importance and moment had indeed occurred. For the first time since the
great day when her brother's divorce had become an absolute fact, Mrs.
Rigby seemed inclined to be soft and tender in her manner to the man
who, she would have been the first to admit, had been to her the most
admirable of husbands.
There are certain human beings, men perhaps, more than women, who use
those they love as princes of old used their whipping boys, and among
these human beings Mrs. Rigby could certainly have claimed a high place.
Matthew Rigby was, therefore, the more surprised, even, perhaps, a
little relieved, when he noted the unwonted tenderness with which she
slipped her arm through his; it couldn't be anything so very bad after
all!
"I don't suppose I need tell you, Matt, what has happened--or what is
just going to happen--to our David and Tiddy Wellow?" and she nodded her
head significantly towards the two figures which were now disappearing
into the rustic arbour, which, erected by Mrs. Rigby's father-in-law,
some thirty years ago, had always vexed her thrifty soul as an
extravagant and useless addition to her garden; just now, however, she
would have admitted that even arbours have their uses.
"Phew----!" exclaimed Matthew Rigby, and had it not been for the
presence of his wife, he would certainly have sworn some decorous form
of oath to express his extreme surprise. His pause prolonged itself, and
then, with a certain effort, he exclaimed: "You're an even cleverer
woman than I took you for, Kate, and that's saying a good deal!"
Mrs. Rigby turned and looked at him steadily. Their heads were almost on
a level, but even she could guess nothing from his expression. It was
his tone, rather, that jarred on her very true contentment.
"Surely you think it's the best thing that could happen to him?" she
asked, a note of wistful anxiety in her voice. "Why, you and I have
talked it over dozens of times!"
"I've heard _you_ say that you thought Matilda Wellow was the very woman
for him, time and again, but--but I don't think, Kate, you ever heard
_me_ say so. Still, I daresay it's all right; you generally know
best,"--and the husband spoke with less irony than might have been
expected. Twenty-five years of married life had taught him that, on the
whole, his wife generally did know best.
"And surely you think so, too?" and she pressed more closely to him,
"surely, Matt, you don't doubt that Matilda Wellow will make him a good
wife, and be kind to the child?"
"Of course, I've no doubt about that," he answered reassuringly. "But
still, she's not exactly the woman I'd have chosen for myself, and,
after all, David was very fond of that queer, cold little hussy."
Mrs. Rigby was given no time for a reply, for her brother and Miss
Wellow were coming slowly towards the house. She turned up the gas with
a quick movement, and when they approached the window a glance at her
future sister-in-law's face was enough. She saw that David had spoken,
but she also saw that he had had the power--and unconsciously her
respect for her brother grew--to stifle in his companion the mingled
emotions his offer of marriage had called forth.
Not till the long dull evening was over, not till Banfield and Miss
Wellow were actually bidding the Rigbys good-night, did the young man
say the word which let loose Matilda's incoherent words of pathetic joy,
of rather absurd amazement, at the good fortune which had befallen her.
Mrs. Rigby bustled out the two men into the hall.
"Matilda! Don't be silly!" she commanded.
But her words had no effect.
"It's just a dream--" gasped Miss Wellow, "just a dream come true! I
never thought, Kate, to be so happy--and dear little Rosy, too----"
The other woman checked her harshly.
"Don't be a fool, Tiddy!" she said in a low, stern voice; "if my brother
were a different kind of man he'd make you remember this to your dying
day. You're lowering yourself--and you're not raising him. Don't go
behaving like a pullet that's just laid her first egg!"
Then, seeing the other's face redden into a painful blush, "There,
there, I shouldn't have said that, I know. But I can't bear to see a
woman cheapen herself to a man!"
* * * * *
Banfield and his new betrothed walked arm in arm through the now
sleeping town to the garden gate of the old Georgian house where Miss
Wellow had now lived for some five years in solitary spinster state, and
where her forefathers had led lives of agreeable, if monotonous,
respectability for over a hundred years.
When they reached the gate, each hesitated a moment. Miss Wellow longed
to ask him in, but like most maiden ladies possessed of means, she had a
tyrant, a Cerberus in the shape of a faithful servant who would now be
sitting up waiting sulkily for her mistress's return. Banfield was
awkwardly debating with himself whether Matilda expected him to kiss
her; on the whole he thought--he hoped--not.
But he was spared the onus of decision concerning this delicate point;
for suddenly he felt himself drawn on one side, and there, in the deep
shadow of the wall, his companion threw her arms about him, murmuring,
with a catch in her voice, "I know you don't love me yet,
but--but--David, I'll _make_ you love me," and the face turned up to his
in the half darkness was full of eager yearning.
Feeling a traitor--to himself, to Rosaleen, above all, to the poor soul
now leaning on his breast--Banfield bent and kissed her; then he turned
on his heel, leaving her to make her way as best she could up the trim
path leading to her front door.
Hardly aware of what he was doing, he walked away quickly, taking the
opposite direction to that of the quiet lane of houses which would have
led him straight home. Instead he struck out, instinctively, towards the
flat open country, for he had a fierce, unreasoning desire to be
alone--far away from all humankind. As he strode along, his eyes having
become so fully accustomed to the dim light that he could see every
detail of the white-rutted road gleaming between low hedges, Banfield's
feeling of bewilderment, even of horror, grew and grew, making him feel
physically cold in the warm, scented night.
For the first time there swept over him that awful sense of unavailing
repentance for the word said which might so well have been left unsaid,
which most human beings are fated to feel at some time of their lives.
Not even over his divorce had he felt so desperate a passion of revolt,
for that act, or so he had believed, was forced on him by Rosaleen
herself. But to-night he realised that before doing what he had just
done he had been free--free to remain free--and he now saw with a sense
of impotent anger how deliberately he had given himself into slavery.
As he strode along, eager to escape from the material surroundings of
his surrender, Banfield remembered each word of his talk with his
sister, and so remembering, he was amazed at his own weak folly.
What were the trifling troubles connected with his Irish servant, Mary
Scanlan, compared to those which lay before him?--to the awful knowledge
that he was now the prisoner--henceforth the body and soul prisoner--of
Matilda Wellow? How sluggish had been his imagination when he had
thought of the woman, whose tears had but just now scalded his lips, as
of a kind, unobtrusive lady housekeeper! He was now aware that there was
another Matilda Wellow, of whom till to-night he had been ignorant, and
it was this stranger who was demanding as a right, and indeed had the
right to demand, that tenderness and devotion which he knew himself
incapable of bestowing on any woman except on the elusive, cold-natured
woman who had been his wife.
And then a strange thing happened to David Banfield.
The near image of Matilda Wellow faded, giving place to the distant, and
yet in a spiritual and even physical sense poignantly present,
personality of Rosaleen.
As far as was possible, Banfield till to-night had banished his wife's
image from his emotional memory. But what he had just done--that is, his
own lack of constancy--had the odd effect of making him feel lowered to
the level to which those about him regarded Rosaleen as fallen. He told
himself that now he and Rosaleen were quits--and deliberately he yielded
to the cruel luxury of recollection.
His mind travelled back to the early days of their acquaintance, to the
pretence at a "friendship" which on his side had so soon become
overwhelming passion. Then had come his formal offer of marriage, and
for a long time she had played with him, saying neither yes nor no. Then
for a while he had flung everything to the winds in order to be with
her--on any terms. He remembered with a pang of pain the trifling
reasons which at last made her quite suddenly consent to become his
wife. A quarrel with the manager of the concert company to which she
then belonged, followed by a bad notice in the local paper of the town
to which he, David Banfield, undeterred by more than one half-laughing
refusal, had come to make what he intended should be a final
offer--these, it seemed, had brought Rosaleen to the point of decision.
Even now, Banfield never heard the name of that little Sussex town
without a leap of the heart, for it was there that had taken place their
marriage, the quietest and least adorned of weddings, celebrated in a
small, bare Roman Catholic chapel, the incumbent of which, a wise old
man, had spoken to Banfield very seriously, asking him to give the young
Irishwoman more time for thought, and impressing upon him the gravity of
the promises which he, a Protestant, had consented to make concerning
their future married life.
With regard to the latter, Banfield had been scrupulously honourable,
going, indeed, out of his way to remind Rosaleen of her religious
obligations, and at the time of the divorce acting, in the matter of
their child's future education, according to the spirit rather than the
letter of his promise....
With bent head and eyes fixed on the white road, David Banfield
insensibly slackened his steps while his mind concerned itself with the
five years he and Rosaleen had spent together at Market Dalling. They
had been years of secret drama, on his part of almost wordless struggle
for some kind of response to the passion which her mysterious
aloofness--to so many men the greater part of a woman's
attraction--evoked and kept alive in him.
He now remembered how during these years there had been minor causes of
disagreement, trifling matters--or so he had considered them--to which
Rosaleen attached far more importance than he had done.
The constant criticism and interference of his half-sister, the dislike
and jealousy of those town folk who regarded themselves as having a
right to the close friendship and intimacy of David Banfield's young
wife, these were the things--forming such unimportant asides to the
course of that hidden struggle--which Rosaleen had brought forward when
begging her husband, with passionate energy, to allow her to go back to
her profession.
But to-night, the grey fear with which he now regarded his own future
life at Market Dalling brought to David Banfield a sudden understanding
of what Rosaleen had felt, caged, as he had caged her, in the little
town to which he was now reluctantly turning his laggard steps, and
which had been, till so few years ago, the centre of his universe.
He told himself that had he had the courage, had he been possessed of
the necessary imagination, to make another life for himself and for her,
none of this need have happened.
But why torture himself uselessly? He and Rosaleen had now drifted as
far apart as a man and a woman can drift. What he had done to-night was
in its way as irrevocable as what she on her side had done--nay more,
the very fact that he had Matilda Wellow so completely at his mercy made
Banfield feel, as a less simple-hearted, generous-minded man would never
have felt, how impossible it was for him to draw back....
While returning to what had now become his place of bondage, David
Banfield made a determined effort to dam the mental floodgates through
which had run so strange a stream of violent revolt and emotion, and he
was so far rewarded that almost at once something occurred which had the
effect of bracing him up, of hardening him in his determination to do
what he believed to be right.
As he walked down the silent, shuttered High Street at the end of which
stood the Brew House, he saw that his hall light had not been
extinguished; and as he opened the front door, he was confronted with
the spare form and the gaunt, though not ill-visaged countenance of Mary
Scanlan, the elderly Irishwoman who had for so long waged triumphant
battle with her master's sister, Mrs. Rigby. Utterly different as the
two women were, they yet, as Banfield sometimes secretly told himself,
not without a certain sore amusement, had strong points of resemblance
the one with the other.
Impelled by some obscure instinct that thus was he certain to be
strengthened in the course of action to which he had just pledged
himself, Banfield invited the woman into the dining-room, which had
been, since his first wife's departure, used by him as living and eating
room in one.
Very deliberately he lit the gas, and then turned and faced his
housekeeper. "I think it right that you should be among the first to
know," he said, "that I am going to be married again--to Miss Wellow."
There was a moment's pause. Banfield expected either a word of sullen
acquiescence or an outburst of anger; he had known Mary Scanlan in both
moods, but now she surprised him by assuming a very disconcerting
attitude.
"If that's the case," she said slowly, twisting and untwisting a corner
of the black apron that she was wearing, "I will be getting ready little
Rosy's clothes, for you will be sending her to the convent rather
sooner, I reckon, than you meant to do. I make no doubt the nuns will
let me stay there for a week or two till the child gets accustomed to
the place--that is, if you have no objection, Mr. Banfield?"
Banfield looked at the woman in some perplexity.
"But I've no thought of sending Rosy to school yet!" he exclaimed--then
added: "Of course, I mean to keep my promise to her mother, but--but the
child's a little thing yet--too young to go to school."
Mary Scanlan was the only woman to whom Banfield ever spoke of his wife,
and Mrs. Rigby would have been amazed indeed had she known how often
these allusions and semi-allusions were made, for to Kate, much as he
trusted and respected his sister, Banfield had never till that day bared
his heart.
"I am going to ask you," he went on, "to stay in my service, simply to
look after the child. I know well, Mary, how devoted you are to my
little girl, and how good you've been to her. When Miss Wellow has
become--" he hesitated awkwardly, and then with a certain effort,
uttered the words "my wife--she will, of course, take charge of the
house, and I suppose she will bring her own servants with her. I shall
no longer have any need for a housekeeper--but I know she will be only
too glad if you will stay on with Rosy."
"I don't think I can do that, sir."
Banfield moved uneasily. Mary Scanlan almost invariably called him "Mr.
Banfield"; it was one of the woman's many Irish idiosyncrasies which
irritated his sister.
"I don't think I can stay on here, sir," repeated Mary Scanlan in a low,
hesitating voice. "I don't hold with a man, a gentleman I mean, having
two wives. I can't say a word of excuse for my poor Miss Rosaleen--I
beg your pardon, sir, I mean Mrs. Banfield. I know she behaved very
wickedly and strangely, but still you see, Mr. Banfield, to my thinking
and according to my holy religion, she's the woman who owns you, sir,
and no one else can ever take her place."
"I know, I know," he said hastily. "But Mary, why don't you consult your
priest? If you explain the circumstances to him, he may take a different
view of the matter to what you do."
"No, that he wouldn't!" exclaimed Mary Scanlan, with a touch of her old
passionate temper, "and if he did, I shouldn't be said by him!"
She hesitated, and then in a low tone asked the strange question, made
the amazing suggestion, "I suppose you wouldn't be after seeing Miss
Rosaleen, Mr. Banfield? Not if I gave you her address?"
Banfield made a nervous movement of recoil.
"Mary," he said sternly, "you forget yourself!" and turning, left her in
possession of the room.
* * * * *
How describe the days that followed?--short days full of intense joy and
looking forward to Matilda Wellow, long days filled with perplexed
misgiving and self-reproach to David Banfield.
Men and women of British birth generally prefer to conduct their
courtships in the way that best suits themselves, but those whom Mrs.
Rigby collectively dubbed as "foreigners" have long ago realised the
advantage of having so important an episode of human life as that of
betrothal "stage-managed" by someone more experienced in such matters
than the two most interested.
Mrs. Rigby had no kind of sympathy with foreign fashion, and in theory
thoroughly disapproved of the way in which the French, for instance,
arrange their matrimonial affairs. But this engagement of her brother
David Banfield and of Matilda Wellow was one of the supreme exceptions
which prove a rule, and so she stage-managed every entrance, every exit,
and, to pursue the analogy to its bitter end, every bit of "business"
connected with the affair.
Her stern eyes, her rough tongue, kept the bride-elect in order, but her
watchful fear lest Matilda should get on David's nerves before she
became securely bound to him for ever had one curious effect; it made
Banfield sorry for his betrothed, and caused him to feel more kindly to
her than he would otherwise have done.
Then he was touched and surprised by Matilda's great loyalty to himself;
he soon discovered that, far from discussing him with his sister, she
often irritated the latter by her assumption that already she, Matilda,
and he, David, had a joint life in which Kate Rigby played no part. This
angered Mrs. Rigby keenly, and it is a pathetic fact that the only tears
Matilda Wellow shed during the course of her engagement were caused by
the woman who was her oldest friend, and to whom she was dimly aware
that she owed her good-fortune.
Blinded by that most blinding of master passions, jealousy, Mrs. Rigby
actually came to believe that her brother was now attached, in a far
truer sense than he had been to Rosaleen, to the fond, foolish woman who
was so soon to become his wife.
"He's getting quite silly about her," she observed angrily to her
husband; "he goes up there every evening, however busy he may be, or
however much I may want to have him here. And now he says he won't go to
that good London tailor for his wedding clothes! It's clear he doesn't
want to leave Tiddy--even for three days!"
But Mr. Rigby, as was his prudent wont when he disagreed with his wife,
only looked at her, and thoughtfully wagged his head.
"Why don't you say something?" she asked crossly.
"Why should David go to London?" observed Mr. Rigby mildly. "He's a
personable fellow; any tailor could fit David. If I were you, Kate, I'd
let him be." But Kate, to her lasting sorrow, did not let David be.
Both her husband and even Matilda Wellow herself could have told Mrs.
Rigby that it was in London that her brother had spent his honeymoon
with his wife; but though she had been made vividly aware of the
circumstance--for it was from there that the news of his hasty marriage
had reached her--that fact would not have seemed to her any reason why
David should not now do the right and proper thing by his second bride.
Thus it was owing to Mrs. Rigby that Matilda was at last roused to a
sense of what was due to herself. Banfield, with some discomfiture,
discovered that Miss Wellow would take it ill of him not to pay her the
compliment of going to the London tailor for his wedding clothes--"and
then," had observed his sister briskly, "you'll be able to bring Tiddy
back something handsome in the way of jewellery; for that's a thing you
owe not only to her, David, but also to yourself."
II
David Banfield, just arrived in London, stood in an hotel bedroom
overlooking the trees in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Staring out at the leafy screen, which seemed to him so lacking in
country freshness, there came to his mind poignant memories of a very
different room and a very different outlook not half a mile away from
where he stood, for he and Rosaleen had spent the first days of their
married life in one of those vast hotels which, overlooking the
Embankment and the river, are filled with light and air, as well as
instinct with a certain material luxury which had pleased his young
wife's taste more than his own.
With a quick movement he pushed up the old-fashioned guillotine window
as far as it would go, and leaned out dangerously far; then he drew back
sharply, feeling, as he now often felt when he was alone, that he was
living through an unreal, a nightmare stage of his life, one which was
bound to come sooner or later to an abrupt end, but which now must be
lived through....
With unseeing eyes and unthinking mind he walked across to the shadowed
corner where had been placed his portmanteau. Slowly, indifferently, he
turned the key in the lock and raised the lid,--then quickened into
alert, painful attention.
Lying on the top of its neatly folded contents was an envelope so placed
that it could not but attract his attention, and on it was written--in
the sprawling, unformed handwriting which was, perhaps, the only marked
betrayal of Mary Scanlan's early lack of education--the one word
"Important."
At once there leapt into Banfield's mind the certain knowledge of what
the envelope contained. If he opened it, there most surely would he find
his wife Rosaleen's address. It was this, then, that the Irishwoman had
in her thoughts when she had asked him the unseemly question to which he
had given so short and stern an answer.
But Mary Scanlan had not understood the type of man with whom she had to
deal.
As he stood there, longing with a terrible longing to verify his
belief, telling himself, with a leap of the heart, that, if he were not
mistaken, then Rosaleen must be living alone, for if this had not been
so the old servant would never have thought of trying to bring them
together again--the claims of others, especially those of the woman from
whom he had only parted that morning, became paramount. He told himself
that, from the point of view of those who loved him, and whom he
respected, it was his duty to destroy unopened the envelope lying before
him.
Banfield turned away, and once more walked across to the window; and
then his agitation suddenly became puerile in his eyes.
What the Irishwoman had regarded as important when packing his bag might
well be a trifling matter, something wanted, maybe, for the child. The
uncertainty seemed to steady his conscience; _he felt that he must
know_.
Bending down, he took up the envelope; the flap was open, and out of it
there slipped into his hand a shabby little card on which was printed:
MISS ROSALEEN TARA (The Colleen Bawn),
18, Abbey Street,
Westminster, S. W.
There followed for David Banfield three days of agonising struggle and
temptation. All the feelings and instincts he had battened down, put
determinedly from him for so long, sprang into life. Now that he knew
where to find her, he became possessed by a deep, unreasoning longing to
see Rosaleen once more--even if a meeting could only result in pain for
him, in shame for her.
On the second day of his stay in London, he offered conscience a salve
in the form of a fine ruby ring, which was despatched to Miss Wellow in
lieu of the letter which he knew only too well she must be anxiously
awaiting.
Had Banfield been a stronger man he would have left London. But that, or
so he told himself, there was no need to do; and as the hours dragged
on, bringing him closer to the moment which must see his return to
Market Dalling--to Matilda Wellow--the fact that he and Rosaleen were in
a material sense so near to one another began to affect his imagination
in strangest and most poignant fashion.