“And are your land-agent’s children allowed to run about in your gardens, when you are not living here?”
“I suppose they would be allowed if there were children — but my agent has only one son, and he is in the Guards.”
This paradise of flowers and wide lawns and flashing water was maintained for nobody, nobody but the gardeners and the birds.
Conway showed her the gardeners’ cottages, the perfection of small dwellings. She and Zamiel went over one that happened to be empty. Never had she seen anything so perfect — a mansion in miniature. Happy gardeners, thrice blessed gardeners’ wives, who lived with such comfort, in a world that seemed made up of woods and gardens.
Mr. Field listened with some show of pleasure to Mary’s praise of Madingley, as she walked slowly beside the wheelchair.
“My father made the place,” he said, in his low grave voice. “Whatever he created was perfect. He had the unerring eye, the sure hand. His shipyard was the finest in Scotland, and Field’s ships were known all over the world. He was not a self-made man. He began his career with an assured position, and a fortune which most men would have thought enough for a life of pleasure. But my father was a creator. To improve and to extend his business, to do things better that had always been done well, was necessary to his existence. He could not sit down in a paradise that another man had made. He had always in his mind the image of a great-grandfather, a dock labourer, who had made the business of John Field & Son, ship-builders, out of nothing but brains and labour. There is a monument in the crypt under Glasgow Cathedral that tells the story of Andrew Field. If I were not too much of a cynic, I should be proud of the race from which my father came — for they were men of iron, and there was never profligate, drunkard, or wastrel among them. It is because my father made this place and loved it that I try to keep things here as he would have liked to see them.”
“I can understand,” Mary said softly, “and I dare say you let your sisters live here sometimes.”
“Never,” he answered sharply, with a frown. “I will have no one else live in the place that I cannot enjoy. My sisters and I are antagonistic. We neither understand nor care for each other. My nephews, Austin and George, are the only pieces of my flesh and blood that have ever come near my heart. I have a liking for them that is almost love. Austin is a saint, and George is a fine creature — but not by any means a saint.”
They went through the stables which were the crowning splendour of Madingley — stables built round a spacious quadrangle, where a jet of water taller than the fountain in the garden shot up from a great oval basin of Scotch granite. There were loose boxes for forty horses, a forge, an infirmary, rooms for grooms and underlings, a saddle-room as large as a church, and everything in perfect order, though there were only three men in charge, where there had once been twenty grooms, a dozen lads, blacksmith, and veterinary surgeon.
It was a dead world. While the gardens suggested some scene of enchantment, where fairies had stopped the clock, the stables made Mary think of some dead city, like Pompeii or Herculaneum, where life had ended in a swift and sudden tragedy.
She saw the infinite pain in Conway Field’s face, as they went round the quadrangle, and then into the huge stable where door after door was opened by the men, showing the double row of boxes, each with a window above the manger — a place of air and light.
She fancied she could follow his thoughts, and realize the bitterness of them, as he looked into those empty places and remembered what had been.
He was unusually silent when they went back to the house, and did not allow Mary to read to him.
“Madingley must be my book for to-day,” he said, “a melancholy story. You can run about and look at things — pictures, china, ghosts. We will have no reading till after tea. Your dinner will be served in the garden-parlour, the prettiest room in the house — but you can have tea in the library with me.”
“You are not ill?” she asked, forgetting her rule of never talking about his health.
“Only tired.”
Everything in the house was in as perfect order as the gardens. The housekeeper was wife of Mr. Moffatt, the head-gardener, a stout, comfortable woman, with a pleasant face and pleasant manners, well-spoken but not superior, the antipodes of Mrs. Tredgold. There were half a dozen country-bred wenches under her control, and there was not a room in the great stately house that could not be made ready for occupation in an hour.
“Mr. Ridley said it was his master’s orders that you were to be made very comfortable, ma’am, so I’ve put you into Miss Field’s bedroom, which is one of the best in the house.”
“And has Miss Field never been here — since?”
“Never since the accident to her brother. He couldn’t bear anybody about him, poor gentleman. The house was full of people — Miss Field, and Mrs. Hailing, and Mrs. Sedgwick, and friends of Mr. Field’s — hunting gentlemen, but they all left next morning, and the house was turned into a hospital — nurses and doctors at every hand’s turn. I was a giddy girl of sixteen, half my time in the still-room and half at the sewing-machine, working for the housemaids, and I shall never forget that dreadful time when nobody thought Mr. Field could live to the end of the year. Oh, the long melancholy days in the silence where the nurses went about like ghosts in their hospital shoes; and the worse nights when nobody seemed to sleep, because of the sound of doors opening and shutting, slowly and softly, as if a murderer was creeping about in the darkness, and the sound of a nurse tapping at the doctor’s bedroom door, and the shuffling of his slippers as he hurried along the passage. It was all dreadful, and I thought Madingley could never be the same again — but my mother was housekeeper in those days, so I stayed on with her, and three or four underservants, in the dreadful house till my two-and-twentieth birthday, when I married young Moffatt, who was the cleverest of all the men in the garden, and bid fair to become head-gardener even at eight-and-twenty. My mother had lived with the Randall Danverses, and stayed on when Mr. John Field bought the estate. She was one of your old-fashioned servants, and she was buried from Madingley.”
The housekeeper, being once allowed to talk, was not easy to stop; but Mary liked her friendly chatter, and was deeply interested in the tragedy that had blighted Conway Field’s life.
She went about the house with Mrs. Moffatt while Garland unpacked and arranged her clothes with infinite pains, and as if for a lifetime, in the handsome, early-Victorian bedroom, where nothing had been altered since Miss Field’s occupation. She went about looking at stately rooms where there had been no life or movement for thirty years. A music-room where no one had made music — a grand piano shut like a tomb — a ballroom where no light foot had touched the floor, a dining hall with a minstrels’ gallery, where only the sound of brooms and scrubbing brushes had broken the mournful silence. In all these rooms it was the sadness rather than the splendour that impressed Mary Smith.
Late in the evening, after she had been reading for nearly three hours, and had just finished Jowett’s translation of the Phaedo, Mr. Field startled her with a sudden question.
“What do you think of my country place, Mary?”
“It is quite beautiful.”
“You like it better than Warburton House?”
“No.”
“No?” with surprise. “I thought it would take your fancy. It is more of a woman’s idea of a fine house.”
“It is splendid, but it might be anybody’s house. Warburton has more individuality. It is unlike any other house I can imagine. You know I have seen only pictures of grand houses, and read descriptions of them. They have all seemed alike, somehow, old or modern; the interiors seemed all of the same pattern. But Warburton House has individuality — what critics call the personal note.”
“You mean that it is the house of a collector.”
“It is your house. You have made it. Your mind is in every room — the gallery with the Italian girl in her common chair — so simple, so human, so unlike other st
atues.”
“Gibson’s tinted Venus was the rage in that same exhibition — a lovely thing — but they were wide as the poles asunder. Well, I’m glad you like Warburton House, as I shall always want you there. Well, Mary, it seems you do not greatly admire Madingley, and I must own that it is contemptibly modern. I hope you noticed the double staircase. That is the chief feature of the house from an architect’s point of view.”
“It is very grand.”
“It was meant to be grand. My father thought much of it. The landing is seventy feet by thirty. There are no statues, no splendid Oriental vases — as there ought to be — but my father was not a collector. If you were mistress of the house that is where you would receive your guests — when you gave a big party.”
He closed his eyes as he lay back upon his heaped up pillows, and there was a smile upon the thin expressive lips. He could fancy her standing there, against the dark red background in the soft light of innumerable candles, graceful, unconscious of her beauty, a tall slip of a girl with a lovely head and throat.
“That’s where you would stand to receive half the county, at one of your parties — a dance — or a concert,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at her. “You would be wearing a diamond tiara and a satin gown with a long train — a green gown, perhaps, like the sheath of a lily — would you like it, Mary? Would it please you to see the long procession coming up to you, open-eyed, smirking, admiring, all with the same words and the same grimaces, worshipping you — not because you are you, but for the amount of your fortune, and the splendour of Madingley. That’s what it all means, Mary. Not what you are, but what you have.”
She looked at him seriously, wondering that he should talk such foolishness, he who had been so full of melancholy thoughts as they went round the quadrangle, where the tall shaft of water leaping into the air was the only movement, and the whinnying of a serviceable pony the only sound of equine life in stables that had been built for a populace of horses. She was used to his moods and caprices, yet this change surprised her.
“You have known what it is to be poor. Would it make you happy to be inordinately rich?” he asked sharply, after a silence.
“No,” she answered, startled, with a look of pain. “It would be no good. My father is dead. I have no one in the world.”
“But for yourself? To be rich, to have crowds of slaves — all the dust-lickers of this earth. Would that be no good?”
“Oh, you know, you know,” she answered piteously. “You know my story. Why do you ask me such a question? What could I do with money? Nothing could bring back the things that I have lost?”
“What if I don’t know your story?”
“You must have guessed — and Mr. Sedgwick must have told you everything he knows about me — and he knows all.”
“He told me very little. I asked no questions. I have done with prejudices and suspicions since I have been lying in my mattress-grave.”
“Did he never tell you that I had a child?”
The delicate face flushed crimson as she asked the question. The shame of that unhallowed birth had never been forgotten.
“No.”
“I had a son whose birth was my disgrace — but whose life was my joy. I can never tell you how I loved him. He died before he was two years old. I had him less than two years, and I shall never cease to grieve for the loss of him.”
“My poor girl! And so that is your story?”
“It is all that is worth telling. His father was splendid in some ways — splendidly clever, splendidly handsome — a king of men. But he was false and cruel. I think he loved me at one time, after his own fashion, yet I was not sorry when he left me, although I knew it was for ever.”
“But he will come back some day and claim you. He will want you again.”
“Never — never — and if he did he would be nothing to me. My love was dead before my child was born. The child was the only tie that bound us, and when he died the bond was broken.”
“Well, let us hope he never will come back. We don’t want him, Mary. Splendidly handsome — a king of men. That sounds as if you still love him.”
“No, no, no! I had to tell you that to explain his power over me. I was not eighteen, and he was my master.”
“Tout comprendre est tout pardonner,” Mr. Field said softly. “I understand your poor little story. There is a story in most people’s lives, Mary, however commonplace the life may seem. Behind the stolid faces — out of harmony with the clumsy figures — there is one inner chamber, one romantic page — sometimes a tragedy. Some night at Venice I will tell you my tragedy. And now, my dear, you must forget your king of men, and remember that you have one true and loyal friend in the world — that as long as he lives Conway Field will want you, and will do all he can to make your life happy.”
She could not thank him. Her face was hidden under her clasped hands. There were tears in her voice when she tried to answer him, and her words of gratitude and affection were almost inarticulate. But Conway Field did not want to be thanked. He dismissed his reader with a smile, and the hand which he gave her lay languidly in hers when he bade her good-night.
XI
APRIL was nearly over when they landed at Venice. The winds and the waves had been kind, and Mr. Field was all the better for the sea voyage. From Southampton to Genoa in the big liner, from Genoa in a small coasting steamer, all had gone well, and the English invalid, with his men-servants and girl-companion, accounted for by the curious as a daughter or a niece, had been an object of interest to all the passengers.
Mary Smith was in Venice. From her window in the big hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni, a patchwork of deserted palaces, where every room must have had a history, she could look across the level water to the Church of San Giorgio, she could see the painted sails of the home-coming fishermen’s boats shining in the sunset, when the day’s work was done. She was in the city of dreams — the one marvellous city that custom cannot stale nor age wither. She was in Venice, and all that was sad and dark in her past life fell from her like a worn-out garment. She was a new creature in a new world. Everything she saw was so strange and yet so familiar. The churches, the palaces, the Piazza, the Custom House, the Rialto, were as well known in every detail as Hyde Park and Byron’s statue. She had seen them all and lingered over them in photographs, richly illustrated books, and Mr. Field’s Canalettos and Guardis. But the sumptuous beauty of Venice in the April sunshine was something beyond the power of art. Only in one of Turner’s pictures had there been the magic of the scene she saw in the golden evening.
Happily the atmosphere of the place suited Conway Field. He slept better in his room on the piano nobile — a room that looked as if it was haunted — than in his spacious bedroom in Warburton House. There he had every conceivable luxury. Here he had ponderous white and gold furniture that had more of archaic splendour than of modern convenience. There he had the quiet of a house enclosed in a courtyard, remote from traffic. Here he had the lapping of the sea against the stone parapet, the sound of many voices and the passing of many footsteps deep into the night, the distant cry of the gondoliers in the narrow canals; a life that in those soft sweet nights of April seemed to go on till morning. Yet here sleep was kinder, and Mary was not often summoned to sit beside his bed and read to him in the small hours. She had told Ridley to call her when his master was restless and miserable. And she sometimes sat in her dressing-gown, reading or working, with only intervals of slumber, till two o’clock in the morning, ready for such a summons. She was at the age that does not care about sleep, and when Mr. Field expressed his concern for her broken nights spent in his service, she told him that she had never been a good sleeper, and that she would rather read to him than lie awake and think.
“True, Mary, anything is better than long thoughts. And remember you are to be as late as you like in the morning. Morning sleep is sometimes sweet, full of beautiful dreams.”
“I have only one beautiful dream,” Mary said sof
tly, “and that does not come often.”
He knew that the dream was of her dead child. He knew what such dreams were like. He had had those dreams himself, more than thirty years ago — the dreams in which the dead was alive again, and never had been dead — and he knew how sweet such visions were, and the misery of awaking.
They had been drawn closer together since Mary had told him her story. They were drawn still closer when Conway told her the tragedy of his twenty-seventh year, more tragic even than the catastrophe that befell him when his favourite mare blundered at a fence, broke her back, and rolled over him in her death-struggle.
They had been in Venice about ten days, when he had his first wakeful night, and Ridley came at half-past one to tell Miss Smith that his master was awake, and very restless. Ridley thought that he was unhappy about something. He had sighed often, and seemed so miserable that Ridley for his own part had not been able to sleep. The valet had his bed in a room next his master’s, with the door of communication open, and was always quick to hear the electric bell.
Mary had been reading, with intervals of gazing out of the window, a gauze veil wrapped round her face and head to keep off the mosquitoes.
“What shall I read to you?” she asked, seating herself in a chair that always stood ready for her by the bedside. There was a table near the chair, heaped with books.
“May I read Rogers, or Shelley?”
“No, my dear — I couldn’t stand either. I don’t want poetry, or prose. Go back to bed.”
“I have not been to bed. It is a glorious night. I have been sitting by the window. Ridley told me you were restless.”
“He might have told you I was miserable, but he is too much a gentleman to tell my secrets. I have been cursed with retrospective thoughts. Stay with me for an hour, Mary. Shut your door, Ridley, and go back to bed. I will ring if I want you. And now switch off the light, and open the windows. The mosquitoes won’t find us if we sit in the dark.”
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