RENOUNCEMENT
"I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight—
The thought of thee—and in the blue Heaven's height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee awaits, hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must go short of thee, the whole day long."
—Alice Meynell.
It was upon the following day that Dr. Dymock asked to see Gaunt, and with all the diplomacy that he could muster, begged him to keep away from his wife entirely for a fortnight at least.
"I do not like her state of evident mental tension," he said. "She seems strung up to an unnatural pitch, and in these cases we always find that the society of those who are nearest and dearest has a disturbing effect. The whole structure of your future happiness probably depends upon your patience and forbearance now. There are many girls who can, so to speak, take marriage in their stride, without its making any perceptible difference. She is not like that. She is acutely sensitive, just now abnormally so; and, unfortunately for you, she was at the time of her marriage seriously out of health. At present she is not what is unscientifically known as hysterical; but she might become so, as the result of quite a small error of judgment on our part. I shall make it clear to her that you are keeping away entirely out of consideration for her, and I will also speak to your servants, who have been with you long, and are trustworthy. Nobody else need know anything of the matter. You could hardly have a better companion for her than Mrs. Ferris, who has no nerves, who is not observant, and who will keep her amused without wanting to pry into her feelings."
Gaunt was lighting a cigar, sheltering the match from the wind with his hand, so that his expression revealed nothing.
"I'll do anything on earth that you advise," he replied after a minute. "I expect you are right. I do blunder. I find myself blundering. The fact is, I know nothing of women. This was very sudden with me, and I—I haven't gone the right way to work. I need hardly say that her happiness is the first consideration."
"If you feel that, I expect it will all come right," Dymock told him hopefully. "Your forbearance is bound to impress her. I will see that it does impress her. In two or three weeks she will be a different creature. Even then you must let her come along at her own pace. She wants delicate handling."
Gaunt said nothing, but shrugged his shoulders as if he felt himself incapable of the requisite diplomacy. So the other went on:
"Of course, I guess at the circumstances. You fell abruptly in love—you found the lady in a position from which you felt she must be instantly rescued. Your marriage came, as it were, too early in the programme. Well—you must do what a good many other men have done successfully—begin your wooing after you are wed. I seem to have a pretty cool cheek, talking to you like this—what?"
"Circumstances justify you, I think," replied Gaunt. He did not speak as if he were offended, but his voice did not invite further admonition.
Dymock rose to go, and for the first time in his life found himself thinking sympathetically of Gaunt of Omberleigh. How was this affair going to pan out, he wondered.
He turned on the doorstep. "She's anxious about her little sister, I gather," said he.
"The child has been taken to London to undergo treatment," replied Gaunt. "Is she not doing well? I had not heard that."
"Oh, she was only moved to London yesterday, so nothing can be known yet. However, Mrs. Gaunt is anxious."
"Do you mean that she wants to be there? Ought one to let her go?" asked Gaunt, startled.
"On no account. She is quite unfit for such exertion. Only, if it can be done, arrange that she gets good news, that nobody writes disquieting bulletins."
"I'll see to that," replied Gaunt with emphasis, as the doctor rode off.
This was a chance to send a line to his mother-in-law—a chance of which he would take the fullest advantage. He would write also to the head of the nursing home where Pansy was installed, directing that his wife should be as much reassured as was consistent with the facts.
*****
During the days that followed found Gaunt himself the object of a universal sympathy and kindness. Dr. Dymock had dropped hints, among those of his patients best famed for gossiping, as to the chivalrous nature of the misogynist's marriage. It seemed that he had found a fair maiden languishing in bondage, and had endowed her with the half of his kingdom. Unfortunately, she had suffered so severely as to undermine her health, and the first task for the newly made husband was to have her properly nursed and fed.
This, of course, explained why he had not taken her upon a wedding tour. That would doubtless come later, when she was strong enough to enjoy it. Rumours of her beauty and of Gaunt's devotion were rife. When he drove into the market town he found people cordial after a wholly new fashion.
Meanwhile, he himself was changing to an extent of which he was far from being aware. The heart and head which for so many years had been wholly occupied with self, were now filled exclusively with the image of another. As the days passed, and he held rigidly to his promise to Dr. Dymock, his thoughts were more and more completely given up to the question of Virginia's future health and happiness. Some deep-lying shyness had prevented his admitting to the doctor that, except for the ceremony, she was not as yet his wife. Yet he had this fact in reserve, as perhaps his only chance to restore to her her freedom.
He recognised that, as soon as she was strong enough, he and she must come to an understanding. He must show her his change of heart, and if it could be done, he must give her liberty. She would have to know that he was no longer her jailer, but her devotee.
He could see now how for all these years he had been yielding himself prisoner to the devil, and how his apprenticeship had culminated in the perpetration of a devilish deed. Night and day he was haunted by the memory of Virginia sitting up, tearing his jewels from her fingers, wringing her bare hands and crying that she was not clean.
These new thoughts, of pity and regret and unavailing tenderness, began to touch the lines of his mouth, to alter the expression of his eyes. He no longer went about scowling. He was seeing the world through a new medium. It was terrible to be able to do nothing. Virginia's vehement repudiation of gifts from him left him helpless. He dare not even send up flowers in his own name. He had to be content with seeking out the finest plants in the conservatory, the best blooms of the garden, and giving them to Grover. Carnations seemed to be in favour, and he sent to Derby for fine specimens. One day, in the innocence of her heart, Grover revealed the fact to the patient, who was inhaling with satisfaction the spicy perfume of some particularly fine ones. Virginia said nothing at the time, but about half an hour after remarked that her head ached, and she thought the flowers smelt too strong. She sent them downstairs and said she would have no more carnations.
Gaunt, when he found the whole array on the table in the hall, asked the reason, and was told that Mrs. Gaunt seemed to have turned against them. Intent upon knowing the worst, he said: "Oh, you should have told her that I sent for them expressly."
"Just what I did tell her, sir," replied Grover at once.
He himself was startled by the pain this trifling fact caused him to feel. He went out of doors, and walked for hours, trying to escape from it. He found Hugh Caunter, and passed the rest of the day with him. The young agent, or bailiff, as the old-fashioned folk called him, was struck by the softening of his master's whole disposition. Anxiety and remorse did not make Gaunt irritable. He became quiet, with a hopeless kind of passive unhappiness which seemed to feel itself to be irremediable. Only now and then did he break out into sudden spasms of rage which, in the opinion of his household, were most excusable and infinitely preferable to his former continual surliness.
He was more approachable these days. Each morning he waited for the doctor and walked with him down the avenue, hearing the latest bulletin. When he came in, Grover usually contrived to be about, to pass on to him any details of interest.
"Better news from London this morning, sir. Yes, it has sent up Mrs. Gaunt's spirits something wonderful. Gave each of the little cats a new ribbon, she has. Yes, she has give them strange names, that she has. Cosmo and Damian, she calls 'em; and when I asked why such outlandish names, she laughs and says that they were doctors—great men, kind to the poor—and that she loves doctors, because they are going to make her little sister well. Fairly wrapped up in that little girl, she is, sir. I fear to think what the consequences would be if anything was to go wrong with the child. Has her photo there on the table beside her bed, with fresh flowers in front of it every day; and the boy, too—a handsome young gentleman, if you like! He will enjoy spending his holidays here, won't he, sir?"
Grover herself wondered how she dared to chatter in this way to him. The change must have been very marked. A month ago she had hardly opened her lips to him during her seven years' service in his house, except for the necessary conventional words she was obliged to speak. To-day, the silence in which he heard her had lacked any audible sign of encouragement. Yet it had encouraged. It had been the silence that eagerly awaits—that longs for more.
Cosmo and Damian! Surely the set lips under the heavy moustache were curving into an unwilling smile. How young it was—how freakish! How strangely he relished it! To have a creature like that always about him!
If he had only known!...
Definitely he had rendered his own happiness impossible. For his mind had begun to reach out, to curl itself about the idea of a new, strange happiness, subtle and flooding—happiness that must spring from this single-minded, loving, exquisite child, whom he had imprisoned in his gloomy fortress.
He wandered aimlessly into his study, sat down at his writing table, rested his elbows upon it, his chin on his hands, and stared out upon the garden without moving for nearly an hour.
*****
Virginia's first visit to Perley Hatch gave her food for much reflection.
They motored there upon a fine sultry afternoon, and the chauffeur and his mistress made a "sedan chair" with their locked hands, to carry the invalid from the car across the grass to where a long chair had been spread for her in the shade.
Tom and Bill were produced from somewhere in the grounds, with more or less grimy faces and shabby overalls, but very healthy and vivacious manners. They quickly made friends with Mrs. Gaunt, divining a sympathetic spirit from the first. The baby, a damsel of about twelve months, being still largely in her nurse's hands, was cleaner and more amenable, but just as hilarious. The two boys were both frankly ugly, but the girl had taken after her somewhat showy father, and was a handsome child, of whom her mother was justly proud. She danced upon Virgie's lap, stroked her face, and tried earnestly to feed her with the soppy remnants of a biscuit, which was her own idea of the greatest civility possible to offer.
Virgie, gifted with an innate understanding of babyhood, was delighted with these amenities. She enjoyed her visit thoroughly, and was startled when a stable clock struck six times.
"Six o'clock! Oh, Mrs. Ferris, it can't be!" cried she in consternation.
"Oh, I daresay that's a bit fast," replied Joey comfortably. "Anyhow, here comes Percy, so you must just wait five minutes and make friends with him."
Mr. Ferris, with every sign of animation and surprise, was advancing across the grass.
"Why, Jo, you never told me that you expected Mrs. Gaunt to tea! This is an unlooked-for pleasure!" He shook hands with effusion, and Virgie felt repugnance in every nerve. The man's voice, his manner, even his good looks, were obviously second-rate. He sat down and began to make himself agreeable—or so he thought—by talk of the emptiest, and glances of the most eloquent. Almost everything he said was a scarcely veiled compliment. Joey had risen, and was helping nurse to remove the family, which was not inclined to part from the new friend who knew so much about steam engines and the other prime interests of life. Ferris had ten minutes' talk with the new beauty, and flattered himself that he made the most of his opportunity.
His fawning turned Virgie almost sick. From her heart she pitied Joey. But that young person was apparently well satisfied with her lot, and quite impervious to the fact that her husband was a bounder. As soon as she came back to the tea-table, Virgie urgently said that she must go. The doctor would not approve of her being out so many hours, even though she had rested all the time, and been so happy and well amused. Then at once Ferris offered to carry her to the car, and hardly waited for permission before taking her up in his arms, and at once seizing the chance to whisper something to the effect that Gaunt was, in his opinion, more to be envied than any man under the sun.
"What, to have his wife fall ill when he had been two days married? I don't fancy he would agree with you," replied Mrs. Gaunt, in a voice so frigid that it pierced even Ferris's hide and made him say to himself that he must put the brake on.
When he had deposited what he alluded to as his "fair burden" in her place, Virgie was almost ready to think that Gaunt's own arms were preferable. He, at least, took no unfair advantage of proximity. Joey took the steering wheel, and Ferris, after starting the engine for her, actually suggested that he should get in with Mrs. Gaunt. To her untold relief Joey declared that Mrs. Gaunt was an invalid, and already overtired. To her dismay, the man seemed inclined to persist, and the matter was finally settled by Joey's giving up the driver's seat to him, and herself getting into the tonneau with Virgie.
"He doesn't mean to bore people, but he certainly would have bored you all the way home with the story of his treasure cave," she remarked as they drove off.
"His treasure cave!"
"Yes. He thinks he has made a discovery. You know, part of our land includes the valley they call Branterdale. I expect Mr. Gaunt has told you that all this part of Derbyshire is limestone rock, and it is honeycombed with caves. We did not know we had any on our land, but the other day—that is, I should say, last season—when we were huntin', the fox ran across the river, and disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him. It was a narrow bit of the stream, between rocks, the bit that the guide-books tell you is like Dovedale in miniature. Of course, they all hunted and poked about, but they did not find so much as a rabbit-burrow. However, the thing worked in Percy's mind, and he went over afterwards on the quiet with the huntsman. This man, Gibbs, is a clever fellow, and he said the fox ran up the side of the rocky wall quite a long way; he saw the waving of the briers as he ran, and that the seekers had looked much too low down.
"So Percy let him down on a rope from the top—it's a sort of little cliff, you know, too steep for a man to climb just there—and they found the cave mouth under a great growth of blackberry bushes and fern."
"Oh, how exciting!"
"Yes, it was. The entrance was so small, they had to chip the rock to make it big enough for them to crawl in, and it was narrow when they got inside—like a mere slit in the ground, but soon it widened out, and then there came a low tunnel, and it went downwards, and after that they came out into a huge cave, with pillars of stalactite."
"It must have made quite an excitement."
"It was a bally nuisance," was Joey's elegant response. "The papers got hold of it, and before you could say 'knife' all the geologists in the kingdom wanted to come hunting for bones. Well, you see, we had to let them in, we couldn't very well keep them out. They grubbed and grubbed, but they didn't get much, because they say at no time could the entrance have been big enough to admit a large animal. Percy went with them, and watched them when they grubbed, to make sure that they didn't take anything away without leave, or keep any finds dark. And one day he found something that they were not looking for."
"Oh! What was that?"
"A pocket of lead. Quite a big one. You know, this county used to be mined for lead. The Speedwell cavern was really a mine at first. So he said nothing to anybody, but he got hold of an expert, who thought it quite promising; and now he wants to find people to subscribe capital, and work the lead. Wouldn't it be splendid if he found some?"
"It would indeed."
"You see, the land has belonged to my forefathers ever since the fourteenth century," said Joey. "Nobody has touched it; that bit of the river bank has never been used for anything. If we should strike it rich, it would not be so very surprising."
"You will have to come and see the cave as soon as you are well enough to walk, Mrs. Gaunt," said Ferris, turning round with a smile which he himself thought enough to melt the most stony-hearted beauty.