looked when she rose and stood before the Marquis of Walderhurst on a
memorable occasion, the afternoon on the moor. She felt almost quiet,
and safe.
"What must I do?" she asked, as if she was speaking to a friend. "I am
afraid. Tell me."
Little Mrs. Osborn stood still and stared at her. The most incongruous
thought came to her mind. She found herself, at this weird moment,
observing how well the woman held her stupid head, how finely it was set
on her shoulders, and that in a modern Royal Academy way she was rather
like the Venus of Milo. It is quite out of place to think such things at
such a time. But she found herself confronted with them.
"Go away," she answered. "It is all like a thing in a play, but I know
what I am talking about. Say you are ordered abroad. Be cool and
matter-of-fact. Simply go and hide yourself somewhere, and call your
husband home as soon as he can travel."
Emily Walderhurst passed her hand over her forehead.
"It _is_ like something in a play," she said, with a baffled, wondering
face. "It isn't even respectable."
Hester began to laugh.
"No, it isn't even respectable," she cried. And her laughter was just in
time. The door opened and Alec Osborn came in.
"What isn't respectable?" he asked.
"Something I have been telling Emily," she answered, laughing even a
trifle wildly. "You are too young to hear such things. You must be kept
respectable at any cost."
He grinned, but faintly scowled at the same time.
"You've upset something," he remarked, looking at the carpet.
"I have, indeed," said Hester. "A cup of tea which was half milk. It
will leave a grease spot on the carpet. That won't be respectable."
When she had tumbled about among native servants as a child, she had
learned to lie quickly, and she was very ready of resource.
Chapter Nineteen
As she heard the brougham draw up in the wet street before the door,
Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her
attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in
itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in
the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door
preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after
twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this
expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without
question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as
interesting as his character and points of view.
Dr. Warren was of the mental build of the man whose life would be
interesting and full of outlook if it were spent on a desert island or
in the Bastille. He possessed the temperament which annexes incident and
adventure, and the perceptiveness of imagination which turns a light
upon the merest fragment of event. As a man whose days were filled with
the work attendant upon the exercise of a profession from which can be
withheld few secrets, and to which most mysteries explain themselves,
his brain was the recording machine of impressions which might have
stimulated to vividness of imagination a man duller than himself, and
roused to feeling one of far less warm emotions.
He came into the room smiling. He was a man of fifty, of strong build,
and masculine. He had good shoulders and good colour, and the eyes,
nose, and chin of a man it would be a stupid thing to attempt to deal
with in a blackguardly manner. He sat down in his chair by the fire and
began to chat, as was his habit before he and his wife parted to dress
for dinner. When he was out during the day he often looked forward to
these chats, and made notes of things he would like to tell his Mary.
During her day, which was given to feminine duties and pleasures, she
frequently did the same thing. Between seven and eight in the evening
they had delightful conversational opportunities. He picked up her book
and glanced it over, he asked her a few questions and answered a few;
but she saw it was with a somewhat preoccupied manner. She knew a
certain remote look in his eye, and she waited to see him get up from
his chair and begin to walk to and fro, with his hands in his pockets
and his head thrown back. When, after having done this, he began in
addition to whistle softly and draw his eyebrows together, she broke in
upon him in the manner of merely following an established custom.
"I am perfectly sure," was her remark, "that you have come upon one of
the Extraordinary Cases."
The last two words were spoken as with inverted commas. Of many deep
interests he added to her existence, the Extraordinary Cases were among
the most absorbing. He had begun to discuss them with her during the
first year of their married life. Accident had thrown one of them into
her immediate personal experience, and her clear-headed comprehension
and sympathy in summing up singular evidence had been of such value to
him that he had turned to her in the occurrence of others for the aid
straightforward, mutual logic could give. She had learned to await the
Extraordinary Case with something like eagerness. Sometimes, it was
true, its incidents were painful; but invariably they were absorbing in
their interest, and occasionally illuminating beyond description. Of
names and persons it was not necessary she should hear anything--the
drama, the ethics, were enough. With an absolute respect for his
professional reserves, she asked no questions he could not reply to
freely, and avoided even the innocent following of clues. The
Extraordinary Case was always quite enough as it stood. When she saw the
remotely speculative look in his eye, she suspected one, when he left
his chair and paced the floor with that little air of restlessness, and
ended with unconscious whistling which was scarcely louder than a
breath, she felt that evidence enough had accumulated for her.
He stopped and turned round.
"My good Mary," he owned at once, "its extraordinariness consists in its
baffling me by being so perfectly ordinary."
"Well, at least that is not frequent. What is its nature? Is it awful?
Is it sad? Is it eccentric? Is it mad or sane, criminal or domestic?"
"It is nothing but suggestive, and that it suggests mystery to me makes
me feel as if I myself, instead of a serious practitioner, am a
professional detective."
"Is it a case in which you might need help?"
"It is a case in which I am impelled to give help, if it proves that it
is necessary. She is such an exceedingly nice woman."
"Good, bad, or indifferent?"
"Of a goodness, I should say--of a goodness which might prevent the
brain acting in the manner in which a brutal world requires at present
that the human brain should act in self-defence. Of a goodness which may
possibly have betrayed her into the most pathetic trouble."
"Of the kind--?" was Mrs. Warren's suggestion.
"Of that kind," with a troubled look; "but she is a married woman."
"She _says_ she is a married woman."
"No. She does not say so, but she looks it. That's the chief feature of
the case. Any woman bearing more obviously the stamp of respectable
British matrimony than this one does, it has not fallen to me to look
upon."
Mrs. Warren's expression was _intriguée_ in the extreme. There was a
freshness in this, at least.
"But if she bears the stamp as well as the name--! Do tell me all it is
possible to tell. Come and sit down, Harold."
He sat down and entered into details.
"I was called to a lady who, though not ill, seemed fatigued from a
hurried journey and, as it seemed to me, the effects of anxiety and
repressed excitement. I found her in a third-class lodging-house in a
third-class street. It was a house which had the air of a place hastily
made inhabitable for some special reason. There were evidences that
money had been spent, but that there had been no time to arrange things.
I have seen something of the kind before, and when I was handed into my
patient's sitting-room, thought I knew the type I should find. It is
always more or less the same,--a girl or a very young woman, pretty and
refined and frightened, or pretty and vulgar and 'carrying it off' with
transparent pretences and airs and graces. Anything more remote from
what I expected you absolutely cannot conceive."
"Not young and pretty?"
"About thirty-five or six. A fresh, finely built woman with eyes as
candid as a six-year-old girl's. Quite unexplanatory and with the best
possible manner, only sweetly anxious about her health. Her confidence
in my advice and the earnestness of her desire to obey my least
instructions were moving. Ten minutes' conversation with her revealed to
me depths of long-secreted romance in my nature. I mentally began to
swear fealty to her."
"Did she tell you that her husband was away?"
"What specially struck me was that it did not occur to her that her
husband required stating, which was ingenuously impressive. She did not
explain her mother or her uncles, why her husband? Her mental attitude
had a translucent clearness. She wanted a medical man to take charge of
her, and if she had been an amiable, un-brilliant lady who was a member
of the royal house, she would have conversed with me exactly as she
did."
"She was so respectable?"
"She was even a little Mid-Victorian, dear Mary; a sort of clean,
healthy, Mid-Victorian angel."
"There's an incongruousness in the figure in connection with being
obviously in hiding in a lodging-house street." And Mrs. Warren gave
herself to reflection.
"I cannot make it as incongruous as she was. I have not told you all. I
have saved to the last the feature which marked her most definitely as
an Extraordinary Case. I suppose one does that sort of thing from a
sense of drama."
"What else?" inquired Mrs. Warren, roused from her speculation.
"What respectable conclusion _could_ one deduce from the fact that a
letter lay on the table near her, sealed with an imposing coat of arms.
One's eye having accidentally fallen on it, one could, of course, only
avoid glancing at it again, so I recognised nothing definite. Also, when
I was announced unexpectedly, I saw her quickly withdraw her hand from
her lips. She had been kissing a ring she wore. I could not help seeing
that afterwards. My good Mary, it was a ruby, of a size and colour which
recalled the Arabian Nights."
Mrs. Warren began to resign herself.
"No," she said, "there is no respectable conclusion to be drawn. It is
tragic, but prosaic. She has been governess or companion in some great
house. She may be a well-born woman. It is ten times more hideous for
her than if she were a girl. She has to writhe under knowing that both
her friends and her enemies are saying that she had not the excuse of
not having been old enough to know better."
"That might all be true," he admitted promptly. "It _would_ be true
if--but she is not writhing. She is no more unhappy than you or I. She
is only anxious, and I could swear that she is only anxious about one
thing. The moment in which I swore fealty to her was when she said to
me, 'I want to be quite safe--until after. I do not care for myself. I
will bear anything or do anything. Only one thing matters. I shall be
such a good patient.' Then her eyes grew moist, and she closed her lips
decorously to keep them from trembling.
"They're not usually like that," Mrs. Warren remarked.
"I have not found them so," he replied.
"Perhaps she believes the man will marry her."
There was odd unexpectedness in the manner in which Dr. Warren suddenly
began to laugh.
"My dear wife, if you could see her! It is the incongruity of what we
are saying which makes me laugh. With her ruby and her coronets and her
lodging-house street, she is of an impeccableness! She does not even
know she could be doubted. Fifteen years of matrimony spent in South
Kensington, three girls in the schoolroom and four boys at Eton, could
not have crystallised a more unquestionable serenity. And you are saying
gravely, 'Perhaps she believes the man will marry her.' Whatsoever the
situation is, I am absolutely sure that she has never asked herself
whether he would or not."
"Then," Mrs. Warren answered, "it is the most Extraordinary Case we have
had yet."
"But I have sworn fealty to her," was Warren's conclusion. "And she will
tell me more later." He shook his head with an air of certainty. "Yes,
she will feel it necessary to tell me later."
They went upstairs to dress for dinner, and during the remainder of the
evening which they spent alone they talked almost entirely of the
matter.
Chapter Twenty
Lady Walderhurst's departure from Palstrey, though unexpected, had been
calm and matter-of-fact. All the Osborns knew was that she had been
obliged to go up to London for a day or two, and that when there, her
physician had advised certain German baths. Her letter of explanation
and apology was very nice. She could not return to the country before
beginning her journey. It seemed probable that she would return with her
husband, who might arrive in England during the next two months.
"Has she heard that he is coming back?" Captain Osborn asked his wife.
"She has written to ask him to come."
Osborn grinned.
"He will be obliged to her. He is tremendously pleased with his
importance at this particular time, and he is just the sort of man--as
we both know--to be delighted at being called back to preside over an
affair which is usually a matter for old women."
But the letter he had examined, as it lay with the rest awaiting postal,
he had taken charge of himself. He knew that one, at least, would not
reach Lord Walderhurst. Having heard in time of the broken bridge-rail,
he had been astute enough to guess that the letter written immediately
after the incident might convey such impressions as might lead even his
lordship to feel that it would be well for him to be at home. The woman
had been frightened, and would be sure to lose her head and play the
fool. In a few days she would calm down and the affair would assume
smaller proportions. At any rate, he had chosen to take charge of this
particular letter.
What he did not know, however, was that chance had played into his hands
in the matter of temporarily upsetting Lord Walderhurst's rather
unreliable digestion, and in altering his plans, by a smart, though not
dangerous, attack of fever which had ended in his being ordered to a
part of the hill country not faithfully reached by letters; as a result
of which several communications from his wife went astray and were
unduly delayed. At the time Captain Osborn was discussing him with
Hester, he was taking annoyed care of himself with the aid of a doctor,
irritated by the untoward disturbance of his arrangements, and giving,
it is true, comparatively little thought to his wife, who, being
comfortably installed at Palstrey Manor, was doubtless enjoyably
absorbed in little Mrs. Osborn.
"What German baths does she intend going to?" Alec Osborn inquired.
Hester consulted the letter with a manner denoting but languid interest.
"It's rather like her that she doesn't go to the length of explaining,"
was her reply. "She has a way of telling you a great many things you
don't care to know, and forgetting to mention those you are interested
in. She is very detailed about her health, and her affection and mine.
She evidently expects us to go back to The Kennel Farm, and deplores her
inhospitality, with adjectives."
She did not look as if she was playing a part; but she was playing one,
and doing it well. Her little way was that of a nasty-tempered,
self-centred woman, made spiteful by being called upon to leave a place
which suited her.
"You are not really any fonder of her than I am," commented Osborn,
after regarding her speculatively a few moments. If he had been as sure
of her as he had been of Ameerah--!
"I don't know of any reason for my being particularly fond of her," she
said. "It's easy enough for a rich woman to be good-natured. It doesn't
cost her enough to constitute a claim."
Osborn helped himself to a stiff whiskey and soda. They went back to The
Kennel Farm the next day, and though it was his habit to consume a large
number of "pegs" daily, the habit increased until there were not many
hours in the day when he was normally sure of what he was doing.
The German baths to which Lady Walderhurst had gone were nearer to
Palstrey than any one knew. They were only at a few hours' distance by
rail.
When, after a day spent in a quiet London lodging, Mrs. Cupp returned to
her mistress with the information that she had been to the house in
Mortimer Street and found that the widow who had bought the lease and
furniture was worn out with ill-luck and the uncertainty of lodgers, and
only longed for release which was not ruin, Emily cried a little for
joy.
"Oh, how I should like to be there!" she said. "It was such a dear
house. No one would ever dream of my being in it. And I need have no one
but you and Jane. I should be so safe and quiet. Tell her you have a
friend who will take it, as it is, for a year, and pay her anything."
"I won't tell her quite that, my lady," Mrs. Cupp made sagacious answer.
"I'll make her an offer in ready money down, and no questions asked by
either of us. People in her position sometimes gets a sudden let that
pays them better than lodgers. All classes has their troubles, and
sometimes a decent house is wanted for a few months, where money can be
paid. I'll make her an offer."
The outcome of which was that the widowed householder walked out of her
domicile the next morning with a heavier purse and a lighter mind than
she had known for many months. The same night, ingenuously oblivious of
having been called upon to fill the role of a lady in genteel "trouble,"
good and decorous Emily Walderhurst arrived under the cover of discreet
darkness in a cab, and when she found herself in the "best bedroom,"
which had once been so far beyond her means, she cried a little for joy
again, because the four dull walls, the mahogany dressing-table, and
ugly frilled pincushions looked so unmelodramatically normal and safe.
"It seems so home-like," she said; adding courageously, "it is a very
comfortable place, really."
"We can make it much more cheerful, my lady," Jane said, with grateful
appreciation. "And the relief makes it like Paradise." She was leaving
the room and stopped at the door. "There's not a person, black or white,
can get across the door-mat, past mother and me, until his lordship
comes," she allowed herself the privilege of adding.
Emily felt a little nervous when she pictured to herself Lord
Walderhurst crossing the door-mat of a house in Mortimer Street in
search of his Marchioness. She had not yet had time to tell him the
story of the episode of the glass of milk and Hester Osborn's sudden
outburst. Every moment had been given to carefully managed arrangement
for the journey which was to seem so natural. Hester's cleverness had
suggested every step and had supported her throughout. But for Hester
she was afraid she might have betrayed herself. There had been no time
for writing. But when James received her letter (of late she had more
than once thought of him as "James"), he would know the one thing that
was important. And she had asked him to come to her. She had apologised
for suggesting any alteration of his plans, but she had really asked him
to come to her.
"I think he will come," she said to herself. "I do think he will. I
shall be so glad. Perhaps I have not been sensible, perhaps I have not
done the best thing, but if I keep myself safe until he comes back, that
really seems what is most important."
Two or three days in the familiar rooms, attended only by the two
friendly creatures she knew so well, seemed to restore the balance of
life for her. Existence became comfortable and prosaic again. The best
bedroom and the room in which she spent her days were made quite
cheerful through Jane's enterprise and memories of the appointments of
Palstrey. Jane brought her tea in the morning, Mrs. Cupp presided over
the kitchen. The agreeable doctor, whose reputation they had heard so
much of, came and went, leaving his patient feeling that she might
establish a friendship. He looked so clever and so kind.
She began to smile her childlike smile again. Mrs. Cupp and Jane told
each other in private that if she had not been a married lady, they
would have felt that she was Miss Fox-Seton again. She looked so like
herself, with her fresh colour and her nice, cheerful eyes. And yet to
think of the changes there had been, and what they had gone through!
People in London know nothing--or everything--of their neighbours. The
people who lived in Mortimer Street were of the hard-worked
lodging-house keeping class, and had too many anxieties connected with
butcher's bills, rent, and taxes, to be able to give much time to their
neighbours. The life in the house which had changed hands had nothing
noticeable about it. It looked from the outside as it had always looked.
The door-steps were kept clean, milk was taken in twice a day, and local
tradesmen's carts left things in the ordinary manner. A doctor
occasionally called to see someone, and the only person who had inquired
about the patient (she was a friendly creature, who met Mrs. Cupp at the
grocer's, and exchanged a few neighbourly words) was told that ladies
who lived in furnished apartments, and had nothing to do, seemed to find
an interest in seeing a doctor about things working-women had no time to
bother about. Mrs. Cupp's view seemed to be that doctor's visits and
medicine bottles furnished entertainment. Mrs. Jameson had "as good a
colour and as good an appetite as you or me," but she was one who
"thought she caught cold easy," and she was "afraid of fresh air."
Dr. Warren's interest in the Extraordinary Case increased at each visit
he made. He did not see the ruby ring again. When he had left the house
after his first call, Mrs. Cupp had called Lady Walderhurst's attention
to the fact that the ring was on her hand, and could not be considered
compatible with even a first floor front in Mortimer Street. Emily had
been frightened and had removed it.
"But the thing that upsets me when I hand him in," Jane said to her
mother anxiously in private, "is the way she can't help looking. You
know what I mean, mother,--her nice, free, _good_ look. And we never
_could_ talk to her about it. We should have to let her know that it's
more than likely he thinks she's just what she isn't. It makes me mad to
think of it. But as it had to be, if she only looked a little awkward,
or not such a lady, or a bit uppish and fretful, she would seem so much
more real. And then there's another thing. You know she always _did_
carry her head well, even when she was nothing but poor Miss Fox-Seton
tramping about shopping with muddy feet. And now, having been a
marchioness till she's got used to it, and knowing that she is one,
gives her an innocent, stately look sometimes. It's a thing she doesn't
know of herself, but I do declare that sometimes as she's sat there
talking just as sweet as could be, I've felt as if I ought to say, 'Oh!
if you please, my lady, if you _could_ look not quite so much as if
you'd got on a tiara.'"
"Ah!" and Mrs. Cupp shook her head, "but that's what her Maker did for
her. She was born just what she looks, and she looks just what she was
born,--a respectable female."
Whereby Dr. Warren continued to feel himself baffled.
"She only goes out for exercise after dark, Mary," he said. "Also in the
course of conversation I have discovered that she believes every word of
the Bible literally, and would be alarmed if one could not accept the
Athanasian Creed. She is rather wounded and puzzled by the curses it
contains, but she feels sure that it would be wrong to question anything
in the Church Service. Her extraordinariness is wholly her
incompatibleness."
Gradually they had established the friendship Emily had thought
possible. Once or twice Dr. Warren took tea with her. Her unabashed and
accustomed readiness of hospitality was as incompatible with her
circumstances as all the rest. She had the ease of a woman who had
amiably poured out tea for afternoon callers all her life. Women who
were uncertain of themselves were not amiably at ease with small social
amenities. Her ingenuous talk and her fervent italics were an absolute
delight to the man who was studying her. He, too, had noticed the
carriage of her head Jane Cupp had deplored.
"I should say she was well born," he commented to his wife. "She holds
herself as no common woman could."