But takes its proper change still out in crime
If once rung on the counter of this world."
All that night Athena lay awake. Her brain was extraordinarily alive. She had not had so bad a bout of wakefulness for years.
If only she were free!
She lay wondering what Lingard had meant by those words—words which she had put into his mouth, and which he had uttered in the thick tones of a man who has lost control of himself, and who speaks scarce knowing what he says.
In the world in which Mrs. Maule lived when she was not at Rede Place, it was a firmly-established belief that those unhappily or unsuitably married could, by making a determined effort, strike off their fetters. And in this connection it had been gradually borne in upon her that the good old proverb which declares that where there's a will there's a way is, in the England of to-day, peculiarly true of everything that pertains to the marital relations of men and women.
The question had never before touched her nearly, and Athena as a rule only concerned herself with what did touch her nearly.
However much she chafed against the bonds which bound her to Richard Maule, the thought that she, Mrs. Maule of Rede Place, should join the crowd of ambiguous women who are neither maids, nor wives, nor widows, was unthinkable. Her day, so she often secretly reasoned with herself, would come later—after Richard's death. At the time of their marriage he had made magnificent, absurdly magnificent settlements. He could do nothing to alter that fact; so much she had been at some pains to ascertain. Meanwhile, she made the best she could of life.
But now, with a dramatic suddenness which strongly appealed to her calculating and yet undisciplined nature—an unlooked for piece of good fortune had come her way. Were she free, or within reasonable sight of freedom, the kind of life for which she now longed passionately was almost certainly within her grasp.
Lingard the man roused in Athena Maule none of that indescribable sensation, part physical, part mental, which she had at first thought, nay hoped, he would do. But that, so she told herself with unconscious cynicism, was a fortunate thing. She had now set her whole heart on being Lingard's wife,—only to secure that end would she be Lingard's lover. Her wild oats were sown. Never more would she allow herself to become the prey of passion,—that "creature of poignant thirst and exquisite hunger...."
She gave but a very fleeting thought to Lingard's engagement to Jane Oglander. Engagements are perpetually made and broken, and fortunately this particular engagement had not even been publicly announced.
No; what deeply troubled her, what stood in the way of the fruition of her desire was—Richard, the man who had so slight a hold on life, and yet who seemed so tenacious of that which had surely lost all savour.
In the darkness of the night, the pallid face of Athena's husband rose before her,—cruel, watchful, streaked, as it so often was when Richard looked her way, with contempt as well as hatred.
How amazingly Richard had altered in the ten years she had known him, and in nothing more than in the expression of his face, which she now visioned with such horrible vividness!
In old days Richard Maule had had a handsome, dreamy, placid face,—the kind of profile which looks to great advantage on a cameo or medal. Now, as Athena often told herself, it was the face of a suffering devil, and of a devil, alas! who looked as if he would never die.
But the days when she had measured anxiously the span of Richard's life were past. Athena, now, could not afford to wait for her husband's death; she must find some other way to freedom.
There was a story which had remained imprinted for two years—or was it three?—on the tablets of Mrs. Maule's memory, and this was the more strange, the more significant, because she had not come across the case in any direct way.
All she could remember of the affair—luckily she had a very good memory for such things—had been told her by a certain Mrs. Stanwood, who was noted for her extraordinary knowledge of other people's business, and for whom Athena had never had any particular liking.
But now the idle words of this casual acquaintance became tremendously significant, pregnant with vital issues.
She sat up in the darkness and pressed her hands against her face in her effort to recapture every word of what had been at the time so unimportant a piece of gossip.
The story had been told her at Ranelagh. She could still see the low-ceilinged entrance hall where the eagerly whispered words had been uttered.
They were standing together, Athena and Maud Stanwood, waiting for the rest of their party, when there had swept by them a pretty, well-dressed, tired-looking woman. Suddenly, a man had come forward and the two for a moment met face to face. Then, with a muttered word of apology, the man passed on.
Mrs. Stanwood clutched Athena's arm. "Do look at them!" she whispered. "How very dramatic! I wonder if this is the first time they have met since the case!" And Athena obediently stared at the pretty, tired-looking woman; the man had disappeared.
"Who is she? Who are they? What case do you mean?" she asked.
And the other answered provokingly, "Surely you remember all about it?"
"But I don't remember. Please tell me? Was it a divorce case?" Athena spoke a little pettishly.
"Divorce? Oh, no! Something quite different. Why, if she had been divorced she would not be here. No, no; their marriage was annulled. The case made quite a talk because they had been married so long—I believe fourteen years. I was at the wedding. She was such a pretty bride. Of course she married again—the other man. But it's rather bad taste of her to come here now, for she used to be here a good deal with him—I mean with her first husband."
Athena, amused with the tale, had pressed the other to tell her all about it, and Mrs. Stanwood, nothing loth, had proceeded to do so, quoting similar cases, and intimating, with the shrewdness which always distinguished her, how odd it was that more childless women didn't have recourse to so easy, so reputable a way of ridding themselves of dull and undesirable husbands!
A sensation of intense relief, nay more, of triumphant satisfaction, stole into Athena's heart. What that woman, that nervous, pretty, faded-looking woman, had done after fourteen years of marriage, Athena could certainly do now. No one looking at Richard—at that poor, miserable wreck of a man—could doubt that Mrs. Maule had a right to her freedom.
"If only you were free!" She was not quite sure in what sense Lingard had uttered those memorable words, but it was enough for her that he could, if necessary, be reminded of having said them. Once she were indeed free, Lingard, so Athena felt comfortably sure, would not need to be so reminded.
Nature, so unkind to woman, has given her one great advantage over man. She can, while herself remaining calm, rouse in him a whirlwind of tempestuous emotion.
Many a time in the last few years Mrs. Maule had heard the cry, "If only you were free!" but, while listening with downcast eyes to the hopeless wish, she had known well that the speaker did not really mean what he said, or if he meant it—poor Bayworth Kaye had meant it—then he was, like Bayworth, ineligible, or if eligible as a lover, absurdly ineligible as a husband.
Her acute, subtle mind, trained from childhood only to concentrate itself on those problems which affected, or might affect, herself, turned to the lesser problem of Jane Oglander.
Jane Oglander was an obstacle. Far less an one than Richard, but still likely to be a formidable obstacle owing to Lingard's strained sense of honour.
So much must be frankly admitted. But it would be a mistake to make too much of Jane. Once Jane realised how unsuited she was to become Hew Lingard's wife, she would draw back—of that Athena felt assured.
But how could Jane be brought to understand? Would Lingard himself ever allow her to see the truth, or would the task fall to her—to Athena?
If what the world now thought were true, Hew Lingard might hope to rise to almost any eminence in the delightful, the glorious career of arms. But for that, and again Athena was quite sincere with herself, he would need to have by his side a clever and brilliant woman, without whose help he might find himself shelved as many another man of action has been. It was this fact that someone ought to convey to poor Jane Oglander.
Within the last few months, by merely saying a word to a distinguished personage at the War Office, Mrs. Maule had been able, so she quite believed, to advance Bayworth Kaye materially—to procure him, that is, a post on which he had set his heart, and for which he was eminently fitted.
The official in question had been extremely cautious, not to say cold, during their little conversation, but a week or two later Athena had been gratified to receive from the great man a pretty little note in which he had informed her that her protégé—as he called poor Bayworth—was going, after all, to be given the post for which he was so admirably qualified.
Athena had no reason to under-estimate her powers. The average man always, and the exceptional man generally, capitulated at once. Even politicians were indulgent to her ignorance, nay more, amused by her lack of knowledge of British public affairs. But Athena was now coming to see the value of such knowledge.
Since the arrival of General Lingard, she had realised that there were all sorts of things which ordinary women—such women as Jane Oglander and Mabel Digby—know, but which she had never taken the trouble to learn. Lingard had already taught her a good deal. She had early adopted the excellent principle, when with a man, of allowing him to talk, especially when the subject was one about which she knew little or nothing.
Lingard would have been amazed indeed had he known that a fortnight ago Athena Maule had scarcely heard of these subjects—so vitally interesting to those concerned with the expansion of our Empire in Africa—about which she now questioned him so intelligently.
The next day opened with very ill news—the news that Bayworth Kaye was dead.
As is the way in the country, the servants heard the bare fact some time before it reached their betters. It formed the subject of discussion in the servants' hall on the previous evening, for the fatal telegram had reached the rectory at seven o'clock, and its contents had made their way, first to the stables of Rede Place, and from thence to the house half an hour later, at the very time Lingard was echoing Athena's words, "If only you were free!"
"You'll 'ave to tell her when you go in with the cup of tea," observed Mr. Maule's valet to Mrs. Maule's French maid, Félicie. But the woman shrugged her shoulders, with a "Ma foi, non!"
They had all wondered, with sighs and mysterious winks, how Mrs. Maule would take the news. The Corsican chef expressed great concern. "Ce pauvre jeune homme est mort d'amour!" he exclaimed to Félicie, and she nodded solemnly, explaining and expanding his remark to the others.
"Gammon! An Englishman—an officer and a gentleman—don't die of such a thing as love," the butler said scornfully, and Félicie again had shrugged her shoulders. What did these unimaginative barbarians know of the tender passion?—nothing, save when it touched their own sluggish souls and bodies. Poor Monsieur Bayworth—so young, so gallant, always kindly and civil to Félicie herself. So unlike that prude, his mamma! Félicie had but one regret—that she had never seen Monsieur Bayworth in uniform.
Wantele was told the next morning. Bayworth Kaye—Bayworth, whom he had known with an affectionate, kindly knowledge from his birth upwards—dead? He felt a sharp pang remembering how coldly he and the young man had said good-bye less than a month ago. After all, it was not Bayworth who had been to blame for all that had happened during the last year....
He came down to breakfast hoping that the news which he had himself learnt but a few moments before was already known to Athena. If that were the case, she would probably stay upstairs. Breakfast in bed is one of the many agreeable privileges civilised life offers woman.
Only since General Lingard had been staying at Rede Place had Mrs. Maule come down each morning. She had evidently begun doing so during those three days which had laid so solid a foundation to her friendship with Lingard.
But if Athena were still in ignorance of young Kaye's death, then to him, Wantele, must fall the painful, the odious, task of telling her. He could not be so cruel as to allow her to discover the fact from the morning papers. Of late—and again Dick traced a connection between the fact and Lingard's presence at Rede Place—Mrs. Maule generally glanced over one of the papers before opening her letters.
Lingard came into the dining-room, and then, a moment after, Mrs. Maule and Jane Oglander together.
Wantele glanced quickly at his cousin's wife. With relief he told himself that Athena had heard the melancholy news. She looked ill and tired, her eyelids were red, her beauty curiously obscured.
She came up languidly to the breakfast table, and Lingard looked at her solicitously. She put out her hand and let it rest for a moment in his grasp. Her hand was cold, and he muttered a word of concern.
"I couldn't sleep," she said. "I shall have to take chloral again—it's the only vice Richard and I ever had in common!"
Lingard turned abruptly away. It had become disagreeable to him to hear her utter Richard Maule's name. And Athena felt suddenly discomfited. The plans she had made in the night became remote from reality.
She sat down and her eyes began following Lingard. He was waiting on Jane, taking trouble to get Jane what he supposed she liked to eat—and leaving her, Athena, his hostess, to Dick Wantele's care.
So far, she had never had the power to make Lingard neglect Jane in those small material things which mean so much to some women and so little to others. Personal service meant a great deal to Athena Maule. The sight of Lingard and Jane Oglander together was becoming unendurable to her.
"D'ye know, Dick, if there's any more news of Bayworth Kaye?"
It was Jane who spoke. She also felt ill and tired; she also had not slept that night; but Lingard's anxious look and muttered word of concern had not been for her. True, he was "looking after her" now, bringing her food she had no wish to eat, making her—and what a mockery it was—his special care.
But what was this that Dick was saying in so hushed a voice, in answer to her idle question?
"Yes, I'm sorry to say there is news—bad news."
The speaker was intensely conscious of Athena's presence. Did she know, or did she not know, what he was about to say? He added slowly, "Poor Bayworth Kaye is dead."
Jane uttered an exclamation of horror and concern. Athena said nothing; but she took a piece of toast out of the tiny rack in front of her plate, and began crumbling it in her hand.
"Yes, it's a terrible thing"—Wantele was now speaking to Lingard. "The poor fellow was an only son—indeed, an only child. We've known him all his life. It will be a shock to Richard——" He talked on, and still Athena remained silent.
But when at last Jane turned to her with, "I suppose you will be going down to the rectory this morning?" Mrs. Maule threw back her head and spoke with a touch of angry excitement in her voice:—
"Why did you tell me now, Dick, before breakfast? You've made me miserable—miserable! You know I hate being told of anyone's death. I hate death! No, I shan't go to the rectory—you can go, Jane, and say all that should be said from Richard and from me."
Lingard looked severely at Wantele. How stupid, how heartless, the young man was always showing himself! Why had he hastened to tell sad news which he must have known would so much distress Athena and Jane Oglander?
"I'm so sorry! I was afraid you would see it in one of the papers," Wantele spoke as if he did indeed repent of his cruel lack of thought.
Athena accepted his apology in silence. After a while she turned to her guest:—
"I wish you had met poor Bayworth Kaye," she said musingly, "he was just the sort of man you would have liked. He was tremendously keen——" Then she stopped short; looking up she had met Dick Wantele's light-coloured eyes fixed on her face with an expression of—was it extreme surprise or angry disgust?
She looked straight at him: "Don't you agree, Dick?"
"Yes, yes," he said hastily, "I certainly agree," and his eyes wavered and fell before her frank, questioning gaze.
CHAPTER XIII
Ces deux lignes-là vont à jamais ensemble."
Owing to the peculiar conditions of his life, a life led almost entirely apart from the rest of his household, Richard Maule seldom had occasion to see Hew Lingard and Athena together. But the owner of Rede Place always realised a great deal more of what was going on than those about him credited him with doing, and on his wife he kept a constant, secret watch of which she alone became sometimes uncomfortably aware.
As the fine autumn days—to the stricken man the pleasantest time of the year—wore themselves away, Richard Maule grew particularly kind and considerate to Jane Oglander.
He was very susceptible to the physical condition of those about him, and he noticed that she had altered strangely during the short time she had been at Rede Place. She was pale and listless; and often when with him she sat doing nothing, saying nothing.
Every time they were alone together—and that now was very often—the past came back to Richard Maule, especially that time of his life when he lay ill to death eight years ago in Italy.
Looking furtively at her strained, unhappy face, he would recall the agony of rage and despair in which he had lain at a time when he had been supposed by those about him to be absorbed in his physical condition—if indeed conscious of anything at all.
In those days Athena had still preserved a simulacrum of regard, of affection for her husband, and when she came into his room, when she stood at the bottom of his bed looking with mingled repugnance and pity at his distorted face, he longed to rise and destroy the wanton who had been so adoringly loved and so wholly trusted.
They were sitting together now, Jane Oglander and Richard Maule, on the afternoon of the day which had opened with the news of Bayworth Kaye's death. It was warm and sunny, and the three others had gone out of doors after luncheon—for Dick Wantele, Athena was well aware of it, had fallen into the way of never leaving the other two alone together if he could possibly prevent it.
Wantele could not understand Jane's attitude. Did she suspect her friend's treachery? He found it impossible to make up his mind one way or the other. In any case Jane and Lingard were not like normal lovers—but Wantele had lived long enough in the world to know that there is every variety of lover. Sometimes he thought Jane trusted Lingard so implicitly as to be still blind.
A letter addressed to Miss Oglander was brought in to her.
"It's from Mrs. Kaye," she said quickly. "May I open it, Richard?"
She glanced through it:—
"Dear Miss Oglander" (it ran), "My husband and myself thank you sincerely for your kind words of sympathy. Had I known you were the bearer of your letter I would have seen you. I am writing to ask if you will do me a kindness. I know that General Lingard is staying at Rede Place, and I write to ask if it would be possible for me to see him on a matter of business connected with my son. I venture to ask if he will kindly come at eleven o'clock on Thursday. I cannot fix any time before that day. I should have written to Mr. Wantele, but as I had to answer your note, I thought I would ask you to arrange this for me."
She told herself with quivering lip that of course Hew should go and see poor Mrs. Kaye. Hew was always kind. He would be patient and understanding with the unhappy woman.
Jane got up. Perhaps she could go and settle the matter at once. She looked at Richard Maule. He was turning over the leaves of a book. Richard would not miss her. There came over her a despairing feeling that no one now needed her, in any dear and intimate sense....
Once she had asked her small vicarious favour of Hew, she could write to Mrs. Kaye, and take the note to the rectory herself. It would give her something to do, and just now Jane Oglander was in desperate need of things to do.
Athena had said something of showing General Lingard the walled gardens which were all that remained of the old Tudor manor house from which Rede Place took its name, and which had been left by Theophilus Joy as a concession to English taste.
It was there, some way from the house, that Jane made her way, and there that she at last found those she sought.
Mrs. Maule had suddenly become alive to the many and varied outdoor beauties of her country home. All the nice women she knew were fond of gardening. It was the feminine fad of the moment, and one with which she had hitherto had very little sympathy.
Athena sincerely believed herself to be devoted to flowers, but she preferred those varieties that look best cut and in water. Still, to be interested in her garden, and in what grew there, belonged to the part which was, for the moment, so much herself that she was scarcely conscious of playing it.
Perhaps one reason why Mrs. Maule had never cared for gardening was because her husband's cousin was so exceedingly fond of it. The old gardens of Rede Place were to Wantele an ever-recurring pleasure, and, what counted far more in the life he had to lead, an infinitely various, as well as a congenial occupation.
As Jane walked through an arch leading to the pear orchard, she saw that Dick was giving instructions to one of the gardeners; a small sack of bulbs lay at their feet.
Hew Lingard and Athena Maule stood a little back, and as Jane came down the path, Mrs. Maule, instead of coming forward, moved further away. Instinct told her that Jane was seeking Hew Lingard with some definite purpose in her mind—and she determined to thwart the other woman. To allow Hew Lingard to continue his anxious deference to Jane were but cruel kindness to them both.
She put out her gloveless hand and laid a finger on Lingard's arm—it was the merest touch, but it produced an instant, a magical effect. He turned, and in a moment gave her his entire, his ardently entire, attention.
Wantele welcomed Jane with an eager, "What would you think, Jane, of putting a mass of starch hyacinths over in that corner?"
She tried obediently to give her mind to the question, but it was of no use, and she shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I—I can't remember what was there before——"
And then she called out, "Hew!"
But Lingard did not hear the call.
She moved a little nearer to where he and Athena were standing. Again she said her lover's name; but this time she uttered it in so low, so faltering a tone that Lingard might indeed have been excused for not hearing it.
She waited a moment for the answer that did not come, and then she turned and walked slowly away, down to and through the arch in the wall.
To Wantele, witness of the little scene, what had just happened seemed full of a profound and sinister significance.
As he had heard Jane Oglander utter Lingard's name, he had told himself that he would have heard her voice—had it been calling "Dick"—across the world. But Lingard was deaf to everything, to everybody, but Athena. He had become her thrall.
With a last muttered word of instruction to the gardener, Wantele turned and hurried out of the orchard. He glanced anxiously down each of the straight walks, and peered through the leafless fruit-trees. It was clear that Jane had already passed out of the walled gardens, and that she had taken the shortest way of escape.
He started in pursuit, his one desire being—in some ways Wantele was very like a woman in his dealings with his beloved—to assuage her pain, to lighten her humiliation....
Suddenly he saw her. She was standing on a little pier which jutted rather far out into the lake. Her slight figure was reflected into the water, now dotted with yellow leaves, and she was staring down into the blue, golden-flecked depths. Wantele felt afraid to call out, so perilously near was she to the unguarded edge.
He began walking quickly along the path which, circling round the oval piece of water, led to the pier, and Jane, looking up, became aware that he was there.
Without speaking, she turned and made her way along the rough boards.
Nothing was changed since yesterday, since this morning, and yet in a sense Wantele felt that everything was changed. Till now he had been doubtful as to what she knew—almost of what there was to know. He distrusted, with reason, his sharp, intolerable jealousy of Lingard.
He had spent a miserable hour after he had himself speeded the two to the Oakhanger. There are no relations so difficult to probe as the relations of lovers—even of those who have been and are no longer lovers.
Jane put out her hand as if they had not met before that day, and Dick took the poor cold hand in his and held it tightly for a moment before he dropped it.
"D'you know what to-day is?" she asked abruptly. "I hadn't meant to remind you of it, Dick—dear, kind Dick. To-day is the twenty-fifth of October, the day my brother died."
He uttered an exclamation of dismay, self-rebuke. How could he have forgotten? So well had he remembered the date last year that he had written and urged Jane to come to Rede Place, and on her refusal to do so he had gone up to London for two or three days; together they had made the long, the interminable, journey to the suburban churchyard where Jack Oglander had been buried.
Wantele's mind went back six years to that melancholy, that sordid, scene in the prison infirmary. They had sent the sister away, reassured her, told her there was a change for the better. And then suddenly young Oglander had sunk—but he, Wantele, had been there, with him....
She was speaking again, in a low musing tone:—
"It's so strange——" she said, and then amended her words—"Isn't it strange that death is so material, so horribly real a thing? It seems so hard that there has to be so much fuss. If only one could slip away into nothingness how much better it would be, Dick—wouldn't it?"
Her mind swung back to her brother. There came a gentler, a softer tone in her sad voice.
"I wonder if you remember that you were the only one who did not bid me rejoice that Jack was dead. I have never forgotten that. And you were right, Dick. It was a great misfortune for me that he died. He would have been out of prison by now—and we should have been together, abroad——He was so clever, I think we should have been able to make some kind of life—and you would have come and stayed with us sometimes——But it's no use talking like that, is it? I know I'm foolish, unreasonable, to-day, and you are the only person to whom I ever talk of Jack."
She was putting up her dead brother as a shield between herself and her distress, and Wantele respected the poor subterfuge.
"I know, I know," he said feelingly.
They walked on in silence for a while, then. "I think, Dick, that I had better go away."
"No, no!" he cried. "Don't do that, Jane! Believe me, that would be a very unwise thing to do. I take it that you and General Lingard"—he brought out the name of her betrothed with an effort—"have other joint visits to pay?"
She shook her head. "I haven't told anybody. Only the Paches know. He thought he ought to tell them."
"If you go away, Jane, he will almost certainly stay on here. It would be a pity for him to do that," Wantele spoke with studied calmness.
"Yes, I suppose it would," the colour rushed into her face. "I want to tell you something, Dick. Hew was very noble about my brother. I told him about it very soon after we first met one another. You see we became friends so soon——" She sighed. "Just friends, you know."
Wantele turned and looked into her face with an indefinable expression of shamed curiosity—an expression that seemed to ask a thousand questions he had no right to ask.
"And then he began to write to me," she went on rather breathlessly, as if answering some inward questioning of her own rather than of his. "I was amazed when I received his first letter—it seemed such a strange thing for him to write to me, and then he asked if he might come and see me before he went away."
She waited a moment, and went on, "I was the only person to whom he wrote while he was away. He's had a very lonely life, Dick,—no brothers, no sisters, and his mother died when he was a little child."
There was a world of anxious apology, of excuse, underlying her confidences.
When, at last, they went back into the house, they found General Lingard sitting with his host, and it was in Richard Maule's presence that Jane made her request—a request to which Lingard gave eager assent.
Of course he would go and see Mrs. Kaye, and bestir himself concerning her son's affairs! He had been very much struck by Mrs. Maule's account of Bayworth Kaye that morning. She had said other things of him to Lingard, but he naturally made no allusion to these when discussing his coming interview with Mrs. Kaye.
Athena had told Lingard, with angry scorn, of the way certain people in the neighbourhood had talked of her friendship with the young soldier, and he had felt that inarticulate rage and disgust which any decent man would have felt on receiving Athena's confidences. Lingard's opinion of the world had altered, and greatly for the worse, since he had made Mrs. Maule's acquaintance.
CHAPTER XIV
"Opportunity creates a sinner: at least it calls him into action, and like the warming sun invites the sleeping serpent from its hole."
The dramas of love, of jealousy, of hatred, which play so awful a part in human existence, only form eddies, perhaps it would be more true to say whirlpools, on the vast placid current of life.
The owners of Rede Place were not allowed to forget for long that in General Lingard they were entertaining a guest who belonged to the world at large, rather than to them or to himself.
It had been arranged that the next day, the twenty-sixth of October, Wantele was to take Lingard to a big shoot. Athena, when reminded of the fact by a casual word the night before, felt curiously pleased. The absence of the two men for a long day would relieve the strain, and make it possible for her to have a serious talk with Jane Oglander. Somehow, it seemed almost impossible to do so with Wantele and Lingard always about.
Athena was no coward, and the time had come when she felt she must discover what her friend knew, or rather, what her friend suspected—for as yet there was very little to know. And if Jane suspected the truth—the little, that is, there was to suspect—she must discover what Jane meant to do.
The men made an early start, and from one of her bedroom windows Mrs. Maule watched the dogcart spinning down the broad road through the park. Dick Wantele was driving; Hew Lingard sitting stiffly, with folded arms, by his side.
At last they turned the corner at the end of the avenue, and Athena went back to bed with the feeling that it was pleasant to know that she need not get up for another two hours, and also that, after her talk with Jane Oglander, she would be free to do what she liked all day.
As she lay back, feeling a little stupid and drowsy, for she had taken a dose of chloral the night before, Athena gave a regretful, kindly thought to Bayworth Kaye.
Yes, though no one knew it but herself, the gods had shown the young man that kindness which is said to prove their love. His only fault as a lover—a serious one from Mrs. Maule's point of view—had been an almost insane jealousy. He would have taken badly, perhaps very badly, her marriage to such a man as General Lingard.
It was well for Bayworth, and, in a lesser sense, well for her also, that he had died in this sad, sudden way. Death is the only final, as it is the only simple, solution of many a painful riddle.
Athena had not allowed the thought of Bayworth Kaye to trouble her unduly; but she had been uncomfortably aware that he might remain, for a long time, a point of danger in her life. She acknowledged that in the matter of this young man she had been imprudent, but he had come across her at a moment when she was feeling dull and "under the weather."
Poor Bayworth! He had taken the whole thing far too seriously. He had been so young, so ardent, so—so grateful. His death at this juncture was a relief. Athena paid his memory the tribute of a sigh.
And then she turned her thoughts to Jane Oglander. During the last few years she had had many proofs of Jane's deep and loyal affection for herself; but the type of woman to which Mrs. Maule belonged can never form any true intimacy with a member of her own sex.
Jane had always been ignorant of everything that concerned Athena's real inward life—the vivid, exciting, emotional life, which she lived when away from Rede Place. Bayworth Kaye had been the one exception to the wise rule she had made for herself very soon after her arrival in England.
Jane Oglander, so Athena was quite convinced, knew nothing of the greatest of the great human games—had never fallen a victim to that jealous, compelling passion which plays so tragic a part in the lives of most of those sentient human beings who are not absorbed in one of the other master-passions.
For Mrs. Maule had valued Jane's unquestioning love; she had rested in the knowledge that Jane believed her to be as spotless a being as herself. Why, Jane had not even suspected poor Bayworth Kaye's infatuation! Athena forgot that Jane had never seen Bayworth and herself together.
But though Mrs. Maule told Jane Oglander nothing of her own intimate concerns, she had taken it for granted that she knew all Jane's innocent secrets. And now, when musing over her coming conversation with her friend, she felt a sharp pang of irritation when she remembered how little Jane had really trusted her concerning Lingard. Why, she hadn't even told her of the correspondence between them! Jane Oglander, Athena was sorry to think of such a thing of one whom she had always set apart in her mind as an exception, had been—sly.
Since the night of Jane Oglander's arrival at Rede Place, the night when Jane had behaved, so Athena now reminded herself, so queerly, the two women had never discussed Jane and Lingard's engagement—indeed, they hardly ever found themselves alone together. This, of course, was Jane's fault quite as much as hers.
Now at last had come the opportunity to—to "have it out" with Jane; to defend herself, if need be, from any charge of disloyalty.
It took Mrs. Maule a considerable time to find her friend. Miss Oglander was in none of the usual living-rooms, neither was she in her own room or with Richard.
Was it possible that Jane had gone off for the day to the Small Farm in order to avoid the very explanation Athena wished to provoke? That was a disturbing thought.
And then, unexpectedly, she ran Jane to earth in a corner of the large library which only Dick Wantele habitually used, and which was at the extreme end of the house, furthest away from Mrs. Maule's boudoir.
"I've been looking for you everywhere," she exclaimed. "What made you hide yourself here, Jane?"
"Dick wanted something copied out of a book, and I thought I would do it now."
There was a look of fear, of painful constraint, in Jane Oglander's face; and as she came forward she kept the book she had been holding, a manual on practical cottage architecture, in her hand, open.
"There are such heaps of things I want to say to you, Jane, and somehow we never seem to have a moment!"
Jane looked into Athena's face—it was a penetrating, questioning look. Was it possible—perhaps it was possible—that Athena was speaking in good faith?
The other hurried on, a little breathlessly: "Of course I want to hear all about your plans. I know you mean to be married quietly in London——" She vaguely remembered that Jane had said something to that effect during their one conversation together. "But what will you do afterwards? Hew is not obliged to take up his new appointment yet, is he?"
There was a long pause—and then, "I don't know exactly what he means to do," Jane answered in a low voice.
They were both standing before the fireplace; Jane Oglander was looking straight at Athena, but Athena's lovely head was bent down.
"Haven't you thought about it? But I suppose you'll pay some visits first."
There was a touch of sharp envy in Athena Maule's voice. It was absurd, it was irritating, to think that Jane, even if only for a short time longer, would be Hew Lingard's companion, sharer in his triumphal progress—unless of course something could bring about the end of their engagement—soon.
"I meant I did not know about his appointment." In each of the letters he had written to Jane during the ten days they had been apart, Hew Lingard had discussed the possibility of his being offered an immediate appointment, but she was only now being made aware that the offer had actually been made.
As a matter of fact, it had not been made.
Jane tried to believe that her ignorance of a fact so vital to Lingard was not in any way Athena's fault—indeed, that it was nobody's fault except perchance her own.
"You mean you don't know whether he will accept what will be offered him? But, Jane, forgive my interference—he and I have become such friends—you must make him take it. It would be a splendid thing, a stepping-stone to something really big. You'll have to train yourself now to be a little worldly——"
Athena spoke with forced lightness. It would be dreadful if Jane in her folly made Lingard do anything which would be irrevocable. "You can't always live with your head in the clouds, you know!"
Jane felt as if the other had struck her; this flippant, hard-voiced woman was not the Athena she had always known.
"I don't suppose," said Mrs. Maule, at last looking up, and smiling into Jane's face, "that you've even made up your mind where you will spend your honeymoon?"
She was feeling slightly ashamed,—ashamed and yet exhilarated by this absurd, make-believe conversation.
Jane shut the book she held in her hand, and put it down.
"Athena," she said quietly, "I did not mean to tell you yet, but now I think I had better do so. I am going to break my engagement. I see—of course I can't help seeing—that it's been a mistake from the beginning."
"He was not good enough for you, Jane," said Mrs. Maule impulsively. "What he wants is a wife who will help him. You did not understand. I saw that from the first——"
Jane went on quickly:
"After all, men—and women, too, I suppose,—often do make that sort of mistake. It's a good thing when they find it out in time—as I have done. But I would rather not talk about it."
She changed the subject abruptly: "I feel rather worried about Mabel Digby. She's really quite ill. I thought of lunching there to-day, if you have no objection."
"Yes, do go there! Surely you know I always want you to do just what you like when you're here?"
Athena's voice sounded oddly loud in her own ears. It seemed to her as if she had lost control over its modulations....
As the door of the library closed behind Jane Oglander, Athena Maule sat down. She felt oppressed, almost scared, by this piece of good fortune. She had never thought things would be made so easy for her.
How mistaken she had been in Jane's attitude, not only to Hew Lingard, but to life! And how mistaken Lingard had been! Athena could not help feeling a certain contempt for him; but all men, so she reminded herself, are vain where women are concerned. They always put a far higher value on themselves than does the woman on whom they are wasting their pity, their—their remorse.
Why, Jane had shown herself more than reasonable just now. She had made no stupid "fuss," attempted no disagreeable accusations. She hadn't even cried! But then, Jane Oglander was just—Jane; that is a sensible, a thoughtful, to tell truth, a cold creature! Athena, to be sure, had seen her moved, terribly so, over that business of her brother, but all the emotional side of the girl's nature had been exhausted over that sad affair.
What Athena was beginning to long for with all the strength of her being had now entered the domain of immediate possibility.
There would be some disagreeable, difficult moments to go through before she could become Hew Lingard's wife. Mrs. Richard Maule, sitting there in the library of Rede Place, faced that fact with the cool, calculating courage which was perhaps her chief asset in the battle of life.
But she was popular, well liked by a large circle of people; she had little doubt that many of them would take her part—again she reminded herself that it would be very difficult for anyone to do anything else who, knowing her, had ever seen Richard Maule as he now was. She had heard of women doing far stranger things than that she was about to do in order to attain their wish.
She tried to remember the two or three names Mrs. Stanwood had uttered in a similar connection—but they were gone, irretrievably gone from her memory. No matter, the position of a woman whose marriage has been dissolved is quite other than that of a divorcée. Little as she really knew of English sentiment and prejudice, Mrs. Maule could be sure of that.
Athena's violet eyes grew tender. Hew Lingard respected as well as worshipped her; and should her dream, the delightful dream which was now taking such living shape, become reality, should she, that is, become Lingard's wife, she would never, never allow him to regret it.
She renewed, and most solemnly, the vow she had taken two nights ago. Ah! yes indeed—her wild oats were all sown! Athena Lingard would be a very different woman from Athena Maule. Besides, as Lingard's wife she would be free of England for a while.
She remembered vividly the day that he had casually told her that he expected an appointment abroad, for it had been the first time she had realised how utterly unsuited Jane was to be Lingard's wife.
Athena possessed the confident belief in herself and in her own powers that every beautiful woman is apt early to acquire in her progress through an admiring world. Such a wife as herself would be of immeasurable use to such a man as was Hew Lingard. Of that she could have no doubt.
Hew was not exactly a man of the world, in fact he seemed astonishingly indifferent to other people's opinion. Well, that told two ways. Just now, it was a good thing that he cared so little what others might say or think. Instinct told her that as long as he was at peace with his own conscience, his own sense of honour, Lingard would care mighty little what the world said—besides, the world would have nothing to say. They, she and Lingard, would have to be careful till the legal matter was settled—that was all.
During the long hour that she sat alone in the library of Rede Place, Athena Maule had time to think of many things, for she was no longer anxious or excited now—everything was going well. The rest, to such a woman as herself, presented no real difficulty.
She dwelt with a feeling of exultation on the thought of the punishment she was going to inflict on Richard. She wondered idly whether the step she was about to take would affect her marriage settlements. They had been splendid—with none of those tiresome "if and if clauses" that she was told settlements often contain. Well, that was a matter of comparatively small consequence. From what she knew of Lingard, it was unlikely that he would allow her to continue in receipt of another man's money. From a practical point of view it was a pity, of course, that Hew was like that, but she liked him the better for it.
She could not, as yet, form any very definite plan of action. There was plenty of time for that now that Jane was out of the way. She would go to London—London was very pleasant at this time of year—and once there she would get one of her clever friends to recommend her a really good lawyer.
Constructive thought—thought such as Athena had now been indulging in for an hour—is a fatiguing mental process. She felt tired, and quite ready for lunch, the principal meal of her day, when the gong sounded.
But before going off to her solitary meal, Mrs. Maule went over to that portion of the library where were kept several rows of old law books that had belonged to Dick Wantele's father. She marked the place where stood a solid volume inscribed, "A Digest of the Marriage Laws of England."
When she had a quiet hour to spare, and when no one was likely to see her engaged on the task, she would take that book down, and study it carefully: it doubtless contained information as to several matters of which she was as yet ignorant, and which it now behoved her to know.
CHAPTER XV
"... that supreme disintegrant, the Tyranny of Love...."
The Small Farm had become dear to Jane during the long miserable days she had lived through in the last fortnight. She had gone there whenever she wanted to escape from the intolerable pain of seeing Lingard's absorption in Athena Maule.
Each of the familiar rooms of Rede Place now held for her some bitter, some humiliating association. She never took refuge in her own room upstairs without remembering the long, intimate talk with Athena the evening of her arrival when she had been compelled to reveal more of her inner self than she had ever done in response to the other woman's curiously insistent, eager questioning.
Yes, no doubt Athena was right. Hew Lingard probably regarded a suitable marriage as a necessity of his career. She, Jane, had misunderstood him from the very first, proving herself, so she told herself with shamed anguish, a romantic fool.
In the region of the emotions there are certain secret ordeals which must be faced in solitude. Hew Lingard had taught Jane Oglander what love between a man and woman can come to mean. She had been ready not only to give all—but to receive all. This being so, she could not bring herself to endure the marriage of convenience she now believed to be all he sought of her.
She would have given all the exquisite happiness of the last two years—happiness the greater and the more intense because it was so largely bred of her imagination—to blot out the week she and Lingard had spent together in London. It was during those days she had learnt to love him in the simple human way which now made the thought of parting agony.
Unwittingly Lingard had done her a terrible mischief during those enchanted days. She felt as if he had stolen her from herself, rifling all the hidden chambers of her heart. She had given everything in exchange for what she had believed to be the great, the sacred, treasure of his love. And now he was scattering the treasure which she had thought hers at the feet of another woman who, she believed, had not sought it and to whom it was dross.
She had heard of such enthralments—a blunderer had so tried to excuse, to explain to her, her brother Jack Oglander's crime. Yes, Jack had been mad about that woman he had killed; that had been the word used—mad.
Mad? Jane Oglander, walking to the Small Farm, repeated the word—yes, Lingard had been made mad by Athena in much the same way as Jack had been made mad. When Lingard had implored her to marry him at once, during that hour on The Hanger, he had really been beseeching her to help him to escape. She saw that now—and perhaps, had she loved him less, she would have yielded.
But there are moments when love, though the most dissembling of the passions, cannot lie. Jane Oglander, when in her lover's arms, could not accept as gold the baser metal he, perhaps unknowingly, pressed upon her.
One thing remained to her. Nothing could take away from her the two years which had gone before. She had not yet destroyed, she did not feel that she need be called upon to destroy—until Lingard married some other woman—the letters he had written to her in those two years. She told herself that they had not been love letters, although to her simple heart they had seemed strangely like it.
Any day during the past two years she might have opened a paper containing the news of Lingard's death. But if that of which she had had so sick a dread had happened, she would have had something dear, something intimately secret and sacred, to bear about with her, locked in the inner shrine of her heart, for the rest of her life.
The present and the immediate future must be considered, and, as she had now told Athena of her decision, they must be considered to-day.
She remembered the many broken engagements of which she had heard—Jane wondered if those other women had suffered as she was suffering now.
The one thing she felt she could not do would be to go back to that little house in London, which to her would ever be filled with Hew Lingard—not Lingard as he was now, gloomy, preoccupied, avoiding her presence and yet painfully eager to obey her slightest wish—but Lingard the happy, the masterful lover who yet had been so tender, so patient with her.
What did other people do when they broke off an engagement or—or were jilted?
Jane tried to remember what she had heard such people did. One girl had been sent on a voyage round the world—another had refused to leave home, she had stayed and "faced it out."
Fortunately she was not compelled to consider either of these alternatives. She was mistress of her own life, and she had already learnt the hard lesson that to deaden pain—heart pain—there is nothing like incessant, unending work. She made up her mind to go to another part of London, and start once more the salvage work which lay on the edge of the great sea strewn with human wreckage.
But before Jane could do this, she must put an end to what had become, certainly to herself, and probably to Lingard also, an intolerable mockery.
Jane found Mabel Digby in bed; and the girl, though but little given to caresses, drew her down and laid her head on the other's kind breast.
"Yes, it's true," she said, "I'm ill, and I don't know what's the matter with me"—she lifted her face and pushed her hair back from her forehead with a tired gesture. "No, I won't lie. I don't see why I should pretend—with you! I'm ill, Jane, because Bayworth Kaye is dead. I lie here thinking—thinking only of Bayworth. It's all so horrible—I mean that he should have died when he was so unhappy. I burnt all his letters the day he went away. You can't think how sorry I am now that I did that, Jane. There was nothing in them, they weren't love letters—at least I don't think so——"
Jane gave a muffled cry of pain.
"Jane, come nearer, and I'll tell you something which may make you think a little less poorly of me. Bayworth did speak to me three years ago, before he first went to India. I have never told anybody—not even his mother, though she was always trying to find out. And when he came back I was so happy—just for a few days—and then, almost at once, he fell into Athena's clutches——"
And as she saw the other make a restless movement of recoil she added, "I suppose you don't believe me, but it's true—horribly true. I saw it all happening, but I could do nothing except feel miserable. I used to think—poor fool that I was—that everything would come right at the last. I thought she would get tired of him, and that I would get what was left." She broke into hard sobs. "She did get tired of him—but too late—too late for me!"
"I wonder, Mabel, whether you would like me to come and stay with you for a few days."
Jane felt that the way was at last opening before her. The grief, the angry pain, of the poor child now lying here before her soothed her sore heart.
"Jane! What an unselfish angel you are!" Mabel did not see the other's almost vehement gesture of denial. "Of course it would be the greatest comfort to have you here!"
Then, as the girl was nervously afraid that Jane should imagine her unwilling to speak of her engagement: "If you come here, I suppose General Lingard will leave Rede Place?"
"Yes, I suppose he will."
Mabel looked up. It seemed to her as if her own suffering was reflected, intensified, in Jane Oglander's sad eyes.
If only she could stay on here now to-day—and not see Lingard again! Such was Jane Oglander's thought, but she lacked the cruel courage. Richard Maule would be hurt and angered were she thus to disappear suddenly. More, it might even make him suspect the truth—the truth as to Lingard's infatuation—of which Jane thought him ignorant.
And so, when the dusk began to fall, she got up. Athena would be annoyed if she were not back by tea-time. Athena disliked very much being alone with her husband.
"Good-bye, Mabel. You'll see me some time to-morrow."
She hurried along the path through the trees and the bushes now stripped of leaves. She was oppressed, haunted, by the thought of Bayworth Kaye. Could Mabel Digby's story be true? Was Athena Maule a cruel, devouring Circe, lacking mercy, honour, shame?
Jane could not think so. To believe what Mabel Digby had told her would have required a readjustment of her whole view and conception of a nature and character she had humbly admired and loved from early girlhood. Jane had always unquestioningly accepted Athena's account of the humiliations and the trials which befall beauty bereft of the care and devotion of beauty's natural protector. Mrs. Maule, so Jane believed, made an unwilling conquest of almost every man who came within her magic ring, but till now Jane had never seen the spell working....
When more than halfway to the house, she heard the sound of wheels. Dick Wantele and Hew Lingard were coming back an hour sooner than they were expected.
She was glad it was so dark—but for that they must see her. She waited till the dogcart flashed past within two or three yards of the path on which she stood.
It looked as if Wantele was urging his eager horse, already within sight of his stable, to go faster.
Jane drew further into the underwood. She saw, as if the scene were actually before her, what would happen if she continued her way on into the house.
Tea was now served in Athena's boudoir instead of in the Greek Room. There the four of them, Jane, Athena, and the two men, came together each afternoon. Dick never stayed long. After a few minutes he would go to Richard, leaving the others—a strange unnatural trio,—till Jane also escaped, sometimes to sit with her host, oftener to some place where she could be alone.
This was what happened every day; and now she suddenly made up her mind that it should never happen again. It was her heart, her mind, which was sick and tired, not her body. It would do her good to go on walking till the time came when she could creep quietly into the house and go up to her room. Athena and Hew would think, if they thought of her at all, that she had stayed on for tea with Mabel Digby....
All at once, out of the darkness, she heard a familiar voice: "Hullo, Jane! You've managed to travel a good way in ten minutes. I don't think it is ten minutes since we drove by. I thought I'd lost you!"
It was Dick Wantele, a little breathless, a little excited by the chase.
"Then you saw I was there?"
"I always see you, Jane."
He spoke quite lightly, but Jane Oglander felt touched—horribly touched. The tears came into her eyes for the first time that day. Dick, and Dick's friendship, was all that remained to her—now.
"Did it all go off quite right? Had you a good time?" she made a valiant effort to control herself.
"A very good time! The duchess is most anxious General Lingard should go on straight there after leaving here."
She felt the underlying, criticising dislike of Lingard in the tone in which Wantele uttered the words, and she felt troubled.
Suddenly she stumbled, and her companion, putting out his thin hand, grasped her arm.
"Jane," he said quickly, "wait a moment! It's not cold. I want to say something to you, and I'd rather say it out here, where no one can interrupt us, than indoors."
He took his hand from her arm. "I trust to your—your kindness not to take offence."
"I shan't be offended, but—but must you speak to me, Dick? I've been so grateful to you for not speaking."
"Yes, I must speak. It's been cowardly of me not to do it before. It's about Lingard, Jane."
He waited a moment, but she made no movement.
"We are both agreed—at least, I suppose we are both agreed—that Lingard is taking the sort of adulation, the—the rather ridiculous homage, to which he is now being subjected, very well. But I don't think you realise, my dear,——" he waited a moment; never had he called Jane Oglander his dear before—"the effect on the real man—the extraordinarily disturbing, upsetting effect such an experience as that he is now going through is bound to have on any human being."
"I don't quite understand what you mean," her voice faltered; and yet what he said brought vague comfort with it.
"Well, it isn't very easy to explain. But I can't help thinking that one ought to be very merciful to a man who's being subjected to such an ordeal. Athena hasn't made it easier," he tried, and failed, to make the mention of his cousin's wife casual, easy. "Doubtless, without meaning it, Athena intensifies everything—she never allows Lingard to forget for a moment that he is a great man—a hero. You must remember that we had ten days—ten days of incessant glorification of Lingard before you arrived. He took it awfully well, but——"
"I do know what you mean," she said painfully. "Yet surely——" she stopped abruptly. Not even with Wantele could she discuss—not even with him could she admit Hew Lingard's attitude to Athena Maule.
"I want to tell you—perhaps I ought to have told you before, Dick,—that I've made up my mind to end my engagement."
They walked on in silence for a few moments.
"I suppose you realise what the effect of your doing this now will be on Lingard?" he said. "Mind you, Jane, I don't say that he doesn't deserve it! But I do say that if you do this you will drive him straight to the devil——" he waited a moment, but she made no answer to his words.
"Have you told Athena?" Wantele was ashamed of the question, but burning curiosity and jealous pain impelled him to ask it.
"Yes, I told her this morning. But, Dick, I want to tell you, I think I ought to tell you, that I don't——" she hesitated, hardly knowing how to frame her sentence—"I don't blame Athena. I'm sure she couldn't help what's happened."
"You press very hardly on Lingard, Jane."
He spoke with a terrible irony, but Jane did not understand.
"No, no!" she cried, distressed. "I press hard on nobody, least of all on Hew."