Part 7

So it was with Raymond Bethune; and if he came to view himself with surprise, still more inexplicable to him was the new Lady Gerardine as he learned to regard her. According to his presentiment, these two women--she to whose puzzling personality he had vowed antipathy, and she whose fresh young presence made dangerously strong demands upon his sympathy--soon began to absorb all the energies of his thoughts. To a man who had hitherto known no other emotion, outside a very ordinary type of home affection, than friendship for another man; whose life, with the exception of one brief period of glamorous hero-worship, had been devoted to duty in its sternest, most virile form, this mental pre-occupation over two women, both comparative strangers, was at first a matter for self-mockery. It was afterwards one of self-conflict. Whoso, however, has reached the point of actually combating an idea is already and obviously its victim, and the final stage of abandonment to the obsession cannot be very distant.

Looking back upon his memories, in later days, it was singular to him how completely the girl and the woman divided his most vivid impressions of that journey. If the vision of Aspasia, fresh as the spray, rosy as the dawn, coming to meet him of a morning, brisk and free, across the deck, her young figure outlined against sparkling sea and translucent sky, was a memory all pleasant and all sweet, the picture of that other, slow moving and pallid, so enwrapped in inexplicable mourning, so immeasurably indifferent to himself, was bitten into the tablets of his mind as with burning acid, fixed in lines of pain.

It is never flattering for a man to realise that he is of no consequence to a woman with whom he is brought into daily intercourse. And to feel that, though his acts have had a distinct influence upon her life, his personality has failed to make the smallest impression, is a situation certain to pique the most unassuming. In the end Bethune began to wish that Lady Gerardine had retained even her original attitude of resentment. Now and again, indeed, he would find her eye fixed upon him, but at the same time would know unmistakably that her thought was not with him. Sometimes her attitude of inexplicable sorrow seemed harder to bear than her first evidences of heartlessness.

One day Aspasia had suddenly attacked her aunt upon the subject of her black garb, crying, with her noted heedlessness:

"I declare, any one would think you were in mourning."

Lady Gerardine shifted her distant gaze from the far horizon to Aspasia's countenance, and her lips moved but made no sound. In her heart she was saying:

"How else should I clothe myself, when I am travelling with my dead?"

Almost as if he read her thought, Bethune sneered as he looked at her, and with difficulty restrained the taunt that rose to his tongue. "Lady Gerardine wears belated weeds!"

Her attitude of hopeless melancholy, her raiment of mourning, irritated him bitterly. Yet, while he looked at her in harshness, he marked the admirable white throat, rising like a flower stem from the dense black of her dress, and found himself wondering whether any shimmer of colour would have become her half so well.

Towards the end of their journey together he was once summoned to speak with her alone. It was about the forthcoming book. Nothing could be more brief, more businesslike than her words, more unemotional than her manner. She asked for his instructions; she discussed, criticised, concurred. It was obvious that, when she chose, her brain could act with quite remarkable clearness. It was also obvious that she had completely capitulated to his wishes; and yet never was victory more savourless.

At the conclusion of this conversation she settled with him that, when she had accomplished her part of the task, she would send for him. And as he withdrew, he felt himself dismissed from her thoughts, except as a mere instrument in what now seemed more her undertaking than his own. At heart he found it increasingly difficult to accept the position with good grace.

After this, during the few days of ship life together left to them, Lady Gerardine seldom admitted him to her company; and thus Raymond was the more thrown with Aspasia. The girl, unconventional by temperament and somewhat set apart by her position of "Governor's niece," unhesitatingly profited by a situation which afforded her unmixed amusement. She was not in love as yet with the Major of Guides. Indeed, she had other and higher ambitions. Aspasia's dream-pictures of herself were ever of a wonderful artist of world-wide celebrity, surrounded by a sea of clapping hands, graciously curtseying her thanks from the side of a Steinway grand.... But Bethune interested her, and there was something piquantly pleasant in being able to awaken that gleam in his cold, light eye, in noticing that the lines of his impassive face relaxed into softness for her alone.

One afternoon, as they sat on deck--the great ship cutting the blue waters of the Adriatic, between the fading of a glorious red and orange sunset and the rising of a thin sickle moon, Aspasia wrapped against the chilly salt airs in some of her aunt's sables, out of which richness the hardy, wild-flower prettiness of her face rose in emphatic contrast--she told him the story of her short life.

She spoke of her musical career, of the bright student days at Vienna; the hard work of them, the anguish, the struggle, the joy. Then of the death of her mother, and the falling of all her high hopes under the crushing will of Sir Arthur, her appointed guardian.

"When mother went," said Aspasia, "everything went." As she spoke two tears leaped out of her eyes, and hung poised on the short, thick eyelashes. "The Runkle thinks it's a disgrace for a lady to do anything in life. 'And, besides,' he says, 'she can't, and she'd better not attempt it.' But wait till I'm twenty-one," cried the girl, vindictively, "and I'll show him what his 'dear Raspasia's' got in her!"

She smiled in her young consciousness of power, and the big tears, detaching themselves, ran into her dimples. Raymond, looking at her with all the experience of his hard life behind him, and all the disillusion of his five-and-thirty years, felt so sudden a movement at once of pity and tenderness that he had to stiffen himself in his seat not to catch her in his arms and kiss her on those wet dimples as he would have kissed a child.

"Oh, you'll do great things," said he, in the tone in which one praises the little one's sand castle on the beach, or tin soldier strategy. "And may I come with a great big laurel crown, tied with gold ribbons, when you give your first concert in the Albert Hall?"

"Albert Hall," mocked she, "the very place for a piano recital!" Then she let her eyes roam out across the heaving space. Once more she saw herself the centre of an applauding multitude; but, in the foremost rank, there was the lean, brown face, and it was moved to enthusiasm, too. And, somehow, from that evening forth, the dream-visions of her future glory were never to be quite complete without it.

* * * * *

A mist-enwrapped, rain-swept shore, parting the dim grey sea and sky in twain, was their first glimpse of England after years of exile.

"Ugh," said Aspasia, shivering, "isn't it just like England to go and be damp and horrid for us!"

Lady Gerardine, looking out with eager straining gaze towards the weeping land, turned with one of her sudden, unexpected movements of passion upon the girl.

"I'm glad it's raining," she said. "I'm glad it's cold, and bleak, and grey. I'm glad to feel the raindrops beating on nay face. I'm sick of hard blue skies and fierce sunshine.... And the trees at Saltwoods will be all bent one way by the blowing of the wet sea wind. It's England, it's home; and, oh, I'm glad to be home!"

*BOOK II*

*CHAPTER I*

Rosamond Gerardine and Aspasia Cuningham lay back, silent, each in her corner of the railway carriage, while the English landscape flew by them, wet and green and autumn brown, gleaming in a fugitive yellow sunlight.

Aspasia still felt the pressure of Bethune's unconsciously hard hand-grip. His image, as he had stood bareheaded looking after the moving train, was still vivid before her eyes. His last words: "It is not good-bye," were ringing in her ears. His face had looked wistful, she thought; his cold glance had taken that warm good look she claimed as her own. She was glad it was not good-bye. And yet, as they steamed away, she, watching him as long as she could, saw, and could not hide it from herself, that it was upon Lady Gerardine his eyes were fixed at the last--fixed with an expression which had already become familiar to her. "One would think he hated her--sometimes," said shrewd Baby to herself, "and yet, when she's there, he forgets me. I might as well be dead, or a fright."

This puzzled her and troubled her, too, a little. She glanced across now at her aunt's abstracted countenance. "I am sure," she thought, in loyal admiration, "if he were madly in love with her, it would be only natural. But it's not love--it's more like hate and a sort of pain." With all her sageness, Baby was only eighteen.

How completely had Raymond Bethune passed from Lady Gerardine's mind--even before he had passed from her sight!

She had nearly reached the end of her journey. The burning land she had left behind her--once the land of her desire--seemed now but a place visited in long evil dreams, where she had undergone unimaginable sufferings during the bondage of sleep. The humid air of England beat upon her face through the open window with a comforting assurance as of waking reality.

She had told herself she was travelling with her dead. Never for one hour of her long journey had she forgotten the meaning of that box under Jani's care. But, with every sunrise that marked a wider distance between her and India, she drew a freer breath. With every stage she felt herself less Lady Gerardine, wife; and more Mrs. English, widow. There was beginning to be an extraordinary restfulness in the sensation.

They sped through the New Forest glades, sodden after the rain, now flashing gold-brown with that shaft of sun; now black-green, cavernous, mysterious, where the pines grow close. And then came the moorland stretches, reaching up to a pale-blue cleft in the storm-weighted clouds. How cool it all was! How soft the colours! How benign the wet sky, how different from the metal glare of the land that had betrayed her!

And, by-and-by, white gleams of sunshine began to deepen into primroses and ambers; towards the west the sky grew ever clearer, and the leaden wrack, parting, showed an horizon like to a honey sea against the rising mists of evening. How beautiful was England!

When they got out at the little country station, in the rural heart of Dorset, the day was closing in. The vault of the heavens brooded over the earth with a cup-like closeness. November though it was, the air struck upon their cheeks as gently as a caress, all impregnated with the fragrance of wet green indefinably touched with the tart accent of decay.

Rosamond drew a long deep breath; it had a poignant pleasure in it; tears sprang to her eyes, but, for the first time in God knew how many years, there was a sweetness in them. Jani at her elbow shivered with an aguish chatter of teeth. With one hand she clutched her shawls across her little lean figure; with the other she held on fiercely to a battered tin box.

"Oh, Aunt Rosamond," cried Aspasia, ecstatically, as they got into the vehicle awaiting them, "it's a fly, it's a fly! Aren't you glad? Do you smell the musty straw? Oh! doesn't it bring back good old times? Don't you wish you may never sit in a state carriage again?"

It was a long drive, through winding lanes. Sometimes they strained uphill, sometimes they skirted the flat down; sometimes the branches of the overhanging trees beat against the roof of the carriage or in at the open window. At first the whole land was wonderfully still. They could hear the moisture drip from the leaves when the horses were at the walk. And, by-and-by, there grew out of the distance the faint yet mighty rumour of the sea. Within such short measure, then, this small, great England was meeting her salt limits! Across the upland down, presently, even on this silent evening, there rose a wind to sing of the surf. The trees by the roadside, in the copses amid fields, on the crest, etched against the glimmer of the sky, had all that regular inland bent that tells of salt winds.

At last the rickety fly began to jingle and jolt along a road that was hardly more than a track. The way dipped down an abrupt slope and then branched off unexpectedly into a side lane. Rosamond leaned out of the window; she felt they were drawing near her unknown home.

"Are we there?" cried Aspasia, entering into a violent state of excitement as they came to a halt before a swing gate.

Rosamond did not answer. She was looking with all her eyes, with all her heart. Sudden memories awoke within her--words, never even noted to be forgotten, began to whisper in her ears: "You never saw such a place, love. It isn't a place, it's a queer old house dumped down in a hollow of the downs. And the avenue--there isn't an avenue, it's a road through the orchard, and the orchard comes right up to the house--and you never saw such a bunch of chimney-stacks in your life. But such as it is, I love it. And some day we'll go and live there, you and I...." Here, then, were the orchard trees, twisted shapes, stretching out unpruned branches to them as they passed!

"I almost plucked an apple," cried Aspasia, from her side, with a childish scream.

The sky was rift just about the horizon--the afterglow primrose against the sullen gloom of the cloud banks. Cut into sharp silhouette against this pallid translucence, rose the black outline of the house and right across it the fantastic old-time chimney-stack, at sight of which Rosamond laughed low to herself as one who recognises the face of a friend. "You never saw such a bunch of chimney-stacks in your life!..."

A faint column of smoke ascended pale against the gloom where the chimneys lost themselves in the skies. As Rosamond noted it, her heart stirred; all was not dead then--the old house, his house, was alive and waiting for her!

They drew up close to the stone porch, open to the night, flush with the level of the out-jutting gables, and the driver, plunging into the black recess, sent the jangle of a bell ringing through inner spaces. In the waiting pause all was very silent, save the stealthy patter from the overgrown ivy clumps that hung across the entrance. There was a rustle, the hop of an awakened bird, quite close to Rosamond's ear, as she leaned out with the eagerness that had been growing upon her ever since her landing.

Then came steps within: the door was opened first but a little space, with the habitual precaution of the lowly caretaker, then suddenly drawn wide. A square of light that seemed golden was cut out of the darkness, and:

"You're welcome, ma'am," cried old Mary, tremulously smoothing her apron.

Lady Gerardine passed with fixed eyes and straight steps into the hall, but she turned quickly as the words struck her ear. Aspasia, following, saw her face illumined by a smile that was almost joy. And the girl became secretly a little alarmed; her aunt's ways had been all inexplicable to her of late.

Rosamond's heart was crying out within her, and it was with actual joy. "Welcome, ma'am," had said his servant--to old Mary the mistress of Saltwoods was Captain English's widow--even to herself might she not now cease to be Lady Gerardine for a brief respite? Oh, then would the manor-house be home indeed!

A great sense of peace, accompanied by a sudden lassitude, fell upon her; she sank into an armchair, flinging her arms wide with a gesture of relief. Opposite to her was a sturdy oaken table, upon which the housekeeper had just placed a hand-lamp. The light fell full upon a rack displaying a hunting-crop, a couple of rough walking-sticks; above, there was the sketch of a boy's face. Her gaze wandered, without at first taking in the meaning of what it saw.

Noise resounded from the porch; it was Jani, struggling with the coachman for the possession of the old regimental case.

Rosamond looked quickly up again at the bright living presentment on the wall; then she rose to her feet and staggered blindly through the nearest door. There, in sheltering darkness, Aspasia promptly overtook her, and was terrified, as she clasped her warm young arms round her aunt's figure, to find it torn by sobs.

"Let me be, let me be!" exclaimed Lady Gerardine, pushing the girl from her, "it is good to give way at last."

And Aspasia, pressing her face in wordless attempt at consolation against her aunt's cheek, found it streaming with a very torrent of tears.

* * * * *

"Ah," said old Mary, shaking her head, as Miss Cuningham presently besought her for the feminine panacea of tea, "poor lady, it's no wonder: he was a grand young gentleman!"

It was, indeed, evident that here Lady Gerardine could never be anything but Captain English's widow.

*CHAPTER II*

The manor-house was very old and very solid. It held nothing of any high value, perhaps, but it held nothing cheap or weak. It was complete before the days of machine-made furniture and of so-called æsthetic art, and those that had ruled over it since had been withheld by innate taste or a happy lack of means from adding to it either within or without. Thus it had remained at a standstill through an extraordinary lapse of years, and all was now beautifully, frankly old; it stood in its simplicity, perfect in antique shabbiness. Only without, the creepers flung ever new shoots about the sturdy strength of the stones. Only within, it was haunted by a memory, by a presence; and this presence was young even to boyhood. And the young ghost harmonised with the aged house, seemed to belong to it as surely as--year by year--the spirit of spring to the ancient garden.

Rosamond, whose life purpose had so long been to avoid the haunting of the past, awoke in the dawn of her first day at Saltwoods to find herself in a very habitation of memories; nay, more, to feel, in some inexplicable manner, that the dead were more alive in this house than the quick, and yet--strange mystery of the heart--that she was glad of it. She watched the dawn wax as on one memorable morning in her far-off Indian palace; not here on beetle's-wing green and eastern glow of carmine and purple, but upon brown of wainscot oak and dim rosebud of faded chintz. And, as the lights spread between the gaps of the shutters, there grew upon her from the panelled wall a strong young face with bold wide-open eyes--eyes very young, set under brows already thoughtful. A very English face, despite the olive of the cheek, the darkness of the hair, close-cut, that still had a crisp wave under the cock of the Sandhurst cap.

"I felt I was not alone," said Rosamond, half in dream, supporting herself on her elbow to look more nearly, "and so it was you!"

But the eyes were gazing past her, out on life, full of eagerness. And the close lips were set with a noble determination. What great things this boy soldier was going to make of his future!

Rosamond let herself fall back upon her pillows, something like a sob in her throat. Then, opposite to her, between the windows, she met full the glance of the same eyes that had but now avoided hers. They were child's eyes this time, gazing, full of soft wonder, out of a serious child's face, framed by an aureole of copper curls--the wonderful tint that is destined to turn to densest black.

Rosamond stretched at ease, resting her eyes on those of the lovely child's--childless woman, who had never desired children, began to picture to herself how proud a mother would be of such a little son as this. And then her mind wandered to the mother, who, lying where she now lay, had feasted her waking heart and gratified her maternal pride, so many mornings with this vision.

Then something began to stir in her that had not yet stirred before; an inchoate desire, an ache, a jealousy; yes, a jealousy of the dead woman who had borne such a child! She turned restlessly from the sight of the two pictures, flung herself to the far side of the bed, and sent her glance and thought determinedly wandering into the recess of an alcove where night still kept the growing light at bay.

A drowsiness fell over her mind again; with vague interest she found herself speculating what might the different objects be that the darkness still enwrapt partly from her sight.

Here was a high chair of unusual shape--a _Prie-Dieu_? Here was a gothic bracket, jutting from the wall above; thereon something glimmered palely forth; a statuette perchance, or alabaster vase of special slender art? Nay, not so, for now she could distinguish the wide-stretched arms, the pendant form; it was the carven ivory of a crucifix. The late Mrs. English's shrine, her altar? Rosamond's interest quickened--she had heard of this unknown relative's goodness from the son's lips, but had never heard this goodness specified as regarded religion. His mother, then, had been High Church ... Roman Catholic perhaps? Rosamond was almost amused, with the detached amusement of one to whom religion means little personal.

Under this impulse of curiosity she rose from her bed, pulled the window shutters aside to let in the day, and then went back to examine the alcove.

It held a shrine indeed, an altar to inevitable sacrifice, to the most sacred relics. Beneath the pallid symbol, figure of the Great Renunciation, was placed a closed frame. And all around and about, in ordered array, the records of a boy's life: medals for prowess in different sports; a cup or two; a framed certificate of merit; in front of the frame, a case bulging with letters. Upon each side of the altar hung shelves filled with books, some in the handsome livery of school prizes, some in the battered covers of the much-perused playroom favourite.

Rosamond stood and looked. A moment or two she hesitated, then she began to tremble. There was within her the old desire of flight, the old sick longing to hide away, to bury, to ignore. But something stronger than herself held her. The day was past when she could deny herself to sorrow. The cup was at her lips and she knew that she must drink.

She would open that letter-case, she would gaze at the face in the closed frame; her coward heart was to be spared no longer.

She took up a volume. As it fell apart she saw the full-page book-plate engraved with the arms of Winchester School and the fine copperplate inscription:

Anno Sæculari 1884 Præmium in re Mathematica Meritus et consecutus est _Henricus English_. (Hæc olim meminisse juvabit).

The life of Christopher Columbus.... It was bound in crimson calf, and the gilt edges of its unopened pages clung crisply together.

She replaced it on the shelf and, with the same dreary mechanical determination, drew forth another. The "Boy's own Book"; a veteran, this; from too much loving usage, dogs'-eared, scored with small grimy finger-prints; its quaint woodcuts highly coloured here and there by a very juvenile artist.

"To Henry English, on his ninth birthday, from his affectionate mother," ran the dedication, in a flowing Italian hand. A gift that had made a little lad very happy, some twenty-five years ago.