Mrs. Ashmeade, who has been previously quoted, now comes into the story.
She is only an episode. Still, her intervention led to peculiar
results--results, curiously enough, in which she was not in the least
concerned. She simply comes into the story for a moment, and then goes
out of it; but her part is an important one.
She is like the watchman who announces the coming of Agamemnon;
Clytemnestra sharpens her ax at the news, and the fatal bath is prepared
for the _anax andron_. The tragedy moves on; the house of Atreus falls,
and the wrath of implacable gods bellows across the heavens; meanwhile,
the watchman has gone home to have tea with his family, and we hear no
more of him. There are any number of morals to this.
Mrs. Ashmeade comes into the story on the day Patricia went to
Lichfield, and some weeks after John Charteris's arrival at Matocton.
Since then, affairs had progressed in a not unnatural sequence. Mr.
Charteris, as we have seen, attributed it to Fate; and, assuredly, there
must be a special providence of some kind that presides over country
houses--a freakish and whimsical providence, which hugely rejoices in
confounding one's sense of time and direction.
Through its agency, people unaccountably lose their way in the simplest
walks, and turn up late and embarrassed for luncheon. At the end of the
evening, it brings any number of couples blinking out of the dark, with
no idea the clock was striking more than half-past nine.
And it delights in sending one into the garden--in search of roses or
dahlias or upas-trees or something of the sort, of course--and thereby
causing one to encounter the most unlikely people, and really, quite the
last person one would have thought of meeting, as all frequenters of
house-party junketings will assure you. And thus is this special
house-party providence responsible for a great number of marriages, and,
it may be, for a large percentage of the divorce cases; for, if you
desire very heartily to see anything of another member of a house-party,
this lax-minded and easy-going providence will somehow always bring the
event about in a specious manner, and without any apparent thought of
the consequences.
And the Musgraves' house-party was no exception.
Mrs. Ashmeade, for reasons of her own, took daily note of this. The
others were largely engrossed by their own affairs; they did not
seriously concern themselves about the doings of their fellow-guests.
And, besides, if John Charteris manifestly sought the company of
Patricia Musgrave, her husband did not appear to be exorbitantly
dissatisfied or angry or even lonely; and, be this as it might, the fact
remained that Celia Reindan was at this time more than a little
interested in Teddy Anstruther; and Felix Kennaston was undeniably very
attentive to Kathleen Saumarez; and Tom Gelwix was quite certainly
devoting the major part of his existence to sitting upon the beach with
Rosalind Jemmett.
For, in Lichfield at all events, everyone's house has at least a pane or
so of glass in it; and, if indiscriminate stone-throwing were ever to
become the fashion, there is really no telling what damage might ensue.
And so had Mrs. Ashmeade been a younger woman--had time and an adoring
husband not rendered her as immune to an insanity _à deux_ as any of us
may hope to be upon this side of saintship or senility--why, Mrs.
Ashmeade would most probably have remained passive, and Mrs. Ashmeade
would never have come into this story at all.
As it was, she approached Rudolph Musgrave with a fixed purpose this
morning as he smoked an after-breakfast cigarette on the front porch of
Matocton. And,
"Rudolph," said Mrs. Ashmeade, "are you blind?"
"You mean--?" he asked, and he broke off, for he had really no
conception of what she meant.
And Mrs. Ashmeade said, "I mean Patricia and Charteris. Did you think I
was by any chance referring to the man in the moon and the Queen of
Sheba?"
If ever amazement showed in a man's eyes, it shone now in Rudolph
Musgrave's. After a little, the pupils widened in a sort of terror. So
this was what Clarice Pendomer had been hinting at.
"Nonsense!" he cried. "Why--why, it is utter, preposterous, Bedlamite
nonsense!" He caught his breath in wonder at the notion of such a jest,
remembering a little packet of letters hidden in his desk. "It--oh, no,
Fate hasn't quite so fine a sense of humor as that. The thing is
incredible!" Musgrave laughed, and flushed. "I mean----"
"I don't think you need tell me what you mean," said Mrs. Ashmeade. She
sat down in a large rocking-chair, and fanned herself, for the day was
warm. "Of course, it is officious and presumptuous and disagreeable of
me to meddle. I don't mind your thinking that. But Rudolph, don't make
the mistake of thinking that Fate ever misses a chance of humiliating us
by showing how poor are our imaginations. The gipsy never does. She is a
posturing mountebank, who thrives by astounding humanity."
Mrs. Ashmeade paused, and her eyes were full of memories, and very wise.
"I am only a looker-on at the tragic farce that is being played here,"
she continued, after a little, "but lookers-on, you know, see most of
the game. They are not playing fairly with you, Rudolph. When people set
about an infringement of the Decalogue they owe it to their self-respect
to treat with Heaven as a formidable antagonist. To mark the cards is
not enough. They are not playing fairly, my dear, and you ought to know
it."
He walked up and down the porch once or twice, with his hands behind
him; then he stopped before Mrs. Ashmeade, and smiled down at her.
Without, many locusts shrilled monotonously.
"No, I do not think you are officious or meddling or anything of the
sort, I think you are one of the best and kindest-hearted women in the
world. But--bless your motherly soul, Polly! the thing is utterly
preposterous. Of course, Patricia is young, and likes attention, and it
pleases her to have men admire her. That, Polly, is perfectly natural.
Why, you wouldn't expect her to sit around under the trees, and read
poetry with her own husband, would you? We have been married far too
long for that, Patricia and I. She thinks me rather prosy and stupid at
times, poor girl, because--well, because, in point of fact, I am. But,
at the bottom of her heart--Oh, it's preposterous! We are the best
friends in the world, I tell you! It is simply that she and Jack have a
great deal in common--"
"You don't understand John Charteris. I do," said Mrs. Ashmeade,
placidly. "Charteris is simply a baby with a vocabulary. His moral
standpoint is entirely that of infancy. It would be ludicrous to
describe him as selfish, because he is selfishness incarnate. I
sometimes believe it is the only characteristic the man possesses. He
reaches out his hand and takes whatever he wants, just as a baby would,
quite simply, and as a matter of course. He wants your wife now, and he
is reaching out his hand to take her. He probably isn't conscious of
doing anything especially wrong; he is always so plausible in whatever
he does that he ends by deceiving himself, I suppose. For he is always
plausible. It is worse than useless to argue any matter with him,
because he invariably ends by making you feel as if you had been caught
stealing a hat. The only argument that would get the better of John
Charteris is knocking him down, just as spanking is the only argument
which ever gets the better of a baby. Yes, he is very like a
baby--thoroughly selfish and thoroughly dependent on other people; only,
he is a clever baby who exaggerates his own helplessness in order to
appeal to women. He has a taste for women. And women naturally like him,
for he impresses them as an irresponsible child astray in an artful and
designing world. They want to protect him. Even I do, at times. It is
really maternal, you know; we would infinitely prefer for him to be soft
and little, so that we could pick him up, and cuddle him. But as it is,
he is dangerous. He believes whatever he tells himself, you see."
Her voice died away, and Mrs. Ashmeade fanned herself in the fashion
addicted by perturbed women who, nevertheless, mean to have their say
out--slowly and impersonally, and quite as if she was fanning some one
else through motives of charity.
"I don't question," Musgrave said, at length, "that Jack is the highly
estimable character you describe. But--oh, it is all nonsense, Polly!"
he cried, with petulance, and with a tinge--if but the merest nuance
--of conviction lacking in his voice.
The fan continued its majestic sweep from the shade into the sunlight,
and back again into the shadow. Without, many locusts shrilled
monotonously.
"Rudolph, I know what you meant by saying that Fate hadn't such a fine
sense of humor."
"My dear madam, it was simply thrown out, in the heat of
conversation--as an axiom----"
For a moment the fan paused; then went on as before. It was never
charged against Pauline Ashmeade, whatever her shortcomings, that she
was given to unnecessary verbiage.
Colonel Musgrave was striding up and down, divided between a disposition
to swear at the universe at large and a desire to laugh at it. Somehow,
it did not occur to him to doubt what she had told him. He comprehended
now that, chafing under his indebtedness in the affair of Mrs. Pendomer,
Charteris would most naturally retaliate by making love to his
benefactor's wife, because the colonel also knew John Charteris. And for
the rest, it was useless to struggle against a Fate that planned such
preposterous and elaborate jokes; one might more rationally depend on
Fate to work out some both ludicrous and horrible solution, he
reflected, remembering a little packet of letters hidden in his desk.
Nevertheless, he paused after a while, and laughed, with a tolerable
affectation of mirth.
"I say--I--and what in heaven's name, Polly, prompted you to bring me
this choice specimen of a mare's-nest?"
"Because I am fond of you, I suppose. Isn't one always privileged to be
disagreeable to one's friends? We have been friends a long while, you
know."
Mrs. Ashmeade was looking out over the river now, but she seemed to see
a great way, a very great way, beyond its glaring waters, and to be
rather uncertain as to whether what she beheld there was of a humorous
or pathetic nature.
"Rudolph, do you remember that evening--the first summer that I knew
you--at Fortress Monroe, when we sat upon the pier so frightfully late,
and the moon rose out of the bay, and made a great, solid-looking,
silver path that led straight over the rim of the world, and you talked
to me about--about what, now?"
"Oh, yes, yes!--I remember perfectly! One of the most beautiful evenings
I ever saw. I remember it quite distinctly. I talked--I--and what, in
the Lord's name, did I talk about, Polly?"
"Ah, men forget! A woman never forgets when she is really friends with a
man. I know now you were telling me about Anne Charteris, for you have
been in love with her all your life, Rudolph, in your own particular
half-hearted and dawdling fashion. Perhaps that is why you have had so
many affairs. You plainly found the run of women so unimportant that it
put every woman on her pride to prove she was different. Yes, I
remember. But that night I thought you were trying to make love to me,
and I was disappointed in you, and--yes, rather pleased. Women are all
vain and perfectly inconsistent. But then, girl-children always take
after their fathers."
Mrs. Ashmeade rose from her chair. Her fan shut with a snap.
"You were a dear boy, Rudolph, when I first knew you--and what I liked
was that you never made love to me. Of all the boys I have known and
helped to form, you were the only sensible one--the only one who never
presumed. That was rather clever of you, Rudolph. It would have been
ridiculous, for even arithmetically I am older than you.
"Wouldn't it have been ridiculous, Rudolph?" she demanded, suddenly.
"Not in the least," Musgrave protested, in courteous wise. "You--why,
Polly, you were a wonderfully handsome woman. Any boy----"
"Oh, yes!--I was. I'm not now, am I, Rudolph?" Mrs. Ashmeade threw back
her head and laughed naturally. "Ah, dear boy that was, it is unfair,
isn't it, for an old woman to seize upon you in this fashion, and insist
on your making love to her? But I will let you off. You don't have to do
it."
She caught her skirts in her left hand, preparatory to going, and her
right hand rested lightly on his arm. She spoke in a rather peculiar
voice.
"Yes," she said, "the boy was a very, very dear boy, and I want the man
to be equally brave and--sensible."
Musgrave stared after her. "I wonder--I wonder--? Oh, no, that
couldn't be," he said, and wearily.
"There must be some preposterous situations that don't come about."
* * * * *
And afterward he strolled across the lawn, where the locusts were
shrilling, as if in a stubborn prediction of something which was
inevitable, and he meditated upon a great number of things. There were a
host of fleecy little clouds in the sky. He looked up at them,
interrogatively.
And then he smiled and shook his head.
"Yet I don't know," said he; "for I am coming to the conclusion that the
world is run on an extremely humorous basis."
And oddly enough, it was at the same moment that Patricia--in
Lichfield--reached the same conclusion.