Part 20

The assistant who registered the order for delivery in their next round, after Mrs. Bunsby left slipped into Mr. Baines's "libery," and half-whispered the news of Lucy's return. When, soon afterwards, Mrs. Baines came into the dining-room to preside over the tea table, he--(he looked very aged--my astral body floating over the scene felt a twinge of pity for him; in his own dull way he had been fond and proud of his only son and worked to provide him with a competency--some day)--he, with some preparatory clearing of the throat, said: "Er ... Hrhm.... Er ... Lucy's back, I hear...."

"Indeed?" replied his wife swiftly. "Where? Bridewell? That's where she _ought_ to be...."

"I dare say, my dear, but she's at Church Farm, her parents', you know.... P'raps she could tell you something about John?..."

"P'raps she could. But I won't have her name mentioned in _this_ house. _Do you understand_?"

Mr. Baines did, and took this intimation as final.

The next day was Sunday. Mrs. Baines spent much of the day (as she had decided she could not go to chapel) communing in prayer with her Maker in the bedroom fastness. Some of the prayers heard by the frightened Eliza through the keyhole sounded more like objurgations, and the Scripture readings were the minatory passage directed by the Minor Prophets against harlots and light women.

After two days of Aldermaston Lucy had quite recovered her spirits--she had felt rather depressed at Hankey's Mansions and not at all lightened at heart by her week of shopping under Aunt Pardew's furtive guidance and rather checked congratulations. On the Monday morning she was standing with her parents and Clara in front of the beautiful old farm house, inhaling the scents of May, revelling with the eye over the landscape beauty she had so often recalled to herself in Africa. Farmer Josling had repeatedly given expression to the pleasure he had derived from the looks, manner, and hand-grip of his son-in-law, and Mrs. Josling still blushed and laughed at the remembrance of his having kissed her cheek. They could not help the gratification of feeling that their daughter's second marriage was into a social stratum worthy of her looks, her superior education and their hopes for her....

Clara, walking away to glance at the bee-hives, called back to the group, "Here's Mrs. Baines coming up from the road."

Instinctively the parents withdrew into the porch of the house, leaving their daughter to meet Mrs. Baines for the first few minutes alone, with no other listeners to the sad story she had to tell. Lucy, like the bird fascinated by the snake, remained where she was, her fingers playing with a pansy she had just picked. Mrs. Baines, all in black, with black plumes to a large bonnet and black gloves, walked slowly and consideringly up to the spell-bound Lucy. When she was close to her she said: "_What ... have ... you done ... with ... my ... son?..._"

"Oh! I ... I ... haven't you heard?" stammered Lucy.

"I _have_ heard ... and I've guessed much _more_ than I've heard.... _You ... you harlot--you adulteress--you--you strumpet!_" roared Mrs. Baines, who had been cooking her vengeance and rehearsing this scene with a dictionary, during the last twenty-four hours. And forthwith before Lucy could reply or any one intervene she had dealt her two terrific boxes on the ears, first on one side and then on the other.

Lucy fell on to the pansy bed, temporarily stunned. Mr. Josling, scarcely able at first to believe ears and eyes, rushed out with a roar like a bull, picked up Mrs. Baines round her iron stays, as though she weighed no more than a wisp, ran round to the other side of the house where there was a great horse trough full of water, and soused in this the head and huge plumed bonnet of the angry woman. And again, giving her time to catch her breath, he plunged her head and bonnet beneath the water. Then, standing her on her feet, he said, "_There! that'll_ cool your hot blood. That is some return for your half-killing my daughter--you _blasted she-tiger, you_ ... Be _off_! Or I'll set the dogs on you.... I'll..."

"Father, _dear_," said Clara, crying for pity and rage over the hapless Lucy, yet careful of appearances: "Father _dear, don't_ shout so! For goodness' sake, let the old witch go, and don't attract everybody's attention. What ever _will_ the neighbours think! Here!" she said, thrusting on Mrs. Baines the umbrella she had brought and dropped on the garden path at the moment of the assault, "be off with you, you wicked old woman. It's a mercy father ain't killed you, he's that strong. And if you've done any real harm to my sister, we'll soon let you know and have you up before the courts, you _wicked old snivelling psalm-singin' Methody_!"

Mrs. Baines said nothing to this counter-attack. She drained the water from her plumes with her fingers, put her flopping bonnet as straight as was possible, pressed the water from her shoulders, and made some attempt to wipe her face with a handkerchief; and then, summoning all her strength and resolution (for in reality she was much shaken and near collapse), she walked firmly past them, uttering never a word, walked slowly down the garden path, turned to the right and contrived not to halt on her way back to the station till she was well out of their sight. They were a little over-awed by her dignity.

It was decided--and Lucy when she could speak implored them to adopt this negative course--not to write to Roger, and as far as possible not to talk of this painful scene to any neighbour. But to keep it from country gossip was an impossibility. This, that, or the other farm servant had seen it, from the rafters of a barn in repair, from the stables, from the dairy window; and so the treatment old Mrs. Baines had served out to her former daughter-in-law became noised abroad, penetrated from the kitchen and still-room of Engledene House to its mistress's dressing-room. A vague rumour of it even reached the African Department of the Foreign Office and Molyneux publicly shrugged his shoulders in Sir Mulberry Hawk's room. The Carnarvons at Highclere heard a perversion of it--rather a humorous one--from one of their farmer tenants, and reconsidered their idea of asking Brentham and Mrs. Brentham over to a week-end party to relate some of their extraordinary experiences. The Vicar of Farleigh Wallop realized that something of the kind had occurred to interrupt his musings on the arrangements of the streets in Calleva Atrebatum, and when he drove over with Maud to make the acquaintance of his daughter-in-law--now convalescent and thankful to find the drum of the worst smacked ear had not been split--he was merely coldly polite and expressed very little interest in missionary questions. Indeed he took no interest in Christian Missions after 700 A.D. Up to that time he reckoned--more or less--they had been spreading the ideas of Imperial Rome, of Roman civilization.

Roger, however, though he commented little on the episode of the assault, and felt in every way the least said, soonest mended, borrowed his father-in-law's riding-horse and rode early one morning over to Tilehurst. He entered the factory, of design, just as Mr. Baines was about to take his seat in the office and run his eyes over the day's orders. "Oh, don't be alarmed!" he said to Mr. Baines, who was instinctively about to withdraw, guessing his visitor's identity. "I'm not a violent heathen like your wife. Sit down and let us talk this over like sensible men."

He then put the matter very plainly before Mr. Baines.

Mrs. Baines, summoned by half-fearful, half-exultant Eliza, had "locked herself in her bedroom, she 'ave an' ast me to go for the police!"

"Then you, too," said Roger to the startled Eliza, "remain and hear what I have to say. Since your termagant of a mistress refuses to come, you shall repeat my words to her. You are, from what my wife tells me, an old and trusted servant of the family" (Eliza bridled and pleated the hem of her apron). "When she returns to sanity, you may get a chance of saying a word to your mistress in season, even if her husband has not the courage to do so. Tell her then, if she ever annoys or slanders or upsets my wife in any way I will leave no stone unturned to punish her. And if she appears at Church Farm or anywhere else again with the intention of assaulting my wife I will knock her on the head like the mad dog she is. Now you can leave us. But I trust also to you as an honourable woman and one who was sincerely fond of poor John Baines, who ought never to be connected with these hateful sayings and doings, not to chatter about this business outside this house."

And Eliza did not. She was much impressed by Brentham's appeal. The interview with John's father even ended in a kind of reconciliation. He heard from Brentham for the first time the whole story, so far as it was known, of the circumstances which led up to the attack on the station, John's death, and Lucy's journey to the coast; of how her baby had died and how ill she had been; of the Stotts, and of Ann Jamblin's obstinacy. Roger purposely prolonged the interview. It was doing the miserable father good, and was keeping Mrs. Baines a prisoner in her bedroom just when she wanted to be busy at house-work.

Maud on her return from visiting the Joslings tightened her lips and "went for" her father as he had never been truth-told before; so Mrs. Baines, if she did harm to Lucy's good name and gave her nervous system a nasty shock, also provoked good in other directions. A disturbance of the kind seldom fails to clear the air and create a fresher atmosphere. Maud reproached her father bitterly with his incivility to his eldest son's wife; with his general indifference to the well-being of his children, his selfish absorption in his archaeological work, his unfairness to them in lavishing on it funds which should have been their patrimony. She even issued a sort of ultimatum: the subsidies to the Silchester Excavation fund must cease; the curate at Farleigh must be given his conge and the Vicar--still able-bodied--carry out his own Church duties: _or_ she would go away and earn her own living as a secretary or something or other. And she was at once, and on his authority, to ask Lucy to stay--with Roger, of course--for at least a month. He gave in. Maud had deeper plans hidden under this surface wrath. Roger was in difficulties with the Foreign Office, she guessed. He had resigned from the Indian Army. He might at any time have to forge a new career for himself and would want a little capital to start with. She reckoned that her father having originally been a well-to-do man and her mother having come to him with a substantial dowry, there ought to be a least twelve thousand pounds to be divided between the four of them. If that left her father almost entirely dependent on his income--about five hundred a year--from the twin benefices of Farleigh and Cliddesden, that would serve him right. He had no business to squander his children's money--as it really was--on a work of excavation which the County or the Nation should finance.

A little repentant and more than a little rheumatic--(besides, Roman Silchester was turning out so distressingly Christian and so little Pompeian and Pagan)--he agreed at any rate to look into the matter. The letter was sent to Lucy, and she came, now quite restored to health. She found in Maud the selfless friend and good adviser she had long needed. All she begged and prayed of Roger was that he might leave her at Farleigh for a time and not frighten her and upset her nerves by requiring of her the going out into smart Society, where she was ever on the twitter for fear of being questioned as to her birth and bringing-up and the circumstances of her life in Africa.

Roger rather ruefully consented. Maud would gradually cure her of her nerves and her rusticity. Meantime he would now tackle Sibyl. Sibyl had taken no notice of his card and call; but about three weeks afterwards had written to Maud, picturing herself as having now emerged from a swoon of grief and being ready to see Roger for a _few_ minutes if he would _promise_ to move gently and speak in a level voice, as _the least thing_ upset her. Pressed to be more definite, she consented to see him--and him only--at Engledene on a certain Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock.

He found her in a little boudoir, which was draped with pleated lavender-mauve cashmere and shaded to a dim light. She was dressed in black, not having as yet the hardihood to discard widows' weeds, still less some diaphanous, filmy _coiffe_, some ghost of a widow's cap. Queen Victoria was still a great power in Society and kept Peeresses in order. If you were too daring you might be banned at Court and then where would your social and political influence be?

"Wheel up, or better still _lift_ up--I can't bear the _slightest_ jar, just now--that small armchair, Roger--the purple velvet one--and put it near enough for me to hear and speak without effort; but not _too_ near, because I notice you have a very powerful aura. I've only just learnt about auras, and I realize now _what_ a difference they make!..."

"All right," said Roger, obeying these instructions, "but what's an aura? Is it the smell of my Harris tweeds, or do you doubt my having had a bath this morning?"

"Don't be so perfectly horrid ... and coarse.... You never _used_ to be coarse, whatever you were--I suppose it comes from marrying a farmer's daughter; but for the matter of that, what am _I_? My poor dear dad is trying hard to be a farmer after spending his best years in the Army. I didn't mean anything much about your 'aura,' except, I suppose, that as I'm only recently widowed all my relations with men-visitors should be a little frigid. But I'm simply talking nonsense to gain time, to remember what I wanted to say to you." (A pause.) ... "Roger! Your _dreadful_ letter from that Gouging place, coming just on top of poor Francis's death, _knocked me over_. The doctors put it all down to Francis, of course ... I don't deny that his death _did_ upset me.... But I'd been expecting _that_ any time within the last six months.... The doctors told me _definitely_ last winter his heart was very unsound and that he must not over-exert himself in any way or be contraried or argued with.... _That_ was why I gave up the orange-velvet curtains and general redecoration of the dining-room at 6A, Carlton House Terrace--which is dingy beyond belief. I shall do it now.... It's too early for tea ... won't you smoke?" (Roger: "Thank you.") "Well, there's everything on that little table.... No. Not those ones; they've got the wee-est flavour of opium.... Obliged to do _something_ for my nerves.... Well, now, about your Gouging letter.... I mean about your marriage.... My _dear_ Roger! _What_ a _gaffe_! I mean, how _could_ you?"

"Could I what?"

"_Ruin_ your hopes and mine?"

"Well, I did hope to marry Lucy ... for at least six months before the knot was tied.... Ever since her husband's death. So _my_ hopes were fulfilled. And as to you, I never prevented you from marrying Lord S. So where the ruin comes in, I can't see."

"Oh," wailed Sibyl, "_why_ beat about the bush? You must have known that I always hoped if anything happened to poor Francis--and anything _might_ well have done so--after all, you or I might be in a railway accident or break our necks out hunting. In such case you _must_ have known I _counted_ on you ... I mean, on our being happy _at last_.... Don't interrupt! ... And just think! Francis loved me awfully. I really _was perfectly sweet_ to him and did my duty to him _in every way_. His gratitude for that boy ... for a direct heir! ... Well, after Clithy was born he made his will! ... Don't be silly ... and don't joke about things I regard almost as sacred.... I mean _Francis_ re-made his will; and left me sole guardian of the boy and sole trustee, sole _everything_; and mistress for my life of Engledene, and of 6A, till Clithy came of age ... and a jointure of L10,000 a year to keep them up. Clithy has also the Silchester house which is let and which I intend to _keep_ let till he comes of age, the moors in Scotland _and_ the shooting lodge. Of course he has the reversionary rights of _everything_ after my death. And equally of course he has fifteen thousand a year, which I control till he is twenty-one or until he marries....

"Just _think_ what I could have done for you, out of all this--if you'd _waited_! If _only_ you'd waited!..." (buries her face in the mauve silk cushions and cries a little or pretends to). (Roger fidgets on his chair. An exquisite little purple Sevres clock on the white mantelpiece ticks ... ticks ... ticks.)

_Roger_: "Look here, Sibyl. You're altogether on the wrong tack, believe me. You might have married me in '86. I was quite ready then and fancied myself in love with you. But if you had we mightn't have got on. My seven hundred a year would have been nowhere to give you surroundings like this...." (And he looks round the boudoir "done" in white, lavender, mauve and purple, with its exquisite bits of furniture, its velvet-covered armchair and Charles II day-bed, and pillow covers of mauve silk; and looked also at the sinuous figure of the woman coiled on the day-bed in her filmy black dress, with her face half buried in the silk cushions, and one disconsolate arm lying listlessly along her side, and at the magnificent rings of emeralds and diamonds on the pink fingers.) "You were _quite_ right: you could _never_ have stood the strain of Africa. I'll tell you by and bye some of the things Lucy and I went through." (At this hint of comradeship with Lucy, the little black velvet shoes gave angry thumps on the frame of the day-bed.) "I know," continues Roger, "you used to throw out mysterious hints after you were married that I might wait till some far-off date when you were free; I mean after Lord Silchester was dead. But what decent man would have taken you at your word? Why, Silchester might well be alive now. He did not die of old age...."

_Sibyl_ (in a muffled voice): "N-no; he ... he ... didn't. He--overrated his strength. He--he--oh, _how_ can I tell you? He was so anxious to play a great part in public affairs ... but he had lost all his energy...." (Sitting up with flushed cheeks--damnably good-looking, Roger feels.) "_Well_! What can I do for you? You've failed _me_. But I suppose you've come here to ask me to help you in some way. Men don't generally waste their time on afternoon calls without a motive. What is it? I've got no influence anywhere since Francis died" (a sob). "So it's no good asking _me_ to write to Lord Wiltshire or to Spavins. I hear you are out of favour at the F.O. It's not _my_ fault, is it? It's all due to your gallivanting after missionaries' wives...." (Roger looks sullen.) ... "Heigh ho! I expect with all this crying and tousling among cushions, to hide I _was_ crying from your cynical eyes, I'd better go into my room and bathe my face before the butler brings in the tea.... _There!_ you can pull up two of the blinds--when I am gone--my eyes are so red--and you can look at some of my new books till I come in to make the tea. You mustn't _dream_ of going before we've had tea and finished our talk."

"I suppose," said Sibyl a quarter of an hour later when they were discussing tea and tea-cake and pate-de-foie sandwiches and assorted cakelets, "what you really came to ask was would I present this Lucy-pucy of yours at Court. But, my _dear_, I shall be in mourning for a year, and the Queen----"

"_Lord_ no! Such a thing never entered my head. It would scare Lucy into fits. I hope before next season comes round I shall be back in Africa--or somewhere. So far as I connected Lucy with this visit I might have intended to ask you to let me bring her here one day, and for you to be kind to her ... not frighten her, as you very well could do, pretending all the time to be her best friend...."

_Sibyl_: "Well: I'll tell you what you shall do. You must remember I'm in mourning, of course.... We always have to think of what the servants will say.... And--ah! Did I tell you? Aunt Christabel is here. I sent her out the longest drive I could think of, so that we might have our afternoon alone; still, she's staying here till I emerge from the deepest of my mourning.... By the bye she's _horrified_ at your marriage, just as she used to be horrified at the idea of your marrying _me_.... Well, bring your Lucy over one day at the end of July and I'll just have a look at her. And then, in the autumn--say October--you and she, and of course if you like to have them, Maurice and Geoffrey too, could come here for the shooting. _Of course_ I shan't have a regular party; but somebody must come and shoot the pheasants. The Queen couldn't object to that. I've asked a man--I did before Francis's death--to come. You might like to meet him: a Sir Willowby Patterne.... Dare say you've heard of him?"

_Roger_: "I've heard no _good_ of him...."

"Oh, what tittle-tattlers and scandal-mongers you men are! I think he's so amusing, and every one says he's a splendid shot.... However, we will make up just a _tiny_ party and you and Lucy shall entertain for me. I shall purposely be very little seen and shall give out my cousins have come over to help me with my guests.... And, _Roger_! If I am to help you you must help _me_. The doctor says I positively _must_ take up my riding again unless I am to drift into being an invalid. Couldn't you--sometimes--whilst you're down in this part of the world--come over and ride with me? I can 'mount' you. You could ride poor Francis's cob ... not showy but very steady."

"I will, when I come back from town," said Roger, and took his departure, not at all dissatisfied with his afternoon.

Two days afterwards he thought it might be prudent to see how things were going at the Foreign Office. So he went up to town, changed into town togs at Hankey's (where their flat was becoming a white elephant, owing to Lucy's dislike to London, so he arranged to give it up), and betook himself to Downing Street, and asked to see Mr. Bennet Molyneux. "Mr. Bennet Molyneux," he was presently told, "is very sorry, sir, but he is much engaged this morning; would you go into the Department and see one of the young gentlemen there?"

The Department was a large, long room with a cubby-hole at its further end for the accommodation of the senior clerk, a sort of school prefect who had to keep order among the high-spirited juniors and therefore required to work a little apart from them. When Brentham entered the main room, announced by the office messenger, he recognized two friends of yore and several new, ingenuous faces. There also emerged from the cubby hole a man whom he had known as a junior three years previously: an agreeable gentleman of agricultural and sporting tastes, who, because of his occasional remonstrances and enforcement of discipline, was known as "Snarley Yow or the Dog Fiend." Then there were "Rosie" Walrond and Ted Parsons. (The others do not matter in this narrative: they merely served as chorus and acclaimers of the witticisms of the elder boys. They were all nice to look at, all well-mannered and all well-dressed.) "Rosie" Walrond was a young man--older than he looked--with wavy flaxen hair and mocking grey eyes, and an extremely cynical manner overlying an exceedingly kind heart.