OF JUDITH'S STATE OF MIND, AND HOW SHE TOLD HER FATHER, BUT
DID NOT IMPRESS HIM AS HE WOULD HAVE WISHED. WHO KNOWS
WHAT JUDITH WAS? OF A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR TO THE HALL. HOW
NO ONE RECOGNIZED MARIANNE. IS MY HUSBAND DYING? A
SCENE ON THE BIG STAIRCASE, AND HOW TWO TOFFS WERE FAR FROM
ODIOUS. HOW THE NURSE RECOGNIZED ATHELSTAN TAYLOR. HOW
JUDITH SAID GOOD-BYE TO CHALLIS. HOW IT CAME OUT WHO MR.
KEITH HORNE'S FRIEND WAS
A sleepless night had preceded that interview between Judith
and Challis, and she was not at her best when his wandering
speech and cold unrecognition struck a chill to her soul. When a
like event occurs—and it does chance, now and again—between
folk who have been linked together for a lifetime, and the uninjured
survivor, awaiting with the return of consciousness the accents
and the look of the affection of a few hours ago, is repelled by
the insensate stare of eyes that only see a stranger, the unimpassioned
sound of a voice from which all tenderness has vanished,
even then the trial is a hard one. But the memory of the past
years is too strong to allow belief that the thing will last—it is dismissed
as a passing nightmare, as the nurse by the bedside of
fever dismisses the wanderings of delirium. It will last its time,
and pass away and be forgotten.
A cool judgment and more experience might have told the girl
to bear her soul in patience; to treat the wanderings of a brain
shaken as Challis's had been as mere sleep-waking. But even had
her self-possession been at its best, she had no long-past years
of love to look back to, to give her confidence in its return with a
returning calm of health. And not only this, but these same wandering
words of his had shown how full his soul still was of the
past in which she had no share. She had been allowed a peep
into her lover's heart, and had felt the force of another love's preoccupation
of it. If only his utterances had been stark rambling,
mere Tom-of-Bedlam incoherence! But the worst of it was, their
outward form was clothed in such a terrible sanity.
There was one thing in it that hit very hard—had a special
sting of its own. Judith knew perfectly well about Challis's bygones.
He had taken her into his confidence about the humble
home of the days of his obscurity. His half-humorous reviews of
his past had shown her plainly how little hold his first wife Kate—the
"Ziz" of his novel—had ever had upon him. He had evidently
wedded the wrong sister first. He spoke of Bob's mother with affection,
certainly, but it was an affection that was artificial and
perfunctory, whereas, even if he had never been passionately in love
with Polly Anne—if no volcanic eruption had ever raged on account
of this young person, whom Judith would have classed as an
insignificant puss—still, that Deceased Wife's Sister seemed to
have generated something that was at least a very good working
substitute for a grande passion. What was the worth of all his
protestations to her, Judith, if this memory of the days of Great
Coram Street was to be the first resurrection of his mind from its
temporary death?
But where was the use of answering the question now? Or any
question at all, for that matter? Was not the last chance gone of
passing the barrier that held them apart? Well—she had kept her
share of the compact. "I am ready, if it can be arranged," she
had said. And she had complied with every arrangement, stipulating
only that the wedding was to be a mere legal precaution—a
formal bar to the creation of a new obstacle by a retrospective
mood of the Lords and Commons. It would keep the position unaltered;
and that was only fair-play, surely! But now all was
changed. She had always been alive to the fact that Marianne in
esse, legally warranted in the appropriation of her husband's children,
and canonically warranted in her paroxysm of sensitiveness
to consanguinity, was a very different force to reckon with from
Marianne in posse, sained and assoilzied by an Act of Parliament.
Did she, we may wonder, ask herself the question: If it were
possible, even at this eleventh hour, to get that knot officially tied,
and be ready to laugh at the "retrospective action" of the measure
that would be the Law of the Land in forty-eight hours, would
she be ready to jump at the opportunity? Or, was she not rather
relieved at the turn things had taken? However, there was this
to be considered:—if the motor accident had not happened, and
the wedding had come off, she would never have had to face that
blank stare of oblivion, and Great Coram Street! Some women
won't marry a widower lest too many tender memories should still
be treasured in some secret corner of his heart. That is unreasonable;
because the source of them is supposed to be underground,
or in Heaven, or in Purgatory, according to the façon-de-parler of
the moment. But ... Great Coram Street! And the Deceased
Wife's Sister still undeceased, and to be legalized retrospectively
on Wednesday! Be it noted, though, that this is only conjecture!
The story has no warrant for saying that any such thought crossed
Judith's mind.
She made a clean breast of the whole matter to her father. She
told him all about that last interview of hers with Challis at
Trout Bend three or four weeks since; and of the arrangement they
had made, and confirmed by subsequent correspondence. Challis
was to reside for fifteen days at some place far enough from his or
her ordinary residence to insure practical secrecy, where there was a
parish-priest qualified to receive his affidavit and issue an ordinary
marriage-licence. "I forget what he called him," said Judith.
"Something like Harrogate." No doubt it was "surrogate." If
in Challis's judgment the passing of the Bill should be put beyond
reasonable doubt, he was at once to procure this licence, and make
every necessary arrangement, keeping her fully informed. He had
at first intended to procure a special licence, but had been deterred
by someone telling him that such a licence might be refused, or at
least delayed. He preferred the idea of dealing with a country
parson with whom he could make acquaintance, and to whose local
charities he could subscribe liberally. Besides, he could mesmerize
that parson. You can't mesmerize Doctor's Commons.
The young lady then narrated, almost more graphically than
seemed quite canny under her circumstances, her reception of a
telegram the previous evening, fixing the time and place of their
meeting in accordance with the terms of a letter of her own, which
had told how her brother-in-law had placed the automobile at her
disposal. She described the meeting at the Park Gate, minus its
salutations; the rapid spin along the mile of road, till they reached
the curve; Challis's appeal to the chauffeur for caution, and M.
Rossier's contemptuous disregard; the sudden appearance of Jim
as the car whirled round the corner; and how Challis, springing to
his feet, was shot straight into the road at the very moment when
she knew well, although her eyes had left him, that Jim was under
the wheels; and then her own dazed condition, that almost grew
to stupor as she rode back; and her arrival at home, when her
mother, brought out by Elphinstone, simply ran back terrified.
The Baronet suspected a shade of exaggeration here, and headed
off an indictment of his wife for panic.
"But why the motor-car at all?" said he.
"We turned it all over," said the young lady, "and could see
no other way. The railway was out of the question...."
"Why?"
"Well—picture me to yourself, meeting a swarm of locals on the
platform at Furnival. And fancy my asking for the carriage!
Where should I have said I was going? You've no idea, papa
dear, what a poor liar I am! Not because I'm truthful, but because
I'm stupid. Anyhow, we had taken the trains for granted;
and when it came to Bradshaw, we found that to get to this obscure
place and back would mean eight hours. And what was
worst was that if there had been any accident or delay I should
have been stranded till next day—at the Hare and Hounds I believe
it would have been, as a matter of fact—and that wouldn't
have suited me at all...."
"Yes—yes—you were quite right. How long was it to take
with the motor?"
"Within five hours, all told. An hour and three-quarters of
car each way. If all had gone well...."
"Why did Sir Alfred Challis come to meet you?"
Judith didn't seem over-clear on this point. "He made believe,"
she said, "that he thought we should lose the way. But I don't
believe that was it. I believe the fun of the ride had more to do
with it than anything."
The Baronet seemed a little froissé by something in his daughter's
tone. "It has been a sorry piece of fun for him," said he.
"And for you, too, my girl." For he was almost vexed with
himself for allowing the inception of a thought of condemnation.
See how much she must have suffered, this fool of a daughter of
his!
"Don't pity me!" said she. "But you are a dear, good papa
always." There was something in this of her old tone of contrasting
her experience with his simplicity. This belief in his pastoral
character was a tradition in the family.
Perhaps it was a part of this character that made him feel that
a blank was being left in their conversation that at least called
for a passing word to fill it in. "This poor fellow's death ..."
he began, taking for granted that Jim Coupland's share in the
tragedy would be as prominent in his daughter's mind as his own.
But she stopped him with an exclamation of alarm as he hesitated.
"Why should he die?" she cried. "There is no chance of his
death. See what the doctors said—both of them...."
He interrupted her. "I was not speaking of Sir Alfred. I was
speaking of Jim Coupland—the blind man, who was killed—is it
possible you do not know that he died?" For, to hear her speak,
no one could have dreamed she knew of that sombre background
to a sad day's work, the man lying dead near at hand.
"Jim Coupland!" she repeated; and the tone of her reply
grated on her father, to whom the thought of Jim's death was an
ever-present burden. Again she repeated, "Jim Coupland!" with
a fuller stress on each syllable that all but seemed contempt.
"Yes—but what is Jim Coupland ... compared to...?"
Then she qualified her words: "Oh, well, of course, one feels all
that I suppose one ought to feel, but...."
"What what?"
"But it's no use pretending...."
"My dear Judith, I don't understand."
"My dear papa, do you mean to say that if you were in my
place.... However, it really is no use talking about it." Her
manner was excited and resentful, till she suppressed it with an
effort, and calmed down to say: "Suppose we don't talk about it!"
There was a symptom of indignation in her father's tone as he
replied: "We shall gain nothing by talking at all, Judith, if I am
right about your meaning. I may be wrong, my dear"—he softened
rather—"but what you seem to me to mean, by the way
you speak about this poor fellow's shocking death, is ... well!—in
short, is, that you are indifferent to it."
"Is it so very surprising? Would you not think me a hypocrite
if I were to profess to be heart-broken about this—this wretched
blind cripple, who was the cause of it all?"
This took place in the garden, where the father and daughter
had walked apart, to be alone, away from the house. Judith had
really been as anxious to speak with him as he with her. But she
was not in love with this turn in the conversation. As she stood
with bitten lip and flashing eye in front of the wires of a cage containing
a sulphur-crested cockatoo—for they were close to the
aviary where she and Challis had talked about the parroquets—a
hideous shriek from the bird caught her last words, and almost
seemed a vindictive endorsement of their spirit.
Her father, to whom the death of the innocent man was a thing
that threw all other disquiets into the shade, suppressed whatever
he felt of resentment or disgust, and showed only wonderment.
"My dear child," said he, "you are not yourself. If you were,
you could not say such things. I can hardly believe that you
realize that the man is dead when you speak so." He stopped a
moment, puzzled. "I suppose, though, he must have been still
alive when you last saw him?"
"Oh yes, he was shouting. But I knew he went under the
wheel. I felt him." Her father shuddered, but she seemed calm.
"Did you not see him again?"
"No—that was the last I saw of him. I never looked for
him.... Well!—I thought Sir Alfred Challis was killed."
The Baronet felt apologetic. "I see, my dear, of course! Yes—yes—that
would be so. I suppose the poor fellow must have had
life enough in him to get off the road ... only ... well!—I
don't understand...."
"What doesn't my papa understand?" There is again the
shade of the old family tradition of patronage in her voice. Disinclination
to accept it in this case may have roughened her father's
reply a little:
"I don't understand what Taylor said. I'm sure—yes, I'm sure!—he
said he found him lying in the road. You must have passed
him as you returned?"
"Very likely."
"Judith!" This was sudden remonstrance, almost anger. But
it softened as it had done before. "Well—well—perhaps it was
only natural ... of course, I am forgetting...."
"Perhaps what was only natural?... Oh dear!—well, of
course I know what you mean—my not being able to go into hysterics
over this man's death. The circumstances are what I believe
are called touching, no doubt, but...."
The Baronet was flushed, and quite angry at this. "The circumstances
are what are rightly called touching," he said. "Poor
Jim Coupland was coming out to meet him—so I understood the
Rector—in the full expectation that he was bringing that dear little
girl of his back to him. And he was only bringing the news of her
death.... What did you say?..." For Judith had muttered
sotto voce that then it didn't matter. But she did not repeat
it, saying only, "I said nothing."
Her father did not believe this, and the end of his sentence hung
fire, he looking doubtful. So Judith repeated his last words, to
start him fresh. "'He was only bringing the news of the little
girl's death' ... you were saying?..."
"Yes!—the news of her death. And then this damnable motor-car
of yours comes tearing round the corner, with its damned hooting,
and he's under the wheels in a moment! I shall tell Frank I
won't have the thing in the house again, once he's taken it away.
It's simply a horror and an abomination...." And so on. He
was in want of a safety-valve, and here it was. The fact was
that Judith's apathy about poor Jim had made him feel thoroughly
uncomfortable; it was so unlike his measure and conception of
what his family ought to be.
As for Judith, she may have felt that sort of alarm at this
impetuous utterance that a child will remain susceptible of in later
years, who would laugh at any like explosion of a non-parent. It
is an inheritance from the nursery. Impressed by her father's denunciation
of the motor-car, or possibly thinking to herself, "No
more scenes, for Heaven's sake!" she relaxed so far as to say,
formally, "I'm sorry for the little girl." But she spoiled whatever
there was of graceful in a grudging concession by adding, "Perhaps
that will satisfy you?"
The old gentleman said nothing, but looked at her, puzzled and
hurt at what he shrank from thinking her heartlessness; trying to
concoct excuses for it that would make her seem less ungracious.
For he loved this daughter of his, so much so that even now he
felt proud of her rich beauty, none the worse for all her stress and
trouble. Indeed, as she stood there, caressing the great white bird
that had shrieked—she had taken it as she spoke from its cage,
and was kissing its terrifying beak with tenderness—her black
mass of hair against its yellow crest; her ivory-white skin against
the driven snow of its feathers, each made whiter in its own way
by yet another white, the soft folds of a creamy summer dress
most late Augusts would have condemned; her beautiful hand in
the sun, with the bird's black claw upon its jewels—all these
might have said a word in arrest of judgment to a parent readier
to disbelieve in his daughter than Sir Murgatroyd. No doubt they
influenced him to think that he had succeeded in glossing over what
he would have condemned as callousness in one further away from
him. But she—as other father's daughters are—was his little girl
of twenty years ago grown up. She did not really mean this heartlessness,
thought he; it was a sort of parti pris—a parade, an affectation!
Was he right, after all? Is the story wrong in its estimate
of her? Has it laid too much stress on the hard side of this girl's
character—its vanity and love of power? Some moralist has said
that no mortal should be called heartless as long as he or she can
fall in love. Judith Arkroyd must have been in love with Alfred
Challis; for see what risks she was running to secure him! Why—yes!—to
secure him; that was just it. She wanted him, and took
the only road to possession that seemed open to her. Now if, when
he lay insensible, that time when there was none to see, she had
only stooped to kiss the inanimate hand, had even held it till the
nurse returned! Should we not have felt more sorrow for her
after that, when his returning speech showed how completely she
had, for the moment, passed from his mind? No doubt she was in
love with him, in one manner of loving. But there are so many!
This story is not going to break its heart about her—to chant
dirges over the grave of her share of this grande passion. And
its commiseration for her grows no mellower from dwelling on the
fact it has to record: that exasperation against poor Jim Coupland,
to whom she thought proper to ascribe the whole miscarriage of
the scheme, was really a source of relief to her—a sort of counter-irritant.
To her father, Jim's death and his child's filled the whole
horizon—a black cloud. Challis's mishap he did not distress himself
about; he would be all right presently—had he not spoken?
As for his loss of memory, that meant nothing. Did he not himself,
when he came round after his mishap, ask whether "the
trout" had been taken, meaning the fox? Loss of memory was
the rule, not the exception, in such cases. And as for the future of
Challis and Judith, that was a difficulty there must be some legal
way out of. It was incredible that Challis's wife should go on
holding him at arm's length, and yet bar his union with another
woman. Some solution of that problem could be found, Bill or no
Bill! As for opposing his daughter's wishes, if they were really
deep-rooted, that he would not do. All his opposition to Challis
hitherto had been to him as Marianne's husband. If their marriage
could be legally annulled or dissolved, he was not going to
stand in the way of his daughter's happiness.
But this anger of hers against Jim showed her as a new Judith,
whom he had never suspected the existence of. In her childhood
she had been proud and domineering with her brothers and sisters—two
elder brothers had died in the army, and a sister was married
in India; none of them have crossed this story—but not, so
far as her father knew, malignant or revengeful. It gave him a
great discomfort at heart; set him wondering which of her ancestors
on either side she had harked back to. Was it Josceline de
Varennes, who, in one of those spirited middle ages, hid a knife
under her bridal pillow and gave her first husband a warm reception
to his couch, in order that she should marry Hugh Arkroyd?
There was the knife, to prove it, in the glass cabinet with the
green-dragon china service. But—as long ago as King Stephen!
Oh no!—it was that old fiend of a great-grandmother of Therèse's.
Every old family has an ancestral scapegoat, and a certain "Lady
Sarah," of the days of the second George, was very popular in this
one.
But Sir Murgatroyd scarcely did more than seek for the scapegoat,
in case he should be forced to condemn this member of the
congregation. He did not pass sentence. He only said gently,
"You will feel differently, Judith dear, when you are yourself
again. All this has upset you." In reply to which the young lady
said wearily, "We shall see, I suppose, presently. I can't be very
demonstrative about either now, though of course it's very sad,
and so on, about the little girl." And then she talked to the parrot,
kissing him and calling him her darling, and saying now he must
go back in his wicked cruel cage. All which her father set down
to mere bravado, and thought it best to say no more to her in her
present mood. But he had a very serious look on his face as they
walked towards the house together.
It was a relief to him to hear the robust musical voice of the
Rector in the large drawing-room that opened on the lawn, which
was their most natural way back into the house. But Judith
paused on the terrace. "Oh dear!" said she. "There's our
Father Confessor! I can't stand sympathy, and I don't want to
be catechized, thank you! Be a dear good papa, and say pretty
things for me!" And then, in spite of an attempt at remonstrance
by her father, slipped away; going round by a side-terrace that,
ending at the house-corner in a vague architectural effort three centuries
old—a Nereid and a Triton and a sink, with an Ionic canopy
over all to keep the rain off—allowed of an approach to the main
façade of the house, and the carriage-drive through the beech avenue
in the Park.
But she did not at once carry out her scheme of escape. The
shadow of the Ionic canopy was sweet on the base of the sink, and
the seat it made was tempting, and the cleanness of its moss and
lichens acceptable even to a skirt of crêpe-de-Chine. It was only
an old dress, too, according to Judith's ideas, so she spent a little
time with the Triton and the Nereid before going on into the
house. She felt stunned and bewildered, for all she had shown so
bold a front, and was glad of rest.
Presently her desire to know that Challis was progressing got
the better of a terror that was on her that his oblivion might be
lasting. She could hear the voices of the party in the drawing-room
still in conversation, the Rector's very distinctly; so she decided
that she could slip indoors with safety, and rose to go.
A little diffident gate, that had shrunk away into the heart of
a yew hedge, led out to the drive and entrance to the house; and
one could see and not be seen there, even by visitors who had been
over the ground before. Judith stopped at this gate, not to be
caught by an early sample, unexplained. It was not yet twelve
o'clock, and there at the door was a vehicle with one horse, steaming.
And a lady in black was descending from it, and Samuel
evidently meant to let her in. Judith waited for her to vanish;
gave her ample time, more than enough, to be shown into the
drawing-room, and then went straight on to the house.
The vehicle was a hired fly from Furnival, whose driver Judith
at once recognized as an habitué of the railway-station. He was
mopping his brow with his handkerchief, for the morning had become
very hot; but he put his hat on to touch it to Miss Arkroyd,
who of course was very familiar to him. Having done this, he
took it off again, and went on mopping. He referred to the dryness
of this sort of day pointedly; but Judith missed his sub-intent,
and conceived that the position was covered by the approach
of Bullett the groom, with a pail of water for the horse. The
lady must have come straight from the train.
Judith looked through the glass door—as she thought, carefully—to
make sure the great hall at the foot of the stairs was empty.
She was quite without conjecture or suspicion as to who the visitor
was, or she might not have contented herself so easily that the
coast was clear. Anyhow, there was no one visible from where she
stood and looked through. So she passed in and walked straight
across to the stairs, and so up to the first landing. As she turned
the angle, she saw a lady in black, whom she did not recognize,
seated in the recess on the left, who rose when their eyes met.
Not a bad-looking woman, of a sort, but not self-explanatory.
Count over the times Judith had met Marianne. They do not
amount to much—at least, until that evening at the theatre. Two
dinners and a visit in London a couple of years ago—consider how
little that means to a young lady who may be under an equal social
obligation to remember half-a-dozen new faces every day! Consider,
too, that in this early time Mr. Challis was in the eyes of this
young lady nothing beyond a popular author whose works she
hadn't read; and as for his wife, why should she notice her at all?
"Which was she, Sib?" we can fancy her asking. Was she, for
instance, the underdressed one with the mole, or the rawboned
giggler? Then, as to that visit to the play a few months later,
think of the exciting pre-occupations! Is it certain that Miss
Arkroyd paid as much attention to her hostess as you and I might
have thought the circumstances demanded? Anyhow, there had
been nothing to fix Marianne in Judith's memory to such an extent
that she should recall at once the travel-worn—and trouble-worn—face
she hardly glanced at, and would have left without a second
look had its owner not risen, as though to speak. She might
have done so, nevertheless, if it had not been for something in the
visitor's action which suggested a lady kept outside the drawing-room
rather than a person allowed inside the house. You know the
sort of difference—the difference between subservient conciliation
and conciliatory self-assertion.
What caught and retained Judith's second look was that this
person answered to neither description. Her manner was sui
generis, and the genus had in it a touch of something odd that
wasn't insanity. Was it desperation? It was creditable to
Judith's penetration that she at once dismissed the only idea that
suggested itself. An image shot into her mind of Jim Coupland's
sister, employed as cook by Challis, humorously described by him
more than once. Stuff and nonsense!—out of the question!
"Are you ... being attended to?" She threw a slight smile
of protest into the question, to guard against the possibility of
wrong form. If she had mistaken the facts, her hearer would understand
the implication of courtesy—no fear of misunderstanding
between us!
"The young man went in. I can wait." The speaker looked
away from Miss Arkroyd. Her manner was not conciliatory. But
even then no idea crossed Judith's mind of who she actually was.
In fact, prohibitives were at every point of the compass. How
could the news have reached Marianne? How could she have
come so quick to Royd?
"Is it anything I can do?" This was bald civility on the
face of it; almost stipulated that it should be refused. The
speaker's arrested foot on the next stair waited to go up when
the refusal should warrant it. But it had to wait, long enough to
make its owner wonder what was coming.
"Yes!—you can, Miss Arkroyd." Judith's good breeding concealed
her surprise. She stood committed, and awaited the instruction.
Was this tiresome person going to give it, or be choked by
it? It came at last. "You can tell me whether my husband is
dying or not."
And then Judith knew that she was face to face with Marianne
Challis, the woman she had injured.
Sir Murgatroyd found his wife talking with Athelstan Taylor,
of course about the current events. "This is good news about
Challis," said the Rector. "Lady Arkroyd tells me he has recovered
consciousness."
The Baronet demurred slightly. "Ye-es. At least, he has
spoken."
"And not incoherently?"
"N-no. Oh no—not incoherently." But the stress on this word
had reservation in it, and her ladyship exclaimed impatiently,
"Oh, my dear, you always make the worst of everything!" A pitying
smile, aside to the Rector, was quite a little essay on the unreasonableness
of husbands—that intractable class. Mr. Taylor
looked from one to the other. It would be early to take sides, but
of course the prescribed form in such a case is to help the wife to
commiserate her mate's shortcomings. It was safest to endorse the
lady's view, provisionally.
"We mustn't expect too much at first," said he, deprecating the
crude judgment of inexperience, a quality common to all our family
except ourself. "The author won't be in trim for dictating
copy for some days to come, I'm afraid." He hesitated a moment,
before adding, "You have kept it from him, I suppose, for the
present?"
"Mr. Taylor is referring to poor Coupland's death, my dear,"
said the Baronet. Which his wife resented slightly, as suggesting
that her sympathies needed a stimulus. "Do you suppose I
don't understand that, my dear?" said she sotto voce; a reply
apart. But she might just as well have left the matter to stand
there, and not let herself be betrayed into a candid admission that,
in view of the sad end of poor little Lizarann, her father's death
almost assumed the form of a Merciful Dispensation. We should
be thankful, at least, that he had been spared the hearing of it.
"The whole thing has been terribly sad," said Athelstan Taylor.
Indeed, he seemed as if he could hardly bear to speak of it. He
turned from the subject abruptly. When could he look forward
to seeing Challis without danger of his hurting himself by talking?
Sir Murgatroyd looked inquiry at his wife, and she at him.
Then he took the reply on himself, as she seemed very doubtful.
"The fact is, Rector," said he, "it isn't by any means certain that
he would know you. He can hardly be said to have come to himself
yet. What he said to...."
"What he said to the nurse was hardly sense," Lady Arkroyd
struck in abruptly. No doubt she wanted to keep Judith out of
it. But Sir Murgatroyd held to his purpose—would have no evasion
or prevarication.
"I was not referring to what he said to the nurse, my dear
Therèse. I was going on to speak of what he said to Judith.
What did he say to the nurse?"
"Oh, I don't know! Tell it your own way." Lady Arkroyd
abdicates.
Her husband did not notice her impatience, but continued: "It
happened that my daughter was present when he showed consciousness,
and he did not recognize her, and asked for his wife. It
was a very singular thing, too, that when Judith told him we did
not know where to write to her, he gave the address he lived at
several years ago. But I cannot say that seems to me so strange
as his non-recognition of Judith, considering...."
"My dear!" from the lady, remonstratively.
But the Baronet sticks to his colours, though he speaks temperately.
"My dear Therèse, Mr. Taylor is so old a friend that I
really do think it would be absurd to make any secrets. After all,
what does the whole thing amount to?..." Here the Rector
interrupted him.
"I think it's only fair of me, Lady Arkroyd, to say that I know
all about it already. This poor chap—I'm not going to say a
word in defence of him—took me into his confidence some weeks
ago. That is to say, he sketched as possible the scheme which I
now see he and Judith must have attempted to carry out. I tried
to dissuade him from it, and, indeed, fancied he had given it
up.... No; I thought it best to hold my tongue about it, in
order to retain my influence with him. He had been speaking
freely to me, assuming that what he said would go no farther, and
I should only have lost my hold over him by talking to you of it,
without any corresponding gain." This was in answer to what
was evidently the beginning of a question: "Why was the
knowledge of this plan to be kept from us?"
However, the Baronet was ready with ungrudging admission that
the Rector had acted for the best; his wife with a rather more
stinted allowance of assent. Of course, Judith would have gone
her own way in any case ... but still!... "Are we not her
parents? Should we not have been told on principle?" seemed
to be an implication lurking behind lips that had shut it in, and
leaking out through a stirring of the eyebrows. Her husband,
averse to reserves, and noting this one, said, "What were you going
to say, Therèse?"
But Therèse said, "Do wait, my dear!" to him, and to the Rector,
"Would you excuse me one moment?... What is it,
Samuel?" The last was because Samuel was in the room with a
card on a hand-tray, to be dealt with furtively, if possible, its
bearer's mission in life being self-subordination. Being called on
to state what it was, he said it was a lady, and might she speak
to her ladyship for a moment. This was a metaphrasis, because it
was palpably a card, on which her ladyship read to herself the
name "Mrs. M. Craik," and seemed none the wiser. Then she
handed it to Sir Murgatroyd, who took his glasses to the reading
of it, and said, "No, I don't know the name." Whereupon her
ladyship said, "I suppose I must see her. You'll excuse me, Mr.
Taylor?" and departed, after instructions to Samuel about the
room the lady was to be shown into.
Now, if she had read the name aloud, the chances are that
Athelstan Taylor, who had a lively enough recollection of his visit
of intercession to Marianne's mother a year ago, would have remembered
it. And then Lady Arkroyd would have known beforehand
who it was she was on her way to interview.
As it was, she continued quite in the dark about the identity of
"Mrs. M. Craik," until, following Samuel at what she thought a
sufficient interval to allow of his disposing of the stranger as arranged,
she came out upon a scene at the stairfoot in the entrance-hall
that taxed her presence of mind; with a result that was not
an uncommon one with her, that she could see no way of meeting
the demand upon it, except by an appeal to her husband to rescue
her. For, ready as she always was to set his judgment aside when
doing so involved her in no difficulty, she always looked to him to
extricate her when she found herself in a bad one.
"Oh, thank God if he is living ... if he is only living to
speak to me once ... just once! Oh, do say again that he is
not dead. I will never think ill of you again. Oh, do let me go
to him where he is now...." Thus far the poor soul had
spoken through a deluge of tears, when Lady Arkroyd came out
from a side-door, and her mind said to her that if it was to be
hysterics, she did wish Sir Murgatroyd would come. But as to
exactly who this was, this female in black who was making a scene
gratuitously, the thing of all others her ladyship hated, she was
for the moment quite at a loss to guess. Of course, a moment's
reflection would have made it clear, but, you see, she was so totally
unprepared. Her first information as to whom she was speaking
with—seeing that she was as much at sea about Marianne's personal
identity as Judith had been at first—came from her daughter,
standing handsome and impassive on the stairs, above this excited
woman; making her seem a suppliant by her own unmoved placidity,
and herself almost cruel by the severity of the contrast.
"This is Lady Challis, mamma." Judith's speech quite ignores
the tension of the situation—passes it by. "She wishes to go to
Sir Alfred. Is there any objection?" What can it matter to the
speaker?—is the implication. Let her go to Sir Alfred, by all
means!
Her mother's breath is fairly taken away. "Lady Challis!"
she repeats. And then, as silence seems to wait for something else,
the blankest interjection: "Oh-h-h!" with the minimum of meaning
sound can convey.
Then poor Marianne, with no Charlotte at hand to suggest possible
ugly interpretations, bursts out, "I am not Lady Challis. I
am nothing of the sort. Dear Lady Arkroyd—you must remember
me?—you came to see me at home. Do let me go—let me go
to my husband!"
Lady Arkroyd was puzzled. Perhaps, after all, there had been
a mistake at the outset, and there had been all along "something
against" this impossible wife. Nothing suggested itself to
her as a practicable course. This lady had turned to her with a
beseeching face, for which she had "Why, of course!" ready in
her heart, being quite a good-natured woman, but there were such
odd complications afoot she could not utter it. Judith, from her
security behind Marianne, was endeavouring to telegraph without
audible speech the words "Deceased Wife's Sister"; and, indeed,
after two or three repetitions, her mother caught the clue. But
she was little, if any, the wiser; and it was then the prompting
came to rush for succour to her husband, still talking to the Rector
in the drawing-room.
"Do you mind my speaking to my husband for a moment first?"
Marianne minds nothing, so long as it is on a road that leads to
her object, and her ladyship goes quickly away.
"May I leave you alone for a few moments, Lady Challis?" says
Judith, going. "Please step in here till my mother returns, and
sit down." That is, into the little room off the landing. Judith
goes upstairs quickly; and Samuel, always on the watch, officiates
as pilot.
Lady Arkroyd walked back into the drawing-room. She looked
despair before trusting herself to speech, and the action of her
hands laid an imaginary case for despair before the two gentlemen,
who stopped talking to hear its spoken particulars. Her husband
encouraged revelation by saying "Well?" interrogatively.
"Oh, my dear, what is to be done? It's the Deceased Wife's
Sister! I wish you would come."
The Baronet gives the slightest of whistles. "Where have you
got her?" he asks.
"My dear, she's in hysterics!"
"Yes—but where?"
"In the front hall. And Judith is there with her!"
"I say, we'd better go." Thus the Baronet to the Rector, who
assents without reserve. Observe that this colloquy has gone on
in undertones. Not that anyone could hear—they might have
shouted, for that matter—but to endorse the tension of the situation.
Arriving in the hall, and seeing first the place where Judith had
been standing, her mother felt a sense of relief. Her absence made
the position easier to deal with. But—where was the Deceased
Wife's Sister? Samuel explained. He had shown the lady into
the mezzanina room, as directed. Samuel felt proud of his Italian,
over this.
Marianne had not been sorry to be alone again for a moment,
after her first effort of self-announcement. She looked out through
the window over the rounded slopes, thickly wooded enough to seem
a stretch of forest; with the little groups of roe-deer in the glades
the beech-woods grudged them, in their ambition to cover the
whole land. She saw the wide level lawns, clothed with the grass
of centuries, dreaming of the music of bygone scythes, before the
days of mowing-machines and their economies of power no man
stinted then; the peacocks walking with precision, and satisfied
that they were appreciated; the beds ablaze with asters and marigolds,
and dahlias, and standard roses still blooming, and proud of
their little tickets that told what variety they were. She saw all
these, and out beyond them the smoke-cloud of the great manufacturing
centre, with its confidence of one day gobbling up the park
and its wood and warren, vert and venison, and getting at its coal,
and using it up to make steel armour-plates, that shall send other
armour-plates to the bottom of the sea. Unless, indeed, civilization
collapses; whereof it is not proper form to say—the sooner the
better!
All this has nothing to do with Marianne, except, perhaps, as
showing what a many things did not cross her mind that might
have done so. The whole thing was dim to her, and swam about.
Now that the excitement was less, she began to be afraid she
might make a fool of herself and faint off, as she did that time
with Charlotte Eldridge. She was sorry now that after travelling
so far on a very poor breakfast in London, she had not had the
sense to get a biscuit or a sandwich at Furnival. When Sir
Murgatroyd and her ladyship came into the mezzanina room, they
found her seated with closed eyes, and alarmingly white. But she
rallied at the sound of their voices. Oh no!—she was all right.
Now all she wanted was to know about her husband. Was he in
danger? Had he been in danger?
The Baronet, in a voice good to banish hysteria in any form,
justifiable or otherwise, rather outwent the truth in his testimony.
Sir Alfred had never been in any danger at all! Who had told
Lady Challis that story? The old gentleman's pooh-poohing laugh
was pleasant to Marianne's ears. Only she didn't feel quite sure
she wasn't an impostor. She had come on the distinct understanding—with
whom, hard to specify—that Titus was dying. Had she
been imposed upon?
"It was in the Sunday paper yesterday," she said. "And I saw
it on all the posters at the stations, coming by rail."
"Those damnable newspapers—you'll excuse me, Lady Challis—I
should have all the editors hanged if I had my way. Yes, I
would indeed! Why, there never was any danger! These things
happen every day." He went on to narrate how, when his mare
Eurydice threw him at Stamford's Croft, he had been carried home
unconscious, and remained so over two days. "But your mare had
to be shot, my dear," said his wife, vaguely.
When Athelstan Taylor, who had hung back a moment to exchange
a few words with the nurse, whom he had met on the stairs
coming from Challis's bedside, followed his companions into the
mezzanina room, he was surprised and pleased to find the Baronet
apparently on the most comfortable and communicative terms with
the embarrassing lady-visitor. It was all just as if none of the
events that made the visit embarrassing had ever happened. Marianne
might have been the wife of any neighbour, the victim of a
bad accident; who had come at a summons to learn the worst,
and was being assured that no bones were badly broken, and the
patient in perfect trim for inspection without a shock to the feelings
of the most sensitive. The escapade of Challis and Judith
might have been a dream, and the terms he had been on with Marianne
those of Philemon and Baucis. Ignoring was evidently the
order of the day, and the Rector made up his mind to comply
with it.
"This is our Rector, Lady Challis," said the old gentleman, introducing
him. "The Rev. Athelstan Taylor. I think he will
tell you he is just as confident as I am that Sir Alfred will be
himself again in the course of a day or two—perhaps in a few
hours. Eh, Rector?"
The voice of the big man with the fresh face, sun-tanned with a
pedestrian summer, was a new reassurance to the frightened, worn-out
woman. It said, filling the little room musically, "Every reason
to suppose it, at any rate! I hope we shall all be as lucky if
we are ever in as bad an accident, which Heaven forbid!" But an
inflexion of his tone contained reference to other injury done in
this accident, and made Marianne remember the details in the
newspaper. "Was there not a man killed?" she asked.
All looked very sad. "Yes, unhappily," was the joint reply.
The Rector began giving some particulars of Jim's death, but
stopped. "You were just going up to Sir Alfred," he said. For
the general bias of the party in the room, as he entered it, had
seemed to be towards migration. The visitor had half-risen from
a sofa, but had fallen back as the conversation showed signs of continuing.
Lady Arkroyd and her husband exchanged looks, and appeared
to assent to the move. Marianne began to rise again, but with such
visible sign of fatigued effort that the other three signalled to one
another, so to speak, that this would never do! Lady Arkroyd
spoke, preferring to indicate that her husband, with man's
proverbial want of tact, was inconsiderately overlooking a guest's
comfort. "My dear, I'm sure Lady Challis has had nothing to
eat since she left London, and she was travelling all night. She's
completely worn out." She added a corollary, "Men forget these
things."
The Rev. Athelstan had a suggestion to make: "One minute,"
said he. "Just let me say ... I spoke to the nurse just now.
She said Sir Alfred had not talked again, but had shown he
wanted to get rid of the bandage on his head. She was going to
take it off, as she says it isn't the least wanted. Lady Challis
would just have time to get a little refreshed while she does it.
And then Sir Alfred will be looking quite like himself. You know,
there was no visible injury ever, except that scratch on the forehead—just
a bit of plaister!"
And thus it came about that Marianne Challis was taking a cup
of black coffee and a biscuit, but nothing else, thank you, in the
house she had refused to follow her husband to over a year ago,
at the very moment that his second return of consciousness
prompted him to ask again for Polly Anne.
Judith, barely pausing to see that Marianne was "shown in"
to the side-room—because it is not enough to know which door; you
have to be properly shown in by a servant—had gone quickly to
the patient's room, meeting the nurse by the way. She stopped her.
"Is Sir Alfred Challis conscious?"
"I think a little more so. He hasn't spoken, but he evidently
wants that bandage off his head. I thought it might be better to
mention it before taking it off. Not that I'm really afraid of the
responsibility. Only it's as well to be on the safe side. Is Lady
Arkroyd downstairs?"
"I think she's just coming up. Sir Alfred's wife is here."
"Oh, indeed. I hope she won't upset him. I shall find Lady
Arkroyd downstairs.... Oh, by-the-bye, Miss Arkroyd, what
did your mother say was the name of the big parson—Reverend
what?"
"Reverend Athelstan Taylor."
"I thought so." And the nurse, a well-defined and explicit person,
went downstairs as Judith passed on along the lobby.
The figure on the bed was moving slightly as she entered the
room, feeling how venturesome her conduct was; and was evidently
fidgeting, as the nurse had said, about the bandage. She went up
and stood beside him, hiding a kind of desperation under an immovable
exterior. Should she speak to him by name? If so, by
what name? As his memory was playing such tricks, might not
his present style and title be strange to him? Besides, she had
never called him "Sir Alfred." And if she called him "Scroop,"
as she had done almost throughout, and still he did not recognize
her, how then? But surely he was speaking again!
"You're very good—but what am I being kept here for? I say!—I
hope Polly Anne's all right...."
"Please don't pull at that bandage; it shall be taken off as
soon as the nurse comes back. Why shouldn't 'Polly Anne' be all
right?" She couldn't help the inverted commas.
"Because she hasn't come. Did you send to the address I gave?"
Judith replied stonily, "Your wife is here. She will come directly....
Listen! Do you not know me?" For she knew
how short their time must be; how brief and abrupt the farewell
that had to be packed into it, whatever form it might take. She
did not certainly know whether she hoped he would say "Yes."
He kept her waiting, to turn his eyes full on her and consider
the point. "N-n-n-no!" said he, prolonging the first letter. "I
don't think I do." His civil manner was heart-rending to the
woman beside him. Recollect that only three days before, though
they would not have become de facto man and wife, their compact
of marriage would have been irrevocable! He kept his eyes still
on her with a puzzled look, adding immediately after, "Could you
not tell me of something to remind me?"
What to remind him of, and avoid all claim of tender memory
for the past, in view of the fact that he might disallow that past
altogether!—that was Judith's difficulty. She must keep to suggestions
prosaic and bald—just the colourless events of daily life.
She tried to speak with absolute calm indifference, tempered by
good-will.
"Is it possible you do not remember this room—the room the German
Baroness saw the ghost in?" She made a not too successful
attempt at a laugh over this. "Why!—you slept here before!"
"Where is 'here'?"
"My father's house, Royd Hall. I am Judith Arkroyd."
Challis's voice and manner were like his old self again as he
answered, "I do feel so out of it!" and laughed a sort of apology.
"I'm horribly ashamed. I shall have to ask Polly Anne to jog
my memory. Is she coming?"
"Oh yes—she's coming." Judith had hard work to refrain
from breaking out "Have you forgotten Trout Bend and the convict's
bridge; the little Tophet garden and the letter, and all my
shawl in a blaze? Have you no memory of the play you wrote for
me to play in; of your fatuous declaration of a passion a man of
your sobriety should have been ashamed of; above all of our
meeting of two days since, our reckless race along the sunlit road,
and its tragic ending?" But she knew all this, that her tongue
was itching to remind him of, was good for oblivion only; knew it
by a thousand tokens, most of all by the revelation chance had
given of the background of his mind. Even the knowledge that
all fruition of their crazy scheme was perforce at an end was as
nothing compared to that. Therefore she felt it safest to say
curtly that Marianne was coming, and to add that the nurse would
be back in a moment to remove the bandage.
Challis closed his eyes again with a tired sigh. "I can't trust
myself to talk," said he. "All sorts of things keep coming into
my head, and convincing me I must be out of my senses. But I'm
clear about one thing. Someone is being very kind to me. I have
a general impression that I don't deserve it, and I want to thank
... want to thank...." He seemed to give it up as a bad job,
and to relapse into half-stupor.
Judith was fast coming to the conclusion that the sooner she
and Challis saw the last of one another the better for both. But
"to part at last without a kiss!" The words of Morris's poem
came into her mind. Well—suppose in this case we were to say,
"without a handshake"? That would be quite enough. At least,
that knight beside the Haystack in the Floods would have known
whom the kissed lips belonged to. Challis's disordered head had
constituted him a stranger to her. All the same, to have the tale
of their love end on a blank and vanish, and none write a word
of epilogue—not so much as a bare finis!—grated on her sense
of the fitness of things. She would just try to print the word herself,
without provoking an appendix. If he was insensible again
and did not hear her, what did it matter?
"The nurse will come directly," she repeated. "I have to go
now. Good-bye!"
He opened his eyes again, rousing himself. "Oh—good-bye—good-bye!"
said he. "I am sorry you have to go." He took her
hand, shaking it frankly and warmly. She was afraid the touch
of her own hand might bring back the past—the useless past—and
almost stinted to return its pressure.
She turned in the doorway, and said, referring to footsteps approaching
the room without, "Perhaps you will know this gentleman
who is coming now, and he will tell you who I am." A
bitterness in her heart made the last words come, and then she said
to the nurse and Athelstan Taylor, who was with her, "He's been
talking again, quite like himself, only he doesn't know me from
Adam. But I fancy he'll soon be all right."
"That's good hearing," said the Rector cheerfully. "You'll find
the Duchess downstairs. She's asking for you, to take you to
Thanes."
"Oh, is she? I think I shall put my things on at once, and go
with her." She went to her room and rang for her maid, whom she
sent with a message to the Duchess. She would be ready in five
minutes, she said, and meant to stop the night.
When the little handmaiden had finished her ministrations, and
her mistress and the Duchess had driven away, she was found in
tears by a fellow-servant, and explained them by saying Miss Judith
was angry with her. Because she had never once called her Cintilla,
but only Clemency, which was merely her proper name.
"My dear sir," said Challis to the Rector, standing by his bed,
"you say, 'Don't I know you?' And you say it so confidently
that it convinces me I ought to know you. But I can't say I do.
Honour bright!"
"Never mind! Don't try to think about it. You'll come to
rights presently. Let this good lady get that thing off your head.
The best thing you can do is to lie still."
So Challis lay still and listened to the conversation. And this
is what he heard:
"I hadn't flattered myself you would remember your humble
servant, Mr. Taylor, but I felt pretty sure you wouldn't have forgotten
the incident."
"I wasn't likely to do that. Faugh!—I've got the flavour of the
place upon me still. That antiseptic sack and rubber gloves!—all
the horror of it! But apart from that, the story the creature told
was such a queer one."
"Seal of confession, I suppose?"
"Hardly that! But not, perhaps, to be repeated except to serve
some special end. I understood he left it to my discretion."
"I had no motive but curiosity. Don't tell me!"
"How came you to remember my name?"
"I didn't. Miss Arkroyd told it me. I remembered your look
when I showed you into the ward. But I ought to have remembered
your name, because I posted Dr. Crumpton's letter to
you...."
"I remember. It was to ask which of his aliases this man had
given me. They didn't know what name to bury him under."
"Oh, I remember ... Thomas Essendean. No, it wasn't that.
That was one they rejected. What was it he told you?"
"Kay Thorne, or perhaps Key—Key Thorne.... What?"
For Challis, by this time bandageless and ready to receive visitors,
but evidently glad to keep his head down on the pillow, had uttered
an exclamation, without opening his eyes. "What's 'hullo,'
Challis?" said the Rector. For a moment, he felt afraid that the
patient's mind was wandering. But only for a moment. For
when Challis spoke again, it was quite quietly and collectedly.
"Name of my first wife's first ... no!—I don't mean that.
Name of a friend of mine eight—ten—years ago. Not Kaith;
Keith Horne. He wasn't a shining light. He came to awful
grief in the end. Penal servitude, I believe...."
"You mustn't tire yourself with talking," said the nurse.
"We shall have her ladyship up directly. You know she's coming?"
"Oh no!—might my wife come? Her ladyship can come afterwards."
The Rector understood. He glanced at the nurse indicatively.
"Mrs. Challis had better come first," he said. Then he said good-bye
to Challis, and went his way. In the passage was Lady Arkroyd,
followed by Marianne. "You'll find him immensely improved,"
said he. "I can't say he remembered me, but he will
next time."
Then, as he shook hands with the scared and bewildered lady in
black, he thought to himself, "Now, what a queer story I could
tell you, if I didn't feel that the right course is to keep a lock on
my tongue!"
For it had just come home to him that Marianne was not
Challis's Deceased Wife's Sister at all, because "poor Kate" had
never been his Deceased Wife. She was the late Mr. Keith
Horne's! And as regarded the "living in sin business," evidently
she was the real Simon Pure, and Marianne a mere pretender!
