“Will you come with him?”
“Oh, to the Priory? I think I’d rather not. You see I feel so miserable, and as if I were guilty of—of——”
“Hush! That is absurd. If you come with us, there will be no question that it will be best for you as well as for Caryl. And it will show that her people understand. Now will you come?”
Still feeling as if she were held guilty by the boy’s father, Rhoda glanced towards him.
“If Sir Robert agrees, I’ll go,” said she.
The marchioness went over to him and they exchanged a few words. Then Lady Eridge came back.
“He agrees with me that nothing could be better. And he thinks that you had better both come at once. Of course you had better be near at hand, for there will be questions to answer, since the terrible affair happened in your room. And you will be near enough at the Priory.”
It was settled at once. Within an hour little Caryl had been removed to his couch on wheels, and wrapped up carefully, was on his way to the Priory, in the company of Rhoda, his grandmother, and one of his aunts.
Rhoda took care not to meet Sir Robert before leaving the house. She could not face those cold looks of his again. And it was with a very heavy heart, and a sense that, in spite of her utmost efforts, she had lost a dear friend, that she left the Mill-house for a second time.
CHAPTER XX AND LAST.
SIR ROBERT’S SECRET
Safely housed at the Priory, Rhoda escaped much of the terrible anxiety and distress which reigned at the Mill-house during the next few days.
There was an inquest, but Rhoda happily escaped once more the trial of being called as a witness. Her health had broken down under the strain of the past few weeks, and although she was allowed to see Caryl for a little while every day, she was kept very quiet and received no visits, even from her own people.
The ladies at the Priory were, however, very kind to her, and did their best to make her forget what she had gone through.
Nobody knew better than they what she must have suffered at the hands of the exacting and capricious Lady Sarah, who, with all her charm, had been a difficult person to live with.
At the inquest Jack Rotherfield was called as a witness, and he was either lucky enough or clever enough to disarm every one by the depth of his distress at what he had done.
He declared that, having had a little quarrel with Sir Robert recently, he had been shy of coming to the house, but that, having met Miss Pembury one day out of doors, he had been anxious for her to come out and speak to him again, as he wished her to make his peace with Sir Robert.
Not being able to attract her attention in any other way, he had on seeing Miss Pembury, as he supposed, at her window, fired a revolver which he always carried about with him; and to his horror, a scream had told him that the bullet had struck the lady whom he had until that moment believed to be Miss Pembury, but who he then discovered by the voice to be Lady Sarah.
The story was not at all a probable one, but Jack was in such a state of acute distress that he produced a favourable impression, and he was let off lightly in examination and re-examination by the coroner and jury.
Sir Robert was able to testify to the truth of the statement that there had been a little quarrel between him and Rotherfield, and to the certainty he felt that Jack would not willingly have injured Lady Sarah.
The verdict brought in by the jury was one of death by misadventure, and the threatened scandal was happily averted.
There was a good deal of gossip, there were rumours, there were whispers, but no arrest was made, and the affair was hushed up, though not without some trembling on the part of the families involved.
Autumn being now well advanced, there was a discussion as to what should become of the usual holiday at the Riviera, and in the end it was abandoned by Lady Eridge, who decided to remain at the Priory. There Caryl was to stay also, and Lady Eridge told Rhoda that she had questioned Sir Robert about his plans, and that he had decided to shut up the Mill-house and to go abroad.
“I then suggested,” went on the marchioness, “that we should ask you to stay with Caryl, and Sir Robert agreed. But really he seems to take no interest in anything since the death of his wife.”
Rhoda was quite ready to fall in with this arrangement, and she hoped that, before going away, the baronet would, on saying good-bye, show her once more a little of his old kindness. For the remembrance of his cold looks and harsh voice when he spoke to her on the night of Lady Sarah’s death had made a wound which did not heal.
To her bitter disappointment, she was told one evening, when she returned to the Priory after a walk into the town by herself, that Sir Robert had called in her absence, had said good-bye to his boy, and that he would start for Egypt that very evening.
Rhoda shed hot tears at the thought that he had gone away without one word to her. She had revered him so long, had sympathised with him, done her best to keep the difficult household going during the lifetime of his wife, that she felt deeply hurt at this lack of ordinary kindness which she had had a right to expect.
It prepared her for a future in which she would find herself cut off altogether from the Mill-house and its inmates; for she did not doubt that, when he returned in the spring, Sir Robert would send for his son, and she would then get her dismissal.
Rhoda felt that Lady Eridge understood something of her feelings, for the marchioness was very kind to her, and did her best to prove that her services were appreciated.
Perhaps Caryl, young as he was, understood too that Rhoda had not been treated quite well, for he said nothing to her about the farewell interview with his father.
The winter passed quickly for all that. Rhoda and Caryl became so devoted to each other that the thought of a possible parting, which was ever present to the woman and which often occurred to the child, grew more and more painful.
But at Christmas time there occurred one incident which afforded Rhoda for the time a little consolation.
It was a visit from Jack Rotherfield.
He arrived at the Priory one afternoon just after luncheon, and had a long interview with Lady Eridge in the drawing-room, at the end of which the marchioness sent for Rhoda. The marchioness rose from her chair, and, advancing towards the girl, who uttered an exclamation of horror on seeing who the visitor was, said in her ear, “He has behaved well to us, and he wishes to make some sort of apology to you.”
And with these words the marchioness left them together.
Jack, who was looking thin and ill, came frankly towards Rhoda. He did not attempt to shake hands:
“I suppose you are surprised to see me, Miss Pembury,” he said. “But as Lady Eridge sent for me to explain certain stories about poor Lady Sarah and me, which had come to her ears, I thought I should like to see you and to ask your forgiveness for my share in making you lose your home at the Mill-house.”
Rhoda was not ready with an answer, and she murmured some indistinct and rather cold words of acknowledgment.
“I know you did your best for her,” he said frankly; “and that you were perfectly right in doing what I so much resented. All the same, she would never have been happy with Sir Robert. And you know it. She irritated him, and she got on his nerves. They were an ill-matched pair from the first.”
“Why have you come?” asked Rhoda abruptly.
“Lady Eridge sent for me, as I told you. She had heard about those interviews poor Lady Sarah and I had before she was married. I told her everything. And I wanted to thank you for holding your tongue. You might have done for me altogether if you had appeared at the inquest, or if you had talked afterwards. I beg your pardon with all my heart for any harm I have ever done you, or for any I, in my mad rage, may have wished to do you.”
Rhoda could not but think that this frankness in a man of his character came perilously near to effrontery. But she was not inclined to stir up the ashes of dead resentments, and she told him that, if Sir Robert could forgive him, she would not hold back.
“I am writing to him to-night,” said Jack.
The interview was not very long, but when it was over and Jack Rotherfield had gone away, she fell to wondering what he would say about her in his letter to Sir Robert.
Her heart was still very sore about the departure of the baronet without a word of farewell to her, and she felt that he still associated her unfairly in his mind with all his misfortunes.
It was true, indeed, that she had always been at the Mill-house when they happened.
As the winter went on, Caryl, who received frequent letters from his father, without one word in them of Rhoda, became more and more disturbed as to his future.
He dictated his letters to Rhoda, who transcribed them for him; but, although they both knew that the baronet must recognise her handwriting, there was never any message in Sir Robert’s letters to his son, to any one except the ladies of the marquis’s family, and the head servants at the Mill-house.
These two, Rhoda and Caryl, began to talk about what they should do when the spring came, and the boy told her he intended to ask his father to let him go abroad with her, if she would not come back to the Mill-house with him.
And so the weeks rolled by until winter was over, and the early days of April found Caryl still at the Priory in the care of Rhoda.
There had been a long pause since Sir Robert’s last letter, and all at the Priory were rather anxious as to his movements. He had said nothing about coming home, had not answered a question put on the subject by his son, and there was much perplexity as to the cause of his silence.
It was now six months since the death of Lady Sarah, and the first horror of the event had passed away.
Rhoda had been pushing Caryl’s wheeled couch about the grounds for him to admire the early spring flowers in the borders, and the daffodils among the grass on the slopes opposite to the house, and she had just taken him indoors, when the fancy seized him that he would like a bunch of daffodils to put in the big flower-vase in the old nursery which had been given up to him as a sitting-room.
Rhoda went out to get the flowers, carrying on her arm a wooden trug containing a knife to cut them with.
She had got into the winding walk that led to the grass slopes when she suddenly became aware that there was a gentleman coming towards her from the little gate that led through the plantation.
She stopped, her heart beating very fast. For it was Sir Robert Hadlow.
He stopped too, and then he came towards her.
The joy she felt on seeing that he did not mean to avoid her got into her head and rendered her so confused and excited that she was without words when he came up.
Raising his hat rather formally, as she thought, but without the cold sternness which had characterised his manner on the fatal night of Lady Sarah’s death, he said:
“How do you do, Miss Pembury. I hope my unannounced arrival has not caused you any alarm. All is well, I hope, with the ladies, and with Caryl?”
“Oh, yes, they are all quite well. And Caryl, I think, is getting a little stronger. The doctor spoke very promisingly indeed only two days ago about him.”
“That’s excellent news. And you? Have you been well? I think, Miss Pembury, you are looking thinner.”
Rhoda reddened. She was beginning to recover some of her lost self-possession.
“I am glad to be able to say that you look better, much better. I think your change must have done you a great deal of good.”
“Not the least doubt about it. Next winter, if all goes well, I think I shall take Caryl with me if I go away.”
“You are longing to see him. Will you go in without preparing him? or shall I tell him first?”
“Well, first I should like a little talk with you. Can you spare me five minutes?”
“Oh, yes.”
She turned, and they walked in silence along the winding path, bordered on one side by a well kept hedge which was as yet only faintly green. He looked better and happier too, Rhoda thought, than he had done in the old days at the Mill-house. Certainly he had then led such a life of anxiety on account of his wife’s caprices and Jack Rotherfield’s escapades that domestic tranquillity was out of the question.
As the silence continued, Rhoda presently stole a glance at Sir Robert, and found that he was looking at her intently.
“You have been very unfairly treated,” he said abruptly.
The blood rushed into her face.
“I have been very happy—with Caryl,” she answered in a whisper.
“Yes. But while you were at the Mill-house you had to suffer a great deal, both from my wife and from me. Between the two of us the situation, for a girl, must have been almost unendurable. But for your feeling for Caryl you could not have borne it.”
“That’s all over now,” she said in a stifled voice. “I can remember only the best part of it, your kindness, and Lady Sarah’s brilliant charm.”
A shadow passed over his face.
“Yes,” he said solemnly. “That’s what I like to recollect. The best, the brightest side.” He paused and then said abruptly:
“I’m afraid I was rather brutal to you on that last night, the terrible night.”
Rhoda drew a long breath.
“Brutal! Oh, no. You couldn’t be that. You were cold, you even seemed hard, but it was because you were not yourself, you were—overwhelmed.”
He listened in silence, and there was a pause. They still walked along the winding path, where there was just room for two, side by side.
“It wasn’t exactly that,” he said. “I have a confession to make, a terrible confession.”
Rhoda’s cheeks blanched. What was he going to say?
“You were wounded, I suppose, that I went away without saying good-bye to you, when you had been so good to my boy, so patient with my wife, so conscientious for me?”
“Oh, pray don’t think about it. Of course, at such a time, after such a tragedy——”
He cut her short.
“Tragedy! Yes, it was a tragedy. Can you guess, I wonder, what a tragedy it was to me?”
“I think I can. Worshipping this lovely woman, in all her beauty and charm, the effect upon you must have been stupendous, unimaginable.”
Sir Robert turned upon her suddenly, with a fire she had never before seen shining in his eyes.
“That was not the worst part of it,” he said in a sonorous voice. “What I was suffering from when that awful sight was suddenly presented to my eyes was—self-reproach. Self-reproach so terrible, so keen, that I could have cut off my right hand, drowned myself, shot myself, in the depths of my own self-abasement.”
Rhoda almost thought he had lost his reason, so amazing, so preposterous did such an attitude seem in the husband who had done so much for a wife who neglected and despised him.
With a pained frown he went on:
“I have felt the need of confession for a long time, ever since, in fact, and now I must make it and have done with it, once for all. The sight of her dead white face struck me dumb with anguish, with self remorse, not because I loved her, but—because I hated her.”
“Oh, no, no. It’s not possible. When you were so patient, so tender, so indulgent!”
He turned to her quickly:
“And that was the reason why. I was not indulgent, but over-indulgent. It was to salve my conscience, to stifle it. Heaven knows,” he went on earnestly, “that I loved her passionately, desperately once. For years she was my ideal; to the last in appearance she remained my model of loveliness in a woman. But she had lost my heart long before she died. She could have kept it easily enough had she wished. But she did not wish. My affection bored her, and she killed it, killed it deliberately. Knowing that the link between us was so slender that it might at any moment snap, and wishing for Caryl’s sake to keep it intact, I put up with everything, I yielded to her in everything. I made sacrifices, I gave up my own wishes to hers. But,” and he turned upon her again with fire in his quiet eyes, “I should not have been so indulgent, so yielding, if I had loved her. It was the tragedy of it that I had grown to hate her. When she lay dead I felt remorse, excitement, horror. But of tenderness scarcely a trace. And,” he lowered his voice as if in shame, “it was because I felt as I did feel that I had to go away without seeing you, or speaking to you. I was afraid that you would find me out. It would have shocked you. You might have found out more too. So it was better that I should go as I did go.”
Half-stunned, Rhoda turned and led the way back to the house.
“You must see Caryl,” she said hoarsely.
She could scarcely realise the secret with which she had been entrusted. It was so hard, remembering his indulgence to his wilful wife, to understand the motive which had prompted his excess of kindness.
They went upstairs to Caryl’s room, after Sir Robert had met and spoken to the ladies of the house.
The boy had seen him from his window, and was clapping his hands with glee.
“Papa, papa,” cried he, “Oh, how glad, how glad I am!”
He seized his father’s hand, and received his kiss, and then he held out his other hand to Rhoda.
“Come here, Rhoda, come here,” cried he.
Timidly, and as it were reluctantly, she came. Caryl put her hand into that of his father, and held them together.
“Papa, you won’t let her go now, will you?” he whispered.
Rhoda was crying. Sir Robert looked at her very tenderly over the little wheel-couch, and said in a low voice as he pressed her hand in his:
“No, Caryl, I won’t let her go away again.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Florence Warden was the pseudonym of Florence Alice (Price) James.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. dinner-gong/dinner gong, newcomer/new-comer, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Punctuation: quotation mark pairings and a missing comma.
[Chapter XII]
“though Lady Sarah appared to be chattering idly to Jack” to appeared.
[End of text]