Studies in Wives
By MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES
NEW YORK
MITCHELL KENNERLEY
_2 East 29th Street_
_Copyright, 1910, by Mitchell Kennerly_
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. ALTHEA'S OPPORTUNITY 1
II. MR. JARVICE'S WIFE 47
III. A VERY MODERN INSTANCE 93
IV. ACCORDING TO MEREDITH 151
V. SHAMEFUL BEHAVIOUR? 205
VI. THE DECREE MADE ABSOLUTE 277
I
ALTHEA'S OPPORTUNITY
"His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall
bring him to the king of terrors."--JOB xviii. 14.
There came the sound of a discreet, embarrassed cough, and Althea Scrope
turned quickly round from the window by which she had been standing
still dressed in her outdoor things.
She had heard the door open, the unfolding of the tea-table, the setting
down of the tea-tray, but her thoughts had been far away from the old
house in Westminster which was now her home; her thoughts had been in
Newcastle, dwelling for a moment among the friends of her girlhood, for
whom she had been buying Christmas gifts that afternoon.
The footman's cough recalled her to herself, and to the present.
"Am I to say that you are at home this afternoon, ma'am?"
Althea's thoughtful, clear eyes rested full on the youth's anxious face.
He had not been long in the Scropes' service, and this was the first
time he had been left in such a position of responsibility, but Dockett,
the butler, was out, a rare event, for Dockett liked to be master in his
master's house. Before the marriage of Perceval Scrope, Dockett had been
Scrope's valet, and, as Althea was well aware, the man still regarded
her as an interloper. Althea did not like Dockett, but Perceval was very
fond of him, and generally spoke of him to his friends as "Trip." Althea
had never been able to discover the reason of the nickname, and she had
not liked to ask; her husband often spoke a language strange to her.
"I will see Mr. Bustard if he comes," she said gently.
Dockett would not have disturbed her by asking the question, for Dockett
always knew, by a sort of instinct, whom his master and mistress wished
to see or to avoid seeing.
Again she turned and stared out of the high, narrow, curtainless
windows. Perceval Scrope did not like curtains, and so of course there
were no curtains in his wife's drawing-room.
Snow powdered the ground. It blew in light eddies about the bare
branches of the trees marking the carriage road through St. James's
Park, and was caught in whirling drifts on the frozen sheet of water
which reflected the lights on the bridge spanning the little lake. Even
at this dreary time of the year it was a charming outlook, and one which
most of Althea's many acquaintances envied her.
And yet the quietude of the scene at which she was gazing so intently
oppressed her, and, suddenly, from having felt warm after her walk
across the park, Althea Scrope felt cold.
She moved towards the fireplace, and the flames threw a red glow on her
tall, rounded figure, creeping up from the strong serviceable boots to
the short brown skirt, and so to the sable cape which had been one of
her husband's wedding gifts, but which now looked a little antiquated in
cut and style.
It is a bad thing--a sign that all is not right with her--when a
beautiful young woman becomes indifferent to how she looks. This was the
case with Althea, and yet she was only twenty-two, and looked even
younger; no one meeting her by chance would have taken her to be a
married woman, still less the wife of a noted politician.
She took off her fur cape and put it on a chair. She might have sent for
her maid, but before her marriage she had always waited on herself, and
she was not very tidy--one of her few points of resemblance with her
husband, and not one which made for harmony. But Mrs. Scrope, if untidy,
was also conscientious, and as she looked at the damp fur cloak her
conscience began to trouble her.
She rang the bell. "Take my cloak and hang it up carefully in the hall,"
she said to the footman. And now the room was once more neat and tidy as
she knew her friend, Mr. Bustard, would like to see it.
It was a curious and delightful room, but it resembled and reflected the
woman who had to spend so much of her life there as little as did her
quaint and fanciful name of Althea. Her husband, in a fit of petulance
at some exceptional density of vision, had once told her that her name
should have been Jane--Jane, Maud, Amy, any of those old-fashioned,
early Victorian names would have suited Althea, and Althea's outlook on
life when she had married Perceval Scrope.
Althea's drawing-room attained beauty, not only because of its
proportions, and its delightful outlook on St. James's Park, but also
because quite a number of highly intelligent people had seen to it that
it should be beautiful.
Although Scrope, who thought he knew his young wife so well, would have
been surprised and perhaps a little piqued if he had been told it,
Althea preferred the house as it had been before her marriage, in the
days when it was scarcely furnished, when this room, for instance, had
been the library-smoking-room of its owner, an owner too poor to offer
himself any of the luxurious fitments which had been added to make it
suitable for his rich bride.
As soon as Scrope's engagement to the provincial heiress Althea then was
had been announced, his friends--and he was a man of many friends--had
delighted to render him the service of making the pleasant old house in
Delahay Street look as it perchance had looked eighty or a hundred years
ago. The illusion was almost perfect, so cleverly had the flotsam of
Perceval Scrope's ancestral possessions been wedded to the jetsam
gathered in curiosity shops and at country auctions--for the devotion of
Scrope's friends had gone even to that length.
This being so, it really seemed a pity that these same kind folk had not
been able to--oh! no, not _buy_, that is an ugly word, and besides it
had been Perceval who had been bought, not Althea--to acquire for Scrope
a wife who would have suited the house as well as the house suited
Scrope.
But that had not been possible.
Even as it was, the matter of marrying their friend had not been easy.
Scrope was so wilful--that was why they loved him! He had
barred--absolutely barred--Americans, and that although everybody knows
how useful an American heiress can be, not only with her money, but with
her brightness and her wits, to an English politician. He had also
stipulated for a country girl, and he would have preferred one straight
out of the school-room.
Almost all his conditions had been fulfilled. Althea was nineteen at the
time of her marriage, and, if not exactly country-bred--she was the only
child of a Newcastle magnate--she had seen nothing of the world to which
Scrope and Scrope's Egeria, the woman who had actually picked out Althea
to be Scrope's wife, had introduced her.
Scrope's Egeria? At the time my little story opens, Althea had long
given up being jealous--jealous, that is, in the intolerant, passionate
sense of the word; in fact, she was ashamed that she had ever been so,
for she now felt sure that Perceval would not have liked her, Althea,
any better, even if there had not been another woman to whom he turned
for flattery and sympathy.
The old ambiguous term was, in this case, no pseudonym for another and
more natural, if uglier, relationship on the part of a married man, and
of a man whom the careless public believed to be on exceptionally good
terms with his young wife.
Scrope's Egeria was twenty-four years older than Althea, and nine years
older than Scrope himself. Unfortunately she had a husband who, unlike
Althea, had the bad taste, the foolishness, to be jealous of her close
friendship with Perceval Scrope. And yet, while admitting to herself the
man's folly, Althea had a curious liking for Egeria's husband. There
was, in fact, more between them than their common interest in the other
couple; for he, like Althea, provided what old-fashioned people used to
call the wherewithal; he, like Althea, had been married because of the
gifts he had brought in his hands, the gifts not only of that material
comfort which counts for so much nowadays, but those which, to Scrope's
Egeria, counted far more than luxury, that is, beauty of surroundings
and refinement of living.
Mr. and Mrs. Panfillen--to give Egeria and her husband their proper
names--lived quite close to Althea and Perceval Scrope, for they dwelt
in Old Queen Street, within little more than a stone's throw of Delahay
Street.
Joan Panfillen, unlike Althea Scrope, was exquisitely suited to her
curious, old-world dwelling. She had about her small, graceful person,
her picturesque and dateless dress, even in her low melodious voice,
that harmony which is, to the man capable of appreciating it, the most
desirable and perhaps the rarest of feminine attributes.
There was one thing which Althea greatly envied Mrs. Panfillen, and that
was nothing personal to herself; it was simply the tiny formal garden
which divided the house in Old Queen Street from Birdcage Walk. This
garden looked fresher and greener than its fellows because, by Mrs.
Panfillen's care, the miniature parterres were constantly tended and
watered, while the shrubs both summer and winter were washed and
cleansed as carefully as was everything else likely to be brought in
contact with their owner's wife.
In spite of the fact that they lived so very near to one another, the
two women were not much together, and as a rule they only met, but that
was, of course, very often, when out in the political and social worlds
to which they both belonged.
Althea had a curious shrinking from the Panfillens' charming house. It
was there, within a very few weeks of her father's death, that she had
first met Perceval Scrope--and there that he had conducted his careless
wooing. It was in Mrs. Panfillen's boudoir, an octagon-shaped room on
the park side of the house, that he had actually made his proposal, and
that Althea, believing herself to be "in love," and uplifted by the
solemn and yet joyful thought of how happy such a marriage--her marriage
to a member of the first Fair Food Cabinet--would have made her father,
had accepted him.
From Old Queen Street also had taken place her wedding, which, if
nominally quiet, because the bride still chose to consider herself in
deep mourning, had filled St. Margaret's with one of those gatherings
only brought together on such an occasion--a gathering in which the
foemen of yesterday, and the enemies of to-morrow, unite with the
friends of to-day in order to do honour to a fellow-politician.
Althea had darker memories connected with Mrs. Panfillen's house. She
had spent there, immediately after her honeymoon, an unhappy fortnight,
waiting for the workpeople to leave her future home in Delahay Street.
It was during that fortnight that for the first time her girlish
complacency had forsaken her, and she had been made to understand how
inadequate her husband found her to the position she was now called upon
to fill. It was then that there had first come to her the humiliating
suspicion that her bridegroom could not forgive her his own sale of
himself. Scrope and Joan Panfillen were subtle people, living in a world
of subtleties, yet in this subtle, unspoken matter of Scrope's
self-contempt concerning his marriage, the simple Althea's knowledge far
preceded theirs.
In those days Joan Panfillen, kindest, most loyal of hostesses, had
always been taking the bride's part, but how unkind--yes, unkind was the
word--Perceval was, even then!
Althea had never forgotten one little incident connected with that time,
and this afternoon she suddenly remembered it with singular vividness.
Scrope had been caricatured in _Punch_ as Scrooge; and--well--Althea had
not quite understood.
"Good Lord!" he had exclaimed, turning to the older woman, "Althea
doesn't know who Scrooge was!" and quickly he had proceeded to put his
young wife through a sharp, and to her a very bewildering examination,
concerning people and places some of whom she had never heard of, while
others seemed vaguely, worryingly familiar. He had ended up with the
words, "And I suppose you consider yourself educated!" A chance muttered
word had then told her that none of these places were real--that none of
these people Perceval had spoken of with such intimate knowledge, had
ever lived!
Althea had felt bitterly angered as well as hurt. Tears had welled up
into her brown eyes; and Mrs. Panfillen, intervening with far more eager
decision than she generally showed about even important matters, had
cried, "That's not fair! In fact you are being quite absurd, Perceval!
I've never cared for Dickens, and I'm sure most people, at any rate most
women, who say they like him are pretending--pretending all the time! I
don't believe there's a girl in London who could answer the questions
you put to Althea just now, and if there is such a girl then she's a
literary monster, and I for one don't want to know her."
As only answer Scrope had turned and put a thin brown finger under
Althea's chin. "Crying?" he had said, "Baby! She shan't be made to
learn her Dickens if she doesn't want to, so there!"
At the time Althea had tried to smile, but the words her husband had
used had hurt her, horribly, for they had seemed to cast a reflection on
her father--the father who thought so much of education, and who had
been at such pains to obtain for his motherless only child an ideal
chaperon-governess, a lady who had always lived with the best families
in Newcastle. Miss Burt would certainly have made her pupil read Dickens
if Dickens were in any real sense an educating influence, instead of
writing, as Althea had always understood he did, only about queer and
vulgar people.
Not educated? Why, her father had sent her away from him for a whole
year to Dresden, in order that she might learn German and study music to
the best possible advantage! True, she had not learnt her French in
France, for her father had a prejudice against the French; he belonged
to a generation which admired Germany, and disliked and distrusted the
French. She had, however, been taught French by an excellent teacher, a
French Protestant lady who had lived all her life in England. Of course
Althea had never read a French novel, but she could recite, even now,
whole pages of Racine and Corneille by heart.
And yet, even in this matter of languages, Perceval was unfair, for some
weeks after he had said that cruel thing to her about education, and
when they were at last settling down in their own house, arranging the
details of their first dinner party, he had said to her with a certain
abrupt ill-humour, "The one language I thought you _did_ know was
menu-French!"
Joan Panfillen was also disappointed in Althea. Scrope's Egeria had
hoped to convert Scrope's wife, not into a likeness of herself--she was
far too clever a woman to hope to do that--but into a bright, cheerful
companion for Perceval Scrope's lighter hours. She had always vaguely
supposed that this was the rôle reserved to pretty, healthy young women
possessed of regular features, wavy brown hair, and good teeth....
But Mrs. Panfillen had soon realised, and the knowledge brought with it
much unease and pain, that she had made a serious mistake in bringing
about the marriage. And yet it had been necessary to do something; there
had come a moment when not only she, but even Scrope himself, had felt
that he must be lifted out of the class--always distrusted and despised
in England--of political adventurers. Scrope required, more than most
men, the solid platform, nay, the pedestal, of wealth, and accordingly
his Egeria had sacrificed herself and, incidentally, the heiress,
Althea.
But, as so often happens to those who make the great renouncement, Joan
Panfillen found that after all no such thing as true sacrifice was to be
required of her.
After his marriage, Scrope was more often with her than he had ever
been, and far more willing, not only to ask but to take, his Egeria's
advice on all that concerned his brilliant, meteoric career. He seldom
mentioned his wife, but Mrs. Panfillen knew her friend far too well not
to know how it was with him; Althea fretted his nerves, offended his
taste, jarred his conscience, at every turn of their joint life.
There were, however, two meagre things to the good--Althea's fortune,
the five thousand a year, which now, after four years, did not seem so
large an income as it had seemed at first; and the fact that Scrope's
marriage had extinguished the odious, and, what was much more unpleasant
to such a woman as was Joan Panfillen, the ridiculous, jealousy of
Joan's husband.
Thomas Panfillen greatly admired Althea; he thought her what she was--a
very lovely young woman, and the fact that he had known her father made
him complacently suppose that he had brought about her marriage to the
peculiar, he was told the remarkably clever, if rather odd, Perceval
Scrope.
Baulked of certain instinctive rights, the human heart seeks
compensation as surely as water seeks its level. Althea, unknown to
herself, had a compensation. His name was John Bustard. He was in a
public office--to be precise, the Privy Council Office. He lived in
rooms not far from his work, that is, not far from Delahay Street, and
he had got into the way of dropping in to tea two, three, sometimes even
four times a week.
The fact that Bustard was an old schoolfellow of Scrope's had been his
introduction to Althea in the early days when she had been
conscientiously anxious to associate herself with her husband's
interests past and present. But of the innumerable people with whom
Scrope had brought her into temporary contact, Mr. Bustard--she always
called him Mr. Bustard, as did most other people--was the one human
being who, being the fittest as regarded herself, survived.
And yet never had there been a man less suited to play the part of
hero, or even of consoler. Mr. Bustard was short, and his figure was
many years older than his age, which was thirty-four. While forcing
himself to take two constitutionals a day, he indulged in no other
manlier form of exercise, and his contempt for golf was the only thing
that tended to a lack of perfect understanding between his colleagues
and himself. He was interested in his work, but he tried to forget it
when he was not at the office. Bustard was a simple soul, but blessed
with an unformulated, though none the less real, philosophy of life.
Of the matter nearest his heart he scarcely ever spoke, partly because
he had always supposed it to be uninteresting to anyone but himself, and
also on account of a certain thorny pride which prevented his being
willing to ask favours from the indifferent.
This matter nearest Mr. Bustard's heart concerned his two younger
brothers and an orphan sister whom he supremely desired to do the best
for, and to set well forward in life.
It was of these three young people that he and Althea almost always
talked, and if Althea allowed herself to have an ardent wish, it was
that her husband would permit her to invite Mr. Bustard's sister for a
few weeks when the girl left the German finishing school which she and
Mr. Bustard had chosen, after much anxious deliberation, a year before.
It soothed Althea's sore heart to know that there was at least one
person in her husband's circle who thought well of her judgment, who
trusted in her discretion, and who did her the compliment of not only
asking, but also of taking her advice.
John Bustard had formed a very good opinion of Althea, and,
constitutionally incapable of divining the causes which had determined
the choice of Scrope's wife, he considered Mrs. Scrope a further proof,
if indeed proof were needed, of his brilliant schoolfellow's acute
intelligence. He had ventured to say as much to Scrope's late official
chief, one of the few men to whom Mr. Bustard, without a sufficient
cause, would have mentioned a lady's name. But he had been taken aback,
rather disturbed, by the old statesman's dry comment: "Ay, there's
always been method in Scrope's madness. I agree that he has made, from
his own point of view, a very good marriage."
His wife's friendship with Mr. Bustard did not escape Perceval Scrope's
ironic notice. He affected to think his old schoolfellow a typical
member of the British public, and he had nicknamed him "the
Bullometer," but, finding that his little joke vexed Althea, he had,
with unusual consideration, dropped it.
Unfortunately the one offensive epithet was soon exchanged for another;
in allusion doubtless to some historical personage of whom Althea had no
knowledge, Scrope began to call Bustard her fat friend. "How's your fat
friend?" he would ask, and a feeling of resentment filled Althea's
breast. It was not John Bustard's fault that he had a bad figure; it was
caused by the sedentary nature of his work, and because, instead of
spending his salary in the way most civil servants spend theirs, that is
in selfish amusements, he spent it on his younger brothers, and on his
little sister's education.
* * * * *
Althea again went over to the window and looked out. It had now left off
snowing, and the mists were gathering over the park. Soon a veil of fog
would shut out the still landscape. If Mr. Bustard were coming this
afternoon she hoped he would come soon, and so be gone before Perceval
came in.
Perceval was going to make a great speech in the House to-night, and
Althea was rather ashamed that she did not care more. He had been put
up to speak against those who had once been of his own political
household and who now regarded him as a renegade, but the subject was
one sure to inspire him, for it was that which he had made his own, and
which had led to his secession from his party. Althea and Mrs. Panfillen
were going together to hear the speech, but, to his wife's surprise,
Scrope had refused to dine with the Panfillens that same evening.
Perceval Scrope had not been well. To his vexation the fact had been
mentioned in the papers. The intense cold had tried him--the cold, and a
sudden visit to his constituency.
Althea could not help feeling slightly contemptuous of Perceval's
physical delicacy. Her husband had often looked ill lately, not as ill
as people told her he looked, but still very far from well. Only to
herself did Althea say what she felt sure was the truth, namely that
Perceval's state was due to himself, due to his constant rushing about,
to the way in which he persistently over-excited himself; last, but by
no means least, to the way he ate and drank when the food and drink
pleased him.
Althea judged her husband with the clear, pitiless eyes of youth, but
none of those about her knew that she so judged him. Indeed, there were
some in her circle, kindly amiable folk, who believed, and said perhaps
a little too loudly, that Althea was devoted to Perceval, and that their
marriage was one of those delightful unions which are indeed made in
Heaven....
From the further corner of the room there came the sharp ring of the
telephone bell. No doubt a message saying that Perceval had altered his
plans and was dining out, alone.
Insensibly Althea's lips tightened. She thought she knew what her
husband was about to suggest. She felt sure that he would tell her, as
he had told her so many times before when he had failed her, to offer
herself to Mrs. Panfillen for dinner.
But no--the voice she heard calling her by name was not that of Perceval
Scrope. It was a woman's voice, and it seemed to float towards her from
a far distance. "Althea," called the strange voice, "Althea."
"Yes?" she said, "who is it? I can hardly hear you," and then, with
startling closeness and clearness--the telephone plays one such
tricks--came the answer in a voice she knew well, "It is I--Joan
Panfillen! Are you alone, Althea? Yes? Ah! that's good! I want you to
do me a kindness, dear. I want you to come round here now--at once.
Don't tell anyone you are coming to me. I have a reason for this. Can
you hear what I say, Althea?"
"Yes," said the listener hesitatingly, "yes, I hear you quite well now,
Joan."
"Come in by the park side, I mean through the garden--the gate is
unlocked, and I will let you in by the window. Be careful as you walk
across the flags, it's very slippery to-night. Can you come now, at
once?"
Althea hesitated a moment. Then she answered, in her low, even voice,
"Yes, I'll come now, at once."
A kindness? What kindness could she, Althea Scrope, do Joan Panfillen?
The fear of the other woman, the hidden distrust with which she regarded
her, gathered sudden force. Not lately, but in the early days of
Scrope's marriage, Mrs. Panfillen had more than once tried to use her
friend's wife, believing--strange that she should have made such a
mistake--that Althea might succeed where she herself had failed in
persuading Scrope for his own good. Althea now told herself that no
doubt Joan wished to see her on some matter connected with Perceval's
coming speech.
As this thought came to her Althea's white forehead wrinkled in vexed
thought. It was too bad that she should have to go out now, when she was
expecting Mr. Bustard, to whom she had one or two rather important
things to say about his sister----But stay, why should he be told that
she was out? Why indeed should she be still out when Mr. Bustard did
come? It was not yet five o'clock, and he seldom came before a quarter
past. With luck she might easily go over to Joan Panfillen's house and
be back before he came.
Althea walked quickly out of the drawing-room and down into the hall.
Her fur cloak had been carefully hung up as she had directed. Perceval
always said Luke was a stupid servant, but she liked Luke; he was
careful, honest, conscientious, a very different type of man from the
butler, Dockett.
Althea passed out into the chilly, foggy air. Delahay Street, composed
of a few high houses, looked dark, forbidding, deserted. She had often
secretly wondered why her husband chose to live in such a place. Of
course she knew that their friends raved about the park side of the
house, but the wife of Perceval Scrope scarcely ever went in or out of
her own door without remembering a dictum of her father's: "Nothing
makes up for a good front entrance."
Althea walked quickly towards Great George Street; to the left she
passed Boar's Head Yard, where lived an old cabman in whom she took an
interest, and whose cab generally stood at Storey's Gate.
How strange to think that here had once stood Oliver Cromwell's house!
Her husband had told her this fact very soon after their marriage; it
had seemed to please him very much that they lived so near the spot
where Cromwell had once lived. Althea even at the time had thought this
pleasure odd, in fact affected, on Perceval's part.
If the great Protector's house stood there _now_, filled with
interesting little relics of the man, she could have understood, perhaps
to a certain extent sympathised with, Perceval's feeling, for Cromwell
had been one of her father's heroes. But to care or pretend to care for
a vanished association----!
But Perceval was like that. No man living--or so Althea believed--was so
full of strange whimsies and fads as was Perceval Scrope! And so
thinking of him she suddenly remembered, with a tightening of the heart,
how often her husband's feet had trodden the way she was now treading,
hastening from the house which she had just left to the house to which
she was now going.
Jealous of Joan Panfillen? Nay, Althea assured herself that there was no
room in her heart for jealousy, but it was painful, even more, it was
hateful, to know that there were people who pitied her because of this
peculiar intimacy between Perceval and Joan. Why, quite lately, there
had been a recrudescence of talk about their friendship, so an ill-bred
busybody had hinted to Althea only the day before.
The wife was dimly aware that there had been a time when Mrs. Panfillen
had hoped to form with her an unspoken compact; each would have helped
the other, that is, to "manage" Perceval; but the moment when such an
alliance would have been possible had now gone for ever--even if it had
ever existed. Althea would have had to have been a different
woman,--older, cleverer, less scrupulous, more indifferent than she was,
even now, to the man she had married, to make such a compact possible.
When about to cross Great George Street she stopped and hesitated. Why
should she do this thing, why leave her house at Joan Panfillen's
bidding? But Althea, even as she hesitated, knew that she would go on.
She had said that she was coming, and she was not one to break lightly
even a light word.
As she crossed Storey's Gate, she noticed the stationary cab of the old
man who lived in Boar's Head Yard. It had been standing there when she
had come in from her walk, and she felt a thrill of pity--the old man
made a gallant fight against misfortune. She and Joan Panfillen were
both very kind to him.
Althea told herself that this sad world is full of real trouble, and the
thought made her ashamed of the feelings which she had just allowed to
possess and shake her with jealous pain. And yet--yet, though many
people envied her, how far from happy Althea knew herself to be, and how
terribly grey her life now looked, stretching out in front of her.
As she passed into Birdcage Walk, and came close to the little iron gate
which Mrs. Panfillen had told her was unlocked, she saw that a woman
stood on the path of the tiny garden behind the railings.
Of course it was not Joan herself; the thought that Joan, delicate,
fragile as she was, would come out into the cold, foggy air was
unthinkable; scarcely less strange was it to see standing there,
cloakless and hatless, Joan's maid, a tall, gaunt, grey-haired woman
named Bolt, who in the long ago had been nurse to the Panfillens' dead
child. Scrope had told Althea the story of the brief tragedy very early
in his acquaintance with her; he had spoken with strong feeling, and
that although the child had been born, had lived, and had died before he
himself had known Joan.
In the days when she had been Mrs. Panfillen's guest, that is before her
marriage, Althea had known the maid well, known and liked her grim
honesty of manner, but since Althea's marriage to Perceval Scrope there
had come a change over Bolt's manner. She also had made Althea feel that
she was an interloper, and now the sight of the woman standing waiting
in the cold mist disturbed her.
Bolt looked as if she had been there a very long time, and yet Althea
had hurried; she was even a little breathless. As she touched the gate,
she saw that it swung loosely. Everything had been done to make her
coming easy; how urgent must be Joan's need of her!
Althea became oppressed with a vague fear. She looked at the maid
questioningly. "Is Mrs. Panfillen ill?" she asked. The other shook her
head. "There's nothing ailing Mrs. Panfillen," she said in a low voice.
Together, quite silently, they traversed the flagged path, and then Bolt
did a curious thing. She preceded her mistress's visitor up the iron
steps leading to the boudoir window, and leaving her there, on the
little balcony, went down again into the garden, and once more took up
her station near the gate as if mounting guard.
The long French window giving access to the boudoir was closed, and in
the moment that elapsed before it was opened from within Althea Scrope
took unconscious note of the room she knew so well, and of everything in
it, including the figure of the woman she had come to see.
It was a panelled octagon, the panels painted a pale Wedgwood blue,
while just below the ceiling concave medallions were embossed with
flower garlands and amorini.
A curious change had been made since Althea had last seen the room. An
old six-leaved screen, of gold so faded as to have become almost silver
in tint, which had masked the door, now stood exactly opposite the
window behind which Althea was standing. It concealed the straight
Empire sofa which, as Mr. Panfillen was fond of telling his wife's
friends, on the very rare occasions when he found himself in this room
with one of them, had formerly stood in the Empress Josephine's boudoir
at Malmaison; and, owing to the way it was now placed, the old screen
formed a delicate and charming background to Mrs. Panfillen's figure.
Scrope's Egeria stood in the middle of the room waiting for Scrope's
wife. She was leaning forward in a curious attitude, as if she were
listening, and the lemon-coloured shade of the lamp standing on the
table threw a strange gleam on her lavender silk gown, fashioned, as
were ever the clothes worn by Joan Panfillen, with a certain austere
simplicity and disregard of passing fashion.
Althea tapped at the window, and the woman who had sent for her turned
round, and, stepping forward, opened the window wide.
"Come in!" she cried. "Come in, Althea--how strange that you had to
knock! I've been waiting for you so long."
"I came as quickly as I could--I don't think I can have been five
minutes."
Althea stepped through the window, bringing with her a blast of cold,
damp air. She looked questioningly at Mrs. Panfillen. She felt, she
hardly knew why, trapped. The other's look of anxious, excited scrutiny
disturbed her.
Mrs. Panfillen's fair face, usually pale, was flushed.
So had she reddened, suddenly, when Althea had come to tell her of her
engagement to Perceval Scrope. So had she looked when standing on the
doorstep as Althea and Perceval started for their honeymoon, just after
there had taken place a strange little scene--for Scrope, following the
example of Thomas Panfillen, who had insisted on what he called saluting
the bride, had taken Panfillen's wife into his arms and kissed her.
"Althea"--Joan took the younger woman's hand in hers and held it,
closely, as she spoke, "don't be frightened,--but Perceval is here,
ill,--and I've sent for you to take him home."
"Ill?" A look of dismay came over Althea's face. "I hope he's not too
ill to speak to-night--that would be dreadful--he'd be terribly upset,
terribly disappointed!" Even as she spoke she knew she was using words
which to the other would seem exaggerated, a little childish.
"I'm sure he'd rather you took him home, I'm sure he'd rather not be
found----" Mrs. Panfillen hesitated a moment, and again she said the
words "'ill', 'here'," and for the first time Althea saw that there was
a look of great pain and strain on Joan's worn, sensitive face.
"Of course not!" said the young wife quickly. "Of course he mustn't be
ill here; he must come home, at once."
Althea's pride was protesting hotly against her husband's stopping a
moment in a house where he was not wanted--pride and a certain
resentment warring together in her heart. How strange London people
were! This woman whom folk--the old provincial word rose to her
lips--whom folk whispered was over-fond of Perceval--why, no sooner was
he ill than her one thought was how to get rid of him quietly and
quickly!
Mrs. Panfillen, looking at her, watching with agonised intensity the
slow workings of Althea's mind, saw quite clearly what Perceval's wife
was feeling, saw it with a bitter sense of what a few moments ago she
would have thought inconceivable she could ever feel again--amusement.
She went across to the window and opened it. As if in answer to a
signal, the little iron gate below swung widely open: "Bolt has gone to
get a cab," she said, without turning round; "we thought that it would
be simplest. The old cabman knows us all--it will be quicker." She spoke
breathlessly, but there was a tone of decision in her voice, a gentle
restrained tone, but one which Althea knew well to spell finality.
"But where _is_ Perceval?"
Althea looked round her bewildered. She noticed, for the first time,
that flung carelessly across two chairs lay his outdoor coat, his
gloves, his stick, his hat. Then he also had come in by the park side of
the house?
Mrs. Panfillen went towards her with slow, hesitating steps.
"He is here," she said in a low tone, "behind the screen. He was sitting
on the sofa reading me the notes of his speech, and--and he fell back."
She began moving the screen, and as she did so she went on, "I sent for
Bolt--she was a nurse once, you know, and she got the brandy which you
see there----"
But Althea hardly heard the words; she was gazing, with an oppressed
sense of discomfort and fear, at her husband. Yes, Perceval looked
ill--very ill,--and he was lying in so peculiar a position! "I suppose
when people faint they have to put them like that," thought Althea to
herself, but she felt concerned, a little frightened....
Perceval Scrope lay stretched out stiffly on the sofa, his feet resting
on a chair which had been placed at the end of the short, frail-looking
little couch. His fair, almost lint white, hair was pushed back from his
forehead, showing its unusual breadth. The grey eyes were half closed,
and he was still wearing, wound about his neck so loosely that it hid
his mouth and chin, a silk muffler.
Althea had the painful sensation that he did not like her to be there,
that it must be acutely disagreeable to him to feel that she saw him in
such a condition of helplessness and unease. And yet she went on looking
at him, strangely impressed, not so much by the rigidity, as by the
intense stillness of his body. Scrope as a rule was never still; when he
was speaking, his whole body, each of his limbs, spoke with him.
By the side of the sofa was a small table, on which stood a decanter,
unstoppered.
"Has he been like that long?" Althea whispered at length. "He--he looks
so strange."
Joan Panfillen came close up to the younger woman; again she put her
hand on her companion's arm.
"Althea," she said, "don't you understand? Can't you see the dreadful
thing that has happened?"--and as the other looked down into the
quivering face turned up to hers, she added with sudden passion, "Should
I want you to take him away if he were still here?--should I want him to
go if there were anything left that I could do for him?"
And then Althea at last understood, and so understanding her mind for
once moved quickly, and she saw with mingled terror and revolt what it
was that the woman on whose face her eyes were now riveted was requiring
of her.
"You sent for me to take him home--dead?"
It was a statement rather than a question. Mrs. Panfillen made a
scarcely perceptible movement of assent. "It is what he would have
wished," she whispered, "I am quite sure it is what he would have wished
you to do."
"I--I am sorry, but I don't think I can do that."
Althea was speaking to herself rather than to the other woman. She was
grappling with a feeling of mortal horror and fear. She had always been
afraid of Perceval Scrope, afraid and yet fascinated, and now he, dead,
seemed to be even more formidable, more beckoning, than he had been
alive.
She turned away and covered her eyes with her hand. "Why did you tell
me?" she asked, a little wildly. "If you hadn't told me that he was dead
I should never have known. I should even have done the--the dreadful
thing you want me to do."
"Bolt thought that--Bolt said you would not know," Mrs. Panfillen spoke
with sombre energy. "She wished me to allow her to take him down into
the garden to meet you in the darkness----But,--but Althea, that would
have been an infamous thing from me to you----" She waited a moment, and
then in a very different voice, in her own usual measured and gentle
accents, she added, "My dear, forgive me. We will never speak of this
again. I was wrong, selfish, to think of subjecting you to such an
ordeal. All I ask"--and there came into her tone a sound of shamed
pleading--"is that you should allow Tom--Tom and other people--to think
that you were here when it happened."
Althea remained silent. Then, uncertainly, she walked across to the
window and opened it. The action was symbolic--and so it was understood
by the woman watching her so anxiously.
But still Althea said nothing. She stood looking out into the darkness,
welcoming the feel of the cold damp air. She gave herself a few brief
moments--they seemed very long moments to Joan Panfillen--before she
said the irrevocable words, and when she did say them, they sounded
muffled, and uttered from far away, for Althea as she spoke did not turn
round; she feared to look again on that which might unnerve her, render
her unfit for what she was about to do.
"Joan," she said, "I will do what you ask. You were right just
now--right, I mean, in telling me what Perceval would have wished."
She spoke with nervous, dry haste, and, to her relief, the other woman
spared her thanks....
There was a long silence, and then Mrs. Panfillen crept up close to
Althea and touched her, making her start violently. "Then I will call
Bolt," she said, and made as if to pass through the window, but Althea
stopped her with a quick movement of recoil--"No, no!" she cried, "let
me do that!" and she ran down the iron steps; it was good to be out of
sight even for a moment of the still presence of the dead--the dead
whose mocking spirit seemed to be still terribly alive.
But during the long, difficult minutes that followed, it was Joan
Panfillen, not Althea Scrope, who shrank and blenched. It was Althea who
put out her young strength to help to lift the dead man, and, under
cover of the sheltering mist, to make the leaden feet retrace their
steps down the iron stairway, and along the narrow path they had so
often leapt up and along with eager haste.
To two of the three women the progress seemed intolerably slow, but to
Althea it was all too swift; she dreaded with an awful dread the
companioned drive which lay before her.
Perhaps something of what she was feeling was divined by Mrs. Panfillen,
for at the very last Scrope's Egeria forgot self, and made, in all
sincerity, an offer which on her part was heroic.
"Shall I come with you?" she whispered, averting her eyes from that
which lay huddled up by Althea's side, "I will come, willingly; let me
come--Althea."
But Althea only shook her head in cold, hurried refusal. She felt that
with speech would go a measure of her courage.
Afterwards Althea remembered that there had come a respite,--what had
seemed to her at the time an inexplicable delay. A man and a girl had
gone slowly by, staring curiously at the two bare-headed women standing
out on the pavement, and on whose pale faces there fell the quivering
gleam of the old-fashioned cab lamp. Then, when the footfalls of these
passers-by had become faint, Bolt spoke to the driver, and handed him
some money. Althea heard the words as in dream, "Get along as quick as
you can to 24, Delahay Street, there's a good man," and then the clink
of silver in the stillness, followed by the full sound of the man's
wheezy gratitude.
There came a sudden movement and the dread drive began, the horse
slipping, the cab swaying and jolting over the frozen ground.
With a gesture which was wholly instinctive, Althea put out her
arm,--her firm, rounded, living arm,--and slipped it round the inert,
sagging thing which had been till an hour ago Perceval Scrope. And, as
she did so, as she pressed him to her, and kept from him the ignominy of
physical helplessness, there came a great lightening of her spirit.
Fear, the base fear bred of the imagination, fell away from her. For the
first time there came the certainty that her husband was at last
satisfied with her; for the first time she was able to do Perceval
Scrope dead what she had never been able to do Perceval Scrope alive, a
great service--a service which she might have refused to do.
Once or twice, very early in their married life, Perceval had praised
her, and his praise had given Althea exquisite pleasure because it was
so rare, so seldom lavished; and this long-lost feeling of joy in her
husband's approval came back, filling her eyes with tears. Now at last
Althea felt as if she and Perceval Scrope were one, fused in that kindly
sympathy and understanding which, being the manner of woman she was,
Althea supposed to be the very essence of conjugal love.
As they were clasped together, she, the quick, he, the dead, Althea lost
count of time; it might have been a moment, it might have been an hour,
when at last the jolting ceased.
As the old man got off the box of his cab, and rang the bell, Big Ben
boomed out the quarter-past five.
Since she had last gone through that door a yawning gap had come in
Althea's life, a gap which she had herself bridged. Fear had dropped
from her; she could never again be afraid as she had been afraid when
she, Joan and Perceval had formed for the last time a trinity. The
feeling which had so upheld her, the feeling that for the first time she
and her husband were in unison, gave her not only courage but serenity
of spirit. Althea shrank from acting a lie, but she saw, for the first
time, through Perceval Scrope's eyes, and she admitted the necessity.
As the door opened, she remembered, almost with exultation, that
Dockett, the butler, was out, and that it was only with Luke, the slow
young footman, that she would have to deal. As she saw his tall, thin
figure emerge hesitatingly into the street, Mrs. Scrope called out in a
strong, confident voice, "Luke--come here! Help me to get Mr. Scrope
indoors. He is ill; and as soon as we have got him into the morning
room, you must go off for a doctor, at once----"
She waved aside the cabman almost impatiently, and it was Althea, Althea
helped by Luke, who carried Perceval Scrope over the threshold of his
own house, and so into a small room on the ground floor, a room opening
out of the hall, and looking out on to the street.
"He looks very bad, don't 'e, ma'am?" Luke was startled out of his
acquired passivity. "I'd better go right off now." She bent her head.
And then Althea, again alone with the dead man, suddenly became
oppressed once more with fear, not the physical terror which had
possessed her when Joan Panfillen had told her the awful truth, but none
the less to her a very agonising form of fear. Althea was afraid that
now, when approaching the end of her ordeal, she would fail Scrope and
the woman he had loved. What was she to say, what story could she invent
to tell those who would come and press her with quick eager questions?
She knew herself to be incapable, not only of untruth, but of invention,
and yet now both were about to be required of her.
Althea turned out the lights, and wandered out into the hall. She felt
horribly lonely; with the exception of the kindly, stupid youth who had
now gone to find a doctor, there was not a member of her considerable
household in sufficient human sympathy with her to be called to her aid.
She remembered with a pang that this question of their servants had been
one of the many things concerning which there had been deep fundamental
disagreement between her husband and herself. She had been accustomed
to a well-ordered, decorous household, and would even have enjoyed
managing such a one; but Perceval--Perceval influenced by Dockett--had
ordained otherwise, and Althea had soon become uneasily aware that the
order and decorum reigning below stairs were only apparent. Even now
there came up from the basement the sound of loud talking, of
unrestrained laughter.
Suddenly someone knocked at the door, a loud double knock which stilled,
as if by magic, the murmur of the voices below.
Althea looked around her doubtfully, then she retreated into the
darkened room, but no one came up, and she remembered that the other
servants of course supposed Luke to be on duty. It might be--nay, it
almost certainly was--the doctor. With faltering steps she again came
out into the hall and opened the front door; and then, when she saw who
it was who stood there, his kind honest eyes blinking in the sudden
light, Althea began to cry.
The tears ran down her cheeks; she sighed convulsively, and John
Bustard, looking at her with deep concern and dismay, was quite
unaware--he does not know even to this day--that it was with relief.
"What is it?" he said. "My dear Mrs. Scrope--what is the matter? Would
you like me to go away--or--or can I be of any use?"
"Oh, yes," she said piteously. "Indeed you can be of use. Don't go
away--stay with me--I'm--I'm so frightened, Mr. Bustard. Perceval--poor
Perceval is--is ill, and I'm afraid to stay in there with him."
And it was Mr. Bustard who at once took command--command of Althea, whom
he ultimately ordered to bed; command of the excited household, whose
excitement he sternly suppressed; it was Mr. Bustard who, believing he
told truth, lied for Althea, first to the doctor, and later to the
coroner.