Spring came, and then summer; and with summer, the annual visitation of
garden parties. The Trenches at Malbury Manor were going to give a
garden party, and Harry and Edie drove across to it. Edie took her
husband over in the pony-carriage with the two little greys she loved so
well to drive herself: the very prettiest and best-matched ponies,
everybody said, in the whole county of Hereford.
As they walked about on the lawn together, they met Edie's father and
mother. Somehow, Edie happened to fasten herself accidentally upon her
mother, while Harry strolled away alone, and stood talking with
something of his old brilliancy to one group or another of loungers
independently. For awhile, Edie missed him; he had gone off to look at
the conservatories or something. Then, she saw him chatting with Canon
Wilmington and his daughters over by one of the refreshment tables, and
handing them champagne cup and ices, while he talked with unusual
volubility and laughter. Presently he came up to her again, and to her
great surprise said, with a yawn, "Edie, this is getting dreadfully
slow. I can't stand it any longer. I think I shall just slip away
quietly and walk home; you can come after me whenever you like with the
ponies! Good-bye till dinner. God bless you, darling!"
It wasn't a usual form of address with him, and Edie vaguely noted it in
passing, but thought nothing more about the matter after the first
moment. "Good-bye, Harry," she said laughingly. "Perhaps Evan will see
me home. Good-bye."
Harry smiled rather sadly. "Evan has ridden over on one of my cobs," he
answered quietly, "and so I suppose he'll have to ride back again."
"He's the best fellow that ever lived," Evan said, as Harry turned away
with a friendly nod. "Upon my word, I'm quite ashamed of the use I make
of your husband's stables, Edie."
"Nonsense, Evan; we're always both delighted when you will use anything
of ours as if it were your own."
At six o'clock the ponies were stopping the way, and Edie prepared to
drive home alone. She took the bye-road at the back of the grounds in
preference to the turnpike, because it wouldn't be so crowded or so
dusty for her to drive upon.
They had gone about a mile from the house, and had passed the Beehive,
where a group of half-tipsy fellows was loitering upon the road outside
the tavern, when a few hundred yards further Edie suddenly checked the
greys for no immediately apparent reason.
"Got a stone in his hoof, ma'am?" the groom asked, looking down
curiously at the off horse, and preparing to alight for the expected
emergency.
"No," Edie answered with a sudden shake of her head. "Look there,
William! On the road in front of us! What a disgusting brute. I nearly
ran over him."
The groom looked in the direction where Edie pointed with her whip, and
saw lying on the ground, straight before the horses' heads, a drunken
man, asleep and helpless, with a small pocket flask clasped in his hand,
quite empty.
"Pick him up!" Edie said in a tone of disgust. "Carry him over and lay
him on the side of the road there, will you, William?"
The man went off to do as he was directed. At that moment, Evan
Meredith, coming up from behind on Harry's cob, called out lightly, "Can
I help you, Edie? What's the matter? Ho! One of those beastly fellows
from the Beehive yonder. Hold a minute, William, you've got a regular
job there--more than an armful. Drunken men are heavy to carry. Wait a
bit, and I'll come and help you."
Ho rode forward, to the groom's side just as the groom raised in his
arms the drunkard's head and exposed to view his down-turned face. Then,
with a sudden cry of horror and pity, Evan Meredith, not faltering for a
moment, drove his heel into his horse's flank, and rode off, speechless
with conflicting emotions, leaving Edie there alone, face to face with
her fallen husband.
It was Harry Lewin.
Apoplexy? Epilepsy? An accident? A sunstroke? No, no. Edie could comfort
herself with none of those instantaneous flashes of conjecture, for his
face and his breath would alone have told the whole story, even if the
empty flask in his drunken hand had not at once confirmed the truth of
her first apprehension. She sat down beside him on the green roadside,
buried her poor face in her trembling hands, and cried silently,
silently, silently, for twenty minutes.
The groom, standing motionless officially beside her, let her tears have
free vent, and knew not what to say or do under such extraordinary and
unprecedented circumstances.
One thing only Edie thought once or twice in the midst of that awful
blinding discovery. Thank God that Evan Meredith had not stopped there
to see her misery and degradation. An Englishman might have remained
like a fool, with the clumsy notion of assisting her in her trouble, and
getting him safely home to Peveril Court for her. Evan, with his quick
Welsh perception, had seen in a second that the only possible thing for
her own equals to do on such an occasion was to leave her alone with her
unspeakable wretchedness.
After a while, she came to a little, by dint of crying and pure
exhaustion, and began to think that something must at least be done to
hide this terrible disgrace from the prying eyes of all Herefordshire.
She rose mechanically, without a word, and motioning the groom to take
the feet, she lifted Harry's head--her own husband's head--that drunken
wretch's head--great heavens, which was it? and helped to lay him
silently on the floor of the pony carriage. He was helpless and
motionless as a baby. Her eyes were dry now, and she hardly even
shuddered. She got into the carriage again, covered over the breathing
mass of insensible humanity at the bottom with her light woollen
wrapper, and drove on in perfect silence till she reached Peveril Court.
As she drew up in front of the door, the evening was beginning to close
in rapidly. The groom, still silent, jumped from the carriage, and ran
up the steps with his usual drilled accuracy to ring the bell. Edie
beckoned to him imperiously with her hand to stop and come back to her.
He paused, and turned down the steps again to hear what she wished.
Edie's lips were dry; she couldn't utter a word: but she pointed mutely
to her husband's prostrate form, and the groom understood at once that
she wished him to lift Harry out of the carriage. Hastily and furtively
they carried him in at the library door--the first room inside the
house--and there they laid him out upon the sofa, Edie putting one white
finger passionately on her lip to enjoin silence. As soon as that was
done, she sat down to the table with marvellous resolution, and wrote
out a cheque for twenty pounds from her own cheque-book. Then at last
she found speech with difficulty. "William," she said, her dry husky
throat almost choking with the effort, "take that, instead of notice. Go
away at once--I'll drive you to the station--go to London, and never say
a single word of this to any one."
William touched his hat in silence, and walked back slowly to the
carriage. Edie, now flushed and feverish, but dry of lips and erect of
mien, turned the key haughtily in the door, and stalked out to the greys
once more. Silently still she drove to the station, and saw William take
the London train. "You shall have a character," she said, very quietly;
"write to me for it. But never say a word of this for your life to
anybody."
William touched his hat once more, and went away, meaning
conscientiously in his own soul to keep this strange and unexpected
compact.
Then Edie drove herself back to Peveril Court, feeling that only Evan
Meredith knew besides; and she could surely count at least on Evan's
honour.
But to-morrow! to-morrow! what could she ever do to-morrow?
Hot and tearless still, she rang the drawing-room bell. "Mr. Lewin will
not be home to-night," she said, with no further word of explanation. "I
shall not dine. Tell Watkins to bring me a cup of tea in my own
bedroom."
The maid brought it, and Edie drank it. It moistened her lips and broke
the fever. Then she flung herself passionately upon the bed, and cried,
and cried, and cried, wildly, till late in the evening.
Eleven o'clock came. Twelve o'clock. One. She heard them tolling out
from the old clock-tower, clanging loudly from the church steeple,
clinking and tinkling from all the timepieces in all the rooms of
Peveril Court. But still she lay there, and wept, and sobbed, and
thought of nothing. She didn't even figure it or picture it to herself;
her grief and shame and utter abasement were too profound for mind to
fathom. She only felt in a dim, vague, half-unconscious fashion that
Harry--the Harry she had loved and worshipped--was gone from her for
ever and ever.
In his place, there had come that irrational, speechless, helpless Thing
that lay below, breathing heavily in its drunken sleep, down on the
library sofa.