Part 3

Lady Maud gave another sigh of relief. The sand-bags of civilization were a great protection after all; and if Captain Weeks had come, Eustace would go out shooting with him. That would give her a whole day to face the situation. Honestly, she thought far more of possible difficulties with him than with her husband. The shock had been terrible at the time, but perhaps, after all, it was an isolated offence. Heaps of men in society got drunk decently out of sight of their legal womenkind, and no one thought-- The recurrence of the phrase she had used the night before made her pause and hide her face in the pillow in sudden horror at herself and him. No! without going so far as that, one could still be rational. Edward was devoted to her, and if a wife by her influence made a better man of her husband, wherein lay the degradation? Last night--great heavens! what had come over her last night? She had been taken by surprise, placed in conditions which no one could possibly have foreseen, dragged by main force from every shelter. Her face burnt as she remembered, and yet how natural it had been! Natural and therefore absurd, ridiculous. To-day, however, was different, and so the little pencilled note from Eustace, which Josephine brought in with the breakfast, received no reply save a message to say she was perfectly well and hoped he would look after Captain Weeks, if Mr. Wilson was not able to go out. A bold parry, which made Eustace Gordon set his teeth.

Yes! to-day was different; a new heaven and a new earth. The very house transformed; for when she came down to lunch, the drawing-room was full of tables, screens, photographs, and ferns, while in the dining-room the butler stood ready to remove the silver covers, and so let loose the pent-up energies of two footmen who, with bent heads, seemed waiting for some one to say grace. Mr. Gordon, the report ran, had taken Captain Weeks to the Carbost beat, and would not be back till late. Her ladyship was to open any telegram which might come, as it would relate to the yacht. Mr. Wilson had gone to shoot rock-pigeon with the head keeper. The professor was exploring, and begged her ladyship not to wait lunch for him. So said the butler gravely as he filled her glass. Through the window she could see the Atlantic guiltless of a white feather, and her own courage rose with the outlook. As she strolled about the heathery knolls after lunch, a boy on a pony appeared with the expected telegram. "Started, should be with you to-morrow." So that was an end of one trouble. Then Cynthia Strong and some others were to come by the next boat. Will Lockhart was cruising about the coast and might look in on them at any time. There would be no more solitude; not even to-day, since there across the moor came Miss Macdonald, attired for calling, and beside her that good-looking young sailor. Lady Maud liked boys, especially handsome ones with palpable adoration in their blue eyes.

The professor, coming in very hot about tea-time, found the trio having it like children out in a bieldy bit by the burn, but with the butler solemnly presiding over the fire. A fire which gave James, the under footman, the hugest delight until his enjoyment was crushed out of him by his superior officer. For the butler knew his duty: afternoon tea was afternoon tea wherever her ladyship chose to take it; that is to say, a function at which a footman must preserve an impassive face. So poor James put on the sticks with funeral calm and burnt his fingers with great decorum.

"Here is a lady, professor," said Lady Maud,--"Miss Macdonald--Professor Endorwick,--who will tell you everything you can possibly want to know about the island. She is a mine of useful information; at least I have found her so."

That gracious voice, face, and manner had been a sort of rapture to young Rick Halmar for the last half hour, and when, after launching the others into conversation, she turned to him with the undefinable change in manner she could no more avoid in talking to men than the magnet can keep its influence, his heart gave quite a throb.

"I didn't introduce you," she said, smiling, "because I only know your Christian name; and I'm not sure of that."

"Rick! Rick Halmar," he replied with a blush which took him by surprise; for he was not as a rule self-conscious.

"Rick?" she echoed curiously.

"Eric. My father was a Norwegian. But it was a boshy name and the fellows on the _Britannia_ called me 'Little by Little'--after the book, you know."

She laughed. "A very inappropriate name, Mr. Halmar. You must be six feet."

He shook his head. "Five feet eleven and three-quarters. It's too big for a sailor. You get in the way of the ropes and things."

"Not too big for a man--but listen! the professor is overcome already; how delightful!"

In good sooth he was actually reduced to the position of listener, an isolated assertion of interest being all the speech allowed him as Miss Willina waxed eloquent over the crass superstitions of the islanders and her own select beliefs.

Rick's face grew brimful of smiles.

"Aunt Will is as bad as the best, herself. Why, the other day I carved out a sort of devil,--a thing they worship in the Caribbees,--and she was in quite a taking because it was left out on a _harp_,--that's a Viking's tomb, Lady Maud. She has some rigmarole about 'tribute to the dead,' their sending back things to work evil to the living. But, do you know, Lady Maud, it's awfully rum, but I couldn't find the thing when I went to look for it yesterday morning."

"You couldn't find it? Mr. Halmar, don't speak loud; don't attract their attention by looking surprised! Was it--the devil, I mean--fearfully ugly?"

"The best I ever made."

"Had it white eyes with a shot stuck in them?"

"Lady Maud! did you find it?"

"Not I, but the professor did. It's a footstep of a discredited belief, and he is going to lecture on it to the British Association. Isn't it perfectly lovely? How we shall all laugh!"

"But you will tell him, of course?"

"Tell him! Why should I? These things are one of my chief joys in life."

Rick Halmar winced. "But don't you see, Lady Maud, it's my fault more or less? I oughtn't to go carving devils and leaving them about. It isn't fair."

She raised her eyebrows. "When you are older, Mr. Halmar, you won't be so eager to accept responsibility. By the way, does yours extend to another devil of the same sort which was found on Grâda Sands?"

He let his head drop into his hands in comic despair. "How one's sins _do_ find one out! It must be the one Aunt Will flung into the Minch. Everything comes round sooner or later to the sands. Has the professor got it too?"

"No, Mr. Halmar. _I_ have it."

"You! Oh, Lady Maud--I am sorry."

"You well may be. I have put it into my own room because the professor declared it was genuine--a real savage fate. No--that isn't true, so don't distress yourself. I took a fancy to it. I have a habit of taking fancies to _things_ and to _people_; so there it shall remain."

Rick's face lit up. "Let me make you a better one," he began.

"I said, Mr. Halmar, that I took a fancy to _it_; and now, don't you think you should make your confession like a good boy?"

He made it very prettily, but with a frank enjoyment of the mistake, which was infectious. So much so, that the chief sufferer, stimulated into unusual playfulness by Miss Willina's wit, actually went into the house for his discredited belief and brought it out for her to burn.

So, with much laughter, they stood round the fire, causing poor James almost to burst under his efforts after dignity, till suddenly, with something between a chuckle and a cough, the butler himself gave way into the remark that "I 'adn't made a Guy Forks--_kck-kh-kh_--since 'e was a boy,--_kh-kh-kh_,--but if 'er ladyship pleased, Jeames could run round to the gun-room for some powder and 'e'd 'ave some squibs ready in no time."

So Numbo Jumbo was burnt with all the honours, and the butler, going back for his own tea to the housekeeper's room, hummed, "Remember, remember, the fifth of November," until the cook, with a snort, asked wherever to goodness he had picked up such a vulgar ditty.

"Now I have no doubt all you learned people think me very foolish," said Miss Willina, drawing on her gloves with the air of one who has completed a good work; "but I really am immensely relieved in my mind. I had a presentiment about that devil of Rick's; besides, these old superstitions invariably have their origin in some fundamental fact or law of Nature. Don't you think so, professor?"

"Undoubtedly, my dear madam; the Folklore Society--"

But Miss Willina had a profound contempt for all societies and proclaimed it cheerfully. "Therefore, the only remaining thing to be done," she continued, shaking her head at Rick, "is to make restitution for that naughty boy's mischief. So, if you will walk over to Eval some day, Mr. Endorwick, I will give you that bone ring with the Runic inscription about which I was telling you."

"My dear lady," cried the professor with greed in his eyes, "I really could not dream--"

"I don't want to give it to _you_, of course," she went on frankly; "but my brother says it should be in a museum; so you can put 'Given by Miss Macdonald through Professor Endorwick' on the ticket. And, by the bye, it was found on Grâda and Malcolm, Aig says."

Meanwhile Lady Maud had turned to Rick with a quizzical smile. "Do you accept the responsibility of my fate, Mr. Halmar? or shall I have a private _auto-da-fe_ in my room?"

The boy's face positively shone with pleasure as he took her hand to say goodbye.

"I couldn't do anything that would bring you harm, I think--you are too--too beautiful." The absolute simplicity of the statement rendered it inoffensive, and Lady Maud laughed.

"Take your nephew away, Miss Macdonald; he is paying me compliments."

"I don't wonder at it," retorted the little lady, nodding her head, "and compliments are pleasant things; at least, I used to find them so."

"Why employ the past tense, dear lady?" said the professor with a bow, as he shook hands, whereat Miss Willina declared that the only safety lay in flight; and Lady Maud, as she went back to the house, told herself once more that to-day was very different from yesterday. This background of _persiflage_, with just a serious touch here and there to help out the chiaro-oscuro, suited figures in modern dress. Tailor-made figures guiltless of a wrinkle and oblivious of vitality's claim for an uncrushed organ or two.

"If her ladyship please," said Josephine, when the dressing bell brought her to her mistress' room, "Mr. 'Ooper, he desire a few word of milady."

"Hooper! didn't they say he had gone with Mr. Wilson?"

"Monsieur 'ave just return; Mr. Gordon also wid Capitaine Veek and--_Mon Dieu! quel gibier!_ Sall I bid him come?"

Lady Maud, at the writing-table, rested her head on her hand, feeling a sudden need of courage. They had all come back, and some things must be faced before life could run smoothly once more. Eustace must be made to understand that there was to be no drifting, and her husband must consent to let her hand be on the tiller ropes.

"Well, Hooper?"

Rather a diffident-looking man; nervous too in his manner. "I am sorry to have to trouble your ladyship, but I think Dr. Haddon would wish it, under the circumstances. It is about master, your ladyship."

Her heart gave a great throb. "Your master, Hooper? Well?"

The diffident man, holding on to the doorknob as for support, cleared his throat. "It is a little difficult, my lady, and Mr. Gordon, when he spoke to me, was for saying nothing; but I have been considering the matter and I think Dr. Haddon--"

"Who is Dr. Haddon?"

"I was not quite sure if your ladyship knew--anything. But master was under Dr. Haddon for a time. It--it is for the liquor habit, my lady, and Dr. Haddon is most successful. He was most successful with master. Four years I have been with him since we came back from America, and never till last night--" he coughed slightly and paused. Lady Maud sate staring at him without a word.

"I am very sorry, my lady. The other servants will tell you how distressed I was to be absent from my duty. It arose from my not understanding the porter's accent, my lady; but it will not occur again. I mean, my lady, that--ahem--nothing of the sort will occur again. So there is no need for--for distress or anxiety."

"You mean that as long as--as you are with Mr. Wilson--" so far she managed in a cold hard voice; then came silence.

"Just so, my lady--it is a question of influence. I undertake the entire responsibility. There is really no cause for alarm."

"That--that will do, Hooper; you can go." Her one thought was to get rid of this man, this servant, who seemed to have reached out his common hand and touched her very soul. He paused, still with his hand on the door.

"I beg pardon, my lady, but there is one thing. Dr. Haddon's system is based on influence. It does not allow any appeal to--ahem--to the moral sense. Therefore, if your ladyship could kindly treat the mistake of yesterday with silence, it would be better--for the system. Dr. Haddon ignores failure on principle, it--it is part of the system; and any interference may be dangerous. Therefore, if your ladyship--"

"I quite understand. You can go."

When she was left alone, she sate staring on at the door he had closed behind him. Behind whom? why the man who--oh! it was an impossible, an incredible, position! She had married her husband without caring for him, but she had married him also because she intended that he _should_ care for her. And now! What was he but a puppet, dependent on this man? She had not married Edward Wilson, but Wilson-cum-Haddon, -cum-Hooper. And Eustace knew it! Her husband, the possible father of her children! She had known all along that he was a weak man, but that the very possibility of his living decently lay in the will of another was hopeless, horrible degradation. She had often in society talked lightly of the part hypnotism was to play in the future regeneration of the world; but now that even a suspicion of it touched her inner life, it left her in wild revolt. When all was said and done, that man to whom they paid so many pounds a year was master of her fate. It should never be! Better, far better, that her husband should be drunk; and yet what right had she to interfere?

"It will be too late to make milady _charmante_," suggested Josephine, coming in, reproachfully.

She stood up hastily with clenched hands. Eustace should not see her degradation--she would show him--

"There is plenty of time," she said coldly. "Put on my diamonds, Josephine--that dress is dull. They can wait if I am not ready."

She was worth waiting for, and Mr. Wilson's weak face brightened as she went up to him with easy grace. "Did you have a good day, Edward? I saw Hooper for a moment, but I forgot to ask him about the sport."

She failed in her object for all her bravado. The eyes she sought to blind saw too clearly.

"So Louisa comes to-morrow," she said lightly, as, after keeping all the men, her husband included, at her feet during the evening, she rose to say good-night and let her hand linger purposely in her cousin's, so that he should see she did not care, that she was not afraid.

"No!" he replied coldly; "I've had another wire. She came as far as Portree, and, hearing that the gathering is next week, decided to stay and show off her new dresses. She got about a ton of them in Paris if you remember, and women, even the best of them, love to show off."

His tone roused her to reckless resentment by its assumption of knowledge and condemnation.

"He does not look very sorry for his wife's decision, does he, professor?" she asked with a laugh.

"My dear lady, how could he be sorry for anything, in his present position?"

"Or I in mine?" she retorted, giving a little mock curtsey over the hand she still held.

Eustace Gordon bit his lip, but said nothing.

IV

"You look worried," said Will Lockhart; "the place doesn't suit you. I told you it wouldn't when we hid behind Charity. Is there anything really the matter?" his voice took a softer tone, "anything I could help you to set straight?"

They were sitting by the fire in Lady Maud's little sitting-room, whither they had retired from the bustle inseparable from tea in the drawing-room when bad weather keeps even the sportsmen indoors. He said the truth; she looked worn and fagged, and her pose as she leant back in her easy-chair was one of listless fatigue.

"Nonsense! There is nothing the matter; nothing more than the usual worries of a hostess in tiresome weather. To begin with, it has prevented your coming here till you can only spare us a miserable day on your way to rejoin the yacht. Then Louisa, after wasting a fine week over the Portree gathering, was detained there ten days by storm. Finally, just as she started for the Highlands one at Inverness _pour passer le temps_, it cleared up. Since then it has been what is called unsettled; most of all for poor Eustace, who never knows for two days together what is going to happen. Then Lady Liddell caught cold at a picnic, and Cynthia Strong, whom I invited for the professor,--a Girtonite you know, does mathematics and all that,--seems uncertain whether she doesn't prefer Arthur Weeks, a man who hasn't a penny and can't do a sum beyond the compound addition of his bills."

"A catalogue of evils, certainly."

"That isn't all. The professor, who would make her an excellent husband, being in that set and with a charming house too at Oxford, does nothing but go over to Eval House to see Miss Macdonald--you knew her once, I think--well, he looks on her as an encyclopædia of discredited beliefs, a unique copy of an ancient work on folk-lore which the lucky finder is bound to purchase. Besides, she has a valuable collection--"

"When I knew her," broke in Will Lockhart hotly, "she did not need any adventitious attractions; she was simply the loveliest--"

Lady Maud's languid hands met in faint applause.

"I thought that would draw you. So she was the _mauvais quart d'heure_. I am not really laughing, so don't be angry; only from the way she spoke of you--"

"Did she speak of me?"

"How can you ask? And women never speak of the men who have loved them in the same tone of voice they use for the dense, indiscriminating multitude who didn't."

"Then Miss Macdonald's voice must change pretty often."

"Ah! was that it? you were jealous."

"Nothing so romantic. We quarrelled over some bread and butter--we were very young. Then circumstances favoured absence, so forgetfulness came, or at least indifference, absolute indifference." He paused for a moment. "And so the professor is there constantly, is he?"

Lady Maud smiled behind the fan with which she screened her face from the fire.

"He is there now, I expect. He went dune-hunting in the south this morning, and was to stop there for the night. Thought he might be late; besides, he must consult the encyclopædia."

Will Lockhart frowned. "This has made us drift from the point. Your husband, does he like the place?"

"Apparently. And the servants are satisfied too, which is a great gain. They get all their work done for them by the natives. It is an immense relief to shift one's responsibilities to other folks' shoulders, isn't it?"

He looked at her sharply. "There _is_ something the matter. Is it only other people's love-affairs? And what, for instance, of that handsome boy downstairs who does Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak for your Majesty's feet all day long?"

Lady Maud leant forward eagerly, her whole face alight. "You mean Rick. Do you remember once, when you were very angry with me, saying I was enough to ruin any man in a week? It wasn't true, Big Bear. I couldn't spoil Rick Halmar."

"Have you tried and failed?" he asked cynically.

She shook her head and a soft half-smiling, half-tearful look came to her pretty eyes.

"You don't know him, and I can't explain. Yet I tell you that I couldn't spoil one of that dear lad's happy days unless--" she broke off suddenly, raising her eyes to the image on the mantelshelf. "He carved that devil up there," she went on with the smile gaining on the tears. "The professor said it was a savage conception of fate, but it isn't. It is Rick Halmar's conception of my fate, and that--well, that hasn't much of the devil in it. Come! it is time I was returning to my duties as hostess."

"Time for me to be going also," he replied, looking at his watch. "I have seven miles before me."

"Not if you make use of the Eval ferryboat." She looked at him mischievously.

"I do not intend to make use of it, even to oblige you, Lady Maud. I might meet the professor, and then there would be a petty-assault case."

"Of course! How tiresome you are! I counted on your being here a week at least, and people can unmake ever so many quarrels in seven days."

"Or make them. But the elements are too strong for you, Lady Maud. I told you so."

Rick Halmar came up as, still smiling over the joke, they entered the drawing-room.

"I'm so glad. I was afraid you might not come before I left, and I must go soon."

"Then you can pilot Mr. Lockhart a little way. He has to walk over to Carbost Bay."

"A good bit of the way, you mean," replied Rick, turning his bright face towards Will Lockhart's. "Our ferry is far the shortest; in fact, it's the only road, for the upper-end bridge gave way in the flood last night and the stream isn't fordable yet!"

Lady Maud's eyebrows went up archly.

"What a nuisance the elements are at times; aren't they, Mr. Lockhart?"

"I should think so," assented Rick cheerfully. "Why, we have been trying to get to Eilean-a-fa-ash these three weeks--haven't we, Lady Maud?--without catching a fine day and a suitable tide on the hop together. The sea ford might have done last spring, but it was too rough for the ladies to return by boat, or else too wet. But the first fine day. That is it, isn't it?"

"Yes, Mr. Halmar!" cried Cynthia Strong from the window seat where Captain Weeks was blissfully useful over a skein of wool. "And please order the fine day soon, for I have to go by the next _Clansman_."

"Then I shall go too," murmured the captain.

"I suppose the birds will be getting rather wild by that time," remarked the young lady tartly. Theoretically, she felt bound to despise her admirer and his occupations; practically, his murmurs made her heart beat.

"Wild! Why, they lie like stones on this coast. Something to do with the Gulf Stream, I'm told, though I know nothing myself about these scientific things. But you can kick 'em up and shoot 'em like chickens on the last day of the season."

"And when is that?"

Captain Weeks laughed,--the true man's laugh of surprised tolerance. "I thought you knew everything, Miss Strong; but I don't suppose they think it worth while to teach girls. It's the 10th of December for grouse, but partridges go on till the beginning of February, and there's no real close time for--" His voice fell to the confidential tone. Eustace Gordon had meanwhile joined the trio at the door.

"Yes! let it be soon, please; for I may be going also. I've just heard, Maud, from Louisa, and the last idea is that I am to take the yacht, which she is sending here, round to Cowes, and that we are to start at once for less uncertain climes. The Mediterranean, most likely."

"That is very--unexpected. But all my friends are flying south, like the swallows."

"And I have to go furthest of all," said Rick ruefully. "I'm booked for the Pacific Station, as sure as fate."

"Then you must send me home a real Numbo Jumbo if you come across one," she replied, smiling up into his eager boyish face with a confidence absolutely free from all alloy.

"Won't I! and some of those jolly shells too; all the pretty things I can pick up."

"Thank you, Rick; I like pretty things."