CHAPTER VIII.
ALICE’S OVERTURES ARE DECLINED.
Being an early riser, Sir Reginald took a walk with his son and improved their acquaintance before breakfast the following morning. They found their way to the stables by mutual consent. Sir Reginald was astounded at their empty condition.
“Where are the carriage-horses?—where are the brown cobs?” he asked authoritatively.
“Please, sir, Lady Fairfax sent them back to Looton more than two years ago, as she never used them. She never drives,” said the groom gloomily.
“Then what are these two hunters doing here?”
“Her ladyship rides ’em reg’lar!”
“Rides them! Do you mean to say that she rides that chestnut, ‘Cardigan’—the most ungovernable brute I ever owned? There must have been some great mistake in their coming here at all. These are not the horses I ordered to be sent down.”
“I allus thought so, Sir Reginald; but her ladyship would not hear of any change, and I must say she do manage that mad cracked beast uncommon. But he is no ways fit for a lady, nor indeed for a gentleman.”
“Well, see that you never saddle him for her again. Those are my orders,” he said, turning away. “She must have thought that I wanted to break her neck. Ignorance has certainly been bliss in my case. Many a wretched hour I would have spent had I known that Alice had adopted Cardigan as her park hack,” he muttered to himself as he walked towards the house in answer to the gong which summoned him to breakfast.
The same afternoon the Mayhews and Geoffrey arrived. After five-o’clock tea under the cedar, and a turn round the garden with Reginald, Helen was escorted to her room by her hostess.
“Shut the door and come here, Alice; I want to speak to you,” she said imperatively.
Alice, knowing from the tone of her voice that a lecture was coming, took a seat in the deep window-sill, and clasping her hands round her knees, looked up at her mentor with grave expectant eyes.
“There is no use in your looking at me with the air of a Christian martyr, you tiresome girl. What is this amazing piece of folly that I hear from Reginald?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” replied Alice innocently.
“He tells me that you received him as an utter stranger!”
“Of course I did.”
“I assure you, Alice, most solemnly,” said her friend, brandishing her hairbrush to give emphasis to her words, “that his patience is well-nigh exhausted, and you have bitterly, sorely disappointed him. Your power over him is rapidly waning, and no wonder. He told me in plain English that he would trouble himself no longer about you. He came home softened towards you by illness, time, and absence, and, little as you deserved it, laid his laurels at your feet. From all accounts you flung them in his face! What a foolish reckless girl you are! Your happiness comes to you, and you spurn it. ‘Too late, too late!’ will be the answer when you yourself go to seek it ere long.”
“But listen to me for one second, Helen,” interrupted Alice, vainly endeavouring to stem the torrent of her friend’s eloquence. “Hear me for an instant. I never expected him to come here; he took me utterly by surprise. Would you have had me volunteer an embrace—after our chilly parting, after three years’ absolute silence? I did humble myself to the very dust before him, and all in vain.”
“When? How? You are talking nonsense!” exclaimed Helen excitedly. “Nonsense I fail to understand.”
“Promise me, my dear Helen, that you will never breathe it to mortal, not even to Mark,” she whispered.
“Yes, yes, I promise,” returned her cousin with almost tragic solemnity.
“It was before Maurice was born. He never took any notice. I blush when I think of it,” she continued, burying her face in her hands. “I sent him Maurice’s photo too,” she murmured.
“Well!” with a gasp of amazement, “I cannot understand it. But you must remember that you treated him horribly. Do not despair of his forgiveness yet. I am sure that in your heart you love him dearly. Make one effort to win him back for yourself. I know how hard it is to conquer one’s pride, but surely the happiness of your whole life is worth a little humility, just as much as the throne of France was worth a mass.” Laying her hands on Alice’s shoulders, and looking down at her gravely, she said: “If Reginald leaves this to-morrow evening in his present state of mind, you will never see him again as long as you live! that is my firm belief.”
“Oh Helen! do you really mean it?” she faltered.
“Yes, of course I do. He will go out into the world and mix in society, where he will be made much of; petted by women, for whom a hero has attractions. Basking in the world’s smiles, rich, handsome, and successful, he will soon forget the proud, heartless, obstinate girl he once called wife. All sympathy will be for him. For you, living here in remote seclusion, eating your heart out with unavailing regrets, what will you do? You will not even have the comfort of your own compassion; all you can say will be, ‘It serves me right!’ And as year by year snatches a portion of your youth and beauty from you, you will settle down into a miserable, dejected, hopeless woman.”
“My goodness, Helen, what a horoscope! what a picture!”
“Then, Alice, unless you would see it a reality, be up and doing; rouse yourself, endeavour to be the gay lighthearted Alice of former days. Instead of cold looks and short answers, try once more smiles and jests, assume a virtue if you have it not; get out some of your former perfect wardrobe and make yourself as lovely as you can, and I promise you you will find yourself much happier ere long. You will make an effort to make friends, will you not, my dear girl?” said Helen, smoothing Alice’s shining hair and kissing her on the forehead. “As a wife, it is your duty to be submissive.”
“It is a very painful, difficult duty,” said Alice, laying her face against Helen’s arm.
“Do you wish to lose him altogether, Alice?” exclaimed Helen impatiently.
“No, no, I could not, I will not,” she whispered without raising her head. During the last few moments Alice’s love and pride had struggled in mortal conflict, and pride had been slain. After a silence of nearly five minutes, she raised her head and stood up, and turning her tear-stained colourless face to her cousin said:
“What shall I do if Reginald repulses me, as he most probably will, since you say he is so angry?”
“Never mind; after all he is your husband, in spite of the folly you both talk about ward and guardian. He is as much your husband as Mark is mine, and you need not be bashful in making stray little advances to him. It is not as if you were a stranger.”
“It will be just as bad as if he were. I told him we were to be strangers for the future.”
“You told him that!” exclaimed Helen with a gesture of incredulity. “I never heard of such madness—never! Impress upon him without delay that you have exercised your sex’s privilege and changed your mind. Run away now and get ready for dinner; the first bell was rung ten minutes ago. And let me see that you will be a good sensible girl for once, and, what is more important still, a good wife. Remember that we have always to give in.”
“If you only had any idea of the task you have set me, and how small and miserable I feel,” replied Alice, with her hand on the door-handle.
“Come, be off. Don’t talk nonsense. You have no time to lose. Don’t let me see that face at dinner—you look as if Melancholy had marked you for her own. Away with you,” cried Mrs. Mayhew, playfully pushing her out of the room.
Parker was amazed to hear her lady say:
“Get me out my white silk and gauze dinner-dress, please, as quickly as possible, and run down to the pleasure-grounds, and bring me a bunch of crimson roses.”
Twenty minutes later Alice appeared in the drawing-room, where she was the cynosure of all eyes except her husband’s; he merely swept her face with one cold glance, and resumed his conversation with Geoffrey.
She wore a long and exquisitely-made square-cut white silk, with a bunch of red roses in her bosom. A piece of black velvet was fastened at her throat by a diamond star, with solitaires in her ears to correspond. Dinner went off much more cheerfully than on the previous day. Alice and Geoffrey seemed to have forgotten their feud and fallen into their old ways; their gay repartees and small jokes provoked general amusement. Alice caught her husband’s eyes fixed on her more than once in grave, puzzled amazement.
In the drawing-room, Alice went unasked to the piano and sang two songs, “Rest on your battle-fields, ye brave,” and “The Rhine Maiden.” She sang the former with such intense pathos and feeling that Mrs. Mayhew and Mary were on the very verge of tears. Her pure, deliciously sympathetic voice called forth pleasure on every face except the one on which she wished to see it reflected.
Her husband continued his occupation of pulling Tory’s ears as unconcernedly as if there was not a note of music within ten miles. After a time a round game was proposed.
“Come along, Alice,” said Geoffrey, “and help me to count the markers,” emptying, as he spoke, a basketful of mother-o’-pearl fish on the crimson cloth. As she stood beside the table in the full light of the lamp, busily reckoning dozens of counters, her husband realised how lovely she was—lovelier than ever, as Helen had said. What could surpass the exquisite symmetry of her slender figure, her delicately-chiselled profile, or the graceful poise of her haughty little head? What her face had lost in its perpetual ripple of smiles it had more than gained in expression. She had grown, too, he discovered, at least an inch; her head was far above Geoffrey’s shoulder. How young and girlish she looked, not more than nineteen at the outside! Who would believe that she was the mother of that great boy upstairs? It seemed absurd. How well he knew her half-foreign tricks and gesticulations with her pretty taper hands, as she indignantly accused Geoffrey of purloining a dozen counters more than his share. Would anyone think, as they looked at her standing there, that she was utterly without heart, as cold and callous as a block of marble, a miracle of obstinacy, and unreasonable beyond belief?
Presently she approached him, outwardly with graceful composure, inwardly with much trepidation, and said, without raising her eyes above his enamel solitaire shirt-stud:
“You will play, will you not, Reginald?”
“Thanks, no,” he replied, leaning still farther back in his chair and languidly drawing Tory towards him by both ears.
“Oh do,” she persisted, nervously twisting her bangles round and round her wrist; “we are so few, and Geoffrey says you can teach us a new game.”
“No, thank you, Alice, I feel too stupid this evening.”
This speech was evidently said with intention, and a look that baffled and chilled her accompanied the shaft as it went home.
“Nonsense, my good fellow!” exclaimed Geoffrey from the card-table, “of course you’ll play. I never heard of such laziness. You will have to come to make up the number.”
Thus adjured, he was obliged to join the circle, where he ostentatiously selected the farthest seat from Alice. All the same he sat opposite her, and was forced during the game to address her frequently; but his tone was coolly formal, and frozen indifference was in his glance. Nevertheless, it was as much as he could do to keep his head cool, with those lovely wistful eyes opposite him. “What, in Heaven’s name, does she mean?” he muttered to himself over his cards, as more than once she made some remark and smiled at him across the table.
“Souvent femme varie, folle qui se fie. She has perhaps changed her mind in spite of her assurance to me yesterday. I shall not change mine, come what may.”
His answers to her questions were curtly polite, and he appeared totally absorbed in the game, and nothing but the game, and the enormous heap of counters that were piled before him.
“Just look at Reginald,” said Geoffrey, pointing enviously at his riches; “did you ever see such luck? What’s that saying about love and play? Something beginning, ‘Malheureux en jeu——’”
“Never mind French quotations,” interrupted Helen precipitately, and frowning and signing at Geoffrey, “but pay me the six counters you owe me.”
“What are you nodding your head and frowning for?” inquired this exasperating youth. “I’ve not said anything, have I?” looking round with an air of injured innocence.
“I’m bankrupt!” exclaimed Alice, suddenly folding her hands on the table and looking with a mock-melancholy face at Mark.
A reckless gambler, she had just seen her last counter swept away, and was utterly penniless. Loans were freely offered by Helen and Geoffrey.
Helen was only too glad to divert the conversation, but much to their astonishment she declined their assistance, saying, as she held a pink palm across the table: “Reginald is the richest of you all; he has made a fortune, and he is the proper person to pay my gambling debts.”
With a look of unqualified amazement he divided his heap of counters into two portions, and without a single remark pushed one of them towards Alice. In doing so she observed for the first time a deep scar across his wrist.
“What is that dreadful cut, Reginald?” she asked timidly.
“Nothing,” he replied shortly, pulling down his shirt-cuff and rapidly dealing out the cards.
“One of his many honourable scars,” explained Geoffrey. “It’s an uncommonly deep sabre cut he got that time he took the standard, and only——”
“Never mind standards and scratches, but go on with the game,” interrupted Reginald with a tinge of asperity in his tone; “it’s you to lead, Geoffrey.”
“I say, Rex,” returned Geoffrey, as if struck by a happy thought as he leisurely sorted his hand, “wouldn’t it be fun if you were to give a lecture, a public lecture, on the Afghan war, say in the Assembly Room at Manister? It would fill like mad, and you might send the proceeds——”
“To an asylum for idiots,” interrupted Sir Reginald impatiently. “Will you play or not, Geoffrey?”
“I’ll play, of course!” returned that youth tranquilly, “but why should we not temper cards with conversation? Here”—nodding towards Alice—“I play the Queen of Hearts!”
After breakfast the next morning, the ladies of the party sauntered about the garden and grounds. An easy-chair, a cigar, and The Times supplied the Honorable Mark’s requirements. Sir Reginald, declining Geoffrey’s challenge to a game of tennis, repaired to the library to write letters.
Alice having done the honours of the garden and shown Helen the most reliable fruit trees, ran back to the house for a basket, in order to gather some plums for dessert. In returning, she nearly came into collision with her husband at the garden-gate. Very much to her surprise he accosted her, saying:
“Alice, the carriage-horses and cobs will be here this evening. I beg that you will not send them away again.”
“But they are of no use to me, really. Auntie has her ponies, and I never drive.”
“But for the use of your visitors, and returning calls, a carriage is indispensable.”
“I never have any visitors, nor have I any calls to return.”
“Pray why not?”
“No one has called on me. Is not that an excellent excuse?”
“Am I to understand that you have no acquaintances?”
“With the exception of the clergyman’s family and the Ruffords, who live at the other end of the county, and the Grantleys, who are abroad—I may say, none.”
“Is this by your own wish?”
“Well, no; not that I care two straws for society, but I will not conceal from you”—with a faint smile and drawing a pattern on the gravel with her pretty little shoe—“that I am not a social success.”
“Do you mean me to understand that you are what is called ‘not visited’?”
“If you look at it in that light, I suppose I am not,” she replied, glancing towards the garden-gate, and moving a few steps in its direction.
“Will you permit me to inquire the reason?” he asked, following her and interposing himself between her and the garden.
“I would rather not tell you,” she answered in a low voice, picking off the blossoms of syringa that embowered the gate, and putting them into her basket.
“But you will have to tell me,” he exclaimed, leaning his back against the gate and setting his straw hat with its zingari ribbon still farther over his eyes.
“I cannot,” she faltered, blushing furiously. “There is no good in telling you; it will only make you—I mean,” correcting herself, “it may annoy you.”
“Annoy me!” he echoed; “I am quite accustomed to that. Pray don’t study me in the matter; I am used to being annoyed, as you call it. Come, do not trifle with me any longer—tell me at once why you are not visited in the neighbourhood.”
“I told you before I could not,” looking down the gravel path that lay between them and the house, and evidently preparing for an abrupt departure.
“You shall not go!” he exclaimed, seizing her by the wrist, as if he had divined her intention. “Neither shall you pass through this gate till you answer my question,” putting his shoulder against it and looking the very picture of resolution.
“Why do you tease me like this, Reginald? Do not detain me. Please do not ask me to answer your question,” she urged, endeavouring to withdraw her hand.
“You must, and you shall tell me,” he said angrily, involuntarily squeezing her wrist still tighter. “Neither you nor I shall stir until I know. As your guardian it is my duty to inquire into the reason that you are excluded from society.”
“Only as my guardian—not as my husband?” she asked in a low voice.
“Certainly—only as your guardian. You gave your husband a lesson lately that he is not likely to forget. Never allude to him again, if you please.”
“But I did not mean—at least I am sorry—I was hasty,” she stammered.
“Your sorrow comes too late—your sincerity is doubtful. Pray excuse my rudeness, but remember that it is to your guardian only you are speaking,” letting go her hand at last.
“Then, as my guardian, I don’t mind telling you,” turning away her face, and becoming perfectly scarlet as far as the ear and cheek that were visible were concerned.
“They think—they say——”
“Go on,” he urged inexorably.
“That I am a divorcée. There!” she cried, facing him, “the murder is out!”
“What!” he exclaimed in a voice that, although not loud, made her start. “You dare,” he said slowly, “to repeat such a tale to me?”
“I had no choice; you would hear it. There is no use in being angry with me; it is not my fault. You know very well that I do not deserve such a stigma—that every thought in my heart belongs to Maurice, and,” she added almost under her breath—“you.”
His sharp ears caught the last word.
“That is putting it strongly indeed. Nothing could be more forcible,” he replied with a sneer. “So they say you are a divorcée?” he continued, his passion repressed but at a white heat all the same, looking her over from head to foot. “Where are the grounds for this most infernal scandal that ever was hatched by evil-tongued old women? What is the story?” he asked vehemently.
“I do not know,” replied Alice, now perfectly composed. “Of course I would be the last to hear.”
“It does not appear to concern you much,” he exclaimed angrily.
“No, not much,” she replied, looking at him with her clear, frank, truthful eyes.
“By Jove, then it concerns me! Society about here wants a lesson in good manners and hospitality if in nothing else. If I can find out the originator of this outrageous calumny it will be worse for him. I believe, if he was here now, I would——But never mind, what is the good of blustering about it to you? I shall act, that is more to the purpose. How can you be thought a divorcée when you were never divorced? The story is senseless; you imagine it, perhaps.”
“It is not imagination that no one ever calls here, is it?” she asked dryly. “I believe it is thought that you sent me to Monkswood to hush up scandal and to save the Fairfax name, and that I am really as bad as ever I can be.”
“As bad as ever you can be!” he repeated, with remarkable fluctuations of countenance, and half under his breath. “As bad as ever you can be!” he repeated, his eyes alight with a sombre fire.
“I do not see that you need be so very angry, Reginald. Remember that it is my guardian,” emphasizing the word; “it does not concern you so much.”
“It does concern me. Nothing could concern me more,” he answered vehemently.
“If I had known you would have been so fearfully angry I never would have told you. How unreasonable and inconsistent you are. You insisted on an answer; you made me speak by main force”—holding up her slender wrist, which still retained the red mark of his fingers—“and when your wish is gratified you are furious. You are encroaching on the privileges of my sex; now are you not?” she asked with a smile.
“Did I do that, Alice?” he exclaimed aghast, pointing to her wrist. “I most sincerely beg your pardon. I was so determined to hear the truth that I forgot it was not a man’s arm I was grasping. I have been downright brutal, but the idea of anyone casting a slur on you of all people drives me beside myself. I am afraid I have been very rude and violent altogether; but you are acquainted with my temper of old, and time, as you may observe, has not improved it,” he concluded with a short laugh.
“May I look at your wrist?” he asked with real concern depicted in his face.
“You may,” she replied, frankly placing her thin little hand in his.
“I hope you will forgive me, Alice. I must have hurt you,” he added after a pause, dropping her hand with a respectful distant gesture, as if he had suddenly recollected himself.
“You did hurt me. You have no idea how strong you are; your hand feels as if it were made of steel. ‘I’ll forgive you this time,’ as Madame Daverne used to say, ‘but don’t let it occur again,’” she added with an assumed gaiety she was far from feeling.
After a silence of some minutes he said:
“I can promise you one thing, Alice, and that is, that you shall resume your proper position in society, and be treated with the respect to which you have every claim. Your good name and mine are one. We will not talk any more on the subject, and I need not detain you longer,” opening the garden-gate politely and standing aside to allow her to pass. But Alice was apparently in no hurry; she continued pulling the syringa mechanically.
“I want you to promise me something else, Reginald. Will you be friends with me,” she asked, raising her sweet wet eyes to his.
“Friends!” he echoed, fairly staggered by the question. “Friends!” he reiterated in a slow deliberate tone, “of course. As your guardian, I must be your friend; and I am,” he replied stiffly.
“That is not the sort of friend I mean. A guardian seems to me to be a sort of stern surly old gentleman, who doles out money, and orders one about, and keeps one in order, and is altogether horribly disagreeable.”
“Charming picture! May I ask if I am the original?” he inquired.
“No, of course not; you may be stern and disagreeable, but you are not old and surly.”
“You are really too flattering!”
“If you knew how few friends I have, how alone in the world I feel, you would not say no,” she urged.
“Did I say no?” he inquired with raised brows.
“You certainly have not met my advances halfway,” she replied with a forced laugh. “You will be my friend, will you not, Regy?” she pleaded, laying her hand timidly on his coat-sleeve.
“I thought we were to be strangers?” he returned, coolly and politely removing her fingers.
With a gesture of impatience Alice turned away, struggling hard to repress her tears, and with a fair assumption of dignity endeavoured to open the gate which a moment before had closed itself with a bang. She could hardly see as she bungled at the bolt.
“Allow me!” said her husband, starting forward to her assistance. To her unutterable dismay and disgust, one of her too ready tears fell with a splash on his slim brown hand. It had the effect of melting him at once. He gazed at Alice steadfastly, and with a softer look in his dark eyes than they had known for many a day.
“You foolish girl! if you really think my friendship worth having—do you not know very well that it is yours, and that, in spite of everything, I am always your best friend? How can I be otherwise? Much and often as I have wished it, I am not one of those who can forget.”
“Nor are you one of those who can forgive!”
“How can you tell?”
“How can you ask me such a question?”
“Well, we won’t argue about it. You say you want a friend?”
“I often want a friend to advise me—someone older, wiser, and better than I am.”
“I can hardly flatter myself that you allude to me,” he said, surveying his wife with the gravest astonishment.
“Yes, of course I do.”
“To obtain your good opinion has always been my ambition; but I had no idea that I held such a high place in your esteem. You have quite taken my breath away.”
“I wish you would not talk in this horribly satirical manner; it is not at all nice of you, Reginald—not a bit like what you used to be! What has changed you?”
“I am not the least like what I used to be; in many respects I was a fool,” he replied with perfect equanimity.
“Were you, really?” she said, stopping and looking at him with wide-open eyes. “What makes you say so? You are joking.”
“All right! let us imagine that I am joking. You say you want a friend ready with counsel and advice. What more can you desire than Helen?” waving his hand towards the garden. “If you are fond of taking advice—of which ‘I hae me doots,’ as the Scotchman said—there is no one who loves imparting it better. It will be a mutual satisfaction for both parties.”
“Now you are down on Helen’s little weakness; that’s rather a shame, you know. Of course I have Helen for a friend and adviser, but——”
“Excuse me for interrupting you, but may I light a cigar? It has the same effect on me that music is popularly supposed to have on the savage.”
“Go on, Alice,” he said, when he had lit up to his satisfaction; “you were telling me something very interesting just now about a friend. Why will not Helen meet all the requirements of the case?” he asked, with a mocking expression in his eyes.
“Do be serious.”
“Very well, I will,” he answered with sudden gravity. “You say you want an intimate, confidential, particular friend, and have done me the honour to offer me the post.”
She nodded.
“I beg to decline it in the most unqualified manner. I am your friend in the best sense of the word—I would cut off my right arm to serve you—but a friend at a distance, one that you will seldom hear of, much less see. The friendship of which you have visions is out of the question between us, and only possible between husband and wife. Be satisfied with your own arrangements; we are ward and guardian, nothing more. Do not be vexed with me for speaking plainly; you asked me to be serious, and I am serious. It seems to me that you do not know your own mind two consecutive hours, but I am not so changeable. You had everything in your hands the other day; it was a question of now or never. Two words would have bridged the gulf between us; you did not speak those two words, and now the occasion for them will never occur again—you let slip your last opportunity.”
“I do not in the least understand you,” she faltered.
“If you reflect for a moment, I think you will remember the two words—the key to the riddle.—Here comes Geoffrey,” he observed, as Geoffrey, in a cool gray suit, with a flower in his button-hole, came bounding towards them.
“Well, upon my word,” he exclaimed, “I’ve been watching you two for the last twenty minutes, talking away nineteen to the dozen, and had I not previously known I should have declared it one of the most promising flirtations I ever interrupted.”
“You are always thinking of flirtations,” said Alice, hastily turning away. “Come along, and help me to gather some plums; Helen is waiting for the basket.”