For the first few moments Audrey had no inclination to utter a
sound. She was too much taken by surprise, too bewildered, too
horror-stricken, even to cry out.
Her tongue, her brain, her limbs seemed paralysed, and she could do
nothing but press her face forward between the little branches of the
shrubs which concealed her from Gerard’s sight, and keep her hungry
eyes fixed on his pale face.
Was it really he? Could it be he? His sentence had been one of years,
and scarcely four months had passed since he was taken from her.
Surely he would never have been released without her hearing a word
about it! Surely, surely in such a few weeks he could not have been
transformed from the merry, bright, vigorous young fellow, full of
life and high spirits, overwhelmed with melancholy of the most
tempestuous sort, into this shadow, this lifeless, colourless
framework of a man!
He lay so still in the lounge-chair, without even moving his lips to
answer the nurse as she leaned over him and talked to him, that Audrey
had a horrible spasm of fear that he was dead, that the feeble remnant
of life had passed away even while she watched him with agonised eyes
from her place of concealment not thirty yards away.
And she pressed farther forward, straining her eyes, and in so doing
disturbed the bushes just sufficiently for the moving branches to
catch the eye of the nurse, who was a tall, muscular, grey-haired
woman, with a firm, pleasant face.
Gerard himself, on a much lower level than she, neither heard nor saw
the movement. The nurse looked apprehensively at the bushes, and
descried the woman behind them. Audrey saw that her face changed, and
knew that she was alarmed lest her patient should be disturbed by some
sudden and startling intrusion.
But she need not have been afraid. Audrey loved her husband too well
not to have the right and safe instinct that caution was necessary
when dealing with a man who was evidently so ill. She knew that to
burst out upon him abruptly, without a word of warning, would be a
rash, perhaps a fatal thing. And she held her own emotions in check,
even while her heart yearned towards him, and her arms tingled with
the longing to take his poor head in her arms and to hug it to her
breast.
The nurse, meanwhile, not knowing all that was passing in the mind of
the other woman, and guessing only that there was trouble in store, at
once took steps to remove her charge out of harm’s way.
Audrey could not hear what she said, but knew that she was suggesting
that he should go indoors. For a few moments he seemed to pay no heed
to her words, but presently, with a petulant frown, as if loth to be
disturbed, he allowed her to help him to his feet, and went slowly,
leaning on her strong arm, in the direction of the angle of the house,
round which they both disappeared.
Audrey, still less than half possessed of her faculties, watched them
to the last, and then, stepping back upon the gravel of the drive,
tried to take stock of her strange position.
As to Gerard’s presence in his uncle’s house, the fact was so amazing
that her brain reeled under it. Lord Clanfield had never once come
forward, since his nephew’s marriage, with so much as a kind word to
him or his young wife. During all the terrible time of waiting for the
trial, not a word had reached his nephew either of reproach, advice or
sympathy. Both young husband and young wife had taken it for granted
that they were looked upon as effaced, degraded, unworthy of any
notice from the august head of the family.
And, proud as well as miserable, they had accepted the situation
without a protest.
Now, however, it was clear that Lord Clanfield had interested himself
on behalf of his unlucky nephew, and the amazing thing was to find
that he had apparently obtained the young man’s release so quietly
that not a word of it had got into the papers, or to the knowledge of
Gerard’s own wife!
And then, with startling force, the truth flashed upon Audrey that,
even if it had been desired to let her know of her husband’s release,
there would have been no means of doing so. For, anxious to hide her
head from all the world, to sink her identity and be forgotten, she
had disappeared from sight as Audrey Angmering, to reappear as Madame
Rocada.
And then the full meaning of her position became clear to her. She was
coming to see Lord Clanfield in the character by which he knew and
suspected her, at the very moment when it was above all things
necessary that he should have the best possible opinion of her in the
character of his nephew’s wife!
What would he say, what would he think when he learned the truth of
her double identity? If he had been severe in his judgment before,
what would he be now?
Although she could now conclusively prove to him--at least so she
believed--that she could not be the White Countess of evil memory,
what would he say to her having taken upon herself the invidious name,
and still more invidious position, of the apparently too well-known
Madame Rocada?
As these thoughts chased each other through her bewildered mind, the
unfortunate woman felt a numb despair creeping over her. She dared not
meet Lord Clanfield now, she dared not try to see Gerard.
What was there left for her to do?
Go away without making some inquiry, without learning something about
her husband and his state of health, and the manner in which he found
himself once more under his uncle’s roof, well cared for and carefully
nursed, she could not and would not.
But how to learn what she wanted to know without making an unseemly
and unwise disturbance? How convey to Gerard the fact of her being
near him, without either giving him a dangerous shock or running the
risk of rousing Lord Clanfield’s anger and causing a family scandal?
That was the question which filled Audrey’s mind, as she lingered in
the drive, looking askance at the house with its old red walls,
weather-stained roof and the great green and red masses of ivy and
virginia creeper which hung about it picturesquely and made dark
fringes over the tall windows.
And while she hesitated, lingered, debated with herself, there came a
clattering of hoofs behind her, and stepping out of the road upon the
sloping bank, Audrey turned to see Geoffrey Angmering, in a dog-cart,
coming at a rapid rate up the drive.
He recognised her at once.
“Madame Rocada! By Jove!” cried he with a grin, as he reined in the
horse, jumped down, and told the groom to drive on to the stable.
“Well, of all the marvellous meetings--and here! By Jove, it is a
surprise!”
Audrey was very pale, very quiet, very dignified. This cub, with the
free and easy manners and the impudent stare, could tell her what she
wanted to know. But how to get at that knowledge?
To him she was merely Madame Rocada, the woman who kept a house where
gambling went on, where he himself and his brother had been “fleeced”
at play. Knowing only of her what he did, there was nothing less
likely than that he would converse with her about the family secrets
or the family scandals. Half-tipsy as he generally was, even the
reckless Geoffrey was hardly likely to speak out on such a subject.
She began, therefore, by telling him frankly the object of her visit.
“I am here,” she said, “to see Lord Clanfield. He has written accusing
me of allowing you and your brother to come to my house to play cards
there. Now you know that I have forbidden you to come, and therefore
you have been deceiving him, by saying you were at ‘The Briars’ when
you were not there at all.”
Geoffrey stared at her with the same impudent look of incredulity and
defiance as he had used on the night when she refused admission to her
house to him and his brother.
“I think it would have been wiser of you, Madame, to have taken no
notice of his letter,” he said, with unmistakable mockery in his tone.
“He won’t believe what you say, if you persist in seeing him, any more
than he did before. If I were you, I should go quietly back home
again, and if you like I’ll drive you to the station in my dog-cart.”
The frank impertinence of his manner and of his suggestion almost
frightened Audrey. It seemed to betray the fact that he looked upon
her as unworthy of much trouble, and as wholly incapable of producing
any effect upon his father.
He seemed to say in effect: “If you like to see my father you can, but
you may just as well save yourself the trouble.”
She hesitated what to reply. To tell the whole truth to him, to say
that she was Gerard’s wife, was, of course, out of the question. He
would certainly receive such a statement with blank incredulity and
probably with insult. Luckily, at that moment, when she was uncertain
what to do and Geoffrey was growing more and more impertinent in his
manner, the elder son of Lord Clanfield, who, if still less endowed
with brains, was not quite such an ill-mannered young rascal as his
brother, came in sight. He was sauntering out from the house with half
a dozen dogs, of various breeds, running and barking round him.
One of these, a bull terrier, spying a stranger in Audrey, rushed at
her, and seizing her skirt, began to worry it tearing the light
material to ribbons.
“Down, sir, down!” cried Edgar, hastening his steps a little, as he
came up to his brother and the lady. “I’m awfully sorry----” he went
on, raising his hat as he spoke. When suddenly he recognised her in
his turn, and said, in breathless amazement: “Madame Rocada!”
He took her presence in the park in a different way from his
brother’s, and seemed not only surprised, but rather alarmed by it.
“Why, I--what--unexpected----” stammered he, as she bowed gravely and
said nothing.
There was a moment’s dead silence. Then she, perceiving that this
young man was at least much more likely to listen quietly than his
brother, said steadily and firmly:--
“My name is not Madame Rocada. It never has been that. I am not a
countess, and I have never wished to pretend to be one.”
She paused for a moment, and it was Geoffrey who, growing curious at
this change in her manner, suddenly put in, half-insolently,
half-inquiringly:--
“Well, if you are not Madame Rocada, who are you then?”
Audrey hesitated one moment more only. Then very quietly, very
solemnly, fixing her eyes on the face of the elder brother and drawing
herself up to her full height, she answered:--
“My name is the same as your own. I am Audrey Angmering, your cousin
Gerard’s wife.”
“The devil you are!” cried Geoffrey, more in amusement than surprise.
But the other saw that there was no pretentiousness, no show of
indignation or of self-assertion, in the poor lady’s manner, and he
silenced his brother by a frown and a curt word half under his breath.
“Do you mean that?” he asked simply.
“Yes. And listen. I know that Gerard is here: I’ve seen him. And I
want to understand all about his coming--about his illness. I--I
hadn’t even heard of it.”
The young man hesitated. Geoffrey was pulling furtively at his sleeve,
mutely urging him to have nothing to do with the unhappy woman and her
story.
Evidently Edgar did not know what to believe.
“You say you’ve seen him?” said he.
“Yes. Out in the garden, with a nurse. Surely, surely there can be no
harm in telling me just what I want to know. How is it he is there?
Why was I not told he was ill?”
As she persisted in her story, it was clear that both the young men
were becoming increasingly alarmed and puzzled, and that they were at
a loss how to deal with this intricate question.
At last Edgar said quickly:--
“Hadn’t you better write about it? Write to Lord Clanfield?”
“No,” said Audrey firmly. “I won’t write. I must see him. And at
once--now--I won’t go away till I have seen him. Look, there’s no need
for you to be afraid. I don’t wish to force myself into Gerard’s
presence until I’m sure I can see him without it’s being a shock to
him.”
“By Jove, it would be!” put in Geoffrey in a tone that brought the
angry blood to the poor wife’s cheeks.
But Edgar gave him a sort of side kick as a gentle recommendation to
be quiet, and after a little hesitation and stammering said:--
“Look here, Madame. I don’t think it’s of the least use for you to try
and see my father or my cousin. I’m almost sure Lord Clanfield
wouldn’t see you, and that my cousin wouldn’t be allowed to see you.
You might understand that it wouldn’t be wise. But if you like I’ll go
in and tell him what you’ve just told me, and I’ll bring you word what
he says.”
Although Audrey was fully resolved that, whether he liked it or not,
Lord Clanfield should see her, she thought that compliance with the
proposal was the best course to begin with. So she agreed to remain
where she was, and not to approach the house for the present, while
Edgar returned to it.
Geoffrey, meanwhile, after a muttered exchange of a few words with his
brother, retreated into the recesses of the trees of the park, and
Audrey guessed that he was, as it were, on guard, set to watch her
movements during his brother’s absence, and to prevent, if necessary,
any attempt on her part to break faith.
In the meantime Edgar fulfilled his mission reluctantly enough.
Returning to the house, he went straight to the study, where his
father was spending the afternoon with his magazines and books.
“What is the matter? Is Gerard worse?” were the viscount’s first
words, when his son entered, with a perturbed and uneasy air.
“N-n-no, but--he’s likely to be worse if something I’ve got to tell
you is true!” was Edgar’s somewhat blundering reply.
“Well!” said Lord Clanfield sharply.
“There’s a--a--woman come--she’s in the park now, who says--who says
she’s--his wife.”
Lord Clanfield looked more relieved than alarmed. He rose to his feet.
“And don’t you think it is his wife? I wish to heaven she would come;
for the greatest drawback to his getting better is the terrible
depression caused by her disappearance.”
Edgar, with whom tact was not a strong point, went on bluntly:--
“Well, he’ll be more depressed when he sees her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, that this woman who says she’s his wife, the woman who is in the
park now, and who says she will see you or see him before she goes
away, is the very woman whose house you’ve forbidden us to go to, the
keeper of a gambling-room--Madame Rocada!”
The shock was so great that Lord Clanfield fell back, scarcely able to
speak, breathless, bewildered, horror-struck.
“Are--are you sure?”
“I’m sure that the woman who calls herself Madame Rocada is outside
the house at this moment, that she says she came in answer to a letter
from you about us----”
“Yes, I did write to her.”
“--and that she declares she saw Gerard--you see she knows his
name--in a chair in the grounds, with a nurse. And she complains that
she had not even heard that he was ill, and she seems as genuinely
upset as ever I saw a woman in my life! And I believe she _is_ his
wife, I do on my honour!”
The viscount made up his mind quickly.
“Get rid of her,” said he. “Drive her away at all costs, I don’t mean
roughly, of course. But you must find some means of getting her
outside the grounds before Gerard hears of her being here.”
“Not so easy! One can deal with a mad dog more easily than with a
determined woman!” retorted Edgar.
“I tell you she must go, must be sent away. Use any argument you like,
tell her it would kill him to break the news of her coming too
suddenly. That is true, I believe. In the meantime say I undertake to
answer her letters if she will write--but it must be to me, not to
him. And--and what I shall do is to get my lawyers to see her, to
arrange with her--until we know something, find out something.”
Edgar, however, still lingered.
“I can never say all that,” grumbled he. “Besides, she wouldn’t
listen. You know she wouldn’t.”
Remembering what he did of Audrey, poor Lord Clanfield thought this
very likely, and his agitation grew stronger and stronger until it
found a climax when, perceiving that the window nearest to him had
become slightly darkened, he turned, and saw Audrey herself, very
white, very quiet, peering in.
“Good Heavens, Madame, you have no right----” began the startled
gentleman.
But Audrey leaned with her arms upon the window-ledge, and putting her
head forward into the room, said in a low-pitched but determined
voice:--
“You must see me. I insist. You must let me in.”
And, helpless in these strong if slight fingers, Lord Clanfield gave
way. Motioning to his son to open the French window at the other end
of the room, he leaned against the old carved white marble mantelpiece
and prepared for the worst.