A CASE FOR INTERPOSITION?
"Why, here you have the awfulest of crimes
For nothing! Hell broke loose on a butterfly!
Yet here is the monster! Why, he's a mere man—
Born, bred and brought up in the usual way."
—R. Browning.
It was six o'clock in the evening. Virginia stepped from the door of the Nursing Home out into Queen Anne Street with a radiant face.
She left Pansy smiling, content, in the hands of people who were not merely experts, but kind and loving. The daily improvement grew more marked. Dr. Danby that day had spoken more encouragingly than ever before. The delight of it, the fascination of watching colour steal back to the cheeks, and light to the eyes; while the awful look of pain vanished from the lines of the mouth, leaving it a child's mouth once more—this was enfolding the elder sister in a sweetness which it seemed no dark future had power to impair. Gaunt was far from her mind; she was living in the present moment—living within the walls of the room that contained Pansy.
A man came rapidly along the street towards her, on the same side of the way. Just as she turned into Portland Place she came face to face with him. It was Gerald Rosenberg. His start of surprise was admirably done. As to Virgie, in the first moment, she was merely glad to see him—ready to take him into the joy that filled her, to share with him her glow of thankfulness and hope.
"Oh!" She stopped, giving him her hand, looking into his face with those eyes that had seemed to him so fathomless as to cause him to hesitate before letting his very being drown in their depths. Now it seemed that they were changed. The girl was, somehow, mysteriously a woman. She retained all her innocence, all her girlish candour, but there was something more, something heroic and splendid. At any rate, it appeared so to the man's enchanted gaze.
"This is indeed good fortune"—he hardly knew what he said. "I heard that you were in town, but hardly hoped—why did you not let Mims know of your being here?"
"Oh, that is easily answered. I have been devoted, body and soul, to my little sister. The first few nights I was in town I spent at the Home, for we did not even know that she would live. I have not had a moment for my friends."
"But she is better now?"
"Yes, thank God! I can hardly speak of it." The tears welled up and misted the changeful eyes. "It is so wonderful—so unspeakable—seeing her, as it were, coming back to me from the grave. If she had died, I can't think what I should have done."
"I remember Mims always said you were such a devoted sister."
Virgie laughed. "So would anybody be devoted to Pansy," she replied cheerfully. "But I am consumed with curiosity. You say that you had heard I was in London. Do tell me how you heard it."
His lip curled and his expression changed. "I heard it from the person most likely to know. Mr. Gaunt told me."
"Mr. Gaunt!" It was too sudden. Usually she had herself perfectly in hand, but the thought of the Ogre, intruding upon her moment of bliss, touched her inmost feeling, and she grew as white as a sheet. Gerald's eyes never left her face. He saw that pallor, saw the fugitive glance of panic that passed across the eyes like a cloud over the sun. It was so, then; it was as he had feared, as he had secretly known! She had been bought by that malevolent-looking man—the creature who had marked her down in the picture gallery, had pursued, hunted, caught, led captive! The feelings in the young man's heart were for a moment so violent that he could not speak.
Virginia and he had turned mechanically as he uttered the fatal name, and they now began to walk down Portland Place, towards Regent's Street side by side. "Somehow," said her soft voice at last, "it seems very surprising to me that you should have met Mr. Gaunt. Do tell me how it came about. I—I believed that he was at home—in Derbyshire."
The speech showed him the measure of her apprehension. She had thought herself free of her tyrant for a while, and now supposed him to have followed her to London.
"Oh, it was in Derbyshire that I met him," he hastened to assure her. "At the house of some people called Ferris. I went down to interview Ferris about a company that he wants to float—a lead-mine. Your husband was lunching there."
"Lunching at Perley Hatch?" She seemed surprised, he thought.
"Yes. On the same line as I was, I fancy. We all went and had a look at the cave afterwards. I think my father will accept a directorship, and probably Mr. Gaunt also will come on the board."
Before reflecting, she cried, in a pleased voice: "Then does that mean that we shall see something of you? Shall you be coming down sometimes to Derbyshire?"
Gerald almost choked. There was so much to say about this that he knew he had better say nothing. Yet, as in her case, words leaped to his lips before he reflected. "I hardly know. It is a question as to how much I could bear."
"How much you could bear?" Her eyes were raised, astonished, troubled. He knew that if he said what was in his mind, his present chance might vanish in a moment. "I won't say what I meant," he replied in a low tone. "Why should I force my troubles on you? You have enough anxiety with your little sister. But is it too late to get some tea?"
"Oh, yes, I have had tea, thanks!"
"Where are you staying? "
"In Margaret Street—my mother is with me."
"Indeed? Do you think she would receive me, if I were to pay a short call?"
"I am sure she would be pleased. But you will not find her at home now; she has gone to the theatre."
"At this hour?"
"She is dining at her club first. She does not like lodging-house food."
"Do you?"
"Oh, food makes very little difference to me. I put up with it, for I am too tired to go and dine out, after a long day with Pansy."
"I wish you would come and dine with me. I know a charming place quite near here, where they give you Italian things—you are so fond of Italy. Let me take you and give you something to eat, and then you shall go straight back to your rooms and rest. There is so much I want to hear."
Her brows knit. "I have nothing to tell you," she answered slowly.
He blamed himself for having risked the last sentence.
She seemed to turn over his offer in her mind. At last: "No," she said, but he felt with reluctance. "I can't come this evening. I am tired and stupid. Some other evening, if you will ask us both."
"Then must I go and dine alone at my club? My father and Mims are in Switzerland, and I am all alone."
"Oh!" Her pity was awake at once. "I did not know."
"Because you are tired is just why you should come," he went on. "I'm not a stranger, some one whom you must exert yourself to entertain. I'm your friend, am I not, Virgie?"
The last word was hardly breathed.
"Oh, you are—and friends are precious. If you are alone—really—and don't mind a dull person——"
Even as she spoke he had hailed a taxi, and she was seated in it at his side before she well knew that she had consented.
"This is the one advantage of your being married—I can take you about," said the young man, with an air of quiet confidence. "Gaunt seemed anxious about you. He said you had been unwell, and would, I am sure, be grateful to me for looking after you, and preventing your dining on a poached egg, which is what I know to have been your immoral intention."
She laughed. "Tell him to stop a moment at Margaret Street. I must tell my maid not to keep the poached egg hot," she replied.
This was done, and he took her to Ciliani's, the most charming restaurant in London. There was no band to drown talk, the tables were arranged so that parties did not intrude upon each other. They found places near a window, and as Virgie seated herself she thought of that awful lunch with her husband at the Savoy Restaurant. The memory made her wince. She remembered her panic terror, her dread of what was to come, her timid attempts to seem at ease. Little had she known what really awaited her.
She resigned herself now to Gerald's care with a sudden beautiful sensation of relief. He was an old friend. In fact, the Rosenbergs were practically the only people she knew who belonged to the life at Lissendean as well as to more recent times. Perhaps Gerald realised how precious an asset such a link was, for he began to talk to her of Lissendean, and of those happy days when they had ridden and golfed together, had roamed the country with lunch in their pockets, and acted charades in the old hall.
All through the charm of such talk Virginia's inner self, the sentinel conscience which ruled her, was helping her to gird on her armour. She was keenly aware that Gerald's first mention of her husband had caught her unprepared, also that Gerald had seen and interpreted her confusion.
It was not until coffee had been served, and he was lighting his cigarette that the moment came. He leaned forward and spoke, composedly, but with a weight which made itself felt.
"I left you—unavoidably—at my father's command, one lovely evening in June. When we parted, there were in my heart feelings which I can't but believe you must have seen and interpreted. A fortnight later I learned that you were about to be married. Has it occurred to you to wonder whether I suffered?"
Virginia was drawing her gloves from her little beaded bag, and daintily pulling out the fingers. "But why should I suppose that you would be suffering?" she demanded quietly.
He hesitated. "Are you being quite straightforward with me, Virgie?"
Again she countered with a question. "Is there any obligation for me to be quite straightforward with you, Mr. Rosenberg? Complete straightforwardness is a large demand."
He grew nettled. His elbow rested on the table, his handsome eyes were full upon her. "Honestly, do you think you treated me fairly?" he wished to know.
"Certainly. I don't see quite what you mean," was her steady reply.
"Then—then you really did not know that I was in love with you?"
"I did not. Of course not."
"Don't try to blind me," he went on urgently, his voice a little unsteady. "I am better informed than you think. I know that you had never seen Gaunt until that day at Hertford House. You went thence, and without a word, or a sign, you engaged yourself to marry a man who was a total stranger. Do you suppose I do not guess that you were forced into that?"
"If you guess so, your guess is quite wrong. I had heard of Mr. Gaunt all my life. I had a romantic idea of him—girls do, you know. I was told, by mother, various things about him, and I knew he was unhappy and lonely. We looked at one another—in the Gallery—that day——"
Her voice tailed off, and she seemed absorbed in the diligent pushing down of the soft kid upon her fingers.
Gerald was baffled. The same idea crossed his mind which had gripped her mother's fancy. It had been then a case of mutual love at first sight, one of those strange, inexplicable attractions that seem like magnetism. He looked at the wedding-ring and the other beautiful rings upon the little hand moving so dexterously. He thought how zealously a middle-aged, unattractive man would strive to secure the affection of this wonderful creature. Could it really be that she was contented with her lot? After all, had she made her calculations? Had she realised that his own people would make difficulties, that she and he would be none too well off at first if they married? Had she deliberately chosen the richer man, as his father had insinuated?...
He recalled her husband's words, spoken only two days previously. "My wife's beauty is the least part of her charm. She is pure gold throughout." Was that true, or was Gaunt successfully hoodwinked? So deft was Virginia's parry that he could not be sure.
When first they met that evening, he had had no plan at all; he was merely filled with an aching desire to behold her face. Now it dawned upon him that, if she were the calculating, self-seeking person whom he sometimes supposed her, she could not suffer from being in his society, and there was no reason why he should not see a good deal of her.
"Love at first sight—most interesting!" was what he said aloud; and a long interval elapsed before he spoke at all.
She assented to his definition, with the least little ghost of a smile.
"How long are you likely to be in town?" he asked abruptly.
"I think I shall stay until they can take Pansy to the sea," she replied. "Dr. Danby says that in about ten days she can be moved on a water-bed in a motor-car to Cliftonville. Osbert says she is to have just what the doctor orders, so I shall arrange for her to go that way. It is, as you may suppose, very difficult for me to be so long away from Omberleigh, but my husband is very good and patient. He knows it was a matter of life and death."
"Well, as long as you are in town, I shall make it my business to see that you have some fresh air every day," he announced. "May I bring a motor to-morrow round to the Home, and take you and Mrs. Mynors to dine somewhere a little way out of town? It is still light until past eight o'clock, and in an hour or so we could get to Essendon, or Chenies, or one of those pretty little places—no need to stew in London these deadly August days."
Her eye lit up, and she began to speak impatiently, then checked herself.
"Now, say just what you were going to say."
She laughed. "I was going to be barefaced enough to ask you to take Tony as well. He has been in camp, with his O.T.C., but he comes to London to-morrow, and I want him to have a good time."
"By all means. Couldn't you get away half an hour sooner?"
She shook her head. "I must stay until they turn me out; Pansy would fret if I did not. But I will be as punctual as I can, and tell mother and Tony to come round to Queen Anne Street."
"On no account! I shall fetch them from Margaret Street on my way to you."
"You are very kind and thoughtful," she responded joyfully. "I do feel that a motor run would do me good after all those hours in the sick room."
*****
For the first few days Virginia said nothing of her meeting with Gerald in her letters to Gaunt. This was not because she wished to hide them, but because she habitually mentioned only such points as seemed essential—Pansy's progress and her own expenditure. Tony's expenses, her mother's club dinners and theatres, came out of her own private allowance. It was wonderful how far a pound could be made to go in museums and picture palaces for Tony's benefit. After a few days, however, she thought it better to mention what was going on, lest her husband should think there might be something clandestine about it. She wrote accordingly, in answer to his demand for an account of her own health:
I have been feeling very much better lately, for Mr. Rosenberg—whom I met last week in the street, and who told me he had been to Perley Hatch, and had seen you—has been taking mother and me for drives in the evening. His people are out of town, and he has the car to himself. We have been to Windsor and Burnham Beeches, to Virginia Water, and all sorts of places. The air does me a great deal of good. I am really quite well now.
Gaunt read it grimly. He told himself that he might have expected it. Was it likely that Rosenberg would leave her alone, having learned that she was in London without him?
The test was growing more acute, the shadowy tie, which bound her to him, more attenuated. She would never come back. He went into the little sitting-room, wherein the decorators were at work, and wondered at his own folly. He was carrying that folly to an absurd pitch. He was having a copy executed of the statue of Love from the Wallace collection. It was to stand upon a column in the charming semicircular bay window, looking out upon the prim terrace garden.
Should he write now—write and offer her her release?
He sneered at himself for having ascertained the limits of his own penitence. Although he was ready to swear that he would do anything for her happiness, he could not do that. Having once seen her, at his table, on the terrace, in the hall, having heard her voice in the stark silence of his desolate house, the craving to have her back was, he had to confess, even greater than the craving for her content. Besides, he argued, she had been willing once. She had accepted her destiny, had meant to do her duty, spoken of being bound by her vows. When she found that there was love—even adoration—to be lavished upon her, would she not become reconciled?
Ah! the time for that had gone by. Rosenberg had now stepped into the picture. She knew nothing of his own change of heart. To her he was a gloomy and cruel tyrant. Had he used his chance when wonderfully he had obtained it—had he not horrified her at the outset by his unmanly, despicable behaviour—what might not have been possible?
Thoughts such as these were his torment day and night; and his sleep went from him.
*****
Mrs. Mynors and Gerald Rosenberg were strolling side by side upon the North Terrace of Windsor Castle. It was growing late, and they were expecting to be ejected by officials shortly; but Virginia and Tony had gone off together to look at Eton College, and to sigh over the deplorable fact that Tony would never occupy his dead father's place in Brooke's House.
"I found it out accidentally," Mrs. Mynors was saying, "when she first came to town. She was in a terrible state of distress about Pansy, and would not go away from the nursing home when night came. They were very kind, and let her lie on a sofa in a sitting-room, and I was in an arm-chair. She dropped off to sleep a dozen times, I should think, and each time woke in a kind of nightmare, crying out to him that he might torture her as he liked, but she was going to Pansy; he might cut her to pieces when she got back."
"Good God!" said Gerald.
"It was dreadful to listen," sighed the mother. "First, she was repeating: 'I am not afraid—I am not afraid of you any more!' Then she was begging him not to make her try to walk, because she could not stand. I can't think what he can have been doing to her, but I have made up my mind that, by hook or by crook, she must not go back to him. The thing is: How to prevent it?"
The drops were standing upon the young man's forehead. He had had hints before, but this was the first time he had succeeded in being alone with Mrs. Mynors long enough to hear all.
"How could you—how could you have permitted it?" he broke out violently. "Such an inhuman sacrifice!"
"My dear Gerald, does the modern mother control her children? Oh, don't think I am saying a word to disparage my darling. I know she is a martyr; I know she sacrificed herself for us. But I implored her not to do so. If only——" She broke off. He waited, feverishly eager, and as she did not continue, broke out:
"Well, if only what?"
"If only she had never gone to London," murmured the mother in a low voice. "Then he would never have seen her, and she would never have seen—you!"
"Never have seen me?"
"Oh, I know it was not the first time you had met. But it was the fatal time. Poor innocent child! she gave you her heart, and you handed it back with a polite thank you. Did you not, dear boy?"
"Great heavens, Mrs. Mynors, do you know what you are saying? You are suggesting that Virgie loves me."
"But surely that is not news to you?" she said, with lifted brows, as one astonished at unlooked-for density of perception.
He turned impulsively away from her, leaning his arms upon the grey stone wall and gazing away into the dusk. Some moments passed in a wild kind of silence. Then the castle warder called to them that he was closing the doors. Without a word the young man moved, walking at his companion's side through the little door in the wall, under the arch, out upon the ramp which descends past St. George's Chapel to the large gate. He was as white as a sheet.
Not a soul was in sight. They paused, gazing down upon the sunk garden which now blooms in the dry moat of the Round Tower. Suddenly Gerald burst into speech. Forgetting for the moment all that his father had told him of this woman, he poured out the story of how he had been overpersuaded, how his father—urging upon him the imprudence of such a match—had coaxed him away that last night of Virgie's stay, when the confession of his feeling was trembling on the tip of his tongue.
"That was what I did," he said. "I was just waiting. I knew of no danger to her. If I had had a hint, if you had sent me a line to tell me that she was being hunted. But all the same," he broke off, his eyes burning in his head, "all the same, to me it is inconceivable that any man, however sunk, could have been cruel to her! Afterwards he might—later, but not at first—not when he had but just acquired that perfect thing for his own! Oh, it makes me mad! I daren't think of it! It's too incredibly ugly—too wild. Are you sure? You don't think those cries of hers that you overheard can have been delirium? It seems altogether outside the pale of possibility that he should have done anything but grovel at her feet!"
Mrs. Mynors had her lovely face averted. She sighed. "There is more in it than that, Gerald," she murmured in a low voice. "I fear it is worse than you think. Have you ever heard of such a thing as a secret maniac? Do you know that there are men, outwardly sane, who go about the world like other people, but who have one single streak of insanity—a bee in the bonnet, as the vulgar saying has it?"
He looked sick with horror. "Do you mean that she is bound for life to a man who isn't sane?"
"Gaunt has had a sad life. I know his story. He thought himself badly used by a woman. It made a profound impression upon him. It is his fixed idea. When I heard my child's broken ravings, the awful thought flashed through my mind—has he some horrible idea of making Virginia pay for another woman's sins?"
"If so, he must be mad, raving mad. We could get him put into an asylum," hissed Gerald.
"Not so easily as you think. Such men are very cunning. You see, he has allowed her to come away from him. He is acting, as every one would say, a most magnanimous part. I and my orphan children are the creatures of his bounty. It would be difficult, indeed, to bring home to him what he may make her endure in private."
"Unbearable," muttered Gerald. "I hardly dare let my mind dwell upon it. But you are going merely upon what you overheard. She has said nothing to you of his being unkind?"
"She is far too proud. I judge by what she does not say. Her reticence to me, her mother, can have but one explanation. He has forbidden her, on pain of certain punishment, to say anything. I know that it is so. I am certain of it."
His burning eyes, searching through the twilight which gathered thickly about them, saw the dim figures of Tony and his sister advancing through the gateway. "There they are," he muttered hoarsely. "We must drop this now, but mind, we must speak of it again. Something must be done. If all this is true, I swear she shall never go back to him. I'll see to that. She loves me! Oh, what a gigantic blunder life is!"