Elizabeth York was reading in a favourite corner of the garden, under the shade of a stunted pine, and in the shelter of a little group of cypresses. The garden fell away in floweriness from her feet, and above a hedge of roses she could see the great plain below her spread in the sunlight towards the mountains.
“A visitor, madame.”
York’s wife closed her book.
“Who is it, Jenny?”
“Why, now—if I didn’t just forget to ask her name. But—she’s French.”
Elizabeth made her way into the house, and on entering the salon she became aware of her visitor as a woman who had used much cheap scent. The room smelt like a Latin church. A Louis Quinze screen stood inside the door, and York’s wife did not discover her visitor’s identity until she was well inside the room.
“Marie!”
She was taken by surprise. Those cerise-coloured lips were smiling in the chalked face. She saw Marie rise and extend a hand as to an equal.
“I am Madame Proyart to-day, Madame York. Yes, my husband has bought Mustapha Farm. And neighbours should be on good terms, hein?”
Elizabeth York remained standing. She did not appear to notice Madame Proyart’s extended hand. The impertinent motive behind the visit became obvious to her as her eyes took in the other woman’s figure.
“So we are neighbours, Marie. Please sit down.”
Madame Proyart resumed her seat, while Bess moved to the couch by the window. Her attitude was one of polite interest, putting the Frenchwoman in the position of an inferior who had come to ask for some favour, and who would be listened to with perfect courtesy. Elizabeth’s silence waited. It seemed to place the white-faced woman at a distance.
She saw the gleam in the brown eyes.
“Madame still likes Algeria?”
Bess’s silence continued. It demanded the real purpose of the visit, the words of Marie in place of the small talk of the self-created gentlewoman.
“I hope Madame York will not find the heat so trying this summer.”
The brown eyes were insolently observant.
“I came to ask Madame York a favour. But—of course—I wished to be sure. If Madame York has no use for le petit lit d’enfant—I shall be glad to buy it. You see—I shall need it—and Madame York——”
She smiled, and her smile seemed to expand as she watched Elizabeth’s face. She smiled with her eyes and mouth, her broad nose and chin, her whole body.
Elizabeth rose slowly to her feet.
“I am afraid I do not sell things, madame. I am sorry.”
She moved slowly across the room and rang the bell.
“Madame Proyart will understand.”
It was Jenny who opened the door, and Marie Proyart got up beaming.
“Madame York will excuse me. You should ask Monsieur York to borrow our storks. They have a nest in one of our trees. Bon soir, madame.”
She limped out with an air of triumph; but, as she was climbing back into her gig, Byron York came round the house with his gun under his arm.
Marie bowed to him with plump gaiety.
“Ah, Monsieur York, I called to see if Madame York would sell me her petit lit d’enfant. I trust she is not offended.”
York stood still with a face of thunder, while Madame Proyart hauled herself up into the gig beside the Arab boy.
“You should borrow our storks, Monsieur York.”
And she drove off, smiling.
VIII
From that day Byron York noticed a change in his wife. It was as though she carried about with her a secret humiliation, or a wound over the heart of her womanhood that would not heal, and the bright surface that she showed to him did not hide her sadness. For love had made York more quick of understanding. The tie between them had grown more sensitive, and he was able to feel what she was feeling.
There was that night when he surprised Bess on her knees beside the empty cot. She did not rise, but knelt there looking up at him with something like shame in her eyes.
“I’m a failure, Ronny.”
He was deeply moved. He raised her up, and made her sit beside him on the bed, her head against his shoulder.
“You are the most successful failure, chérie, a man could ask for.”
“You say that out of kindness.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Then you are wrong, old woman. The fact is I’m not half so keen. I was a bit lonely here, and I suppose I got hungry for something—but when you began to take charge of me——”
He was aware of a curious rigidity, a tenseness of her body, as though she resisted.
“But you were keen. It was the child you wanted, not me. Oh—I knew.”
“You ought to have hated me.”
“No; I loved you for it. I wanted to give you all that you wished——”
“You have done.”
“No.”
“Do you love me less, Bessie, for not being so keen?”
She seemed to reflect a moment.
“I don’t believe it, Ronny. It’s only that you are big and kind to me.”
“My dear,” he said, “why don’t you believe me? We’ll put that confounded cradle away in one of the attics.”
But she would not hear of it; the suggestion seemed to frighten her.
“Oh, no—please. I couldn’t bear it.”
He was silent, and she wondered what his silence meant.
“Bess, there is one thing. It is not a thing a man likes to talk about. I have led a pretty clean life. But we ought to face the fact that it may be——”
She understood him instantly, and put a quick hand over his mouth.
“No, Ronny, don’t say it. I—know—it is not that. I’m sure. But—dear—how I wish——”
Again, he tried to convince her that he was happy as he was, that he had never been happier. She listened with a kind of smiling sadness, stroking his hand with one of hers. Her devotion had never been so deep.
She took it all for a wonderful magnanimity on his part, and she was grateful, but she believed what she believed. In fact, his obsession had passed to her; their parts had been reversed; she wanted a child because she wanted to give, to make the uttermost sacrifice to this man who loved her.
“We’ll hope, Ronny—we’ll go on hoping.”
That was the tragic part of it. Elizabeth York felt herself to be a failure, nor could she convince her conscience that her husband’s cheerfulness was other than an attempt to keep her in countenance. She could not believe that he had changed, for her desire to bear him a child made the change seem all the more improbable.
And she began to brood over it more and more until she began to think of herself as a woman who was in a false position, and who could not complete her part of the compact. York had married the wrong woman. He ought to have chosen one of her sisters.
Moreover, he was so very dear to her that she made herself face the fear of losing him, for true courage faces that which it dreads.
Might there not come a time when he would grow impatient—when he would begin to regret a marriage that was childless? And then——? She knew that she would not be able to bear his impatience, and that her very love would side with him, even in the loneliness of her failure.
“I should want to die!” she thought.
But what was the use of dying? If he wished for a child, and she could not give him one, ought not the bargain to be cancelled? Yet marriage was more than a mere bargain. She found herself considering their marriage as a poignant and intimate relationship that could be broken only with a kind of solemnity, and by some act of desperate self-renunciation. Supposing that life drove her to the point of feeling that it was her duty to set him free? The thought devastated her, and yet she knew that if his life were in question and that the sacrifice of her own life could save his, she would give hers gladly.
But what a prospect! To take shame to herself in order to set him free! Was that the only alte
rnative?
Happily or unhappily York did not—and could not know all that was passing in his wife’s mind. To please him she learnt to ride, and would accompany him about the estate; never had the household been run so efficiently; she welcomed his friends and made him envied. Her tranquillity hid an increasing purpose, for outwardly she appeared tranquil.
Yet Bess’s feeling of failure was pushing her towards an act of blind self-renunciation. The plan grew gradually, and yet when it had come to completeness it retained an element of the incalculable. Nothing is final, and this plan of hers was far from being final. It contained much that was impulse, and a kind of subconscious wisdom that was more potent than any logic. She felt impelled towards the act she contemplated; she could explain it to herself and to her husband, and yet there was a part of her that knew that the unexpected might come of it.
IX
One evening in April a Frenchman named Lavie appeared at the Villa York. He was a big landowner south of Mida, and a great sportsman and a very good friend of Byron York’s. It appeared that Lavie was off to the desert for three weeks with half a dozen friends to shoot gazelle, and he had come to ask York to join the party.
His bow to Elizabeth was gallant and propitiatory.
“If madame can spare him——?”
York seemed undecided, and his wife understood his indecision.
“Do go. I shall be all right here. I should like you to go.”
Lavie was smiling at them both.
“Madame is generous. Why should not Madame York come and spend the time with my wife and the children?”
He did not realize that he had said the wrong thing, nor did Elizabeth allow him to realize it.
“That is very kind of you; but I take myself rather seriously, monsieur.”
“Ah, the housewife?”
She made herself laugh.
“Yes; in England we have what we call spring cleaning. Take my husband away, and I shall put on an apron and cover my head with a duster, and terrorize the servants.”
York was looking at her with eyes of tenderness.
“It seems a selfish thing to do, Bess.”
“Oh! Why?”
Her eyes held his.
“Should one always be together, dear man. I want you to go. You’ll enjoy it.”
She seemed so happy in making the decision for him that York decided to go.
“Well, our holiday will come later. The Tyrol or the Pyrenees.”
In leaving her he left her as his châtelaine, with very definite orders to Odgers that he would be responsible for the farm, and that he was to sleep in the house each night. There was nothing little or meticulous about York.
From the very beginning he had given Bess her cheque-book, and told her that she could draw as she pleased for herself up to twenty-five thousand francs a year. She had drawn very little. She had no extravagances and no greeds, and the larger part of her expenditure had translated itself into presents to the people at home.
So York got into his hunting kit, and motored over the mountains with a merry party of men, and at one of the little oasis towns they picked up their camels and their Arabs and disappeared into the desert. He had shown some emotion, a man’s emotion, on leaving Bess. She had been touched by it—humiliated.
“Good-bye, dear—— I rather wish I was not going.”
He had held her close for a moment.
“Take care of yourself. You are precious, you know.”
For two days after her husband had left Elizabeth York felt that she could not do the thing she had planned to do. She cared so much that the taking of that critical decision was a matter of self-martyrdom, but, in the end her very caring enabled her to decide against herself. There was Jenny Rourke to be considered, but she was under no obligation to tell the Irishwoman more than she wished to tell her. What more natural than that she should pay a flying visit to England while her husband was away?
Elizabeth decided to take Jenny Rourke with her, and when she had come to her decision she acted as though she wished by acting swiftly to make the step final. She was afraid of her own heart. It seemed to her that she might find herself stronger when she was among her own people. Atmosphere counts for so much.
Odgers had to be told, and he showed no surprise when she told him.
“You’ll be in time to see the primroses. Didn’t some bloke write a song about getting to Blighty in April, ma’am?”
Odgers’s quaint idea of humour nearly provoked her to tears.
“I am taking Mrs. Rourke with me.”
“Well, of course. She’s a useful body.”
“I know that you will look after everything, Odgers.”
“I will, ma’am.”
“I am going to leave a letter for Mr. York. It’s only in case he should come back suddenly.”
Odgers saw nothing significant in her leaving a letter.
But, on the morning of her departure, she was like a woman whose soul—in dying—clings despairingly to the warm human body. She found that she loved the place better than she knew, the rooms, the garden, the pine wood, the wild and fragrant hills, the dogs, the servants. It was home. And more than home.
It was Ronny York, her husband, her mate, the man whom she had loved on those very first days when he had walked into that English farmhouse and looked at her with those grave and considering eyes of his. She dared not look back when the car carried her down the hill and out on to the great white road that led to Algiers. She felt that she had left everything that mattered to her behind there in that white house on the hill.
York came back one evening just before sunset, looking very brown and well. He passed through the smiling servants into the house, and they heard his voice calling:
“Bess—Bess——”
The servants looked at each other. Strange that he did not know, and that madame had not returned!
Odgers, cantering up in a hurry from the farm, found his master wandering about the garden.
“I say—Odgers—I can’t find Mrs. York.”
“Why, she’s gone to England, sir,” said the groom.
They stared at each other.
“England!”
“Yes; soon after you left, sir. Expect she didn’t want to worry you. She left a letter in case she shouldn’t be back before you.”
“Where’s that letter?” said York, with a queer look in his eyes.
The letter had been placed behind the French clock on the dining-room mantelpiece, and Odgers, following his master into the house, stood by the door with his hat in his hand, waiting to report on how things had been going during York’s absence. York was by one of the windows, reading his wife’s letter, and the groom’s presence seemed to bother him.
“Come back in five minutes, Odgers.”
The groom was not a speculative person, but it had been obvious to him that that letter must have contained something rather unusual. For ten years or so he had grown wise as to the varying expressions upon his master’s face, but hitherto Odgers had never seen York afraid.
“Scared—he looked—queer and scared.”
Punctiliously, at the end of five minutes marked off upon his wrist-watch, the groom knocked at the dining-room door.
“Come in.”
York was still by the window, but the letter had disappeared.
“Odgers, I’m starting for England to-morrow. I must catch the midday boat from Algiers. You’ll stay on in charge—here.”
“Very good, sir.”
Odgers’s laconic acceptance of the news was delusive.
“Now—what the devil’s up? She can’t have left him. Never saw two people more gone on each other.”
X
York started to walk from Hookfield Station to Beech Hangar Farm. It was one of those rare evenings at the end of April when England is all that the exiles picture it to be, a wet greenness seen against the blue and gold of a cloudless sky, and with blackbirds singing their hearts out.
York had t
he look of a man who had travelled hard and far, and with but little sleep. In Hookfield village he did not see people, for he did not want to see them, but at the cross-roads by the church he fell in with Miss Philippa York’s motor-car, and his aunt’s quick eyes were not to be avoided. She rapped on the glass screen between her and her chauffeur, and the man pulled up.
York crossed over to the car.
“Well, upon my word, Ronny—why didn’t you let us know?”
Her use of the plural was suggestive.
“Just a surprise visit, Aunt Phil.”
“When did you come?”
“Just arrived. My luggage is at the station—one kit bag.”
She observed him closely, but her imperious old face was kind.
“Well—I think Elizabeth might have told me. I was at the farm yesterday. Of course—you are going there——”
His face had betrayed intense relief, and his aunt had noticed the change, and had been puzzled by it. Was there any trouble between these two? If so, her nephew’s wife had concealed it very well.
“I’ll send the car down for your bag, Ronny. I suppose you will be able to spare me a few days, both of you.”
Her hand was resting on the side of the car, and York placed a sudden hand over it.
“You always were a sportsman, Aunt Phil.”
“No trouble, Ronny?”
“None,” he said calmly. “I was one of the lucky ones.”
His aunt’s car travelled on towards the Hall, and York took the by-road down the valley where the willows showed a film of green along the windings of the river. He was aware of an immense feeling of relief, and the relief deepened his emotion. Good Lord—what sort of panic had he been in? His imagination had run amuck ever since his reading of that most pathetic letter.
He had been afraid, with the unreasoning and deadly fear of a man whose whole consciousness had centred itself about one person. Women did such tragic things, women who loved too well. He had lived for three days with the thought that Bess—— But she was there, among those old trees, and as he caught sight of the glimmering tops of the great beeches he felt a quivering of the throat. What must she have suffered in secret that she should have been driven to do this thing?
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 87