Cardinal.—Say you?
Ferdinand.—And I am grown mad with it."
And now the evening of the last of their delightful days had come,—so at least Athena Maule thought of it, for Jane Oglander was arriving the next morning.
Wantele and Athena had had a sharp difference that afternoon. She wished that the gay, the amusing doings of the last few days should continue, and she had made out a further list—a short list, so she assured herself,—of people who had been forgotten, and who might as well be asked now. To her anger and surprise, Dick Wantele had refused her reasonable request backing up his refusal with the authority of her husband, of Richard himself.
"Richard thinks we've had enough of it, and that Jane would so hate it all," he said, having reminded her half jokingly that they had arranged everything of the kind should end with Jane Oglander's arrival. "I think we owe Jane some consideration. She would be miserable married to a man who was always being lionised in this absurd fashion——"
He stopped, then added lightly, "You don't know England, my dear cousin: there will be a new lion soon, then our friend will have to take a back place. To do him justice I think he's already getting rather sick of it all!"
Mrs. Maule remained silent for a moment, and then she exclaimed, with a rather curious look on her lovely face, "I don't agree! I think that he enjoys it, Dick, and surely it is good for his career that he should do so. Jane should understand that!"
Wantele lifted his eyebrows. It was a trick of his when surprised or amused. "He will go on having plenty of that sort of thing after he's married—if Jane lets him!"
Athena turned pettishly away. Thanks to Dick Wantele she was never allowed to forget the fact that her delightful, her famous guest was going to be married—and to her own dearest friend. Dick never spared her. He seemed to delight in "rubbing it in." It was the more irritating inasmuch as Hew Lingard never spoke to her of Jane.
During those pleasant, exciting days Mrs. Maule had sometimes asked herself whether Lingard ever thought of Jane when—when he was with her, with Athena. She had taken the trouble to find out, by means not wholly creditable, that Lingard wrote to Jane every day; and there was always one letter from the many that reached him each morning which he picked out first and put in his pocket. The sight of his doing this gave Athena a little pang of jealous pain. It annoyed her that any man when with her should concern himself with another woman.
And then something else on this last day added to Mrs. Maule's depression. Her husband was not well. He was feeling the effects of the excitement of the last few days. Just after her unpleasant little discussion with Dick, Richard Maule had addressed her directly—a thing he scarcely ever did. "Aren't you going away?" he asked ungraciously. "I thought you were going away as soon as Jane Oglander arrived."
She had answered briefly that her plans were changed, that she would not be leaving Rede Place for nearly another month. But as, a moment later, she had swept out of the room, she had told herself with rage that her present life was intolerable,—that no woman had ever to put up with such insults as she had to put up with, from Dick on the one hand, and Richard on the other!
Within an hour her feelings were assuaged. Lingard, seeking her as he had now fallen into the way of doing, had found her quivering with anger, and what he took to be bitter pain.
She had told him of her husband's desire that she should leave Rede Place on her friend's arrival, and he had received her confidences with burning indignation and passionate sympathy. Nay more, the atmosphere between them became electric, almost oppressive. Then, to Athena's sharp surprise and annoyance, Lingard suddenly turned on his heel and left the room, muttering something about having work to do.
That evening, for the first time for many days, Athena, General Lingard, and Dick Wantele dined without the restraining presence of strangers. Dick, unlike the other two, was in good spirits, nay more, lively and, in his own rather caustic way, amusing.
Jane Oglander would be here to-morrow! He dwelt on the thought with satisfaction and an almost malicious pleasure. Ten days ago the thought of seeing Jane at Rede Place had been painful, but now he would welcome her presence. It was time, high time, she were here.
Now and again, while talking to Athena,—he could always compel her attention,—he stole a glance at Jane Oglander's lover. Lingard did not look as looks the man who is going to see his love on the morrow. His expression was one of deep gravity, almost of suffering. There was a strained look about his eyes, his mouth was set in grim lines, and unless directly addressed he remained silent.
Mrs. Maule soon finished her more than usually frugal evening meal. She got up and left the table, and as she did so Lingard sprang to the door. He seemed to delight in rendering her the smallest personal service.
Before leaving the room, she turned round and addressed Wantele: "Don't hurry," she said softly. "We won't go into the drawing-room to-night. I've got to write some notes. Quite a batch of letters came this afternoon. There were just one or two people I should have liked to have asked next week—" she looked at him pleadingly, reproachfully....
Wantele stared at her coldly. "Of course you can ask one or two people," he said, and, with a slight smile, "Don't make yourself out more of a martyr than you must, Athena!"
Hew Lingard, standing aside, his hand still on the handle of the door, felt an overmastering impulse to go back to the table and strike Dick Wantele's sneering face across the mouth. How awful to think, to see, that such a woman as Athena Maule, so kind, so gentle, so generous, so—so lovely and so defenceless, was subject to this young man's insolence.
But he could do nothing—nothing; and Jane, amazing thought, was actually fond of Wantele!
He shut the door behind his hostess and walked slowly back to the table. There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Wantele broke it by speaking of Jane. It was the first time her name had passed his lips in Lingard's presence.
"Since Miss Oglander lost her brother in the strange and terrible way you know," he said, "she has shrunk very much from seeing people, I mean from mixing in ordinary society. That is one reason why she has always enjoyed her visits here. The state of my cousin, Richard Maule's, health compels us to lead a very quiet life." He forced himself to go on: "Mrs. Maule, as you know, is a good deal away. She naturally does not care for the extreme dulness, the solitariness, of the life——"
Lingard muttered a word of assent, but he made no other comment on the other man's words. He took them to mean that Dick Wantele felt rather ashamed of himself, as indeed he ought to do. Was it not pitifully clear that Mrs. Maule, poor beautiful Athena, had no part or place in her husband's house? All invalids tend to become self-absorbed and selfish; but he judged Wantele hardly for encouraging, nay for fostering, Mr. Maule's egoistic unkindness to his wife.
Both men were glad when the time came for them to part. Dick, as always, went off to Richard, and Lingard, after a few unquiet moments in the smoking-room, made his way slowly to Athena's boudoir, the charming, restful room which, alone of the many rooms in the big quiet house, seemed to be in a real sense her territory, and where he and she had spent so many delightful hours together.
But to-night he was met there with something very like a rebuff.
Athena had been standing thinking, doing nothing, but when she heard Lingard's now familiar steps in the corridor she moved swiftly to her writing-table, and bent over it.
As he came in she lifted her head: "I really must finish these notes," she said deprecatingly. "You see, I had hoped to soften, if not Richard's, then Dick's heart! Well, I failed, as I generally do fail with him. And I feel"—her voice quivered—"very much as poor Cinderella must have felt when the clock was about to strike twelve."
As he stood, irresolute, before her, she added, "Take a book and sit down. I'll be as quick as I can." She got up with a swift movement and put a box of cigarettes and matches close to his hand.
It was such a little thing, and yet, in the emotional state in which he was now, Lingard felt touched, inexpressibly touched. How extraordinarily kind and thoughtful she was! No wonder Jane was so fond of her.
Mrs. Maule went back to her writing-table, intensely conscious that Lingard's ardent, melancholy gaze was fixed on her. Now and again, perhaps three or four times, she looked up for a moment and smiled, her glance full of confident friendliness. But she did not speak, and thus was spent one of the shortest and most poignant half-hours of Lingard's life.
At last there came harsh, unwelcome interruption in the person of Dick Wantele. For a moment he stood between them, his back to Lingard, facing Athena.
"I've only come to tell you," he exclaimed, rather breathlessly, "that Richard agrees that there are two or three more people we ought to ask. I suggested the Dight-Suttons."
"I've just written, this moment, to say we can't have them," said Athena slowly.
Dick shrugged his shoulders with what seemed to the man watching him an unmannerly gesture of irritation. "I'm sorry," he said curtly. "I had no idea that you would be writing to them to-night, or indeed to anyone to-night. Surely to-morrow morning will be time enough. However, there are one or two other people——"
Lingard got up. "I think I'll go out of doors for a bit," he said abruptly. "I haven't walked enough to-day." It was horrible to him to stand by and see Mrs. Maule insulted in her own house, in her own room. He felt afraid that if he stayed there he would lose control of himself and say something he would regret having said to Dick Wantele.
And Athena, moving to one side, saw his lowering face, and she felt a thrill of possessive pride. What a man Lingard seemed by the side of Dick Wantele! How well he must look in uniform. She wondered, jealously, if Jane had ever seen him in uniform....
"Yes—do go out. And take the key—you know—the key of the Garden Room off the mantelpiece. But you must get a coat. It's cold to-night."
He shook hands with them both, and went out. Dick only stayed a very few moments,—long enough, however, to be told very plainly the names of the people whom Athena wished to be invited. He went off to Richard with her message.
Mrs. Maule began moving about the boudoir aimlessly. It was tiresome of Lingard to stay out so long. She was used to another type of man,—one more civilised, who would have understood in a moment what her quick glance at him had tried to convey. That sort of man would have hung about in the Garden Room till Dick Wantele had left her, and then he would have come back at once.
But the great soldier—and the fact, it must be admitted, was part of his attraction for Athena Maule—was not in the least like that.
Lingard knew nothing of flirtation, as the word was understood in Mrs. Maule's circle. She supposed him, rightly, to be a man with but little knowledge of the world in which the pursuit of the tenderer emotions is carried to a fine art; she judged him, erroneously, to be a man strangely lacking in certain primitive instincts. But that made the state of bondage to which she had already reduced him the greater triumph.
To a thinking mind there is something sombre, disturbing, in the thought that the attraction of a man to a woman, whatever be the quality of that attraction, manifests itself in much the same way.
Athena knew the signs. To-night every omen pointed one way. She put the thought—the slightly insistent memory—of Jane away from her. Jane should have known how to guard what had perhaps never been really hers.
She set her door ajar. It would be very annoying if General Lingard were to come in and, as she knew he had done some nights ago, creep up silently through the house....
At last there came the sounds of footfalls across the flags of the Garden Room. Athena began to experience that curious sensation which goes by the name of a beating heart. In other words, she felt strung up to a high pitch of emotion.
Bayworth Kaye had given her some delicious moments, but she had never felt with him what she felt now. For the first time Athena—skilful huntress of men—had found a quarry worthy of pursuit. Was it possible that to-night her quarry would elude her? Was it conceivable that Lingard would push his scruples, his sense of absurd delicacy, as far as that?
Athena had not yet learnt to reckon with Hew Lingard's conscience,—the conscience, perhaps it would be more true to say the honour, he had already deliberately thrust aside to-night, during those few unquiet moments in the smoking-room.
She remained, however, absolutely still.
Lingard advanced a few steps nearer to the partly open door. He was evidently hesitating, and Athena felt she could bear the suspense no longer.
"Is anyone there?" she called out in a low voice. "Is it Hew?" She only called him by that name when they were alone together.
He opened the door and came in.
"You must be cold," she said tremulously. "Do come nearer the fire."
Lingard came towards her. No, he was not cold. He had been walking, covering miles in the hour he had spent trying to tire, to deaden, himself out. It had been a terrible time of self-communion, self-reproach, self-abasement.
The state he found himself in to-night recalled with piteous vividness that episode of his stormy youth which had led to his long break with the Paches.
It was horrible that he should couple, even in thought, Athena Maule and that—that creature, over whom he had wasted, squandered, such treasures of adoring love. Rosie had been one of those young ladies who, to use a technical term, "walk on"; and because she was extraordinarily pretty, she was always placed in the front row of the foolish musical comedy of which he could still recall, not only every tune, but almost every word, so often had he been to the theatre after that first meeting.
At the end of ten days,—he had known Athena Maule ten days, what a strange coincidence!—at the end of ten days he had asked Rosie to marry him. She had shilly-shallied for a while, and then, to his rapturous surprise, she had said "Yes." How angry, how scandalised, how shocked his relations had been!
Tommy Pache—in those days old Mr. Pache had been "Tommy" to his relations—had hurried up to London and said all the usual things that one does say to a young fool on such an occasion, but even he had been struck by the girl's beauty, though of course Tommy had been careful not to let this out to the others when he had got back to them.
How it all came back to him to-night! Lingard remembered the letters he had received, the letters he had written. It had gone on for some weeks—he couldn't quite remember how long now,—that time of anger, of impatience, of longing, of rapture. And then, within a very few days of that fixed for the quiet wedding which was to take place in a city church,—he had always avoided that part of London ever since,—Rosie had become the wife of another man, of a young idiot with a vacuous face and an enormous fortune, of whom he had not even troubled to be jealous, although his presence in the flat Rosie shared with another girl had often made him impatient.
Now Lingard felt desperately tired—tired in body, tired in spirit. But he was glad—glad that he had disregarded the promptings of his conscience, of his honour. It was delicious to be here indoors, with this kind, this enchanting, this angelically beautiful woman close, very close, to him.
Athena held out her foot to the fire, and Lingard, staring down, saw that she was wearing a curious kind of slipper, one unlike any that he had ever noticed on a woman's foot before. A sandal rather than a shoe, it left visible the lovely lines of the arched instep and slender ankle.
"You were out a long time," she said, and fixed her eyes on the clock. It was one of the curious costly toys of which Rede Place was full, and for which old Theophilus Joy had had a marked predilection. Fashioned like a tiny wall sundial, across its face was written in faded gold letters, "I only mark the sunny hours." The hands now pointed to three minutes to midnight.
Lingard said no word. He went on staring down at Athena's little foot. He was wondering if she knew how exquisitely perfect she was physically, how unlike all other women.
"Isn't it odd to think," she whispered, "that in a few moments another day will begin? I feel more like Cinderella than ever—now. You have given me such a good time," her voice trembled, and he looked up and stared at her strangely. "You've almost made me in love again with life," and she was sincere in what she said.
"I?" said Lingard hoarsely. "I?"
"Yes, you! You don't know—how could you know?—what it's been to me, what it would have been to any woman, to have a man for a friend, to feel at last that there is someone to whom one can say everything——"
He looked away from her. At all costs he must prevent himself from showing what he felt—the violent, the primitive emotion her simple, touching words had called forth.
How utterly she would despise him if she knew! He swore to himself she should never know that she had made him all unwittingly traitor to the woman she loved,—the woman alas! whom they both loved. Lingard, and that was part of the punishment he already had to endure, never left off loving Jane Oglander. Jane was always, in a spiritual sense, very near to him; it was her physical self which was remote.
The tiny gong behind the little clock began to strike, quick precipitate strokes.
"Isn't it in a hurry?" said Athena plaintively, "in such a hurry to end the last of my happy days." Her voice broke into a sob, and Lingard, at last looking straight into her face, saw that tears were rolling down her cheeks.
He gave a hoarse inarticulate cry. Athena thought he said "My God!" She was filled with a sense of intoxicating happiness and triumph. Each of the wild, broken words—words of self-abasement, self-blame, self-rebuke, which Lingard uttered, holding both her hands in his firm grasp,—meant to her what fluttering white flags of surrender mean to besiegers.
With downcast eyes, with beating heart she listened while Lingard, abasing himself and exalting her, took all the blame—and shame—on himself. His words fell very sweetly and comfortingly on her ears. Athena had no wish to act treacherously by Jane.
Any other man but this strange man would have had her long ago in his arms, but Lingard, though he held her hands so tightly that his grasp hurt, made no other movement towards her, not even when with a sobbing sigh she admitted—and as she did so there came across her a slight feeling of shame—that she, too, had been a traitor, an unwilling, an unwitting traitor, to Jane these last few days.
At last they made a compact—how often are such compacts made, and broken?—that Jane should never, never, know the strange madness which had seized them both.
Lingard spoke of leaving the next day. Nothing would be easier than to urge important business in London. But again the tears sprang to Athena's eyes.
"Don't go away," she murmured brokenly. "I couldn't bear it! I promise you that Jane shall never know. Don't leave me with Dick and Richard—they've both been kinder—indeed, indeed they have—since you've been here, Hew——"
He eagerly assured her that he would stay. Flight was a cowardly expedient at best, and the feeling he intended henceforth to cherish for Athena Maule was nothing of which he need be ashamed. It was a high, a noble feeling of compassion and respect. It was well, nay most fortunate, that they had had this explanation; henceforth they would be friends. The very touch of her cool hands resting so confidingly in his, had driven forth certain black devils from his heart—made him indeed once more true to Jane,—Jane who, if she knew all, would understand. For there were things Athena had told him of her life with Richard which Jane did not know,—things which it was not desirable Jane should ever know, and which had filled him with an infinite compassion for Richard's young, beautiful wife.
When Lingard bade her good-night, he resisted the temptation, the curiously strong temptation, of asking Mrs. Maule if she would allow him to kiss her feet.
CHAPTER X
"The passion of love has a danger for very sensitive, reserved and concentrated minds unknown to creatures of more volatile, expansive and unreflective dispositions."
Dick Wantele walked with swinging nervous strides up and down the short platform of the little country station of Redyford. He had already been there some time, for the local train run in connection with the London express was late. But he was in no hurry—there would always be time to tell Jane that she would not see her lover for some hours.
Mrs. Maule had taken General Lingard over to the Paches to lunch. It was a small matter, an altogether unimportant matter, and it was certainly no business of Wantele's to care about it one way or the other. And yet he did care. He was jealous for Jane in a way she never would be for herself. And then—and then Lingard had allowed himself to be bamboozled—no other word so well expressed it—as to the time of Jane's arrival.
It had happened at breakfast. "Mrs. Pache is expecting us—you and me—over to lunch," Athena said to Lingard.
And Wantele had cut in—"Jane is coming this morning."
"No, indeed she isn't! We shall be back long before she arrives," and then Athena had gone on, addressing no one in particular, "Jane is the most casual person in the world——"
Lingard, throwing back his head with a quizzical look on his face, had exclaimed, "Yes, that's one of the good things about her." He had shot out the words as a sword leaps from its scabbard.
There had followed a moment of silence. And then Athena had broken out into eager praise of Jane—eager, inconsequent praise. But for once Hew Lingard had seemed indifferent, hardly aware of the sound of her voice.
Instead he looked across to Wantele: "I wonder if you remember that curious phrase of George Herbert? 'There is an hour wherein a man might be happy all his life could he but find it—'"
Athena had stared at Lingard—what did he mean by saying such an odd thing?
Then she had reminded Dick that the last time Jane had been coming to Rede Place she had changed her mind not once but three times, and what Athena said had irritated Wantele the more because she spoke the truth.
Jane was curiously uncertain and casual—women of her temperament often are. She only made an effort to be mindful of her engagements when dealing with those concerning whom most people would have said punctuality did not matter—with those forlorn men and women adrift on the dark sea of South London, to whose service she had given herself since her brother's death.
For a moment he, Dick Wantele, and Hew Lingard, had been in that wordless sympathy which between men means friendship. Wantele was eager to be convinced that his suspicions were both base and baseless. If only Athena would remove her disturbing presence from Rede Place! But he knew her too well to hope that she would go—yet.
Here was the train at last, but where was Jane Oglander? Dick looked before and behind him. No, she was not there. She hadn't come after all. She had, as usual, changed her plans at the last moment. Athena was right, Jane was really too casual! When he reached home he would find a telegram from her explaining——
And then suddenly he saw her walking towards him from the extreme end of the platform. And the mere sight of her dispelled, not only the irritation of which he was now ashamed, but the anxieties, the suspicions of the last ten days.
He had vaguely supposed that Jane would look unlike herself, that the fact that she was going to be Lingard's wife would have produced in her some outward change. But she looked as she always looked—set apart from the women about her, especially from those of her own age, by the greater simplicity, the almost austerity of her dress. An old cottage woman had once said to Wantele, "Grey is Miss Oglander's colour, and if she was 'appy perhaps light blue."
And as she came up to him, smiling, he remembered what the old woman had said, for Miss Oglander was wearing a long grey cloak; it was open at the neck, and showed some kind of white vest with a touch of blue underneath. On her fair hair, framing her face, rested a Quakerish little cap-like hat with strings tied under her soft chin.
"Dick," she said, "how kind of you to come and meet me! I'm so glad to see you!"
And he saw with a queer feeling of mingled pleasure and jealous pain that she did indeed look glad; also that there had in very truth come a change over her face. Jane Oglander possessed that which is not always the attribute of beauty, a great and varying charm of expression, but Wantele had never seen her eyes filled, as they were to-day, with gladness.
"I nearly came by the later train," she said. "For I had to see a child off to the country, to a convalescent home, and its train went at the same time as mine. But I found a kind, understanding porter, and so it was all right. Working people are so good to one another, Dick. The porter wouldn't take the sixpence I offered him for looking after the little boy——" And in her voice there was still that under-current of joyousness which was so new, and, to Wantele, so unexpected.
Jane Oglander looked as if the six last years had been blotted out,—as if she were again a happy girl, pathetically, confidently ignorant of the ugly realities of life.
They walked out of the station together, and with a simultaneous movement they turned into the field path which formed a short cut to Rede Place. Soon they fell into the easy, desultory talk of those who have many interests and occupations in common. The young man had saved up many little things to tell her—things that he thought would amuse Jane, things about which he wished to consult her.
And as they walked side by side, Wantele kept reminding himself, with deep, voiceless melancholy, that this was the last time—the last time that Jane Oglander would be what she had been for so long, his chief friend and favourite companion. Lingard—happy Lingard had been right. More fortunate than Wantele, he had found that hour most men seek and never find, the hour wherein a man may be happy all his life.
They were now close to the house, and as yet neither had spoken the name of Jane's lover. "Shall we go in by the Garden Room?" asked Wantele.
Now had come the moment when he must tell her of Athena's and Lingard's absence; also, when he must, if he could bring himself to do so, wish her joy.
"You'll have to put up with me for a bit longer, Jane. Athena has taken General Lingard to lunch at the Paches'. Of course you heard of the accident?"
"Yes," she said. "Poor Patty!" And then, with a rather quizzical expression in her kind eyes, "It's odd, isn't it, Dick, that Hew should be related to the Paches——"
With no answering smile on his face, he exclaimed, "Amazing!"
He put the key in the lock, and turning it pushed open the glass door. Then he fell back so that she should pass in before him.
"Jane," he muttered hoarsely, "Jane, you know what I would say to you—how truly I wish you joy——"
She looked up, and then quickly cast down her eyes. Wantele had grown very pale, across his plain face was written suffering and renunciation.
"I knew," she said in a low voice, "I knew that you would wish me joy."
Neither spoke again till they reached the Greek Room.
There Wantele left her, and then Richard Maule also said his word, his dry word, of congratulation.
"I like your soldier, Jane! You know what I had hoped would happen—but things that I hope for never do happen——"
But apart from these two interludes, the first afternoon of Jane Oglander's stay at Rede Place passed exactly as had passed innumerable other afternoons spent by her there in recent years. She took a walk with Dick round the walled gardens which were his special interest and pleasure; she read aloud for a while to Richard.
Nothing was changed, and yet everything was different. Last time Miss Oglander had stayed at Rede Place, she had been almost daughter to Richard Maule, almost wife to Dick Wantele. Now she was about to pass for ever out of their lives, and on all three of them the knowledge lay heavy.
At four o'clock the Paches' motor returned with a message that Mrs. Maule and General Lingard were walking back and would not be home before five.
Miss Oglander's first meeting with her lover at Rede Place took place in the Greek Room. It was six o'clock, she had given the two men their tea, and then, voicing what they were all thinking, "They're very late," said Richard Maule, and as he uttered the words the door opened and the truants walked in.
Wantele, sitting in his favourite place, away from the fire, close under one of the high windows, noted with reluctant approval that Athena did not overdo her surprise. "Why, Jane, I didn't expect you till the six-twenty train!"—that was all she said as she came forward and warmly greeted her friend.
Wantele went on looking dispassionately at his cousin's wife. To-day Athena had chosen the plainest of out-of-door costumes. A girl of seventeen might have worn the very short skirt and simple little coat, but like everything she wore, they made her, at the moment, look her best. The long walk, and the companionship in which she had taken the walk, had exhilarated her—intensified her superb vitality. She looked like some wild, lovely thing out of the woods, a nymph on whom Time would never dare lay his disfiguring touch.
Lingard, hanging back behind her, showed himself no actor. He looked moody, preoccupied, almost sullen.
"Has anything happened to-day?" asked Mrs. Maule. "Apart, I mean, from the happy fact of Jane's arrival——" she smiled radiantly at the other woman.
Her husband's voice unexpectedly answered her, and as he spoke he cast on her a look of hate, and then his eyes rested with an air of rather malignant, speculative curiosity on Lingard's dark, gloomy face and restless eyes.
"Yes, something did happen during your short absence. I had a call this morning from Mr. Kaye——" In an aside he muttered for Lingard's benefit, "Mr. Kaye is our excellent clergyman," and then he went on, "I'm sorry to say he brought bad news of his son."
All the caressing glow died from Athena's face; it became suddenly watchful, wary.
Mr. Maule went on, "Bayworth Kaye, it seems, is lying very ill at Aden."
Mrs. Maule gave a slight sigh of relief. That was not what she had thought, with a sudden overwhelming fear, to hear Richard say.
"The Kayes are thinking of going out to him, and they thought that I should be able to tell them something about the place—how to get there, and so on. But I advised them to wait a day or two for further news.
"I heard about Bayworth Kaye's illness some days ago," said Wantele slowly. "But I forgot to tell you. I did, however, enquire about him yesterday. They seemed to know very little then——"
"I have been longing, longing, longing to see you, Jane! Now, at last we can have a talk——"
Putting both her hands on Jane's unresisting shoulders, Mrs. Maule gently pushed her friend down into a low chair, and then knelt down by her.
They were in Jane's bedroom, and it still wanted three-quarters of an hour to dinner.
Jane's eyes filled with happy tears. She was moved to the heart. How good they all were to her!
She could still feel the clinging, the convulsive, grasp of Lingard's hand. She had not seen him alone, even for a moment, but now, at last, they were under the same roof, and each of his letters from Rede Place had been a cry of longing for her.
"We ought not to have gone to the Paches'," cried Athena remorsefully. "But honestly it never occurred to me that you would come till the evening train, Jane."
Jane laughed through her tears. "I'm very glad you went! I enjoyed my quiet day here. And oh I am so glad to see you, Athena! I was afraid that you might be away."
"Do you really think I should leave Rede Place—now?" Athena looked searchingly into Jane's face. "I know we are none of us conventional, but still the proprieties have to be respected—sometimes!"
Jane reddened uncomfortably. She had not thought of it in that way. She and Hew had been so happy together alone in London. But no doubt Athena was right.
Athena rose slowly, gracefully, from her knees, and stood looking down at her friend with a rather inscrutable smile. Jane moved uneasily, she felt as if the other woman was gently, remorselessly stripping her soul of its wrappings....
"You look just the same," said Mrs. Maule, still smiling that probing, mysterious smile, "just as much a white and grey nun as you did before, Jane. But I think this is the first time I ever saw you blush. Go on blushing, dear—it makes you look quite pretty and worldly!"
Jane flinched beneath the intent questioning gaze. She felt suddenly defenceless against a form of attack she had not expected from her friend. She could not bear the lightest touch of raillery, still less any laughing comment, on what was so deep and sacred a thing to herself as her relation to Lingard.
She got up, walked over to a window, and pulled back the curtain.
Athena moved swiftly after her, and with a gentle violence put her soft arms round Jane and pillowed the girl's head on her breast.
"Jane!" she whispered, "do forgive me—I understand, indeed I do! But—but the sight of your happiness makes me a little bitter. Richard has been worse than ever this time. And Dick has been—well, Dick at his very worst. I can't think why he dislikes me so—but to be sure I have never liked him either!"
Jane heard her in troubled silence. Her feelings of restful happiness, of exquisite content, had gone.
"I'm sure that General Lingard must have noticed Richard's extraordinary manner to me," Athena spoke musingly. "Has he said anything about it in any of his letters to you?"
"No, never." Jane released herself from Mrs. Maule's circling arms.
"I like your man so much," went on Athena, stroking Jane's hair, "so very, very much! I think I like him more than I ever thought to like a man again. But then he's so unlike most men, Jane."
Jane did not need Athena's words to convince her that Hew Lingard was unlike other men. But still her friend's words touched and pleased her.
"He's been so awful good to me these last ten days! He's made everything easier. Fortunately Richard took a great fancy to him. And he and I—I know you won't be jealous, Jane—have become true friends. When Dick isn't looking, we call each other Hew and Athena!"
"I am so glad," said Jane in a low voice; and indeed she was glad that the two had "made friends."
But again she was touched with vague discomfort, again she shrank, when Mrs. Maule, leading her back into the room, rained eager, insistent questions on her——
"Do tell me all about it! How did it all begin? How did you ever come to know each other so well before he went away? What made him first write to you? Were they love letters, Jane? Come, of course you must know whether they were love letters or not! You're not so simple as all that comes to—no woman ever is!"
But at last, driven at bay, her heart bruised by the other's indelicate curiosity, Jane said slowly, "I dare say I'm foolish—but I would rather not talk about it, Athena."
A look of deep offence passed over Mrs. Maule's face. Later on—much later on—Jane wondered whether she had been wrong in saying those few words—words said feelingly, apologetically.
"Of course we won't speak of your engagement if you would rather not. I'm sorry. I had no idea you would mind. I must go and dress now. But just one word more, Jane. Of course you and General Lingard will like to be a good deal alone together—I'll give Dick a hint."
"No, no!" cried Jane. "Please don't do that, Athena. I don't want anything of the sort said to Dick."
But Mrs. Maule went on as if she had not heard the other's words, "And you can always sit together in my boudoir. Mrs. Pache was saying to-day that it was a pity I didn't use the drawing-room more than I do. She thought—it was so like an Englishwoman to say so—that it smelt damp!"
"As if we should think of turning you out of your own room! How can you imagine such a thing? I don't want you to make the slightest difference while I'm here. Hew and I will have plenty of opportunities of seeing one another when we get back to London. Please don't speak to Dick—I should be very, very sorry if you spoke to Dick, Athena."
CHAPTER XI
"Tu peux connaître le monde, tu peux lire à livre ouvert dans les plus caverneuses consciences, mais tu ne liras jamais, oh! pauvre femme, le cœur de ton ami."
And then there came a short sequence of days, full of deep calm without, full of strife and disturbance within.
Jane was ailing, and each day she fought with the knowledge of what ailed her as certain strong natures fight, and even for a while keep at bay, physical disease.
But there came a moment when she had to face the truth; when she had to tell herself that the new, the agonising pain which racked her soul night and day, leaving her no moment of peace, was that base passion, jealousy.
It was horrible to feel that it was of Athena she was jealous—Athena who seemed to be always there, between Lingard and herself. She could not think so ill of her friend as to suppose that this was Mrs. Maule's fault; still less would she accuse Lingard.
Gradually the knowledge had come to her that when they three were together—Athena, Jane, and Lingard—it was as if she, Jane, was not, so entirely was Lingard absorbed in, possessed by, Athena.
Jane Oglander could not fight with the weapons another woman in her place might have used. She could not, that is, make the most of such odd moments, of such scanty opportunities as she might have snatched from Athena Maule. How could the trifling events which made up the sum of five or six days have brought about such a change?
She had thought to be so happy at Rede Place. She had come there filled with a sense of tremulous and yet certain gladness; in the mood to be sought by, rather than in that which seeks, the beloved. Athena, Richard, and Dick, if they did not love each other, surely each loved her sufficiently to understand, to respect her joy.
The circumstances of her brother's death which had fallen like a pall on her young life had set Jane Oglander apart from happy, normal women. To her the world had only contained one lover—Hew Lingard; and those days they had spent together in a peopled solitude had taught her all she knew of the ways of love.
It was instinct which had made her shrink, that first night of her stay at Rede Place, from Athena's insistent questioning; natural delicacy which had made her refuse, almost with disgust, the suggestion that she and Lingard should be set apart in an artificial solitude. As yet their engagement was secret from the world which seemed to take so great, so—so impertinent an interest in Hew Lingard, and she wished to keep it so as long as possible.
Then there was another reason, one which she now told herself Athena should have divined, why Jane wished little notice to be taken of her engagement. She had no wish to flaunt her happiness before Dick Wantele.
But now there was no happiness to flaunt—in its place only a dumb misery and a jealousy of which she felt an agonising shame.
To Jane Oglander it was as if another entity had entered Hew Lingard's bodily shape—the bodily shape that was alas! so terribly dear to her.
Lingard was not unkind, he was ever careful of her comfort in all little ways, but when they were alone together—and this happened strangely seldom—he would fall into long silences, as if unaware that she, his love, was there.
From these abstracted moods Jane soon learnt that she could rouse him only in one way. He was ever ready to talk of Athena,—of their noble, lovely, and ill-used friend; and Jane, assenting, would tell herself that it was all true, and that only long familiarity with the strange conditions of existence at Rede Place had made her take as calmly as she did the tragedy of Athena Maule's life—that tragedy which now weighed so heavily on Lingard that it blotted out for him everything and everybody else.
"I have told her she can always come and stay with us when things get intolerable here," he had exclaimed during one such talk, looking at Jane with eager, ardent eyes; and she had bent her head.
Then it was with Athena he discussed their future, his and Jane's—the future in which Mrs. Maule was, it seemed, to have so great a share.
It was on the seventh day of Jane's stay at Rede Place that her lover for the first time, or so it seemed to her sore heart, sought her company.
It fell about in this wise. Athena had been caught by Mrs. Pache, who, taking a drive in her old safe brougham for the first time since the motor accident, had naturally chosen Rede Place. Lingard and Dick Wantele at last escaped, leaving Mrs. Maule prisoned by her guest. They had gone out of doors, and chance had led them across Jane—Jane on her way back from the Small Farm where Mabel Digby, for the first time in her young life, lay ill in bed, unwilling to see anyone, excepting Jane.
On hearing who had called, Miss Oglander had wished to hurry in, but Lingard had cried imperiously, "No! you shan't be made to endure Cousin Annie's congratulations! Come instead for a walk with me!" He had said the words in his old voice—the voice Jane knew, loved, obeyed.
Dick Wantele looked quickly at them both. Was it possible that Lingard was working himself free of the fetters of which he was—Dick wished to think it possible—still unaware? "Take him to the Oakhanger," he said to Jane. "You can get there and back in an hour——"
Side by side they hastened, walking not as lovers walk, but as do those who feel themselves to be escaping from some danger which lies close behind them. Jane was taking Lingard the shortest way out of the park.
At last, at last she and Lingard would be alone, away from Athena as they had never yet been away from her during these long, to Jane these most miserable, days.
For a while neither spoke to the other, then, as they turned into one of the narrow streets of the little country town, Lingard broke into hurried, disconnected speech, only to fall into moody silence as they again emerged into the lonely country lane leading to the large, enclosed piece of ground for which they were bound.
The Hanger, as it was familiarly called in the neighbourhood of Redyford, was a huge natural mound rising from a low, undulating stretch of wild furze-covered common. Through the eighteenth century it had formed part of the estate of Rede Place, or rather it had been enclosed and appropriated, together with other common land.
Thanks to the generosity, perhaps it should be said the sense of justice, of Theophilus Joy, The Hanger now belonged to the little town of Redyford. In warm weather it was used by the town folk as a picnic resort, though the nature and formation of the ground, and of the mountainous height which gave the place its name, made the playing of games there impossible. This was as well, for the huge mound remained unspoilt, and in its stark way beautiful.
Sharply the two breasted the rising ground. The wind swept athwart them in short, strong gusts. Now and then there fell a spot of rain.
There was something in Jane Oglander's nature, something hidden from those about her, which responded to wild weather. She now welcomed the battle against wind and rain, and mounted with secret exhilaration the steep slippery path winding its way through and under the oak-trees which clothed the right flank of The Hanger.
Once she tripped, and Lingard for a moment put his arm round her, but she sprang forward, away from its strong shelter; surprised, and a little piqued, he kept behind her, letting her lead the now darkling way, for twilight was falling.
On they climbed, till at last, emerging from under the low oak branches, they stood, solitary figures, on a grassy ridge, bare save for a clump of high twisted fir-trees which swayed gauntly against the vast grey expanse of sky.
Owing to its peculiar formation, The Hanger presented, especially at this time of the early evening, an impression of almost monstrous height and loneliness.
Sheer down on the right from whence they had come lay the little town of Redyford, the grey and red roofs partly hidden by the thick-set oaks. On the left the ground sloped away more gently; but it looked to-night as if a leap over the edge would fling one down, down into the valley of meadowlands now white with curling mists.
Slowly they turned and walked along the ridge, their feet sinking into the short soft turf growing in patches of pale green among the mauve-grey and brown heather. The path led up to a summer house, a curious circular building crowning the apex of the hill, and so wide open to wind, rain, and view that only the deep-eaved roof afforded any shelter to those under it.
It was there that Lingard, after a moment of hesitation, led the way. "Jane," he said, "let us come and sit down for a moment. I have something to ask you." And she followed him into the poor shelter the summer house afforded. It had stopped raining; the high wind reigned alone, victorious.
The bench on which they sat down was heavily scored with the initials of generations of Redyford lovers; for the little round building had ever been a temple of innocent courtship, and in the spring and summer evenings never lacked couples sitting in silent, inarticulate happiness.
Lingard's bare hand involuntarily rested on the dented figures, the interlaced initials....
Three weeks ago he would have prayed Jane's leave to add a J. and an H. to these rude scores, for three weeks ago he had been one of the great company of the world's lovers, understanding and sympathising with all the absurdities of love.
And now—even now, though he knew himself for a traitor to the woman sitting silent by his side, he yet felt in a strange way that the link between them was eternal—that in no way could it be broken. Each, so he assured himself fiercely, had a call on the other.
He was about to put this belief, this instinctive certainty, to the test.
"As I said just now, I've something to ask you, Jane——" His words came haltingly; to his listener they sounded very cold.
"Yes, Hew?" She looked round at him. He was staring at the ground as if something lay there he alone could see.
"I asked you to come out with me to-night, because—because"—and then in a voice so low, so hoarse, that she had to bend forward to catch the words—"I want to ask you, to implore you, Jane—to marry me at once."
"At once?" she repeated. "When do you mean by at once, Hew?" She also spoke in a still, low voice. They seemed to be hatching a conspiracy of which one, if not both, should feel ashamed.
And more than ever it seemed to Jane Oglander as if another man, a stranger, had taken possession of Hew Lingard's shape.
"I mean at once!" he answered harshly. "To-morrow—or the day after to-morrow. There's no necessity why we should ever go back to Rede Place! Why shouldn't we walk down to the station now, from here? We should be in London in an hour and a half. People have often done stranger things than that. We could send a message from the station to——" His voice wavered, his lips refused to form Mrs. Maule's name.
He thrust the thought of Athena violently from him; and with the muttered words, "Can't you understand? I love you—I want you, Jane——" he turned and gathered the woman sitting so stilly by his side into his arms.
She gave a stifled cry of surprise; and then, as he kissed her fiercely once, twice, and then again, there broke from her a low, bitter sigh—the sigh of a woman who feels herself debased by the caresses for which she has longed, of which she has been starved.
To Jane Oglander a kiss, so light, so willing a loan on the part of many women, was so intimate a gift as to be the forerunner of complete surrender. And to-night each of Hew Lingard's kisses was to her a profaned sacrament. Not so had they kissed on that day in London. Now his kisses told her, as no words could have done, of a divided allegiance.
She lay unresponsive, trembling in his arms, her eyes full of a wild, piteous questioning....
With a sudden sense of self-loathing and shame he released her from his arms.
"Well?" he said sullenly. "Well, Jane?" but he knew what her answer would and must be.
"I can't do what you wish, Hew. I don't think that either of us would be happy now—if we did that." She spoke in a quiet, restrained voice. She was too miserable, too deeply humiliated, for tears.
Together they walked out of the summer house and retraced their steps along the ridge.
"As I cannot do what you wish, would you like me to end our engagement?"
He turned on her fiercely. "I did not think," he cried, "that there lived a woman in the world who could be as cruel as you have been to me to-night!"
"I did not mean to be cruel," she said mournfully.
"Unless you wish to drive me to the devil, don't speak like that again," he said violently. "Promise me, I mean, that you won't think of breaking our engagement."
She made no answer, and a few moments later in a gentler tone he asked, "Can't you understand, Jane?"
She said humbly, "I try to understand."
A great and a healing flood of tenderness filled her heart, and as if the spiritual tie between them was indeed of so close a nature that Lingard felt her softening for the first time put his hand in hers.
"Jane," he said huskily, "forgive me. Try to forget to-night."
So they walked in silence, hand in hand, through the solitary lane and the now lighted streets of Redyford, uncaring of the few passers-by.
But when they came to the park gates Lingard withdrew his hand from hers, and at the door of the Garden Room he left her. "I won't come in yet," he said abruptly, and turning on his heel he disappeared into the night.
And with Jane's going something good and noble in Lingard went too, and as he walked into the darkness he lashed himself into a sea of deep injury and pain. His heart filled with anger rather than with shame when he evoked the look almost of aversion, of protesting anguish, which had come into her face while his lips had sought and found unresponsive her sweet, tremulous mouth.
He had been longing, craving, for that which he had now only the right to demand from her, and she had cruelly repulsed him.
How amazing that a fortnight—or was it three weeks?—could have so altered a woman!
Even now the memory of those days they had spent together immediately on his return home was dear and sacred to him.
Could he have been mistaken,—such was the question he asked himself to-night,—in his belief that Jane Oglander had been exquisitely sensitive, responsive as are few human beings to every high demand of love?
Was it that his unspoken, unconfessed treachery had killed, obliterated in her the power of response? Nay, it was far more likely that he had made a mistake,—that the woman he loved was cold, as many tender women are cold, temperamentally incapable of that fusion of soul and body which is the essence of love between a man and a woman.
Had he not discovered this lack in Jane through his contact with a very different nature—with one who was full of quick, warm-blooded, generous impulses? Athena Maule might do foolish things,—she had admitted to him that more than once she had been tempted to do wild, reckless things,—but it was only her heart that would lead her astray.
The man in Lingard, knowing as he thought the hidden truth which underlay her story, felt full of burning sympathy.
As he at last walked back to the house, it was pleasant to him to feel that he would be able to forget the painful, the humiliating hour he had gone through with the woman who was to be his wife, in the company of Athena Maule.
Athena was in her boudoir. She had been there alone for two hours, and they had been hours filled with impatient revolt and anxiety.
After Mrs. Pache had gone Athena had tried to find first Jane, and then Lingard. Then Dick Wantele, meeting her, had casually observed that the two others had gone out for a long walk.
Jane and Lingard out together beyond her ken and pursuit? The knowledge stabbed her. Athena was convinced, aye quite honestly convinced, that these two, her friends both of them, were ill-suited the one to the other.
She felt the breach between herself and Jane, and it hurt her the more because she had done nothing—nothing to deserve that Jane should avoid her as she sometimes felt sure Jane was doing.
It was not her fault if General Lingard was gradually coming to see the terrible mistake he had made. But to-night, while waiting, too excited, too impatient to do anything but sit and stare into the fire, she told herself that she was also disappointed in Lingard.
What a strange, peculiar man he was! Since the night before Jane Oglander's arrival he had said nothing—nothing that is, that all the world might not have heard. And yet she could not mistake his thraldom. If nothing else had proved it, Dick Wantele's behaviour would have done so. Twice in the last few days Dick had made a strong, a meaning, appeal to Athena to leave Rede Place. Her heart swelled at the thought of Dick's discourtesy and unkindness. She even wondered if he had dared to say anything to Lingard. During the last two days Lingard had certainly avoided finding himself alone with her....
The only one of them all who seemed perfectly at ease, and who was as usual absorbed in his own selfish ills and in his dull books, was Richard. Fortunately he took up a great deal of Jane's time.
At last, when it was nearly seven o'clock, the door opened, and Lingard came in. He had instinctively made his way to her, without stopping to think whether he were wise or no in what he was doing. During the last two days, putting a strong restraint on himself, he had avoided Athena, and his strange request to Jane, his pleading for an immediate marriage, had been the outcome of the state in which he found himself.
But now everything was changed. Jane had denied him, and he felt an imperative need of the kind, comfortable words Athena would lavish on him. He was sick of lies—of the lies he had told himself. He hungered for Athena's presence. What an unmannerly brute she must have thought him, to have avoided her as he had done, all that day and all the day before!
Very gently she bade him sit down, and in some subtle fashion she ministered to Lingard in a way that restored to a certain extent his feeling of self-respect. And then at last, when secure that there would be no interruptions, for the dinner bell had rung some moments before, she leant forward and said slowly, "Is something the matter? Is anything troubling you, Hew? Is it a matter in which I can help?"
She desired above all things that he should speak to her of Jane Oglander. But her wish was not to be gratified.
"Everything is troubling me," he said sombrely. "Everything!"
She moved a little nearer to him. Her hand lay close to his. Suddenly he took her hand and held it. "I loathe myself," he said in a low voice. "I needn't tell you the reason why, Athena,—you know, you understand——"
"Ah! Yes—I understand," there was a thrill in her voice. "How often I have felt ashamed of my own longing—of my longing to be free!"
It was a bow at a venture. He looked at her with dazed eyes. That was not what he had meant. Then suddenly he caught fire from her thin flame. "If you were free?" he repeated thickly. "I wish to God, Athena, that you were free——"
She withdrew her hand from his, and got up. "It's nearly eight o'clock," she said quietly. "We must go up and dress now."