Proper pride

It is needless to say that all this excitement upstairs had created no small stir in the lower regions. The servants held a court of inquiry on it over their meals, and discussed the subject in all its bearings and from every point of view. Susan Parker, lady’s-maid, examined and gave evidence that on Tuesday night she was called to her lady, who was in a dead faint in the drawing-room; that the two following days she had kept her room, refusing to eat or drink, save a very little toast, or tea; and that she sat all day long looking as if she was crazed, with her hands clasped idly before her, and that she, Susan, had surprised her more than once reading a letter and crying bitterly.

John Scott, groom, gave evidence that by order of Markham, the coachman, he had driven the dog-cart over to meet his master by the eight-o’clock down train. That Sir Reginald was never in better spirits in his life, asked him how they were all at home, talked of going to the meet at Copperley Gate next day, and drove along at his usual spanking pace, smoking a cheroot, as happy as you please.

That an hour after they got home, as he was at his supper in the servants’-hall, Mr. Geoffrey had come down and beckoned him out, and told him to be ready with the dog-cart in ten minutes, as Sir Reginald was going up by the mail. That when he was ready at the side door, his master had come out, shaken hands with Mr. Geoffrey, and driven away as if the Old Boy himself was after him.

They were just in time for the train, and Sir Reginald jumped out and tore off, leaving his portmanteau and rug behind him.

It was agreed on all hands that there had been an awful row between Sir Reginald and Lady Fairfax, but they were obliged to return a verdict of “Cause not known.”

The following morning Reginald called at the Mayhews’, and found them at breakfast.

“By Jove, my dear fellow, how seedy you look!” exclaimed the Honorable Mark. “I suppose you had it roughish in the Channel?”

“No; I arrived yesterday, and went straight to Looton.”

“Then you had it roughish there instead,” remarked Mr. Mayhew with a grin.

“Mark, I have come to speak to you about this,” said he, producing the certificate and handing it over to him. “You don’t believe it, do you? he asked anxiously.

“Not I; no more than if it were myself,” said Mr. Mayhew, pausing in the act of voraciously devouring a grill. “I stand by you, Rex.”

“And you, Helen?”

“And I also, Regy. Although appearances are against you, I believe in you firmly. You need not have asked,” she added, sipping her tea and speaking between every sip.

“I really wish you would sit down and have some breakfast instead of standing on the rug in that uncomfortable way. Have a cup of tea at any rate, and we’ll talk it over together.”

Her woman’s heart was touched by his haggard wan face. He looked as if he had not slept for nights, and although his “get-up” was as studiously correct as ever, there was a careless, reckless air about him that half frightened her. He looked like a man on the brink of a brain fever.

“Nothing for me, thank you. If I were to swallow a morsel it would choke me just now. I need not assure you, Mark and Helen, that the certificate is a most wicked forgery. I never heard of, much less married, Fanny Cole, nor anyone but Alice Saville. I must unwittingly have made some bitter enemy to bring down on myself such diabolical vengeance, uprooting my home and estranging my wife.”

“Alice believes it then?” they cried in one breath.

“Yes, so she has told me. She declares she is no longer my wife, and will never see me again. She means to leave Looton and live in remote retirement with Miss Fane, where, reversing the Elizabethan valediction, she will do her best to forgive and forget me.”

“Reginald!” said Helen with wide-open eyes, “you are joking.”

“Do you think this a subject for jests?” he said sternly.

“Did you not reason with her?” asked his cousin vehemently.

“I did; I assured her of my innocence, on my word of honour. I reasoned with her as temperately as I could, till she nearly goaded me to madness. I could not trust myself to tell you what she said; but she concluded the interview by flinging me her wedding-ring. Here it is,” said he, taking it out of his waistcoat-pocket and laying it on the table between them.

At this tangible proof of the rupture they both stared in silent consternation. Presently Helen said:

“I need not tell you, Regy, how young and inexperienced she is—not yet eighteen. Make allowances for her, for she naturally received a great shock, and has been ill-advised by Miss Fane, whom, you know, I never could bear. Do not be hasty in taking Alice at her word; you know she is very fond of you.”

“If you had been present last night you would scarcely have said so,” returned Sir Reginald dryly; “but I have written to her this morning to say that, if she changes her mind, a line to the Club will find me for a week. She may have been carried away in the heat of passion to say more than she thought or meant. After a week it will be too late; I shall accept the liberty she offers me, and return to my profession. Fortunately my papers have not gone in yet. Now I must be going. You shall see me this day week.”

“Nonsense, man, you are coming to stay here.”

“No, Mark; many thanks to you. You would find me a restless, unbearable inmate. In a week’s time I shall have settled down and grown more accustomed to my fate—if fate it is to be. Meanwhile, I shall spare neither time nor money to find out the author of this certificate, scoundrel that he is!”

“Reginald, I am sure a man never sent it,” said Helen. “I’m sorry to say it of my own sex, but it’s safe to be a woman.”

“My dear Helen, if you knew how very small my circle of lady acquaintances in India was you would not say so. I don’t think so badly of your sex. Good-bye.”

The allotted week having elapsed, Sir Reginald found himself once more in Wessex Gardens, this time to dinner. He was no longer the pale half-distracted man we had last seen him. He looked quiet and self-possessed, as if his fate had overtaken him, and he had submitted to it without a struggle. There had been no letter from Alice; his plans were fully formed, and he would unfold them after dinner—this much he imparted to Helen as he escorted her downstairs.

During dessert the children came in—Hilda, aged six, and Norman, eight—both delighted to see their special favourite, Uncle Regy. But Uncle Regy was very slow this evening—no stories, no paper boats, no rabbits on the wall. True, he took Hilda on his knee, gave her all his grapes, cracked walnuts for her, with the reckless profusion of a young man, not an experienced paterfamilias, and finally carried her up to bed. But even the children could see that something was amiss, and told their nurse that Uncle Regy never laughed nor showed his nice white teeth once, and they thought he must be sick, he looked so solemn.

“Now,” said Helen, as she poured out coffee, “let us have it all. What have you been doing, Regy?—and what are you going to do?”

“I have placed the certificate in the hands of a first-rate detective, for one thing; I have written to the chaplain at Cheetapore; and I have effected an exchange from the Fifth to the Seventeenth Hussars—now in India—and go out with drafts early in February.”

“Oh Regy, to India again so soon?” said Helen with tears in her eyes.

“Yes,” affecting not to observe them. “Is it not a good thing now I have the Service to fall back on? After all, India is not half a bad place for soldiering, and we are sure to have a row out there ere long.”

“But why leave this country? Why not stay at home?”

“Because it will the more effectually muzzle Mrs. Grundy. It will be less marked than if Alice and I both lived in England and kept up separate establishments.”

“But would you?” asked Helen in an awe-struck tone.

“Certainly. Alice has stood to her guns, and as ‘Trust me all in all, or not at all,’ is my motto, we should never get on. As a married couple our career is finished. I remember hearing a cynical old bachelor say that the marriage service, instead of being the prelude to happiness and harmony, was almost always the ceremony that inaugurated a long and arduous campaign, a series of skirmishes, varied with numerous pitched battles. Alice and I have had one desperate engagement, and both vacate the field. We live to fight another day, but not with each other! Our married life was a short one—barely four months—and I find myself once more a bachelor; for as Alice declares she is not my wife, and as I equally solemnly declare that the other is not my wife, I conclude I am single. What do you think, Helen?”

“I think you are talking a great deal of nonsense, my dear Regy, and though you rail at matrimony now, in your heart you know very well that the last four months were the happiest of your life. You need not deny it, and if you did it would be useless. Go on,” waving her fan imperiously, “go on; tell me what you are going to do about Alice.”

“Of course she must bear my name and live in my house, but that will be the only tie between us. Unfortunately I am her guardian, a post I would willingly relinquish; but it is out of the question to do so. However, my solicitor will manage to represent me as much as possible. I do not intend to be brought personally into contact with Alice, much less with Miss Fane, who has fanned the flame with all her might, Geoffrey tells me.”

“And how have you managed?”

“I have opened an account in Alice’s name at Drummond’s, and made her an allowance of five thousand a-year. Her own money she cannot touch till she is one-and-twenty, excepting five hundred a-year, which her father very wisely thought ample for a girl in her teens.”

“Then why increase it?”

“My dear Helen, where is your common sense? Alice will have an establishment to keep up befitting her position as a married woman. I intend her to live at Monkswood, which has always been a kind of dower house. I shall shut up Looton, dismiss most of the servants, and send all the horses up to Tattersall’s on Saturday. I am going abroad for a month previous to returning to India, and start for Vienna the day after to-morrow. Now I think I have told you all my plans; have you any exception to take to them?” he inquired, drinking off his coffee and setting down his cup.

“I know you of old, Regy,” replied Mrs. Mayhew with a sigh. “Your asking me if I take exception to any of your arrangements is only a Chinese compliment; once you make up your mind nothing will alter it, so there is no use wasting words. I think you ought to stay at home instead of going to India. I think you ought to insist on bringing Alice to her senses; or suppose you allow me to take her in hand? Let her come here on a visit whilst you go out to Cheetapore and investigate this horrid business thoroughly.”

“No,” replied Reginald coldly; “Alice and I are strangers for the future. You will oblige me very much, Helen, by referring to her as seldom as possible. She thinks me a hypocrite, a deceiver, a thoroughly bad man. Such were her own words. She could not think worse of me if I were the greatest scoundrel that ever walked this earth.”

“Reginald, I am sure she does not,” pleaded Helen.

It was in vain she begged him to reconsider his decision. He listened to all she had to say with a kind of contemptuous tolerance.

“Very kind of you, Helen, to take her part in this way; very good of you to defend her; but, as you yourself remarked just now, it is only a waste of words.”

One has a good opportunity of studying Sir Reginald Fairfax as he stands on the rug looking down on Mrs. Mayhew, who, leaning back in the easiest of chairs, is slowly fanning herself.

Tall, slender, and graceful, his well-cut evening clothes fit him and suit him admirably. “Gentleman” is stamped on every line and lineament, and there is a leisurely ease and deliberation about everything he says or does; the repose that stamped the line of “Vere de Vere” is not wanting in the Fairfax family. His eyes are the most striking feature—so dark, so cool, so keen, they seem to read one’s thoughts like a book, to penetrate one through and through. His delicately-chiselled high-bred nose (to particularise each feature impartially) and proud sensitive nostrils he inherits from a long line of ancestors. Do not dozens of similar profiles adorn the walls of the gallery at Looton? There is a certain look about his well-cut lips—barely to be guessed at beneath his dark moustache—that to a close observer indicates a resolute, not to say imperious, disposition; and something altogether intangible in his bearing points out the soldier. A handsome, dark, daring face one could easily imagine leading the headlong hurricane of a cavalry charge.