he can save, oh, enormously, of course! The
barouche and the pair of horses are to go, the first thing."
The barouche! It carried his mind back to the beginning, when its costly
luxury framed for his eyes their earliest picture of Bernadette's dainty
beauty.
"If he isn't going to keep it, he might send it after her. I would."
"Yes, you'd do a lot of foolish things if you were let. Luckily you're
not!"
"Judith, I half believe he's glad!"
"Need we admit quite so much as that? Let's say he's facing the
situation manfully!"
"Oh, he talked like that to you too, did he?" He jumped up, and took a
few paces about the lawn, then came back and stood beside her. "By God,
if he's glad, she was right to go, Judith!"
"I've never said anything to the contrary, have I? Have you seen
Margaret this morning?"
"No, I haven't. What made you ask me that just now?"
"She came into my head. After all, she's a--a factor in the situation
which, as Godfrey observes, has to be faced. I suppose I shall have to
adopt her--more or less. Premature cares! Not so much Rome and Florence!
It's as well to realise where one comes in oneself. When Godfrey talks
of facing the situation, I don't think he proposes to do it alone, you
know. You and I come into it."
"Yes." He added after a pause: "Well, we can't turn our backs on him,
can we?"
"I've told her that her mother's gone on a visit--suddenly, to see a
friend who's ill--and didn't like to wake her up to say good-bye. But
that's a temporary solution, of course. She'll have to know more, and
something'll have to be arranged about her and Bernadette. I don't
suppose he'll object to Bernadette seeing her sometimes." She ended with
a smile: "Perhaps you'll be asked to take her and be present at the
interviews--and see that Sir Oliver's off the premises."
"I'll be hanged if I do anything of the sort! And, as you asked me to
stay here, I don't think you need go on laughing at me."
Judith was impenitent. "It's a thing quite likely to happen," she
insisted. "Bernadette would like it."
He turned away angrily and resumed his pacing. Yet in his heart he
assented to the tenor of her argument. She might, in her malice, take an
extravagant case--a case which, at all events, seemed to him just now
cruelly extravagant--but she was right in her main contention. No more
than she herself could he turn his back on Godfrey, or cut himself
adrift from Hilsey. In last night's desperate hour Bernadette and he,
between them, seemed to have cut all the bonds and severed all the ties;
his only impulse had been to get away quickly. But it could not be so.
Life was not like that--at least not to men who owned the sway of
obligations and felt the appeal of loyalty and affection. He could not
desert the ship.
Barber came out of the house and brought him a note. "From Mr. Beard,
sir. Will you kindly send a verbal answer?"
He read it, and glanced towards Judith. He was minded to consult her.
But, no, he would not consult Judith. He would decide for himself;
something in the present position made him put a value on deciding for
himself, even though he decided wrongly. "All right, say I will,
Barber." He lit a cigarette and, walking back to Judith, sat down again
beside her. But he said nothing; he waited for her to ask, if she were
curious.
She was. "What did Barber want?"
"Only a note from Beard--about the match. We shall be one man short
anyhow, and two if I don't turn up. So I told Barber to say I would."
"Good. Margaret and I will come and watch you. We've not gone into
official mourning yet, I imagine."
"Hang 'em, they may think what they like! I'm going to play cricket."
So he played cricket, though that again would not have seemed possible
over-night, and, notwithstanding that his eye might well have been out,
he made five-and-twenty runs and brought off a catch of a most
comforting order. Hilsey won the match by four wickets, and Judith,
Margaret, and he strolled back home together in the cool of the evening,
while the setting sun gilded the mellow and peaceful beauties of the old
house.
The little girl held Judith's hand, and, excited by the incidents of the
game, above all by Cousin Arthur's dashing innings--his style was rather
vigorous than classic--prattled more freely than her wont.
"I wish mummy hadn't had to go away just to-day," she said. "Then she
could have seen Cousin Arthur's innings. I wanted to cry when he was
caught out."
Arthur applied the words in parable, smiling grimly at himself in his
pain. He had been crying himself at being caught out, and at mummy's
having had to go away that morning. But he mustn't do it. He must set
his teeth, however sore the pain, however galling the consciousness of
folly. Surely, in face of what had happened to that house, nobody but an
idiot--nobody but a man unable to learn even words of one syllable in
the book of life--could be content to meet trouble with sighs and sulks,
or with cries only and amorous lamentation? Not to feel to the depths of
his being the shattering blow, or lightly and soon to forget it--that
could not be, nor did his instinct ask it; it would argue shallowness
indeed, and a cheapening of all that was good and generous in him, a
cheapening too of her who, towards him at least, had ever been generous
and good. What had he, of all men, against her? Had she not given him
all she could--joy, comradeship, confidence in all things save that one?
In the crisis of her own fate, when she was risking all her fortunes on
that momentous throw, had she not paused, had she not turned aside, to
pity him and to be very tender towards his foolishness? Was his the hand
to cast at her the stone of an ungrateful or accusing memory?
They passed through the tall iron gates which, with a true
squirearchical air, guarded the precincts of Hilsey Manor.
"Why, look, there's papa in the garden, walking on the lawn!" cried
Margaret.
Yes, there was Godfrey, heavily wrapped in shawls, walking to and fro
briskly. He had got up and come downstairs--to face the situation.