It was so natural that they should marry, and it would be so romantic. People were longing for something romantic — something to talk about, something that would permit of a good deal of gush, and just a spice of ridicule.
“They are both such wonderful creatures. He belongs to nobody — just stands alone, and docs everything off his own bat. She may be a Tremayne, with the blood of Crusaders in her veins, but who knows how she was brought up, or what she was doing before she was Conway Field’s salaried reader? Cornwall is not a large county, but one never meets anyone who knows anything about her. She has the Tremayne arms on her silver — yet one has it on the best authority that till Mr. Field’s will was made public she was only known as Mary Smith.”
John Rayner was pursuing her, and she knew it, and defied him, and perhaps even enjoyed the excitement. It was a silent battle that she was fighting, and she never looked handsomer than when she was moving about a crowded room talking to acquaintances without number, but always contriving to evade her pursuer.
George Bertram was there sometimes, and she knew that he was watching her, and was there on purpose to watch her and the haunting presence. He would try to get near her, and they would shake hands, and they would talk for five minutes — just a few trivial sentences about the room and the people who were there — and he would drift away, but only to watch Rayner from another part of the room. He was at least spared the annoyance of seeing her talking with the Rastac — for she showed consummate art in avoiding him, and her distant recognition was freezing enough to keep any man at arm’s-length.
There was a feverish excitement for Mary in such a night — when these two men were in the same room with her. Already the little autumn season — the time of big shoots in Scotland and Yorkshire and big races at Newmarket, was over. The parliamentary session was dragging its slow length to a close after a prolonged illustration of how not to do it, and Mary Tremayne was contemplating a winter in Rome, with the Sedgwick girls for her companions, and Elaine for her lady-in-waiting.
“After all, there won’t be much doing in my darling garden between now and March,” Mrs. Hailing told her friends, “and I have never seen Rome. It was a dream of dear Walter’s to take me there, but he couldn’t afford the travelling expenses for us both, so he had to go there alone. It was absolutely necessary for his Roman tragedy. How could he write his great act till he had seen the Forum?”
“I wonder whether Shakespeare ever saw the Forum?” said one superior person. “Some people think: that he went to Scotland with a strolling company, and that he must have seen Dunsinane. But, unless he was Bacon, I have my doubts about Italy.”
“You will have a lovely time,” said another friend. “Of course, Mary will do you tophole — the best and most recherché hotel — and a forty-horse-power car for rushing: about the Campagna.”
The Sedgwick girls were enraptured at the prospect of a winter in Rome. Julia had visions of fox-hunting in the Campagna, and fancied herself riding along the Appian Way, with the brush dangling from the off side of her saddle, and an eligible male to chatter with all the way home.
Clementina thought mostly of the nice people, the people in Debrett who were likely to be there, and the chance of Embassy gaieties, that had been so painfully absent during their previous visit.
It was quite absurd of Mary Tremayne to have refused to be presented in May, but as Julia and her sister were both Court-worthy, that didn’t so much matter. In the meantime, as Mary was going to pay for everything from the hour they left London, there would be all the more money to spend on their “rig-out.” Their father would have to come down handsomely, and perhaps Austin would be kind and remember for once in his life that clothes were wanted in the West End as much as in the East. He was now absolutely wallowing, the sisters said, yet the utmost he had done for the girls was a diamond pendant at Christmas and an amethyst necklace or so at Easter. He had; such queer notions — still lived in the same rooms, and in the same way, as when he was a barnacle. And if he were; to marry Our Lady of the Slums, meaning Mary, he would be ever so much richer; but that didn’t seem to come on.
Mary had a friend in Rome upon whose discretion she thought she could rely — the doctor who had come every other day to sit by Conway Field’s sofa, and feel his pulse, and look at him with the eye that can see. He was to find rooms near the Pincian Gardens, and servants, and a motor-car adapted to the work she would want. Her men-servants and Garland were to go with her, but for housemaids and kitchen she would have Romans. She liked the idea of seeing the frank smiles and brilliant eyes and teeth that flashed their whiteness from red lips and olive faces.
Everything was settled. Mrs. Hailing had been to say good-bye to her garden, and to amuse the head-gardener by meticulous instructions about work to be done in the winter.
All the fine clothes for the Sedgwick girls had been packed, with much help from Garland, who pitied the maid that had to wait upon such young ladies.
“One maid for the two is cruelty to animals,” she told Mrs. Tredgold. “Why, one and a half for each of them would be overworked. My lady doesn’t give as much trouble in a week as Miss Julia gives for a single dance — two hours messing about, and going off in a hurry with her right glove only half-buttoned at the last.”
Garland opined that a month of such work would kill her. She would rather be an under-housemaid, even if she had to do bedroom fires.
Mary was flying from her enemy. The pursuit had become intolerable. To be hunted down by the man who had blighted her life — the man she could never forgive.
She had thought of a winter in India — just to put so many more miles between her and Rayner, but it seemed to her that Rome was far enough; for though it would be easy enough for him to dog her footsteps there, as in London, it would hardly suit his convenience to leave the city where he was piling up a huge fortune. It would hardly suit him to turn his back upon the Stock Exchange, while he was, to use his own expression, on the crest of the wave.
She was thinking these thoughts as she sat by the fire in the room where her life had been spent with Conway Field — the room she loved best amid all her splendour; and it was her last day there till the May of another year. Clementina and Julia were finishing their shopping with Elaine Hailing, who had a way of leaving her preparations for a journey to the last day, and expecting to do wonders in an afternoon. The Sedgwick girls had gone with her — preferring a smart shop to any other form of entertainment, and promising to keep their aunt up to the mark.
“You wouldn’t a bit know what to buy, or what you would want, if you hadn’t someone in the know to advise you,” Julia told her, and Clementina said that her aunt was capable of leaving London without a warm coat or a fur stole, because she was going to Italy.
“You had better have a pony coat lined with ermine, and we will choose it for you,” said the dutiful niece.
They had gone directly after luncheon, and were to have tea in St. James’s Street, so Mary was sure of being alone to receive Austin, who was coming to bid her good-bye, and with whom she wanted to have much confidential talk about the things and the people in which they were both so keenly interested: her people, as she was beginning to call some of the patient toilers in that greater London.
The clock on the chimney-piece chimed the quarter after three, and Drayson ushered in a visitor:
“Mr. Rayner.”
Mary started to her feet.
“I am not at home to Mr. Rayner,” she said, with a flashing look that passed by the visitor to the butler in the background, who affected not to hear her, and quietly withdrew, shutting the door behind him.
“I told that man that I should be at home only to one visitor this afternoon,” she said angrily; “but no doubt you have paid him well to disobey my orders.”
“Whose fault is it if I did? Not his, at any rate, poor devil! Why do you play such tricks with me, Mary? I have told you that I came back to England to claim you — that I look upon you as my wife �
� just as much my wife now in the midst of your splendour as you were in the Chelsea lodging-house. My wife by a bond that cannot be broken — the consciousness that we have lived together as man and wife. No woman can forget that — no decent woman.”
“I am not likely to forget — so far I told you I agree, but only so far. The bond you refused to legalize shall never be legalized by me. You put the shame of an unmarried wife upon me. Do you think I have forgotten that?”
“You remember only the hard things. You don’t remember how I loved you.”
“I do!” she said passionately, bursting into tears. “I do remember what your love was like — and that is why I hate you.”
“What is the use of hard words, Mary? Wise people never hate each other, for they never know how soon they may come to want each other. You will have to marry me — that is a foregone conclusion — pleased or reluctant, you will have to be my wife. I will hem you round with reasons. I will encompass you with obstacles to any other marriage. You will have to marry me. The world will make you. You may have a will of iron, you may have a soul of fire — but the world is too strong for any woman. The world will make you marry me.”
“What do I care for the world — and what does the world care whom I marry?”
“I shall be the driving force behind the world. The world will be my will — the process has begun already — paragraphs — a romantic marriage — wealth and beauty — a man who has made himself a power in certain circles — a woman with a curious history — you must have seen some of these paragraphs!”
“If they were posted on the walls in giant type they would not affect me — or spoil any marriage you may be thinking of. I shall never marry. The shame you have put upon my life will prevent that. Your threats cannot frighten me. I am no more afraid of you than of the world. I shall go my way to the end — and I fear no man’s face.”
“You don’t know how unpleasant people can make themselves — the people who call themselves society. They have taken you up, made much of you — crowded your parties, sung your praise. Wait till they drop you, as they will when our history has leaked out — the mean surroundings of an unmarried wife. If you refuse to marry me, all those smart friends of yours — and your superior friends too — shall know that you are my cast-off mistress.”
“Coward!”
She went quickly to the bell and rang long and loud. He followed her and put his hand upon her arm, the hand that had held her when she was lifted half conscious into the railway carriage at Camelford Road. He let her go the next moment as the door opened and Drayson stood waiting to show him out.
Drayson had earned his bribe, although he might have waited a few minutes longer, and given the intruder a better run for his money.
Mary flung herself into a low chair by the fire and sobbed passionately, with covered face.
She knew for certain that the man who had betrayed her when she was a helpless girl, ignorant of evil, meant to persecute her now that she was a woman strong in the power of knowledge and great wealth.
There was a rapid step in the long gallery, the door opened quickly, and Austin Sedgwick was by her side. The sound of his voice as he knelt beside her increased her agitation. Here was friendship, here was love that would protect her against all the world — if she dared, if she only dared let him defend her.
“Mary, why arc you distressed? I met that man upon the stairs — the man who has been haunting you — the man whose name people are coupling with yours. What has he been saying to you? How did he dare to come here?”
“There is nothing he would not dare. He made me unhappy years ago and he is making me unhappy now.”
“Yes, I understand. I have seen him following you about, and I knew he was your first and worst enemy, your only enemy. My darling, be reasonable. You made me promise that I would ask for nothing but your friendship. I have kept my word; but the time has come when I must be something more than a friend. You must give me the only right by which I can protect you — a husband’s right.”
Her sobs had ceased, but she was trembling violently, and the hand he clasped was deadly cold.
“No, no, no. Impossible! I can never marry while that man lives. If marriage were in question I belong to him, and sooner than let me go, he would brand me with the shame of that bitter past. He would let all my little world know what I was. And people have been so kind to me — I have some friends it would break my heart to lose. I have not been a coward, Austin, I have faced him resolutely and defied him — but I know that he will be relentless — that I am doomed to be a miserable woman for the rest of my life. No, my kindest of friends, you can never be more to me than a friend. If all others turn from me — you can help me, and my business in life must be to make other suffering women just a little happier. If you go on helping me to do that you will help me to live.”
“Then I will be your friend — nothing more — but a friend on the watch. Why are you going so far away?”
“I want to put distance between that man and me. His interests are all in London and Paris. I don’t think he will follow me to Rome.”
Austin was doubtful, but he wanted to comfort and not to frighten her.
“Let me dine with you to-night. There will be some chance of a quiet talk, for my sisters are sure to be full of nothing but their clothes for Rome, and they will be running upstairs to see that all their finery is packed.”
Of course she would be glad for him to spend that last evening with her. She wanted to talk to him about her people down East and in Cornwall. She had so much to say to him about them — so many suggestions about the things that ought to be done while she was away.
“I don’t want them to miss me,” she said simply.
“You can’t prevent them doing that.”
He saw that her nerves were quieter — that the agitation in which he had found her had passed — that she was brave again.
XXVIII
JACK RAYNER was, indeed, on the crest of the wave: a wave that carried him wherever he wanted to go — and Lady Cheveril was rapidly becoming impossible.
That is what her friends said, but seen from the outside her progress towards the boundary line of possibility seemed slow.
She was still seen everywhere, and all the old familiar faces were to be seen in her handsome reception rooms, in that new flat which had all the latest inventions in flat-land — the most recent thing in fireplaces, the last cry in ceiling and cornice — the quintessential dado. She was such a lucky woman! That is what all her friends said about her. She could do the most foolish things, and there was no one to interfere with her. No husband! That obliging person had died soon after his marriage, and being elderly when he married her, had not left a herd of brothers and sisters to take liberties and give her good advice.
“My poor Tom was almost the last of his race,” she told people, who were inclined to wonder if Tom had ever had a race, since there was a legend that he had begun his career in Liverpool as an errand-boy, and had risen step by step to the fine mercantile position that had brought him local distinction and finally made him — after the expenditure of thirty thousand on what he himself denominated a royal ‘obby — Sir Thomas: not a common or municipal knight, but a pukha baronet.
He had left his widow well provided for, but not rich in the twentieth-century acceptation of that thrilling word, not rich enough to be indifferent to losses at Bridge, or to scorn “making a bit” in a flutter on the Stock Exchange.
It was that fancy for making a bit that had drawn a certain set of women about Rayner as moths are drawn to a flame — most of the women for mercenary reasons only. But with Lady Cheveril there had been a stronger attraction than greed of gold — and the flame that had caught her was in the man himself. She made light of him to her friends, and was the first to disparage him from a personal point of view. She admitted that he was “not quite” — but he was useful, and he took such pains to put one on to a good thing. That was the sole reason for one’s tolera
ting his not-quiteness, and asking him to one’s parties now and then.
“Now and always, you mean, dear,” said Mrs. Hazeldeane. “He almost lives at your flat. If I want to write to him about business I would sooner chance my letter catching him at Flamborough Mansions than in the city.”
Lady Cheveril had been obliged of late to put up with speeches of this kind or to cut her dearest friends. The women of her set were free of speech among their intimates. They said things to each other that had to be passed off with a laugh — or one would be always quarrelling with one’s favourite pal. Lady Cheveril hated quarrels, and didn’t much mind what her friends said about Jack — so long as they did not steal him from her.
There was a tacit understanding about that. He might help them in the city — put them on to good things — but they must not lure him away from her. If they asked him to their houses, she must be asked too. She very soon made them understand that they must play the game. And that is how it was that Mr. Rayner had become such an important person in a somewhat trumpery society.
But he had his chances in a better society — in houses which Lady Cheveril did not enter — houses to which the Rastac was admitted for various motives, houses where he was to be seen at my lord’s dinners, as well as at my lady’s receptions from ten-thirty to twelve, where there was only just standing room.
There were evenings when Lady Cheveril went to bed at nine o’clock with one of her headaches, and as strong a dose of veronal as her maid would give her, after seeing Rayner at tea-time and being told that he had to dine in Grosvenor Square and to look in at two or three parties after dinner.
“I can’t think how you can care for such silly herds,” she would say pettishly. “Surely a quiet little dinner and a rubber with some of my nicest friends and me would rest you more after a long day in the city.”
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