CHAPTER XII.
HOW TITA COMES BACK FROM HER HONEYMOON, AND HOW HER HUSBAND'S MOTHER TELLS HER OF CERTAIN THINGS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEFT UNTOLD.
"And the weather—the weather was the most marvellous thing!" says Tita, with enthusiasm. "Perpetual sunshine! Here, in September, it often pelts rain all day long!"
"Pelts! My dear Tita, what a word!" says Lady Rylton.
She sinks back in her chair as if overcome, and presses her perfumed handkerchief to her face.
"What's the matter with it?" asks Tita, a little smartly, perhaps. "It's a right-down good word, in my opinion. I've heard lots of people use it."
"No doubt you have," says her mother-in-law.
"Well, so have you, I dare say!" says Tita.
"I expect we all have," says Margaret Knollys, laughing. "Still, you know, Tita, it's not a pretty word."
"Very good; I shan't say it again," says Tita, the mutinous little face of a moment ago now lovely with love.
She has come back from her honeymoon quite as fond of Margaret as when she started.
It is now the middle of September; outside on the lawn the shadows are wandering merrily from tree to tree. The sun is high, but little clouds running across it now and again speak of sharp rains to come.
"The air so soft, the pines whispering so low,
The dragon-flies, like fairy spears of steel,
Darting or poised."
All these speak of the glad heat that still remains, though summer itself is but a dream that is gone.
Tita's honeymoon is at an end. It had seemed to her delightful. She had taken but a child's view of it. Maurice had been so kind, so good, so different from that nasty old uncle. He had been so good, indeed, that when he asked her to come first to see his mother (Lady Rylton had made quite a point of this in her letters to him; the county might think it so odd if the young wife did not appear anxious to fly into her arms on her return), she had said "Yes" quite willingly, and with a grateful little glance. He had done so much for her, she must do something for him. But she hated going back to The Place, for all that. She wanted to go straight to her own old home, her beautiful Oakdean, without a single stop.
She has been at The Place now for a week. Margaret Knollys and Randal Gower are the only two guests, Mrs. Bethune being on a visit to some friends in Scotland. The shooting here is excellent, and Sir Maurice has enjoyed himself immensely. Sir Maurice's wife has, perhaps, not enjoyed herself quite so much. But nothing, so far, has occurred to render her in the very least unhappy. If the clouds be black, she has not seen them. Her young soul has uplifted itself, and is soaring gaily amongst the stars. In her ignorance she tells herself she is quite, quite happy; it is only when we love that we doubt of happiness, and thus sometimes (because of our modesty, perhaps) we gain it. Tita has never known what love means.
There has been a little fret, a little jar to-day, between her and Lady Rylton. The latter's memory is good, and she has never forgotten what Maurice—in a moment's folly—had said of Tita's determination not to live with her at The Place. It is Lady Rylton's rôle to return to all, in extra good measure, such injuries as she may judge herself to have received.
Tita naturally, in this small warfare, is at a disadvantage. She has forgotten her words, but even if she remembered them, would not for a moment suspect Maurice of having repeated them. And, indeed, Maurice, as we all know, had done it in a heated moment with best intent towards his small betrothed; besides, Tita at this time—so heartwhole and so _débonnaire—_gives no thinking to anything save the getting out into the fresh air in these uncertain days, and the breaking in of a young horse that Maurice has made her a present of. Danger walks behind her, but she never turns her head; what has she to fear?
"Youth, that knows no dread
Of any horrors lurking far ahead,
Across the sunny flowered fields of life."
carries her safely right into the enemy's camp. Cruel youth!
"Won't you come out with me and have a stroll in the gardens before tea?" asks Margaret, rising. It seems to her that the social air is growing a little too sultry. "Come, Tita; it will do you good."
"Oh, I should love it!" says Tita, starting to her feet.
"Dear Margaret, you forget that, though Tita has been here for a week, this is the very first quiet moment I have had with her! Do not tempt her from me!"
"Certainly not, Tessie, if you wish to have her with you," says
Margaret, reseating herself.
Now, more than ever, she feels there is danger in the air.
"Don't let me keep you," says Lady Rylton, with deliberation. "Go, dear Margaret, and get some of the sweet evening air—it may be of use to your complexion; it is the tiniest bit yellow of late. And when one is twenty-five—it is twenty-five?"
She knows Margaret's truthful nature.
"Thirty," says Margaret, who knows her, too, to the very ground.
"Ah, impossible!" says Lady Rylton sweetly. "Twenty-five, Margaret—not a day more! But, still, your complexion—— There, go away and refresh it; and come back when I have had my little chat with my dearest Tita."
Margaret casts a swift glance at the girl sitting there, apparently quite unconscious of the coming storm, and with her hands twined behind her head. She has her legs crossed—another sin—and is waving one little foot up and down in a rather too careless fashion.
Tita looks back at her.
"Don't be long," says she inaudibly.
Margaret gives her a nod, and goes out through the window.
"My dearest child," says Lady Rylton, nestling cosily into her chair, and smiling delicately at Tita over the top of her fan, "you may have noticed that I gave dear Margaret her congé with intent?"
"I saw that you wanted to get rid of her," says Tita.
"I fear, my dear, your training has been somewhat defective," says Lady Rylton, biting her lips. "We never—we in society, I mean—never 'get rid' of people. There are better ways of doing things, that——"
"It must cause you a lot of trouble," says Tita. "It looks to me like walking half a dozen times round your bath on a frosty morning, knowing all along you will have to get into it."
"Sh!" says Lady Rylton. "My dear, you should not mention your bath before people."
"Why not? When one loves a thing, one speaks of it. Don't you love your bath?" asks Tita.
Lady Rylton sits glaring at her, as if too horrified to go on. Tita continues:
"If you don't, you ought, you know," says she.
"You must be out of your mind to talk to me like this," says Lady Rylton at last. Something in the girl's air tells her that there is some little touch of devilment in it, some anger, some hatred. "But, naturally, I make allowances for you. Your birth, your surroundings, your bringing up, all preclude the idea that you should know how to manage yourself in the world into which you have been thrown by your marriage with my son."
"As for my birth," says Tita slowly, "I did not choose it; and you should be the last to throw it in my teeth. If you disapproved of it before my marriage with your son, why did you not say so?"
"There were many reasons," says Lady Rylton slowly, deliberately. "For one, as you know, your money was a necessity to Maurice; and for another——" She breaks off, and scans the girl's face with an air of question. "Dare I go on?" asks she.
"Why should you not dare?" says Tita.
A quick light has come into her eyes.
"Ah, that is it! I have something to say to you that I think, perhaps, should be said, yet I fear the saying of it."
"For you, or for me?" asks Tita.
She has her small brown hands clasped tightly together in her lap now. There is something nervous in the tension of them. Where, where is Margaret? For all that, she looks back at her mother-in-law with a clear and fearless glance.
"For you," says Lady Rylton—"for you only! But before I begin—I am a very nervous person, you know, and scenes," again pressing her handkerchief to her face, "upset me so—tell me, do tell me, if you have a good temper!"
"I don't know," says Tita. "Why?"
"Well, a reasonable temper! I know Maurice would try anything—less than that."
"Has it to do with Maurice? Yes? I am very reasonable," says Tita, laughing. She shows all her pretty teeth. "Now for the other reason for deigning to accept me as your son's wife!"
She laughs again. She seems to turn Lady Rylton into a sort of mild ridicule.
"I don't think I should laugh about it if I were you," returns Lady Rylton calmly, and with the subdued air that tells her intimates when she is in one of her vilest moods. "I feel very sorry for you, my poor child; and I would have warned you of this thing long ago, but I dreaded the anger of Maurice."
"Why, what is it?" cries Tita vehemently. "Has Maurice murdered somebody, or defrauded somebody, or run away with somebody?"
"Oh no! He did not run away with her," says lady Rylton slowly.
"You mean—you mean——"
The girl is now leaning forward, her small face rather white.
"I mean that he has been in love with his cousin for the past two years."
"His cousin!" Tita's thoughts run to Margaret. "Margaret?"
"Nonsense!" says Lady Rylton; the idea strikes her as ludicrous. The surprise, the strange awakening to the young bride, who, if not in love with her husband, has at all events expected loyalty from him, has affected her not at all; but this suggestion of Margaret as a possible lover of Maurice's convulses her with amusement. "Margaret! No!"
"Who, then?" asks Tita.
"Marian—Marian Bethune."
"Mrs. Bethune!"
"Did you never guess? I fancied perhaps you had heard nothing, so I felt it my duty to let you into a little of the secret—to warn you. Marian might want to stay with you, for example—and Maurice——"
"Mrs. Bethune may stay with me with pleasure," says Tita. "Why not?"
"Why not?" Lady Rylton pauses as if choking. She had thought to lower this girl into the very dust, and revenge herself on Maurice at the same time by her shameful revelation. "You do not care, then?" says she, bitterly disappointed.
Tita does not answer her. Suddenly her young thoughts have gone backwards, and all at once she remembers many things. The poison has entered into her. In a moment, as it were, she is back in that dim conservatory where Maurice (he has never been "he" or "him" to her, as happier girls, who love more and are more beloved, would have styled him)—where Maurice had asked her to marry him.
Now, in some strange fashion, her memory grows alive and compels her to remember how he looked and spoke that night—that night of his proposal to her, when she had asked him if he loved his cousin.
There had been a queer, indescribable change in his face—a sudden pallor, a start! She had thought nothing of it then, but now it comes back to her. She had meant Margaret—Margaret whom she loves; but he—who had he meant?
Really it doesn't matter so much after all, this story of Lady
Rylton's. Maurice can go his way and she hers—that was arranged!
But, for all that, it does seem rather mean that he should have
married her, telling her nothing of this.
"Care! why should I care?" says she suddenly, Lady Rylton's last words clinging to her brain, in spite of all its swift wanderings during the last sixty seconds.
"Such an admirable indifference would almost lead me to believe that you had been born of good parentage," says Lady Rylton, cold with disappointed revenge.
"I was born of excellent parentage——" Tita is beginning, when the sound of footsteps slowly mounting the stairs of the veranda outside comes to them.
A second later Mrs. Gower shows himself.