Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “I had not said good-night to you,” she exclaimed, coming towards him and giving him her hands, “and I wanted to say it to you here, when we were alone. For I must thank you for to-night, you and your father. Oh, I have no words.”

  The tears were very near to her eyes and they were audible in her low voice. Dick Hazlewood was quick to answer her.

  “Good! For there’s need of none. Will you ride to-morrow?”

  Stella took her hands from his and moved across the room towards the great bay window with its glass doors.

  “I should love to,” she said.

  “Eight. Is that too early after to-night?”

  “No, that’s the good time,” she returned with a smile. “We have the day at its best and the world to ourselves.”

  “I’ll bring the same horse round. He knows you now, doesn’t he?”

  “Thank you,” said Stella. She unlatched the glass door and opened it.

  “You’ll lock it after me, won’t you?”

  “No,” said Dick. “I’ll see you to your door.”

  But Stella refused his company. She stood in the doorway.

  “There’s no need! See what a night it is!” and the beauty of it crept into her soul and stilled her voice. The moon rode in a blue sky, a disc of glowing white, the great cedar-trees flung their shadows wide over the bright lawns and not a branch stirred.

  “Listen,” said Stella in a whisper and the river rippling against its banks with now a deep sob and now a fairy’s laugh sang to them in notes most musical and clear. That liquid melody and the flutter of a bird’s wings in the bough of a tree were the only sounds. They stood side by side, she looking out over the garden to the dim and pearly hills, he gazing at her uplifted face and the pure column of her throat. They stood in a most dangerous silence. The air came cool and fresh to their nostrils. Stella drew it in with a smile.

  “Good-night!” She laid her hand for a second on his arm. “Don’t come with me!”

  “Why not?”

  And the answer came in a clear whisper:

  “I am afraid.”

  Stella seemed to feel the man at her side suddenly grow very still. “It’s only a step,” she went on quickly and she passed out of the window on to the pathway. Dick Hazlewood followed but she turned to him and raised her hand.

  “Don’t,” she pleaded; the voice was troubled but her eyes were steady.

  “If you come with me I shall tell you.”

  “What?” he interrupted, and the quickness of the interruption broke the spell which the night had laid upon her.

  “I shall tell you again how much I thank you,” she said lightly. “I shall cross the meadow by the garden gate. That brings me to my door.”

  She gathered her skirt in her hand and crossed the pathway to the edge of the grass.

  “You can’t do that,” exclaimed Dick and he was at her side. He stooped and felt the turf. “Even the lawn’s drenched. Crossing the meadow you’ll be ankle-deep in dew. You must promise never to go home across the meadow when you dine with us.”

  He spoke, chiding her as if she had been a mutinous child, and with so much anxiety that she laughed.

  “You see, you have become rather precious to me,” he added.

  Though the month was July she that night was all April, half tears, half laughter. The smile passed from her lips and she raised her hands to her face with the swiftness of one who has been struck.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, and she drew her hand away.

  “Don’t you understand?” she asked, and answered the question herself. “No, why should you?” She turned to him suddenly, her bosom heaving, her hands clenched. “Do you know what place I fill here, in my own county? Years ago, when I was a child, there was supposed to be a pig-faced woman in Great Beeding. She lived in a small yellow cottage in the Square. It was pointed out to strangers as one of the sights of the town. Sometimes they were shown her shadow after dusk between the lamp and the blind. Sometimes you might have even caught a glimpse of her slinking late at night along the dark alleys. Well, the pig-faced woman has gone and I have taken her place.”

  “No,” cried Dick. “That’s not true.”

  “It is,” she answered passionately. “I am the curiosity. I am the freak. The townspeople take a pride in me, yes, just the same pride they took in her, and I find that pride more difficult to bear than all the aversion of the Pettifers. I too slink out early in the morning or late after night has fallen. And you” — the passion of bitterness died out of her voice, her hands opened and hung at her sides, a smile of tenderness shone on her face— “you come with me. You ride with me early. With you I learn to take no heed. You welcome me to your house. You speak to me as you spoke just now.” Her voice broke and a cry of gladness escaped from her which went to Dick Hazlewood’s heart. “Oh, you shall see me to my door. I’ll not cross the meadow. I’ll go round by the road.” She stopped and drew a breath.

  “I’ll tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “It’s rather good to be looked after. I know. It has never happened to me before. Yes, it’s very good,” and she drew out the words with a low laugh of happiness.

  “Stella!” he said, and at the mention of her name she caught her hands up to her heart. “Oh, thank you!”

  The hall-door was closed and all but one car had driven away when they turned the corner of the house and came out in the broad drive. They walked in the moonlight with a perfume of flowers in the air and the big yellow cups of the evening primroses gleaming on either side. They walked slowly. Stella knew that she should quicken her feet but she could not bring herself to do more than know it. She sought to take into her heart every tiniest detail of that walk so that in memory she might, years after, walk it again and so never be quite alone. They passed out through the great iron gates and turned into the lane. Here great elms overhung and now they walked in darkness, and now again were bathed in light. A twig snapped beneath her foot; even so small a thing she would remember.

  “We must hurry,” she said.

  “We are doing all that we can,” replied Dick. “It’s a long way — this walk.”

  “You feel it so?” said Stella, tempting him — oh, unwisely! But the spell of the hour and the place was upon her.

  “Yes,” he answered her. “It’s a long way in a man’s life,” and he drew close to her side.

  “No!” she cried with a sudden violence. But she was awake too late. “No,

  Dick, no,” she repeated, but his arms were about her.

  “Stella, I want you. Oh, life’s dull for a man without a woman; I can tell you,” he exclaimed passionately.

  “There are others — plenty,” she said, and tried to thrust him away.

  “Not for me,” he rejoined, and he would not let her go. Her struggles ceased, she buried her face in his coat, her hands caught his shoulders, she stood trembling and shivering against him.

  “Stella,” he whispered. “Stella!”

  He raised her face and bent to it. Then he straightened himself.

  “Not here!” he said.

  They were standing in the darkness of a tree. He put his arms about her waist and lifted her into an open space where the moonlight shone bright and clear and there were no shadows.

  “Here,” he said, and he kissed her on the lips. She thrust her head back, her face uplifted to the skies, her eyes closed.

  “Oh, Dick,” she murmured, “I meant that this should never be. Even now — you shall forget it.”

  “No — I couldn’t.”

  “So one says. But — oh, it would be your ruin.” She started away from him.

  “Listen!”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  She stood confronting him desperately a yard or so away, her bosom heaving, her face wet with her tears. Dick Hazlewood did not stir. Stella’s lips moved as though she were speaking but no words were audible, and it seemed that her strength left her. She came suddenly forward, groping w
ith her hands like a blind person.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said as he caught them. They went on again together. She spoke of his father, of the talk of the countryside. But he had an argument for each of hers.

  “Be brave for just a little, Stella. Once we are married there will be no trouble,” and with his arms about her she was eager to believe.

  Stella Ballantyne sat late that night in the armchair in her bedroom, her eyes fixed upon the empty grate, in a turmoil of emotion. She grew cold and shivered. A loud noise of birds suddenly burst through the open window. She went to it. The morning had come. She looked across the meadow to the silent house of Little Beeding in the grey broadening light. All the blinds were down. Were they all asleep or did one watch like her? She came back to the fireplace. In the grate some torn fragments of a letter caught her eyes. She stooped and picked them up. They were fragments of the letter of regret which she had written earlier that evening.

  “I should have sent it,” she whispered. “I should not have gone. I should have sent the letter.”

  But the regret was vain. She had gone. Her maid found her in the morning lying upon her bed in a deep sleep and still wearing the dress in which she had gone out.

  CHAPTER XVII

  TROUBLE FOR MR. HAZLEWOOD

  WHEN DICK AND Stella walked along the drive to the lane Harold Hazlewood, who was radiant at the success of his dinner-party, turned to Robert Pettifer in the hall.

  “Have a whisky-and-soda, Robert, before you go,” he said. He led the way back into the library. Behind him walked the Pettifers, Robert ill-at-ease and wishing himself a hundred miles away, Margaret Pettifer boiling for battle. Hazlewood himself dropped into an arm-chair.

  “I am very glad that you came to-night, Margaret,” he said boldly. “You have seen for yourself.”

  “Yes, I have,” she replied. “Harold, there have been moments this evening when I could have screamed.”

  Robert Pettifer hurriedly turned towards the table in the far corner of the room where the tray with the decanters and the syphons had been placed.

  “Margaret, I pass my life in a scream at the injustice of the world,” said Harold Hazlewood, and Robert Pettifer chuckled as he cut off the end of a cigar. “It is strange that an act of reparation should move you in the same way.”

  “Reparation!” cried Margaret Pettifer indignantly. Then she noticed that the window was open. She looked around the room. She drew up a chair in front of her brother.

  “Harold, if you have no consideration for us, none for your own position, none for the neighbourhood, if you will at all costs force this woman upon us, don’t you think that you might still spare a thought for your son?”

  Robert Pettifer had kept his eyes open that evening as well as his wife. He took a step down into the room. He was anxious to take no part in the dispute; he desired to be just; he was favourably inclined towards Stella Ballantyne; looking at her he had been even a little moved. But Dick was the first consideration. He had no children of his own, he cared for Dick as he would have cared for his son, and when he went up each morning by the train to his office in London there lay at the back of his mind the thought that one day the fortune he was amassing would add a splendour to Dick’s career. Harold Hazlewood alone of the three seemed to have his eyes sealed.

  “Why, what on earth do you mean, Margaret?”

  Margaret Pettifer sat down in her chair.

  “Where was Dick yesterday afternoon?”

  “Margaret, I don’t know.”

  “I do. I saw him. He was with Stella Ballantyne on the river — in the dusk — in a Canadian canoe.” She uttered each fresh detail in a more indignant tone, as though it aggravated the crime. Yet even so she had not done. There was, it seemed, a culminating offence. “She was wearing a white lace frock with a big hat.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Hazlewood mildly, “I don’t think I have anything against big hats.”

  “She was trailing her hand in the water — that he might notice its slenderness of course. Outrageous I call it!”

  Mr. Hazlewood nodded his head at his indignant sister.

  “I know that frame of mind very well, Margaret,” he remarked. “She cannot do right. If she had been wearing a small hat she would have been Frenchified.”

  But Mrs. Pettifer was not in a mood for argument.

  “Can’t you see what it all means?” she cried in exasperation.

  “I can. I do,” Mr. Hazlewood retorted and he smiled proudly upon his sister. “The boy’s better nature is awakening.”

  Margaret Pettifer lifted up her hands.

  “The boy!” she exclaimed. “He’s thirty-four if he’s a day.”

  She leaned forward in her chair and pointing up to the bay asked: “Why is that window open, Harold?”

  Harold Hazlewood showed his first sign of discomfort. He shifted in his chair.

  “It’s a hot night, Margaret.”

  “That is not the reason,” Mrs. Pettifer retorted implacably.

  “Where is Dick?”

  “I expect that he is seeing Mrs. Ballantyne home.”

  “Exactly,” said Mrs. Pettifer with a world of significance in her voice.

  Mr. Hazlewood sat up and looked at his sister.

  “Margaret, you want to make me uncomfortable,” he exclaimed pettishly. “But you shan’t. No, my dear, you shan’t.” He let himself sink back again and joining the tips of his fingers contemplated the ceiling. But Margaret was in the mind to try. She shot out her words at him like so many explosive bullets.

  “Being friends is one thing, Harold. Marrying is another.”

  “Very true, Margaret, very true.”

  “They are in love with one another.”

  “Rubbish, Margaret, rubbish.”

  “I watched them at the dinner-table and afterwards. They are man and woman, Harold. That’s what you don’t understand. They are not illustrations of your theories. Ask Robert.”

  “No,” exclaimed Robert Pettifer. He hurriedly lit a cigar. “Any inference

  I should make must be purely hypothetical.”

  “Yes, we’ll ask Robert. Come, Pettifer!” cried Mr. Hazlewood. “Let us have your opinion.”

  Robert Pettifer came reluctantly down from his corner.

  “Well, if you insist, I think they were very friendly.”

  “Ah!” cried Hazlewood in triumph. “Being friends is one thing, Margaret.

  Marrying is another.”

  Mrs. Pettifer shook her head over her brother with a most aggravating pity.

  “Dick said a shrewd thing the other day to me, Harold.”

  Mr. Hazlewood looked doubtfully at his sister.

  “I am sure of it,” he answered, but he was careful not to ask for any repetition of the shrewd remark. Margaret, however, was not in the mind to let him off.

  “He said that sentimental philosophers sooner or later break their heads against their own theories. Mark those words, Harold! I hope they won’t come true of you. I hope so very much indeed.”

  But it was abundantly clear that she had not a shadow of doubt that they would come true. Mr. Hazlewood was stung by the slighting phrase.

  “I am not a sentimental philosopher,” he said hotly. “Sentiment I altogether abhor. I hold strong views, I admit.”

  “You do indeed,” his sister interrupted with an ironical laugh. “Oh, I have read your pamphlet, Harold. The prison walls must cast no shadow and convicts, once they are released, have as much right to sit down at our dinner-tables as they had before. Well, you carry your principles into practice, that I will say. We had an illustration to-night.”

  “You are unjust, Margaret,” and Mr. Hazlewood rose from his chair with some dignity. “You speak of Mrs. Ballantyne, not for the first time, as if she had been tried and condemned. In fact she was tried and acquitted,” and in his turn he appealed to Pettifer.

  “Ask Robert!” he said.

  But Pettifer was slow to answer, and when he did it was without
assurance.

  “Ye-es,” he replied with something of a drawl. “Undoubtedly Mrs. Ballantyne was tried and acquitted”; and he left the impression on the two who heard him that with acquittal quite the last word had not been said. Mrs. Pettifer looked at him eagerly. She drew clear at once of the dispute. She left the questions now to Harold Hazlewood, and Pettifer had spoken with so much hesitation that Harold Hazlewood could not but ask them.

  “You are making reservations, Robert?”

  Pettifer shrugged his shoulders.

  “I think we have a right to know them,” Hazlewood insisted. “You are a solicitor with a great business and consequently a wide experience.”

  “Not of criminal cases, Hazlewood. I bring no more authority to judge them than any other man.”

  “Still you have formed an opinion. Please let me have it,” and Mr. Hazlewood sat down again and crossed his knees. But a little impatience was now audible in his voice.

  “An opinion is too strong a word,” replied Pettifer guardedly. “The trial took place nearly eighteen months ago. I read the accounts of it certainly day by day as I travelled in the train to London. But they were summaries.”

  “Full summaries, Robert,” said Hazlewood.

  “No doubt. The trial made a great deal of noise in the world. But they were not full enough for me. Even if my memory of those newspaper reports were clear I should still hesitate to sit in judgment. But my memory isn’t clear. Let us see what I do remember.”

  Pettifer took a chair and sat for a few moments with his forehead wrinkled in a frown. Was he really trying to remember? His wife asked herself that question as she watched him. Or had he something to tell them which he meant to let fall in his own cautiously careless way? Mrs. Pettifer listened alertly.

  “The — well — let us call it the catastrophe — took place in a tent in some state of Rajputana.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Hazlewood.

  “It took place at night. Mrs. Ballantyne was asleep in her bed. The man

  Ballantyne was found outside the tent in the doorway.”

  “Yes.”

  Pettifer paused. “So many law cases have engaged my attention since,” he said in apology for his hesitation. He seemed quite at a loss. Then he went on: