Part 13

“Is this the doing of Flora? She told me that she should notify you of our coming, but it is good to meet with a friend’s face so early. Our stay is to be a very brief one. I have to return home for the Sunday. I cannot leave all in Clover’s hands. Besides, I trust there will be no need. You know the errand on which we are come?”

“I told him in my letter,” said Flora.

“This lady, this Mrs. Carey, had seen much of our dear fellow in India and her letter is full of feeling--full of feeling. She heard nothing of our tragedy until she landed in England. It seems that she had been in ill-health for some time, she writes of complete prostration, and is on her way to Scotland now. So you will understand our hasty journey hither. Has it not indeed been with us, ‘Ask and ye shall receive’? Flora, here, knows what my yearning has been for one word with those who knew him, who had been with him recently. And behold! it has been given unto me, ‘full measure, heaped up, pressed down and running over’.”

The Canon leant back. He looked very tired and old.

“Do you see her tomorrow morning, sir?”

“We go to her, Owen. She is good enough to receive us on Saturday morning, and I understand that she leaves that evening. Tomorrow I have a conference in the afternoon, but the morning is our own.”

He gazed wistfully at Owen.

“I had thought of a memorial window to the beloved David, and this is an opportunity which may not come again. I have the name of a place to which I half thought of going, if it be not too trying for little Flora.”

“Let me accompany you,” said Quentillian.

It was evidently what the Canon wished.

“Will you, dear lad? I own that I should be glad of your arm, aye, and your presence. Flora is overwrought and overtired.”

She did indeed look very ill, not at all to Quentillian’s surprise.

“She has been taking too much thought for me, dear child,” said the Canon, Quentillian could not help thinking with more truth than he realized. “I wish Flora to take some rest. Let the expedition tomorrow be yours and mine, Owen. Tell me, my daughter, what time am I free?”

“Tomorrow morning, till twelve o’clock. Your conference is at two.”

“Flora is my deputy secretary,” said the Canon smiling. “I trust it all to her, and her memory is unfailing. She is indeed my right hand.”

“Will you come at ten o’clock tomorrow, Owen, and start from here?” said Flora abruptly.

He assented, determined to obtain an opportunity of speaking to her alone. If he was to assist Flora in a scheme of concealment against which he inwardly revolted strongly, he must at least know of what that scheme consisted. His indignation waxed in proportion to his anxiety, until Flora said to him with deliberation:

“Ought we to keep you any longer, Owen? I’ll ring for the lift.” The suggestion took them both out of the room, and she closed the door after her.

“What is it you’re doing?” said Quentillian, his urgency too great for a choice of words.

She leant against the passage wall, white and rather breathless, but spoke low and very distinctly, as though to impress her facts upon him.

“Listen--I want you to be quite clear about it. The appointment with Mrs. Carey is for tomorrow--Friday morning. I’m going to her house. I’m certain from her letter, that she’s not a woman to be trusted. I don’t know why she wants to see us, but I think it’s to tell us things--things about David. I shall know when I’ve seen her.”

“But your father thinks the appointment is for Saturday?”

“I told him it was. I wrote the letter to arrange it.”

“And how are you to prevent his going there on Saturday?”

“She leaves for Scotland on Friday night.”

“You know that for certain?”

“Of course I do, Owen. One doesn’t leave these things to chance. But I shall telephone on Saturday and find out if she’s really left.”

“I still don’t understand altogether. How can you explain to the Canon that this lady isn’t there, when he goes by appointment to see her?”

“I shall have made a mistake. I’m keeping his engagements written down for him. And I shall have written down this engagement for Saturday, instead of for Friday. He will go exactly one day too late.”

“Flora, you can’t do it.”

She lifted tired eyes to his face, overwrought to the point of fanaticism.

“Don’t waste time. Only tell me if I can count on you. All I want you to do is to keep Father out, with you, tomorrow morning. I shall be at Mrs. Carey’s at half-past ten and I promise to be back here before one o’clock.”

“Suppose this lady is not what you think her, and you find that she will be--discreet--is your father to be disappointed of his hopes of seeing her?”

“I may be able to arrange something. Perhaps she’d put off going to Scotland, and see him on Saturday after all. It would be all right then, wouldn’t it? Or I might even be able to tell her the whole thing,” said Flora wistfully. “It isn’t very likely, though.”

He did not think that it was.

“You see, you didn’t see her original letter, and I did. It was the letter of a very hysterical person. She might say almost anything, I imagine and--well, there’s a good deal that mustn’t be said, isn’t there?”

It was incontrovertible, but Quentillian said roughly:

“I detest maneuvering, it’s utterly unworthy of you. All this juggling with dates and letters----”

“It’s no use doing things by halves,” said Flora stubbornly. “Yes or no, Owen, are you going to back me up if necessary?”

“If I say no, will it deter you from going through with this insane performance?”

“Of course it won’t.” She actually smiled. “What would be the sense of making up one’s mind if it’s to be unmade again just because one’s friends don’t agree with one?”

“Very well.” He shrugged his shoulders as one in desperation.

She evidently accepted it as the assent, however ungracious, that he meant it to be.

“Thank you very much,” said Flora with brief finality.

(iii)

Flora followed Mrs. Carey’s maid upstairs, feeling as though the beating of her heart were causing each breath she drew to crowd thickly upon the next one.

Mrs. Carey’s house--she supposed it was Mrs. Carey’s house--was a very tiny one indeed, and looked tinier by reason of the number of pictures, draperies, and flowers that covered every available corner of the steep staircase and the small landing.

The drawing-room was small, too, and so dark that the maid turned on the rose-shaded electric lights as she ushered Flora into the empty room.

“Mrs. Carey isn’t down yet. I’ll tell her you’re here, m’m.”

“Mrs. Carey is expecting me. Please say that it is Miss Morchard.”

The maid went away.

“Unpunctual,” reflected Flora. “She said half-past ten.”

She gazed round the room, which confirmed the impression of Mrs. Carey’s personality that Flora had already received from her pale mauve notepaper, her methods of expressing herself in writing, and that which she knew of her relations with David Morchard.

Nearly everything in the room was rose-colour, except the walls, which were grey, and laden with sketches, brackets, and a shelf on which stood innumerable framed and unframed photographs, nearly all of them of men.

A minute writing-table, set corner ways, overflowed with papers, and more photographs, including one that Flora recognized instantly, although it had never been sent to St. Gwenllian.

The chair in front of the table supported a number of illustrated papers.

“Untidy,” was Flora’s next verdict.

She had resolutely closed the avenues of her mind to emotion and speculation alike. The habits of observation, which she mentioned in private spiritual consultation with her father as her own tendency towards a lack of charity, she knew subconsciously to possess a steadying effect.

A quantity of cigarette ash in a small receptacle, presumably placed there on the previous evening, and a general atmosphere of unopened windows, did not serve to modify Flora’s already unenthusiastic judgments.

Neither did Mrs. Carey’s delay in making her appearance.

When she at last came in, it was difficult to see what could possibly have delayed her, since she had apparently only stepped out of bed into a wadded silk kimono, a lace boudoir cap, and fur-bordered bedroom slippers.

She looked younger than Flora had expected her to be, and her little pallid face was pretty enough, with violet semi-circles under big, light blue eyes and a general air of fragility. Although nearly as tall as Flora herself, she was slight enough to produce an effect of daintiness, the adjective that Flora immediately felt certain would appeal to her most.

A short, thick plait of fair hair fell over her shoulders, and a certain babyish plaintiveness of utterance made Flora think of Olga Duffle.

“I’m sure you’re David’s sister,” said Mrs. Carey, to which proof of intuition her visitor offered no reply, thinking the fact sufficiently self-evident.

“Oh, do sit down. You must forgive me coming in like this, but I’m not strong, and I arrived worn out after an awful voyage--and then to get this news! Do you smoke?”

“No, thank you.”

“Do you mind if I do? I smoke too much, but my nerves are in an awful state. A doctor friend of mine--the dearest thing--made me promise faithfully never to inhale, but I’m afraid I do. It was the ship’s doctor, on the way home, as a matter of fact. There were one or two nice men on board, but the women were dreadful. Miss Morchard, I should think other women generally confide in you, don’t they, and like you most awfully. Now, I’m _not_ enormously popular with other women. I don’t mean that I haven’t got women-friends, devoted ones, who’d do anything in the world for me--but most of my very best pals have been men. It’s funny, isn’t it? Your brother was one of my _dearest_ friends.”

The blue eyes looked warily at Flora.

“That’s why I felt I had to see you, and oh! you are so like him! It’s hardly like talking to a stranger at all!”

It certainly was not, Flora reflected.

“I feel I’m so dreadfully in the dark--I know nothing. Only the awful, awful fact. When I got the cable--it was cabled to me, by a dear friend at Government House--when I read it, I simply didn’t believe it. I said, ‘It can’t be true.’ But it was.”

Flora did not feel it incumbent upon her to reply.

“When your father got my letter, I daresay he was astonished, but I’m frightfully impulsive, Miss Morchard, and I felt I _must_ know more or I should go mad. That’s why I begged you to let me see you. I’m a thoroughly unconventional woman, as you may perhaps have guessed, and I always act on impulse.”

Flora looked at the frightened, furtive little face, and wondered what purpose and what concealment lay behind the flood of words.

“I’m going to be perfectly frank with you, because I feel I can trust you. May I call you Flora? My name is Maisie--a silly little name, isn’t it, but my friends all say it suits me. I don’t know why. Tell me, did David write to you about me? He said he was going to, but it was such a--such a short time before----”

Mrs. Carey’s tongue moistened her lips as though they were dry.

“I don’t know whether you’ve ever lived abroad, but if you haven’t, you don’t know what the East is like for people who have to live there. There’s a frightful amount of slander and gossip going on, and people put a wicked construction on all sorts of innocent things. It’s awful. It used to make me simply miserable. You see, live and let live has always been my motto. I like to go my own way, and have my own friends, and not do any harm to anybody, but simply be happy in my own little way. After all, it’s what God meant for all of us, isn’t it? But in India one can’t do that. My dear, you wouldn’t believe what it’s like. I went out when I was awfully young--I was married at twenty--and I know for a fact that the most beastly things have been said about me. You see, I feel I can tell you this quite frankly, Flora, because of your being David’s favourite sister. I know you’ll understand, and that I can trust you.”

Again that anxious, furtive glance was shot at her from under Mrs. Carey’s long lashes.

“I’ve had heaps of men friends, of course--especially in the Regiment. I’m going to be _perfectly_ honest with you, and own up that one or two of them got rather silly, and fancied themselves in love with me. That wasn’t my fault, was it? I just wanted to be friends, you know. A nice woman can do such a lot for young men. I couldn’t help it--possibly--if they went and fancied themselves in love with me. Now could I? But would you believe it, people--it was mostly women, I must say, and some of them actually called themselves my friends--went and invented the most disgusting lies about me. Out of jealousy, you know. I was a good ten years younger than any of them, as it happened, and you’d have thought the Colonel’s wife, or anyone like that, might have wanted to mother me a little bit. (I lost my own mother when I was only fourteen, and had a rotten time at home.) But instead of that, my dear, _instead_ of that, they simply spread these filthy stories about me and all my best friends. However, I don’t want to go into all that. It was soon after I first went out, and of course nobody who really knew me believed for an instant that there was anything in it. They heard something about it at Government House, you know, and the Governor was simply furious, I believe. My friend in the Secretariat told me about it. The Governor said that Mrs. Carey was the only real lady in the place, as well as being the prettiest woman in India. Of course, that may have been nonsense, because I happen to know that he did like me most awfully--personally, I mean--but I know I was most awfully touched at his taking up the cudgels for me like that. It showed what the people who really _mattered_ thought of me, didn’t it, and after all, the Governor of a place does represent the King, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Flora.

It was the first appeal to which she had felt able to give any assent.

“You said that so like David!” cried Mrs. Carey clasping her hands together. “We were the greatest friends, and he used to come to me about everything. I used to tell him to marry....”

Another pause, and another look.

“I always want my young-men friends to marry. That just shows, doesn’t it, what nonsense it is for anyone to talk as though there were anything wrong about it? I don’t know whether your brother ever hinted anything to you, in his letters, about any horrid gossip. Between ourselves, he used to get angry, I know, at the things that were sometimes said, and of course he knew that I wasn’t--well, very happy. You’re not married, I know, so perhaps you won’t understand what it means to a woman, especially a very sensitive one, which I am, to have a husband who is jealous. I’m not blaming Fred, exactly, I suppose he can’t help it, and he was madly in love with me when we married. Of course, I was much too young and ignorant of life to marry, but I had an awfully unhappy home, and if it hadn’t been Fred, it would have been somebody else--men were always pestering me, somehow. Besides, people made mischief between us. How people can be wicked enough to come between husband and wife, I can’t think! I’ve been through hell once or twice in my life, I can tell you!”

Looking at the fear and the craftiness and the sensuality written on Maisie Carey’s small, ravaged face, Flora could believe it without difficulty.

“I don’t really know why I’m telling you all this, exactly. It’s not like me. I’m terribly reserved, really. But you’ve got such an awfully nice face, somehow, and you’re David’s sister. I can’t tell you how fond I was of David--we were just tremendous chums. It upset me awfully, that he should die in that sudden way.”

She began to cry in a convulsive, spasmodic way.

Flora still remained silent.

“I wish you’d tell me if he ever wrote anything to you about me,” sobbed Mrs. Carey.

In the midst of the tears which seemed to be really beyond her own control, Flora caught a glimpse as of a terrible anxiety. She suddenly knew that in the answer to that last, sobbed-out question lay, for Mrs. Carey, the crux of their interview.

“He did write,” said Flora. “But what he wrote is safe with me. It will never go any further.”

The figure in the gay silk kimono seemed to cower further back into the armchair, but there was no self-betraying exclamation.

“I suppose he told you about Fred and me?”

“And about himself too,” said Flora.

“Men are all alike! Why did he want to tell you?”

“So that I could tell my father and sister. David was afraid of Father.”

“Your father knows?” This time the note of alarm was undisguised.

“No. The letter was only found and posted after the ones that told us of David’s death. And I have told my father nothing.”

Mrs. Carey broke into vehement, hysterical speech.

“There’s nothing to tell! You people at home make such mountains out of molehills. I swear to you that there was nothing between us, that I never----”

Flora interrupted her.

“He told me everything,” she repeated. “He told me that the case would be undefended, and that he was coming home to marry you. So you see I know.”

“You! What can you, who’ve never married, never seen anything of life, know of things? You see evil where none exists--you’re like all these good and holy people ... intolerant....” Tears poured unchecked down her face, making streaks across the white powder. “You don’t even _begin_ to know what I’ve gone through. My husband is a beast--a _beast_. You don’t know what that means.”

She flung herself backwards, almost prone, and wept hysterically.

“What are you going to do?” said Flora.

“Kill myself!”

The rhetorical answer came almost automatically.

Flora waited for a moment and then said very gently:

“As you say, I don’t know anything about these things, but perhaps you would tell me what you want. We might think of some way of making things better. And you can see for yourself that your secret--and David’s--is safe with me. I’ve deceived my father, sooner than let him guess. I don’t think he need ever know, now.”

“Why don’t you want him to know?” said Mrs. Carey with sudden curiosity that seemed to check her crying.

“It would make him very unhappy. He was proud of David and he thinks that David had a career before him. Perhaps you’ve read in books,” said Flora, speaking as though to a child, “about people thinking death is better than dishonour. Well, my father is like that.”

“He’s a parson, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Carey shrugged her shoulders.

“Where is your husband now?” Flora enquired. She felt that she could ask this woman questions without fear or rebuff, but she thought that it would be for her to disentangle the truth from the false in Mrs. Carey’s replies.

“Fred’s in Scotland. He’s staying with his mother. She’s a beastly old woman and I hate her. If she’d been a decent sort, you’d think she’d have used her influence to put things right between us, now wouldn’t you? But she’s never let Fred alone ever since we married. Always telling him tales about me, and saying I’m extravagant, and a flirt, and wanting to know why I’ve never had a baby. It’s not my fault if I’ve got rotten health, now is it? I’ve always been delicate. I’m sure I only wish I had got a child. It might have made Fred nicer to me, and I should have had something to care for.”

She began to cry again.

“I’m sure I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Perhaps you think I’m mad.”

“I’m dreadfully sorry for you,” said Flora truthfully.

“You’re a dear.” Mrs. Carey dropped the hostility out of her voice abruptly. “No one knows what I’ve gone through. And now about David--it’s simply awful!”

“Did you really mean to marry David, after your divorce?”

“I’d better tell you the whole story, I suppose,” said Mrs. Carey. She dried her eyes and her voice insensibly hardened from self-pity into tones of satisfaction.

“I suppose I’ve always been attractive to men. I can’t help it, after all. And I daresay I’ve played the fool, in my time--in fact I don’t deny it. But David and I were simply tremendous friends, to begin with. He was frightfully sorry for me, too. Everybody knew that Fred was simply hateful to me, and made a scene if I so much as went out riding with another man. He quite liked your brother, though, at first, I will say that for him. We used to have him to dinner pretty often, and one of the subalterns to make a fourth, and play Bridge. Well, I never guessed that your brother did more than just like me as a great friend, as heaps of men did--how could I? I used to advise him to marry, often and often. Some nice girl at home, who’d come out and look after him. Those boys all drink more than is good for them, out there, if they’ve no wife to look after them. And David used to talk nonsense about having no use for girls, and having met his ideal too late, but of course I never took it seriously. Heaps of men say things like that to one, now don’t they? We used to go out riding together a good deal, and of course I danced with him. (That’s another of the ways in which Fred is so frightfully selfish. He can’t dance himself ever since he was wounded in the war, so he hates me to.) Then people began to say the usual horrid things. The women out there are all cats, and besides, a good many of them wanted David for themselves. I didn’t take any notice. I think it’s so much more dignified not to, don’t you? As I said to the Colonel’s wife, when she had the impertinence to speak to me about it, I never _have_ taken any notice of gossip, and I’m not going to begin now. I simply go my own way, and let people say what they choose. It doesn’t matter to me if they’ve got horrible minds. It’s themselves that are hurt by it, I always think, not me. But I think women are much braver and more unconventional than men, don’t you? David minded ever so much more than I did, when he found people were talking about us. Well, things were going from bad to worse between Fred and me, and one night he was so perfectly hateful to me that I got frightened. He was--not drunk, but not altogether sober. And I ran into the compound and down the road to David’s bungalow. He shared it with another man, but the other man was away shooting. You see, I was so frightened and upset that I didn’t know what I was doing, and I just felt I must go to someone who’d take care of me.”

Mrs. Carey swallowed, as though something in her throat were hurting her, and lit another cigarette with a hand that trembled.

“It was a frightfully imprudent thing to do, I suppose, but I’ve never pretended to be a particularly prudent woman. I daresay I should have been much happier if I’d been less impulsive, all my life, but after all, one can’t change one’s nature, can one? Besides, I was nearly out of my mind. Fred came to find me next morning. I was far too miserable and terrified to go back to him that night. We had scene after scene, after that, and he threatened me with divorce proceedings.”

She glanced at her motionless auditor.

“I may have been a careless fool, and I’ll go as far as to say that I’ve flirted with other men, but it was wicked of Fred to think of such a thing as divorce--to ruin my reputation, and spoil David’s career.”

“Why was the case to be undefended?” said Flora steadily.

“Why--why, don’t you see, when it all came to a crisis, I told David how utterly wretched my whole life was, and how I couldn’t bear it and should kill myself, and we had to talk things over, and see what could be done with Fred, who was like a madman. And then it all came out--I mean David said I was the only woman he could ever care for, and if I was free, wouldn’t I marry him, and let him try to make up to me for everything.”

“Why was the case to be undefended?”

“It would make less of a scandal if it was all done quietly. I--I didn’t feel I could face the other.”

In the truth of that last assertion, Flora could believe absolutely.