"Except about her appearance," put in Geoffrey. "The landlord said he thought she must be an actress, or 'summat o' that sort.' She had such a strange way of looking at you. But when we asked what that meant, he scratched his head and couldn't tell us. All that we got out of him was he wouldn't like to have her for a lodger—'she'd frighten his missus.' Oh, and he did say that she looked dead-tired, and that he advised her not to walk to Feetham, but to wait for the five o'clock bus that goes from the village to the station. But she said she liked walking, and would find some cool place in the park to sit in—till it was time to catch the train."
"She was well-dressed, he said," added Buntingford, addressing himself to Cynthia Welwyn, who sat beside him; "and his description of her hat and veil, etc., quite agreed with old Stimson's account."
There was a silence, in which everybody seemed to be trying to piece the evidence together as to the mysterious onlooker of the night, and make a collected whole of it. Buntingford and Geoffrey were especially thoughtful and preoccupied. At last the former, after smoking a while without speaking, got up with the remark that he must see to some letters before post.
"Oh, no!"—pleaded Helena, intercepting him, and speaking so that he only should hear. "To-morrow's Whitsunday, and Monday's Bank Holiday. What's the use of writing letters? Don't you remember—you promised to show me those drawings before dinner—and may Geoffrey come, too?"
A sudden look of reluctance and impatience crossed Buntingford's face. Helena perceived it at once, and drew back. But Buntingford said immediately:
"Oh, certainly. In half an hour, I'll have the portfolios ready."
He walked away. Helena sat flushed and silent, her eyes on the ground, twisting and untwisting the handkerchief on her lap. And, presently, she too disappeared. The rest of the party were left to discuss with Geoffrey French the ins and outs of the evidence, and to put up various theories as to the motives of the woman of the yew trees; an occupation that lasted them till dressing-time.
Cynthia Welwyn took but little share in it. She was sitting rather apart from the rest, under a blue parasol which made an attractive combination with her semi-transparent black dress and the bright gold of her hair. In reality, her thoughts were busy with quite other matters than the lady of the yews. It did not seem to her of any real importance that a half-crazy stranger, attracted by the sounds and sights of the ball, on such a beautiful night, should have tried to watch it from the lake. The whole tale was curious, but—to her—irrelevant. The mystery she burned to find out was nearer home. Was Helena Pitstone falling in love with Philip? And if so, what was the effect on Philip? Cynthia had not much enjoyed her dance. The dazzling, the unfair ascendency of youth, as embodied in Helena, had been rather more galling than usual; and the "sittings out" she had arranged with Philip during the supper dances had been all cancelled by her sister's tiresome attack. Julian Horne, who generally got on with her, chivalrously moved his seat near to her, and tried to talk. But he found her in a rather dry and caustic mood. The ball had seemed to her "badly managed"; and the guests, outside the house-party, "an odd set."
Meanwhile, exactly at the hour named by Buntingford, he heard a knock at the library door. Helena appeared.
She stood just inside the door, looking absurdly young and childish in her white frock. But her face was grave.
"I thought just now"—she said, almost timidly,—"that you were bored by my asking you to show us those things. Are you? Please tell me. I didn't mean to get in the way of anything you were doing."
"Bored! Not in the least. Here they are, all ready for you. Come in."
She saw two or three large portfolios distributed on chairs, and one or two drawings already on exhibition. Her face cleared.
"Oh, what a heavenly thing!"
She made straight for a large drawing of the Val d'Arno in spring, and the gap in the mountains that leads to Lucca, taken from some high point above Fiesole. She knelt down before it in an ecstasy of pleasure.
"Mummy and I were there two years before the war. I do believe you came too?" She looked up, smiling, at the face above her.
It was the first time she had ever appealed to her childish recollections of him in any other than a provocative or half-resentful tone. He could remember a good many tussles with her in her frail mother's interest, when she was a long-legged, insubordinate child of twelve. And when Helena first arrived at Beechmark, it had hurt him to realize how bitterly she remembered such things, how grossly she had exaggerated them. The change indicated in her present manner, soothed his tired, nervous mood. His smile answered her.
"Yes, I was there with you two or three days. Do you remember the wild tulips we gathered at Settignano?"
"And the wild cherries—and the pear-blossoms! Italy in the spring is Heaven!" she said, under her breath, as she dropped to a sitting posture on the floor while he put the drawings before her.
"Well!—shall we go there next spring?"
"Don't tempt me—and then back out!"
"If I did," he said, laughing, "you could still go with Mrs. Friend."
She made no answer. Another knock at the door.
"There's Geoffrey. Come in, old boy. We've only just begun."
Half an hour's exhibition followed. Both Helena and French were intelligent spectators, and their amazement at the quality and variety of the work shown them seemed half-welcome, half-embarrassing to their host.
"Why don't you go on with it? Why don't you exhibit?" cried Helena.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"It doesn't interest me now. It's a past phase."
She longed to ask questions. But his manner didn't encourage it. And when the half-hour was done he looked at his watch.
"Dressing-time," he said, smiling, holding it out to Helena. She rose at once. Philip was a delightful artist, but the operations of dressing were not to be trifled with. Her thanks, however, for "a lovely time!" and her pleading for a second show on the morrow, were so graceful, so sweet, that French, as he silently put the drawings back, felt his spirits drop to zero. What could have so changed the thorny, insolent girl of six weeks before—but the one thing? He stole a glance at Buntingford. Surely he must realize what was happening—and his huge responsibility—he must.
Helena disappeared. Geoffrey volunteered to tie up a portfolio they had only half examined, while Buntingford finished a letter. While he was handling it, the portfolio slipped, and a number of drawings fell out pell-mell upon the floor.
Geoffrey stooped to pick them up. A vehement exclamation startled
Buntingford at his desk.
"What's the matter, Geoffrey?"
"Philip! That's the woman I saw!—that's her face!—I could swear to it anywhere!"
He pointed with excitement to the drawing of a woman's head and shoulders, which had fallen out from the very back of the portfolio, whereof the rotting straps and fastenings showed that it had not been opened for many years.
Buntingford came to his side. He looked at the drawing—then at French.
His face seemed suddenly to turn grey and old.
"My God!" he said under his breath, and again, still lower—"My God! Of course. I knew it!"
He dropped into a chair beside Geoffrey, and buried his face in his hands.
Geoffrey stared at him in silence, a bewildering tumult of ideas and conjectures rushing through his brain.
Another knock at the door. Buntingford rose automatically, went to the door, spoke to the servant who had knocked, and came back with a note in his hand, which he took to the window to read. Then with steps which seemed to French to waver like those of a man half drunk he went to his writing-desk, and wrote a reply which he gave to the servant who was waiting in the passage. He stood a moment thinking, his hand over his eyes, before he approached his nephew.
"Geoffrey, will you please take my place at dinner to-night? I am going out. Make any excuse you like." He moved away—but turned back again, speaking with much difficulty—"The woman you saw—is at the Rectory. Alcott took her in last night. He writes to me. I am going there."
CHAPTER XI
Buntingford walked rapidly across the park, astonishing the old lodge-keeper who happened to see him pass through, and knew that his lordship had a large Whitsuntide party at the house, who must at that very moment be sitting down to dinner.
The Rectory lay at the further extremity of the village, which was long and straggling. The village street, still bathed in sun, was full of groups of holiday makers, idling and courting. To avoid them, Buntingford stepped into one of his own plantations, in which there was a path leading straight to the back of the Rectory.
He walked like one half-stunned, with very little conscious thought. As to the blow which had now fallen, he had lived under the possibility of it for fourteen years. Only since the end of the war had he begun to feel some security, and in consequence to realize a new ferment in himself. Well—now at least he would know. And the hunger to know winged his feet.
He found a gate leading into the garden of the Rectory open, and went through it towards the front of the house. A figure in grey flannels, with a round collar, was pacing up and down the little grass-plot there, waiting for him.
John Alcott came forward at sight of him. He took Buntingford's hand in both his own, and looked into his face. "Is it true?" he said, gently.
"Probably," said Buntingford, after a moment.
"Will you come into my study? I think you ought to hear our story before you see her."
He led the way into the tiny house, and into his low-roofed study, packed with books from floor to ceiling, the books of a lonely man who had found in them his chief friends. He shut the door with care, suggesting that they should speak as quietly as possible, since the house was so small, and sound travelled so easily through it.
"Where is she?" said Buntingford, abruptly, as he took the chair Alcott pushed towards him.
"Just overhead. It is our only spare room."
Buntingford nodded, and the two heads, the black and the grey, bent towards each other, while Alcott gave his murmured report.
"You know we have no servant. My sister does everything, with my help, and a village woman once or twice a week. Lydia came down this morning about seven o'clock and opened the front door. To her astonishment she found a woman leaning against the front pillar of our little porch. My sister spoke to her, and then saw she must be exhausted or ill. She told her to come in, and managed to get her into the dining-room where there is a sofa. She said a few incoherent things after lying down and then fainted. My sister called me, and I went for our old doctor. He came back with me, said it was collapse, and heart weakness—perhaps after influenza—and that we must on no account move her except on to a bed in the dining-room till he had watched her a little. She was quite unable to give any account of herself, and while we were watching her she seemed to go into a heavy sleep. She only recovered consciousness about five o'clock this evening. Meanwhile I had been obliged to go to a diocesan meeting at Dansworth and I left my sister and Dr. Ramsay in charge of her, suggesting that as there was evidently something unusual in the case nothing should be said to anybody outside the house till I came back and she was able to talk to us. I hurried back, and found the doctor giving injections of strychnine and brandy which seemed to be reviving her. While we were all standing round her, she said quite clearly—'I want to see Philip Buntingford.' Dr. Ramsay knelt down beside her, and asked her to tell him, if she was strong enough, why she wanted to see you. She did not open her eyes, but said again distinctly—'Because I am'—or was—I am not quite sure which—'his wife.' And after a minute or two she said twice over, very faintly—'Send for him—send for him.' So then I wrote my note to you and sent it off. Since then the doctor and my sister have succeeded in carrying her upstairs—and the doctor gives leave for you to see her. He is coming back again presently. During her sleep, she talked incoherently once or twice about a lake and a boat—and once she said—'Oh, do stop that music!' and moved her head about as though it hurt her. Since then I have heard some gossip from the village about a strange lady who was seen in the park last night. Naturally one puts two and two together—but we have said nothing yet to anyone. Nobody knows that she—if the woman seen in the park, and the woman upstairs are the same—is here."
He looked interrogatively at his companion. But Buntingford, who had risen, stood dumb.
"May I go upstairs?" was all he said.
The rector led the way up a small cottage staircase. His sister, a grey-haired woman of rather more than middle age, spectacled and prim, but with the eyes of the pure in heart, heard them on the stairs and came out to meet them.
"She is quite ready, and I am in the next room, if you want me. Please knock on the wall."
Buntingford entered and shut the door. He stood at the foot of the bed. The woman lying on it opened her eyes, and they looked at each other long and silently. The face on the pillow had still the remains of beauty. The powerful mouth and chin, the nose, which was long and delicate, the deep-set eyes, and broad brow under strong waves of hair, were all fused in a fine oval; and the modelling of the features was intensely and passionately expressive. That indeed was at once the distinction and, so to speak, the terror of the face,—its excessive, abnormal individualism, its surplus of expression. A woman to fret herself and others to decay—a woman, to burn up her own life, and that of her lover, her husband, her child. Only physical weakness had at last set bounds to what had once been a whirlwind force.
"Anna!" said Buntingford gently.
She made a feeble gesture which beckoned him to come nearer—to sit down—and he came. All the time he was sharply, irrelevantly conscious of the little room, the bed with its white dimity furniture, the texts on the distempered walls, the head of the Leonardo Christ over the mantelpiece, the white muslin dressing-table, the strips of carpet on the bare boards, the cottage chairs:—the spotless cleanliness and the poverty of it all. He saw as the artist, who cannot help but see, even at moments of intense feeling.
"You thought—I was dead?" The woman in the bed moved her haggard eyes towards him.
"Yes, lately I thought it. I didn't, for a long time."
"I put that notice in—so that—you might marry again," she said, slowly, and with difficulty.
"I suspected that."
"But you—didn't marry."
"How could I?—when I had no real evidence?"
She closed her eyes, as though any attempt to argue, or explain was beyond her, and he had to wait while she gathered strength again. After what seemed a long time, and in a rather stronger voice she said:
"Did you ever find out—what I had done?"
"I discovered that you had gone away with Rocca—into Italy. I followed you by motor, and got news of you as having gone over the Splugen. My car had a bad accident on the pass, and I was ten weeks in hospital at Chur. After that I lost all trace."
"I heard of the accident," she said, her eyes all the while searching out the changed details of a face which had once been familiar to her. "But Rocca wasn't with me then. I had only old Zélie—you remember?"
"The old bonne—we had at Melun?"
She made a sign of assent.—"I never lived with Rocca—till after the child was born."
"The child! What do you mean?"
The words were a cry. He hung over her, shaken and amazed.
"You never knew!"—There was a faint, ghastly note of triumph in her voice. "I wouldn't tell you—after that night we quarrelled—I concealed it. But he is your son—sure enough."
"My son!—and he is alive?" Buntingford bent closer, trying to see her face.
She turned to look at him, nodding silently.
"Where is he?"
"In London. It was about him—I came down here. I—I—want to get rid of him."
A look of horror crossed his face, as though in her faint yet violent words he caught the echoes of an intolerable past. But he controlled himself.
"Tell me more—I want to help you."
"You—you won't get any joy of him!" she said, still staring at him.
"He's not like other children—he's afflicted. It was a bad doctor—when
I was confined—up in the hills near Lucca. The child was injured.
There's nothing wrong with him—but his brain."
A flickering light in Buntingford's face sank.
"And you want to get rid of him?"
"He's so much trouble," she said peevishly. "I did the best I could for him. Now I can't afford to look after him. I thought of everything I could do—before—"
"Before you thought of coming to me?"
She assented. A long pause followed, during which Miss Alcott came in, administered stimulant, and whispered to Buntingford to let her rest a little. He sat there beside her motionless, for half an hour or more, unconscious of the passage of time, his thoughts searching the past, and then again grappling dully with the extraordinary, the incredible statement that he possessed a son—a living but, apparently, an idiot son. The light began to fail, and Miss Alcott slipped in noiselessly again to light a small lamp out of sight of the patient. "The doctor will soon be here," she whispered to Buntingford.
The light of the lamp roused the woman. She made a sign to Miss Alcott to lift her a little.
"Not much," said the Rector's sister in Buntingford's ear. "It's the heart that's wrong."
Together they raised her just a little. Miss Alcott put a fan into
Buntingford's hands, and opened the windows wider.
"I'm all right," said the stranger irritably. "Let me alone. I've got a lot to say." She turned her eyes on Buntingford. "Do you want to know—about Rocca?"
"Yes."
"He died seven years ago. He was always good to me—awfully good to me and to the boy. We lived in a horrible out-of-the-way place—up in the mountains near Naples. I didn't want you to know about the boy. I wanted revenge. Rocca changed his name to Melegrani. I called myself Francesca Melegrani. I used to exhibit both at Naples and Rome. Nobody ever found out who we were."
"What made you put that notice in the Times?"
She smiled faintly, and the smile recalled to him an old expression of hers, half-cynical, half-defiant.
"I had a pious fit once—when Rocca was very ill. I confessed to an old priest—in the Abruzzi. He told me to go back to you—and ask your forgiveness. I was living in sin, he said—and would go to hell. A dear old fool! But he had some influence with me. He made me feel some remorse—about you—only I wouldn't give up the boy. So when Rocca got well and was going to Lyons, I made him post the notice from there—to the Times. I hoped you'd believe it." Then, unexpectedly, she slightly raised her head, the better to see the man beside her.
"Do you mean to marry that girl I saw on the lake?"
"If you mean the girl that I was rowing, she is the daughter of a cousin of mine. I am her guardian."
"She's handsome." Her unfriendly eyes showed her incredulity.
He drew himself stiffly together.
"Don't please waste your strength on foolish ideas. I am not going to marry her, nor anybody."
"You couldn't—till you divorce me—or till I die," she said feebly, her lids dropping again—"but I'm quite ready to see any lawyers—so that you can get free."
"Don't think about that now, but tell me again—what you want me to do."
"I want—to go to—America. I've got friends there. I want you to pay my passage—because I'm a pauper—and to take over the boy."
"I'll do all that. You shall have a nurse—when you are strong enough—who will take you across. Now I must go. Can you just tell me first where the boy is?"
Almost inaudibly she gave an address in Kentish Town. He saw that she could bear no more, and he rose.
"Try and sleep," he said in a voice that wavered. "I'll see you again to-morrow. You're all right here."
She made no reply, and seemed again either asleep or unconscious.
As he stood by the bed, looking down upon her, scenes and persons he had forgotten for years rushed back into the inner light of memory:—that first day in Lebas's atelier when he had seen her in her Holland overall, her black hair loose on her neck, the provocative brilliance of her dark eyes; their close comradeship in the contests, the quarrels, the ambitions of the atelier; her patronage of him as her junior in art, though her senior in age; her increasing influence over him, and the excitement of intimacy with a creature so unrestrained, so gifted, so consumed with jealousies, whether as an artist or a woman; his proposal of marriage to her in one of the straight roads that cut the forest of Compiegne; the ceremony at the Mairie, with only a few of their fellow students for witnesses; the little apartment on the Rive Gauche, with its bits of old furniture, and unframed sketches pinned up on the walls; Anna's alternations of temper, now fascinating, now sulky, and that steady emergence in her of coarse or vulgar traits, like rocks in an ebbing sea; their early quarrels, and her old mother who hated him; their poverty because of her extravagance; his growing reluctance to take her to England, or to present her to persons of his own class and breeding in Paris, and her frantic jealousy and resentment when she discovered it; their scenes of an alternate violence and reconciliation and finally her disappearance, in the company, as he had always supposed, of Sigismondo Rocca, an Italian studying in Paris, whose pursuit of her had been notorious for some time.
The door opened gently, and Miss Alcott's grey head appeared.
"The doctor!" she said, just audibly.
Buntingford followed her downstairs, and found himself presently in Alcott's study, alone with a country doctor well known to him, a man who had pulled out his own teeth in childhood, had attended his father and grandfather before him, and carried in his loyal breast the secrets and the woes of a whole countryside.
They grasped hands in silence.
"You know who she is?" said Buntingford quietly.
"I understand that she tells Mr. Alcott that she was Mrs. Philip Bliss, that she left you fifteen years ago, and that you believed her dead?"
He saw Buntingford shrink.
"At times I did—yes, at times I did—but we won't go into that. Is she ill—really ill?"
Ramsay spoke deliberately, after a minute's thought:
"Yes, she is probably very ill. The heart is certainly in a dangerous state. I thought she would have slipped away this morning, when they called me in—the collapse was so serious. She is not a strong woman, and she had a bad attack of influenza last week. Then she was out all last night, wandering about, evidently in a state of great excitement. It was as bad a fainting fit as I have ever seen."
"It would be impossible to move her?"
"For a day or two certainly. She keeps worrying about a boy—apparently her own boy?"
"I will see to that."
Ramsay hesitated a moment and then said—"What are we to call her? It will not be possible, I imagine, to keep her presence here altogether a secret. She called herself, in talking to Miss Alcott, Madame Melegrani."
"Why not? As to explaining her, I hardly know what to say."
Buntingford put his hand across his eyes; the look of weariness, of perplexity, intensified ten-fold.
"An acquaintance of yours in Italy, come to ask you for help?" suggested Ramsay.
Buntingford withdrew his hand.
"No!" he said with decision. "Better tell the truth! She was my wife. She left me, as she has told the Alcotts, and took steps eleven years ago to make me believe her dead. And up to seven years ago, she passed as the wife of a man whom I knew by the name of Sigismondo Rocca. When the announcement of her death appeared, I set enquiries on foot at once, with no result. Latterly, I have thought it must be true; but I have never been quite certain. She has reappeared now, it seems, partly because she has no resources, and partly in order to restore to me my son."
"Your son!" said Ramsay, startled.
"She tells me that a boy was born after she left me, and that I am the father. All that I must verify. No need to say anything whatever about that yet. Her main purpose, no doubt, was to ask for pecuniary assistance, in order to go to America. In return she will furnish my lawyers with all the evidence necessary for my divorce from her."
Ramsay slowly shook his head.
"I doubt whether she will ever get to America. She has worn herself out."
There was a silence. Then Buntingford added:
"If these kind people would keep her, it would be the best solution. I would make everything easy for them. To-morrow I go up to Town—to the address she has given me. And—I should be glad if you would come with me?"
The doctor looked surprised.
"Of course—if you want me—"
"The boy—his mother says—is abnormal—deficient. An injury at birth. If you will accompany me I shall know better what to do."
A grasp of the hand, a look of sympathy answered; and they parted. Buntingford emerged from the little Rectory to find Alcott again waiting for him in the garden. The sun had set some time and the moon was peering over the hills to the east. The mounting silver rim suddenly recalled to Buntingford the fairy-like scene of the night before?—the searchlight on the lake, the lights, the music, and the exquisite figure of Helena dancing through it all. Into what Vale of the Shadow of Death had he passed since then?—
Alcott and he turned into the plantation walk together. Various practical arrangements were discussed between them. Alcott and his sister would keep the sick woman in their house as long as might be necessary, and Buntingford once more expressed his gratitude.
Then, under the darkness of the trees, and in reaction from the experience he had just passed through, an unhappy man's hitherto impenetrable reserve, to some extent, broke down. And the companion walking beside him showed himself a true minister of Christ—-humble, tactful, delicate, yet with the courage of his message. What struck him most, perhaps, was the revelation of what must have been Buntingford's utter loneliness through long years; the spiritual isolation in which a man of singularly responsive and confiding temper had passed perhaps a quarter of his life, except for one blameless friendship with a woman now dead. His utmost efforts had not been able to discover the wife who had deserted him, or to throw any light upon her subsequent history. The law, therefore, offered him no redress. He could not free himself; and he could not marry again. Yet marriage and fatherhood were his natural destiny, thwarted by the fatal mistake of his early youth. Nothing remained but to draw a steady veil over the past, and to make what he could of the other elements in life.
Alcott gathered clearly from the story that there had been no other woman or women in the case, since his rupture with his wife. Was it that his marriage, with all its repulsive episodes, had disgusted a fastidious nature with the coarser aspects of the sex relation? The best was denied him, and from the worse he himself turned away; though haunted all the time by the natural hunger of the normal man.
As they walked on, Alcott gradually shaped some image for himself of what had happened during the years of the marriage, piecing it together from Buntingford's agitated talk. But he was not prepared for a sudden statement made just as they were reaching the spot where Alcott would naturally turn back towards the Rectory. It came with a burst, after a silence.
"For God's sake, Alcott, don't suppose from what I have been telling you that all the fault was on my wife's side, that I was a mere injured innocent. Very soon after we married, I discovered that I had ceased to love her, that there was hardly anything in common between us. And there was a woman in Paris—a married woman, of my own world—cultivated, and good, and refined—who was sorry for me, who made a kind of spiritual home for me. We very nearly stepped over the edge—we should have done—but for her religion. She was an ardent Catholic and her religion saved her. She left Paris suddenly, begging me as the last thing she would ever ask me, to be reconciled to Anna, and to forget her. For some days I intended to shoot myself. But, at last, as the only thing I could do for her, I did as she bade me. Anna and I, after a while, came together again, and I hoped for a child. Then, by hideous ill luck, Anna, about three months after our reconciliation, discovered a fragment of a letter—believed the very worst—made a horrible scene with me, and went off, as she has just told me,—not actually with Rocca as I believed, but to join him in Italy. From that day I lost all trace of her. Her concealment of the boy's birth was her vengeance upon me. She knew how passionately I had always wanted a son. But instead she punished him—the poor, poor babe!"
There was an anguish in the stifled voice which made sympathy impertinent. Alcott asked some practical questions, and Buntingford repeated his wife's report of the boy's condition, and her account of an injury at birth, caused by the unskilful hands of an ignorant doctor.
"But I shall see him to-morrow. Ramsay and I go together. Perhaps, after all, something can be done. I shall also make the first arrangements for the divorce."
Alcott was silent a moment—hesitating in the dark.
"You will make those arrangements immediately?"
"Of course."
"If she dies? She may die."
"I would do nothing brutal—but—She came to make a bargain with me."
"Yes—but if she dies—might you not have been glad to say, 'I forgive'?"
The shy, clumsy man was shaken as he spoke, with the passion of his own faith. The darkness concealed it, as it concealed its effect on Buntingford. Buntingford made no direct reply, and presently they parted, Alcott engaging to send a messenger over to Beechmark early, with a report of the patient's condition, before Buntingford and Dr. Ramsay started for London. Buntingford walked on. And presently in the dim moonlight ahead he perceived Geoffrey French.
The young man approached him timidly, almost expecting to be denounced as an intruder. Instead, Buntingford put an arm through his, and leaned upon him, at first in a pathetic silence that Geoffrey did not dare to break. Then gradually the story was told again, as much of it as was necessary, as much as Philip could bear. Geoffrey made very little comment, till through the trees they began to see the lights of Beechmark.
Then Geoffrey said in an unsteady voice:
"Philip!—there is one person you must tell—perhaps first of all. You must tell Helena—yourself."
Buntingford stopped as though under a blow.
"Of course, I shall tell Helena—but why?—"
His voice spoke bewilderment and pain.
"Tell her yourself—that's all," said Geoffrey, resolutely—"and, if you can, before she hears it from anybody else."
CHAPTER XII
Buntingford and French reached home between ten and eleven o'clock. When they entered the house, they heard sounds of music from the drawing-room. Peter Dale was playing fragments from the latest musical comedy, with a whistled accompaniment on the drawing-room piano. There seemed to be nothing else audible in the house, in spite of the large party it contained. Amid the general hush, unbroken by a voice or a laugh, the "funny bits" that Peter was defiantly thumping or whistling made a kind of goblin chorus round a crushed and weary man, as he pushed past the door of the drawing-room to the library. Geoffrey followed him.
"No one knows it yet," said the young man, closing the door behind them. "I had no authority from you to say anything. But of course they all understood that something strange had happened. Can I be any help with the others, while—"
"While I tell Helena?" said Buntingford, heavily. "Yes. Better get it over. Say, please—I should be grateful for no more talk than is inevitable."
Geoffrey stood by awkwardly, not knowing how to express the painful sympathy he felt. His very pity made him abrupt.
"I am to say—that you always believed—she was dead?"
Under what name to speak of the woman lying at the Rectory puzzled him. The mere admission of the thought that however completely in the realm of morals she might have forfeited his name, she was still Buntingford's wife in the realm of law, seemed an outrage.
At the question, Buntingford sprang up suddenly from the seat on which he had fallen; and Geoffrey, who was standing near him involuntarily retreated a few steps, in amazement at the passionate animation which for the moment had transformed the whole aspect of the elder man.
"Yes, you may say so—you must say so! There is no other account you can give of it!—no other account I can authorize you to give it. It is four-fifths true—and no one in this house—not even you—has any right to press me further. At the same time, I am not going to put even the fraction of a lie between myself and you, Geoffrey, for you have been—a dear fellow—to me!" He put his hand a moment on Geoffrey's shoulder, withdrawing it instantly. "The point is—what would have come about—if this had not happened? That is the test. And I can't give a perfectly clear answer." He began to pace the room—thinking aloud. "I have been very anxious—lately—to marry. I have been so many years alone; and I—well, there it is!—I have suffered from it, physically and morally; more perhaps than other men might have suffered. And lately—you must try and understand me, Geoffrey!—although I had doubts—yes, deep down, I still had doubts—whether I was really free—I have been much more ready to believe than I used to be, that I might now disregard the doubts—silence them!—for good and all. It has been my obsession—you may say now my temptation. Oh! the divorce court would probably have freed me—have allowed me to presume my wife's death after these fifteen years. But the difficulty lay in my own conscience. Was I certain? No! I was not certain! Anna's ways and standards were well known to me. I could imagine various motives which might have induced her to deceive me. At the same time"—he stopped and pointed to his writing-table—"these drawers are stuffed full of reports and correspondence, from agents all over Europe, whom I employed in the years before the war to find out anything they could. I cannot accuse myself of any deliberate or wilful ignorance. I made effort after effort—in vain. I was entitled—at last—it often seemed to me to give up the effort, to take my freedom. But then"—his voice dropped—"I thought of the woman I might love—and wish to marry. I should indeed have told her everything, and the law might have been ready to protect us. But if Anna still lived, and were suddenly to reappear in my life—what a situation!—for a sensitive, scrupulous woman!"
"It would have broken—spoiled—everything!" said Geoffrey, under his breath, but with emphasis. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, and his face was hidden from his companion. Buntingford threw him a strange, deprecating look.
"You are right—you are quite right. Yet I believe, Geoffrey, I might have committed that wrong—but for this—what shall I call it?—this 'act of God' that has happened to me. Don't misunderstand me!" He came to stand beside his nephew, and spoke with intensity. "It was only a possibility—and there is no guilt on my conscience. I have no real person in my mind. But any day I might have failed my own sense of justice—my own sense of honour—sufficiently—to let a woman risk it!"
Geoffrey thought of one woman—if not two women—who would have risked it. His heart was full of Helena. It was as though he could only appreciate the situation as it affected her. How deep would the blow strike, when she knew? He turned to look at Buntingford, who had resumed his restless walk up and down the room, realizing with mingled affection and reluctance the charm of his physical presence, the dark head, the kind deep eyes, the melancholy selfishness that seemed to enwrap him. Yet all the time he had not been selfless! There had been no individual woman in the case. But none the less, he had been consumed with the same personal longing—the same love of loving; the amor amandi—as other men. That was a discovery. It brought him nearer to the young man's tenderness; but it made the chance of a misunderstanding on Helena's part greater.
"Shall I tell Helena you would like to speak to her?" he said, breaking the silence.
Buntingford assented.
Philip, left alone, tried to collect his thoughts. He did not conceal from himself what had been implied rather than said by Geoffrey. The hint had startled and disquieted him. But he could not believe it had any real substance; and certainly he felt himself blameless. A creature so radiant, with the world at her feet!—and he, prematurely aged, who had seemed to her, only a few weeks ago, a mere old fogy in her path! That she should have reconsidered her attitude towards him, was surely natural, considering all the pains he had taken to please her. But as to anything else—absurd!
Latterly, indeed, since she had come to that tacit truce with Jim, he was well aware how much her presence in his house had added to the pleasant moments of daily life. In winning her good will, in thinking for her, in trying to teach her, in watching the movements of her quick untrained intelligence and the various phases of her enchanting beauty, he had found not only a new occupation, but a new joy. Rachel's prophecy for him had begun to realize itself. And, all the time, his hopes as to Geoffrey's success with her had been steadily rising. He and Geoffrey had indeed been at cross-purposes, if Geoffrey really believed what he seemed to believe! But it was nothing—it could be nothing—but the fantasy of a lover, starting at a shadow.
And suddenly his mind, as he stood waiting, plunged into matters which were not shadows—but palpitating realities. His son!—whom he was to see on the morrow. He believed the word of the woman who had been his wife. Looking back on her character with all its faults, he did not think she would have been capable of a malicious lie, at such a moment. Forty miles away then, there was a human being waiting and suffering, to whom his life had given life. Excitement—yearning—beat through his pulses. He already felt the boy in his arms; was already conscious of the ardour with which every device of science should be called in, to help restore to him, not only his son's body, but his mind.
There was a low tap at the door. He recalled his thoughts and went to open it.
"Helena!—my dear!"
He took her hand and led her in. She had changed her white dress of the afternoon for a little black frock, one of her mourning dresses for her mother, with a bunch of flame-coloured roses at her waist. The semi-transparent folds of the black brought out the brilliance of the white neck and shoulders, the pale carnations of the face, the beautiful hair, following closely the contours of the white brow. Even through all his pain and preoccupation, Buntingford admired; was instantly conscious of the sheer pleasure of her beauty. But it was the pleasure of an artist, an elder brother—a father even. Her mother was in his mind, and the strong affection he had begun to feel for his ward was shot through and through by the older tenderness.
"Sit there, dear," he said, pushing forward a chair. "Has Geoffrey told you anything?"
"No. He said you wanted to tell me something yourself, and he would speak to the others."
She was very pale, and the hand he touched was cold. But she was perfectly self-possessed.
He sat down in front of her collecting his thoughts.
"Something has happened, Helena, to-day—this very evening—which must—I fear—alter all your plans and mine. The poor woman whom Geoffrey saw in the wood, whose bag you found, was just able to make her escape, when you and Geoffrey landed. She wandered about the rest of the night, and in the early morning she asked for shelter—being evidently ill—at the Rectory, but it was not till this evening that she made a statement which induced them to send for me. Helena!—what did your mother ever tell you about my marriage?"
"She told me very little—only that you had married someone abroad—when you were studying in Paris—and that she was dead."
Buntingford covered his eyes with his hand.
"I told your mother, Helena, all I knew. I concealed nothing from her—both what I knew—and what I didn't know."
He paused, to take from his pocket a small leather case and to extract from it a newspaper cutting. He handed it to her. It was from the first column of the Times, was dated 1907, and contained the words:—"On July 19th at Lyons, France, Anna, wife of Philip Bliss, aged 28."
Helena read it, and looked up. Buntingford anticipated the words that were on her lips.
"Wait a moment!—let me go on. I read that announcement in the Times, Helena, three years after my wife had deserted me. I had spent those three years, first in recovering from a bad accident, and then in wandering about trying to trace her. Naturally, I went off to Lyons at once, and could discover—nothing! The police there did all they could to help me—our own Embassy in Paris got at the Ministry of the Interior—useless! I recovered the original notice and envelope from the Times. Both were typewritten, and the Lyons postmark told us no more than the notice had already told. I could only carry on my search, and for some years afterwards, even after I had returned to London, I spent the greater part of all I earned and possessed upon it. About that time my friendship with your mother began. She was already ill, and spent most of her life—as you remember—except for those two or three invalid winters in Italy—in that little drawing-room, I knew so well. I could always be sure of finding her at home; and gradually—as you recollect—she became my best friend. She was the only person in England who knew the true story of my marriage. She always suspected, from the time she first heard of it, that the notice in the Times—"
Helena made a quick movement forward. Her lips parted.
"—was not true?"
Buntingford took her hand again, and they looked at each other, she trembling involuntarily.
"And the woman last night?" she said, breathlessly—"was she someone who knew—who could tell you the truth?"
"She was my wife—herself!"
Helena withdrew her hand.
"How strange!—how strange!" She covered her eyes. There was a silence.
After it, Buntingford resumed:
"Has Geoffrey told you the first warning of it—you left this room?"
"No."
He described the incident of the sketch.
"It was a drawing I had made of her only a few weeks before she left me. I had no idea it was in that portfolio. We had scarcely time to put it away before Mr. Alcott's note arrived—sending for me at once."
Helena's hands had dropped, while she hung upon his story. And a wonderful unconscious sweetness had stolen into her expression. Her young heart was in her eyes.
"Oh, I am so glad—so glad—you had that warning!"
Buntingford was deeply touched.
"You dear child!" he said in a rather choked voice, and, rising, he walked away from her to the further end of the room. When he returned, he found a pale and thoughtful Helena.
"Of course, Cousin Philip, this will make a great change—in your life—and in mine."
He stood silently before her—preferring that she should make her own suggestions.
"I think—I ought to go away at once. Thanks to you—I have Mrs.
Friend—who is such a dear."
"There is the London house, Helena. You can make any use of it you like."
"No, I think not," she said resolutely. Then with an odd laugh which recalled an earlier Helena—"I don't expect Lucy Friend would want to have the charge of me in town; and you too—perhaps—would still be responsible—and bothered about me—if I were in your house."
Buntingford could not help a smile.
"My responsibility scarcely depends—does it—upon where you are?" Then his voice deepened. "I desire, wherever you are, to cherish and care for you—in your mother's place. I can't say what a joy it has been to me to have you here."
"No!—that's nonsense!—ridiculous!—" she said, suddenly breaking down, and dashing the tears from her eyes.
"It's very true," he said gently. "You've been the dearest pupil, and forgiven me all my pedantic ways. But if not London—I will arrange anything you wish."
She turned away, evidently making a great effort not to weep. He too was much agitated, and for a little while he busied himself with some letters on his table.
When, at her call, he returned to her, she said, quite in her usual voice:
"I should like to go somewhere—to some beautiful place—and draw. That would take a month—perhaps. Then we can settle." After a pause, she added without hesitation—"And you?—what is going to happen?"
"It depends—upon whether it's life at the Rectory—or death."
She was evidently startled, but said nothing, only gave him her beautiful eyes again, and her unspoken sympathy.
Then an impulse which seemed invincible came upon him to be really frank with her—to tell her more.
"It depends, also,—upon something else. But this I asked Geoffrey not to tell the others in the drawing-room—just yet—and I ask you the same. Of course you may tell Mrs. Friend." She saw his face work with emotion. "Helena, this woman that was my wife declares to me—that I have a son living."
He saw the light of amazement that rushed into her face, and hurried on:—"But in the same breath that she tells me that, she tells me the tragedy that goes with it." And hardly able to command his voice, he repeated what had been told him.
"Of course everything must be enquired into—verified. I go to town to-morrow—with Ramsay. Possibly I shall bring him back—perhaps to Ramsay's care, for the moment. Possibly, I shall leave him with someone in town."
"Couldn't I help," she said, after a moment, "if I stayed?"
"No, no!" he said with repugnance, which was almost passion. "I couldn't lay such a burden upon you, or any young creature. You must go and be happy, dear Helena—it is your duty to be happy! And this home for a time will be a tragic one. Well, but now, where would you like to go? Will you and Geoffrey and Mrs. Friend consult? I will leave any money you want in Geoffrey's hands."
"You mean"—she said abruptly—"that I really ought to go at once—to-morrow."
"Wouldn't it be best? It troubles me to think of you here—under the shadow—of this thing."
"I see!—I see! All right. You are going to London to-morrow morning?"
She had risen, and was moving towards the door.
"Yes, I shall go to the Rectory first for news. And then on to the station."
She paused a moment.
"And if—if she—I don't know what to call her—if she lives?"
"Well, then—I must be free," he said, gravely; adding immediately—"She passed for fifteen years after she left me as the wife of an Italian I used to know. It would be very quickly arranged. I should provide for her—and keep my boy. But all that is uncertain."
"Yes, I understand." She held out her hand. "Cousin Philip—I am awfully sorry for you. I—I realized—somehow—only after I'd come down here—that you must have had—things in your life—to make you unhappy. And you've been so nice—so awfully nice to me! I just want to thank you—with all my heart."
And before he could prevent her, she had seized his hands and kissed them. Then she rushed to the door, turning to show him a face between tears and laughter.
"There!—I've paid you back!"
And with that she vanished.
Helena was going blindly through the hall, towards her own room, when
Peter Dale emerged from the shadows. He caught her as she passed.
"Let me have just a word, Helena! You know, everything will be broken up here. I only want to say my mother would just adore to have you for the season. We'd all make it nice for you—we'd be your slaves—just let me wire to Mater to-morrow morning."
"No, thank you, Peter. Please—please! don't stop me! I want to see
Mrs. Friend."
"Helena, do think of it!" he implored.
"No, I can't. It's impossible!" she said, almost fiercely. "Let me go,
Peter! Good-night!"
He stood, a picture of misery, at the foot of the stairs watching her run up. Then at the top she turned, ran down a few steps again, kissed her hand to him, and vanished, the bright buckles on her shoes flashing along the gallery overhead.
But in the further corner of the gallery she nearly ran into the arms of
Geoffrey French, who was waiting for her outside her room.
"Is it too late, Helena—for me to have just a few words in your sitting-room?"
He caught hold of her. The light just behind him showed him a tense and frowning Helena.
"Yes—it is much too late! I can't talk now."
"Only a few words?"
"No"—she panted—"no!—Geoffrey, I shall hate you if you don't let me go!"
It seemed to her that everybody was in league to stand between her and the one thing she craved for—to be alone and in the dark.
She snatched her dress out of his grasp, and he fell back.
She slipped into her own room, and locked the door. He shook his head, and went slowly downstairs. He found Peter pacing the hall, and they went out into the June dark together, a discomfited pair.
Meanwhile Mrs. Friend waited for Helena. She heard voices in the passage and the locking of Helena's door. She was still weak from her illness, so it seemed wisest to get into bed. But she had no hope or intention of sleep. She sat up in bed, with a shawl round her, certain that Helena would come. She was in a ferment of pity and fear,—she scarcely knew why—fear for the young creature she had come to love with all her heart; and she strained her ears to catch the sound of an opening door.
But Helena did not come. Through her open window Lucy could hear steps along the terrace coming and going—to and fro. Then they ceased; all sounds in the house ceased. The church clock in the distance struck midnight, and a little owl close to the house shrieked and wailed like a human thing, to the torment of Lucy's nerves. A little later she was aware of Buntingford coming upstairs, and going to his room on the further side of the gallery.
Then, nothing. Deep silence—that seemed to flow through the house and all its rooms and passages like a submerging flood.
Except!—What was that sound, in the room next to hers—in Helena's room?
Lucy Friend got up trembling, put on a dressing-gown, and laid an ear to the wall between her and Helena. It was a thin wall, mostly indeed a panelled partition, belonging to an old bit of the house, in which the building was curiously uneven in quality—sometimes inexplicably strong, and sometimes mere lath and plaster, as though the persons, building or re-building, had come to an end of their money and were scamping their work.
Lucy, from the other side of the panels, had often heard Helena singing while she dressed, or chattering to the housemaid. She listened now in an anguish, her mind haunted alternately by the recollection of the scene in the drawing-room, and the story told by Geoffrey French, and by her rising dread and misgiving as to Helena's personal stake in it. She had observed much during the preceding weeks. But her natural timidity and hesitancy had forbidden her so far to draw hasty deductions. And now—perforce!—she drew them.
The sounds in the next room seemed to communicate their rhythm of pain to Lucy's own heart. She could not bear it after a while. She noiselessly opened her own door, and went to Helena's. To her scarcely audible knock there was no answer. After an interval she knocked again—a pause. Then there were movements inside, and Helena's muffled voice through the door.
"Please, Lucy, go to sleep! I am all right."
"I can't sleep. Won't you let me in?"
Helena seemed to consider. But after an interval which seemed interminable to Lucy Friend, the key was slowly turned and the door yielded.
Helena was standing inside, but there was so little light in the room that Lucy could only see her dimly. The moon was full outside, but the curtains had been drawn across the open window, and only a few faint rays came through. As Mrs. Friend entered Helena turned from her, and groping her way back to the bed, threw herself upon it, face downwards. It was evidently the attitude from which she had risen.
Lucy Friend followed her, trembling, and sat down beside her. Helena was still fully dressed, except for her hair, which had escaped from combs and hairpins. As her eyes grew used to the darkness, Lucy could see it lying, a dim mass on the white pillow, also a limp hand upturned. She seized the hand and cherished it in hers.
"You are so cold, dear! Mayn't I cover you up and help you into bed?"
No answer. She found a light eiderdown that had been thrown aside, and covered the prone figure, gently chafing the cold hands and feet. After what seemed a long time, Helena, who had been quite still, said in a voice she had to stoop to hear:
"I suppose you heard me crying. Please, Lucy, go back to bed. I won't cry any more."
"Dear—mayn't I stay?"
"Well, then—you must come and lie beside me. I am a brute to keep you awake."
"Won't you undress?"
"Please let me be! I'll try and go to sleep."
Lucy slipped her own slight form under the wide eiderdown. There was a long silence, at the end of which Helena said:
"I'm only—sorry—it's all come to an end—here."
But with the words the girl's self-control again failed her. A deep sob shook her from head to foot. Lucy with the tears on her own cheeks, hung over her, soothing and murmuring to her as a mother might have done. But the sob had no successor, and presently Helena said faintly—"Good-night, Lucy. I'm warm now. I'm going to sleep."
Lucy listened for the first long breaths of sleep, and seemed to hear them, just as the dawn was showing itself, and the dawn-wind was pushing at the curtains. But she herself did not sleep. This young creature lying beside her, with her full passionate life, seemed to have absolutely absorbed her own. She felt and saw with Helena. Through the night, visions came and went—of "Cousin Philip,"—the handsome, melancholy, courteous man, and of all his winning ways with the girl under his care, when once she had dropped her first foolish quarrel with him, and made it possible for him to show without reserve the natural sweetness and chivalry of his character. Buntingford and Helena riding, their well-matched figures disappearing under the trees, the sun glancing from the glossy coats of their horses; Helena, drawing in some nook of the park, her face flushed with the effort to satisfy her teacher, and Buntingford bending over her; or again, Helena dancing, in pale green and apple-blossom, while Buntingford leaned against the wall, watching her with folded arms, and eyes that smiled over her conquests.
It all grew clear to Lucy—Helena's gradual capture, and the innocence, the unconsciousness, of her captor. Her own shrewdness, nevertheless, put the same question as Buntingford's conscience. Could he ever have been quite sure of his freedom? Yet he had taken the risks of a free man. But she could not, she did not blame him. She could only ask herself the breathless question that French had already asked:
"How far has it gone with her? How deep is the wound?"