CHAPTER III
She saw nothing of him for nearly a week; he had more and more his
own times and hours, adjusted to his tremendous responsibilities, and
he spent whole days at his crammer's. When she knocked at his door
late in the evening he was regularly not in his room. It was known
in the house how much he was worried; he was horribly nervous about
his ordeal. It was to begin on the 23rd of June, and his father was
as worried as himself. The wedding had been arranged in relation to
this; they wished poor Godfrey's fate settled first, though they felt
the nuptials would be darkened if it shouldn't be settled right.
Ten days after that performance of her private undertaking Adela
began to sniff, as it were, a difference in the general air; but as
yet she was afraid to exult. It wasn't in truth a difference for the
better, so that there might be still a great tension. Her father,
since the announcement of his intended marriage, had been visibly
pleased with himself, but that pleasure now appeared to have
undergone a check. She had the impression known to the passengers on
a great steamer when, in the middle of the night, they feel the
engines stop. As this impression may easily sharpen to the sense
that something serious has happened, so the girl asked herself what
had actually occurred. She had expected something serious; but it
was as if she couldn't keep still in her cabin--she wanted to go up
and see. On the 20th, just before breakfast, her maid brought her a
message from her brother. Mr. Godfrey would be obliged if she would
speak to him in his room. She went straight up to him, dreading to
find him ill, broken down on the eve of his formidable week. This
was not the case however--he rather seemed already at work, to have
been at work since dawn. But he was very white and his eyes had a
strange and new expression. Her beautiful young brother looked
older; he looked haggard and hard. He met her there as if he had
been waiting for her, and he said at once: "Please tell me this,
Adela--what was the purpose of your visit the other morning to Mrs.
Churchley, the day I met you at her door?"
She stared--she cast about. "The purpose? What's the matter? Why
do you ask?"
"They've put it off--they've put it off a month."
"Ah thank God!" said Adela.
"Why the devil do you thank God?" Godfrey asked with a strange
impatience.
She gave a strained intense smile. "You know I think it all wrong."
He stood looking at her up and down. "What did you do there? How
did you interfere?"
"Who told you I interfered?" she returned with a deep flush.
"You said something--you did something. I knew you had done it when
I saw you come out."
"What I did was my own business."
"Damn your own business!" cried the young man.
She had never in her life been so spoken to, and in advance, had she
been given the choice, would have said that she'd rather die than be
so handled by Godfrey. But her spirit was high, and for a moment she
was as angry as if she had been cut with a whip. She escaped the
blow but felt the insult. "And YOUR business then?" she asked. "I
wondered what that was when I saw YOU."
He stood a moment longer scowling at her; then with the exclamation
"You've made a pretty mess!" he turned away from her and sat down to
his books.
They had put it off, as he said; her father was dry and stiff and
official about it. "I suppose I had better let you know we've
thought it best to postpone our marriage till the end of the summer--
Mrs. Churchley has so many arrangements to make": he was not more
expansive than that. She neither knew nor greatly cared whether she
but vainly imagined or correctly observed him to watch her obliquely
for some measure of her receipt of these words. She flattered
herself that, thanks to Godfrey's forewarning, cruel as the form of
it had been, she was able to repress any crude sign of elation. She
had a perfectly good conscience, for she could now judge what odious
elements Mrs. Churchley, whom she had not seen since the morning in
Prince's Gate, had already introduced into their dealings. She
gathered without difficulty that her father hadn't concurred in the
postponement, for he was more restless than before, more absent and
distinctly irritable. There was naturally still the question of how
much of this condition was to be attributed to his solicitude about
Godfrey. That young man took occasion to say a horrible thing to his
sister: "If I don't pass it will be your fault." These were
dreadful days for the girl, and she asked herself how she could have
borne them if the hovering spirit of her mother hadn't been at her
side. Fortunately she always felt it there, sustaining, commending,
sanctifying. Suddenly her father announced to her that he wished her
to go immediately, with her sisters, down to Brinton, where there was
always part of a household and where for a few weeks they would
manage well enough. The only explanation he gave of this desire was
that he wanted them out of the way. Out of the way of what?" she
queried, since there were to be for the time no preparations in
Seymour Street. She was willing to take it for out of the way of his
nerves.
She never needed urging however to go to Brinton, the dearest old
house in the world, where the happiest days of her young life had
been spent and the silent nearness of her mother always seemed
greatest. She was happy again, with Beatrice and Muriel and Miss
Flynn, with the air of summer and the haunted rooms and her mother's
garden and the talking oaks and the nightingales. She wrote briefly
to her father, giving him, as he had requested, an account of things;
and he wrote back that since she was so contented--she didn't
recognise having told him that--she had better not return to town at
all. The fag-end of the London season would be unimportant to her,
and he was getting on very well. He mentioned that Godfrey had
passed his tests, but, as she knew, there would be a tiresome wait
before news of results. The poor chap was going abroad for a month
with young Sherard--he had earned a little rest and a little fun. He
went abroad without a word to Adela, but in his beautiful little hand
he took a chaffing leave of Beatrice. The child showed her sister
the letter, of which she was very proud and which contained no
message for any one else. This was the worst bitterness of the whole
crisis for that somebody--its placing in so strange a light the
creature in the world whom, after her mother, she had loved best.
Colonel Chart had said he would "run down" while his children were at
Brinton, but they heard no more about it. He only wrote two or three
times to Miss Flynn on matters in regard to which Adela was surprised
he shouldn't have communicated with herself. Muriel accomplished an
upright little letter to Mrs. Churchley--her eldest sister neither
fostered nor discouraged the performance--to which Mrs. Churchley
replied, after a fortnight, in a meagre and, as Adela thought,
illiterate fashion, making no allusion to the approach of any closer
tie. Evidently the situation had changed; the question of the
marriage was dropped, at any rate for the time. This idea gave our
young woman a singular and almost intoxicating sense of power; she
felt as if she were riding a great wave of confidence. She had
decided and acted--the greatest could do no more than that. The
grand thing was to see one's results, and what else was she doing?
These results were in big rich conspicuous lives; the stage was large
on which she moved her figures. Such a vision was exciting, and as
they had the use of a couple of ponies at Brinton she worked off her
excitement by a long gallop. A day or two after this however came
news of which the effect was to rekindle it. Godfrey had come back,
the list had been published, he had passed first. These happy
tidings proceeded from the young man himself; he announced them by a
telegram to Beatrice, who had never in her life before received such
a missive and was proportionately inflated. Adela reflected that she
herself ought to have felt snubbed, but she was too happy. They were
free again, they were themselves, the nightmare of the previous weeks
was blown away, the unity and dignity of her father's life restored,
and, to round off her sense of success, Godfrey had achieved his
first step toward high distinction. She wrote him the next day as
frankly and affectionately as if there had been no estrangement
between them, and besides telling him how she rejoiced in his triumph
begged him in charity to let them know exactly how the case stood
with regard to Mrs. Churchley.
Late in the summer afternoon she walked through the park to the
village with her letter, posted it and came back. Suddenly, at one
of the turns of the avenue, half-way to the house, she saw a young
man hover there as if awaiting her--a young man who proved to be
Godfrey on his pedestrian progress over from the station. He had
seen her as he took his short cut, and if he had come down to Brinton
it wasn't apparently to avoid her. There was nevertheless none of
the joy of his triumph in his face as he came a very few steps to
meet her; and although, stiffly enough, he let her kiss him and say
"I'm so glad--I'm so glad!" she felt this tolerance as not quite the
mere calm of the rising diplomatist. He turned toward the house with
her and walked on a short distance while she uttered the hope that he
had come to stay some days.
"Only till to-morrow morning. They're sending me straight to Madrid.
I came down to say good-bye; there's a fellow bringing my bags."
"To Madrid? How awfully nice! And it's awfully nice of you to have
come," she said as she passed her hand into his arm.
The movement made him stop, and, stopping, he turned on her in a
flash a face of something more than, suspicion--of passionate
reprobation. "What I really came for--you might as well know without
more delay--is to ask you a question."
"A question?"--she echoed it with a beating heart.
They stood there under the old trees in the lingering light, and,
young and fine and fair as they both were, formed a complete
superficial harmony with the peaceful English scene. A near view,
however, would have shown that Godfrey Chart hadn't taken so much
trouble only to skim the surface. He looked deep into his sister's
eyes. "What was it you said that morning to Mrs. Churchley?"
She fixed them on the ground a moment, but at last met his own again.
"If she has told you, why do you ask?"
"She has told me nothing. I've seen for myself."
"What have you seen?"
"She has broken it off. Everything's over. Father's in the depths."
"In the depths?" the girl quavered.
"Did you think it would make him jolly?" he went on.
She had to choose what to say. "He'll get over it. He'll he glad."
"That remains to be seen. You interfered, you invented something,
you got round her. I insist on knowing what you did."
Adela felt that if it was a question of obstinacy there was something
within her she could count on; in spite of which, while she stood
looking down again a moment, she said to herself "I could be dumb and
dogged if I chose, but I scorn to be." She wasn't ashamed of what
she had done, but she wanted to be clear. "Are you absolutely
certain it's broken off?"
"He is, and she is; so that's as good."
"What reason has she given?"
"None at all--or half a dozen; it's the same thing. She has changed
her mind--she mistook her feelings--she can't part with her
independence. Moreover he has too many children."
"Did he tell you this?" the girl asked.
"Mrs. Churchley told me. She has gone abroad for a year."
"And she didn't tell you what I said to her?"
Godfrey showed an impatience. "Why should I take this trouble if she
had?"
"You might have taken it to make me suffer," said Adela. "That
appears to be what you want to do."
"No, I leave that to you--it's the good turn you've done me!" cried
the young man with hot tears in his eyes.
She stared, aghast with the perception that there was some dreadful
thing she didn't know; but he walked on, dropping the question
angrily and turning his back to her as if he couldn't trust himself.
She read his disgust in his averted, face, in the way he squared his
shoulders and smote the ground with his stick, and she hurried after
him and presently overtook him. She kept by him for a moment in
silence; then she broke out: "What do you mean? What in the world
have I done to you?"
"She would have helped me. She was all ready to help me," Godfrey
portentously said.
"Helped you in what?" She wondered what he meant; if he had made
debts that he was afraid to confess to his father and--of all
horrible things--had been looking to Mrs. Churchley to pay. She
turned red with the mere apprehension of this and, on the heels of
her guess, exulted again at having perhaps averted such a shame.
"Can't you just see I'm in trouble? Where are your eyes, your
senses, your sympathy, that you talk so much about? Haven't you seen
these six months that I've a curst worry in my life?"
She seized his arm, made him stop, stood looking up at him like a
frightened little girl. "What's the matter, Godfrey?--what IS the
matter?"
"You've gone against me so--I could strangle you!" he growled. This
image added nothing to her dread; her dread was that he had done some
wrong, was stained with some guilt. She uttered it to him with
clasped hands, begging him to tell her the worst; but, still more
passionately, he cut her short with his own cry: "In God's name,
satisfy me! What infernal thing did you do?"
"It wasn't infernal--it was right. I told her mamma had been
wretched," said Adela.
"Wretched? You told her such a lie?"
"It was the only way, and she believed me."
"Wretched how?--wretched when?--wretched where?" the young man
stammered.
"I told her papa had made her so, and that SHE ought to know it. I
told her the question troubled me unspeakably, but that I had made up
my mind it was my duty to initiate her." Adela paused, the light of
bravado in her face, as if, though struck while the words came with
the monstrosity of what she had done, she was incapable of abating a
jot of it. "I notified her that he had faults and peculiarities that
made mamma's life a long worry--a martyrdom that she hid wonderfully
from the world, but that we saw and that I had often pitied. I told
her what they were, these faults and peculiarities; I put the dots on
the i's. I said it wasn't fair to let another person marry him
without a warning. I warned her; I satisfied my conscience. She
could do as she liked. My responsibility was over."
Godfrey gazed at her; he listened with parted lips, incredulous and
appalled. "You invented such a tissue of falsities and calumnies,
and you talk about your conscience? You stand there in your senses
and proclaim your crime?"
"I'd have committed any crime that would have rescued us."
"You insult and blacken and ruin your own father?" Godfrey kept on.
"He'll never know it; she took a vow she wouldn't tell him."
"Ah I'll he damned if _I_ won't tell him!" he rang out.
Adela felt sick at this, but she flamed up to resent the treachery,
as it struck her, of such a menace. "I did right--I did right!" she
vehemently declared "I went down on my knees to pray for guidance,
and I saved mamma's memory from outrage. But if I hadn't, if I
hadn't"--she faltered an instant--"I'm not worse than you, and I'm
not so bad, for you've done something that you're ashamed to tell
me."
He had taken out his watch; he looked at it with quick intensity, as
if not hearing nor heeding her. Then, his calculating eyes raised,
he fixed her long enough to exclaim with unsurpassable horror and
contempt: "You raving maniac!" He turned away from her; he bounded
down the avenue in the direction from which they had come, and, while
she watched him, strode away, across the grass, toward the short cut
to the station.
