ANDROMEDA
"Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
To look at, from outside the walls....
And up, like a weary yawn, with its pulleys,
Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis;
And, like a glad sky the north wind sullies,
The lady's face stopped its play
As if her first hair had grown grey."—Browning.
The final closing of the door upon Hemming, as he discreetly retired, seemed to the bride to fill the gloomy room with reverberations. The door was not banged, yet she heard its echoing dying away like a murmur in cavernous heights. She had an illusion of being in some dark sea-cave, into which the tide would slowly crawl and swallow her up. Her feet were cold, as though the first shallow waves already laved them.
All through the dinner she had been putting a strain upon herself. She was now near the breaking-point. Gaunt was pouring wine from the heavy, stumpy cut-glass decanter into a wine-glass. She heard the lip of the bottle clink, as though his hand were not quite steady.
As usual in moments of stress her appetite had forsaken her. She had seemed to help herself to the various dishes, and had played with her knife and fork, so that Gaunt, from his end of the table, did not notice that she ate practically nothing. Before leaving the room, Hemming had handed her a dish of fine strawberries. These she felt she could eat. She took some cream, broke the fruit with a fork, and ate with thankfulness that she had some mechanical process with which to fill in this hollow pause before the commencement of what she felt might be definite hostilities.
The moments lengthened. He did not speak nor raise his eyes; but as soon as she laid down her spoon, he lifted his head, and said abruptly:
"Come here!"
Virgie jumped. The attack was indeed sudden. For a moment she wavered, then rose and moved noiseless down the length of the floor, along the edge of the table, until she stood beside him.
He leaned back, contemplating her. More than ever she looked like the princess in a fairy-tale. Her dress was cut and fashioned with the mystic skill that belongs to very few of the daughters of our race. It was subtle; it had a disturbing effect. There was a general impression of charm—elusive and faintly fragrant—of a finished work of art, from the curve of the soft hair to the satin of the small shoes.
"You are quite as good an actress as I supposed," remarked her husband, with satisfaction.
She pondered this for a minute. Then: "You mean that I kept up appearances before the servants? That is second nature with me, I think—hardly acting. But I thought I was doing what you would wish?"
He placed his hands upon the table edge, pushing his chair back slightly on its hind legs, while he looked up at her. Again he had the air of one who grimly jests.
"Excellent! A wife who actually foresees her husband's wishes, and acts accordingly! Yes, I suppose it is best that it should be so. Pray continue to enliven my meals with your pretty prattle."
The colour sprang to her face at the gibe. "Perhaps you will give me more efficient support next time," she said quickly, speaking before reflecting.
He laughed as though he had scored a point. "I think I warned you against answering back," he softly reminded her.
She looked him full in the eyes—a look which apparently infuriated him. With a sudden forward movement he caught her by the waist, dragging her down upon his knee. "Here, drink to our good health and future happiness!" he cried, pushing the glass of wine towards her.
The unlooked-for assault made her so faint that she knew the wine would do her good, help her to maintain her self-command in this ghastly situation. She sat where he placed her, took the glass from his hand with both hers, and lifted it to her lips. "I drink to your good health," she said with dignity.
He gave a wrathful exclamation, snatched the glass from her, so that the remainder of the wine was shot over the carpet, and said: "Little hypocrite! You would sooner drink to my death!"
"Oh, no," said she, "I desire your health. You are a very sick man just now, in mind if not in body."
"Sick or well, I am your husband—in sickness or in health, you know."
She answered patiently. "Yes; I know. I am not likely to forget."
She took out a tiny handkerchief, wiping her trembling lips with it. The action drew his attention to the tourmalin ring she wore above her wedding-ring. He snatched at her hand, pulled off the ring, and flung it into the heart of the fire which glowed dully afar off in the old-fashioned steel grate, for the day had not been warm.
"An end of that," he said. "I only used it to get it out of your mother's hands."
She drew in her breath in a long sigh, but made no other demonstration, though she felt her head swim. He was holding her with both hands, and his touch seemed as if it seared. He looked as if he longed to provoke some sign of acute feeling.
"You are proud," he said, under his breath. "Proud as Lucifer. But I'll tame your pride."
There seemed no answer to this, and she attempted none.
"You are going to be the passive martyr, the persecuted victim, are you?" he went on. "That is the rôle you select? But don't try me too far, or you may provoke me to make you show yourself in your true colours."
She raised her hands to her mouth with a little moan. "Oh!" she faltered, shaken with the storm of her wounded heart. "Isn't it enough for you to know me broken? Must you see the tears and hear the cries before you can be satisfied? Well, you will—very soon. I—don't feel as if I can bear much more. But to-night you have hit too hard. You have blunted all feeling. I could not care, whatever happened. I have got past that."
With a sudden gasping for breath, she made an effort to rise. For a moment he seemed minded to constrain her, but almost immediately let her go. She stood, supporting herself a moment against the corner of the table, then tried a few uncertain steps, and collapsed softly in a little forlorn heap of silk and gauze upon the carpet, midway to the door.
Gaunt rose, his face dark with annoyance. This was altogether so unlike his own forecasts of the scene that he was bewildered. He had expected coaxings, blandishments, the pleadings and wiles with which Virginia the elder had made him so intimately acquainted. He remembered how, when in the old days his sullen temper had made him harsh, she had hung about him, how sweetly and pathetically she had put him in the wrong, how deftly she had smoothed his ruffled fur and achieved her own ends whatever they were.
Continually in his solitude, brooding over the wreck of his life, he had told himself that now he knew, now he was wise with the wisdom we garner from the fields of tragedy and disappointment. He was proof against the sirens, his ears were plugged with wool. Was he not the man to punish and reform a coquette?
He went and stood over Virginia; then knelt at her side, passed an arm under her, and arranged her in a more easy posture. She was in a dead faint. He stared doubtfully, rose, haltingly crossed the room, and laid his fingers upon the bell. He did not ring it. His hand fell away; he went to the table, poured some water into a glass, knelt and dabbed her temples. She did not move.
After a minute or two he rose, went softly to the door and peered out into the hall. There was no sound of Hemming or the coffee. Turning back he stooped, lifted Virgie with ease, carried her into the drawing-room, laid her on a sofa near the window, and opened the casement wide upon the night. The fresh, strong air revived her. She opened her eyes, and looking upward, saw the canopy of stars in the deep-blue velvet heavens.
Slowly coming back to the realisation of the present moment, she turned her head, and saw Gaunt stooping over the hearth, placing a fresh log upon the fire. She sat up, sick and shivering. He looked round quickly at her movement, but turned away again and did not speak. He stood gazing down at the leaping flames in brooding silence; then, facing about with one of his sudden, flinging movements, which sent her heart into her mouth, he marched across the room, opened the grand piano and sat down.
Virginia was conscious of great astonishment as he began to play. It was wild, Hungarian music, leaping and striking like lightning flashes. But it seemed the one thing she could have borne at the moment. With a sigh of utter fatigue, she let her head droop against the hard, uncompromising cushion of the old-fashioned sofa and listened. He had been playing about ten minutes, when Hemming and the coffee came in; and Virginia was able to sit up and help herself with composure.
"Hemming," said Gaunt, as the servant was leaving the room, "Mrs. Gaunt is overtired. Tell Grover she will be coming upstairs almost at once."
"Yes, sir."
The man departed, and again the closing of the door awoke those faint, mysterious reverberations which were like the last contact of the outside world with the tragedy of the isolated and rock-chained maiden. So might Andromeda have felt, when the smith had hammered into place the last rivet of her fetters, and she was left—left helpless and in an anguish of suspense, to await the oncoming of the monster.
Gaunt drank his coffee seated upon the piano-stool. Then he set down his cup and began once more to play. This time it was soft and gentle, a lullaby, like falling water. It brought the tears rushing to Virginia's eyes, so that she hid her face against the cushions, and covered her mouth to suppress her crying.
Oh for just one moment of the clinging of Pansy's arms; of the bear's hug from a leaping boy in pyjamas, declining to go to bed tractably, wasting his sister's time in the fashion in which she loved to have it wasted! What were they all doing now, at this hour? Caroline, the new maid, was just bringing up Pansy's cup of Benger's food. Was it properly made?—"thin, but not too thin," like Mr. Woodhouse's gruel? Virgie had taken pains to show Caroline exactly how to do it. She had seemed to understand.
Were they missing their sister? Would Pansy—intolerable thought—cry for Virgie's good-night kiss and tuck-in? Oh, no, surely not! They would all be lapped in their new comfort and security. They would be better cared for than she, with all her goodwill, had been able to accomplish, unsupported by funds.
Yet, oh, to be back, with that burden hanging over her as of old! To take up and shoulder the weight that had been crushing her, even if to do so meant death—a maiden death, a blessed release from this hard, difficult world.
She grasped, she clutched at the only consolation she had. Her present agony of terror and apprehension was just the price she had to pay for their safety and welfare. She had determined to pay it, and she would carry out her resolve. She must not flinch because it was turning out so much worse than she had thought possible. What did it matter—what could it matter, what became of her? They were happy and secure; Gaunt was tightly bound down to go on helping them, even in the case of her own death. She felt so weak, so scared that night, that she thought for the first time in all her life of death as a thing which might conceivably happen to herself.
"What is the use of minding," she whispered, trying to reassure herself. "It doesn't matter—nobody but me will ever know."
Her sobbing ceased. Something in the music helped to soothe it. The flutter of harmonious notes was like the beating of wings. It suggested the flight of wild birds. She thought of the swans which used to cross the sky in autumn at Lissendean, flying to seek new spheres for themselves. There came to her mind that story of Hans Andersen, in which the princess has to weave coats of nettles for the princes, her brothers, in order to break the spell that binds them. Should she not gladly plait her nettle-coats, endure her doom, to lift from those two beloved heads the evil spell of poverty and sickness?
*****
The music stopped.
With it, her thoughts ceased as if shivered suddenly to fragments.
Her husband rose from the piano. Her heart was in her mouth, and she found herself shuddering in a panic terror which drove out every other sensation. He came up and stood looking at her, with a somewhat resentful expression.
"You seem quite done up," he observed. "You had better go to bed and to sleep. A good night's rest is what you want. To-morrow let us hope you will be more fit to take up your new duties."
She raised her wet eyes with a glance of incredulous gratitude. "I am sorry I gave way," she murmured. "I am not usually so weak. But you see, a great deal has happened ... and I hardly slept at all last night, and I am very tired." Slowly she stood up, eagerly but silently questioning him.
After a moment's embarrassment she held out her hand. He drew his own from his pocket to present in return. Half contemptuously, he threw a glance at the little girlish fingers lying in his square brown palm. "I'll give you another ring," he said brusquely, "but I couldn't stand seeing you wear that other. When we meet to-morrow morning, I hope you will be rested. Good night. Off with you."
She needed no second bidding.