CHAPTER XI
The Autumn twilight was thickening with milky opal reflections when they rolled through the heavy iron gates of the park. Gigantic trees shadowed the curving drive; every now and then sending a swirl of jewel-coloured leaves to join their brothers carpeting the soft turf.
They passed one copper beech, tinted like the understrands of Ferlie's hair. But, though the grounds were obviously well cared-for, nothing could relieve a brooding sense of desolation, due to the over-luxuriant vegetation which darkened the surroundings of an already dark, if beautiful, house.
Well-merited the name, Cyprian thought, as the solid old turret towers rose at last, picked out in inky silhouette against the flaming aftermath of sunset cloud.
Upon the flight of black marble steps a child was standing; a miniature bull's-eye lamp in his hands. He had evidently been trying to light it with the aid of a box of matches which would not strike.
A footman came down the stairs as the car drew up, and his expression of surprise gave way to placid recognition of its lady-occupant.
"Her ladyship said she was expecting you, Madam, but did not think that you would be arriving till Wednesday."
"I have brought a friend of hers with me," Miss Trefusis told him. "Where is she?"
The man did not answer; he had turned back to speak to his colleagues, now gathering about the limousine.
Jardine, the old butler, with the forceful impassive face, informed them that her ladyship should be told. He left them before the hall fire and glided away.
"I always regard him as a sort of Keeper of the Keys," whispered Miss Trefusis, hysterical with fatigue and achievement.
Cyprian took out his watch as if suddenly reminded of something, but he did not look at the time; only at the securing ring of a small gold key dangling from the watch-chain.
"He has been in the Family so many years," went on Aunt Brillianna, "that Ferlie says he believes himself a kind of Influence on the Greville-Mainwaring destinies."
The child, whose lamp one of the footmen had lighted now, passed through the hall, carrying it carefully. She called to him.
"Come here, John. Don't you know me to-day? Where is your mother?"
He was advancing towards her but checked himself at the inquiry.
"She said not to take no one up the stairs," he informed them with emphasis. "She are having a key made for the door."
He spoke clearly and with only a slight slurring of the S's which could not be described as a lisp but which gave a more human childishness to his unnatural gravity.
Scarcely concealing the effort it cost, Cyprian raised his head and looked at him. Yes. That hair, also, would have flaunted a rebellious crop of sunny waves had they been allowed to grow. He was too white and frail-looking for prettiness but it was with his mother's wide steady gaze that he returned Cyprian's survey which shifted first.
"Nonsense!" said Aunt B. on a low quaver of amusement, "you can't afford to be jealous of Ferlie's son."
Cyprian replied with a vexed laugh,
"Don't read me so clearly out loud. There are some things a man wishes to hide from himself."
She rose, holding out her hand to John.
"Take us to the foot of the stairs, laddie. I do not want you to go up. We may hear Mother coming down."
John hesitated, but, finally, led the way, vouchsafing one piece of news as he pushed back a nail-studded door.
"I have got a tricycle."
It gave Aunt B. her opening. At the foot of the stairs she turned and gestured to Cyprian, standing behind her.
"The key is not yet made to lock you out," she reminded him in an undertone. And aloud to John, "Show me the tricycle."
Was it not yet made? Cyprian asked himself; or, rather, would the lock be too rusty for it to turn, after such long disuse?
Up and always up. And Ferlie climbed thus, daily, the ascent of her lonely Purgatory for the little hour when she might unmask her suffering, and face the truth that her soul was exceeding heavy.
It was a long time to Cyprian before he stood outside that door. It had a heavy looped iron handle like that which turns the latch of a church.
He paused but heard no sound within.
His hand grasping the ring was steady; the oaken panels swung back easily under that strong pressure.
She was leaning against the Gothic window, and the lingering touch of long sun-fingers rested upon her head in comforting caress.
He spoke her name in a whisper. Her head turned slowly but she did not move. So often had he come to her at this time and, so often, faded back into the gloaming.
His shoulders relaxed as dawned the explanation for her dumb acceptance of his presence. He crossed the threshold with outstretched hands.
"My dear ... Oh, my dear..."
She crumpled up in his arms, not unconscious, but sick with shock.
The last red ray withdrew from the turret, leaving them in the gloom of a grave from which resurrection seemed very far away.
* * * * * *
The presence of Aunt B. made all the difference to the situation. She effaced herself and entertained John, but lent a more commonplace air to his visit than would have seemed possible, in the circumstances.
The erratic arrivals and departures of Lady Greville-Mainwaring's elderly aunt had ceased to be a matter for comment in the servants' hall. Jardine palpably respected her uncompromising utterances; John met her as an equal, and Cyprian and Ferlie, at peace in one another's companionship along the garden walks, passionately blessed her in their hearts. She had done wisely in warning Cyprian that Ferlie's appearance must startle him. She wore the look of some Inquisition victim whom the torturer's power had reduced to that exhaustion which ceases to feel. Instead of the limp body, incapable of further suffering, Ferlie betrayed a like condition of soul.
"Was this change of religion any use?" Cyprian asked her.
Her eyes might swiftly have become sightless as she replied, "There was no 'change.' It had to be that or Father's way of thinking. And I could not trust my small strength with Father's self-sufficient philosophy. This represented one more cage, but a necessary one, if I was to obtain enough self-discipline to enable me to live. You know I am not being dramatic. Sometimes I thought of that way out, only it did not seem quite fair to John, until he should be old enough to understand about heredity and choose for himself."
"You—you don't make yourself exactly clear."
"No. Well, never mind! ... Peter, by chance, knocked up against a clever Jesuit. I do admire that much-criticized sect, Cyprian. Their hard logic; their cold positivity of thought. This one thrilled one's sense of humour first by a speech made to a Church of England padre, which, beginning on a note of toleration crashed to conclusion on a chord of glorious bigotry. 'After all,' he assured his vacillating companion, 'We both serve the same Master; you in your way, I in His.'
"Later, this man was discussing the conversion of a well-known statesman with Peter. 'He was too intellectual,' said the Jesuit, 'to be satisfied longer with less than all the Truth his brain could assimilate.' That speech impressed Peter as, doubtless, it was meant to do, with his tendency to brain-worship. He, also, began to be sure that the World's Thinkers, among whom he would like to be numbered some time, must, universally, find the Whole Truth here.
"And you know, Cyprian, he is clever. They did not make the mistake of approaching him on the sentimental, or even the romantically beautiful side, of the religion. He is certainly a more valuable ally to the Catholic Church than undoctrinal I."
"The thing has not yet interfered with Peter's instinctive love of liberty," Cyprian pointed out. "Whereas, you and I are, surely, threatened by its precepts."
He went no further. Not yet had he broached to her that which he understood to be passing in Aunt Brillianna's mind; more tentatively in his own. But Ferlie smiled with wistful understanding.
"There is no public cause for a divorce, that I know of," she said quietly, "And, apart from Catholicity, isn't divorce rather impossible as a solution for Us?"
She was placing her finger upon something which formed the basis of their mutual pride. They did not give to take back again, whatever the type of altar to which they had dedicated the gift.
The mockery of her marriage-service struck him afresh.... "That theirs may be the love which knows no ending, Whom Thou for evermore doth join in one...."
"Dear," and his voice was vibrant with pain, "How could you ever have imagined that any public vows could unite you to him, who were already part of..."
Habit of mind checked him; Ferlie was braver.
"Of you," she finished steadily.
They walked the whole length of the lawn before she added,
"You did not realize that, Cyprian, while there was time. If you had realized it I should not have been free. There was no time to give you time to weigh your love. When you held back my light seemed clear."
"And I had no light," he said shortly.
"You haven't told me whether you now share these modern views about divorce," she reminded him. "Even the Church you nominally belong to is divided in its opinions on the subject. Its members talk very fluently, and go on their way, self-convinced. Like Peter, who, at nineteen, could talk himself into that sort of convinced state about anything."
"There are exceptional circumstances..." Cyprian began, but she stopped him then.
"And now you are going to do it! No, Cyprian. You must be either 'for' or 'against,' with principle at the back of you. Don't you see that everybody's exceptional circumstances would always be his own? That is how the Individual now dethrones God in favour of himself."
"Ferlie, you forget you have not yet told me your circumstances. And I have a right to know."
He watched her clouded face and waited. Twice she seemed about to speak but the constrained reticence of the past two years still fettered her tongue.
"I have never told anyone," she said huskily. "I don't know how much I ought to tell. I only believe that it may be a divorcing matter, according to Law; if I had not put myself under Catholic discipline."
He placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down on to a moss-upholstered bench near which, perched on a pillar, mocked a laughing stone faun.
"You must tell me," he said. And took his place beside her, covering her hand with his own.
Presently, with an obvious effort, she asked,
"You will not have forgotten Muriel Vane?"
His fingers contracted and she paused to reflect that if Cyprian had not remained so true in the abstract to his First Vision he would hardly have been Cyprian; and her god.
But she could not long mis-read the expression of raw disgust on his face as she lifted hers. It puzzled her.
"Nothing would hurt now, Cyprian—if you knew. She is—not quite normal now. Not since a long time has she——"
"I know all that." His tone was cruelly hard. "For a long while I would not allow myself to believe those rumours.... And once I thought to put her before you! It is that I shall never forget." Even so does a man resent his mistakes on their object instead of on himself.
"Cyprian, don't. Haven't the years taught you compassion?"
He shrugged that view away.
"What compassion is possible, or even right and decent?"
"You may feel inclined to shun a leper but, surely, you would desire to help him, too?"
She surprised him.
"What makes you think of it that way?"
"Experience," said Ferlie, so low that he hardly caught the word.
She braced herself for explanation.
"You once met a woman called Ruth Levine." She went on without heeding his start of acquiescence. "She has been very good to Muriel Vane. Muriel's people separated; then her mother died. Her father took to drugs, or something; they were a queer family, degenerating, like—like so many. And Muriel developed into—what people said. Ruth thought she had foreseen it and might have done something to prevent it happening. I should have imagined that impossible; often it is caused by heredity insanity. Anyhow, she saved Muriel from the usual kind of 'Home.' It is always the woman, Ruth says, who is judged; men so affected can often live undetected or screened from public criticism.... Ruth knew Clifford before I married him and when I concluded that, for John's sake—if only for that—there must be a complete break between Clifford and myself, she came to ask me to get divorced, as she had cared for him first. She was quite matter-of-fact about it. I told her that I could not dream of using the evidence she offered to supply. I told her that Clifford and I had privately arranged to live apart but that I was a Catholic and it was not in my power to unsay vows once spoken. I told her that I did not think she understood why Clifford ought to be in other hands than those of women. She looked at me as if I were crazy and went away.... I—I don't know any more, Cyprian."
Ferlie's voice had almost vanished. Suddenly her head went down upon her knees and her body shook with dry sobbing.
Cyprian, with half-closed eyes which did not wish to see, was wondering whether he had understood.
She had conjured up dark visions the like of which had rarely crossed his horizon. He was inclined, like many self-sheltered individuals, to blink at the most sinister of Life's shadows, as if by so doing he could blink them out of existence as easily as out of his thoughts.
His inarticulate prayer: "Et ne nos indue as in tentationem!" A wise one with reference to the safety of his individual soul but hardly conducive of expansive sympathy to others.
The horror he experienced in hearing this child, a score of years younger than himself, approaching for commonplace—as indeed they might be elsewhere in the world, for all he cared—issues which, until now, he had always succeeded in pushing far from his own sphere of action, hindered him from pressing her further.
* * * * * *
He might never have realized the immensities at stake for her, but that Chance interfered to drive his newly-acquired knowledge home.
At that moment Jardine was seen to be coming across the lawn, a silver salver in his hand.
Cyprian aroused Ferlie in time. When the old butler stood before them, with the telegram, she was presentably calm.
"Mrs. Minchin sent me out with it, your ladyship; it was addressed to her. His lordship wishes her to inform you that he is arriving to-night and would like one of the cars to meet the 8.15." Mrs. Minchin was the housekeeper.
Ferlie took the yellow envelope from the tray and, as she did so, Cyprian wondered whether it were only in his imagination that a look passed between mistress and man, electric with mutual warning.
Just the flash of an eyelid, and Jardine was pursuing his majestic course over the grass, his back-view impervious to criticism and comment. Not until the last glimpse of his black coat-tails had disappeared behind the yew-bushes did Ferlie rise to her feet and face Cyprian beside the laughing faun. Again that illusory sightlessness filmed her dilated pupils. She looked through him and beyond into a blank pall of darkness.
"Cyprian," the voice was dead like her face, "Take me away."
He fancied the half-human leering thing of stone stirred in evil exultation. The twisted weather-beaten features made an unholy contrast to those others of still soft flesh on a level with them.
"I have nothing more to say to you than that," she said, when he did not answer. "I will tell you nothing more. Whether you go with us or not, John and I leave here to-night—in time. You could not trust me five years ago; can you trust me now?"
"It was not you five years ago; it was my own creed that I could not trust."
"But now it is different, Cyprian. You have out-lived one stage of self-mistrust now."
Did man ever arrive beyond the reach of that urging Power in a world peopled with mortal flesh, he wondered.
Strange that, in forcing a decision upon himself concerning Ferlie's future, Cyprian forgot the very existence of Hla Byu and his son. It was not his intention to conceal from Ferlie the temporary loss of will-power which had changed the tenour of his life during the last two years. But the Burmese girl, received in a moment of sick physical weakness and retained in pure apathy of soul, had existed so mistily for the real Cyprian that, the practical arrangements for her safe-keeping concluded, she simply slipped out of the picture. When he did remember her she had become so superfluous among the host of living memories he and Ferlie were storing up that he could not bring himself to recall her, even by speech.
"I know too thoroughly by what means the latent forces of the body can accomplish the spirit's murder"—she was speaking again and he recollected himself—"But you and I have nothing to do with such perishable links. Nor do we require witnesses to ratify a spiritual marriage for which we should not have been prepared without these last enforced years of disciplined control."
She stopped, confronted with his unyielding silence, and, all at once, grew limp and human by that other inhuman watcher in stone. Her shoulders relaxed, bowed and aged beneath their invisible burden.
"I am not playing the part of Eve. It is all right. I promised that you should never need to ask me, a second time, to leave you. I understand. I am going now, alone."
He drew towards her then.
"You are going with me. I am giving you no choice. Do you understand? This decision is mine, not yours. You are going where I shall take you and under whatsoever conditions I lay down, now, and during your whole future. The responsibility is mine; you have got to put your trust in me."
Was it credible that the ripple of breeze through the swaying stalks of a bed of tall Madonna lilies drowned a satyr-laugh of derision?
Standing shoulder to shoulder they made no attempt to touch one another's hands.
So might the Little Saint of Assisi have mythically wedded Poverty, while Chastity and Obedience supported her on either hand.
Said Ferlie, "I have nothing to give you that you have not already. Everything of yours has been guarded safely behind a locked door. And, Cyprian, you have the key."
* * * * * *
To Miss Trefusis he outlined his scheme and found her a little dubious.
"But, my dear man, this is the twentieth century. Why not meet this fly-by-night lord and arrange matters with modern sanity over a whisky and soda?"
"You are the only modern one of us three," he reminded her, amusedly recognizing that her unusually broad views, contact with which he had once feared for Ferlie, were responsible for their present re-union. "Ferlie tells me that she has no evidence for a divorce, nor can she seek it, in consideration of the Church she has joined."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Aunt B., exasperated that any Church should continue to consider joined what she had been at such infinite pains to put asunder. "Surely you, Cyprian, are old enough to smile at sects and Churches! Ferlie would not be true to type if, at her age, a cardinal did not seem too picturesque to be a liar. And, believe me, the Pope was the only safe substitute for you."
"You, surely, are not advocating collusion?" asked Cyprian, tickled, in spite of himself, at this feminine Juggernaut, the wheels of whose common-sense responded to no brake till she had guided them triumphantly past her goal.
"I don't believe there is 'no cause,'" she snapped: "If he is a gentleman he will make one, since he has obviously admitted her right to leave him. It can't affect the child's inheritance. An atom of patience, and the whole affair might be straightened out with a minimum of scandal."
"There is no necessity for even a perfectly respectable scandal," Cyprian assured her. "Ferlie is coming out to Burma with me, to live there as my sister. After a time, the man can get his marriage annulled if he wishes, on the ground of desertion; but that is unlikely to affect us."
Miss Trefusis searched his face with an expression of mingled admiration and incredulity on her own.
"Yes, I am afraid you mean what I think you mean," she said. "You are more of a child than she is, and I'd like to shake you. I'd almost rather you eloped healthily—without a new wedding-ring."
"I am so sorry to disappoint you," Cyprian said.
She laid a hand on his arm which he immediately imprisoned in his.
"Excelsior, then! Go and freeze to death upon your mountain top, both of you. I have interfered enough in bringing your bodily forms together. I dare not dig inquisitive fingers into your souls."
It was arranged that her chauffeur should return with them to the coast so as to render negligible the chance of delay if any suspicion were aroused.
"But there is no earthly reason why Clifford should want to argue it out with me," said Ferlie.
* * * * * *
At the last moment she gave way to a curious attack of nerves, and again Cyprian suspected that the incident was due to some secret reminder conveyed to her by Jardine.
From the step of the limousine, into which the sleeping John had been carried, she let go Cyprian's arm and darted back up the steps.
"Aunt B.! You will go home yourself to-night, won't you? Take the Daimler!"
"Hurry, child! It is twenty minutes to eight. Yes. I am all ready to start, and you can trust me to take care of myself."
"Come, Ferlie, don't waste any more time."
She ignored even that quiet voice, looking uncertainly at Jardine who dropped his eyes with an almost imperceptible movement of his head.
"You will see my aunt comfortably off, Jardine?"
"Ferlie, don't be foolish! Since when have I needed dry-nursing? Make her get in, Cyprian. There, darling! There. Shut the door. That's right, Cyprian. Write to me, both of you. What is she shaking about? I won't let Clifford eat me in any case. Good-bye. Look after her, Cyprian. Good-bye! Good-bye!"
They were whirled out of her sight.
* * * * * *
Whereupon, the temptation of Eve descended upon Aunt B.
She had never met this husband of Ferlie's and, on reconsidering that fact, it seemed that Ferlie herself had always intervened in the past to prevent a meeting. There was really no need for her to hurry home to-night; she might even serve the fugitives best by staying to produce some plausible reason for Ferlie's sudden "journey to town."
Jardine, to her amazement, was respectfully inhospitable in his opposition to this proposed change of plan. He made it unmistakably clear that he wished to be rid of her. And the more insistently he conveyed that impression, the more obstinately did Miss Trefusis desire to see the owner of Black Towers.
To settle the matter out of hand she went to her room, unpacked a dinner dress of silver-grey velvet, and came downstairs wearing it and an assured air which discouraged argument.
Said Jardine to her in the hall where he was hovering like a distressed bat among the chain-mailed ancestors.
"It is to be expected that his lordship will dine in his own apartments, Madam. I have not put off the dinner hour to suit his late arrival."
Therefore, at 8.15 precisely, Aunt B. found herself frustrated thus far, at the end of the long table.
Half-way through the meal came the sounds of arrival: the footman's hurrying steps and a man's voice in the hall.
She strained her ears, but silence soon followed the retreating feet and then Jardine came in to ask if she would have coffee on the terrace.
"Too chilly," was her cross verdict, and he agreed that the little drawing-room and a fire would be more comfortable.
Even after she had drunk the coffee and was immersed in the newspaper, she remained aware of the old servant's flitting presence. He appeared to be finding matters to occupy him in the small drawing-room and only after she had twice looked up inquiringly over the printed page did he make reluctantly for the door.
She sat on when the paper, restlessly devoured, had slipped from her knees to the floor. Soft radiance glowed about her through orange silk shades, etherealizing the dignified feminine figure with its close-fitting crown of silvery hair. The features, in repose not unlike Ferlie's, were attractively gentle. She leant back in the dark tapestried chair and thought of the lovers, of the long trail which lay before them, of the spiritual courage supporting their rare decision. Could a man and a woman live under such conditions, loving as these two loved?
And something told her that it was just because they so loved that the improbable became possible.
If they failed that Utopian ideal in the end— She broke off her reflections with a sigh.
"Who is to judge?" she asked aloud of the flames on the open hearth. "Who is to judge These, or Any?"
A man on the terrace, rolling a cigarette with uncertain fingers, heard the quiet question and paused in his occupation. His eyes glittered oddly over the flickering match, just struck, and the face, as he lifted it starwards, was not unlike the face of the deriding faun, aged by the battering years into a very surely alive satyr.
* * * * * *
Cold, suffocating darkness in the hall, and the comforting impassive bulk of old Jardine.
Later, a square of corpse-coloured light, and the black marble steps making a row of ebony mirrors for the waning moon. Beyond them, the blurred lines of Ferlie's Daimler, heralding escape to the dainty simplicity of the lavender-scented garden and rooms sweet with the pot-pourri of clean sane memories.
Finding her voice, she turned fiercely upon the man supporting her trembling descent.
"And you knew—and remained silent, while she was facing That!"
His slow gesture was controlled but unyielding.
"For forty years, Madam, I have served the Greville-Mainwarings. As their like dies out so does my like die out which has learnt the lesson of silence."
He closed the door of the car upon her, adding with cold dignity,
"Her ladyship chose to become a Greville-Mainwaring."