THE PITFALL
PART I
"Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in."—Omar Khayyám.
Lady Mary Carden sat near the open window of her blue and white boudoir looking out intently, fixedly across Park Lane at the shimmer of the trees in Hyde Park. It was June. It was sunny. The false gaiety of the season was all around her; flickering swiftly past her in the crush of carriages below her window; dawdling past her in the walking and riding crowds in the park. She looked at it without seeing it. Perhaps she had had enough of it, this strange conglomeration of alien elements and foreign bodies, this bouille-à-baisse which is called "The Season." She had seen it all year after year for twelve years, varying as little as the bedding out of the flowers behind the railings. Perhaps she was as weary of society as most people become who take it seriously. She certainly often said that it was rotten to the core.
She hardly moved. She sat with an open letter in her hand, thinking, thinking.
The house was very still. Her aunt, with whom she lived, had gone early into the country for the day. The only sound, the monotonous whirr of the great machine of London, came from without.
Mary was thirty, an age at which many women are still young, an age at which some who have heads under their hair are still rising towards the zenith of their charm. But Mary was not one of these. Her youth was clearly on the wane. She bore the imprint of that which ages—because if unduly prolonged it enfeebles—the sheltered life, a life centred in conventional ideas, dwarfed by a conventional religious code, a life feebly nourished on cut and dried charities sandwiched between petty interests and pettier pleasures. She showed the mark of her twelve seasons, and of what she had made of life, in the slight fading of her delicate complexion, the fatigued discontent of her blue eyes, the faint dignified dejection of her manner, which was the reflection of an unconscious veiled surprise that she of all women—she the gentle, the good, the religious, the pretty Mary Carden was still—in short was still Mary Carden.
The onlooker would perhaps have shared that surprise. She was indubitably pretty, indubitably well bred, graceful, slender, with a delicate manicured hand, and fair waved hair. Her fringe, which seemed inclined to grow somewhat larger with the years, was nearly all her own. She possessed the art of dress to perfection. You could catalogue her good points. But somehow she remained without attraction. She lacked vitality, and those who lack vitality seldom seem to get or keep what they want, at any rate in this world.
She was the kind of woman whom a man marries to please his mother, or because she is an heiress, or because he has been jilted and wishes to show how little he feels it. She was not a first choice.
She was one of that legion of perfectly appointed women who at seventeen deplore the rapacity of the older girls in ruthlessly clutching up all the attention of the simpler sex; and who at thirty acidly remark that men care only for a pink cheek and a baby face.
Poor Mary was thinking of a man now, of a certain light-hearted simpleton of a soldier with a slashed scar across his hand, which a Dervish had given him at Omdurman, the man as commonplace as herself, on whom for no particular reason she had glued her demure, obstinate, adhesive affections twelve years ago.
Our touching faithfulness to an early love is often only owing to the fact that we have never had an adequate temptation to be unfaithful. Certainly with Mary it was so. The temptations had been pitiably inadequate. She had never swerved from that long-ago mild flirtation of a boy and girl in their teens, studiously thrown together by their parents. She had taken an unwearying interest in him. She had petitioned Heaven that he might pass for the Army, and he did just squeeze in. By the aid of fervent prayer she had drawn him safely through the Egyptian campaign, while other women's husbands and lovers fell right and left. He had not said anything definite before he went out, but Mary had found ample reasons for his silence. He could not bear to overshadow her life in case, etc., etc. But now he had been safely back a year, two years, and still he had said nothing. This was more difficult to account for. He was fond of her. There was no doubt about that. They had always been fond of each other. Every one had expected them to marry. His parents had wished it. Her aunt had favoured the idea with heavy-footed zeal. Her brother, Lord Rollington, when he had a moment to spare from his training-stable, had jovially opined that "Maimie" would be wise to book Jos Carstairs while she could, as if she was not careful she might outstand her market.
Mary, who had for many years dreamed of gracefully yielding to Jos's repeated and urgent entreaties, had even begun to wonder whether it would not be advisable if one of her men relations were to "speak to Jos." Such things were done. As she had said to her aunt with dignity, "This sort of thing can't go on for ever," when her aunt—who yearned for the rest which, according to their own account, seems to elude stout persons—pleaded that difficulties clustered round such a course.
The course was not taken, for Jos suddenly engaged himself to a girl of seventeen, a new girl whom London knew not, the only child of one of those ruinous unions which had been swallowed up in a flame of scandal seventeen years ago, which had been forgotten for seventeen years all but nine days.
It was sedulously raked up again now. People whispered that Elsa Grey came of a bad stock; that Jos Carstairs was a bold man to marry a woman with such antecedents; a woman whose mother had slipped away out of her intolerable home years ago for another where apparently life had not been more tolerable.
Jos brought his Elsa to see Mary, for he was only fit to wave his sword and say, "Come on, boys." He did not understand anything about anything. He only remembered that Mary was a tender, loving soul. Had she not shown herself so to him for years? So he actually besought Mary to be a friend to the beautiful young sombre creature whom he had elected to marry.
Mary behaved admirably according to her code, touched Elsa's hand, civilly offered the address of a good dressmaker (not her best one), and hoped they should meet frequently. The girl looked at her once, wistfully, intently, with unfathomable lustrous eyes, as of some untamed, prisoned, woodland creature, and then took no further notice of her.
That was a fortnight ago. They were to be married in three weeks.
Mary sighed, and looked once again for the twentieth time at the letter in her hand. It was a long epistle from her bosom friend, Lady Francis Bethune, the electric tramways heiress, joylessly married to the handsomest man in London, the notorious Lord Francis Bethune.
"My dear," said the letter, "men are always like that. They are brutes, and it is no good thinking otherwise. They will throw over the woman they have loved for years for a flower-girl. You are too good for him. I have always thought so. (So had Mary.) But the game is not up yet. I could tell him things about his Elsa that would surprise him, not that he ought to be surprised at anything in her mother's daughter. He is coming to me this afternoon to tea. He said he was busy; but I told him he must come as it was on urgent business, and so it is. He is my trustee, you know, and there really is something wrong. Francis has been at it again. After the business is over I shall tell him a few things very nicely about that girl. Now, my advice to you is—chuck the Lestrange's water-party this afternoon, and come in as if casually to see me. I shall leave you alone together, and you must do the rest yourself. You may pull it off yet, after what I shall say about Elsa, for Jos has a great idea of you. Wire your reply by code before midday."
Mary got up slowly, and walked to the writing-table. Should she go and meet him? Should she not? She would go. She wrote a telegram quickly in code form. She knew the code so well that she did not stop to refer to it. She and Jos had played at code telegrams when he was cramming for the Army. She rang for the servant and sent out the telegram. Then she sat down and took up a book. It was nearly midday, and too hot to go out.
But after a few minutes she cast it suddenly aside, and began to move restlessly about the room. What was the use of going, after all? What could she say to Jos if she did see him? How could she touch his heart? Like many another woman when she thinks of a man, Mary stopped before a small mirror, and looked fixedly at herself. Was she not pretty? Had she not gentle, appealing eyes? See her little hand raised to put back a strand of fair hair. Was not everything about her pretty, and refined, and good? The vision of Elsa rose suddenly before her, with her dark, mysterious beauty and her formidable youth. Mary's heart contracted painfully. "I love him, and she doesn't," she said to herself, with bitterness. But Jos would never give up Elsa. She would make him miserable, but—he would marry her. Oh! what was the use of going to waylay him to-day? Why had she lent herself to Lady Francis's idiotic plan? Why had she accepted from her help that was no help? She would telegraph again to say she would not come after all. No. She would follow up her own telegram, and tell her friend that on second thoughts she did not care to see Jos.
She ran upstairs, put on her hat, and in a few minutes was driving in a hansom to Bruton Street. The Bethunes' footman knew her and admitted her, though Lady Francis was technically "not at home."
Yes, her ladyship was in, but she was engaged with the doctor at the moment in the drawing-room. The footman hesitated. "They were a-tuning of the piano in her ladyship's boudoir," he said, and he tentatively opened the door of a room on the ground floor. It was Lord Francis' sitting-room.
"Was his lordship in?"
"No, his lordship had gone out early."
"Then I will wait here," said Mary, "if you will let her ladyship know that I am here."
The man withdrew.
Mary's face reddened with annoyance. She disliked the idea of telling Lady Francis she had changed her mind, and the discussion of the subject. Oh! why had she ever spoken of the subject at all? Why had she telegraphed that she would come?
The painful, reiterated stammering of the piano came to her from above. It seemed of a piece with her own indecision, her own monotonous jealousy.
Suddenly the front door bell rang, and an instant later the footman came in with a telegram, put it on the writing-table, and went out again.
Her telegram! Then she was not too late to stop it. She need not explain after all.
The drawing-room door opened, and Lady Francis' high metallic voice sounded on the landing.
Mary seized up the pink envelope and crushed it in her hand! What? The drawing-room door closed again. The conference with the doctor was not quite over after all. She tore open the telegram and looked again at her foolish words before destroying them.
Then her colour faded, and the room went round with her. Who had changed what she had said? Why was it signed "Elsa"?
She looked at the envelope. It was plainly addressed—"Lord Francis Bethune." She had never glanced at the address till this moment. The contents were in code as hers had been, but it was the same code, and before she knew she had done so, she had read it.
What did it mean? What could it mean? Why should Elsa promise to meet him after the Speaker's Stairs—to-day—at Waterloo main entrance?
Mary was not quick-witted, but after a few dazed moments she suddenly understood. Elsa was about to go away with Lord Francis. But what Elsa? Her heart beat so hard that she could hardly breathe. Could it be Elsa Grey?
As we piece together all at once a puzzle that has been too simple for us, so Mary remembered in a flash Elsa's enigmatical face, and a certain ball where she had seen—only for a moment as she passed—- Lord Francis and Elsa sitting out together. Elsa had looked quite different then. It was Elsa Grey. She knew it. Degraded creature, not fit to be an honest man's wife.
Mary shook from head to foot under a climbing, devastating emotion, which seemed to rend her whole being. The rival was gone from her path. Jos would come back to her.
As she stood stunned, half blind, trembling, a hansom dashed up to the door, and in a moment Lord Francis' voice was in the hall speaking to the footman.
"Any letters or telegrams?"
"One telegram on your writing-table, my lord."
The servant went on to explain something, Lady Mary Carden, etc., but his master did not hear him. He was in the room in a second, and had closed the door behind him. Lord Francis' beautiful, thin, reckless face was pinched and haggard. He seemed possessed by some fierce passion which had hold of him and drove him before it as a storm holds and spins a leaf.
Mary was frightened, paralysed. She had not known that men could be so moved. He did not even see her. He rushed to the writing-table, and swept his eye over it. Then he gave a sharp, low, hardly human cry of rage and anguish, and turned to ring the bell. As he turned he saw her.
"I beg your pardon. I don't understand," he said hoarsely. "Why did my fool of a servant bring you in here?"
Then he saw the open telegram in her hand, and his face changed. It became alert, cold, implacable. There was a deadly pause. From the room above came the acute, persistent stammer of the piano.
He took the telegram from her nerveless hand, read it, and put it in his pocket. He picked up the envelope from the floor, and threw it into the waste-paper basket. Then he came close up to her, and looked her in the eyes. There was murder in his.
"It was in cypher," he said.
She was incapable of speech.
"But you understood it? Answer me. By—did you understand it, or did you not?"
"I did not." She got the words out.
"You are lying. You did, you paid spy. Now listen to me. If you dare to say one word of this to any living soul I'll——"
The door suddenly opened, and Lady Francis hurried in.
"Sorry to keep you, my dear," said the high, unmodulated voice. "Old Carr was such a time. What! You here, Francis? I thought you had gone out."
"I have been doing my best to entertain Lady Mary till you appeared," he said.
"I came to say I'm engaged this afternoon," said Mary. "I can't go with you to your concert."
The footman appeared with another telegram.
Lord Francis opened it before it could reach his wife, and then tossed it to her.
"For you," he said, and left the room.
"Well, my dear," said Lady Francis, "in this you say you will come, and now you say you won't, or am I reading it wrong? I don't understand."
"I have changed my mind," said Mary feebly. "I mean I can't throw over the Lestranges. I only ran in to explain. I must be going back now."
Lord Francis, who was in the hall, put her into her hansom and closed the doors. As he did so he leaned forward and said:
"If you dare to interfere with me you will pay for it."
PART II
"Ah! woe that youth should love to be
Like this swift Thames that speeds so fast,
And is so fain to find the sea,—
That leaves this maze of shadow and sleep,
These creeks down which blown blossoms creep,
For breakers of the homeless deep."—Edmund Gosse.
The little river steamer, with its gay awning, was hitched up to the Speaker's Stairs. The Lestranges were standing at the gangway welcoming their guests. There was a crowd watching along the parapet of Westminster Bridge just above.
"Are we all here? It is past four," said Captain Lestrange to his wife.
Mrs Lestrange looked round. "Eighteen, twenty, twenty-four. Ah! Here is Lady Mary Carden, late as usual. She is the last. No. There is one more to come. Miss Grey."
"Which Miss Grey?"
"Why, the one Jos Carstairs is to marry. She is coming under my wing. And now she isn't here. What on earth am I to do? We can't wait for ever."
A tall white figure was advancing slowly, as if dragged step by step, through the shadow of the great grey building.
"She does not hurry herself," said Mrs Lestrange indignantly, and she did not welcome Elsa very cordially as she came on board. The youngest of the party had made all the rest of that distinguished gathering wait for her.
Mary, in a gown of immaculate white serge stitched with black, was sitting under the awning when Elsa passed her on her way towards a vacant seat lower down. The two women looked fixedly at each other for a moment, and in that moment Mary saw that Elsa knew that she knew. Even in that short time Lord Francis had evidently warned the girl against her.
Do what she would, Mary could not help watching Elsa. This was the less difficult, as no one ever talked for long together to Mary. The seat next her was never resolutely occupied. Her gentle voice was one of those which swell the time-honoured complaint, that in society you hear nothing but the same vapid small talk, the same trivial remarks over and over again. She was not neglected, but she awakened no interest. Her china blue eyes turned more and more frequently towards that tall figure with its lithe, panther-like grace sitting in the sun, regardless of the glare. Mary, whose care for her own soul came second only to her care for her complexion, wondered at her recklessness.
Mrs Lestrange introduced one or two men to Elsa, but they seemed to find but little to say to her. She was distraite, indifferent to what was going on round her. After a time she was left alone, except when Mrs Lestrange came to sit by her for a few minutes. Yet she was a marked feature of the party. Wherever Elsa might be she could not be overlooked. Mysterious involuntary power which some women possess, not necessarily young and beautiful like Elsa, of becoming wherever they go a centre, a focus of attention whether they will or no.
Married men looked furtively at her, and whispered to their approving wives that Carstairs was a bold man, that nothing would have induced them to marry a woman of that stamp. The unmarried men looked at her too, but said nothing.
At seventeen Elsa's beauty was mature. It was not the thin wild-flower beauty of the young English girl who emerges but slowly from her chrysalis. It was the splendid pale perfection of the magnolia which opens in a night. The body had outstripped the embryo spirit. Out of the exquisite face, with its mysterious foreshadowing of latent emotion, looked the grave inscrutable eyes of a child.
Elsa appeared quite unconscious of the interest she excited. She looked fixedly at the gliding dwindling buildings, at the little alert brown-sailed eel-boats, and the solemn low-swimming hay barges, burning yellow in the afternoon sun, and dropping gold into the grey water as they went. Sometimes she looked up at the overhanging bridges, and past them to the sky. Presently a white butterfly came twinkling on toddling, unsteady wings across the water, and settled on the awning. Elsa's eyes followed it. "It is coming with us," she said to Captain Lestrange, who was standing near her. The butterfly left the awning. It settled for a moment on the white rose on Elsa's breast. Now it was off again, a dancing baby fairy between the sunny sky and sunny river. Then all in a moment some gust of air caught its tiny spread sails, and flung it with wings outstretched upon the swift water.
Elsa gave a cry, and tearing the rose out of her breast, leaned far over the railing and flung it towards the butterfly. It fell short. The current engulfed butterfly and rose together.
Captain Lestrange caught her by the arm as she leaned too far, and held her firmly till she recovered her balance.
"That was rather dangerous," he said, releasing her gently.
"I could not stand by and see it drown," said Elsa, shivering, and she turned her eyes back across the river, to where in the distance the white buildings of Greenwich stood almost in the water in the pearl haze.
Who shall say what Elsa's thoughts were as she leaned against the railing, white hand against white rose cheek, and watched the tide which was sweeping them towards the sea? Did she realise that another current was bearing her whither she knew not, was hurrying her little barque, afloat for the first time, towards a surging line of breakers where white sails of maiden innocence and faith and purity might perchance go under? Did she with those wonderful melancholy eyes look across her youth and dimly foresee, what all those who have missed love learn in middle life, how chill is the deepening shadow in which a loveless life stands? Did she dimly see this, and shrink from the loveless marriage before her, which would close the door against love for ever? Did she in her great ignorance mistake the jewelled earthen cup of passion for the wine of love which should have brimmed it? Did she think to allay the thirst of the soul at the dazzling empty cup which was so urgently proffered to her? Who shall say what Elsa's thoughts were as the river widened to the sea.
They were coming back at last, beating up slowly, slowly against the tide towards London, lying low and dim against an agony of sunset. To Mary it had been an afternoon of slow torture. Ought she to speak to Elsa? "After the Speaker's Stairs" the telegram had said. Then Elsa meant to join Lord Francis on her return this evening. Ought not she, Mary, to go to Elsa now, where she sat apart watching the sunset, and implore her to go home? Ought she not to tell her that Lord Francis was an evil man, who would bring great misery upon her? Ought she not to show her that she was steeping her young soul in sin, ruining herself upon the threshold of life? Something whispered urgently to Mary that she ought at least to try to hold Elsa back from the precipice, whispered urgently that perhaps Elsa, friendless as she was, might listen to her even at the eleventh hour. And Elsa knew she knew.
Was it Mary's soul—dwarfed and starved in the suffocating bandages of her straitened life and narrow religion—which was feebly stirring in its shroud, was striving to speak?
Mary clenched her little blue-veined hands.
No, no. Elsa would never listen to her. Elsa knew very well what she was doing. Any girl younger even than she knew that it was wicked to allow a married man to make love to her. Elsa was a bad woman by temperament and heredity, not fit to be a good man's wife. Even if Mary could persuade her to give up her lover, still Elsa was guilty in thought, and that was as bad as the sin itself. Did not our Saviour say so? Elsa was lost already.
"No, no," whispered the inner voice. "She does not know what she is doing."
She did know very well what she was doing—Mary flushed with anger—she was always doing things for effect, in order to attract attention. Look how she had made eyes at Captain Lestrange about that butterfly. If there is one thing more than another which exasperates a conventional person it is an impulsive action. The episode of the butterfly rankled in Mary's mind. Several silly men had been taken in by it. No. She, Mary, would certainly speak to Elsa; she would be only too glad to save a fellow-creature from deadly sin if it was any use speaking—but it was not. And she did not care to mix herself up with odious, disgraceful subjects unless she could be of use. She had always had a high standard of refinement. She had always kept herself apart from "that sort of thing." Perhaps, in her meagre life, she had also kept herself apart from all that makes our fellow-creatures turn to us.
Lord Francis' last threat, spoken low and distinct across the hansom doors, came back to her ears—"If you dare to interfere with me you will pay for it."
The river was narrowing. The buildings and wharves pushed up close and closer. The fretted outlines and towers of Westminster were detaching themselves in palest violet from the glow in the west.
A river steamer passed them with a band on board. A faint music, tender and gay, came to them across the water, bringing with it the promise of an abiding love, making all things possible, illuminating with sudden distinctness the vague meaning of this mysterious world of sunset sky and sunset water, and ethereal city of amethyst and pearl; and then—as suddenly as it came—passing away down stream, and taking all its promises with it, leaving the twilight empty and desolate.
The sunset burned dim like a spent furnace. The day lost heart and waned all at once. It seemed as if everything had come to an end.
And as, when evening falls, jasmine grows white and whiter in the falling light, so Elsa's face grew pale and paler yet in the dusk.
Once she looked across at Mary, and a faint smile, tremulous, wistful, stole across her lips. Tears shone in her eyes. "Is there any help anywhere?" the sweet troubled eyes seemed to say. But apparently they found none, for they wandered away again to the great buildings of Westminster rising up within a stone's throw over the black arch of Westminster Bridge.
The steamer slowed and stopped once more against the Speaker's Stairs.
The Lestranges put Elsa into a hansom before they hurried away in another themselves. All the guests were in a fever to depart, for there was barely time to dress for dinner—and they disappeared as if by magic. Mary, whose victoria was a moment late, followed hard on the rest. As she was delayed in the traffic she saw the hansom in front of her turn slowly round. She saw Elsa's face inside as it turned. Then the hansom went gaily jingling its bell over Westminster Bridge, and was lost in the crowd.
PART III
"Thou wilt not with Predestination round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?"—Omar Khayyám.
The scandal smouldered for a day or two, and then raged across London like a fire. Mary stayed at home. She could not face the glare of it. She said she was ill. Her hand shook. She started at the slightest sound. She felt shattered in mind and body.
"I could not have stopped her," she said stubbornly to herself a hundred times, lying wide-eyed through the long, terrifying nights. She besieged Heaven with prayers for Elsa.
On the fourth day Jos came to her.
She went down to her little sitting-room, and found him standing at the open window with his back to her. She came in softly, trembling a little. She would be very gentle and sympathetic with him. She would imply no reproach. As she entered he turned slowly and faced her. The first moment she did not recognise him. Then she saw it was he.
Jos' face was sunk and pinched, and the grey eyes were red with tears fiercely suppressed by day, red with hard crying by night. Now as they met hers they were fixed, unflinching in their tearless, enduring agony, like those of a man under the surgeon's knife.
"Oh! Jos, don't take it so hard," said Mary, laying her hand on his arm.
She had never dreamed he would feel it like this. She had thought that he would see at once he had had a great escape.
He did not appear to hear her. He looked vacantly at her, and then recollected himself, and sat down by her.
"You saw her last," he said, biting his lips.
Mary's heart turned sick within her.
"The Lestranges saw her last," she said hastily. He made an impatient movement. He knew all that.
"You were with her all the afternoon on the boat?"
"Yes. But, of course, there were numbers of others. I had many friends whom I had to——"
"Did you notice anything? Did you have any talk with her? Was she different to usual?"
"She does not generally talk much. She was rather silent."
"You did not think she looked as if she had anything on her mind."
"I couldn't say. I know her so very slightly." Mary's voice was cold.
"She did not care for me," said Jos. "I knew that all along," and he put his scarred hand over his mouth.
"She was not worthy of you."
He did not hear her. He took away his hand and clenched it heavily on the other.
"I knew she didn't care," he said in a level, passionless voice. "But I loved her. From the first go-off I saw she was different to other women. And I thought—I know I'm only a rough fellow—but I thought perhaps in time ... I'm not up to much, but I would have made her a good husband—and at any rate, I would have taken her away from—her father. He said she was willing. I—I tried to believe him. He wanted to get rid of her—and—I wanted to have her. That was the long and the short of it. We settled it between us.... She hadn't a chance in that house. I thought I'd give her another—a home—where she was safe. She had never had a mother to tell her things. She had never had any upbringing at that French school. She had no women friends. She had never known a good woman, except her old nurse, till I brought her to you, Mary. I told her you were good and gentle and loving, and would be a friend to her; and that I had known you all my life, and she might trust you."
"She never liked me," said Mary. It seemed to her that she must defend herself. Against what? Against whom?
"If she had only confided in you," he said. "I knew she was in trouble, but I could not make out what it was. She was such a child, and I seemed a long way off her. I took her to plays and things after I had seen them first, to be sure they were all right; and she would cheer up for a little bit—she liked the performing dogs. I had thought of taking her there again; but she always sank back into low spirits. And I knew that sometimes young girls do feel shy about being married—it's a great step—a lottery—that is what it is, a lottery—so I thought it would all come right in time. I never thought. I never guessed." Jos' voice broke. "I see now I helped to push her into it—but—I didn't know.... If only you had known that last afternoon, and could have pleaded with her ... if only you had known, and could have held her back—my white lamb, my little Elsa."
He ground his heel against the polished floor. There was a long silence.
Then he got up and went away.
It was not until the end of July that Mary saw him again. She heard nothing of him. She only knew that he had left London. He came in one evening late, and Mary's aunt discreetly disappeared after a few minutes' desultory conversation.
He looked worn and aged, but he spoke calmly, and this time he noticed Mary's existence. "You look pulled down," he said kindly. "Has the season been too much for you?"
"It is not that," she said. "I have been distressed because an old friend of mine is in trouble."
He looked at her and saw that she had suffered. A great compunction seized him. He took her hand and kissed it.
"You are the best woman in the world," he said. "Don't worry your kind heart about me. I'm not worth it." Then he moved restlessly away from her, and began turning over the knick-knacks on the silver table.
"Bethune has been tackled," he said suddenly. "The Duke of —— did it, and he has promised to marry her—if—if——"
"If what?"
"If his wife will divorce him. The Duke has got his promise in black and white."
"I don't think Lady Francis will divorce him."
"N-no. I've been with her to-day for an hour, but I couldn't move her. She doesn't seem to see that it's—life or death—for Elsa."
"You would not expect her under the circumstances to consider Elsa."
"Yes, I should," said the simpleton. "Why should not she help her? There are no children, and she does not care for Bethune. She never did. She ought to release him for the sake of—others."
"I don't think she will."
"I want you to persuade her, Mary." Mary's heart swelled. This then was what he had come about.
"Aren't you her greatest friend? Do put it before her plainly. I'm a blundering idiot, and she seemed to think I had no right to speak to her on the subject. Perhaps I had not. I never thought of that. I only thought of——. But do you go to her, and bring her to a better mind."
"I will try," said Mary.
"I wish there were more women like you, Maimie," he said, using for the first time for years the pet name which he had called her by when they were boy and girl together.
Mary went to Lady Francis next day, but she did not make a superhuman effort to persuade her friend. She considered that it was not desirable that Elsa should be reinstated. If there were no punishment for such misdemeanours, what would society come to? For the sake of others, as a warning, it was necessary that Elsa should suffer.
All she said to Lady Francis was: "Are you going to divorce Lord Francis?"
"No, my dear," said that lady with a harsh little laugh. "I am not. Not that I could not get a divorce. He has been quite brute enough, but if I did it would be forgotten in about a quarter of an hour, whether I had divorced him or he had divorced me. I have a right to his name, and I mean to stick to it. It's about all I've got out of my marriage. I don't intend to go about as a divorced woman under my maiden name of Huggins. The idea does not smile on me. Besides, I know Francis. He will come back to me. He did—before. He has not a shilling, and he is in debt. He can't get on without me. I was a goose to marry him; but still I am the goose that lays the golden eggs."
Jos' parents sent Mary a pressing invitation to stay with them after the season. Mary went, and perhaps she tasted something more like happiness in that quiet old country house than she had known for many years. Jos' father and mother were devoted to her, with that devotion, artificial in its origin, but genuine in its later stages, of parents who have made up their minds that she was "the one woman" for their son. Mary played old Irish melodies in the evenings by the hour, and sang sweetly at prayers. She was always ready to listen to General Carstairs' history of the fauna of Dampshire, and to take an interest in Mrs Carstairs' Sunday School. She had a succession of the simplest white muslin gowns (she could still wear white) and wide-brimmed garden hats. Mary in the country was more rural than those who abide in it all the year round.
Jos was often there. There was no doubt about it. Jos was coming back to his early allegiance. Perhaps his parents, horrified by his single unaided attempt at matrimony, were tenderly pushing him back. Perhaps, in the entire exhaustion and numbness that had succeeded the shock of Elsa's defection, he hardly realised what others were planning round him. Perhaps when a man has been heartlessly slighted he turns unconsciously to the woman of whose undoubted love he is vaguely aware.
Jos sat at Mary's feet, not metaphorically but literally, for hours together by the sundial in the rose-garden; hardly speaking, like a man stunned. Still he sat there, and she did her embroidery, and looked softly down at him now and then. The doors of the narrow, airless prison of her love were open to receive him. They would be married presently, and she should make him give up the Army, and become a magistrate instead. She would never let him out of her sight. A wife's place is beside her husband. She knew, for how many wives compact of experience had assured her during the evening hour of feminine confidence when the back hair is let down, that the perpetual presence of the wife was the only safeguard for the well-being of that mysterious creature of low instincts, that half-tamed wild animal, always liable to break away unless held in by feminine bit and bridle, that irresponsible babe, that slave of impulse—man. She would give him perfect freedom of course. She should encourage him to go into the Yeomanry, and she should certainly allow him to go out without her for the annual training. He would be quite safe in a tent, surrounded by his own tenantry; but, on other occasions, she, his wife, would be ever by his side. That was the only way to keep a man good and happy.
Early in September Jos went away for a few days' shooting. Mary, who generally paid rounds of visits after the season at dull country houses (she was not greatly in request at the amusing ones), still remained with the Carstairs, who implored her to stay on whenever she suggested that she was paying them "a visitation."
Jos was to return that afternoon, for General Carstairs was depending on him to help to shoot his own partridges on the morrow. But the afternoon passed, and Jos did not come. The next day passed, and still no Jos. And no letter or telegram. His father and mother were silently uneasy. They said, no doubt he had been persuaded to stay on where he was, and had forgotten the shoot at home. Mary said, "No doubt," but a reasonless fear gathered like thin mist across her heart. Where was he? The letters that had been forwarded to his last address all came back. A week passed, and still no Jos, and no answers to autocratic telegrams.
Then suddenly Jos telegraphed from London saying he should return early that afternoon, and asking to be met at the station.
When the time drew near, Mary established herself with a book in the rose-garden. He would come to her there, as he had so often done before. The roses were well-nigh over, but in their place the sweet white faces of the Japanese anemones were crowding up round the old grey sundial. The sunny windless air was full of the cawing of rooks. It was the time and the place where a desultory love might come by chance, and linger awhile, not where a desperate love, brought to bay, would wage one of his pitched battles. Peace and rest were close at hand. Why had she been fearful? Surely all was well, and he was coming back. He was coming back.
She waited as it seemed to her for hours before she heard the faint sound of his dog-cart. She should see him in a moment. He would speak to his parents, and then ask where she was, and come out to her. Oh! how she loved him; but she must appear calm, and not too glad to see him. She heard his step—strong, light, alert, as it used to be of old, not the slow, dragging, aimless step of the last two months.
He came quickly round the yew hedge and stood before her. She raised her eyes slowly from her book to meet his, a smile parting her lips.
He was looking hard at her with burning scorn and contempt in his lightning grey eyes.
The smile froze on her lips.
"I have seen Elsa," he said. "I only came back here for half-an-hour to—speak to you."
A cold hand seemed to be pressed against Mary's heart.
"I found by chance, the merest chance, where she was," he continued. "I went at once. She was alone, for Bethune has gone back to his wife. I suppose you knew he had gone back. I did not. I found her——" He stopped as if the remembrance were too acute, and then went on firmly. "We had a long talk. She was in great trouble. She told me everything, and how he, that devil, had made love to her from the first day she came back from school, and how her father knew of it, and had obliged her to accept me. And she said she knew it was wrong to run away with him, but she thought it was more wrong to marry without love, and that the nearer the day came the more she felt she must escape, and she seemed hemmed in on every side, and she did love Bethune, and he had sworn to her that he would marry her directly he got his divorce, and that his wife did not care for him, and would be glad to be free, and that all that was necessary was a little courage on her part. So she tried to be brave—and—she said she did not think at the time it could be so very wicked to marry the person she really loved, for you knew, and you never said a word to stop her. She said you had many opportunities of speaking to her on the boat, and she knew you were so good, you would certainly have told her if it was really so very wicked."
"I knew it was no use speaking," said Mary, hoarsely.
"You might have tried to save my wife for my sake," said Jos. "You might have tried to save her for her own. But you didn't. I don't care to know your reasons. I only know that—you did not do it. You deliberately—let—her—drown." His eyes flashed. The whole quiet, commonplace man seemed transfigured by some overmastering, ennobling emotion. "And I have come to tell you that I think the bad women are better than the good ones, and that I am going back to Elsa; to Elsa—betrayed, deserted, outcast, my Elsa, who, but for you, might still be like one of these." He touched one of the white anemones with his scarred hand. "I am going back to her—and if—in time she can forget the past and feel kindly towards me—I will marry her."
And he did.
THE END
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