Chapter 38

A PEACE-MAKER

It was a very strange household that Christmas at Overfield. Mary and her husband came over with their child, and the entire party, with the exception of the duellists themselves, settled down to watch the conflict between Lady Torridon and Beatrice Atherton. Its prolongation was possible because for days together the hostess retired into a fortress of silence, whence she looked out cynically, shrugged her shoulders, smiled almost imperceptibly, and only sallied when she found she could not provoke an attack. Beatrice never made an assault; was always ready for the least hint of peace; but guarded deftly and struck hard when she was directly threatened. Neither would she ever take an insult; the bitterest dart fell innocuous on her bright shield before she struck back smiling; but there were some sharp moments of anxiety now and again as she hesitated how to guard.

A silence would fall suddenly in the midst of the talk and clatter at table; there would be a momentary kindling of glances, as from the tall chair opposite the chaplain a psychological atmosphere of peril made itself felt; then the blow would be delivered; the weapons clashed; and once more the talk rose high and genial over the battlefield.

* * * * *

The moment when Beatrice’s position in the house came nearest to being untenable, was one morning in January, when the whole party were assembled on the steps to see the sportsmen off for the day.

Sir James was down with the foresters and hounds at the further end of the terrace, arranging the details of the day; Margaret had not yet come out of chapel, and Lady Torridon, who had had a long fit of silence, was standing with Mary and Nicholas at the head of the central stairs that led down from the terrace to the gravel.

Christopher and Beatrice came out of the house behind, talking cheerfully; for the two had become great friends since they had learnt to understand one another, and Beatrice had confessed to him frankly that she had been wrong and he right in the matter of Ralph. She had told him this a couple of days after her arrival; but there had been a certain constraint in her manner that forbade his saying much in answer. Here they came then, now, in the frosty sunshine; he in his habit and she in her morning house-dress of silk and lace, talking briskly.

“I was sure you would understand, father,” she said, as they came up behind the group.

Then Lady Torridon turned and delivered her point, suddenly and brutally.

“Of course he will,” she said. “I suppose then you are not going out, Mistress Atherton.” And she glanced with an offensive contempt at the girl and the monk. Beatrice’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and opened again.

“Why, no, Lady Torridon.”

“I thought not,” said the other; and again she glanced at the two--“for I see the priest is not.”

There was a moment’s silence. Nick was looking at his wife with a face of dismay. Then Beatrice answered smiling.

“Neither are you, dear Lady Torridon. Is not that enough to keep me?”

A short yelp of laughter broke from Nicholas; and he stooped to examine his boot.

Lady Torridon opened her lips, closed them again, and turned her back on the girl.

“But you are cruel,” said Beatrice’s voice from behind, “and--”

The woman turned once more venomously.

“You do not want me,” she said. “You have taken one son of mine, and now you would take the other. Is not my daughter enough?”

Beatrice instantly stepped up, and put her hand on the other’s arm.

“Dear Mistress,” she said; and her voice broke into tenderness; “she is not enough--”

Lady Torridon jerked her arm away.

“Come, Mary,” she said.

* * * * *

Matters were a little better after that. Sir James was not told of the incident; because his son knew very well that he would not allow Beatrice to stay another day after the insult; but Chris felt himself bound to consult those who had heard what had passed as to whether indeed it was possible for her to remain. Nicholas grew crimson with indignation and vowed it was impossible. Mary hesitated; and Chris himself was doubtful. He went at last to Beatrice that same evening; and found her alone in the oak parlour, before supper. The sportsmen had not yet come back; and the other ladies were upstairs.

Beatrice affected to treat it as nothing; and it was not till Chris threatened to tell his father, that she told him all she thought.

“I must seem a vain fool to say so;” she said, leaning back in her chair, and looking up at him, “and perhaps insolent too; yet I must say it. It is this: I believe that Lady Torridon--Ah! how can I say it?”

“Tell me,” said Chris steadily, looking away from her.

Beatrice shifted a little in her seat; and then stood up.

“Well, it is this. I do not believe your mother is so--so--is what she sometimes seems. I think she is very sore and angry; there are a hundred reasons. I think no one has--has faced her before. She has been obeyed too much. And--and I think that if I stay I may be able--I may be some good,” she ended lamely.

Chris nodded.

“I understand,” he said softly.

“Give me another week or two,” said Beatrice, “I will do my best.”

“You have worked a miracle with Meg,” said Chris. “I believe you can work another. I will not tell my father; and the others shall not either.”

* * * * *

A wonderful change had indeed come to Margaret during the last month. Her whole soul, so cramped now by circumstances, had gone out in adoration towards this stranger. Chris found it almost piteous to watch her--her shy looks, the shiver that went over her, when the brilliant figure rustled into the room, or the brisk sentences were delivered from those smiling lips. He would see too how their hands met as they sat together; how Margaret would sit distracted and hungering for attention, eyeing the ceiling, the carpet, her embroidery; and how her eyes would leap to meet a glance, and her face flush up, as Beatrice throw her a soft word or look.

And it was the right love, too, to the monk’s eyes; not a rival flame, but fuel for divine ardour. Margaret spent longer, not shorter, time at her prayers; was more, not less, devout at mass and communion; and her whole sore soul became sensitive and alive again. The winter had passed for her; the time of the singing-birds was come.

* * * * *

She was fascinated by the other’s gallant brilliance. Religion for the nun had up to the present appeared a delicate thing that grew in the shadow or in the warm shelter of the cloister; now it blossomed out in Beatrice as a hardy bright plant that tossed its leaves in the wind and exulted in sun and cold. Yet it had its evening tendernesses too, its subtle fragrance when the breeze fell, its sweet colours and outlines--Beatrice too could pray; and Margaret’s spiritual instinct, as she knelt by her at the altar-rail or glanced at the other’s face as she came down fresh with absolution from the chair in the sanctuary where the chaplain sat, detected a glow of faith at least as warm as her own.

She was astonished too at her friend’s gaiety; for she had expected, so far as her knowledge of human souls led to expect anything, a quiet convalescent spirit, recovering but slowly from the tragedy through which Margaret knew she had passed. It seemed to her at first as if Beatrice must be almost heartless, so little did she flinch when Lady Torridon darted Ralph’s name at her, or Master More’s, or flicked her suddenly where the wound ought to be; and it was not until the guest had been a month in the house that the nun understood.

They were together one evening in Margaret’s own white little room above the oak parlour. Beatrice was sitting before the fire with her arms clasped behind her head, waiting till the other had finished her office, and looking round pleased in her heart, at the walls that told their tale so plainly. It was almost exactly like a cell. A low oak bed, red-blanketted, stood under the sloping roof, a prie-dieu beside it, and a cheap little French image of St. Scholastica over it. There was a table, with a sheet of white paper, a little ink-horn and two quills primly side by side upon it; and at the back stood a couple of small bound volumes in which the nun was accumulating little by little private devotions that appealed to her. A pair of beads hung on a nail by the window over which was drawn an old red curtain; two brass candlesticks with a cross between them stood over the hearth, giving it a faint resemblance to an altar. The boards were bare except for a strip of matting by the bed; and the whole room, walls, floor, ceiling and furniture were speckless and precise.

Margaret made the sign of the cross, closed her book, and smiled at Beatrice.

“You dear child!” she answered.

Margaret’s face shone with pleasure; and she put out her hand softly to the other’s knee, and laid it there.

“Talk to me,” said the nun.

“Well?” said Beatrice.

“Tell me about your life in London. You never have yet, you know.”

An odd look passed over the other’s face, and she dropped her eyes and laid her hands together in her lap.

“Oh, Meg,” she said, “I should love to tell you if I could. What would you like to hear?”

The nun looked at her wondering.

“Why--everything,” she said.

“Shall I tell you of Chelsea and Master More?”

Margaret nodded, still looking at her; and Beatrice began.

It was an extraordinary experience for the nun to sit there and hear that wonderful tale poured out. Beatrice for the first time threw open her defences--those protections of the sensitive inner life that she had raised by sheer will--and showed her heart. She told her first of her life in the country before she had known anything of the world; of her father’s friendship with More when she was still a child, and of his death when she was about sixteen. She had had money of her own, and had come up to live with Mrs. More’s sisters; and so had gradually slipped into intimacy at Chelsea. Then she described the life there--the ordered beauty of it all--and the marvellous soul that was its centre and sun. She told her of More’s humour, his unfailing gaiety, his sweet cynicism that shot through his talk, his tender affections, and above all--for she knew this would most interest the nun--his deep and resolute devotion to God. She described how he had at one time lived at the Charterhouse, and had seemed to regret, before the end of his life, that he had not become a Carthusian; she told her of the precious parcel that had been sent from the Tower to Chelsea the day before his death, and how she had helped Margaret Roper to unfasten it and disclose the hair-shirt that he had worn secretly for years, and which now he had sent back for fear that it should be seen by unfriendly eyes or praised by flattering tongues.

Her face grew inexpressibly soft and loving as she talked; more than once her black eyes filled with tears, and her voice faltered; and the nun sat almost terrified at the emotion she had called up. It was hardly possible that this tender feminine creature who talked so softly of divine and human things and of the strange ardent lawyer in whom both were so manifest, could be the same stately lady of downstairs who fenced so gallantly, who never winced at a wound and trod so bravely over sharp perilous ground.

“They killed him,” said Beatrice. “King Henry killed him; for that he could not bear an honest, kindly, holy soul so near his own. And we are left to weep for him, of whom--of whom the world was not worthy.”

Margaret felt her hand caught and caressed; and the two sat in silence a moment.

“But--but--” began the nun softly, bewildered by this revelation.

“Yes, my dear; you did not know--how should you?--what a wound I carry here--what a wound we all carry who knew him.”

Again there was a short silence. Margaret was searching for some word of comfort.

“But you did what you could for him, did you not? And--and even Ralph, I think I heard--”

Beatrice turned and looked at her steadily. Margaret read in her face something she could not understand.

“Yes--Ralph?” said Beatrice questioningly.

“You told father so, did you not? He did what he could for Master More?”

Beatrice laid her other hand too over Margaret’s.

“My dear; I do not know. I cannot speak of that.”

“But you said--”

“Margaret, my pet; you would not hurt me, would you? I do not think I can bear to speak of that.”

The nun gripped the other’s two hands passionately, and laid her cheek against them.

“Beatrice, I did not know--I forgot.”

Beatrice stooped and kissed her gently.

* * * * *

The nun loved her tenfold more after that. It had been before a kind of passionate admiration, such as a subject might feel for a splendid queen; but the queen had taken this timid soul in through the palace-gates now, into a little inner chamber intimate and apart, and had sat with her there and shown her everything, her broken toys, her failures; and more than all her own broken heart. And as, after that evening, Margaret watched Beatrice again in public, heard her retorts and marked her bearing, she knew that she knew something that the others did not; she had the joy of sharing a secret of pain. But there was one wound that Beatrice did not show her; that secret was reserved for one who had more claim to it, and could understand. The nun could not have interpreted it rightly.

* * * * *

Mary and Nicholas went back to Great Keynes at the end of January; and Beatrice was out on the terrace with the others to see them go. Jim, the little seven-year-old boy, had fallen in love with her, ever since he had found that she treated him like a man, with deference and courtesy, and did not talk about him in his presence and over his head. He was walking with her now, a little apart, as the horses came round, and explaining to her how it was that he only rode a pony at present, and not a horse.

“My legs would not reach, Mistress Atherton,” he said, protruding a small leather boot. “It is not because I am afraid, or father either. I rode Jess, the other day, but not astride.”

“I quite understand,” said Beatrice respectfully, without the shadow of laughter in her face.

“You see--” began the boy.

Then his mother came up.

“Run, Jim, and hold my horse. Mistress Beatrice, may I have a word with you?”

The two turned and walked down to the end of the terrace again.

“It is this,” said Mary, looking at the other from under her plumed hat, with her skirt gathered up with her whip in her gloved hand. “I wished to tell you about my mother. I have not dared till now. I have never seen her so stirred in my life, as she is now. I--I think she will do anything you wish in time. It is useless to feign that we do not understand one another--anything you wish--come back to her Faith perhaps; treat my father better. She--she loves you, I think; and yet dare not--”

“On Ralph’s account,” put in Beatrice serenely.

“Yes; how did you know? It is on Ralph’s account. She cannot forgive that. Can you say anything to her, do you think? Anything to explain? You understand--”

“I understand.”

“I do not know how I dare say all this,” went on Mary blushing furiously, “but I must thank you too for what you have done for my sister. It is wonderful. I could have done nothing.”

“My dear,” said Beatrice. “I love your sister. There is no need for thanks.”

A loud voice hailed them.

“Sweetheart,” shouted Sir Nicholas, standing with his legs apart at the mounting steps. “The horses are fretted to death.”

“You will remember,” said Mary hurriedly, as they turned. “And--God bless you, Beatrice!”

Lady Torridon was indeed very quiet now. It was strange for the others to see the difference. It seemed as if she had been conquered by the one weapon that she could wield, which was brutality. As Mr. Carleton had said, she had never been faced before; she had been accustomed to regard devoutness as incompatible with strong character; she had never been resisted. Both her husband and children had thought to conquer by yielding; it was easier to do so, and appeared more Christian; and she herself, like Ralph, was only provoked further by passivity. And now she had met one of the old school, who was as ready in the use of worldly weapons as herself; she had been ignored and pricked alternately, and with astonishing grace too, by one who was certainly of that tone of mind that she had gradually learnt to despise and hate.

Chris saw this before his father; but he saw too that the conquest was not yet complete. His mother had been cowed with respect, as a dog that is broken in; she had not yet been melted with love. He had spoken to Mary the day before the Maxwells’ departure, and tried to put this into words; and Mary had seen where the opening for love lay, through which the work could be done; and the result had been the interview with Beatrice, and the mention of Ralph’s name. But Mary had not a notion how Beatrice could act; she only saw that Ralph was the one chink in her mother’s armour, and she left it to this girl who had been so adroit up to the present, to find how to pierce it.

Sir James had given up trying to understand the situation. He had for so long regarded his wife as an irreconcilable that he hoped for nothing better than to be able to keep her pacified; anything in the nature of a conversion seemed an idle dream. But he had noticed the change in her manner, and wondered what it meant; he hoped that the pendulum had not swung too far, and that it was not she who was being bullied now by this imperious girl from town.

He said a word to Mr. Carleton one day about it, as they walked in the garden.

“Father,” he said, “I am puzzled. What has come to my wife? Have you not noticed how she has not spoken for three days. Do you think she dislikes Mistress Atherton. If I thought that--”

“No, sir,” said the priest. “I do not think it is that. I think it is the other way about. She did dislike her--but not now.”

“You do not think, Mistress Atherton is--is a little--discourteous and sharp sometimes. I have wondered whether that was so. Chris thinks not, however.”

“Neither do I, sir. I think--I think it is all very well as it is. I hope Mistress Atherton is to stay yet a while.”

“She speaks of going in a week or two,” said the old man. “She has been here six weeks now.”

“I hope not,” said the priest, “since you have asked my opinion, sir.”

Sir James sighed, looked at the other, and then left him, to search for his wife and see if she wanted him. He was feeling a little sorry for her.

* * * * *

A week later the truth began to come out, and Beatrice had the opportunity for which she was waiting.

They were all gathered before the hall-fire expecting supper; the painted windows had died with the daylight, and the deep tones of the woodwork in gallery and floor and walls had crept out from the gloom into the dancing flare of the fire and the steady glow of the sconces. The weather had broken a day or two before; all the afternoon sheets of rain had swept across the fields and gardens, and heavy cheerless clouds marched over the sky. The wind was shrilling now against the north side of the hall, and one window dripped a little inside on to the matting below it. The supper-table shone with silver and crockery, and the napkins by each place; and the door from the kitchen was set wide for the passage of the servants, one of whom waited discreetly in the opening for the coming of the lady of the house. They were all there but she; and the minutes went by and she did not come.

Sir James turned enquiringly as the door from the court opened, but it was only a wet shivering dog who had nosed it open, and now crept deprecatingly towards the blaze.

“You poor beast,” said Beatrice, drawing her skirts aside. “Take my place,” and she stepped away to allow him to come. He looked gratefully up, wagged his rat-tail, and lay down comfortably at the edge of the tiles.

“My wife is very late,” said Sir James. “Chris--”

He stopped as footsteps sounded in the flagged passage leading from the living rooms; and the next moment the door was flung open, and a woman ran forward with outstretched hands.

“O! mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she cried. “My lady is ill. Come, sir, come!”