The Duchess and her friend Wickes were a trifle anxious, but their
faces cleared as the late ones arrived. Two or three rows behind them
the village schoolmaster dropped like a shot rabbit into his seat.
"A minute later and we'd have been lost," whispered the Duchess. "It's
always a battle to keep him off the platform. Once he is wound up no
power on earth can stop him. Twice already he has offered his
recitation, proposing to fill the breach."
"Poor devil, what a shame!" said Barnaby. "Why not let him?"
"We did let him--once," said Wickes, and a reminiscent shudder passed
down the row. He addressed himself eagerly to Susan.
"It's awfully good of you, Mrs. Hill," he said, the worried creases in
his long face relaxing. "Every time I get up a village concert I swear
it will be the last, but I go on doing it year by year. You have no
idea what the tribulations are----"
"That is meant for me," said the Duchess, lowering her voice to a
guilty whisper. "--I ask you, how could I help it? You know what a
commotion there was this morning, getting off to the meet.--I told
somebody to call down from my window to Rufus Brown that he was to
attend this concert and sing _John Peel_.--I could tell him a mile off
by his old grey horse; you know how the creature bobs his head up and
down:----"
"_I_ did your bidding," said Barnaby. "You only said 'Stop him!' and I
don't know who on earth it was, but it certainly wasn't Rufus."
"How was I to know," groaned the Duchess, "that he had sold the grey?"
"But the beggar was quite delighted," protested Barnaby, who saw
nothing worse than a joke in this substitution of a probably voiceless
stranger. "He undertook to do it."
The Duchess pointed a solemn finger.
"Barnaby," she said, "you have been out of the world too long. You
don't know the whole horror of the position. There he sits!"
"Flushed with victory," murmured someone else, "hoarse with
bawling:----"
"It was an awful moment," said the Duchess, "when he came and thanked
me for the compliment I had paid him. I've never spoken to the wretch
in my life."
"He feels you have adopted him now," said the Job's comforter at her
elbow. "Barnaby, you don't know him. He's the most impossible bounder
who was ever kicked out of society, and we have all been turning him
the cold shoulder for the last two seasons. We were beginning to hope
we had finally choked him off."
"Poor Wickes is nearly beside himself," said the Duchess. "He will
never get over it. But imagine my feelings when I discovered what I
had done----"
"The populace at the back didn't know what to make of it; they are used
to us rollicking in _John Peel_,--shouting out the chorus. But we were
all too utterly petrified to emit a whoop----"
"Is there anything you would like in the way of properties, Mrs. Hill?"
said Wickes, in a severe, sad voice. Susan looked down, suddenly
nervous, her hands clenched, her face a little pale.
"What is your wife going to do?" Kilgour was asking, and Barnaby was
answering carelessly that he didn't know.
"She is rather a dab at acting," he said, and now he was looking
humorously at her. But for once she failed to smile back her
recognition of the eternal joke between them.... Yes, she was good at
acting....
"Turn the lights down," she said, and Mr. Wickes flew obediently to the
nearest lamp. Anything to obliterate past misfortunes!--"And there is
a woman at the back with a baby. Ask her to lend it to me."
She had meant to amuse them differently, but some impulse had made her
change her mind. She flung a dark shawl, borrowed, over her satin
frock. Mr. Wickes came back to her, carrying the child gingerly; its
mother had relinquished it with pride, only protesting against his
taking it up by the back of its neck like a puppy, which Wickes,
distracted by his responsibilities, had seemed inclined to do.
They were all looking at her with interest, mildly stirred to expect
something unusual, as the anxious Wickes helped her on to the platform
and lowered another lamp. But as she stood above them their curious
faces faded, and the touch of the little body, so light in her arm,
took her out of herself. She was once more playing, playing for life,
in the Tragedy Company; making the people sob at the tragic end of the
drama.
"--Don't waken the child...."
The first note of her voice vibrated like the plaintive string of a
harp. The listeners were startled.
She was the woman whose husband was faithless and, in the horrible
madness that gripped him, was coming to take her life. She was shut
in, hidden in a poor shelter, miles away from human help; and she was
listening for his step in terror, loving him so bitterly still that she
would have been glad to die, but clinging desperately to life for the
sake of his child. And she rocked the baby on her arm, half
distracted; singing to it, ceasing her chant to listen ... and
imagining his approach. But all the while, in her despair, she stifled
the scream that was on her lips;--she must not waken the child.
Farther and farther she retreated, staring with frightened eyes at the
door, but still hushing the baby at her breast; and then, all at once,
she stopped, and bent her face to its cheek. A pause hung,
significant; and then came her cry, dreadful, heart-breaking. The baby
was still. He might come; he might kill her ... he could not waken the
child....
"Good heavens, how real!" said Mr. Wickes.
Susan, breathing a little quicker, looked down on the dim-lit audience.
All these women could ride, all these women could dance.... She wanted
Barnaby to think of her sometimes, later. Would he remember her by the
one thing they could not do? by that wild scrap of melodrama?
The room was shaking with an almost hysterical applause. Behind there
was an enthusiastic stamping. And the only woman who was not crying
was the baby's mother, who was too flattered, and one other who looked
on with disdainful eyes.
"Did you like it?" asked the actress wistfully. It was Barnaby himself
who had come forward to help her down. She could not hear what he
said; it was under his breath, and it was drowned in the clapping.
The lights had gone up again; she could recognize the people who were
surrounding her, as she stepped down amongst them. Near the wall, not
very far from the Duchess, who was frankly borrowing a large, masculine
handkerchief, were sitting a thin, fair woman, and a big, stupid,
slow-witted man. They both had an odd look of having just found each
other. The Duchess wagged her head at them.
"Yes," she whispered, "there they are. They have made it up....
Wickes, don't you think it would be a noble deed to invite the
schoolmaster to play God Save the King? It will get his name into the
local paper."
"Certainly," said Wickes. He took a long breath, conceiving his
troubles over, remaining, however, with his eyes fixed on Susan in a
kind of awed curiosity. Finally he spoke out the problem in his mind.
"Do you mind telling me," he said, apologetically, "what spell you
used--how you contrived to keep the infant quiet?"
"Oh, she's a witch!" said Barnaby.
"Yes, she's a witch," said the Duchess kindly, "but I know the secret.
It had a comforter in its mouth."
They were all moving now, bustling out of their chairs, and blocking up
the gangway with their "good nights." The proletariat was waiting for
them to depart before shuffling out of the shilling benches. And there
was Julia, paler than usual, but as lovely, smiling at Barnaby, giving
him a long, strange look that was full of pity and understanding....
"You're done up," said Barnaby. "Come along. I shouldn't have let you
be dragged into this performance on the top of a hard day's hunting."
She kept her lip steady, wishing she had not seen that interchange of
glances; shrinking absurdly from the implication that was conveyed by
Kilgour's officious interposition of his broad person. Did he think he
could arrest the march of events by planting himself like a kind ox
between Barnaby and Julia? Did he think they would not find means--?
Still she kept her lip steady, letting Barnaby hurry her down the room;
reminding herself that she had no right to feel insulted, or even a
little sad.
* * * * *
When they reached home she was going straight upstairs, as was her
custom, but Barnaby stopped her.
"Don't go up yet," he said. "You ate no dinner. I told them we'd have
something when we came in."
She let him draw a chair for her beside that red fire in the hall that
always tempted the weary to go no farther; and bring things that she
did not want out of the dining-room.
"I've sent away the servants," he said. "I've got out of the way of
them flitting round me. You'd rather sit here, wouldn't you, and get
warm and let me forage?"
For a little while they were gay, and then he cleared away plates and
glasses, and a silence fell between them. He settled down in another
of the great chairs and lit a cigarette. A smile curved in the corners
of his mouth and vanished; he was thinking hard. Susan watched him,
shading her eyes with her hand that he might not raise his head
suddenly and read their wistfulness. She was not often alone with him
in the house.
What was he thinking? His face was no longer careless; the kind blue
eyes were fixed earnestly on the fire. She remembered the strangeness
of Julia's look and her heart ached, guessing. Something must have
happened between them; he must have let her see unmistakably that he
loved her still. For there had been no restlessness in Julia's air, no
bravado,--it had been the smile of a woman who was sure. And he had
himself set a barrier between them.
She felt a wild longing to comfort him, to take his head on her arm and
whisper that nothing was too hard for a man,--nothing worth that
steadfast, unhappy gaze.
He moved, and the start it gave her set her pulses beating fast. If he
had not stirred, might not the impulse have been too much for her?
might she not have found herself kneeling by him, comforting him in the
madness of her heart? She heard her own voice, imploring, sharp as if
in some stress of mortal fright--
"Oh, let me go! Oh, will you not let me go?"
He had looked up quickly. The sobbing wildness of her cry broke in on
his absent mood.
"You are tired of the farce?" he said.
She came back to herself. What was the matter with her?
"I--cannot--bear it," she said slowly.
And for a minute there was silence again between them. She heard the
fire crackling, a far-away clock ticking on the stairs; ... she thought
she could hear the silence itself.
"I didn't know it was hurting you," he said.
He was sorry for her; he must not be sorry. She tried to laugh.
"Don't think of me," she said. "It--it didn't matter. After all, I'm
an actress. I am one of these strange people that can pretend. Let me
go back to the other kind of acting, where nobody will think me real;
where there will be crowds applauding, and not just one person to be
amused and say--'She carries it off well, but she'll make a slip,--she
will stumble!' ... Oh, it couldn't hurt me. Don't you know we can only
hurt ourselves?"
"Do you think I'll let you go back to that life?" he said.
His voice recalled the raging warmth of pity with which he had once
referred to his lawyer's tale of her plight. Apparently the situation
still roused in him a mistaken feeling that she was in his charge. She
flushed, struggling with a betraying weakness.
"A hard life," she said, "but not unbearable.... My public will not be
cheated. They will not shame me with too much kindness----"
Barnaby was not listening.
"Who was the man,--that fellow last night?" he said.
Why did he speak of that? Did he dare to imagine that she was building
on another man's promises? that she was scheming, calculating--?
"No,--" she cried bitterly. "No,--not that!"
A great while after, it seemed to her, he spoke again. His voice was
quiet.
"I think you are right," he said. "It's time to make an end of this.
It's too dangerous."
"Yes," she said faintly. That at least was true....
He went on, rather quickly. She was not looking at him. She could not.
"Listen. To-morrow you'll have a wire from London. I'll see to it.
I'm afraid we can't make it a cable; there isn't time. It will have to
be from my lawyers, saying you are wanted in America on important
business. My mother doesn't understand business. Anyhow, you'll be
excited, and you needn't know what it means; so you can't explain."
"Yes," she said, in the same low voice. "To-morrow."
"We'll have to see about boats and things when we get up to town. And,
of course, we'll have to make up a story. But once you're out of this
country----"
Yes, once she was out of this country it would all be simple. She had
only to disappear.
"What will you say of me?" she asked, with a sad quaintness. "Will you
tell them that I am dead?"
He moved suddenly, checking himself.
"Oh, God knows!" he said. "It will take a lot of planning. You've
forgotten the--other lady."
Yes, that was his difficulty. Although she would be gone there would
still be a bar between him and Julia. That was the tragedy.
"I'll be out when the wire comes, probably," he said. It seemed to
amuse him to settle the details; he seemed to be flinging his
seriousness aside. "Rackham is coming over to try a horse. For form's
sake you'll have to send for me immediately. I'll be somewhere down in
the schooling pastures."
The nearness of exile took away her breath. But the impossible
situation could only have ended so. That had been their bargain. At
least she had not failed him, she had done all that he asked of her,
drinking the bitter cup of her own dishonesty to the dregs. A rush of
memory carried her back to that first night of his return, so distant,
and yet such a little while ago. She held out her hand to him, humbly,
uncertainly--
"Good night," she said. "You--you have been good to me."
Barnaby took her hands in his; clasped them hard. It was surely not
his voice that was so unsteady.
"It's the last time, is it?" he said. "Let's play it out gallantly.
Let's pretend. Susan,--Susan--is that how you say good night to your
husband?"
Her heart beat fast; her head was dizzy. He was looking down in her
eyes, drawing her hands to his breast.
No, not Barnaby:--not the one man she trusted!...
"Good night,--Sir," she whispered.
And he remembered; he let her go and stood back as she passed him on
her way to the stairs.
"Good night," he repeated, in that queer, unsteady voice. "I beg your
pardon,--Madam."