Part 16

His nature was all unused to introspection. By character and breeding he was given to hold in scorn all troubles that were not concrete, all conflicts conducted in those nebulous regions known as the heart or the soul. His life had been mapped out on positive lines, where right and wrong were as white and black. But, since his first meeting with Lady Gerardine, his simple ethics no longer sufficed. Not only did others discover to him desires, motives, heights and depths undreamed of in his philosophy, but he had become aware of some such forces in his own being. Like a man who first suspects within himself the germs of mortal illness, he had tried to prove their non-existence by denial. But the pain-life is too strong for human will, and the time comes when the only fight the will can make against it is that of silent endurance.

As Bethune sat by his hostess to-night, he was feeling, inarticulately, according to his nature, but acutely, not only the pain of her own situation as he dimly guessed it, but the actual physical pain of her suffering, her sick recoil from meat and bread, almost the spasm in her beautiful throat that would not let her swallow one drop of the water her fevered lips yearned for.

He spoke at last. Her dumb anguish was more than he could bear.

She inclined her head towards him. Vague at first, he saw understanding of his speech, consciousness of his presence gather into her glance; and then, something else--something, the name of which he could not formulate, even in his own mind, but which turned him cold. Suddenly she spoke, in so low a voice that the words, like some distilled poison, seemed, drop by drop, to fall straight from her lips into his heart only:

"You sit at his table, you drink his wine--you--you who took the sacrifice of his life for your own--you, who should have died, that dawn, that he might live!"

What things are these, our conventions of civilisation! There sat Bethune, in his high white collar, his stiff shirt-front, his trim black coat, listening to Lady Gerardine's mad words, one hand still on his fork, with that air of courteous attention which a man should pay to his hostess' conversation, be it on the subject of the weather or the last political conundrum.

Even had M. Châtelard adjusted his spectacles for a piercing look at the hero of his drama at that particular moment, he would have read nothing on the lean saturnine countenance. Yet had it not been for the conventions of society, how would not Raymond Bethune have answered Rosamond Gerardine? With what madness leaping to hers; with what passion, down on his knees! ... "Scorn me, for I deserve your scorn. I cast myself and my worthless life before you. Crush me into the dust if you will, only let me feel as I die the print of your foot upon me. Oh, you--most beautiful!"

"I think," said M. Châtelard, rising abruptly, "that Lady Gerardine is ill."

She was leaning back, deathly white, save for two hectic spots on each cheekbone which heightened the ghastliness of her look.

Poor Sir Arthur! It was too bad! Just as he was beginning to feel so comfortable, in spite of the pokey little place, so connubially satisfied.

"Tut, tut!" he cried, as he fussily made his way round the table. "I had hoped we had left all this in India."

Baby warded off his approach with a pointed elbow.

"Keep away, for goodness' sake, Runkle," she cried sharply. "She's faint; she wants air, that's all. Come with me, darling."

But, with unexpected strength, Lady Gerardine rose abruptly from her chair and pushed the faithful child on one side.

"I am not faint," she said. "I am not faint; I am sick. Oh ... to see you all eat and drink!" She swept the circle with her eyes; her last glance resting upon Bethune. Then, with a beating heart, he knew what it was, this new nameless thing he had never seen before in her soft eyes--it was hatred.

Her light draperies, weighted with their embroideries, swung against the chairs and the panelling of the narrow room as she hurried out from among them, head erect--scorn, abhorrence, in the very wind of her swift passage.

With a sudden dilation of the eye, Muhammed Saif-u-din watched her come. He checked a forward movement towards her, and drew himself up sharply. But as she passed him he bent his supple frame and bowed deep--deep. Suddenly aware of him, she started fiercely from the proximity.

"Out of my sight," she exclaimed, with a hoarse, deep cry, "son of treachery; his blood is still upon your hands!"

The tread of her foot, curiously heavy, resounded, measured, all up the oaken stairs.

Muhammed shot one eager glance after the retreating figure, then turned abruptly and plunged into the side passage.

In the dining-room a dead little silence had fallen. Even Aspasia dared not follow her aunt. Consternation sat upon every countenance; the eye of each guest was instinctively dropped, as if dreading to betray a thought. Dr. Châtelard drew his brow together with professional gravity.

"Insane--the poor, beautiful lady?" he asked himself. "Here is a solution, _par exemple_, that even I could not have foretold!"

"I'm afraid Lady Gerardine has found our surprise party a little overwhelming," cried Lady Aspasia at last, with her harsh laugh.

Young Aspasia began to sidle towards the door. Sir Arthur, rousing himself from his painful astonishment, arrested her in the act.

"No, my dear Aspasia," said he, not without dignity; "you remain here and entertain our guests. I will see to your aunt. You are right, Lady Aspasia, it was inconsiderate of me to take my wife by surprise in this way. The poor girl is quite overwrought. Never fear, my dear," he went on, again addressing his niece, in answer to her last feeble objection, "I shall find my way, the house is not so large. Une neurasthénie, mon cher Châtelard, compliquée d'hyperésthésie," he added, with his seraphic smile. "I do not know if your experience has brought any such cases under your notice, but, of course, you know they require careful handling."

Sir Arthur might have been a fool, and a pompous one, but long traditions leave their stamp, even on unworthy material. You may be a bad specimen of porcelain, but porcelain will remain refined clay. Grand seigneur in breeding, if in nothing more, he carried off the situation with due regard to his guests and due regard to English reserve, as well as a better man. Nevertheless, no situation could be imagined more galling, perhaps, to his particular temperament. His hand on the door knob, he made them a courtly little bow, and left the room.

"Overwrought!" commented Lady Aspasia, dilating her nostrils, with an expression that made her long-featured face look more equine than ever. "Some people would call it 'high strikes'; and, if you ask me, I think the 'high strikes' in this case are sheer temper."

Baby sat down, looking sick and faint herself.

"The fat's in the fire, now," said she, in a desperate whisper to Bethune.

The man made no response, but taking a nut from the dish before him, seemed exclusively interested in the task of cracking it between his fingers.

"Neurasthenia is, I fear, sadly on the increase," said M. Châtelard, in a non-committal manner to Lady Aspasia.

The latter laughed again.

"Neurasnonsense and hyperfiddlesticks! Poor Arty--with his careful handling! Careful handling. I should carefully handle the water-jug."

She flung an irate and contemptuous look at Bethune, who was absorbed in his nut-cracking. What sordid hole-and-corner business had this two-penny-halfpenny Indian officer been concocting with the Lieutenant-Governor's wife to account for these tantrums?

"So ill-bred," said the lady of birth to herself. "When people make these slips, at least they should have the decency not to parade them!"

*CHAPTER XVIII*

Sir Arthur had, as he foretold, little difficulty in finding his wife's room; indeed, her door had been left open, and she stood directly in his line of vision as he came upstairs. A lighted candle aloft in her hand, she seemed to be examining a picture that hung on the panel immediately above her dressing-table.

He came in quickly, with his short consequential step, and closed the door behind him. At the sound of the clicking lock she wheeled round, still holding the candle above her head. The light played upon the outstanding aureole of her hair, caught on one side the scarlet oval of her cheek, the gleam of her teeth between lips, open as upon amazement. Her rapid breathing shook her as she stood; and the darkling brilliancy of her jet-flecked robe ran all about, and up and down the long lines of her limbs, as if she had been clothed in black fires.

"You said you were sick," he exclaimed tartly, "and I find you looking at a picture."

She made no reply, but stood, still holding up her light, shimmering and quivering, a thing of such extraordinary vividness and beauty, out of the half-darkness of the room, that in admiration he felt his righteous wrath once more slip from him.

"Really, my dear Rosamond," he went on, in mollified tones, "you should try and have a little more self-control. I cannot imagine what Lady Aspasia must think of you. I declare any one might have thought--I don't know what they might not have thought," concluded Sir Arthur, somewhat lamely.

Rosamond put down the candlestick on the table beside her, then stood clasping her hands tightly together, her head bent in the attitude of a chidden child. She was making a strong effort after her vanishing sanity. It was, perhaps, the old instinctive dread of violent emotion, or the realisation that here was the crisis at last, hitherto so deliberately thrust from her thoughts, that braced her to meet the moment. It may have been, after all, the fact that it was Sir Arthur the taskmaster, not Sir Arthur the fond husband, that stood before her. However it might be, something of the sweet reasonableness that had made her so acceptable a consort to the Lieutenant-Governor all these years did, in truth, seem to come back to her. She answered, very gently:

"Indeed, I owe you all an apology. You will explain it to the others, will you not? I am really ill."

Ill; tut, tut! What was she feeling? Was she sick; had she a pain; had she a cough? He lit another candle to look at her. Had she taken her temperature. Where was the thermometer?

With an unutterable failing of the heart, the atmosphere of her whole life as Lady Gerardine seemed suddenly to close round her once more; the intolerable solicitude, the tyrannic fondness, the perpetual, ineluctable watchfulness, how had she endured it? But she must be calm. What was it Baby had said? "Anything would be better than a scandal." These holy walls, this consecrate house--oh, no, they should never echo the wranglings of her most unholy union!

Sir Arthur was turning over the trinkets on her dressing-table. Where was the thermometer?

She did not know.

Not know where the thermometer was!

"I don't think I've got one," said Lady Gerardine, faintly. "But it's not fever; it's not that! Indeed, I only want rest----"

He turned, in real indignation and surprise.

"Not got one?"

"Perhaps if you were to ask Aspasia----" The suggestion was coupled with a wild look at the door.

Sir Arthur laughed, not very pleasantly. One would almost have thought she wanted to get rid of him. Women were certainly incomprehensible creatures.

"You have not mislaid your pulse, I take it."

She retreated from his touch till she could retreat no further; then, brought up by the wall, slid both her hands behind her.

"I'm not ill in that way. You know I always did hate being fussed about. Aspasia told you I had a headache. It is true, I have a headache. I only want to be alone; I only want to sleep."

Sir Arthur stood surveying her. Poor gentleman; his mind was generally in a compact and neatly labelled condition, quite ready with an adequate theory for each event of life. But to-night it was as if some one had been making hay in the tidy compartments. His ideas were positively jumbled. Scarcely did he seem to have a proper hold of one when the next would send him off at a tangent. He had come upstairs to make his wife feel how grievously she had offended his idea of decorum, and had immediately lost himself in admiration of her appearance. And now, once more, in the very midst of his real anxiety about her health, he found himself abjectly remarking what an extraordinarily beautiful woman she was.

"I'm not so sure," he said suddenly, half fondly, half irritably, "that those red cheeks are a very good sign."

He put out a finger and stroked the velvet outline. She closed her eyes and set her teeth, nerving herself against the agony of the caress.

"I left a white rose," he went on, with elaborate gallantry; "I find a red one. My dear, your cheeks are certainly very hot."

That voice from the past, to which Rosamond's ears had been so acutely attuned these days, suddenly took up the words: "_My white rose, my red, red rose!_" As the sailor feels the raft break beneath him, she felt the last shreds of her self-control giving way under the stress of seas of passion and terror. She looked round desperately; almost, she thought, that man--that intruder--must have heard the dear voice also. Oh, sacrilege to have him standing there!

"Will you not leave me?" she cried, with a burst of pleading. "I must rest. You were always kind to me--will you not leave me now? Indeed, I am in pain."

"My darling!" he exclaimed, in genuine concern.

That flush was unnatural, it was evident. She had wasted away, too. He could see that. She who used to have such a noble, full throat; and her breathing came all too quick.

"Come, my darling," he went on, "let me see you to bed myself. No one, you know, can look after you as I do. I should not have trusted you away from me all this time. Come, come, we must let this hair down to ease the poor head--your golden hair, Rosamond. It is not the first time I have unbound it--eh, my love?"

"Your golden hair, Rosamond..." whispered the voice in her heart. What sort of a woman was she that another should dare use these sacred words of love to her? She fixed her piteous eyes upon Sir Arthur, as if, by the sheer intensity of dread, she could keep him from her. But he stretched out his arms.

She shrank, flattening herself against the wall, one arm raised across her brow as though to protect her hair.

"One would almost think you were shy--afraid of me," said he, jocularly, while his embrace hovered over her.

"Once there was fear of me in your eyes..."

"Don't touch me!" she shrieked. "Oh, your horrible hands!"

There fell instantly between them the silence of the irremediable deed.

Rosamond had at last torn across the interwoven fabric of their two lives; the ugly rending sound of the parting hung in the air. These gaping edges no seam could ever join again. To the woman came a fierce realisation of freedom, a sweeping anger at the petty shackles that had held her so long.

Sir Arthur stepped back, his arms falling by his side. He, poor man, felt as if the good old world, of which he was such an ornament, had ceased to be solid beneath his feet.

"Rosamond!"

"What are you doing here?" she cried, in a panting whisper. "What do you want with me? How dare you come into this room?"

"Rosamond!"

"Go!" she bade him, pointing to the door. "In the name of God, leave me. Merciful Heavens ... to follow me here! Have you not a spark of human feeling left in you? Is it not bad enough, is it not terrible, hideous, that you should be in this house at all?" She caught him by the arm, pushing him like a frenzied creature. "Go!"

"Are you mad?" he furiously exclaimed.

Upon the very words he stopped abruptly and stared at her. A horrible suspicion of their truth flashed upon him. Could it be possible, could fate dare to play so horrible a trick on him? Was the wife of Sir Arthur Gerardine actually going out of her mind? He felt his hair rise. A dampness gathered cold on his forehead.

She stood, with outflung arm, motionless, save for her rapid breathing.

"If you're really ill," he faltered now, seeking for his handkerchief and mopping his face with flurried hand. The tail of his apprehensive eye upon her, he was, in his mind, rapidly concocting that telegram to the family physician in London which should be despatched at the earliest possible moment, and bring him--and also a mental specialist--to the manor-house by the first possible train. "Most urgent, serious anxiety." The Lieutenant-Governor muttered the words to himself. He belonged to that type of fond family man who, at the first hint of a possibly insane member in the home circle, has no other idea than the immediate shutting up and putting away of the dangerous dear one.

Dimly, through the storm and stress in which her soul was struggling, there came to Rosamond some perception of the pathetic figure presented by Sir Arthur in his sudden trouble. The well-worn cloak of self-complacency was rudely torn from him. His was the flurry of the man on the wrong side of life who has neither the elasticity of youth nor the true dignity of age to help him meet an unexpected blow. Her hand dropped by her side. He had been kind to her, after his own fashion; generous, too, and trusting. She sank back against the bed with a moan.

"I am to blame, all through, from the beginning," she said hopelessly. "I have sinned against myself, against you, against him," she faltered; and laid her left hand on the old carven bedpost to steady herself. Her head dropped sideways against her shoulder. "If I could set you free," she murmured.

Sir Arthur turned sharply upon her, one suspicion chased by another. This was coherent enough. There was meaning in this--too much! A purple flush mounted to his face; the veins in his forehead swelled.

"I was content to go on," pursued the woman, in the same vague tones of plaint. "Remember, it was you who insisted. Before you curse me, always remember that. I wanted to dream my life away--why, else, should I ever have listened to you? But you would not let me dream. You thrust my fate upon me--you and that man. What chance had I of escape between you both? you and that man!"

From purple, Sir Arthur's face grew ashen grey. That smiling, genial, handsome face became a positive mask--lips drawn back from the teeth, pupils narrowed to vindictive pin-points of fury. He drew near to her in silence, his head thrust forward, his twitching hands clutching the lapels of his coat on either side.

You and that man--that man, Bethune!

Through the buzzing in his ears there came once again the echo of Lady Aspasia's laugh, her meaning words: "So you were the excuse." And again the gibe: "Aspasia is tired of playing chaperon!"

Mad? Would God it had been madness! This was a confession. His wife, Lady Gerardine, the consort of the Lieutenant-Governor, had had a low intrigue with an obscure Indian officer, a fellow of no standing, of no importance--Bethune! As Sir Arthur drew near her, silent through the very inadequacy of language, his eye fell upon the pale hand clasping the bedpost. There, upon the third finger, flashed the tiny gems of an unknown ring--a miserable, paltry thing. (Sir Arthur was a creature of detail, even at such a moment.) It was the last straw. He gripped her by the wrist, brutally.

"Whose ring is that?" he sputtered.

The physical pain of his clutch did her good--roused her, with a sense of relief, to face his onslaught. She was glad that he should be angry, that his countenance should be distorted and ugly. In such a mood as this she could meet him and feel strong. It was the broken-down, trembling, aged Sir Arthur she could not meet.

"Whose ring?" he repeated, and shook her as he held her.

She straightened herself, and with her free hand swept a gesture of pride towards the portrait on the wall. Far away was she, in the depth of her grand passion, from the sordid speculations of his mind.

"What!" he shouted, dropped her hand, and ran to the dressing-table, flinging a candle on high to stare. "Why--why!" he stammered, putting down the light. "Pooh, what nonsense is this? You can't put me off like this now. That--why, that's poor English!"

"And I," she cried, walking up to him, "I am Mrs. English. Oh, that was the mistake! You thought I was Lady Gerardine. I never was. You took a dream woman and thought she was your wife. I never was your wife. I am his--his only. Now you understand, do you not?"

Poor Sir Arthur! In proportion as her exaltation mounted, his heat of anger fell away. His bewilderment grew, and his perturbation. For a moment or two he tried to cling to his conviction of her guilt. We are always anxious to vindicate ourselves when we are moved to great wrath; and the more unjust we have been the more loth are we to give up our suspicions. But with these eyes of flame upon him, with these accents of passion in his ears, even he could not maintain his damning judgment. The first hypothesis, that of insanity, came back to him in full force. Then arose a mitigated suggestion. A man of desultory reading, he had a smattering of many subjects. He had heard of that form of mental trouble called auto-suggestion--_idée fixe_. He looked round the room.

By George, there was another portrait of poor English! And, as he lived, a photograph of him on the chimney-piece. He had passed one on the stairs. And now he remembered the daub in the hall. He drew a long breath. This little damp hole of a place, with the fellow's head staring down at one from every corner--yes, that was it--it had been too much for her in her nervous state of health. The next words she spoke brought confirmation:

"Do not think I blame you! I know--I know. It is my own cowardice, my own baseness of soul that has brought it all upon me. And now it is too late. His papers, his letters, too late they came to me. I am lost--lost!"

She put her hands to her forehead, and reeled. He caught her in his arms.

Those dashed papers! How obstinate she had been about them! He had known it would be too much for her; he had even been ready to take the burden upon himself.

"There, there, Rosamond!" She faintly struggled against his supporting embrace, every inch of her flesh shuddering from his touch. Oh, that voice from the past: "_There are things a man cannot contemplate in his living body; things the flesh rebels against. The dead will be quiet._" The dead ... but he was not dead. Perhaps now he was looking on them! The horror of the thought paralysed her, as the snake paralyses the bird. Yet, if she had had a knife in her hand she might, in that madness of nausea, have struck it into the breast against which she was clasped.

"Sir James was certainly right," thought Sir Arthur, tightening his grip upon her waist with one hand, while he patted her shrinking shoulder with the other. "What Rosamond wants, poor girl, is soothing."

She wrenched herself free suddenly, with unexpected strength. Sir Arthur staggered. Then she turned upon him a countenance of such livid vindictive menace and at the same time such torture that, speechless, he recoiled before her.

At the door he muttered something about sending up Aspasia; but it was closed upon him and locked before the words were formulated. He listened awhile. From within came, at first, a faint swish as of her moving draperies, and then a heavy silence.

"She looked at me," said the unhappy husband to himself; "she looked at me as if she could murder me!"

He shook his head, and began once more to concoct his telegram as he slowly walked downstairs.

*CHAPTER XIX*