CHAPTER VIII
To a woman like Audrey Noel, born to be the counterpart and complement of another, – whose occupations and effort were inherently divorced from the continuity of any stiff and strenuous purpose of her own, the uprooting she had voluntarily undergone was a serious matter.
Bereaved of the faces of her flowers, the friendly sighing of her lime-tree, the wants of her cottagers; bereaved of that busy monotony of little home things which is the stay and solace of lonely women, she was extraordinarily lost. Even music for review seemed to have failed her. She had never lived in London, so that she had not the refuge of old haunts and habits, but had to make her own – and to make habits and haunts required a heart that could at least stretch out feelers and lay hold of things, and her heart was not now able. When she had struggled with her Edwardian flat, and laid down her simple routine of meals, she was as stranded as ever was, convict let out of prison. She had not even that great support, the necessity of hiding her feelings for fear of disturbing others. She was planted there, with her longing and grief, and nothing, nobody, to take her out of herself. Having wilfully embraced this position, she tried to make the best of it, feeling it less intolerable, at all events, than staying on at Monkland, where she had made that grievous, and unpardonable error – falling in love.
This offence, on the part of one who felt within herself a great capacity to enjoy and to confer happiness, had arisen – like the other grievous and unpardonable offence, her marriage – from too much disposition to yield herself to the personality of another. But it was cold comfort to know that the desire to give and to receive love had twice over left her – a dead woman. Whatever the nature of those immature sensations with which, as a girl of twenty, she had accepted her husband, in her feeling towards Miltoun there was not only abandonment, but the higher flame of self-renunciation. She wanted to do the best for him, and had not even the consolation of the knowledge that she had sacrificed herself for his advantage. All had been taken out of her hands! Yet with characteristic fatalism she did not feel rebellious. If it were ordained that she should, for fifty, perhaps sixty years, repent in sterility and ashes that first error of her girlhood, rebellion was, none the less, too far-fetched. If she rebelled, it would not be in spirit, but in action. General principles were nothing to her; she lost no force brooding over the justice or injustice of her situation, but merely tried to digest its facts.
The whole day, succeeding Courtier’s visit, was spent by her in the National Gallery, whose roof, alone of all in London, seemed to offer her protection. She had found one painting, by an Italian master, the subject of which reminded her of Miltoun; and before this she sat for a very long time, attracting at last the gouty stare of an official. The still figure of this lady, with the oval face and grave beauty, both piqued his curiosity, and stimulated certain moral qualms. She, was undoubtedly waiting for her lover. No woman, in his experience, had ever sat so long before a picture without ulterior motive; and he kept his eyes well opened to see what this motive would be like. It gave him, therefore, a sensation almost amounting to chagrin when coming round once more, he found they had eluded him and gone off together without coming under his inspection. Feeling his feet a good deal, for he had been on them all day, he sat down in the hollow which she had left behind her; and against his will found himself also looking at the picture. It was painted in a style he did not care for; the face of the subject, too, gave him the queer feeling that the gentleman was being roasted inside. He had not been sitting there long, however, before he perceived the lady standing by the picture, and the lips of the gentleman in the picture moving. It seemed to him against the rules, and he got up at once, and went towards it; but as he did so, he found that his eyes were shut, and opened them hastily. There was no one there.
From the National Gallery, Audrey had gone into an A.B.C. for tea, and then home. Before the Mansions was a taxi-cab, and the maid met her with the news that ‘Lady Caradoc’ was in the sitting-room.
Barbara was indeed standing in the middle of the room with a look on her face such as her father wore sometimes on the racecourse, in the hunting field, or at stormy Cabinet Meetings, a look both resolute and sharp. She spoke at once:
“I got your address from Mr. Courtier. My brother is ill. I’m afraid it’ll be brain fever, I think you had better go and see him at his rooms in the Temple; there’s no time to be lost.”
To Audrey everything in the room seemed to go round; yet all her senses were preternaturally acute, so that she could distinctly smell the mud of the river at low tide. She said, with a shudder:
“Oh! I will go; yes, I will go at once.”
“He’s quite alone. He hasn’t asked for you; but I think your going is the only chance. He took me for you. You told me once you were a good nurse.”
“Yes.”
The room was steady enough now, but she had lost the preternatural acuteness of her senses, and felt confused. She heard Barbara say: “I can take you to the door in my cab,” and murmuring: “I will get ready,” went into her bedroom. For a moment she was so utterly bewildered that she did nothing. Then every other thought was lost in a strange, soft, almost painful delight, as if some new instinct were being born in her; and quickly, but without confusion or hurry, she began packing. She put into a valise her own toilet things; then flannel, cotton-wool, eau de Cologne, hot-water bottle, Etna, shawls, thermometer, everything she had which could serve in illness. Changing to a plain dress, she took up the valise and returned to Barbara. They went out together to the cab. The moment it began to bear her to this ordeal at once so longed-for and so terrible, fear came over her again, so that she screwed herself into the corner, very white and still. She was aware of Barbara calling to the driver: “Go by the Strand, and stop at a poulterer’s for ice!” And, when the bag of ice had been handed in, heard her saying: “I will bring you all you want – if he is really going to be ill.”
Then, as the cab stopped, and the open doorway of the staircase was before her, all her courage came back.
She felt the girl’s warm hand against her own, and grasping her valise and the bag of ice, got out, and hurried up the steps.
CHAPTER IX
On leaving Nettlefold, Miltoun had gone straight back to his rooms, and begun at once to work at his book on the land question. He worked all through that night – his third night without sleep, and all the following day. In the evening, feeling queer in the head, he went out and walked up and down the Embankment. Then, fearing to go to bed and lie sleepless, he sat down in his arm-chair. Falling asleep there, he had fearful dreams, and awoke unrefreshed. After his bath, he drank coffee, and again forced himself to work. By the middle of the day he felt dizzy and exhausted, but utterly disinclined to eat. He went out into the hot Strand, bought himself a necessary book, and after drinking more coffee, came back and again began to work. At four o’clock he found that he was not taking in the words. His head was burning hot, and he went into his bedroom to bathe it. Then somehow he began walking up and down, talking to himself, as Barbara had found him.
She had no sooner gone, than he felt utterly exhausted. A small crucifix hung over his bed, and throwing himself down before it, he remained motionless with his face buried in the coverlet, and his arms stretched out towards the wall. He did not pray, but merely sought rest from sensation. Across his half-hypnotized consciousness little threads of burning fancy kept shooting. Then he could feel nothing but utter physical sickness, and against this his will revolted. He resolved that he would not be ill, a ridiculous log for women to hang over. But the moments of sickness grew longer and more frequent; and to drive them away he rose from his knees, and for some time again walked up and down; then, seized with vertigo, he was obliged to sit on the bed to save himself from falling. From being burning hot he had become deadly cold, glad to cover himself with the bedclothes. The heat soon flamed up in him again; but with a sick man’s instinct he did not throw off the clothes, and stayed quite still. The room seemed to have turned to a thick white substance like a cloud, in which he lay enwrapped, unable to move hand or foot. His sense of smell and hearing had become unnaturally acute; he smelled the distant streets, flowers, dust, and the leather of his books, even the scent left by Barbara’s clothes, and a curious odour of river mud. A clock struck six, he counted each stroke; and instantly the whole world seemed full of striking clocks, the sound of horses’ hoofs, bicycle bells, people’s footfalls. His sense of vision, on the contrary, was absorbed in consciousness of this white blanket of cloud wherein he was lifted above the earth, in the midst of a dull incessant hammering. On the surface of the cloud there seemed to be forming a number of little golden spots; these spots were moving, and he saw that they were toads. Then, beyond them, a huge face shaped itself, very dark, as if of bronze, with eyes burning into his brain. The more he struggled to get away from these eyes, the more they bored and burned into him. His voice was gone, so that he was unable to cry out, and suddenly the face marched over him.
When he recovered consciousness his head was damp with moisture trickling from something held to his forehead by a figure leaning above him. Lifting his hand he touched a cheek; and hearing a sob instantly suppressed, he sighed. His hand was gently taken; he felt kisses on it.
The room was so dark, that he could scarcely see her face – his sight too was dim; but he could hear her breathing and the least sound of her dress and movements – the scent too of her hands and hair seemed to envelop him, and in the midst of all the acute discomfort of his fever, he felt the band round his brain relax. He did not ask how long she had been there, but lay quite still, trying to keep his eyes on her, for fear of that face, which seemed lurking behind the air, ready to march on him again. Then feeling suddenly that he could not hold it back, he beckoned, and clutched at her, trying to cover himself with the protection of her breast. This time his swoon was not so deep; it gave way to delirium, with intervals when he knew that she was there, and by the shaded candle light could see her in a white garment, floating close to him, or sitting still with her hand on his; he could even feel the faint comfort of the ice cap, and of the scent of eau de Cologne. Then he would lose all consciousness of her presence, and pass through into the incoherent world, where the crucifix above his bed seemed to bulge and hang out, as if it must fall on him. He conceived a violent longing to tear it down, which grew till he had struggled up in bed and wrenched it from off the wall. Yet a mysterious consciousness of her presence permeated even his darkest journeys into the strange land; and once she seemed to be with him, where a strange light showed them fields and trees, a dark line of moor, and a bright sea, all whitened, and flashing with sweet violence.
Soon after dawn he had a long interval of consciousness, and took in with a sort of wonder her presence in the low chair by his bed. So still she sat in a white loose gown, pale with watching, her eyes immovably fixed on him, her lips pressed together, and quivering at his faintest motion. He drank in desperately the sweetness of her face, which had so lost remembrance of self.
CHAPTER X
Barbara gave the news of her brother’s illness to no one else, common sense telling her to run no risk of disturbance. Of her own initiative, she brought a doctor, and went down twice a day to hear reports of Miltoun’s progress.
As a fact, her father and mother had gone to Lord Dennis, for Goodwood, and the chief difficulty had been to excuse her own neglect of that favourite Meeting. She had fallen back on the half-truth that Eustace wanted her in Town; and, since Lord and Lady Valleys had neither of them shaken off a certain uneasiness about their son, the pretext sufficed:
It was not until the sixth day, when the crisis was well past and Miltoun quite free from fever, that she again went down to Nettlefold.
On arriving she at once sought out her mother, whom she found in her bedroom, resting. It had been very hot at Goodwood.
Barbara was not afraid of her – she was not, indeed, afraid of anyone, except Miltoun, and in some strange way, a little perhaps of Courtier; yet, when the maid had gone, she did not at once begin her tale. Lady Valleys, who at Goodwood had just heard details of a Society scandal, began a carefully expurgated account of it suitable to her daughter’s ears – for some account she felt she must give to somebody.
“Mother,” said Barbara suddenly, “Eustace has been ill. He’s out of danger now, and going on all right.” Then, looking hard at the bewildered lady, she added: “Mrs. Noel is nursing him.”
The past tense in which illness had been mentioned, checking at the first moment any rush of panic in Lady Valleys, left her confused by the situation conjured up in Barbara’s last words. Instead of feeding that part of man which loves a scandal, she was being fed, always an unenviable sensation. A woman did not nurse a man under such circumstances without being everything to him, in the world’s eyes. Her daughter went on:
“I took her to him. It seemed the only thing to do – since it’s all through fretting for her. Nobody knows, of course, except the doctor, and – Stacey.”
“Heavens!” muttered Lady Valleys.
“It has saved him.”
The mother instinct in Lady Valleys took sudden fright. “Are you telling me the truth, Babs? Is he really out of danger? How wrong of you not to let me know before?”
But Barbara did not flinch; and her mother relapsed into rumination.
“Stacey is a cat!” she said suddenly. The expurgated details of the scandal she had been retailing to her daughter had included the usual maid. She could not find it in her to enjoy the irony of this coincidence. Then, seeing Barbara smile, she said tartly:
“I fail to see the joke.”
“Only that I thought you’d enjoy my throwing Stacey in, dear.”
“What! You mean she doesn’t know?”
“Not a word.”
Lady Valleys smiled.
“What a little wretch you are, Babs!” Maliciously she added: “Claud and his mother are coming over from Whitewater, with Bertie and Lily Malvezin, you’d better go and dress;” and her eyes searched her daughter’s so shrewdly, that a flush rose to the girl’s cheeks.
When she had gone, Lady Valleys rang for her maid again, and relapsed into meditation. Her first thought was to consult her husband; her second that secrecy was strength. Since no one knew but Barbara, no one had better know.
Her astuteness and experience comprehended the far-reaching probabilities of this affair. It would not do to take a single false step. If she had no one’s action to control but her own and Barbara’s, so much the less chance of a slip. Her mind was a strange medley of thoughts and feelings, almost comic, well-nigh tragic; of worldly prudence, and motherly instinct; of warm-blooded sympathy with all love-affairs, and cool-blooded concern for her son’s career. It was not yet too late perhaps to prevent real mischief; especially since it was agreed by everyone that the woman was no adventuress. Whatever was done, they must not forget that she had nursed him – saved him, Barbara had said! She must be treated with all kindness and consideration.
Hastening her toilette, she in turn went to her daughter’s room.
Barbara was already dressed, leaning out of her window towards the sea.
Lady Valleys began almost timidly:
“My dear, is Eustace out of bed yet?”
“He was to get up to-day for an hour or two.”
“I see. Now, would there be any danger if you and I went up and took charge over from Mrs. Noel?”
“Poor Eusty!”
“Yes, yes! But, exercise your judgment. Would it harm him?”
Barbara was silent. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t suppose it would, now; but it’s for the doctor to say.”
Lady Valleys exhibited a manifest relief.
“We’ll see him first, of course. Eustace will have to have an ordinary nurse, I suppose, for a bit.”
Looking stealthily at Barbara, she added:
“I mean to be very nice to her; but one mustn’t be romantic, you know, Babs.”
From the little smile on Barbara’s lips she derived no sense of certainty; indeed she was visited by all her late disquietude about her young daughter, by all the feeling that she, as well as Miltoun, was hovering on the verge of some folly.
“Well, my dear,” she said, “I am going down.”
But Barbara lingered a little longer in that bedroom where ten nights ago she had lain tossing, till in despair she went and cooled herself in the dark sea.
Her last little interview with Courtier stood between her and a fresh meeting with Harbinger, whom at the Valleys House gathering she had not suffered to be alone with her. She came down late.
That same evening, out on the beach road, under a sky swarming with stars, the people were strolling – folk from the towns, down for their fortnight’s holiday. In twos and threes, in parties of six or eight, they passed the wall at the end of Lord Dennis’s little domain; and the sound of their sparse talk and laughter, together with the sighing of the young waves, was blown over the wall to the ears of Harbinger, Bertie, Barbara, and Lily Malvezin, when they strolled out after dinner to sniff the sea. The holiday-makers stared dully at the four figures in evening dress looking out above their heads; they had other things than these to think of, becoming more and more silent as the night grew dark. The four young people too were rather silent. There was something in this warm night, with its sighing, and its darkness, and its stars, that was not favourable to talk, so that presently they split into couples, drifting a little apart.
Standing there, gripping the wall, it seemed to Harbinger that there were no words left in the world. Not even his worst enemy could have called this young man romantic; yet that figure beside him, the gleam of her neck and her pale cheek in the dark, gave him perhaps the most poignant glimpse of mystery that he had ever had. His mind, essentially that of a man of affairs, by nature and by habit at home amongst the material aspects of things, was but gropingly conscious that here, in this dark night, and the dark sea, and the pale figure of this girl whose heart was dark to him and secret, there was perhaps something – yes, something – which surpassed the confines of his philosophy, something beckoning him on out of his snug compound into the desert of divinity. If so, it was soon gone in the aching of his senses at the scent of her hair, and the longing to escape from this weird silence.
“Babs,” he said; “have you forgiven me?”
Her answer came, without turn of head, natural, indifferent:
“Yes – I told you so.”
“Is that all you have to say to a fellow?”
“What shall we talk about – the running of Casetta?”
Deep down within him Harbinger uttered a noiseless oath. Something sinister was making her behave like this to him! It was that fellow – that fellow! And suddenly he said:
“Tell me this – ” then speech seemed to stick in his throat. No! If there were anything in that, he preferred not to hear it. There was a limit!
Down below, a pair of lovers passed, very silent, their arms round each other’s waists.
Barbara turned and walked away towards the house.
CHAPTER XI
The days when Miltoun was first allowed out of bed were a time of mingled joy and sorrow to her who had nursed him. To see him sitting up, amazed at his own weakness, was happiness, yet to think that he would be no more wholly dependent, no more that sacred thing, a helpless creature, brought her the sadness of a mother whose child no longer needs her. With every hour he would now get farther from her, back into the fastnesses of his own spirit. With every hour she would be less his nurse and comforter, more the woman he loved. And though that thought shone out in the obscure future like a glamorous flower, it brought too much wistful uncertainty to the present. She was very tired, too, now that all excitement was over – so tired that she hardly knew what she did or where she moved. But a smile had become so faithful to her eyes that it clung there above the shadows of fatigue, and kept taking her lips prisoner.
Between the two bronze busts she had placed a bowl of lilies of the valley; and every free niche in that room of books had a little vase of roses to welcome Miltoun’s return.
He was lying back in his big leather chair, wrapped in a Turkish gown of Lord Valleys’ – on which Barbara had laid hands, having failed to find anything resembling a dressing-gown amongst her brother’s austere clothing. The perfume of lilies had overcome the scent of books, and a bee, dusky, adventurer, filled the room with his pleasant humming.
They did not speak, but smiled faintly, looking at one another. In this still moment, before passion had returned to claim its own, their spirits passed through the sleepy air, and became entwined, so that neither could withdraw that soft, slow, encountering glance. In mutual contentment, each to each, close as music to the strings of a violin, their spirits clung – so lost, the one in the other, that neither for that brief time seemed to know which was self.
In fulfilment of her resolution, Lady Valleys, who had returned to Town by a morning train, started with Barbara for the Temple about three in the after noon, and stopped at the doctor’s on the way. The whole thing would be much simpler if Eustace were fit to be moved at once to Valleys House; and with much relief she found that the doctor saw no danger in this course. The recovery had been remarkable – touch and go for bad brain fever just avoided! Lord Miltoun’s constitution was extremely sound. Yes, he would certainly favour a removal. His rooms were too confined in this weather. Well nursed – (decidedly) Oh; yes! Quite! And the doctor’s eyes became perhaps a trifle more intense. Not a professional, he understood. It might be as well to have another nurse, if they were making the change. They would have this lady knocking up. Just so! Yes, he would see to that. An ambulance carriage he thought advisable. That could all be arranged for this afternoon – at once – he himself would look to it. They might take Lord Miltoun off just as he was; the men would know what to do. And when they had him at Valleys House, the moment he showed interest in his food, down to the sea-down to the sea! At this time of year nothing like it! Then with regard to nourishment, he would be inclined already to shove in a leetle stimulant, a thimbleful perhaps four times a day with food – not without – mixed with an egg, with arrowroot, with custard. A week would see him on his legs, a fortnight at the sea make him as good a man as ever. Overwork – burning the candle – a leetlemore would have seen a very different state of things! Quite so! quite so! Would come round himself before dinner, and make sure. His patient might feel it just at first! He bowed Lady Valleys out; and when she had gone, sat down at his telephone with a smile flickering on his clean-cut lips.
Greatly fortified by this interview, Lady Valleys rejoined her daughter in the ear; but while it slid on amongst the multitudinous traffic, signs of unwonted nervousness began to start out through the placidity of her face.
“I wish, my dear,” she said suddenly, “that someone else had to do this. Suppose Eustace refuses!”
“He won’t,” Barbara answered; “she looks so tired, poor dear. Besides – ”
Lady Valleys gazed with curiosity at that young face, which had flushed pink. Yes, this daughter of hers was a woman already, with all a woman’s intuitions. She said gravely:
“It was a rash stroke of yours, Babs; let’s hope it won’t lead to disaster.”
Barbara bit her lips.
“If you’d seen him as I saw him! And, what disaster? Mayn’t they love each other, if they want?”
Lady Valleys swallowed a grimace. It was so exactly her own point of view. And yet – !
“That’s only the beginning,” she said; “you forget the sort of boy Eustace is.”
“Why can’t the poor thing be let out of her cage?” cried Barbara. “What good does it do to anyone? Mother, if ever, when I am married, I want to get free, I will!”
The tone of her voice was so quivering, and unlike the happy voice of Barbara, that Lady Valleys involuntarily caught hold of her hand and squeezed it hard.
“My dear sweet,” she said, “don’t let’s talk of such gloomy things.”
“I mean it. Nothing shall stop me.”
But Lady Valleys’ face had suddenly become rather grim.
“So we think, child; it’s not so simple.”
“It can’t be worse, anyway,” muttered Barbara, “than being buried alive as that wretched woman is.”
For answer Lady Valleys only murmured:
“The doctor promised that ambulance carriage at four o’clock. What am I going to say?”
“She’ll understand when you look at her. She’s that sort.”
The door was opened to them by Mrs. Noel herself.
It was the first time Lady Valleys had seen her in a house, and there was real curiosity mixed with the assurance which masked her nervousness. A pretty creature, even lovely! But the quite genuine sympathy in her words: “I am truly grateful. You must be quite worn out,” did not prevent her adding hastily: “The doctor says he must be got home out of these hot rooms. We’ll wait here while you tell him.”
And then she saw that it was true; this woman was the sort who understood.
Left in the dark passage, she peered round at Barbara.
The girl was standing against the wall with her head thrown back. Lady Valleys could not see her face; but she felt all of a sudden exceedingly uncomfortable, and whispered:
“Two murders and a theft, Babs; wasn’t it ‘Our Mutual Friend’?”
“Mother!”
“What?”
“Her face! When you’re going to throw away a flower, it looks at you!”
“My dear!” murmured Lady Valleys, thoroughly distressed, “what things you’re saying to-day!”
This lurking in a dark passage, this whispering girl – it was all queer, unlike an experience in proper life.
And then through the reopened door she saw Miltoun, stretched out in a chair, very pale, but still with that look about his eyes and lips, which of all things in the world had a chastening effect on Lady Valleys, making her feel somehow incurably mundane.
She said rather timidly:
“I’m so glad you’re better, dear. What a time you must have had! It’s too bad that I knew nothing till yesterday!”
But Miltoun’s answer was, as usual, thoroughly disconcerting.
“Thanks, yes! I have had a perfect time – and have now to pay for it, I suppose.”
Held back by his smile from bending to kiss him, poor Lady Valleys fidgeted from head to foot. A sudden impulse of sheer womanliness caused a tear to fall on his hand.
When Miltoun perceived that moisture, he said:
“It’s all right, mother. I’m quite willing to come.”
Still wounded by his voice, Lady Valleys hardened instantly. And while preparing for departure she watched the two furtively. They hardly looked at one another, and when they did, their eyes baffled her. The expression was outside her experience, belonging as it were to a different world, with its faintly smiling, almost shining, gravity.
Vastly relieved when Miltoun, covered with a fur, had been taken down to the carriage, she lingered to speak to Mrs. Noel.
“We owe you a great debt. It might have been so much worse. You mustn’t be disconsolate. Go to bed and have a good long rest.” And from the door, she murmured again: “He will come and thank you, when he’s well.”
Descending the stone stairs, she thought: “‘Anonyma’ – ‘Anonyma’ – yes, it was quite the name.” And suddenly she saw Barbara come running up again.
“What is it, Babs?”
Barbara answered:
“Eustace would like some of those lilies.” And, passing Lady Valleys, she went on up to Miltoun’s chambers.
Mrs. Noel was not in the sitting-room, and going to the bedroom door, the girl looked in.
She was standing by the bed, drawing her hand over and over the white surface of the pillow. Stealing noiselessly back, Barbara caught up the bunch of lilies, and fled.