CHAPTER VIII
[THE LADY WANDERS]
That was the beginning of a very bad time for Mrs Plummer.
She was sitting peacefully reading--she was not one of those ladies who indulge in "fancy work," and was always ready to confess that never, under any circumstances, if she could help it, would she have a needle in her hand--when Miss Arnott came rushing into the room in a condition which would have been mildly described as dishevelled. She was a young lady who was a little given to vigorous entrances and exits, and was not generally, as regards her appearance, a disciple of what has been spoken of as "the bandbox brigade." But on that occasion she moved Mrs Plummer, who was not easily moved in that direction, to an exhibition of surprise.
"My dear child! what have you been doing to yourself, and where have you been?"
"I've been to the woods. Mrs Plummer, I've come to tell you that we're going abroad."
"Going abroad? Isn't that rather a sudden resolution? I thought you had arranged--"
"Never mind what I've arranged. We're going abroad to-morrow, if we can't get away to-night."
"To-morrow? To-night? My child, are you in earnest?"
"Very much so. That is, I don't wish to put any constraint on you. You, of course, are at liberty to go or stay, exactly as you please. I merely wish to say that I am going abroad, whether you come with me or whether you don't; and that I intend to start either to-night or to-morrow morning."
They left the next morning. The packing was done that night. At an early hour they went up to town; at eleven o'clock they started for the Continent. That evening they dined in Paris. Mrs Plummer would have liked to remonstrate--and did remonstrate so far as she dared; but it needed less sagacity than she possessed to enable her to see that, in Miss Arnott's present mood, the limits of daring might easily be passed. When she ventured to suggest that before their departure Mr Stacey should be consulted, the young lady favoured her with a little plain speaking.
"Why should I consult Mr Stacey? He is only my servant."
"Your servant? My dear!"
"He renders me certain services, for which I pay him. Doesn't that mean that, in a certain sense, he's my servant? I have authority over him, but he has none over me--not one iota. He was my trustee; but, as I understand it, his trusteeship ceased when I entered into actual possession of my uncle's property. He does as I tell him, that's all. I shouldn't dream of consulting him as to my personal movements--nor anyone. As, in the future, my movements may appear to you to be erratic, please, Mrs Plummer, let us understand each other now. You are my companion--good! I have no objection. When we first met, you told me that my liberty would be more complete with you than without you. I assure you, on my part, that I do not intend to allow you to interfere with my perfect freedom of action in the least degree. I mean to go where I please, when I please, how I please, and I want no criticism. You can do exactly as you choose; I shall do as I choose. I don't intend to allow you, in any way whatever, to be a clog upon my movements. The sooner we understand each other perfectly on that point the better it will be for both sides. Don't you think so?"
Mrs Plummer had to think so.
"I'm sure that if you told me you meant to start in ten minutes for the North Pole, you'd find me willing; that is, if you'd be willing to take me with you."
"Oh, I'd be willing to take you, so long as you don't even hint at a disinclination to be taken."
They stayed in Paris for two days. Then they wandered hither and thither in Switzerland. Everywhere, it seemed, there were too many people.
"I want to be alone," declared Miss Arnott. "Where there isn't a soul to speak to except you and Evans,"-- Evans was her maid--"you two don't count. But I can't get away from the crowds; they're even on the tops of the mountains. I hate them."
Mrs Plummer sighed; being careful, however, to conceal the sigh from Miss Arnott. It seemed to her that the young lady had an incomprehensible objection to everything that appealed to anyone else. She avoided hotels where the cooking was decent, because other people patronised them. She eschewed places where there was something to be obtained in the way of amusement, because other reasonable creatures showed a desire to be amused. She shunned beauty spots, merely because she was not the only person in the world who liked to look upon the beauties of nature. Having hit upon an apparently inaccessible retreat, from the ordinary tourist point of view, in the upper Engadine, where, according to Mrs Plummer, the hotel was horrible, and there was nothing to do, and nowhere to go, there not being a level hundred yards within miles, the roads being mere tracks on the mountain sides, she did show some disposition to rest awhile. Indeed, she showed an inclination to stay much longer than either Mrs Plummer or Evans desired. Those two were far from happy.
"What a young lady in her position can see in a place like this beats me altogether. The food isn't fit for a Christian, and look at the room we have to eat it in; it isn't even decently furnished. There's not a soul to speak to, and nothing to do except climb up and down the side of a wall. She'll be brought in one day--if they ever find her--nothing but a bag of bones; you see if she isn't!"
In that strain Evans frequently eased her mind, or tried to.
To this remote hamlet, however, in course of time, other people began to come. They not only filled the hotel, which was easy, since Miss Arnott already had most of it, and would have had all, if the landlord, who was a character, had not insisted on keeping certain rooms for other guests; but they also overflowed into the neighbouring houses. These newcomers filled Miss Arnott with dark suspicions. When indulging in her solitary expeditions one young man in particular, named Blenkinsop, developed an extraordinary knack of turning up when she least expected him.
"I believe I'm indebted to you for these people coming here."
This charge she levelled at Mrs Plummer, who was amazed.
"To me! Why, they're all complete strangers to me; I never saw one of them before, and haven't the faintest notion where they come from or who they are.
"All the same, I believe I am; to you or to Evans; probably to both."
"My dear, what do you mean? The things you say!"
"It's the things you say, that's what I mean. You and Evans have been talking to the people here; you have been telling them who I am, and a great many things you have no right to tell them. They've been telling people down in the valley, and the thing has spread; how the rich Arnott girl, who has so much money she herself doesn't know how much, is stopping up here all alone. I know. These creatures have come up in consequence. That man Blenkinsop as good as told me this afternoon that he only came because he heard that I was here."
"My dear, what can you expect? You can't hide your light under a bushel. You would have much more real solitude in a crowd than in a place like this."
"Should I? We shall see. If this sort of thing occurs again I shall send you and Evans home. I shall drop my own name, and take a pseudonym; and I shall go into lodgings, and live on fifty francs a week--then we'll see if I sha'n't be left alone."
When Mrs Plummer retailed these remarks to Evans, the lady's maid--who had already been the recipient of a few observations on her own account--expressed herself with considerable frankness on the subject of her mistress.
"I believe she's mad--I do really. I don't mean that she's bad enough for a lunatic asylum or anything like that; but that she has a screw loose, and that there's something wrong with her, I'm pretty nearly sure. Look at the fits of depression she has--with her quite young and everything to make her all the other way. Look how she broods. She might be like the party in the play who'd murdered sleep, the way she keeps awake of nights. I know she reads till goodness knows what time; and often and often I don't believe she has a wink of sleep all night It isn't natural--I know I shouldn't like it if it was me. She might have done some dreadful crime, and be haunted by it, the way that she goes on-- she might really."
It was, perhaps, owing to the fact that the unfortunate lady practically had no human society except the lady's maid's that Mrs Plummer did not rebuke her more sharply for indulging in such free and easy comments on the lady to whom they were both indebted. She did observe that Evans ought not to say such things; but, judging from certain passages in a letter which, later on, she sent to Mrs Stacey, it is possible that the woman's words had made a greater impression than she had cared to admit.
They passed from the Engadine to Salmezzo, a little village which nestles among the hills which overlook Lake Como. It was from there that the letter in question was written. After a page or two about nothing in particular it went on like this:--
"I don't want to make mountains out of molehills, and I don't wish you to misunderstand me; but I am beginning to wonder if there is not something abnormal about the young lady whom I am supposed to chaperon. In so rich, so young, and so beautiful a girl--and I think she grows more beautiful daily--this horror of one's fellow-creatures--carried to the extent she carries it--is in itself abnormal. But, lately, there has been something more. She is physically, or mentally, unwell; which of the two I can't decide. I am not in the least bit morbid; but, really, if you had been watching her--and, circumstanced as I am, you can't help watching her--you would begin to think she must be haunted. It's getting on my nerves. Usually, I should describe her as one of the most self-possessed persons I had ever met; but, during the last week or two, she has taken to starting--literally--at shadows.
"The other day, at the end of the little avenue of trees which runs in front of my bedroom, right before my eyes, she stopped and leaned against one of the trees, as if for support. I wondered what she meant by it--the attitude was such an odd one. Presently a man came along the road, and strode past the gate. The nearer he came the more she slunk behind the tree. When he had passed she crouched down behind the tree, and began to cry. How she did cry! While I was hesitating whether I ought to go to her or not, apparently becoming conscious that she might be overlooked, she suddenly got up and--still crying--rushed off among the trees.
"Now who did she think that man was she heard coming along the road? Why did she cry like that when she found it wasn't he? Were they tears of relief or disappointment? It seemed very odd.
"Again, one afternoon she went for a drive with me; it is not often that she will go anywhere with me, especially for a drive, but that afternoon the suggestion actually came from her. After we had gone some distance we alighted from the vehicle to walk to a point from which a famous view can be obtained. All at once, stopping, she caught me by the arm.
"'Who's that speaking?' she asked. Up to then I had not been conscious that anyone was speaking. But, as we stood listening, I gradually became conscious, in the intense silence, of a distant murmur of voices which was just, and only just, audible. Her hearing must be very acute. 'It is an English voice which is speaking,' she said. She dragged me off the path among the shadow of the trees. She really did drag; but I was so taken aback by the extraordinary look which came upon her face, and by the strangeness of her tone, that I was incapable of offering the least resistance. On a sudden she had become an altogether different person; a dreadful one, it seemed to me. Although I was conscious of the absurdity of our crouching there among the trees, I could not say so--simply because I was afraid of her. At last she said, as if to herself, 'It's not his voice.' Then she gave a gasp, or a groan, or sigh-- I don't know what it was. I could feel her shuddering; it affected me most unpleasantly. Presently two perfectly inoffensive young Englishmen, who were staying at our hotel, came strolling by. Fortunately they did not look round. If they had seen us hiding there among the trees I don't know what they would have thought.
"I have only given you two instances. But recently, she is always doing ridiculous things like that, which, although they are ridiculous, are disconcerting. She certainly is unwell mentally, or physically, or both; but not only so. I seriously do believe she's haunted. Not by anything supernatural, but by something, perhaps, quite ordinary. There may be some episode in her life which we know nothing of, and which it might be much better for her if we did, and that haunts her. I should not like to venture to hint at what may be its exact nature; because I have no idea; but I would not mind hazarding a guess that it has something to do with a man."
Mrs Plummer's sagacity was not at fault; it had something to do with a man--her husband. She had hoped that constant wandering might help her to banish him from her mind--him and another man. The contrary proved to be the case. The farther she went the more present he seemed to be--they both seemed to be.
And, lately, the thing had become worse. She had begun to count the hours which still remained before the prison gates should be reopened. So swiftly the time grew shorter. When they were reopened, what would happen then? Now she was haunted; what Mrs Plummer had written was true. Day and night she feared to see his face; she trembled lest every unknown footstep might be his. A strange voice made her heart stand still.
The absurdity of the thing did not occur to her? she was so wholly obsessed by its horror. Again Mrs Plummer was right, she was unwell both mentally and physically. The burden which was weighing on her, body and soul, was rapidly becoming heavier than she could bear. She magnified it till it filled her whole horizon. Look where she would it was there, the monster who--it seemed to her, at any moment--might spring out at her from behind the prison gates. The clearness of her mental vision was becoming obscured, the things she saw were distorted out of their true proportions.
As a matter of fact, the hour of Robert Champion's release was drawing near. The twelve months were coming to an end. The probability was that they had seemed much longer to him than to her. To her it seemed that the hour of his release would sound the knell of the end of all things. She awaited it as a condemned wretch might await the summons to the gallows. As, with the approaching hour, the tension grew tighter, the balance of her mind became disturbed. Temporarily, she was certainly not quite sane.
One afternoon she crowned her display of eccentricity by rushing off home almost at a moment's notice. On the previous day--a Tuesday--she had arranged with the landlord to continue in his hotel for a further indefinite period. On the Wednesday, after lunch, she came to Mrs Plummer and announced that they were going home at once. Although Mrs Plummer was taken wholly by surprise, the suggestion being a complete reversal of all the plans they had made, Miss Arnott's manner was so singular, and the proposition was in itself so welcome, that the elder lady fell in with the notion there and then, without even a show of remonstrance. The truth is that she had something more than a suspicion that Miss Arnott would be only too glad to avail herself of any excuse which might offer, and return to England alone, leaving her--Mrs Plummer-- alone with Evans. Why the young lady should wish to do such a thing she had no idea, but that she did wish to do it she felt uncomfortably convinced. The companion managing to impress the lady's maid with her aspect of the position, the trunks were packed in less than no time, so that the entire cortège was driven over to catch the afternoon train, leaving the smiling landlord with a thumping cheque, to compensate him for the rapidity with which the eccentric young Englishwoman thought proper to break the engagements into which she had solemnly entered.
That was on the Wednesday. On the Saturday--by dint of losing no time upon the way--they arrived at Exham Park. On the Sunday Robert Champion's term of imprisonment was to come to an end; on that day he would have been twelve months in jail. What a rigid account she had kept of it all, like the schoolboy who keeps count of the days which bar him from his holidays. But with what a different feeling in her heart! She had seen that Sunday coming at her from afar off--nearer and nearer. What would happen when it came, and he was free to get at her again, she did not know. What she did know was that she meant to have an hour or two at Exham Park before the Sunday dawned, and the monster was set free again. She had come at headlong speed from the Lake of Como to have it.