CHAPTER XIII.
HOW A LITTLE SPARRING IS DONE AMONGST THE GUESTS AT OAKDEAN; AND HOW TOM HESCOTT TELLS A STORY.
Meantime all the others are sitting out in the garden, gossiping to their hearts' content. They had tried tennis, but the courts are rather soft now; and though an Indian summer has fallen upon us, still it has not sufficed to dry up all the moisture caused by the late rains.
The little thatched hut at the end of the gardens, where the sun is now blazing, has drawn them all into a net, as it were. It is an off day, when there is no shooting, and the women are therefore jubilant, and distinctly in the ascendant. The elder Lady Rylton is not present, which adds to the hilarity of the hour, as in spite of her wonderful juvenility she is by no means a favourite. Miss Gower, however, _is—_which balances the situation.
"I don't believe I ever felt so sorry for leaving any place," says Mrs. Chichester (who is always talking) with a soft but prolonged sigh—the sigh that is meant to be heard. She casts a languishing glance at Marryatt as she says this. He is not invited to the next country house to which she is bound. He returns her glance fourfold, upon which she instantly dives behind Mrs. Bethune's back, on the pretence of speaking to Margaret, but in reality to hide her face.
"Yes; I feel sorry too," says Colonel Neilson. "Where are you going?"
"To the Hastings'," says Mrs. Chichester, who has now emerged from behind Marian's back, with the same sad face as before. "You know her. Matilda Bruce!"
"Bless me! Has she got married?" says Colonel Neilson, who is really the kindest-hearted man alive.
"Yes; quite a year ago."
Mrs. Bethune laughs her usual slow, cruel little laugh, that is always in some strange way so full of fascination. She, too, had known Matilda Bruce. "I am afraid poor Mr. Hastings must have had a great many refusals," says she. She looks at Mrs. Chichester. "So you are going there?"
"Yes, for my sins. Fred Hastings is a very old friend of mine."
"What a great many old friends you have," says Mrs. Bethune softly.
"Well, it is better to have old friends than no friends"—making the retort courteous, with a beaming smile.
"I've been staying at the Hastings', too," says Minnie Hescott, glad to show that she is within the sacred circle, even though it be on its outermost edge. "But——" She stops.
"I know. You needn't go on," says Mrs. Chichester. "I've heard all about it. A terrible ménage, and no fires anywhere. Amy Stuart told me—she was staying with them last Christmas—that she often wished she was the roast joint in the oven, she felt so withered up with cold."
"Well, marriage improves people," says Colonel Neilson, laughing. "Let us hope it will enlarge Mrs. Hastings' mind as to the matter of fires."
"It will!" says Mrs. Chichester.
"But why? If——" says Margaret, leaning forward.
"Because marriage improves women, and"—Mrs. Chichester pauses, and lets her queer green eyes rest on Marryatt's—"and does the other thing for men."
Marryatt is looking back at her as if transfixed. He is thinking of her words rather than of her. Has marriage disimproved her husband? Has he been a brute to her? He knows so little—she has told him so little! At this moment it occurs to him that she has told him nothing.
"What are you staring at?" asks she presently. "Is anything the matter with me? Have I straws in my hair?"
His answer is interrupted by Mr. Gower.
"Take it down," says he. "How can anyone tell nowadays what a woman has in her hair unless one sees?"
"Well, it's not straws, any way," says Mrs. Chichester, with a shrug of her lean shoulders.
"It might be worse!" says Mr. Gower, who has always declared that Mrs. Chichester has dyed her hair. His tone, which is always sepulchral, attracts immediate attention, as all things sepulchral do. "And as for Matilda Bruce, I refuse to see why you should sit upon her with such determined cruelty. I know her, and I think her a most excellent wife, and house-wife, and—mother!"
"A mother!" says Margaret, who had known Mrs. Bruce slightly, but had not been in sympathy with her.
"Why, yes! She's got a baby," says Mrs. Chichester. "Didn't you hear? Nobody does hear much about them. For my part, I pity her about that baby! It's so awkward to have children!"
"Awkward?"
"Yes. Nasty people go about asking their ages, especially the age of the eldest little horror, and then they can guess to a nicety how long one must have lived. It's a mean way of finding out one's age. I'm thankful I have no children."
Mrs. Chichester leans back in her chair and laughs.
Perhaps—perhaps—there is a regret in her laugh.
"I think it is the children who ought to be thankful," says old
Miss Gower, covering her with a condemnatory glance.
Mrs. Chichester turns her eye on her.
"Do you know, Miss Gower, you have for once hit a happy truth," says she.
She smiles blandly on the terrible old maid. But Tita, who has just come down from her room, and has entered the hut, is struck by the queer expression in her eyes.
"You have come at last, Tita," says Margaret, going to her.
"I have had such a headache," says Tita, pressing her hands to her brow. "It has worried me all day. But I came down now, hoping the air and"—sweetly looking round her—"all of you would cure it."
"I think you ought to be lying down," says Margaret, seeing the pallor of the young face before her, and pitying the determination, so plainly to be seen, to keep up.
"Maurice"—to Rylton, who has come on the scene a moment later than his wife, so immediately after her, indeed, that one might be forgiven for imagining he had come in her train, only for one thing, he had come from an opposite direction—"Maurice, I think Tita should be induced to lie down for a bit. She looks tired."
"Nonsense," says Tita.
Her tone is almost repellent, although it is to Margaret she speaks.
But in reality the tone is meant for Maurice.
"I've got a headache, certainly. But I firmly believe that it has grown out of the knowledge that you are all going to desert me to-morrow."
This little speech, most innocently meant, she points by smiling at her cousin, Tom Hescott. She had been unkind to him down there in the shrubbery awhile ago, she tells herself, and now she is telling him in silent, sweet little ways that she meant nothing nasty, nothing cold or uncourteous.
Her husband, watching her, sees the glance, and grinds under it. He misunderstands it. As for Tom! Poor Tom! He, too, sees the pretty glance, and he, too, misunderstands it.
All at once a quick but most erroneous thought springs to life within his heart. Her glance now! Her tears awhile ago! Were they for him? Is she sorry because he is leaving her? Is her life here unbearable?
Mrs. Bethune has risen and come up to Tita.
"You speak as if we were going to leave you to immediate destruction?" says she. "Are you afraid of being left alone with—Maurice?"
Mrs. Chichester, who has a great deal of good in her, mixed up with a terrible amount of frivolity, comes forward so quietly that Tita's sudden whiteness is hardly seen, except by one.
"Fancy being afraid of Sir Maurice," says she. "Sir Maurice," casting a laughing glance at him, "I shouldn't be afraid of you."
Sir Maurice laughs back, and everyone laughs with him, and Mrs.
Bethune's barb is blunted.
"I am not afraid of anything," says Tita lightly. "But I confess I feel sorry at the thought of losing you all, even for a time——"
This prettily, and with a glance round her as good as an invitation for next year.
"I know you, Minnie" (to her cousin), "are going to delightful people—and you," turning suddenly to Mrs. Bethune, "I hope you are going to friends?"
"Friends! I have no friends," says Marian Bethune sombrely. "I have learned to forbid myself such luxuries. I can't afford them. I find them too expensive!"
"Expensive?"
"Yes. A loss to me of peace of mind that can never be made up." She smiles at Tita, a cold, unpleasant smile. "Do you know what my definition of a friend is? Someone who takes delight in telling you all the detestable things your other friends have said of you."
"I don't think much of your friends, any way," says Mrs.
Chichester, who as a rule is always en évidence. "Do you, Sir
Maurice?"
"Do I what?"
"Do you agree with Mrs. Bethune?"
"I always agree with everybody," says Rylton, smiling.
Tita moves abruptly away.
"What a hot day it is," says she petulantly, "and nothing to do. Tom," beckoning Hescott to her, "tell us a story. Do. You used to tell beautiful ones—in—the old days."
"Do you still long for them?" asks Mrs. Bethune, always with her supercilious smile, and in a tone that is almost a whisper, yet quite loud enough for Rylton, who is standing near, to hear.
"Do you?" demands Tita, turning upon her with eyes ablaze with miserable anger.
"I?" haughtily. "What do you mean?"
Tita lifts her eyes to Rylton—such eyes.
"He will tell you," says she, and with a little scornful lifting of her chin she turns away.
"Now for your story, Tom," cries she gaily, merrily.
"You take me very short," says Hescott, who seems, in his present mood, which is of the darkest, to be the last man in Europe to tell an amusing tale. "But one occurs to me, and, of course," looking round him, "you all know it. Everyone nowadays knows every story that has and has not been told since the world began. Well, any way, I heard of a man the other day who—it is a most extraordinary thing—but he hated his wife!"
"For goodness' sake tell us something new," says Mrs. Chichester, with open disgust.
"Isn't that new? Well, this man was at a prayer-meeting of some sort. There is a sort of bad man that hankers after prayer-meetings, and, of course, this was a bad man because he hated his wife. It was at the East End, and Job was the subject. Job is good for an East-End meeting, because patience is the sort of thing you must preach there nowadays if you wish to keep your houses from being set on fire; and he heard of all the troubles of Job, and how he was cursed—and how his children and cattle and goods had been taken from him—and only his wife left! That struck him—about the wife! 'Hang it! That was a big curse!' said he. 'Fancy leaving the wife!' And the odd part of it was," says Hescott, lifting his eyes and looking deliberately at Rylton, "that his wife was an angel, whereas he—well, she was the Job of his life. She had to endure all things at his hands."
Rylton looks back at him, and feels his brow grow black with rage.
He would have liked to take him and choke the life out of him.
"A delightful story," says he, with a sneer. "So fresh, so original!"
"Very dull, I think," says Mrs. Chichester, who can't hold her tongue. "An everyday sort of thing. Lady Rylton, what do you think?"
But when they look round for her they find Tita has disappeared.