Read the book: «A Life For a Love: A Novel», page 9

CHAPTER XXIV

A few days after the events related in the last chapter Mr. Paget asked his son-in-law to have a few minutes' private conversation with him. Once more the young man found himself in that inner room at the rich merchant's office which represented more or less a torture-chamber to him. Once more Valentine's untroubled girlish innocent eyes looked out of Richmond's beautiful picture of her.

Wyndham hated this room, he almost hated that picture; it had surrounded itself with terrible memories. He turned his head away from it now as he obeyed Mr. Paget's summons.

"It's this, Gerald," said his father-in-law. "When a thing has to be done the sooner the better. I mean nobody cares to make a long operation of the drawing of a tooth for instance!"

"An insufficient metaphor," interrupted Wyndham roughly. "Say, rather, the plucking out of a right eye, or the cutting off a right hand. As you say, these operations had better be got quickly over."

"I think so – I honestly think so. It would convenience me if you sailed in the Esperance on the 25th of March for Sydney. There is a bonâ fide reason for your going. I want you to sample – "

"Hush," interrupted Wyndham. "The technicalities and the gloss and all that kind of humbug can come later. You want me to sail on the 25th of March. That is the main point. When last you spoke of it, I begged of you as a boon to give me an extension of grace, say until May or June. It was understood by us, although there was no sealed bond in the matter, that my wife and I should spend a year together before this – this temporary parting took place. I asked you at one time to shorten my season of grace, but a few weeks ago I asked you to extend it."

"Precisely, Wyndham, and I told you I would grant your wish, if possible. I asked you to announce to your own relatives that you would probably have to go away in March, for a time; but I said I would do my utmost to defer the evil hour. I am sorry to say that I cannot do so. I have had news from India which obliges me to hasten matters. Such a good opportunity as the business which takes you out in the Esperance will probably not occur again. It would be madness not to avail ourselves of it. Do not you think so? My dear fellow, do take a chair."

"Thank you, I prefer to stand. This day – what is this day?" He raised his eyes; they rested on the office calendar. "This day is the 24th of February. A spring-like day, isn't it? Wonderful for the time of year. I have, then, one month and one day to live. Are these Valentine's violets? I will help myself to a few. Let me say good-morning, sir."

He bowed courteously – no one could be more courteous than Gerald Wyndham – and left the room.

His astonished father in-law almost gasped when he found himself alone.

"Upon my word," he said to himself, "there's something about that fellow that's positively uncanny. I only trust I'll be preserved from being haunted by his ghost. My God! what a retribution that would be. Wyndham would be awful as a ghost. I suppose I shall have retribution some day. I know I'm a wicked man. Hypocritical, cunning, devilish. Yes, I'm all that. Who'd have thought that soft-looking lad would turn out to be all steel and venom. I hate him – and yet, upon my soul, I admire him. He does more for the woman he loves than I do – than I could do. The woman we both love. His wife —my child."

"There, I'll get soft myself if I indulge in these thoughts any longer. Now is the time for him to go. Valentine has turned from him; any fool can see that. Now is the time to get him out of the way. How lucky that I overheard Helps that day. Never was there a more opportune thing."

Mr. Paget went home early that evening. Valentine was dining with him. Lately, within the last few weeks, she often came over alone to spend the evening with her father.

"Where's your husband, my pet?" the old man used to say to her on these occasions.

And she always answered him in a bright though somewhat hard little voice.

"Oh, Gerald is such a book-worm – he is devouring one of those abstruse treatises on music. I left him buried in it," or, "Gerald is going out this evening," or, "Gerald isn't well, and would like to stay quiet, so" – the end was invariably the same – "I thought I'd come and have a cosy chat with you, dad."

"And no one more welcome – no one in all the wide world more welcome," Mortimer Paget would answer, glancing, with apparent pleased unconcern, but with secret anxiety, at his daughter's face.

The glance always satisfied him; she looked bright and well – a little hard, perhaps – well, the blow must affect her in some way. What had taken place at the Gaiety would leave some results even on the most indifferent heart. The main result, however, was well. Valentine's dawning love had changed to indifference. Had she cared for her husband passionately, had her whole heart been given into his keeping, she must have been angry; she must have mourned.

As, evening after evening, Mr. Paget came to this conclusion, he invariably gave vent to a sigh of relief. He never guessed that if he could wear a mask, so also could his child. He never even suspected that beneath Valentine's gay laughter, under the soft shining of her clear eyes, under her smiles, her light easy words, lay a pain, lay an ache, which ceased not to trouble her day and night.

Mr. Paget came home early. Valentine was waiting for him in the drawing-room.

"We shall have a cosy evening, father," she said. "Oh, no, Gerald can't come. He says he has some letters to write. I think he has a headache, too. I'd have stayed with him, only he prefers being quiet. Well, we'll have a jolly evening together. Kiss me, dad."

He did kiss her, then she linked his hand in her arm, and they went downstairs and dined together, as they used to do in the old days before either of them had heard of Gerald Wyndham.

"Let us come into the library to-night," said Valentine. "You know there is no room like the library to me."

"Nor to me," said Mr. Paget brightly. "It reminds me of when you were a child, my darling."

"Ah, well, I'm not a child now, I'm a woman."

She kept back the sigh which rose to her lips.

"I think I like being a child best, only one never can have the old childish time back again."

"Who knows, Val? Perhaps we may. If you have spoiled your teeth enough over those filberts, shall we go into the library? I have something to tell you – a little bit of news."

"All right, you shall tell it sitting in your old armchair."

She flitted on in front, looking quite like the child she more or less still was.

"Now isn't this perfect?" she said, when the door was shut, Mr. Paget established in his armchair, and the two pairs of eyes fixed upon the glowing fire. "Isn't this perfect?"

"Yes, my darling – perfect. Valentine, there is no love in all the world like a father's for his child."

"No greater love has come to me," replied Valentine slowly; and now some of the pain at her heart, notwithstanding all her brave endeavors, did come into her face. "No greater love has come to me, but I can imagine, yes. I can imagine a mightier."

"What do you mean, child?"

"For instance – if you loved your husband perfectly, and he – he loved you, and there was nothing at all between – and the joy of all joys was to be with him, and you were to feel that in thought – in word – in deed – you were one, not two. There, what am I saying? The wildest nonsense. There isn't such a thing as a love of that sort. What's your news, father?"

"My dear child, how intensely you speak!"

"Never mind! Tell me what is your news, father."

Mr. Paget laughed, his laugh was not very comfortable.

"Has Gerald told you anything, Valentine?"

"Gerald? No, nothing special; he had a headache this evening."

"You know, Val – at least we often talked the matter over – that Gerald might have to go away for a time. He is my partner, and partners in such a firm as mine have often to go to the other side of the world to transact important business."

"Yes, you and Gerald have both spoken of it. He's not going soon, is he?"

"That's it, my pet. The necessity has arisen rather suddenly. Gerald has to sail for Sydney in about a month."

Valentine was sitting a little behind her father. He could not see the pallor of her face; her voice was quite clear and quiet.

"Poor old Gerry," she said; "he won't take me, will he, father?"

"Impossible, my dear – absolutely. You surely don't want to go."

"No, not particularly."

Valentine yawned with admirable effect.

"She really can't care for him at all. What a wonderful piece of luck," muttered her father.

"I daresay Gerald will enjoy Sydney," continued his wife. "Is he likely to be long away?"

"Perhaps six months – perhaps not so long. Time is always a matter of some uncertainty in cases of this kind."

"I could come back to you while he is away, couldn't I, dad?"

"Why, of course, my dear one, I always intended that. It would be old times over again – old times over again for you and your father, Valentine."

"Not quite, I think," replied Valentine. "We can't go back really. Things happen, and we can't undo them. Do you know, father, I think Gerald must have infected me with his headache. If you don't mind, I'll go home."

Mr. Paget saw his daughter back to Park-lane, but he did not go into the house. Valentine rang the bell, and when Masters opened the door she asked him where her husband was.

"In the library, ma'am; you can hear him can't you? He's practising of the violin."

Yes, the music of this most soul-speaking, soul-stirring instrument filled the house. Valentine put her finger to her lips to enjoin silence, and went softly along the passage which led to the library. The door was a little ajar – she could look in without being herself seen. Some sheets of music were scattered about on the table, but Wyndham was not playing from any written score. The queer melody which he called Waves was filling the room. Valentine had heard it twice before – she started and clasped her hands as its passion, its unutterable sadness, its despair, reached her. Where were the triumph notes which had come into it six weeks ago?

She turned and fled up to her room, and locking the door, threw herself by her bedside and burst into bitter weeping.

"Oh, Gerald, I love you! I do love you; but I'll never show it. No, never, until you tell me the truth."

CHAPTER XXV

"Yes," said Augusta Wyndham, "if there is a young man who suits me all round it's Mr. Carr. Yes," she said, standing very upright in her short skirts, with her hair in a tight pig-tail hanging down her back, and her determined, wide open, bright eyes fixed upon an admiring audience of younger sisters. "He suits me exactly. He's a kind of hail-fellow-well-met; he has no nonsensical languishing airs about him; he preaches nice short sermons, and never bothers you to remember what they are about afterwards; he's not bad at tennis or cricket, and he really can cannon quite decently at billiards; but for all that, if you think, you young 'uns, that he's going to get inside of Gerry, or that he's going to try to pretend to know better than Gerry what I can or can't do, why you're all finely mistaken, so there!"

Augusta turned on her heel, pirouetted a step or two, whistled in a loud, free, unrestrained fashion, and once more faced her audience.

"Gerry said that I could give out the library books. Now is it likely that Mr. Carr knows more of my capacities after six months' study than Gerry found out after fifteen years?"

"But Mr. Carr doesn't study you, Gus. It's Lilias he's always looking at," interrupted little Rosie.

"You're not pretty, are you, Gus?" asked Betty. "Your cheeks are too red, aren't they? And nurse says your eyes are as round as an owl's!"

"Pretty!" answered Augusta, in a lofty voice. "Who cares for being pretty? Who cares for being simply pink and white? I'm for intellect. I'm for the march of mind. Gerry believes in me. Hurrah for Gerry! Now, girls, off with your caps, throw them in the air, and shout hurrah for Gerry three times, as loud as you can!"

"What an extraordinary noise the children are making on the lawn," said Lilias to Marjory. "I hear Gerald's name. What can they be saying about Gerald? One would almost think he was coming down the avenue to see the state of excitement they are in! Do look, Meg, do."

"It's only one of Gussie's storms in a tea-cup," responded Marjory, cheerfully. "I am so glad, Lil, that you found Gerald and Val hitting it off so nicely. You consider them quite a model pair for affection and all that, don't you, pet?"

"Quite," said Lilias. "My mind is absolutely at rest. One night Val puzzled me a little. Oh, nothing to speak of – nothing came of it, I mean. Yes, my mind is absolutely at rest, thank God! What are all the children doing. Maggie? They are flying in a body to the house. What can it mean?"

"We'll know in less than no time," responded Marjory, calmly. And they did.

Four little girls, all out of breath, all dressed alike, all looking alike, dashed into the drawing-room, and in one breath poured out the direful intelligence that Augusta had mutinied.

"Mr. Carr forbade her to give away the library books," they said, "and she has gone up now to the school-room in spite of him. She's off; she said Gerry said she might do it, long ago. Isn't it awful of her? She says beauty's nothing, and she's only going to obey Gerry," continued Betty. "What shall we do? She'll give all the books away wrong, and Mr. Carr will be angry."

They all paused for want of breath. Rosie went up and laid her fat red hand on Lilias' knee.

"I said it was you he stared at," she remarked. "You wouldn't like him to be vexed, would you?"

The words had scarcely passed her lips before the door was opened, and the object of the children's universal commiseration entered. A deep and awful silence took possession of them. Lilias clutched Rosie's hand, and felt an inane desire to rush from the room with her.

Too late. The terrible infant flew to Adrian Carr, and clasping her arms around his legs, looked up into his face.

"Never mind," she said, "it is wrong of Gussie, but it isn't Lilias' fault. She wouldn't like to vex you, 'cause you stare so at her."

"Nursie says that you admire Lilias; do you?" asked Betty.

"Oh, poor Gussie!" exclaimed the others, their interest in Lilias and Carr being after all but a very secondary matter. "We all do hope you won't do anything dreadful to her. You can, you know. You can excommunicate her, can't you?"

"But what has Augusta done?" exclaimed Carr, turning a somewhat flushed face in the direction not of Lilias, but of Marjory. "What a frightful confusion – and what does it mean?"

Marjory explained as well as she was able. Carr had lately taken upon himself to overhaul the books of the lending library. He believed in literature as a very elevating lever, but he thought that books should not only be carefully selected in the mass, but in lending should be given with a special view to the needs of the individual who borrowed. Before Gerald's marriage Marjory had given away the books, but since then, for various reasons, they had drifted into Augusta's hands, and through their means this rather spirited and daring young lady had been able to inflict a small succession of mild tyrannies. For instance, poor Miss Yates, the weak-eyed and weak-spirited village dressmaker, was dosed with a series of profound and dull theology; and Macallister, the sexton and shoemaker, a canny Scot, who looked upon all fiction as the "work of the de'il," was put into a weekly passion with the novels of Charles Reade and Wilkie Collins.

These were extreme cases, but Augusta certainly had the knack of giving the wrong book to the wrong person. Carr heard mutterings and grumbling. The yearly subscriptions of a shilling a piece diminished, and he thought it full time to take the matter in hand. He himself would distribute the village literature every Saturday, at twelve o'clock.

The day and the hour arrived, and behold Miss Augusta Wyndham had forestalled him, and was probably at this very moment putting "The Woman in White" into the enraged Macallister's hand. Carr's temper was not altogether immaculate; he detached the children's clinging hands from his person, and said he would pursue the truant, publicly take the reins of authority from her, and send her home humiliated. He left the rectory, walking fast, and letting his annoyance rather increase than diminish, for few young men care to be placed in a ridiculous situation, and he could not but feel that such was his in the present instance.

The school-house was nearly half a mile from the rectory, along a straight and dusty piece of road; very dusty it was to-day, and a cutting March east wind blew in Carr's face and stung it. He approached the school-house – no, what a relief – the patient aspirants after literature were most of them waiting outside. Augusta, then, could not have gone into the school-room.

"Has Miss Augusta Wyndham gone upstairs?" he asked of a rosy-cheeked girl who adored the "Sunday At Home."

"No, please, sir. Mr. Gerald's come, please, Mr. Carr, sir," raising two eyes which nearly blazed with excitement. "He shook 'ands with me, he did, and with Old Ben, there; and Miss Augusta, she give a sort of a whoop, and she had her arms round his neck, and was a-hugging of him before us all, and they has gone down through the fields to the rectory."

"About the books," said Carr; "has Miss Augusta given you the books?"

"Bless your 'eart, sir," here interrupted Old Ben, "we ain't of a mind for books to-day. Mr. Gerald said he'd come up this evening to the Club, and have a chat with us all, and Sue and me, we was waiting here to tell the news. Litteratoor ain't in our line to-day, thank you, sir."

"Here's Mr. Macallister," said Sue. "Mr. Macallister. Mr. Gerald's back. He is, truly. I seen him, and so did Old Ben."

"And he'll be at the Club to-night," said Ben, turning his wrinkled face upwards towards the elongated visage of the canny Scot.

"The Lord be praised for a' His mercies," pronounced Macallister, slowly, with an upward wave of his hand, as if he were returning thanks for a satisfying meal. "Na, na. Mr. Carr, na books the day."

Finding that his services were really useless, Carr went away. The villagers were slowly collecting from different quarters, and all faces were broadening into smiles, and all the somewhat indifferent sleepy tones becoming perceptibly brighter, and Gerald Wyndham's name was passed from lip to lip. Old Miss Bates wiped her tearful eyes, as she hurried home to put on her best cap. Widow Simpkins determined to make up a good fire in her cottage, and not to spare the coals; the festive air was unmistakeable. Carr felt smitten with a kind of envy. What wonders could not Wyndham have effected in this place, he commented, as he walked slowly back to his lodgings. Later in the day he called at the rectory to find the hero surrounded by his adoring family, and bearing his honors gracefully.

Gerald was talking rather more than his wont; for some reason or other his face had more color than usual, his eyes were bright, he smiled, and even laughed. Lilias ceased to watch him anxiously, a sense of jubilation filled the breast of every worshipping sister, and no one thought of parting or sorrow.

Perhaps even Gerald himself forgot the bitterness which lay before him just then; perhaps his efforts were not all efforts, and that he really felt some of the old home peace and rest with its sustaining power.

You can know a thing and yet not always realize it. Gerald knew that he should never spend another Saturday in the old rectory of Jewsbury-on-the-Wold. That Lilias' bright head and Lilias' tender, steadfast earnest eyes would be in future only a memory. He could never hope again to touch that hair, or answer back the smile on that beloved and happy face. The others, too – but Lilias, after his wife, was most dear of all living creatures to Gerald. Well, he must not think; he resolved to take all the sweetness, if possible, out of this Saturday and Sunday. He resolved not to tell any of his people of the coming parting until just before he left.

The small sisters squatted in a semicircle on the floor round their hero; Augusta, as usual, stood behind him, keeping religious guard of the back of his head.

"If there is a thing I simply adore," that vigorous young lady was often heard to say, "it's the back of Gerry's head."

Lilias sat at his feet, her slim hand and arm lying across his knee; Marjory flitted about, too restless and happy to be quiet, and the tall rector stood on the hearthrug with his back to the fire.

"It is good to be home again," said Gerald. Whereupon a sigh of content echoed from all the other throats, and it was at this moment that Carr came into the room.

"Come in, Carr, come in," said the rector. "There's a place for you, too. You're quite like one of the family, you know. Oh, of course you are, my dear fellow, of course you are. We have got my son back, unexpectedly. Gerald, you know Carr, don't you."

Gerald stood up, gave Carr's hand a hearty grip, and offered him his chair.

"Oh, not that seat, Gerry," groaned Augusta, "it's the only one in the room I can stand at comfortably. I can't fiddle with your curls if I stand at the back of any other chair."

Gerald patted her cheek.

"Then perhaps, Carr, you'll oblige Augusta by occupying another chair. I am sorry that I am obliged to withhold the most comfortable from you."

Carr was very much at home with the Wyndhams by now. He pulled forward a cane chair, shook his head at Augusta, and glanced almost timidly at Lilias. He feared the eight sharp eyes of the younger children if he did more than look very furtively, but she made such a sweet picture just then that his eyes sought hers by a sort of fascination. For the first time, too, he noticed that she had a look of Gerald. Her face lacked the almost spiritualized expression of his, but undoubtedly there was a likeness.

The voices, interrupted for a moment by the curate's entrance, soon resumed their vigorous flow.

"Why didn't you bring my dear little sister Valentine down, Gerald?" It was Lilias who spoke.

He rewarded her loving speech by a flash, half of pleasure, half of pain in his eyes. Aloud he said: —

"We thought it scarcely worth while for both of us to come. I must go away again on Monday."

A sepulchral groan from Augusta. Rosie, Betty and Joan exclaimed almost in a breath: —

"And we like you much better by yourself."

"Oh, hush, children," said Marjory. "We are all very fond of Val."

"You have brought a great deal of delight into the village. Wyndham," said Carr, and he related the little scene which had taken place around the school-house. "I'd give a good deal to be even half as popular," he said with a sigh.

"You might give all you possessed in all the world, and you wouldn't succeed," snapped Gussie.

"Augusta, you really are too rude," said Lilias with a flush on her face.

"No, I'm not, Lil. Oh, you needn't stare at me. I like him, and he knows it," nodding with her head in the direction of Adrian Carr; "but you have to be born in a place, and taught to walk in it, and you have had to steal apples in it and eggs out of birds' nests, and to get nearly drowned when fishing, and to get some shot in your ankle, and you've got to know every soul in all the country round, and to come back from school to them in the holidays, and for them first to see your moustache coming; and then, beyond and above all that, you've got just to be Gerry, to have his way of looking, and his way of walking, and his way of shaking your hand, and to have his voice and his heart, to be loved as well. So how could Mr. Carr expect it?"

"Bravo, Augusta," said Adrian Carr. "I'd like you for a friend better than any girl I know."

"Please, Gerry, tell us a story," exclaimed the younger children. They did not want Augusta to have all the talking.

"Let it be about a mouse, and a cricket on the hearth, and a white elephant, and a roaring bull, and a grizzly bear."

"And let the ten little nigger-boys come into it," said Betty.

"And Bo-Peep," said Rosie.

"And the Old Man who wouldn't say his prayers," exclaimed Joan.

"And let it last for hours," exclaimed they all.

Gerald begged the rest of the audience to go away, but they refused to budge an inch. So the story began. All the characters appeared in due order; it lasted a long time, and everybody was delighted.