CHAPTER IV
His bags, by the time she got home, had been brought to the house,
but Beatrice and Muriel, immediately informed of this, waited for
their brother in vain. Their sister said nothing to them of her
having seen him, and she accepted after a little, with a calmness
that surprised herself, the idea that he had returned to town to
denounce her. She believed this would make no difference now--she
had done what she had done. She had somehow a stiff faith in Mrs.
Churchley. Once that so considerable mass had received its impetus
it wouldn't, it couldn't pull up. It represented a heavy-footed
person, incapable of further agility. Adela recognised too how well
it might have come over her that there were too many children.
Lastly the girl fortified herself with the reflexion, grotesque in
the conditions and conducing to prove her sense of humour not high,
that her father was after all not a man to be played with. It seemed
to her at any rate that if she HAD baffled his unholy purpose she
could bear anything--bear imprisonment and bread and water, bear
lashes and torture, bear even his lifelong reproach. What she could
bear least was the wonder of the inconvenience she had inflicted on
Godfrey. She had time to turn this over, very vainly, for a
succession of days--days more numerous than she had expected, which
passed without bringing her from London any summons to come up and
take her punishment. She sounded the possible, she compared the
degrees of the probable; feeling however that as a cloistered girl
she was poorly equipped for speculation. She tried to imagine the
calamitous things young men might do, and could only feel that such
things would naturally be connected either with borrowed money or
with bad women. She became conscious that after all she knew almost
nothing about either of those interests. The worst woman she knew
was Mrs. Churchley herself. Meanwhile there was no reverberation
from Seymour Street--only a sultry silence.
At Brinton she spent hours in her mother's garden, where she had
grown up, where she considered that she was training for old age,
since she meant not to depend on whist. She loved the place as, had
she been a good Catholic, she would have loved the smell of her
parish church; and indeed there was in her passion for flowers
something of the respect of a religion. They seemed to her the only
things in the world that really respected themselves, unless one made
an exception for Nutkins, who had been in command all through her
mother's time, with whom she had had a real friendship and who had
been affected by their pure example. He was the person left in the
world with whom on the whole she could speak most intimately of the
dead. They never had to name her together--they only said "she"; and
Nutkins freely conceded that she had taught him everything he knew.
When Beatrice and Muriel said "she" they referred to Mrs. Churchley.
Adela had reason to believe she should never marry, and that some day
she should have about a thousand a year. This made her see in the
far future a little garden of her own, under a hill, full of rare and
exquisite things, where she would spend most of her old age on her
knees with an apron and stout gloves, with a pair of shears and a
trowel, steeped in the comfort of being thought mad.
One morning ten days after her scene with Godfrey, on coming back
into the house shortly before lunch, she was met by Miss Flynn with
the notification that a lady in the drawing-room had been waiting for
her for some minutes. "A lady" suggested immediately Mrs. Churchley.
It came over Adela that the form in which her penalty was to descend
would be a personal explanation with that misdirected woman. The
lady had given no name, and Miss Flynn hadn't seen Mrs. Churchley;
nevertheless the governess was certain Adela's surmise was wrong.
"Is she big and dreadful?" the girl asked.
Miss Flynn, who was circumspection itself, took her time. "She's
dreadful, but she's not big." She added that she wasn't sure she
ought to let Adela go in alone; but this young lady took herself
throughout for a heroine, and it wasn't in a heroine to shrink from
any encounter. Wasn't she every instant in transcendent contact with
her mother? The visitor might have no connexion whatever with the
drama of her father's frustrated marriage; but everything to-day for
Adela was part of that.
Miss Flynn's description had prepared her for a considerable shock,
but she wasn't agitated by her first glimpse of the person who
awaited her. A youngish well-dressed woman stood there, and silence
was between them while they looked at each other. Before either had
spoken however Adela began to see what Miss Flynn had intended. In
the light of the drawing-room window the lady was five-and-thirty
years of age and had vivid yellow hair. She also had a blue cloth
suit with brass buttons, a stick-up collar like a gentleman's, a
necktie arranged in a sailor's knot, a golden pin in the shape of a
little lawn-tennis racket, and pearl-grey gloves with big black
stitchings. Adela's second impression was that she was an actress,
and her third that no such person had ever before crossed that
threshold.
"I'll tell you what I've come for," said the apparition. "I've come
to ask you to intercede." She wasn't an actress; an actress would
have had a nicer voice.
"To intercede?" Adela was too bewildered to ask her to sit down.
"With your father, you know. He doesn't know, but he'll have to."
Her "have" sounded like "'ave." She explained, with many more such
sounds, that she was Mrs. Godfrey, that they had been married seven
mortal months. If Godfrey was going abroad she must go with him, and
the only way she could go with him would be for his father to do
something. He was afraid of his father--that was clear; he was
afraid even to tell him. What she had come down for was to see some
other member of the family face to face--"fice to fice," Mrs. Godfrey
called it--and try if he couldn't be approached by another side. If
no one else would act then she would just have to act herself. The
Colonel would have to do something--that was the only way out of it.
What really happened Adela never quite understood; what seemed to be
happening was that the room went round and round. Through the blur
of perception accompanying this effect the sharp stabs of her
visitor's revelation came to her like the words heard by a patient
"going off" under ether. She afterwards denied passionately even to
herself that she had done anything so abject as to faint; but there
was a lapse in her consciousness on the score of Miss Flynn's
intervention. This intervention had evidently been active, for when
they talked the matter over, later in the day, with bated breath and
infinite dissimulation for the school-room quarter, the governess had
more lurid truths, and still more, to impart than to receive. She
was at any rate under the impression that she had athletically
contended, in the drawing-room, with the yellow hair--this after
removing Adela from the scene and before inducing Mrs. Godfrey to
withdraw. Miss Flynn had never known a more thrilling day, for all
the rest of it too was pervaded with agitations and conversations,
precautions and alarms. It was given out to Beatrice and Muriel that
their sister had been taken suddenly ill, and the governess
ministered to her in her room. Indeed Adela had never found herself
less at ease, for this time she had received a blow that she couldn't
return. There was nothing to do but to take it, to endure the
humiliation of her wound.
At first she declined to take it--having, as might appear, the much
more attractive resource of regarding her visitant as a mere
masquerading person, an impudent impostor. On the face of the matter
moreover it wasn't fair to believe till one heard; and to hear in
such a case was to hear Godfrey himself. Whatever she had tried to
imagine about him she hadn't arrived at anything so belittling as an
idiotic secret marriage with a dyed and painted hag. Adela repeated
this last word as if it gave her comfort; and indeed where everything
was so bad fifteen years of seniority made the case little worse.
Miss Flynn was portentous, for Miss Flynn had had it out with the
wretch. She had cross-questioned her and had not broken her down.
This was the most uplifted hour of Miss Flynn's life; for whereas she
usually had to content herself with being humbly and gloomily in the
right she could now be magnanimously and showily so. Her only
perplexity was as to what she ought to do--write to Colonel Chart or
go up to town to see him. She bloomed with alternatives--she
resembled some dull garden-path which under a copious downpour has
begun to flaunt with colour. Toward evening Adela was obliged to
recognise that her brother's worry, of which he had spoken to her,
had appeared bad enough to consist even of a low wife, and to
remember that, so far from its being inconceivable a young man in his
position should clandestinely take one, she had been present, years
before, during her mother's lifetime, when Lady Molesley declared
gaily, over a cup of tea, that this was precisely what she expected
of her eldest son. The next morning it was the worst possibilities
that seemed clearest; the only thing left with a tatter of dusky
comfort being the ambiguity of Godfrey's charge that her own action
had "done" for him. That was a matter by itself, and she racked her
brains for a connecting link between Mrs. Churchley and Mrs. Godfrey.
At last she made up her mind that they were related by blood; very
likely, though differing in fortune, they were cousins or even
sisters. But even then what did the wretched boy mean?
Arrested by the unnatural fascination of opportunity, Miss Flynn
received before lunch a telegram from Colonel Chart--an order for
dinner and a vehicle; he and Godfrey were to arrive at six o'clock.
Adela had plenty of occupation for the interval, since she was
pitying her father when she wasn't rejoicing that her mother had gone
too soon to know. She flattered herself she made out the
providential reason of that cruelty now. She found time however
still to wonder for what purpose, given the situation, Godfrey was to
he brought down. She wasn't unconscious indeed that she had little
general knowledge of what usually was done with young men in that
predicament. One talked about the situation, but the situation was
an abyss. She felt this still more when she found, on her father's
arrival, that nothing apparently was to happen as she had taken for
granted it would. There was an inviolable hush over the whole
affair, but no tragedy, no publicity, nothing ugly. The tragedy had
been in town--the faces of the two men spoke of it in spite of their
other perfunctory aspects; and at present there was only a family
dinner, with Beatrice and Muriel and the governess--with almost a
company tone too, the result of the desire to avoid publicity. Adela
admired her father; she knew what he was feeling if Mrs. Godfrey had
been at him, and yet she saw him positively gallant. He was mildly
austere, or rather even--what was it?--august; just as, coldly
equivocal, he never looked at his son, so that at moments he struck
her as almost sick with sadness. Godfrey was equally inscrutable and
therefore wholly different from what he had been as he stood before
her in the park. If he was to start on his career (with such a
wife!--wouldn't she utterly blight it?) he was already professional
enough to know how to wear a mask.
Before they rose from table she felt herself wholly bewildered, so
little were such large causes traceable in their effects. She had
nerved herself for a great ordeal, but the air was as sweet as an
anodyne. It was perfectly plain to her that her father was deadly
sore--as pathetic as a person betrayed. He was broken, but he showed
no resentment; there was a weight on his heart, but he had lightened
it by dressing as immaculately as usual for dinner. She asked
herself what immensity of a row there could have been in town to have
left his anger so spent. He went through everything, even to sitting
with his son after dinner. When they came out together he invited
Beatrice and Muriel to the billiard-room, and as Miss Flynn
discreetly withdrew Adela was left alone with Godfrey, who was
completely changed and not now in the least of a rage. He was broken
too, but not so pathetic as his father. He was only very correct and
apologetic he said to his sister: "I'm awfully sorry YOU were
annoyed--it was something I never dreamed of."
She couldn't think immediately what he meant; then she grasped the
reference to her extraordinary invader. She was uncertain, however,
what tone to take; perhaps his father had arranged with him that they
were to make the best of it. But she spoke her own despair in the
way she murmured "Oh Godfrey, Godfrey, is it true?"
"I've been the most unutterable donkey--you can say what you like to
me. You can't say anything worse than I've said to myself."
"My brother, my brother!"--his words made her wail it out. He hushed
her with a movement and she asked: "What has father said?"
He looked very high over her head. "He'll give her six hundred a
year."
"Ah the angel!"--it was too splendid.
"On condition"--Godfrey scarce blinked--"she never comes near me.
She has solemnly promised, and she'll probably leave me alone to get
the money. If she doesn't--in diplomacy--I'm lost." He had been
turning his eyes vaguely about, this way and that, to avoid meeting
hers; but after another instant he gave up the effort and she had the
miserable confession of his glance. "I've been living in hell."
"My brother, my brother!" she yearningly repeated.
"I'm not an idiot; yet for her I've behaved like one. Don't ask me--
you mustn't know. It was all done in a day, and since then fancy my
condition; fancy my work in such a torment; fancy my coming through
at all."
"Thank God you passed!" she cried. "You were wonderful!"
"I'd have shot myself if I hadn't been. I had an awful day yesterday
with the governor; it was late at night before it was over. I leave
England next week. He brought me down here for it to look well--so
that the children shan't know."
"HE'S wonderful too!" Adela murmured.
"Wonderful too!" Godfrey echoed.
"Did SHE tell him?" the girl went on.
"She came straight to Seymour Street from here. She saw him alone
first; then he called me in. THAT luxury lasted about an hour."
"Poor, poor father!" Adela moaned at this; on which her brother
remained silent. Then after he had alluded to it as the scene he had
lived in terror of all through his cramming, and she had sighed forth
again her pity and admiration for such a mixture of anxieties and
such a triumph of talent, she pursued: "Have you told him?"
"Told him what?"
"What you said you would--what _I_ did."
Godfrey turned away as if at present he had very little interest in
that inferior tribulation. "I was angry with you, but I cooled off.
I held my tongue."
She clasped her hands. "You thought of mamma!"
"Oh don't speak of mamma!" he cried as in rueful tenderness.
It was indeed not a happy moment, and she murmured: "No; if you HAD
thought of her--!"
This made Godfrey face her again with a small flare in his eyes. "Oh
THEN it didn't prevent. I thought that woman really good. I
believed in her."
"Is she VERY bad?"
"I shall never mention her to you again," he returned with dignity.
"You may believe _I_ won't speak of her! So father doesn't know?"
the girl added.
"Doesn't know what?"
"That I said what I did to Mrs. Churchley."
He had a momentary pause. "I don't think so, but you must find out
for yourself."
"I shall find out," said Adela. "But what had Mrs. Churchley to do
with it?"
"With MY misery? I told her. I had to tell some one."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
He appeared--though but after an instant--to know exactly why. "Oh
you take things so beastly hard--you make such rows." Adela covered
her face with her hands and he went on: "What I wanted was comfort--
not to be lashed up. I thought I should go mad. I wanted Mrs.
Churchley to break it to father, to intercede for me and help him to
meet it. She was awfully kind to me, she listened and she
understood; she could fancy how it had happened. Without her I
shouldn't have pulled through. She liked me, you know," he further
explained, and as if it were quite worth mentioning--all the more
that it was pleasant to him. "She said she'd do what she could for
me. She was full of sympathy and resource. I really leaned on her.
But when YOU cut in of course it spoiled everything. That's why I
was so furious with you. She couldn't do anything then."
Adela dropped her hands, staring; she felt she had walked in
darkness. "So that he had to meet it alone?"
"Dame!" said Godfrey, who had got up his French tremendously.
Muriel came to the door to say papa wished the two others to join
them, and the next day Godfrey returned to town. His father remained
at Brinton, without an intermission, the rest of the summer and the
whole of the autumn, and Adela had a chance to find out, as she had
said, whether he knew she had interfered. But in spite of her chance
she never found out. He knew Mrs. Churchley had thrown him over and
he knew his daughter rejoiced in it, but he appeared not to have
divined the relation between the two facts. It was strange that one
of the matters he was clearest about--Adela's secret triumph--should
have been just the thing which from this time on justified less and
less such a confidence. She was too sorry for him to be consistently
glad. She watched his attempts to wind himself up on the subject of
shorthorns and drainage, and she favoured to the utmost of her
ability his intermittent disposition to make a figure in orchids.
She wondered whether they mightn't have a few people at Brinton; but
when she mentioned the idea he asked what in the world there would be
to attract them. It was a confoundedly stupid house, he remarked--
with all respect to HER cleverness. Beatrice and Muriel were
mystified; the prospect of going out immensely had faded so utterly
away. They were apparently not to go out at all. Colonel Chart was
aimless and bored; he paced up and down and went back to smoking,
which was bad for him, and looked drearily out of windows as if on
the bare chance that something might arrive. Did he expect Mrs.
Churchley to arrive, did he expect her to relent on finding she
couldn't live without him? It was Adela's belief that she gave no
sign. But the girl thought it really remarkable of her not to have
betrayed her ingenious young visitor. Adela's judgement of human
nature was perhaps harsh, but she believed that most women, given the
various facts, wouldn't have been so forbearing. This lady's
conception of the point of honour placed her there in a finer and
purer light than had at all originally promised to shine about her.
She meanwhile herself could well judge how heavy her father found the
burden of Godfrey's folly and how he was incommoded at having to pay
the horrible woman six hundred a year. Doubtless he was having
dreadful letters from her; doubtless she threatened them all with
hideous exposure. If the matter should be bruited Godfrey's
prospects would collapse on the spot. He thought Madrid very
charming and curious, but Mrs. Godfrey was in England, so that his
father had to face the music. Adela took a dolorous comfort in her
mother's being out of that--it would have killed her; but this didn't
blind her to the fact that the comfort for her father would perhaps
have been greater if he had had some one to talk to about his
trouble. He never dreamed of doing so to her, and she felt she
couldn't ask him. In the family life he wanted utter silence about
it. Early in the winter he went abroad for ten weeks, leaving her
with her sisters in the country, where it was not to be denied that
at this time existence had very little savour. She half expected her
sister-in-law would again descend on her; but the fear wasn't
justified, and the quietude of the awful creature seemed really to
vibrate with the ring of gold-pieces. There were sure to be extras.
Adela winced at the extras. Colonel Chart went to Paris and to Monte
Carlo and then to Madrid to see his boy. His daughter had the vision
of his perhaps meeting Mrs. Churchley somewhere, since, if she had
gone for a year, she would still be on the Continent. If he should
meet her perhaps the affair would come on again: she caught herself
musing over this. But he brought back no such appearance, and,
seeing him after an interval, she was struck afresh with his jilted
and wasted air. She didn't like it--she resented it. A little more
and she would have said that that was no way to treat so faithful a
man.
They all went up to town in March, and on one of the first days of
April she saw Mrs. Churchley in the Park. She herself remained
apparently invisible to that lady--she herself and Beatrice and
Muriel, who sat with her in their mother's old bottle-green landau.
Mrs. Churchley, perched higher than ever, rode by without a
recognition; but this didn't prevent Adela's going to her before the
month was over. As on her great previous occasion she went in the
morning, and she again had the good fortune to be admitted. This
time, however, her visit was shorter, and a week after making it--the
week was a desolation--she addressed to her brother at Madrid a
letter containing these words: "I could endure it no longer--I
confessed and retracted; I explained to her as well as I could the
falsity of what I said to her ten months ago and the benighted purity
of my motives for saying it. I besought her to regard it as unsaid,
to forgive me, not to despise me too much, to take pity on poor
PERFECT papa and come back to him. She was more good-natured than
you might have expected--indeed she laughed extravagantly. She had
never believed me--it was too absurd; she had only, at the time,
disliked me. She found me utterly false--she was very frank with me
about this--and she told papa she really thought me horrid. She said
she could never live with such a girl, and as I would certainly never
marry I must be sent away--in short she quite loathed me. Papa
defended me, he refused to sacrifice me, and this led practically to
their rupture. Papa gave her up, as it were, for ME. Fancy the
angel, and fancy what I must try to be to him for the rest of his
life! Mrs. Churchley can never come back--she's going to marry Lord
Dovedale."
