V
On these warm August evenings Ishbel and Julia had their dinner in the garden under a beech tree. Ishbel’s bright courage seldom failed her, but she was grateful for Julia’s companionship and help during this the most trying period of her life, and Julia, glad to be necessary to some one, above all to her favorite friend, responded without any of the usual feminine fervors, and the harmony between them remained unbroken. Mr. Jones, helpless in body and bitter in mind, demanded every moment his wife could give him, but occasionally permitted Julia to take her place and read the war news aloud.
Between the defeat of the Boer forces at Diamond Hill and the beginning of Kitchener’s “drives,” there was less demand for mourning garments; the war, indeed, was believed to be over. Ishbel and Julia rose later and left the shop earlier. Both were haggard and needed rest. They made a deliberate attempt to enjoy their evening meal, refusing to discuss immediate deaths and hypothetical disaster, and tabûing personal topics. There was still plenty to discuss, and so many reminiscences of officers that had left their lives or their looks in the South African graveyard, that it was easy to steer clear of private anxieties. But one evening after the cloth was removed and they were alone, Julia said abruptly: —
“I had a letter from Harold to-day—directed to the shop. He had just learned that I had not gone to Nevis. He did not say who gave him my address —”
“Yes?” The word had a fashion of flying from Ishbel’s lips at all times. Now she sat forward in alarm. “Yes?”
“He says that I am to return to White Lodge to-morrow.”
“But of course you will not!”
“Of course not. I consulted a solicitor some time ago. He cannot compel me to live with him. On the other hand —”
“Yes?”
“As I am unable to get a legal separation I cannot prevent him from forcing himself into my rooms, annoying me in a thousand ways. He might even come to the shop and make a scene.”
“Well, it is my shop, and I can have him put out. Did you tell the solicitor other things? Is there really no chance of a legal separation?”
“He did not seem to think well of my reasons for wanting one. I could not bring myself to tell him much, and I have kept it in the background so long it seemed rather dim and flat—the little I did tell him. He said that mental cruelty existed largely in women’s imaginations. Then he consoled me by adding that if I refused to return, Harold might be betrayed into some overt act before witnesses, perhaps later give me cause for divorce. But I don’t think so. He is very cunning. His instinct for self-protection is almost abnormal. I told the lawyer I believed Harold to be insane, and he was quite shocked; said there was too much talk already of insanity in the great families of Britain, and it was doing them harm with the lower orders—intimated that it was my duty to keep such an affliction dark if it really had descended upon the house of France. When I told him I knew that at least two of Harold’s ancestors had been shut up for years at Bosquith, and not so long ago, he fairly squirmed. Then he advised me to conceal both my knowledge and my suspicions if I hoped for a divorce. The law is far more tender to its lunatics than to their victims. Harold, shut up for twenty—thirty—forty years would continue to be my husband on the off chance of his cure—while I consoled myself with the prospect of his release! On the other hand, if left at large he may give me cause for divorce. That was the only argument that appealed to me. My legal friend ended by advising me to return to Nevis—this, I feel sure, in the interests of the British aristocracy. I’d like to make over a few laws in this country.”
“That is what Bridgit says. The women of the lower classes might almost as well be slaves in the Congo. They can’t divorce a merely drunken brute, and a legal separation does them little good. If a man wants to desert his family all he has to do is to go to the Midlands or the North and disappear in a coal mine, while his wife, unable to marry a better man, sinks to the dregs in the effort to support herself, perhaps half a dozen children. The laws in this country might have been made by Turks. Who ever hears of a man being punished because he is the father of the child a wretched girl has murdered? Oh—some day—let us hope—But we have the present to deal with. Have you answered France’s letter?”
“Yes, I wrote him that I never should return to him, that I had had legal advice, that I was able to support myself, that I wished never to hear from him again. Also, that any further letters I received from him I should return unopened to his club. I did not write a page, but I fancy he cannot mistake my meaning.”
“I am afraid he will persecute you, but you must be brave. If necessary, you might hide in the country for a bit, or go over to Paris for me —”
“I shall stay here at work. He can do his worst.”
But, alas, it was always Harold France’s good fortune to be underrated. Julia, well as she knew him, had never yet gauged the depth and extent of his resources. Some strange arrest in his mental development, possibly a forgotten blow during boyhood, or a prenatal check, had left him with a quick, cunning, malicious, scheming mind which otherwise might have been brilliant, unscrupulous, and resourceful in the grand manner. Possibly it might have been useful as well; and this may have been the secret of those vague angry ambitions, always seething in the base of his cramped brain. Whatever the cause, his mind required a constant grievance to feed on, and whatever his limitations, they were never too great to interfere with the success of his devilish purposes.
Three mornings later Ishbel and Julia arrived in Bond Street at a few minutes before eleven. Royalty was expected at a quarter past, and as they ascended the stairs they were not surprised to see the forewoman, pale and trembling, standing at the turn. When royalty had arrived—unheralded—the day before, she had almost wept, and her assistant had succumbed and been obliged to leave the room. It was the first time that royalty had honored the shop in Bond Street, smart as it was, and when the princess left she had announced that on the morrow she should return with her two girls. Ishbel had felt sure that her women would not close their eyes during the night, and be quite unfit for the strain of the second visit. Therefore, she laughed merrily as she saw Miss Slocum’s twisted visage.
“Brace up! Brace up!” she cried. “You have nearly twenty minutes yet. And am I not here? Mrs. France and I will wait on their royal highnesses —”
“Oh, your ladyship,” wailed the woman. “It ain’t that—or, I mean I could stand it much better to-day. I’d made up my mind. No! It’s worse!”
“Worse?”
The woman glanced up the half flight behind her. The door leading into the show-room was closed. “Oh, your ladyship, there’s two awful creatures in there, and their royal highnesses coming in ten minutes. I told them to go —”
“But I don’t understand. Every one has a right to come here. I can’t have any of my customers put out for royalty. I am not being honored by a call. This is a shop —”
“Oh, yes, my lady, but you don’t understand. You’ve never had this sort —”
“What sort?”
The woman’s voice quavered and broke. “Tarts, my lady. Regular Piccadilly trotters, that’s what!”
Ishbel was as dismayed as the woman could wish. Followed by her equally horrified friend she brushed the forewoman aside, ran up the stair, and entered the show-room. The large windows, open to the gay subdued roar of Bond Street, let in a flood of mellow sunshine. The square room, not too large, and with a mere suggestion of the First Empire in its wall paper and scant furniture, was a severe yet delicate background for the most charming hats ever seen in London. Of every shape and size, but each touched with a fairy’s wand, these harbingers of autumn, hopefully prismatic, and mounted on slender rods, seemed to sing that woman’s face was naught without its frame, and that in them alone was the problem of the floating decoration solved.
But alas! no such fantasie was in the air this morning. “Creatures,” in truth! Two females, loudly dyed, rouged, blackened, bedecked in cheap finery, were overhauling hats, mantles, and chiffons, despite the protests of the livid assistant. Ishbel went directly up to the largest and most aggressive.
“I am so sorry,” she said with her sweet remote smile and her bright crisp manner, “but I must ask you to go. Some other time I shall be most happy to show you the things, but just now everything must be put in order as quickly as possible. I am expecting patrons who are in town only for the moment. As you see, this room is not very large. Be quick, Jeannie, will you?”
She turned her back on the two women, but the largest walked deliberately round in front of her.
“I say,” she said, “are you the boss?”
“I am—Jeannie—”
“I say. What’s a shop for if ladies can’t call and see things? Is this a private shop for your friends?”
“No, but this morning is exceptional. I really must ask you to go—” she glanced at the clock. It was nearly ten minutes past eleven, and royalty was hideously prompt. “I dislike being rude, but I must ask you to go at once.”
“Really, now!” The woman sat herself on the little sofa before the mantel and spread out her gaudy skirts. “I ain’t going to be put out. Brass is brass, and mine’s as good as any. Wot you say, Frenchie?”
“That’s what.” Her partner was holding a large hat on her uplifted arm, and twirling it from side to side. “And I want a hat. Don’t mind trying ’em all on, one by one.”
“If you don’t go at once, I shall call the police.”
“Police? Wot for? Ain’t we behaving ourselves proper? I call that libel, I do.”
At this moment the door, which Ishbel had taken care to close, flew open, and royalty entered, followed by two slim young daughters. The eyes of the lady on the sofa bulged, but her presence of mind did not desert her. She sprang to her feet and threw her arm round Ishbel’s waist.
“Your hats are too sweet, dearie,” she exclaimed. “I shall take four to-day and come back to-morrow —”
At the same moment the other woman, who had dropped the hat, lit a cigarette.
Royalty gasped, made a motion not unlike that of a mother hen when she spreads her wings to protect her chicks from a sudden shower, then shooed her girls out and down the stairs.
Ishbel made no motion to detain her. No explanation was possible. She saw ruin, but she merely removed her waist from the embrace of the woman and turned her white composed face upon both of the invaders.
“Will you explain what spite you have against me?” she asked.
“Oh!” cried Julia, passionately. “Can’t you see? France has sent them.”
“Right you are, dearie,” said the younger cocotte, smoking comfortably. “And here we stay till you pack up and go home to your lawful husband. Lucky you are to have one. Oh, yes, my lady, you can call in the bobbies, but this is the middle of Bond Street, and we’ll raise such a hell of a row as we’re being dragged out there won’t be anybody else coming up here in a hurry.”
Julia turned to her. “If I leave this shop and promise never to return, will you agree to do the same?”
“If you go back to your husband. If you don’t, here we, and more of us, come every day, unless, of course, her ladyship has us put out! Your leaving the shop won’t help matters any. You go back to White Lodge. France is an old pal of mine, but it isn’t often we see his brass. Jolly lark this is, too.”
“Very well,” said Julia. “I shall go.”
“You shall not!” cried Ishbel, passionately. “My business is ruined in any case. We can go to America —”
“And leave Mr. Jones? He is dependent upon you for shelter. Your business is not ruined. Of course the princess will not come again, but you have powerful friends that will explain to her and prevent the story from spreading —”
“Right you are. France ain’t aiming to spite her. But he’ll ruin every friend you’ve got unless you go home, double quick.”
“I shall go this afternoon.” And Julia ran down the stairs and out of the building before Ishbel could detain her.
VI
Julia took a closed fly at Stanmore, and in the avenue of White Lodge her eyes moved constantly from one window to the other. But on this bright hot afternoon there was neither sound nor motion in the woods. She feared that the house might be without servants, but as the fly entered the garden she saw that the windows were open and that smoke rose from the kitchen chimney. White Lodge was built round three sides of a shallow court, and after dismissing the fly, she attempted to open the door on her right, as it was close to the stair which communicated with the hallway outside her own rooms. But this door was locked. So apparently were the central doors, but the one opposite and leading into the dining room was open, and not caring to ring and announce herself, she crossed the court and entered; although this meant that she must traverse the entire house to reach the comparative shelter of her own apartment. The large rooms were full of light, but she was nearly ten minutes arriving at her destination, for she opened every door warily, and explored dark corridors with her eyes before she put her foot in them. But even on the twisted stair she met no one, and the house was as silent as the wood.
When she entered her boudoir, she saw that the door leading into her bedroom was closed. For a moment she was grateful, as it was a room of hideous memories, and she intended to sleep on her wide sofa as long as she was obliged to remain at White Lodge. Then she remembered that its inner door led into France’s rooms, and that she intended to move a heavy piece of furniture across it.
She opened the door cautiously and looked in. This room was very dark and close; the heavy curtains were drawn across the windows. By such light as she had let in she could define nothing but shapeless masses of heavy furniture, not an outline; it would have been difficult to tell a man from a bedpost. She was about to close the door and ring for a servant when the one opposite opened and the big frame of her husband seemed to fill the sudden panel of light. There was not a key in the boudoir, nor time to move furniture. Julia retreated behind a table.
France crossed the inner room at his leisure and entered. Julia almost relieved the tension of her feelings by laughing aloud. Every man that had come back from the Boer war looked ten years older, but she had seen no one before that looked ridiculous as well. Not only were his stiff hair and moustache gray and his bony face gaunt, but the copper color of the tan he had acquired during the months preceding his weeks in hospital clung to his pallid face in patches, making him look as if afflicted with some foul disease; and he had lost a front tooth. His glassy eyes, however, were less dull, and moved restlessly.
“Howd’y do?” he said. “Didn’t expect you till to-night or to-morrow. Good girls! Good girls!”
He was about to turn the corner of the table when he paused abruptly and his jaw fell. He found himself looking into the barrel of a small revolver.
“Sit down,” said Julia. “I’m willing to talk to you for a few moments, but if you come a step nearer, I’ll shoot.”
France made a movement as if he would spring. The pistol advanced, and he stood staring into the thing. He was a brave man on the battlefield, but he had never looked into the mouth of a firearm at close range, and he disliked the sensation it induced. He gave a loud laugh and sat down.
“Oh, well, my lady, have your dramatics. I can wait. What’ve you got to say? Seems to me you should have a good deal. Nice pair of liars you and your aunt!”
Julia took the chair directly opposite his.
“I have come back—”
“Oh, I say! That thing will go off. Pistols were not made for women to fool with.”
Julia put the pistol in her lap.
“I have returned to White Lodge to protect Ishbel, and for no other reason. Your plot was fiendish, and you won out. But I win now. I shall not leave you again, but I shall be my own mistress. I shall no longer call you names nor attempt to make you understand how I loathe you, but if you ever enter my rooms again or attempt to touch me, here or elsewhere, I shall shoot you without further notice!”
“Oh, you will! And how long do you think you can keep that sort of heroics up? You’ve got to sleep, and there’s not a key in your rooms.”
“There will be to-morrow. I left orders with the locksmith in Stanmore. I need not sleep to-night, and I shall meet him when he comes, and stand guard with this pistol. You interfere at your peril.”
“And do you think that keys can keep me out?”
“I shall use both keys and heavy pieces of furniture. You cannot enter without making noise enough to rouse me. And if you succeeded, you would gain nothing. I can always kill myself. I would boil in oil before you should ever touch me again.”
“You are hard for such a young ’un,” muttered France. “Gad, your eyes are like ice!” He made a motion as if to cover his own eyes, but they flashed with exultation, and he dropped his hand.
“Look here,” he said. “You can’t get the best of me. I gave you to understand there was to be no compromise. You were to come back to me, or your Ishbel would be ruined. Well, that’s what I meant. You chuck that pistol, and you do everything else I tell you to do, or I send those tarts back to the shop.”
“I can do no more to protect Ishbel than I have done already. But I shall not live to see my best friend disgraced and ruined.”
“Curse you!” shouted France. “Curse you!”
“Now suppose you listen to me a moment. Since you left England I have consulted not only a solicitor but an alienist —”
“A—a—what—”
“I believe you to be mad—”
“Don’t! Don’t!” France’s face was gray and loose. His eyes rolled with terror.
But Julia went on remorselessly, pressing the suggestion home.
“The doctor told me that it might be years before you would develop acute mania. Unfortunately, your rotten spot has not developed the lust to kill, or you would easily be got rid of. You can practise your former methods of cruelty on me no more, but let this fact compensate you—keep you quiet. Use it as a cud; chew on it and exult. It should satisfy you for the rest of your life. This is it: you have destroyed my youth, you have killed my soul, you have ruined my power of enjoyment in anything, you have left me nothing but a mind to carry me through the rest of my days. Even if you had died in Africa, I should never have given even a thought to loving and being loved like other women. For me you symbolize man and all the horrors that are in him. I live because my mind compels it, and because my mother is still alive. If this statement does not give you food for gloating, if you are incapable of understanding what I mean, then—” She laid her pistol on the table again and tapped it significantly.
But France took no notice of the pistol. He was staring at her with his jaw relaxed, and his eyes still full of horror.
“Did—didn’t—he say I might never go mad?”
“So you have thought of it yourself?”
“No—no—not really. But out there when I lay all night on that cursed veldt, and expected to die before they found me—I thought—thought—I had gone pretty far here, even for me—No! No! No! I never really thought it—it was only when I came to in hospital I was jolly glad to find that it had only been delirium—any one might mistake delirium—curse you, you red-headed witch! I had forgotten all about it.”
“And do you suppose that even if you had no inherited tendency to insanity, you could go the pace you did, do the things you have done for years, and not rot your brain —”
“How many men go the pace —”
“Not yours. If you hadn’t compelled me to return to you, I should have had you watched —”
“You mean to say you’d lock me up —”
“I shouldn’t waste a minute. You ought to be locked up on general principles. It’s a half-baked civilization that permits you and your sort to be at large. Strange laws! Strange justice!”
France gathered himself together and stood up, but he leaned heavily on the table. “You’ve got your revenge,” he said thickly. “Nothin’ I ever did crueller to you or any one than tell a man his brain’s rotten—and makin’ him believe it! Oh, God! Those eyes! If ever I do go mad, I’ll see nothing else.”
“Better think no more about it.” Julia, having subdued her keeper, felt a pang of remorse and pity. “Take my advice and go to Bosquith for the shooting —”
“And see that brat?”
“The duke will think the more of you. Remember he is not compelled to allow you a thousand a year. He has a sensitive vanity, and resents lack of attention. Besides, the sport will do you good.”
“And you?”
“I shall stay here.”
“And never leave the place?”
“I shall go to London for the day whenever I choose, and I shall ride and walk about the country. I have no desire to see any of my neighbors.”
“Very well. I’ll go. I’ve got to pull myself together. I can’t do it here. I’m still off my feed, or you wouldn’t have bowled me over like this. Before I come back, I’ll have thought out how to deal with you —”
Julia tapped the pistol again. “I have five others. I shall conceal them in different parts of the house, and carry this always.”
France gave a strangled cry and began to curse, with reviving enthusiasm.
Julia rose and leaned across the table.
“Be careful,” she said softly. “Keep calm. You are forty-six, your heart is not good, and blood cannot surge through your brain much longer with impunity. Unless you choose to court apoplexy —”
But France had bolted from the room. An hour later he was on his way to Bosquith.
VII
He didn’t return for a month. During that time Julia did not go to London. She was glad to be alone and to rest. For the first time she realized how tired she was, and enjoyed lying in bed late and being waited on. She felt as hard as she appeared to France, and cynically made up her mind to select from life such of its physical and mental pleasures as she could command and enjoy, since personality was denied her. She saw no hope in the future except the preservation of her bodily and mental integrity. Whatever else France might compel her to do, or however live, she must submit, as she could not spend her life flourishing a pistol. Now that she had found herself, knew that she no longer feared him, she guessed that he would take no further pleasure in frightening her; but the mere fact of his presence in the house year after year was enough to turn her into a mere shell. That she was already one she did not quite believe, despite her bitter declaration, for she knew the tenacity of youth and the buoyancy of her nature; but ten—twenty—thirty years!
And how long would her nerves last? To be forced to live under the same roof with a man whose mere glance made her nerves crawl was bad enough, but to sleep night after night, for months on end (save when she could persuade him to visit), a few yards from a possible lunatic, must wear down the stoutest defences of will and reason. There was a double cause for sleeping with one pistol under her pillow and another under a book on the table beside her bed. The situation had something of grim humor in it as well as adventurous excitement, and Julia shrugged her shoulders and felt grateful that she had inherited her mother’s nerves.
But she thought as little as possible, since thinking did no good. Moreover, in years she was young, and although her spirit was curdled and dark at present, its quality was fine and high; and for such spirits life is rarely long enough to bury hope, save for brief moments, alive.
For the present she read and walked and rode, her surface contentment increased by the cheering news from Ishbel that one of her powerful aunts, who was a personal friend of the outraged royal lady, had made a satisfactory explanation; and the princess, to signify her forgiveness and sympathy, had ordered several hats sent to her for inspection. It was not to be expected that she would risk a second shock by venturing into the shop in Bond Street again, but she was a conscientious soul, always recognizing the duties toward mere mortals imposed upon those of divine origin; and as discretion was a part of her equipment, the story never got about town. Ishbel’s business was saved. But it was a long time before Julia dared to enter that shop again.
She heard France return, late one night. She rose at once, put on her dressing-gown, and sat on the edge of her bed-sofa, waiting. But although he made an even greater noise and fuss than usual, summoning the entire staff of servants from their beds to wait on him, and spent at least an hour in the dining-room, he did not pass her door.
She met him on the following day in the living-room, a few moments before luncheon. He greeted her with an almost regal courtesy, asked after her health, and then preceded her into the dining-room. During the meal, although he looked the personification of serene amiability, he did not address a remark to her. Julia, puzzled but relieved, noted that he looked far better than when he had gone to Bosquith, that his hands were steadier, and that he drank nothing. At the end of the meal he rose with a slight bow as if dismissing her—from his thoughts, no doubt!—and left the room without smoking. It was probable that he was nursing his nerves.
The next day she learned that he had bought a string of hunters and a pack of fifty couples. A corresponding number of grooms and helpers appeared in the stables, as well as a pack huntsman, a kennel huntsman, and whippers-in. Hunting is the most expensive luxury, counting out dissipations, in which an Englishman can indulge, and Julia wondered at his sudden extravagance. True, he had never stinted himself in anything, and he was one of the best-dressed men in England, but, then, he had always schemed to make some one else pay, and since his social restoration his tailor had “carried” him. Relieved as she was at his avoidance of her, and to be excused from making conversation at the table, curiosity overcame her in the course of a week, and one night at dinner, when the servants had left the room, she asked him if he had joined the Hertfordshire.
“I have,” he said graciously.
“I thought hunting was so terribly expensive.”
“What of that?” he asked, with his new grand air. “Whatever is due my position I am not likely to forget.”
He uttered this copy-book sentiment, so different from his usual loose slang, as if he had rehearsed it, and Julia began to perceive that he had cut out a new rôle for himself, and was wearing it with his usual methodical consistency.
“But can you afford it? You know this is a matter which does not admit of debt —”
“I am not in the habit of being catechised, but I am willing to gratify you. I satisfied myself at Bosquith that neither my cousin nor his child has many months to live.”
“But I heard that the child was healthy, and that the duke was uncommonly well.”
“They are both in the last stages of tuberculosis, Bright’s disease, or diabetes, I have not made up my mind which. And I also satisfied myself that Margaret will have no more children.”
“Oh! I see. Then you expect to succeed shortly.”
“Within a year.”
“Then perhaps when you have what you’ve always most wanted in life, you will let me go my own way.”
For the first time his glassy eyes lit a small sinister torch, although they did not meet hers. They had not met hers since his return.
“You will be my duchess and do your little to support the prestige of the great house into which you have had the good fortune to marry. If you leave me, or in any way bring discredit upon me and my family, you know one penalty. Others you will learn if you cause me even the lightest displeasure.”
Julia laughed outright. “Really, Harold, you were about the only man I had never thought funny—for good and sufficient reasons! Now you are too absurd, with your airs of superiority over the mere female, and your new rôle of stage lord. You were more impressive when you were the ordinary male brute, for at least you were natural. You never were intended for an actor.”
“Actor?” His tones were still even. It seemed impossible to ruffle him. “I have told you that I expect to be Duke of Kingsborough in six months.”
“Even so. What duke do you know that puts on such airs? Even Kingsborough pretends to be simple and democratic.”
“The great peers of England have made a mistake in affecting a democracy it is impossible they should feel. They have only lowered the dignity of their position. I propose to raise it. When I am Kingsborough, I shall restore the ancient glories of Bosquith, and live as the old feudal lords lived, with an army of retainers, and a tenantry to whom my lightest word is law. I shall entertain as kings have forgotten how to entertain, and in no village on my estates anywhere shall an election ever be held again.”
“Good Lord! Do you fancy you can turn back the clock? This is the twentieth century.”
“I am not the only one who believes that the clock will turn back—to absolute monarchy. It is the only solution—barring Socialism—if we are to escape mob rule.”
This was the one thoughtful remark he had made, and she looked at him with a trifle less suspicion, then remembered having read an intensely conservative article in one of the reviews, not long since. She had left it in the library, she recalled. But it was odd that he should open a review. She had never known him to read anything but French novels and the Pink ’Un. Was he trying to educate his mind, late in life? Far be it from her to discourage him, even if it did lead to impossible dreams. She rose from the table.
“Well, it will be picturesque,” she said. “I suppose I shall wear gold brocade to breakfast —”
“I have not risen,” said France, in an even remote tone.
“Oh? What? Are you practising on me?”
France turned almost purple. But he made no reply. He merely rose with great dignity and left the room. Julia watched him cross the court with as much interest as amusement. His back was imposing, regal. Nature certainly had started in a lavish mood to fashion him, then suffered from a fit of spleen when she finished his shoulders, and vented it on his head—without and within! Poor devil, what mortifications awaited him! For the moment she forgot the bitter debt she owed him.
VIII
On the following day, at luncheon, France remarked:—
“I shall leave cards on the county. When they are returned, no one will be admitted. I do not wish you to have any relations with my neighbors.”
“I haven’t the least desire to have any relations with our neighbors.”
“And you will exercise on foot hereafter. I shall want all the mounts.”
“Very well.”
“If you wish to go to London, you will walk to Stanmore. I have given orders at the stables that none are to be taken from you, and the servants will take none to Stanmore.”
“Very well.”
Julia looked up, and their eyes met for the first time. In his was the strange glitter that had terrified her early in her married life and with which she had grown horribly familiar during her previous sojourn at White Lodge. It was an expression of utterly soulless mirth, such, no doubt, as lit the eyes of savages while watching their victims at the stake. She saw at once that he was devising new methods of tormenting her and debated whether it would be wiser to laugh at him or to let him think he was accomplishing his purpose. Being now poised and entirely without fear, it was her disposition to reveal herself, if only as a compensation for what he had made her suffer; but, on the other hand, she wanted what peace she could get; she felt no desire to vary the monotony of her life by egging him on to a point where, in spite of her pistols and her courage, he could easily, with his devilish resource, make her life unbearable. She believed that if she possessed her soul in patience, he would weary of the game and leave, even if he did not fulfil her hopes and go quite out of his mind first. She decided to temporize, and dropped her eyes.
“You make my life very hard, but I can only submit,” she murmured.
“I wish you never to forget that you are, so to speak, a prisoner of state.”
Julia controlled her muscles and replied demurely: —
“The king commands. I have only to obey. I shall probably expire of ennui, but, after all, I am only a woman, so what matter?”
“Quite so!”
Julia raised her lashes. The dancing glitter in his eyes was appalling. There was no doubt in her mind at that moment that his complete loss of reason was but a question of months. So much the better if she must merely humor a madman; that, at least, was “managing” without loss of self-respect. She sighed, and looked wistfully out of the window.
“I suppose you do not intend to permit me to follow the hounds?”
“Certainly not. I intend that you shall remain within the walls of White Lodge for the rest of your life and do nothing.”
“Oh, very well.”
Having banished all expression from her eyes, she looked at him again. This time he was regarding her with condescension and approval. “You may go to your room,” he said.
She thanked him and retired in good order.
He did not address her again for quite a month. Then he informed her that there would be a large hunt breakfast at the house on the following morning, and commanded her to appear. He had already entertained a number of red-coated men at breakfast, and Julia wondered at their complaisance in admitting him to something like intimacy; for, in spite of the position he had enjoyed for a time as a respectable benedict and heir to a dukedom, he had never made a friend, and it was patent that he was swallowed with many grimaces. But she guessed that noblesse oblige had much to do with it. The man had been accepted when placed in a position by his powerful relative to press home his social rights; therefore, was it impossible, in his fallen fortunes, to retreat to their old position, unless he proved himself a flagrant cad. Besides, he had fought bravely in South Africa, and personal courage and patriotism compensate for many shortcomings. Moreover, he was an admirable cross-country rider. He was safe enough for the present.
She dressed herself with some excitement on the following morning, for it was long since gayety of any sort had entered her life. But when she stood in her house gown among some twenty men and women in pink coats and riding habits, all chattering of the prospective meet, and of the one two days before, she felt sadly out of it, and wished she had been permitted to remain in seclusion. It was nearly two years since she had presided at a hunt breakfast, and then she had worn her own habit, and been as keen for the chase as any of her guests. But as she stood with a group of women waiting for breakfast to be announced, and answering polite questions, assuring her indifferent neighbors that her frail health alone forbade her joining them in the field, she was astonished to find that she did not envy them, nor did she feel the least desire to race across the country after a frantic fox. It seemed such a futile attempt at self-delusion in the matter of pleasure. What had come over her? Had she seen too much of the serious side of life during her eight months in London?
If she had wondered at France’s benevolence in permitting her to meet his guests and preside at his table, she was not long receiving enlightenment. They sat opposite each other in the table’s width, and before ten minutes had passed, he opened upon her batteries which hardly could be called masked. She had almost forgotten him, and was laughing merrily at a sally of the good-natured youth who sat on her left, when France leaned across the table and said softly: —
“Not so loud, my dear. You have forgotten your manners this last year. This is not Nevis.”
Julia was so completely taken by surprise that to her intense annoyance she colored violently. But she instantly understood his new tactics, and blazing defiance on him, regardless of consequences, turned to her neighbor. Whatever she might submit to in private, pride commanded that she hold her own in public.
But every time that she answered a remark addressed to her by some one opposite, his dry sarcastic glance crossed hers, and once he said, raising his voice: “Workin’ in a bonnet shop doesn’t improve manners, by Jove. But my wife is only a child yet, and my cousin Kingsborough and Lady Arabella worked too hard over her not to have been rewarded if she could have remained with them. Of course, I’m only a rough sailor.”
There was an intense and painful pause after this speech, although Julia paid no attention, and once more permitted her musical laugh, not the least of her charms, to ring out. She fancied this was the last time the county would honor White Lodge, but shrewdly surmised that it was the last time they would be invited. They had been brought together to satisfy her husband’s passion for inflicting torment.
And not once did he betray himself. He looked superior, tolerant, lightly annoyed, but never vicious. His guests pronounced him a cad by the grace of God, but too great an ass to know what he was up to. They had long since accepted the fact that he was off his head about his wife; and, although this was damned uncomfortable, could only conclude that he was trying in his blundering way to apologize for her; why, heaven only knew, as she could give him cards and spades on breeding. Julia secretly hoped that he would suddenly lose his self-control and burst out in a torrent of abuse, but France still had sentinels posted at every turn in his brain, and played his part throughout the breakfast without an instant’s lapse. He laughed tolerantly whenever he caught her making an observation or airing an opinion, but it was not until just before they rose from the table that he made another attack. The incessant sporting talk had ceased for a moment, and some one had mentioned Nigel Herbert’s books, apropos of his fine record in South Africa.
“Is he goin’ to hammer away at Socialism for the rest of his life?” asked one of the young women. “Awful bore, because he’s an old pal of mine, and I’d like to read him. Do use your influence, Mrs. France. He thinks a towerin’ lot of your opinion.”
“Oh, now! now!” broke in France. “Don’t encourage my little wife in any of her nonsense. She’s straight, all right, but an awful little goose about men. Hope you haven’t turned her head, Lansing,” addressing the young man beside her. “She’s only a child yet, and devoted to me, but I don’t want to be teased noon and night for a new toy.”
“By God,” muttered one of the men, “let’s take him to the duck pond. Serves us right for coming here. Wish I’d opposed his election. Silly asses, all of us. Leopards don’t change spots. But she’s a brick.”
Julia, at least, had won the admiration of the company by her attitude, after the first attack, of serene unconsciousness. She might have been deaf and blind, and at the same time there was no betraying note of defiance in her voice or flash in her eyes. It was impossible to call France cruel, but the guests, as they filed out, and got on their mounts as quickly as possible, voted that it must be harder to be shut up with a bounder like that than to have lost the prospect of being a duchess.
After they had gone, and Julia had brought the angry blood from her head by a long tramp in the opposite direction, she recalled a visit she had once paid with France to the castle of a young peer of the realm who had married a wealthy American girl for whom he had conceived an intense dislike. This man had appeared to take a peculiar pleasure in mortifying his wife in company, by an irresistible play of wit directed at herself. Julia had felt a passionate sympathy for the helpless young duchess, who had neither the subtlety of tongue nor the bad manners of the man who was spending her money, and had expressed her wrath to France in no measured terms. France forgot nothing. When he felt the time had come for a new weapon, he selected one that is in every husband’s armory, and, although he used it clumsily, possessing nothing of the young duke’s cold irony and glancing wit, there was no chance that it should miss its aim.
Julia was apprehensive that France, irritated at his failure to provoke her to retort, if not to tears, might seek other vengeance. But when they met on the following day it was evident by the expression of his eyes that he was quite satisfied. The arrogance of his manner, indeed, led her to suspect that his faith in himself was too great to recognize failure if it sprang at him, and for small mercies she was thankful.
It was nearly three months before he addressed another remark to her beyond polite phrases calculated to impress the servants. But one morning, shortly after the first of the year, he sent her word that he wished her presence in the library. She went at once and found him sitting before the table in a magisterial attitude. Before him was a long itemized bill.
“You have been ordering books,” he said in a voice of cutting reproof, as if speaking to a dependant who must be shown his place. “I gave you no permission to run up bills of any sort.”
“I have always ordered books—for years, at least—it did not occur to me.”
This time Julia was deeply mortified, and showed it as plainly as he could wish.
“You pretend to loathe me—your own word—and yet you are not too proud to run up bills for me to pay.”
Julia’s gorge rose, and her humiliation fled. “You compel me to live with you, and I am entitled to compensation. Besides, after all, you are my husband and I see no reason why you should not pay my bills. If you permit me to live away from you, that is another matter. I had nothing charged to you while I was earning my living.”
“If you want books, my lady, you can write to your mother for the money to pay for them. Silly ass I was to marry a girl without a penny. Who else would have married you if I hadn’t, and you thrown at my head? You ought to be thankful for bread and butter and a roof. No girl has a right to marry a man in my position unless she brings him her weight in gold.”
“What a pity I shall cost you so much when I’m a duchess,” said Julia, mildly. “You would better let me go at once.”
“When you are a duchess, you’ll have clothes, but you’ll have no books, and no more liberty than you have here. As for this bill, I’ll pay it—when I get ready—but I shall write to-day and tell them that you have no further credit. You can go now.”
Julia, as she left the room, felt dismayed for the first time. What should she do without books? The winter was very wet, and English winters are very long, and often wet. She was forced to remain indoors a good deal; and to sit and hold her hands!
In the course of another month she found a new cause for uneasiness. Several times she awakened suddenly in the night and listened to heavy breathing outside her door; and when France was unable to hunt he prowled unceasingly about the house in the daytime. It was all very well to wish he would go quite out of his mind, but to be forced to accompany him through the various stages might be too great an ordeal even for her sound nerves.
IX
She stood one morning at her window, staring out at the rain. She had evaded the question for days, but she faced it now. What was she to do? She had always despised women with nerves, the strong fibre of her brain and the steel frame in her apparently frail body balancing her otherwise abundant femininity. When women had complained to her of nerves, cried out that they hated life, she had felt like an entomologist looking at specimens on a pin. When they had demanded sympathy she had asked them why, if they didn’t like their life, they didn’t go out and make another. Bridgit and Ishbel had done it, and she had heard of many others, although few of these were in her own class. Had not her sense of fate been so strong, she should have gone herself years ago.
These superfluous women had not taken kindly to her advice, and when she had added that strength was the greatest achievement of the human character, they had merely stared at her. These confidences had not been many, but one woman had replied petulantly that politics and charities were not in her line, and one had reminded her gently that a woman did not always hold her fate in her hands. She had despised this woman more than any of the others. In her youthful arrogance and consciousness of powers of some sort, she had equal contempt for the woman who submitted to detested conditions, and for the man who was too poor to keep up his position and yet grumbled, without seeking the obvious remedy.
But her spirit was chastened. She had discovered one woman, at least, that was quite helpless, and it seemed to her highly ironic that this, of all women, should be herself. She had felt her independence so keenly during the eight months she had earned her bread, working as hard as any of her humble associates, after she had persuaded Ishbel that she was broken in. She had often been tried to the point of fainting, for she had been accustomed always to the open-air life, and it would take more than eight months and a strong will to make a well-oiled machine of her; but she had persisted, never thought of looking for easier work, always rejoicing in her liberty and in the independent spirit that had bought it. Moreover, she had formed the habit of work, and soon after her return to White Lodge she had begun almost automatically to wish for a regular occupation of some sort. She had understood then why Ishbel loved her business as she never had loved society and its pleasures. But after she had made over all the clothes she had left behind at her flight, and retrimmed all her hats, she realized that there is no joy to be got out of useless work; with the exception of the hunt breakfast she had not even crossed the path of one of her neighbors. Her evening gowns alone had proved necessary, as France, the day after his return, had issued an edict that she was to dress for dinner.
She had by no means forgotten her old desire to write, but although she had essayed it more than once, particularly during the past month, she could rouse her mind to no vital interest in fiction, although she had come upon themes enough during her sojourn in the world. She wondered if such productive faculties as she may have been born with had withered under the blight of her married life; not knowing that the genius for fiction survives the death of every illusion, being, as it is, quite outside the range of personality and watered by the lost fountain of youth. She had not, however, dismissed the belief, cunningly nursed by Bridgit and Ishbel, that she had talents of some sort, and that the expression of them would manifest itself in due course.
But now? What was she to do meanwhile? Where should she seek refuge against a possible disaster in her nervous system which might wreck her life? There was nothing here. If she fled to London and obtained employment of any sort, even in an obscure shop, France would carry out his threat and ruin Ishbel, one way or another. If he dared not employ his original method again—and why not? He was cunning enough to know that one sensational episode might be explained away, but not two of the same kind. There is nothing people weary of so quickly as explanations.
If she could only take up a difficult language. She had studied French and German during four of her years in the world, and knew the power of a foreign tongue to dominate the brain. She had intended to take up Italian, and it was the resource for which she most longed at the moment. But she could as easily furnish the library downstairs.
She was about to turn from the window and go for a ten-mile tramp in the rain, since nothing was left her but physical exercise, when she saw a fly crawling up the avenue. She was not particularly interested, as the occupant was more than likely to have a dun or a writ in his pocket, but she lingered, watching idly. The least event broke the monotony of her existence.
As the fly approached the end of the avenue, the door was flung open and a man jumped out impatiently, paid the driver, and walked rapidly toward the house. It was Nigel Herbert.
Julia’s first impulse was to run downstairs and embrace him. Her spirits went up with a wild rush. But she rang the bell and asked the servant if her husband was in the house. He was tearing across country with his pack on an independent hunt. She ordered a fire built in the drawing-room, rearranged her hair, and put on a becoming house frock of apple-green cloth. She observed with some pleasure that her skin was as white as ever, if her chin and throat were not as round as when Nigel had seen her last. Excitement brought the old brilliance to her eyes, and she smiled for the first time since the hunt breakfast. She ran downstairs and into the drawing-room. Nigel, who was standing before the fire in the chill room, met her halfway and gave both her hands a close clasp.
“Oh, this is so delightful—so delightful—how did you think of it—when did you come back—” Julia delivered a volley of questions, not only because she was excited herself, but because she saw that Nigel had come charged with so much that he could say nothing at the moment.
They sat down and continued to stare at each other. Nigel was far more changed than Julia. The smooth pink face she had first known was lined and rather sallow, his eyes had lost their careless laughter, his lips their boyish pout.
“Oh, South Africa! South Africa!” said Julia, softly. “How it has changed all of you.”
“Rather!” said Nigel, sadly. “Those that are left of us. Perhaps you don’t know that I am literally the last of my name now, except my poor old father—who has forgiven me once for all. I had four brothers and six cousins when this war began. Now I have scarcely a friend of my sex. At all events I know the worst. There is no one left to mourn for but my father, and he’ll go soon. But I haven’t a pang left in me—not of that sort. God! What a cursed thing war is! A cursed, useless, souless thing! But I’ll treat that subject elsewhere. I’ve come here to see you, and I don’t fancy we’ll be uninterrupted any too long —”
“Oh, he rarely takes luncheon here—and you are to take yours with me. Do you know that I haven’t had a soul to talk to since last November?”
“I know. And that is what I have come to see you about. I—” He got up and walked to the window, then back, his hands in his pockets. “The last time I made love to you—the only time, for that matter—you put me off, turned me down —”
“Alas! I only went out that night because the romantic situation appealed to me. What a baby I was! And since! Oh! oh! oh!”
She sprang to her feet, and running over to the fire, knelt down, pretending to arrange the logs. Tragedy rose on the stage of her mind, but at the same time she felt an impulse to laugh. The hard shell in which she had fancied her spirit incased, sealed, had melted the moment the man she liked best had appeared with love in his eyes. But tragedy swept out humor and took possession. She flung her head down into her lap and burst into tears. They were the first she had shed and they beat down the last of her defences.
“Oh, Nigel! Nigel!” she sobbed. “If you knew! If you knew! I never have dared tell one-tenth. I dare not remember —”
Nigel, like most of his sex, was distracted and helpless at sight of tears. “Yes! Yes!” he exclaimed, bending over and trying to raise her. “I know. You need not tell me. Please get up. I have so much to say—I can’t say a word while you are like this.”
She let him lift her and put her back in her chair. He made no attempt to take her in his arms.
He took the chair opposite hers and smiled wryly. “I don’t fancy I’m as impulsive as I was! Ishbel told me when I returned last week. If I had heard—say, during the first year of our acquaintance—I should have got one of these new motor cars and flown to your rescue without a plan. But much water has flowed under our bridges since then!”
“Don’t you love me any longer?” Julia sat up alertly and dried her eyes.
“I’ve always loved you and I fancy I always shall. But—well, we are only young once—young in the sense of love being the one thing to live and breathe for. And, then, I have had a resource! There have been many months when I have been able to put you out of my head altogether. That is what work, productive work, does for a chap. And after—well, soon after that night at Bosquith, I hated you for a time. You could never be the same delicious wonderful child again. That would have broken my heart if I had not both hated you and taken the first train into the kingdom of Micomicon. Even when I found you so charming, when I saw so much of you, that next season, I still congratulated myself that I was jolly well over it. But—well—you never really ceased to haunt me—you had a way of asserting yourself in the most disconcerting fashion. When I heard of the duke’s marriage, I began to worry—I knew that life would not go as smoothly with you—I had heard from the girls that you managed France very cleverly, saw comparatively little of him. Out there in Africa, I never was alone at night that I didn’t find myself thinking of you. But I never guessed—When the girls told me, I thought I’d go off my head. It’s too awful! Too awful!”
“It’s not so bad now. I have five pistols in the house.”
“I know. But what a life! It is so hideous that it is almost farcical.”
“People’s troubles are generally rather absurd when you come to think of them. And I fancy I’m a good deal better off than a lot of women. Many have husbands that are worse than lunatics, and as the divorce laws won’t help them, they suffer in silence, without a ray of hope. At least I may hope mine will betray himself in public sooner or later. I can manage him in a way, and of death I have not the least fear —”
“Oh! It is all too dreadful! How old are you? Twenty-five? It’s awful! Awful! But you must end it —”
“If I could conceal two alienists in the house long enough —”
“But you can’t. Nor would their certificate give you real freedom. I’ve no doubt he’ll go raving mad in time—but when one reflects upon what he might do first! No! I have not come here without a plan, and here it is: You must go to the United States at once and get a divorce. There is a place called Reno, where one can be got at the end of about ten months. Bridgit will go with you. We held a conclave over it—we two and Ishbel—not the first! Great heaven! What an eternity ago that seems—” He laughed bitterly. “Once—was it only seven years ago?—we three talked the subject over and came to much the same conclusions, but our plans were frustrated by France’s illness. Well—we were all young then, but it was a good plan and we readopted it. You must get away from this without delay—there has been enough! When the divorce is granted, I’ll follow and marry you if you will have me. If not, we’ll provide for you in whatever part of America you choose to live in. But I hope you’ll marry me. I don’t think I ever really loved you before. When Ishbel told me! When just now you crouched by that fire!”
“Oh, how good you all are!”
“I’ve not taken to philanthropy. I want you more than I ever did when we were both careless and young and arrogant. I never thought it could be. But either Time or what you have endured with that man has annihilated everything. Can you go to-morrow?”
“Oh! I must think. I don’t know. It is all very alluring. But I am not sure.”
“You mean that you don’t love me?”
“Oh, if I could! If I could!”
Julia sprang to her feet and threw out her arms. “Away from all this!—from the memory of it! The horror! And there are other memories behind those three months! I don’t know! I have felt so sure I never could forget. And if I cannot forget, I cannot love you or any man. I have never felt so sure of anything as of that.”
“You are but twenty-five, remember. The mind is not crystallized at that age. Even memory is fluid. I believe that anything can be forgotten, given change of scene—at your age, at least. A year in the United States, and all this will be a dream. At the end of ten months in a life which is like a French poster out of drawing, you will be a different being—no, you will have lived with your old sense of humor, and be the same enchanting creature—Oh, we young people take life so tragically, my dear, and we succumb so generously to time and distance! Blessed antidotes to life! Time and change! And you are full of buoyancy, to say nothing of your brains. Once I regretted that you had any. Where would you be without them? A woman must find them a pretty good substitute when man fails her. Oh, I have learned! The land of shadows in which we writers of fiction live is peopled with the luminous egos of women as well as with their conventional shells; we have only to take our choice! And you—I shall find Julia Edis again, with all her enchanting possibilities at least half developed. Oh, you are wonderful! When one thinks of what you might have become—of the brainless women that brood and brood. Will you go?”
“I must think! I must think!” The powerful suggestion in his words seemed to have delivered Julia Edis from the tomb to which she had crept in terror, but hidden and shivered intact. She ran up and down the room, she even thrust her hands into her hair as if to lift its weight from her struggling brain, that it might think faster. Freedom! The new world! The annihilation of memory! A quick divorce which would deliver her forever from the terrifying creature she had married, over to the protection of the new world’s laws. It was an enchanting prospect. She drew in her breath as if inhaling the ozone, drinking the elixir of that land of youth and freedom. And happiness! Happiness! Why shouldn’t she love Nigel —
But she stopped short and dropped her hands. Her whole body looked paralyzed. The youth seemed to run out of her face.
“It is impossible,” she whispered. “I cannot take with me his power to avenge himself, and he will do that by ruining Ishbel —”
“We have talked all that over. Ishbel will manage to protect herself. What are bobbies for —”
“It won’t do. A policeman at the door! People would soon hear of it—and stay away. Besides he is a fiend for resource —”
“Yes—but Mr. Jones can’t last much longer. And then—well, I fancy Ishbel will marry Dark—he’s on his feet again, and will be home before long.”
“Ishbel will never give up her work. Remember she took it up because it seemed to her the most vital thing she could find in life, not because she was driven to earn her bread. And it has become a sort of religion with her.”
“Ishbel never had been in love then! But if she kept the business on, she would have a husband to protect her. You would be out of it —”
“But not yet!”
“We are none of us willing you should wait, Ishbel least of all.”
“I know, but I can’t sacrifice her. I should be a beast. Harold is capable of writing the most frightful anonymous letters to hundreds of people —”
“Why the devil isn’t he rotting in South Africa? When I think of the hundreds of fine fellows—Oh, well, I’ve given over trying to understand space and fate. But I wish I could have run across him down there. I’d have shot him like a dog if I’d got the chance, and never felt a pang.”
“So should I! That is the most dreadful result of it all—the hardness, the callousness, the cynicism —”
“Oh, it will all fall from you. We don’t change much under the armor Life forces us into. Dismiss Ishbel from your mind. Take care of yourself. What is Ishbel’s business when weighed against a lifetime of horror and demoralization? Nobody knows this better than Ishbel. I fancy if you don’t go, she’ll chuck the business. It’s a deuced unpleasant position for her. And she has made enough to live on comfortably until she can marry Dark —”
“I don’t believe it. It might be years —”
The butler entered and announced luncheon. Julia smoothed her hair, feeling much herself again.
“I can see the force of all your arguments. And I am tempted. I don’t deny it. But you must give me time to think it over. Perhaps I exaggerate about Ishbel. But there is another point: I was not consulted in regard to my first marriage. I should be something more than a fool if I rushed blindly into another, no matter what the temptations. Still—Come, you must be starved.”