*
"This is sheer recklessness," said Lord Newhaven, as Rachel bought an expensive tea-cosey from Fräulein. "In these days of death-duties you cannot possess four teapots, and you have already bought three teapot costumes."
"That is what I am here for," said Rachel, producing a check-book. "How much did you say, Fräulein?"
"Twenty-seven and seex," said Fräulein.
"Now I see it in the full light, I have taken a fancy to it myself," said Lord Newhaven. "I never saw anything the least like it. I don't think I can allow you to appropriate it, Miss West. You are sweeping up all the best things."
"I have a verr' pretty thing for gentlemen," said Fräulein. "Herr B-r-r-rown has just bought one."
"Very elaborate, indeed. Bible-markers, I presume? Oh, braces! Never mind, they will be equally useful to me. I'll have them. Now for the tea-cosey. It is under-priced. I consider that, with the chenille swallow, it is worth thirty shillings. I will give thirty for it."
"Thirty-two and six," said Rachel.
"The landed interest is not going to be browbeaten by coal-mines. Thirty-three and twopence."
"Forty shillings," said Rachel.
"Forty-two," said Lord Newhaven.
Every one in the tent had turned to watch the bidding.
"Forty-two and six," said Rachel.
Fräulein blushed. She had worked the tea-cosey. It was to her a sonata in red plush.
"Three guineas," said Captain Pratt, by an infallible instinct, perceiving, and placing himself within the focus of general interest.
The bidding ceased instantly. Lord Newhaven shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Fräulein, still shaking with conflicting emotions, handed the tea-cosey to Captain Pratt. He took it with an acid smile, secretly disgusted at the sudden cessation of interest, for which he had paid rather highly, and looked round for Lady Newhaven.
But she had disappeared.
"Fancy you and Algy bidding against each other like that," said Ada Pratt, archly, to Lord Newhaven, for though Ada was haughty in general society she could be sportive, and even friskily ingratiating, towards those of her fellow-creatures whom she termed "swells." "Why, half Middleshire will be saying that you have quarrelled next."
"Only those who do not know how intimate Captain Pratt and I really are could think we have quarrelled," said Lord Newhaven, his eyes wandering over the crowd. "But I am blocking your way and Mrs. Pratt's. How do you do, Mrs. Pratt? Miss West, your burden is greater than you can bear. You are dropping part of it. I don't know what it is, but I can shut my eyes as I pick it up. I insist on carrying half back to the house. It will give a pleasing impression that I have bought largely. Weren't you pleased at the money we wrung out of Captain Pratt? He never thought we should stop bidding. It's about all the family will contribute, unless that good old Mamma Pratt buys something. She is the only one of the family I can tolerate. Is Scarlett still here? I ought to have asked after him before."
"He's here, but he's not well. He's in hiding in the smoking-room."
"He is lucky he is no worse. I should have had rheumatic fever if I had been in his place. How cool it is in here after the glare outside. Must you go out again? Well, I consider I have done my duty, and that I may fairly allow myself a cigarette in peace."
*
"Really, Mr. Loftus, I'm quite shocked. This absurd faintness! The tent was very crowded, and there is not much air to-day, is there? I shall be all right if I may sit quietly in the hail a little. How deliciously cool in here after the glare outside. A glass of water? Thanks. Yes, only I hate to be so troublesome. And how are you after that dreadful accident in the boat?"
"Oh! I am all right," said Doll, who by this time hated the subject. "It was Scarlett who was nearly frozen like New Zealand lamb."
Doll had heard Mr. Gresley fire off the simile of the lamb, and considered it sound.
"How absurd you are. You always make me laugh. I suppose he has left now that he is unfrozen."
"Oh no. He is still here. We would not let him go till he was better. He is not up to much. Weak chap at the best of times, I should think. He's lying low in the smoking-room till the people are gone."
"Mr. Scarlett is an old friend of ours," said Lady Newhaven, sipping her glass of water, and spilling a little; "but I can't quite forgive him—no, I really can't—for the danger he caused to Edward. You know, or perhaps you don't know, that Edward can't swim, either. Even now I can't bear to think what might have happened."
She closed her eyes with evident emotion.
Doll's stolid garden-party face relaxed. "Good little woman," he thought. "As fond of him as she can be."
"All's well that ends well," he remarked, aloud.
Doll did not know that he was quoting Shakespeare, but he did know by long experience that this sentence could be relied on as suitable to the occasion, or to any occasion that looked a little "doddery," and finished up all right.
"And now, Mr. Loftus, positively I must insist on your leaving me quietly here. I am quite sure you are wanted outside, and I should blame myself if you wasted another minute on me. It was only the sun which affected me. Don't mention it to Edward. He is always so fussy about me. I will rest quietly here for a quarter of an hour, and then rejoin you all again in the garden."
*
"I hope I am not disturbing any one," said Lord Newhaven, quietly entering the smoking-room. "Well, Scarlett, how are you getting on?"
Hugh, who was lying on a sofa with his arms raised and his hands behind his head, looked up, and his expression changed.
"He was thinking of something uncommonly pleasant," thought Lord Newhaven, "not of me or mine, I fancy. I have come to smoke a cigarette in peace," he added aloud, "if you don't object."
"Of course not."
Lord Newhaven lit his cigarette and puffed a moment in silence.
"Hot outside," he said.
Hugh nodded. He wondered how soon he could make a pretext for getting up and leaving the room.
There was a faint silken rustle, and Lady Newhaven, pale, breathless, came swiftly in and closed the door. The instant afterwards she saw her husband, and shrank back with a little cry. Lord Newhaven did not look at her. His eyes were fixed on Hugh.
Hugh's face became suddenly ugly, livid. He rose slowly to his feet, and stood motionless.
"He hates her," said Lord Newhaven to himself. And he removed his glance and came forward.
"You were looking for me, Violet?" he remarked. "I have no doubt you are wishing to return home. We will go at once." He threw away his cigarette. "Well, good-bye, Scarlett, in case we don't meet again. I dare say you will pay Westhope a visit later on. Ah, Captain Pratt! so you have fled, like us, from the madding crowd. I can recommend Loftus's cigarettes. I have just had one myself. Good-bye. Did you leave your purchases in the hall, Violet? Yes? Then we will collect them on our way."
The husband and wife were half-way down the grand staircase before Lord Newhaven said, in his usual even voice:
"I must ask you once more to remember that I will not have any scandal attaching to your name. Did not you see that that white mongrel Pratt was on your track? If I had not been there when he came in he would have drawn his own vile conclusions, and for once they would have been correct."
"He could not think worse of me than you do," said the wife, half cowed, half defiant.
"No, but he could say so, which I don't; or, what is more probable, he could use his knowledge to obtain a hold over you. He is a dangerous man. Don't put yourself in his power."
"I don't want to, or in anybody's."
"Then avoid scandal instead of courting it, and don't repeat the folly of this afternoon."
*
Captain Pratt did not remain long in the smoking-room. He had only a slight acquaintance with Hugh, which did not appear capable of expansion. Captain Pratt made a few efforts, proved its inelastic properties, and presently lounged out again.
Hugh moved slowly to the window, and lean
ed his throbbing forehead against the stone mullion. He was still weak, and the encounter with Lady Newhaven had shaken him.
"What did he mean?" he said to himself, bewildered and suspicious. "'Perhaps I should be staying at Westhope later on!' But, of course, I shall never go there again. He knows that as well as I do. What did he mean?"
Chapter XXXI
*
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the wing.
—OMAR KHAYYÁM.
It was the third week of November. Winter, the destroyer, was late, but he had come at last. There was death in the air, a whisper of death stole across the empty fields and bare hill-side. The birds heard it and were silent. The November wind was hurrying round Westhope Abbey, shaking its bare trees.
Lord Newhaven stood looking fixedly out eastward across the level land to the low hills beyond. He stood so long that the day died, and twilight began to rub out first the hills and then the long, white lines of flooded meadow and blurred pollard willows. Presently the river mist rose up to meet the coming darkness. In the east, low and lurid, a tawny moon crept up the livid sky. She made no moonlight on the gray earth.
Lord Newhaven moved away from the window, where he had become a shadow among the shadows, and sat down in the dark at his writing-table.
Presently he turned on the electric lamp at his elbow and took a letter out of his pocket. The circle of shaded light fell on his face as he read—the thin, grave face, with the steady, inscrutable eyes.
He read the letter slowly, evidently not for the first time.
"If I had not been taken by surprise at the moment I should not have consented to the manner in which our differences were settled. Personally, I consider the old arrangement, to which you regretfully alluded at the time"—("pistols for two and coffee for four," I remember perfectly)—"as preferable, and as you appeared to think so yourself, would it not be advisable to resort to it? Believing that the old arrangement will meet your wishes as fully as it does mine, I trust that you will entertain this suggestion, and that you will agree to a meeting with your own choice of weapons, on any pretext you may choose to name within the next week."
The letter ended there. It was unsigned.
"The time is certainly becoming short," said Lord Newhaven. "He is right in saying there is only a week left. If it were not for the scandal for the boys, and if I thought he would really hold to the compact, I would meet him, but he won't. He flinched when he drew lots. He won't. He has courage enough to stand up in front of me for two minutes, and take his chance, but not to blow his own brains out. No. And if he knew what is in store for him if he does not, he would not have courage to face that either. Nor should I if I were in his shoes, poor devil. The first six foot of earth would be good enough for me."
He threw the letter with its envelope into the fire and watched it burn.
Then he took up the gold pen, which his wife had given him, examined the nib, dipped it very slowly in the ink, and wrote with sudden swiftness.
"Allow me to remind you that you made no objection at the time to the manner of our encounter and my choice of weapons, by means of which publicity was avoided. The risk was equal. You now, at the last moment, propose that I should run it a second time, and in a manner to cause instant scandal. I must decline to do so, or to reopen the subject, which had received my careful consideration before I decided upon it. I have burned your letter, and desire you will burn mine."
"Poor devil!" said Lord Newhaven, putting the letter, not in the post-box at his elbow, but in his pocket.
"Loftus and I did him an ill turn when we pulled him out of the water."
*
The letter took its own time, for it had to avoid possible pitfalls. It shunned the company of the other Westhope letters, it avoided the village post-office, but after a day's delay it was launched, and lay among a hundred others in a station pillar-box. And then it hurried, hurried as fast as express train could take it, till it reached its London address, and went softly up-stairs, and laid itself, with a few others, on Hugh's breakfast-table.
For many weeks since his visit at Wilderleigh Hugh had been like a man in a boat without oars, drifting slowly, imperceptibly on the placid current of a mighty river, who far away hears the fall of Niagara droning like a bumblebee in a lily cup.
Long ago, in the summer, he had recognized the sound, had realized the steep agony towards which the current was bearing him, and had struggled horribly, impotently, against the inevitable. But of late, though the sound was ever in his ears, welling up out of the blue distance, he had given up the useless struggle, and lay still in the sunshine watching the summer woods slide past and the clouds sail away, always away and away, to the birthplace of the river, to that little fluttering pulse in the heart of the hills which a woman's hand might cover, the infant pulse of the great river to be.
Hugh's thoughts went back, like the clouds, towards that tiny spring of passion in his own life. He felt that he could have forgiven it—and himself—if he had been swept into the vortex of a headlong mountain torrent leaping down its own wild water-way, carrying all before it. Other men he had seen who had been wrested off their feet, swept out of their own keeping by such a torrent on the steep hill-side of their youth. But it had not been so with him. He had walked more cautiously than they. As he walked he had stopped to look at the little thread of water which came bubbling up out of its white pebbles. It was so pretty, it was so feeble, it was so clear. Involuntarily he followed it, watched it grow, amused himself, half contemptuously, with it, helped its course by turning obstacles from its path. It never rushed. It never leaped. It was a toy. The day came when it spread itself safe and shallow on level land, and he embarked upon it. But he was quickly tired of it. It was beginning to run muddily through a commonplace country, past squalid polluting towns and villages. The hills were long since gone. He turned to row to the shore. And, behold, his oars were gone! He had been trapped to his destruction.
Hugh had never regarded seriously his intrigue with Lady Newhaven. He had been attracted, excited, partially, half-willingly enslaved. He had thought at the time that he loved her, and that supposition had confirmed him in his cheap cynicism about woman. This, then, was her paltry little court, where man offered mock homage, and where she played at being queen. Hugh had made the discovery that love was a much overrated passion. He had always supposed so; but when he tired of Lady Newhaven he was sure of it. His experience was, after all, only the same as that which many men acquire by marriage, and hold unshaken through long and useful lives. But Hugh had not been able to keep the treasures of this early experience. It had been rendered worthless, perhaps rather contemptible by a later one—that of falling in love with Rachel, and the astonishing discovery that he was in love for the first time. He had sold his birthright for a mess of red pottage, as surely as any man or woman who marries for money or liking. He had not believed in his birthright, and holding it to be worthless, had given it to the first person who had offered him anything in exchange.
His whole soul had gradually hardened itself against Lady Newhaven. If he had loved her, he said to himself, he could have borne his fate. But the play had not been worth the candle. His position was damnable; but that he could have borne—at least, so he thought if he had had his day. But he had not had it. That thought rankled. To be hounded out of life because he had mistaken paper money for real was not only unfair, it was grotesque.
Gradually, however, Hugh forgot his smouldering hate of Lady Newhaven, his sense of injustice and anger against fate; he forgot everything in his love for Rachel. It became the only reality of his life.
He had remained in London throughout October and November, cancelling all his engagements because she was there. What her work was he vaguely apprehended: that she was spending herself and part of her colossal fortune in the East End, but he took no interest in it. He was incapable of taking more interests into his life at this time. He passed many
quiet evenings with her in the house in Park Lane, which she had lately bought. The little secretary who lived with her had always a faint smile and more writing to do than usual on the evenings when he dined with them.
A great peace was over all their intercourse. Perhaps it was the hush before the storm, the shadow of which was falling, falling, with each succeeding day across the minds of both. Once only a sudden gust of emotion stirred the quiet air, but it dropped again immediately. It came with the hour when Hugh confessed to her the blot upon his past. The past was taking upon itself ever an uglier and more repulsive aspect as he saw more of Rachel. It was hard to put into words, but he spoke of it. The spectre of love rose like a ghost between them, as they looked earnestly at each other, each pale even in the ruddy fire-light.
Hugh was truthful in intention. He was determined he would never lie to Rachel. He implied an intrigue with a married woman, a deviation not only from morality, but from honor. More he did not say. But as he looked at her strained face it seemed to him that she expected something more. A dreadful silence fell between them when he had finished. Had she then no word for him. Her eyes—mute, imploring, dark with an agony of suspense—met his for a second and fell instantly. She did not speak. Her silence filled him with despair. He got up. "It's getting late. I must go," he stammered.
She rose, mechanically, and put out her hand.
"May I come again?" he said, holding it more tightly than he knew, and looking intently at her. Was he going to be dismissed?
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