The Daughter Pays

by Mrs. Baillie Reynolds

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

"Take back the love you gave, I claim
Only a memory of the same;
With this beside, if you will not blame,
Your leave for one more last ride with me."—Browning.

For ten days more Virginia's life floated upon a summer sea. She had Tony, she had Pansy, she had Gerald. She was away from Gaunt, and his letters made no demand upon her. He never mentioned the date, or even alluded to the fact, of her return. She had, however, set herself a limit. When Pansy went to the seaside she must go back to her prison.

The nurse who was now in charge of the case would be permitted to accompany the child, so that there would be no valid reason for Virginia to go too. Mrs. Mynors, who was having the time of her life in London, though she grumbled incessantly at the need to keep her expenditure so rigorously within bounds, was not anxious for the move. Her daughter, however, was scrupulously determined that it should take place at the earliest date which Dr. Danby would sanction. She was very grateful to her husband. Her gratitude had taken the edge off the bitterness with which she regarded him. Her fear remained, but his present generosity could not but do something to salve the wound his cruelty had made. To take undue advantage of his kindness was what she would never suffer herself to do.

Yet, when the time of parting drew near, it became evident to every one that Pansy would fret so much at her sister's departure as to make it likely that her grief might react disastrously upon her frail returning health.

This distressed Virginia terribly. She hardly knew which way her duty lay. It seemed almost as if she must stay with the child until she was strong enough to be reasoned with. At least Gaunt's health would not suffer from her absence. Yet the situation galled her. Here they all were, living upon his bounty, while he waited alone in Derbyshire bereft of his newly made wife. Had she loved him, all would have been otherwise, she would have felt it natural that he should help her, and she would not have hesitated to choose the path of duty, even if absence from him had been a misery to her. As things stood, she was uncomfortably aware that, so far, she had not fulfilled her share of the contract. He had paid her price, but she was devoted, body and soul, to Pansy and not to him.

That night she cried bitterly when alone in bed, while the conflict raged in her heart; and strangely, that night, at Omberleigh, Gaunt had the illusion that he heard her sobbing, as he had heard her upon the night when she received the news of Pansy's danger. So vivid was the impression that he got up, opened the door of her room, and stood a long moment, in the moonlight, gazing at the smooth, empty bed and the dim outlines of the furniture, before he could realise that she was not there.

Next morning she wrote to him:

I am in a difficulty. Pansy is making herself unhappy about going to the sea without me. She has fretted so that Dr. Danby spoke seriously to me yesterday, asking if I could not manage to stay a few days longer just to settle her into her new surroundings. We have found rooms very near the sea, not at Cliftonville, but at Worthing. The roads there are so nice and flat that she can be wheeled out upon the Parade every day, and the doctor says as soon as she is a little stronger she will lose this silly fancy about my leaving her. I am ashamed to mention it to you, when you have done and are doing so much. I will be guided by what you wish. I had arranged definitely to go back to Omberleigh on Monday. If you think I had better keep to that date I will do so. If I may instead take Pansy to Worthing, and stay there with her till the following Friday, returning to you on Saturday, I shall be most grateful, but I feel guilty in asking for it, when I have already made such large demands upon your patience.

The answer to this letter came by telegram:

Stay as long as advisable.—Gaunt.

Tony brought this message round to the Home from Margaret Street in the course of the morning, and great, indeed, was the joy it caused. Pansy was a different creature when she learned that "that dear old trump of an Osbert was going to let Virgie come to Worthing."

There was a tea-party in the little invalid's room that afternoon to celebrate the occasion. Gerald Rosenberg was present. The journey was to be made in his car, and he thought he would take a week's holiday at Worthing, and have a run round the country thereabout.

It was a delightful plan, and in Virginia's eyes it had no drawbacks. She was now wholly at ease with Gerald. Since that first day, he had asked no awkward questions, trenched on no dangerous ground. He had been the best of friends, and was apparently quite content to talk to her mother for long periods during which she and Tony roamed together.

Under his auspices the removal to Worthing took place most satisfactorily. The day was dull and chilly, but there was no rain, and Pansy's spirits never flagged.

For the first day or two following their arrival, there was so much to be done, the elder sister's time was so fully occupied in making all the arrangements that were necessary, that she hardly realised how time was flying. It was on Thursday morning that she awoke with a terrible sensation of depression, amounting to horror. She had dreamed of Gaunt. This had happened to her twice, and only twice, before. Once, upon the night following their first wordless encounter at Hertford House. It had been an oddly vivid dream, producing a feeling of excitement which persisted after she awoke. The second occasion was at Omberleigh. It occurred—though she naturally was unaware of the fact—on the night during which her husband wandered through the park in an agony of remorse. That dream too had left an impression which seemed disproportionate. This last was, however, the most haunting of all.

In it she found herself searching through the house at Omberleigh, looking for Gaunt, who could not be found. She went upstairs to the garrets, where Mrs. Wells had once taken her, but the rooms seemed to have been altered. In her dream she said: "If I come to the room with the Sheraton furniture in it, I shall know where I am." She could not find it, however, and after descending stairs which were the stairs of the Hertford House Gallery, she ran along a passage in search of the sitting-room she had been told she might call her own. That, too, had vanished; in its place was something pale, dim, and shapeless. All empty—Gaunt was not to be seen, and she had been made aware that it was most important that she should find him. She passed out into the garden, in a wet mist which hid everything from her sight, and she dare not hasten for fear of stepping upon his dead body. Terror took her, and she tried, as one tries in dreams, to run. Her feet were rooted to the ground, she was incapable of movement; and out of the fog came Gaunt, with his eyes closed. He was repeating words, but in so low a tone that she could not immediately hear. She listened, first attentively, then eagerly, because she knew that it was so tremendously urgent that she should understand; and at last something reached her consciousness. "Are you coming? No. I said you would not come. I never dared to think you would. But you promised—you promised——"

She tried to say: "Here I am, do you not see me?" But she failed to articulate, and awoke with the sound of his muttered words ringing in her ears.

The morning scene upon which she looked out was gay. The sun shone lazily over a calm sea, there was no wind, and the seafront was already lively with the passing figures of those who had been out for an early dip. When she went into Pansy's room she found that the child had slept without awakening the whole night through; and was greeted with a smile of content and freedom from pain which made her heart swell with joy and gratitude.

This was Gaunt's doing! Without him, this marvellous recovery would have been impossible. It was he who had not only furnished the funds, but who had sent her to Dr. Danby, perhaps the one man in the world who could have achieved so wonderful a result. For the authorities, at first so grave, now began to talk of a cure. Lameness there would always be, but the nurse was certain that the power of locomotion would be recovered. Virgie knelt by the bed, her whole mind flooded with the poignant memory of her pitiful dream. "Oh, Pansy blossom," said she, "isn't it wonderful? What do we not owe to Osbert?"

"Yes," said Pansy, turning her head eagerly, "do you know, Virgie, I was just thinking about that. Nurse talked to me a bit yesterday. She said I must not be selfish. She said how good you had been to sacrifice so much of your time to me; and how miserable it is for Osbert all alone at Omberleigh. I feel rather ashamed of myself, darling, and I can see quite plainly that I must let you go."

"Oh, Pansy!" cried Virginia brokenly, seeing her way thus unexpectedly made clear. Was she glad or sorry? Her imagination took a peep into the future, and for a minute sheer fright paralysed her. Then her dream floated before her, and she almost heard the words: "Are you coming? You promised! You promised!"

Yes, she was coming. She would keep her promise, as she had always intended; but now, for the first time, she faced the terror of it. Once away from her gaoler, in the insistence of the present moment, she had been able to forget. Other things had filled her heart. Apprehension for Pansy's safety had blotted out apprehension for Virginia's happiness. Now with vehemence her panic fear resurged.

*****

Down in the sitting-room, Mrs. Mynors, daintily attired in seaside raiment and white shoes, had just rung for breakfast. Tony and Gerald, who had been together for a swim, walked past under the window. Gerald stopped and called up that he was going along to his hotel for breakfast, and would be back in an hour, decently attired.

"Come in and have some breakfast with us, just as you are," urged Mrs. Mynors, leaning from the open casement.

"Yes, yes," cried Tony, gripping his arm joyfully.

"Don't mind if I do," answered Gerald, and ascended the stairs leisurely, while the boy dashed up to a higher floor, to put down his towels. "Tony met a pal down on the sands," remarked Rosenberg, as he shook hands with Virginia's mother. "I have taken two tickets on the char-à-banc for them to go to Arundel. If you will stay with Pansy the arrangements are quite complete."

"That's a splendid idea," replied Mrs. Mynors with satisfaction. "You are a good general, Gerald."

He looked somewhat doubtful, as though a cloud passed over his mood.

"I hate it," he said, "but I must do something. If I don't, she will go back to that crazy beast to-morrow as sure as the sun rises, and what can we do then?"

"My dear Gerald, why do you say that you hate it? You are not going to do anything to which anybody could take exception!"

"No, but I am going to trick her with a put-up job. If she ever found that out she would dislike it. I have seen so much of her lately, and her sincerity and simplicity are almost terrible."

Virgie's mother smiled rather superciliously. "Yet she can keep her own counsel," she remarked incisively. "I have done all that I knew to secure her confidence, and never one word has she let slip. But for the fact that she never mentions him and will not let me see letters from him, I should hardly suspect——"

"You are sure?" He turned from the window with intent expression. "Remember, I am going almost entirely upon what you tell me——"

"Gerald, it seemed to me that I must have some certainty, and I did a thing which you will probably condemn. I looked at a letter from him to her, which was accidentally left accessible. I made a copy of it to show you. This is it, word for word. There was no more."

He grew scarlet. The pretty woman was approaching him with the bit of paper. Was it taking an unfair advantage of Virgie to steal a march upon her loyalty thus? He told himself that the end justified the means. He was too deep in love now. He could not draw back. He took the paper and read:

Omberleigh. Tuesday.

Yours of 5th duly recd. Glad journey satisfactorily accomplished. Rooms seem reasonable. Suppose Mrs. M. will go back to Wayhurst in a few days, leaving child in charge of nurse. Trust you have done as I ordered you with regard to m.c. This is important.—O. G."

"That is all—absolutely all—that was written on the sheet of paper," murmured Mrs. Mynors, watching him read.

"What is m.c., do you know?"

"Have no idea. A nice letter for a man to write to his few weeks' bride, is it not?"

"It shows them to be on very peculiar terms," he admitted, with knit brows. "Yes, you must be right. The man is a bit cracked. Was there no beginning to the letter?"

"Nothing."

"Yet you think there is no chance of our being able to get him certified as of unsound mind?"

"Not the least; because he is very sane, except on this point. Have you asked Mr. Ferris what he thinks of him?"

"Ferris thinks him most able. Says he is the best magistrate in the district. They all down there seem to suppose that he is quite devoted to his wife. They laugh at him as an old bachelor hopelessly in love."

"That letter is the letter of a man in love, is it not?"

Gerald shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, I have been extremely careful to keep off the subject with her," he said. "There is one thing, however, which makes me horribly suspicious that you may be right—that he is being actually unkind to her. I mean this. She seems to believe that, when she leaves here, it is final. Now and then, when she is off her guard, she seems to assume that she will never see any of us again. I did what amounted to some pretty open fishing for an invitation to Omberleigh the other day. She was wholly unresponsive."

"She did admit to me, in one letter, that she did very wrong to marry him," slowly said Mrs. Mynors.

"She did?" he cried quickly.

"She practically admitted that her marriage was a failure as far as she was concerned. I will show you that bit of the letter, though most of it is private. I have it here."

Upon his eager assent she produced that letter from Virginia, which Gaunt had intercepted, and read a paragraph to him:

... What I have done is wrong. I know that now. I half knew it all the time. But what else was there for me to do? I believe God knows I did it for the best. I was at the end of my own strength; I was at the end of all our money. I had you all dependent upon me, and I knew I was going to break down.

I felt I had to save you, and, Oh, mother, you can't, you simply must not deny that I have done that!...

Mrs. Mynors glanced at the young man's face. It was set and hard.

"You should have shown me that before. I think it conclusive," said he. "Only a most unhappy woman could have written so." He broke off with a catch in his breath. "And to think that I had failed her, that she was in those desperate straits and I never knew! Oh, ye gods, how blind we are! But you see, don't you, that the fact of my deserting her then makes it more incumbent upon me to save her now, if I can? Mad or sane, there can be no doubt that the brute must be desperately jealous. We only want suspicious circumstances and somebody who will be sure to mention them to him. If I mistake not, Mr. Ferris is the very man for our purpose. The fact that he himself admires Virgie to the point of fatuity will give the necessary edge to his malice."

"Have you heard from him? He is coming to-day?"

"Yes, that's all right," replied Gerald hastily. "No more now; I hear her on the stairs."

Virginia came in. Happiness and returning health together had made her radiant. She wore to-day a pale mauve frock, and a hat trimmed with a garland of mauve and faint blue flowers. Like Mr. Bent on another occasion, Gerald found himself distracted with the wonder as to which of the two colours matched her eyes.

"What a day!" she said. "Oh, what a heavenly blue day, isn't it? Have you come to breakfast, Gerald? How nice!"

"Gerald is afraid he may be obliged to go back to town to-morrow," remarked her mother, as they sat down to table. "He wants to have one good day's motoring for the last, and as the driving does you so much good, I have arranged to stay with Pansy and leave you free to go with him."

"Tony and I! Oh, how splendid!" cried Virgie, sparkling. "I, too, must leave to-morrow, and I want to have a really delightful day for the last." She broke off a little abruptly, afraid lest what she said might be by implication uncomplimentary to her husband. Both her hearers remarked it, and they exchanged glances.

They did not say that Tony would not be going. Instead, Gerald produced a map from his pocket, and spread it on a corner of the table.

"I have more or less thought out a route," said he. "I wonder if you will approve. There were two places which you told me that you would particularly like to see—one was Bodiam Castle. The other was the Roman Pavement at Bignor. I have been talking to Baines (his chauffeur), and he says it would be quite possible to do both. It is a fifty-mile run to Bodiam—less than two hours. We could lunch on the way back—say at Lewes—and go on to Bignor, where we could have tea, and get back any time we like."

"How simply perfect!" laughed Virgie as she helped herself to marmalade with an appetite which was so recent an acquirement that she herself could not understand it. Nobody present noticed it. Mrs. Mynors would never have known had her daughter starved herself to death under her eyes. Across the girl's mind stole the thought of some one who had watched every mouthful, had hectored and bullied her into eating.

She leant across to Gerald, and perused the map with attention. "What a way it seems! Bodiam is in the very eastest corner of Sussex. And Bignor is more than the whole way back—positively on the other side of Worthing! Are you sure it won't be too far? I am so afraid Pansy will miss me."

"You forget," put in her mother, "Pansy is going to have the first of her electric baths to-day, and nurse says she will have to be very quiet for some hours after it. Besides, it will accustom her to the idea of being without you."

"Yes. That is true," was the reply, while a shadow crept over the gladness of the face.

"I expect Osbert is beginning to be restive, isn't he?" asked her mother, in order to gauge the effect of a sudden reference to Gaunt.

The effect, as always, was a momentary confusion, slight but evident. She soon rallied. "He is very patient," she replied, while her thoughts went obstinately back to the dream garden, veiled in mist, to the man who approached her, groping blindly, to his words, "Are you coming back? No!"

"It seems wonderful that he can be patient under the circumstances," observed Gerald drily. He did not pursue the subject. He was folding up his map. "I told the chauffeur to be round in exactly twenty minutes from now. I must bolt, and do a change. Can you be ready in twenty minutes?"

She eagerly assented, and he caught up his hat and ran out of the room, with a smile to her of glowing, eager anticipation which set her heart dancing in response. What a dear fellow he was! How good he had been to them all! He had saved quite a lot of Gaunt's money by taking them down to Worthing in the car. She did not ask herself why it was terrible to take her husband's money, but easy to take Gerald's.

She ran away upstairs, calling to Tony. He appeared from his room, got up in a striped flannel suit, a soft linen collar, a most recherché tie, and a Panama hat—a real one.

"Why, Tony, you have made yourself a swell!" cried the girl.

"Pretty decent, isn't it?" was the gratified reply. "Left me any brekker?"

"Plenty, but be quick, we have to start in twenty minutes."

"Not me, sis. I'm going with Mullins Major to Arundel."

"To Arundel! Oh, no, Tony, you are going with Gerald and me in the car!"

"Not much. This is heaps better. Good old Gerald bought us the ticket—front places, and he has given me half a sov. for our grub. Isn't he great?"

"Oh, Tony!" She stood back as the boy ran down the stairs whistling gaily. "Did Gerald give you that suit, too, and that overwhelmingly elegant hat?"

"He did. Took me into the town the first day we got here and rigged me out."

Virgie burst out laughing. She was so glad that Tony should be young—should put on a bit of "swank." How dear of Gerald to be so good to him!

Money makes life very easy. The thought turned her grave once more. Am I mercenary? she asked herself. Does love of money mean the desire to obtain good doctors and nursing, to educate a boy well, to live cleanly and keep out of debt? With a sigh she admitted that her marriage had been mercenary. Yet how small a share of life's good things would have prevented her from making so hideous a mistake—a mistake which as yet she had hardly begun to pay for. Oh, why, why, had Gerald stepped aside and failed her at the critical moment?

"If I had only had patience, if only I had waited," she told herself, "it would have come right! He as good as told me so that first night we dined together. I ought to have refused to do what I knew to be wrong, and left the consequences to God."

She made herself ready for the drive, slipped into Pansy's room, and to her relief found the child quite prepared for her going. "Gerald told me yesterday that he should take you," she said sedately.

Gerald was then heard calling for Virgie, and with a hasty kiss she ran off. Both the plotters heaved a sigh of relief when they found she took Tony's defection in good part. The boy came down from his half-eaten breakfast to see them off, and the car spun away, up to Broadwater and Sompting, and on along the northern slopes of those magical South Downs, the love of which can never fade from a Sussex heart.

Virgie's heart sang as the sunny miles whizzed past. She and Gerald were together, and who knew what might come after? She caught herself wishing that an accident might terminate the day, that she might be fatally injured, and gasp out her life in Gerald's arms. Gaunt would be legally compelled to continue the allowances to her family. The idea fascinated her, so that at length, after a long silence, she said to her companion: "Isn't there a piece of poetry about two people riding together for the last time? The man said he wished the world would end at the end of the ride—do you know it?"

"Can't say I do. I'm not much at poetry," he answered apologetically, "but he was a wise chap if he wanted to end off at the best bit. So you think we are in like case?" he stooped to look into her eyes.

She was shaken into remembrance, and stood on guard in a moment. "Oh, no, of course not! What nonsense! I was only thinking to myself in the silly way I sometimes do."

"Just so. For you the world is but just beginning. You are returning to-morrow to the arms of the man who loved you so devotedly that for the sake of calling you his own he was ready to come to the rescue of your family. For me the case is very, very different. I don't know who could blame me if I wished that this day should end my life."

She laughed. "But that is really nonsense. You are a man—you can go where you like and do as you like. I must do as some one else wills all my life long."

"You think that I can do as I like, Virgie?"

"Of course you can."

"If I did, you would be distinctly surprised. I should tell the chauffeur to change his course—or, rather, to continue on, past Lewes, to Newhaven; and I should carry you on board the first steamer that sailed, and we should vanish across the sea and start life together in some glorious new land, and you would be mine—all mine!"

He spoke half banteringly, but very tenderly, and she hardly knew how to take him.

"As I am I, and as you are you, that is out of the question, you know," he went on, almost in a whisper. "You are not the girl to break your oath and I am not the man to tempt you, even if I thought I could do it with success. So all will go on as before. We shall be together to-day and we shall part to-morrow; and for the rest of my life I shall be fully occupied in resisting the temptation to cut Gaunt's throat."

Virgie decided that she was expected to laugh, and did so, but very softly.

"Don't talk like that," she begged him wistfully. "Let us be quite happy, and think about Pansy, and how wonderful it is that she should be getting well."