Chapter 24

"What time is the carriage ordered for Mr. Nixon?" asked Marsham of his servant.

"Her ladyship, sir, told me to tell the stables four-twenty at Dunscombe."

"Let me hear directly the carriage arrives. And, Richard, go and see if the Dunscombe paper is come, and bring it up."

The footman disappeared. As soon as the door was shut Marsham sank back into his cushions with a stifled groan. He was lying on a sofa in his own sitting-room. A fire burned in the grate, and Marsham's limbs were covered with a rug. Yet it was only the first week of September, and the afternoon was warm and sunny. The neuralgic pain, however, from which he had suffered day and night since the attack upon him made him susceptible to the slightest breath of chill.

The footman returned with the newspaper.

"Is her ladyship at home?"

"I think not, sir. I saw her ladyship go out a little while ago with Miss Drake. Is there anything else I can get for you?"

"Make up the fire, please. Put the cigarettes here, and don't come till I ring."

Marsham, left alone, lit a cigarette, and fell hungrily upon the paper, his forehead and lips still drawn with pain. The paper contained an account of the stone-throwing at Hartingfield, and of the injury to himself; a full record of the last five or six days of the election, and of the proceedings at the declaration of the poll; a report, moreover, of the "chivalrous and sympathetic references" made by the newly elected Conservative member to the "dastardly attack" upon his rival, which the "whole of West Brookshire condemns and deplores."

The leading article "condemned" and "deplored," at considerable length and in good set terms, through two paragraphs. In the third it "could not disguise--from itself or its readers"--that Mr. Marsham's defeat by so large a majority had been a strong probability from the first, and had been made a certainty by the appearance on the eve of the poll of "the Barrington letter." "No doubt, some day, Mr. Marsham will give his old friends and former constituents in this division the explanations in regard to this letter--taken in connection with his own repeated statements at meetings and in the press--which his personal honor and their long fidelity seem to demand. Meanwhile we can only express to our old member our best wishes both for his speedy recovery from the effects of a cowardly and disgraceful attack, and for the restoration of a political position which only a few months ago seemed so strong and so full of promise."

Marsham put down the paper. He could see the whipper-snapper of an editor writing the lines, with a wary eye both to the past and future of the Marsham influence in the division. The self-made, shrewd little man had been Oliver's political slave and henchman through two Parliaments; and he had no doubt reflected that neither the Tallyn estates, nor the Marsham wealth had been wiped out by the hostile majority of last Saturday. At the same time, the state of feeling in the division was too strong; the paper which depended entirely on local support could not risk its very existence by countering it.

Marsham's keen brain spared him nothing. His analysis of his own situation, made at leisure during the week which had elapsed since the election, had been as pitiless and as acute as that of any opponent could have been. He knew exactly what he had lost, and why.

A majority of twelve hundred against him, in a constituency where, up to the dissolution, he had commanded a majority--for him--of fifteen hundred. And that at a general election, when his party was sweeping the country!

He had, of course, resigned his office, and had received a few civil and sympathetic words from the Premier--words which but for his physical injury, so the recipient of them suspected, might have been a good deal less civil and less sympathetic. No effort had been made to delay the decision. For a Cabinet Minister, defeated at a bye-election, a seat must be found. For a Junior Lord and a Second Whip nobody will put themselves out.

He was, therefore, out of Parliament and out of office; estranged from multitudes of old friends; his name besmirched by some of the most damaging accusations that can be brought against a man's heart and honor.

He moved irritably among his cushions, trying to arrange them more comfortably. This _infernal_ pain! It was to be hoped Nixon would be able to do more for it than that ass, the Dunscombe doctor. Marsham thought, with resentment, of all his futile drugs and expedients. According to the Dunscombe man, the stone had done no vital injury, but had badly bruised one of the lower vertebræ, and jarred the nerves of the spine generally. Local rest, various applications, and nerve--soothing drugs--all these had been freely used, and with no result. The pain had been steadily growing worse, and in the last twenty-four hours certain symptoms had appeared, which, when he first noticed them, had roused in Marsham a gust of secret terror; and Nixon, a famous specialist in nerve and spinal disease, had been summoned forthwith.

To distract his thoughts, Marsham took up the paper again.

What was wrong with the light? He looked at the clock, and read it with some difficulty. Close on four only, and the September sun was shining brightly outside. It was his eyes, he supposed, that were not quite normal Very likely. A nervous shock must, of course, show itself in a variety of ways. At any rate, he found reading difficult, and the paper slid away.

The pain, however, would not let him doze. He looked helplessly round the room, feeling depressed and wretched. Why were his mother and Alicia out so long? They neglected and forgot him. Yet he could not but remember that they had both devoted themselves to him in the morning, had read to him and written for him, and he had not been a very grateful patient. He recalled, with bitterness, the look of smiling relief with which Alicia had sprung up at the sound of the luncheon-bell, dropping the book from which she had been reading aloud, and the little song he had heard her humming in the corridor as she passed his door on her way down-stairs.

_She_ was in no pain physical or mental, and she had probably no conception of what he had endured these six days and nights. But one would have thought that mere instinctive sympathy with the man to whom she was secretly engaged.

For they were secretly engaged. It was during one of their early drives, in the canvassing of the first election, that he had lost his head one June afternoon, as they found themselves alone, crossing a beech wood on one of the private roads of the Tallyn estate; the groom having been despatched on a message to a farm-house. Alicia was in her most daring and provocative mood, tormenting and flattering him by turns; the reflections from her rose-colored parasol dappling her pale skin with warm color; her beautiful ungloved hands and arms, bare to the elbow, teasing the senses of the man beside her. Suddenly he had thrown his arm round her, and crushed her to him, kissing the smooth cool face and the dazzling hair. And she had nestled up to him and laughed--not the least abashed or astonished; so that even then, through his excitement, there had struck a renewed and sharp speculation as to her twenty-four hours' engagement to the Curate, in the spring of the year; as to the privileges she must have allowed him; and no doubt to others before him.

At that time, it was tacitly understood between them that no engagement could be announced. Alicia was well aware that Brookshire was looking on; that Brookshire was on the side of Diana Mallory, the forsaken, and was not at all inclined to forgive either the deserting lover or the supplanting damsel; so that while she was not loath to sting and mystify Brookshire by whatever small signs of her power over Oliver Marsham she could devise; though she queened it beside him on his coach, and took charge with Lady Lucy of his army of women canvassers; though she faced the mob with him at Hartingfield, on the occasion of the first disturbance there in June, and had stood beside him, vindictively triumphant on the day of his first hard-won victory, she would wear no ring, and she baffled all inquiries, whether of her relations or her girl friends. Her friendship with her cousin Oliver was nobody's concern but her own, she declared, and all they both wanted was to be let alone.

Meanwhile she had been shaken and a little frightened by the hostile feeling shown toward her, no less than Oliver, in the first election. She had taken no part in the second, although she had been staying at Tallyn all through it, and was present when Oliver was brought in, half fainting and agonized with pain, after the Hartingfield riot.

* * * * *

Oliver, now lying with closed eyes on his sofa, lived again through the sensations and impressions of that first hour: the pain--the arrival of the doctor--the injection of morphia--the blessed relief stealing through his being--and then Alicia's face beside him. Delivered from the obsession of intolerable anguish, he had been free to notice with a kind of exultation the tears in the girl's eyes, her pale tremor and silence. Never yet had Alicia wept for _him_ or anything that concerned him. Never, indeed, had he seen her weep in his whole life before. He triumphed in her tears.

Since then, however, their whole relation had insensibly and radically changed; their positions toward each other were reversed. Till the day of his injury and his defeat, Marsham had been in truth the wooed and Alicia the wooer. Now it seemed to him as though, through his physical pain, he were all the time clinging to something that shrank away and resisted him--something that would ultimately elude and escape him.

He knew well that Alicia liked sickness and melancholy no more than he did; and he was constantly torn between a desire to keep her near him and a perception that to tie her to his sick-room was, in fact, the worst of policies.

Persistently, in the silence of the hot room, there rang through his brain the questions: "Do I really care whether she stays or goes?--do I love her?--shall I ever marry her?" Questions that were immediately answered, it seemed, by the rise of a wave of desolate and desperate feeling. He was maimed and ruined; life had broken under his feet. What if also he were done forever with love and marriage?

There were still some traces in his veins of the sedative drug which had given him a few hours' sleep during the night. Under its influence a feverish dreaminess overtook him, alive with fancies and images. Ferrier and Diana were among the phantoms that peopled the room. He saw Ferrier come in, stoop over the newspaper on the floor, raise it, and walk toward the fire with it. The figure stood with its back to him; then suddenly it turned, and Marsham saw the well-known face, intent, kindly, a little frowning, as though in thought, but showing no consciousness of his, Oliver's, presence or plight. He himself wished to speak, but was only aware of useless effort and some intangible hinderance. Then Ferrier moved on toward a writing-table with drawers that stood beyond the fireplace. He stooped, and touched a handle. "No!" cried Oliver, violently--"no!" He woke with shock and distress, his pulse racing. But the feverish state began again, and dreams with it--of the House of Commons, the election, the faces in the Hartingfield crowd. Diana was among the crowd--looking on--vaguely beautiful and remote. Yet as he perceived her a rush of cool air struck on his temples, he seemed to be walking down a garden, there was a scent of limes and roses.

"Oliver!" said his mother's voice beside him--"dear Oliver!"

He roused himself to find Lady Lucy bending over him. The pale dismay in her face excited and irritated him.

He turned away from her.

"Is Nixon come?"

"Dearest, he has just arrived. Will you see him at once?"

"Of course!" he said, angrily. "Why doesn't Richard do as he's told?"

He raised himself into a sitting posture, while Lady Lucy went to the door. The local doctor entered--a stranger behind him. Lady Lucy left her son and the great surgeon together.

* * * * *

Nearly an hour later, Mr. Nixon, waylaid by Lady Lucy, was doing his best to compromise, as doctors must, between consideration for the mother and truth as to the Son. There was, he hoped, no irreparable injury. But the case would be long, painful, trying to everybody concerned. Owing to the mysterious nerve-sympathies of the body, the sight was already affected and would be more so. Complete rest, certain mechanical applications, certain drugs--he ran through his recommendations.

"Avoid morphia, I implore you," he said, earnestly, "if you possibly can. Here a man's friends can be of great help to him. Cheer him and distract him in every way you can. I think we shall be able to keep the pain within bounds."

Lady Lucy looked piteously at the speaker.

"And how long?" she said, trembling.

Mr. Nixon hesitated. "I am afraid I can hardly answer that. The blow was a most unfortunate one. It might have done a worse injury. Your son might be now a paralyzed invalid for life. But the case is very serious, nor is it possible yet to say what all the consequences of the injury may be. But keep your own courage up--and his. The better his general state, the more chance he has."

A few minutes more, and the brougham had carried him away. Lady Lucy, looking after it from the window of her sitting-room, knew that for her at last what she had been accustomed to describe every Sunday as "the sorrows of this transitory life" had begun. Till now they had been as veiled shapes in a misty distance. She had accepted them with religious submission, as applying to others. Her mind, resentful and astonished, must now admit them--pale messengers of powers unseen and pitiless!--to its own daily experience; must look unprotected, unscreened, into their stern faces.

"John!--John!" cried the inner voice of agonized regret. And then: "My boy!--my boy!"

* * * * *

"What did he say?" asked Alicia's voice, beside her.

The sound--the arm thrown round her--were not very welcome to Lady Lucy. Her nature, imperious and jealously independent, under all her sweetness of manner, set itself against pity, especially from her juniors. She composed herself at once.

"He does not give a good account," she said, withdrawing herself gently but decidedly. "It may take a long time before Oliver is quite himself again."

Alicia persisted in a few questions, extracting all the information she could. Then Lady Lucy sat down at her writing-table and began to arrange some letters. Alicia's presence annoyed her. The truth was that she was not as fond of Alicia as she had once been. These misfortunes, huddling one on another, instead of drawing them together, had in various and subtle ways produced a secret estrangement. To neither the older nor the younger woman could the familiar metaphor have been applied which compares the effects of sorrow or sympathy on fine character to the bruising of fragrant herbs. Ferrier's death, sorely and bitterly lamented though it was, had not made Lady Lucy more lovable. Oliver's misfortune had not--toward Lady Lucy, at any rate--liberated in Alicia those hidden tendernesses that may sometimes transmute and glorify natures apparently careless or stubborn, brought eye to eye with pain. Lady Lucy also resented her too long exclusion from Alicia's confidence. Like all the rest of the world, she believed there was an understanding between Oliver and Alicia. Of course, there were reasons for not making anything of the sort public at present. But a mother, she thought, ought to have been told.

"Does Mr. Nixon recommend that Oliver should go abroad for the winter?" asked Alicia, after a pause. She was sitting on the arm of a chair, her slender feet hanging, and the combination of her blue linen dress with the fiery gold of her hair reminded Lady Lucy of the evening in the Eaton Square drawing-room, when she had first entertained the idea that Alicia and Oliver might marry. Oliver, standing erect in front of the fire looking down upon Alicia in her blue tulle--his young vigor and distinction--the carriage of his handsome head--was she never to see that sight again--never? Her heart fluttered and sank; the prison of life contracted round her.

She answered, rather shortly.

"He made no plan of the kind. Travelling, in fact, is absolutely forbidden for the present."

"Poor Oliver!" said Alicia, gently, her eyes on the ground. "How _horrid_ it is that I have to go away!"

"You! When?" Lady Lucy turned sharply to look at the speaker.

"Oh! not till Saturday," said Alicia, hastily; "and of course I shall come back again--if you want me." She looked up with a smile.

"Oliver will certainly want you; I don't know whom he could--possibly--want--so much." Lady Lucy spoke the words with slow emphasis.

"Dear old boy!--I know," murmured Alicia. "I needn't be long away."

"Why must you go at all? I am sure the Treshams--Lady Evelyn--would understand--"

"Oh, I promised so faithfully!" pleaded Alicia, joining her hands. "And then, you know, I should be able to bring all sorts of gossip back to Oliver to amuse him."

Lady Lucy pressed her hand to her eyes in a miserable bewilderment. "I suppose it will be an immense party. You told me, I think, that Lady Evelyn had asked Lord Philip Darcy. I should be glad if you would make her understand that neither I, nor Sir James Chide, nor any other old friend of Mr. Ferrier can ever meet that man on friendly terms again." She looked up, her wrinkled cheeks flushed with color, her aspect threatening and cold.

"Of course!" said Alicia, soothingly. "Hateful man! I too loathe the thought of meeting him. But you know how delicate Evelyn is, and how she has been depending on me to help her. Now, oughtn't we to go back to Oliver?" She rose from her chair.

"Mr. Nixon left some directions to which I must attend," said Lady Lucy, turning to her desk. "Will you go and read to him?"

Alicia moved away, but paused as she neared the door.

"What did Mr. Nixon say about Oliver's eyes? He has been suffering from them dreadfully to-day."

"Everything is connected. We can only wait."

"Are you--are you thinking of a nurse?"

"No," said Lady Lucy, decidedly. "His man Richard is an excellent nurse. I shall never leave him--and you say"--she turned pointedly to look at Alicia--"you say you will come back?"

"Of course!--of course I will come back!" cried Alicia. Then, stepping up briskly to Lady Lucy, she stooped and kissed her. "And there is you to look after, too!"

Lady Lucy allowed the kiss, but made no reply to the remark. Alicia departed.

* * * * *

She went slowly up the wide oak staircase. How stifling the house was on this delicious afternoon! Suddenly, in the distance, she heard the sound of guns--a shooting-party, no doubt, in the Melford woods. Her feet danced under her, and she gave a sigh of longing for the stubbles and the sunny fields, and the companionship of handsome men, of health and vigor as flawless and riotous as her own.

Oliver was lying still, with closed eyes, when she rejoined him. He made no sign as she opened the door, and she sank down on a stool beside him and laid her head against his shoulder.

"Dear Oliver, you must cheer up," she said, softly. "You'll be well soon--quite soon--if you are only patient."

He made no reply.

"Did you like Mr. Nixon?" she asked, in the same caressing voice, gently rubbing her cheek against his arm.

"One doesn't exactly like one's executioner," he said, hoarsely and suddenly, but without opening his eyes.

"Oliver!--dearest!" She dropped a protesting kiss on the sleeve of his coat.

Silence for a little, Alicia felt as if she could hardly breathe in the hot room. Then Oliver raised himself.

"I am going blind!"--he said, violently. "And nothing can be done. Did that man tell my mother that?"

"No, no!--Oliver!" She threw her arm round him, hastily repeating and softening Nixon's opinion.

He sank back on his cushions, gloomily listening--without assent. Presently he shook his head.

"The stuff that doctors talk when they can do no good, and want to get comfortably out of the house! Alicia!"

She bent forward startled.

"Alicia!--are you going to stick to me?"

His eyes held her.

"Oliver!--what a cruel question!"

"No, it is not cruel." He spoke with a decision which took no account of her caresses. "I ought to give you up--I know that perfectly well. But I tell you frankly I shall have no motive to get well if you leave me. I think that man told me the truth--I did my best to make him. There _is_ a chance of my getting well--the thing is _not_ hopeless. If you'll stand by me, I'll fight through. Will you?" He looked at her with a threatening and painful eagerness.

"Of course I will," she said, promptly.

"Then let us tell my mother to-night that we are engaged? Mind, I am not deceiving you. I would give you up at once if I were hopelessly ill. I am only asking you to bear a little waiting--and wretchedness--for my sake."

"I will bear anything. Only, dear Oliver--for your sake--for mine--wait a little longer! You know what horrible gossip there's been!" She clung to him, murmuring: "I couldn't bear that anybody should speak or think harshly of you now. It can make no difference to you and me, but two or three months hence everybody would take it so differently. You know we said in June--six months."

Her voice was coaxing and sweet. He partly withdrew himself from her, however.

"At least, you can tell my mother," he said, insisting. "Of course, she suspects it all."

"Oh, but, dear Oliver!"--she brought her face nearer to his, and he saw the tears in her eyes--"one's own mother ought to know first of all. Mamma would be so hurt--she would never forgive me. Let me pay this horrid visit--and then go home and tell my people--if you really, really wish it. Afterward of course, I shall come back to you--and Cousin Lucy shall know--and at Christmas--everybody."

"What visit? You _are_ going to Eastham?--to the Tresham's?" It was a cry of incredulous pain.

"How _can_ I get out of it, dear Oliver? Evelyn has been _so_ ill!--and she's been depending on me--and I owe her so much. You know how good she was to me in the Season."

He lifted himself again on his cushions, surveying her ironically--his eyes sunken and weak--his aspect ghastly.

"Well, how long do you mean to stay? Is Lord Philip going to be there?"

"What do I care whether he is or not!"

"You said you were longing to know him."

"That was before you were ill."

"I don't see any logic in that remark." He lay looking at her. Then suddenly he put out an arm, pulled her down to him feebly, and kissed her. But the movement hurt him. He turned away with some broken words--or, rather, moans--stifled against his pillows.

"Dear, do lie still. Shall I read to you?"

He shook his head.

"Don't stay with me. I shall be better after dinner."

She rose obediently, touched him caressingly with her hand, drew a light shawl over him, and stole away.

* * * * *

When she reached her own room she stood a moment, frowning and absorbed; beside the open window. Then some one knocked at her door. It was her maid, who came in carrying a large light box.

Alicia flew toward her.

"From Cosette! Heavens! Oh, Benson, quick! Put it down. I'll help you."

The maid obeyed, and ran to the dressing-table for scissors. Cords and tapes were soon cut in the hurry of unpacking, and from the crackling tissue-paper there emerged an evening gown of some fresh snowy stuff, delicately painted and embroidered, which drew from the maid little shrieks of admiration.

Alicia looked at it more critically.

"The lace is not good enough," she said, twisting her lip, "and I shall make her give me some more embroidery than that on the bodice--for the money--I can tell her! However, it is pretty--much prettier, isn't it, Benson, than that gown of Lady Evelyn's I took it from? She'll be jealous!" The girl laughed triumphantly. "Well, now, look here, Benson, we're going on Saturday, and I want to look through my gowns. Get them out, and I'll see if there's anything I can send home."

The maid's face fell.

"I packed some of them this morning, miss--in the large American trunk. I thought they'd keep better there than anywhere. It took a lot of time."

"Oh, never mind. You can easily pack them again. I really must go through them."

The maid unwillingly obeyed; and soon the room--bed, sofa, chairs--was covered with costly gowns, for all hours of the day and night: walking-dresses, in autumn stuffs and colors, ready for the moors and stubbles; afternoon frocks of an elaborate simplicity, expensively girlish; evening dresses in an amazing variety of hue and fabric; with every possible adjunct in the way of flowers, gloves, belt, that dressmakers and customer could desire.

Alicia looked at it all with glowing cheeks. She reflected that she had really spent the last check she had made her father give her to very great Advantage. There were very few people of her acquaintance, girls or married women, who knew how to get as much out of money as she did.

In her mind she ran over the list of guests invited to the Eastham party, as her new friend Lady Evelyn had confided it to her. Nothing could be smarter, but the competition among the women would be terribly keen. "Of course, I can't touch duchesses," she thought, laughing to herself, "or American millionaires. But I shall do!"

And her mind ran forward in a dream of luxury and delight. She saw herself sitting or strolling in vast rooms amid admiring groups; mirrors reflected her; she heard the rustle of her gowns on parquet or marble, the merry sound of her own laughter; other girls threw her the incense of their envy and imitation; and men, fresh and tanned from shooting, breathing the joy of physical life, devoted themselves to her pleasure, or encircled her with homage. Not always chivalrous, or delicate, or properly behaved--these men of her imagination! What matter? She loved adventures! And moving like a king among the rest, she saw the thin, travel-beaten, eccentric form of Lord Philip--the hated, adored, pursued; Society's idol and bugbear all in one; Lord Philip, who shunned and disliked women; on whom, nevertheless, the ambitions and desires of some of the loveliest women in England were, on that account alone, and at this moment of his political triumph, the more intently and the more greedily fixed.

A flash of excitement ran through her. In Lady Evelyn's letter of that morning there was a mention of Lord Philip. "I told him you were to be here. He made a note of it, and I do at last believe he won't throw us over, as he generally does."

She dressed, still in a reverie, speechless under her maid's hands. Then, as she emerged upon the gallery, looking down upon the ugly hall of Tallyn, she remembered that she had promised to go back after dinner and read to Oliver. Her nature rebelled in a moral and physical nausea, and it was all she could do to meet Lady Lucy at their solitary dinner with her usual good temper.