HILSEY AND ITS FUGITIVE
She met him just as of old; she gave him the same gay, gracious, almost
caressing welcome when she found him at the foot of the stairs, awaiting
her arrival and ready to escort her to his room. She put her arm through
his and let him lead her there; then seated herself by the fire and,
peeling off her gloves, looked up at him as he stood leaning his arm on
the mantelpiece. She smiled as she used; she was the same Bernadette in
her simple cordiality, the same too in her quiet sumptuousness. Only in
her eyes, as they rested on his face, he thought he saw a new
expression, a look of question, a half-humorous apprehension, which
seemed to say, "How are you going to treat me, Cousin Arthur?" Not
penitence, nor apology, but just an admission that he might have his own
views about her and might treat her accordingly. "Tell me your views
then--let's know how we stand towards one another!"
Perhaps it was because some such doubt found a place in her mind that
she turned promptly, and in a rather business-like way, to the practical
object of her visit.
"I came over to see my lawyers about the money question. They wanted to
see me, and convince me I ought to take something from Godfrey. I don't
know that I should refuse if I needed it, but I don't. You know what
lawyers are! They told me Oliver would desert me, or practically said he
would! Well, I said I was going to chance that--as a fact he's settling
quite a lot on me--and at last they gave in, though they were really
sulky about it. Then they told me that I ought to settle something about
Margaret. Godfrey's been very kind there too; he's offered to let me see
her practically whenever I like--with just one condition, a natural one,
I suppose." She paused for a moment and now leant forward, looking into
the fire. "I shouldn't have quarrelled with that condition. I couldn't.
Of course he wouldn't want her to see Oliver." She frowned a little. "I
told the lawyers that the matter wasn't pressing, as I was going abroad,
for a year probably, perhaps longer; it could wait till I got back."
"You're going away?" asked Arthur, without much seeming interest.
"Yes--to Brazil. Oliver's got some interests there to look after." She
smiled. "I daresay you think it happens rather conveniently? So it does,
perhaps--but I think he'd have had to go anyhow; and of course I mean to
go with him. But about Margaret. The real truth is, I didn't want to
talk about her to the lawyers; I couldn't tell them what I really felt.
I want to tell you, Arthur, if I can, and I want you somehow to let
Godfrey know about it--and Judith too. That's what I want you to do for
me. Will you?"
"I'll do my best. He won't like talking about it. He may be very
unapproachable."
"I know he may!" She smiled again. "But you'll try, won't you?" She
looked up at him gravely now, and rather as though she were asking his
judgment. "I'm not going to see her, Arthur."
"You mean--not at all? Never?" he asked slowly.
"It was always rather difficult for Margaret and me to get on together,
even before all that's happened. We didn't make real friends. How could
we now--with sort of official visits like those? Under conditions!
Still, that's not the main thing; that's not what I want you to say to
Godfrey. I don't mean to see her till she's old enough--fully old
enough--to understand what it all means. Then, when she's heard about
it--not from me, I don't want to make a case with her or to try to
justify myself--when Godfrey, or Judith, or even you, have told her, I
want it to be left to her what to do. If she likes to leave it alone,
very good. If she likes to see me, and see if we can make friends, I
shall be ready. There'll be no concealment then, no false pretences,
nothing to puzzle her. Only just what sort of a view she takes of me
herself, when she's old enough." She paused and then asked, "Have they
told her anything yet?"
"Only that you can't come back yet. But I think they mean to tell her
presently that you won't, that--well, that it's all over, you know.
Judith thinks she'll accept that as quite--well, that she won't see
anything very extraordinary about it--won't know what it means, you
see."
"Do you think she misses me much?"
"No, I don't think so. She and her father are becoming very great
friends. I think she's happy."
"You've been there a lot?"
"Yes, a good deal."
"I saw your mother's death in the paper. I'm sorry, Arthur."
"They make me quite at home at Hilsey. They've given me a den of my
own."
"And Godfrey?"
"He's very cheerful, with his walks and his books--and, as I say, with
Margaret."
"You're looking very thoughtful, Arthur. What are you thinking of? Do
you think me wrong about Margaret? I shall hear of her, you know. I
shall know how she's getting on; Judith will tell me--and Esther. You
can too."
"It's all so strange!" he broke out. "The way you've just--vanished! And
yet the house goes on!"
She nodded. "And goes on pretty well?" she hazarded, with raised brows
and a little smile. He made a restless impatient gesture, but did not
refuse assent. "Well, if there's anything to be said for me, there it
is! Because it means that I was a failure."
"You weren't the only failure, Bernadette."
"No, I wasn't. It was all a failure--all round--except you; you got on
with all of us. Well, when things are like that, and then somebody comes
and--and shows you something quite different, and makes--yes, makes--you
look at it--well, when once you do, you can't look at anything else. It
swallows up everything."
She fell into silence. Arthur moved from the mantelpiece, and sat down
in a chair by her side, whence he watched her delicate profile as she
gazed into the fire thoughtfully. He waited for her to go on--to take up
the story from the day when the long failure came to its violent end,
from the morning of her flight.
"I don't see how I could have done anything different; I don't see it
now any more than I saw it then. You won't forgive Oliver, I suppose--my
old Sir Oliver! In fact, if I know you, Cousin Arthur, you've been
trying to paint him blacker in the hope of making me whiter! But he
gives me a wonderful life. I never really knew what a man could do for a
woman's life before. Well, I'd had no chance of understanding that, had
I? It's not being in love that I mean so much. After all, I've been in
love before--yes, and with Godfrey, as I told you once. And Oliver's not
an angel, of course--about as far from it as a man could be----"
"I should think so," Arthur remarked drily.
She smiled at him. "But there's a sort of largeness about him, about the
way he feels as well as the things he goes in for. And then his courage!
Oh, but I daresay you don't want to hear me talk about him. I really
came only to talk about Margaret."
"You must know I'm glad to hear you're happy."
She caught a tone of constraint in his voice; the words sounded almost
formal. "Yes, I suppose you are--and ready to let it go at that?" she
asked quickly, with a little resentment.
"What else can I do--or say?" he answered, slowly and with a puzzled
frown. "I've got nothing more to do with it. I really belong to--to what
you've left behind you. I made a queer mess of my part of it, but still
I did belong there. I don't belong to this new life of yours, do I?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "No, I suppose you don't. You belong to
Hilsey? Is that it? And I'm trying to get you on my side--unfairly?" She
challenged him now with something like anger.
"Oh, it's not a question of sides! I tried not to take sides. The thing
went too deep for that. And why must I, why should I? But there's what's
happened--the state of things, you see."
"And the state of things makes you belong to Hilsey, and prevents your
having anything to do with me?"
"That's putting it too strongly----" he began.
"Oh, but you mean it comes to that?" she insisted.
"I don't see how, in practice, it can work out very differently from
that."
His voice was low and gentle; he avoided her eyes as he spoke, though he
knew they were upon him, watching him closely. He had come to this
curious searching talk--or rather it had come upon him--totally
unprepared. She had not been much in his thoughts lately; when he had
thought of her, it had been in relation to the past, or to the household
at Hilsey. Her present and future life had been remote, out of his ken,
perhaps relegated to neglect by an instinctive repugnance, by a latent
but surviving jealousy. Now he was faced with it, without time to
consider, to get a clear view--much less to find diplomatic or dexterous
phrases. If he were to say anything in reply to the questions with which
Bernadette pressed him--and he could hardly be dumb--there was nothing
for it but to give her bluntly what he thought, his raw reading of the
position as it stood, the best he could make of it on the spur of the
moment, without looking far forward, or anticipating future
modifications and weighing the possible effect of them, and without
going into any of the ethics of the case, without moral judgments or a
casuistry nicely balancing the rights and wrongs of it; all that seemed
futile, arrogant, not for him anyhow. The real present question was how
the state of affairs which had come into being affected him in regard to
Bernadette, what it left open to them. It was on that point that her
questions pressed him so closely and sharply.
What did she expect? A resumption of her empire over him? That the idol
should be re-erected in the shrine, pieced together again and put in
place to receive its worship? Then she could not understand all that had
gone to the making and the adoration of it. The flight had brought
mighty changes in and for her--had she not herself said so? In and for
him was it to make none? She could hardly expect or claim that. Yet her
questions, her resentment, a forlorn pettishness which had crept into
her voice and manner, suggested that she was feeling hardly used, that
she was disappointed and in some measure affronted by his attitude. She
seemed to pit herself against Hilsey--against the household and the home
she had elected to leave, for reasons good or bad, under impulses
whether irresistible or merely wayward--to pit herself against it with
something like scorn, even with jealousy. Had she not herself been all
in all to him at Hilsey? Had it not been to him a setting for her charm
and fascination, dear to him for her sake? The others there--what had
they been to him? Oh, friends, yes, friends and kinsfolk, of course! But
essentially, in his real thoughts, her attendants, her satellites--and
largely the grievances against which his adoration had protested.
She remembered their last interview, the night before she went
away--Arthur's despair, his sudden flare of hot passion, even the words
in which he told her that she had been everything, nearly everything, in
his life. Discount them as she might, calling them a boy's madness and
self-delusion, how they had moved her even at that crisis of her life!
They had smitten her with tender grief, and remained her last impression
of her generous young devotee. She did not want to hear them again, nor
to find that folly still in his heart. But they had been a witness to
her power over him. Was it lost? What had destroyed it? Her flight with
Oliver? That would be natural and intelligible, and was true in part, no
doubt; nor did she complain of it. But it did not seem to be what was
deepest in his mind, not the real stumbling-block. If it were a question
of personal jealousy and a lover's disenchantment only, how came Hilsey
into the matter? And it seemed that it was over Hilsey that they had
come to an issue.
She sat a long while, brooding over his last answer, with her eyes still
set on his averted face.
"You mean it'll work out that you're part of the family, and I'm not?
Are you going to cut me, Arthur?"
"Oh, no, no!" he cried, turning to her now. "It's monstrous of you to
say that! God knows I've no grudge against you! I've owed you too much
happiness and--and felt too much for you. And if we must talk of sides,
wasn't I always on your side?"
"Yes, but now you're not."
"I'm not against you--indeed I'm not! But if you're away somewhere
with--well, I mean, away from us, and we're all together at home----"
"Us! We! Home!" she repeated after him, with a smile of rather sad
mockery. "Yes, I suppose I begin to see, Arthur."
"They've made it home to me--especially since my mother's death."
Her resentment passed away. She seemed tranquil now, but sad and
regretful. "Yes, I suppose that's the way it'll work," she said. "I
shall get farther and farther off, and they'll get nearer and nearer!"
She laid her hand on his for a moment, with one of her old light
affectionate caresses. "I was silly enough to think that I could keep
you, Arthur, somehow, in spite of all that's happened. And I wanted to.
Because I'm very fond of you. But I suppose I can't. I'm a spoilt
child--to think I could have you as well as all the rest I've got!" She
smiled. "Awfully thorough life is, isn't it? Always making you go the
whole hog when you think you can go half-way, just comfortably half-way!
I don't like it, Cousin Arthur."
"I don't like it either, altogether; but that is the kind of way it gets
you," he agreed thoughtfully.
"Still we can be good friends," she said, and then broke away from the
conventional words with a quick impatience. "Oh, being good friends is
such a different thing from being really friends, though!" She took up
her gloves and began to put them on slowly. "I had a letter from Judith
just before I came over," she remarked. "She writes every three or four
weeks, you know. She said you were down there, and that she and you were
having a good time skating."
"Yes, awfully jolly. She's a champion, you know!"
Bernadette was busy with her gloves. She did not see the sudden
lighting-up of his eyes, as her words recalled to him the vision of
Judith skating, the vivid grace of motion and the triumph of activity,
there on the ice down at Hilsey.
"Oh, well, she's been to Switzerland in the winter a lot," said
Bernadette carelessly. "I suppose she'd have gone this year, if it
hadn't been for--" She raised her eyes again to his, and stopped with a
glove half-way on. "Well, if it hadn't been for me, really!" She smiled,
and jerked her head impatiently. "How I seem to come in everywhere,
don't I? Well, I can't help it! She's got no one else belonging to her,
and she used to be a lot with us anyhow."
"Oh, you needn't worry about her; she's quite happy," said Arthur
confidently.
"I don't know that I was worrying, though I daresay I ought to have
been. But she likes being there. I expect she'll settle down there for
good and all." As she went back to her glove-buttoning she added, by way
of an after-thought, "Unless she marries."
Knowing the thing that was taking shape in his own heart, and reading
his own thoughts into the mind of another, as people are prone to do,
Arthur expected here a certain suggestion, was wondering how to meet it,
and was in a way afraid of it. He felt a sense of surprise when
Bernadette passed directly away from the subject, leaving her
after-thought to assume the form of a merely perfunctory recognition of
the fact that Judith was a girl of marriageable age and therefore might
marry--perhaps with the implication that she was not particularly likely
to, however. He was relieved, but somehow a little indignant.
"You've told me hardly anything about yourself," said Bernadette. But
here again the tone sounded perfunctory, as though the topic she
suggested were rather one about which she ought to inquire than one in
which she felt a genuine interest.
"Oh, there's not much to tell. I've sown my wild oats, and now I've
settled down to work."
She seemed content with the answer, whose meagreness responded
sensitively to her own want of a true concern. She was not really
interested, he felt, in any life that he might be living apart from her.
She was very fond of him, as she said and he believed; but it was
fondness, a liking for his company, an enjoyment of him, a desire to
have him about her, had such a thing been still possible; it was not
such a love or deep affection as would make his doings or his fortunes
in themselves of great importance to her. Where his life was not in
actual contact with her own, it did not touch her feelings deeply. Well,
she had always been rather like that, taking what she wanted of his life
and time, leaving the rest, and paying with her smiles. Well paid too,
he had thought himself, and had made no complaint.
He did not complain now either. He had never advanced any claim to more
than her free grace bestowed; and what she gave had been to him great.
But he felt a contrast. At home--his thoughts readily used that word
now--his fortunes were matter for eager inquiry, excited canvass and
speculation. His meagre answer would not have sufficed there. Judith and
little Margaret had to hear about everything; even old Godfrey fussed
about in easy earshot and listened furtively. It was not that Bernadette
had changed; there was no reason to blame her, or call her selfish or
self-centred. It was the others who had changed towards him, and he
towards them, and he in himself. For Bernadette he was still what he had
been before the flight--what Judith had once called a toy, though a very
cherished one. To himself he seemed to have found, since then, not only
a home but a life.
She did not know that; she had not seen it happening. Nobody had told
her; probably she would not understand if anyone did--not even if he
himself tried to; and the task would be difficult and ungracious. And of
what use? It would seem like blame, though he intended none, and against
blame she was very sensitive. It might make her unhappy--for she was
very fond of him--and what purpose was served by marring ever so little
a happiness which, whatever else it might or might not be, was at least
hard-won?
She rose. "It must be getting late," she said, "and I'm going to the
theatre. And back to Paris to-morrow! I shan't be in London again for a
long long while. Well, you'll remember what to tell Godfrey--how I feel
about Margaret? And--and anything kind about himself--if you think he'd
like it."
"I don't really think I'd better risk that."
She smiled. "No, I suppose not. I'm never mentioned--is that it?"
"Oh, Judith and I talk about you."
"I daresay Judith is very--caustic?"
"Not particularly. Not nearly so caustic as when you were with us!"
"Us! Us! I begin to feel as if I'd run away from you too, Arthur! Though
I wasn't your wife, or your mother--or even your chaperon, was I? Well,
at the end I did run away a little sooner because of you--you'd found me
out!--but I don't think I meant to run away from you for ever. But you
belong to Hilsey now--so it seems as if it was for ever. I ran away for
ever from Hilsey, all Hilsey--and now you're part of it!"
She was standing opposite to him, with a smile that seemed half to tease
him, half to deride herself. She did not seek to hide her sorrow and
vexation at losing him; she hardly pretended not to be jealous--he could
think her jealous if he liked! Her old sincerity abode with her; she had
no tricks.
She looked very charming in his eyes; her sorrow at losing her--he did
not know what to call it, but whatever it was that she used to get from
his society and his adoration--touched him profoundly. He took one of
her gloved hands and raised it to his lips. She looked up at him; her
eyes were dim.
"It's turned out rather harder in some ways than I thought it
would--making quite a fresh start, I mean. I do miss the old things and
the old friends dreadfully. But it's worth it. It was the only thing for
me. There was nothing else left to do. I had to do it."
"You're the only judge," he said gently. "Thank God it's turned out
right for you!"
She smiled under her dim eyes. "Did you think I should repent? Like
those frogs--you remember?--in the fable. King Stork instead of King
Log?" She laughed. "It's not like that." She paused a moment. "And
Oliver and I aren't to be alone together, I think, Cousin Arthur."
He sought for words, but she put her slim fingers lightly on his lips.
"Hush! I don't want to cry. Take me to a taxi--Quickly!"
She spoke no more to him--nor he to her, save to whisper, with a last
clasp of her hand before she drove away, "God bless you!"