Chapter IV: Book II: Sanchia at Wanless Hall (3)

She was full of her reasons, evidently. Rumours of them, so to say, drove over her eyes, showed cloudily and angrily there. Her beautiful mouth looked cruel--as if she saw death and took joy in it. “I think he is horrible,” she said. “I think he is like a beast. He doesn't love me at all until he comes here--and then he expects me--Oh, don't ask me to talk about it.” She stopped her tongue, but not her thought. That thronged the gates of her lips. She hesitated, fighting the entry; but the words came, shocked and dreadful. “He wants me, to ravage me--like a beast.”

Chevenix began to stammer. “Oh, I say, you mustn't--Oh, don't talk like that--”

The door opened, and Ingram came in.

He looked from one to the other, sharply. “Hulloa,” he said. “What are you two about in here?”

Sanchia looked at the fire, and put her foot close to it, to be warmed. “Tea-party,” said Chevenix. “That's it, Nevile.” He nodded sagely at his host, and saw his brow clear. Ingram shut the door and came into the room, to a chair. “That's all right,” he said. “I hope it was a livelier one than mine. That old Devereux was on her high-stepper. I'm sick of being trampled. I thought, though, that you had been having words. You looked like it.”

Sanchia said, smiling in her queer way, “Oh, dear no. Mr. Chevenix is much too kind for that. He's been talking very nicely to me. He's been charming.”

“Oh, come, Sancie--” cried the brisk young man, quite recovered.

Ingram, in a stare, said, “Yes, Sancie, you may trust him. He's a friend of ours.”

“I do trust him,” she said.

Chevenix said, “I shall go out on that. I declare my innings. Good-bye, you two. I'll go and pacify the Devereux.” He hoped against hope that he might have warmed her.

Ingram, when they were alone, threw himself back in his chair, crossed one leg, and clasped the thin ankle of it. He had finely-made, narrow feet, and was proud of his ankles. Sanchia was now again kneeling before the fire.

“Quite right to have a fire,” he said. “It's falling in cold. There'll be a frost. What was Chevenix saying about me?”

She had been prepared. “Nothing but good. He's your friend, as you said.”

“I said 'our friend,' my dear.”

She looked at him. “Yes, certainly. He's my friend, too.”

“I hope he'll prove so. Upon my soul, I do.” He remained silent for a time. Then he leaned forward suddenly, and held out his arms.

“Oh, Sancie,” he said, his voice trembling. “Love me.”

She looked at him with wide, searching, earnest eyes. They seemed to search, not him, but her own soul. They explored the void, seeking for a sign, a vestige, a wreck; but found nothing.

“I can't,” she said. Her voice was frayed. “The thing is quite dead.”

Ingram flushed deeply, but sat on, biting his lip, frowning, staring at the young, mounting fire, which she, stooping over it, cherished with her breath and quick hands.

VII

Ingram, at supper in his private room, had his elbows on the table, and spoke between his fists to Chevenix, let into these mysteries for the first time.

“I ought not to complain, you'll say, and in my heart of hearts I don't, because I'm a reasonable man, and know that you don't make a row about sunstroke or lightning-shocks. We call 'em the Act of God, and rule 'em out in insurance offices. No, no, I see what I've let myself in for. I've been away too much; she's got sick of it. I shall have to work at it--to bring her round. By God, and she's worth it. She's a wonder.”

“Pity,” said Chevenix, “you've only just found it out.”

Ingram frowned, and waxing in rage, stared at his friend as if he had never known him. “You don't know what you're talking about. Why, she adored me. I was never more in love with a woman in my life than I was with Sancie.”

Chevenix tilted back his chair. “Oh, you had it pretty badly--at the time. The trouble with you is that you are such a chap for accepting things. You're like a hall-porter in a Swiss hotel. You take things for granted. Do nothing--hold out your hand--and get your perks. Perks! Why, they ain't perks at all. They're bounty--what you get from a girl like Sancie.”

All this Ingram took as his due--as due, that is, to a man of passion and reasonable desires. He fell into a reverie. “Yes, yes, I know. She was devilish fond of me.”

Chevenix gritted his teeth, but Ingram went on. “It was a false position, I know, and I never ought to have looked at her twice. But she was awfully queer or awfully deep--one never knew which. Why, when we got thick together--always meeting out, always reading poetry and philosophy--Shelley, Dante, Keats (I forget half their names now)--I take my oath I hadn't a suspicion that she was getting to like me, in that sort of way, as we call it. She made all the difference in the world to me, I can tell you. You know what I was doing after Claire bolted with that swine: killing time and killing myself--that's what I was doing. It was like going into church out of the sun to hear her at her poetry, and see her. Oh, a lovely girl she was!”

“She's a lovelier woman than you and I are fit to look at,” said Chevenix, “if you ask me.”

“Damn you, I know all about that. D'you think I want telling, now that I can't get her? Well, then I found out what was the matter with me--and then we cleared the air.”

“Who had stuffed it up to begin with?” Chevenix murmured; but Ingram ignored him.

“I told her the whole thing--”

“After she had found it out!” cried Chevenix with energy. “Let's have cards on the table. I told Vicky all about it at a dance--and Vicky told her.”

“I told her,” Ingram said, “that I was in love with her, and promised to behave--and so I should have, only--”

“Only you didn't, old chap.”

“She loved me--there was no stopping it then. The thing was done. Mind you, her people knew it all, too.”

“The mother always was a fool,” Chevenix agreed. “And she liked you.”

“I know she did. I took care of that.”

“Not a bit of it, my boy,” the other objected. “That's just what you didn't do. She liked you because she thought you didn't care a curse whether she liked you or not.”

Ingram raised his eyebrows at such _naivete_. “That's what I mean, of course. So it went on all that summer. We used to shake when we met each other, and be speechless. By heavens, what a time that was! Do you remember the tea-party?”

Chevenix blinked. “I wasn't there; but I remember what happened afterwards. The poor child--as white as a sheet--and every hand lifted against her. By God, Nevile, what girls--mere chits--will go through!”

“I know,” said Ingram dreamily. “Isn't it awful?” Chevenix looked at him. He was quite serious. What can you do with such a man as this?

“They left us alone in the room, you know,” Ingram continued. “Vicky went out last and left us in there--and the whole place was charged with electricity. You could feel it, smell it, hear it crackling all about. My heart going like a drum; my ears buzzing with it all. I hadn't been able to speak when they spoke to me. I don't know what the devil they must have thought of me--and I didn't care a damn. And over across the tea-table, on a low chair--there she sat--my girl! Her eyes downcast, her mouth adroop.” He shut his eyes for a moment. “And Vicky went out, and left us there!”

“You had it badly, old chap,” Chevenix said. “Go slow. Take your time. Or chuck it, if you'd rather.”

Ingram appeared not to hear him; he was staring at the tablecloth, at his two hands locked in front of him, and at his knuckles white under the strain.

“I don't know how long I stood gaping at the window, I don't indeed. I could feel her sitting shaking in her chair; but neither of us said anything. Somebody came to take the tea out--and then I turned and looked at her; and she turned and looked at me. Something drew me--set me on the move. It was all over with me then. I went straight across the room to her; I stood above her, I stooped and took her hands. I don't know what I said: she looked at me all the time in a strange, clear way. She got up--I was beside her, and took her. Not a word said. I had her lips. Honey of flowers! Her soul came forth from them: new wine. Oh, God! I thought so, anyhow. And so did she. Chevenix, she meant giving.”

Chevenix nodded shortly. He believed that. Ingram had covered his eyes.

He drained a glass before he went on with his account. “I suppose you know the rest as well as I do. I never had the details out of her. One of them--that Mrs. King--Philippa, it was--came slam into the room; and what was there to do? I stuck it as long as I could--until I was practically kicked out. The mother came back and turned me out. I had to leave her to brave them all--and I never saw her again until I found out where she was in London.”

“Don't you trouble to tell me all that part,” said Chevenix frowning at him. “I know more about that than you do. I was in it. My head, how they treated her! What I never did understand, you know, was how you found out where she was.”

Ingram smiled. His memories now amused him. He looked straight at his friend. “I'll tell you that. It was rather neat. You remember that chap Senhouse--loafing kind of artist? Anarchist, gypsy-looking chap, who wore no hat?”

Chevenix opened his eyes. “By George, I do!”

Ingram nodded. “She thought no end of him. He took her affair with me very much to heart.”

“As well he might,” said Chevenix. “I fancy that you were the only person who took it easy.”

“Sancie used to tell him everything,” Ingram went on, “and she told him all the trouble. She'd been turned adrift with fifty pounds to her name.”

“Not quite so bad as that,” Chevenix put in. “They locked her up with an aunt, and she bolted.”

“Same thing,” said Ingram. “Well, this chap Senhouse comes here one day in a mighty hurry--turns up at breakfast, and makes a row. Wants me to swear I'll divorce and marry Sancie. Says he thinks I'm a blackguard and all that, but that, on the whole, I'd better marry her. Refuses to give me her address, all the same. We had a row, I remember, because he began to tell me what he thought about her. The man was a bore, you know.”

Chevenix screwed up one leg. “All men are, if they're sweet on your sweetheart, I suppose. He was worth fifty of you, all the same--but go on.”

Ingram laughed. “I set my wits against his,” he said, “and found out that he'd come straight from seeing her--in London. That was good enough for me. I got rid of Master Senhouse, and went off to town. He had no promises out of _me_, you may believe.”

Chevenix felt very sick, and looked it. “The less you say about your promises, my good chap, the better I'll take it.” But Ingram by now had got back to his holier reminiscences:--

“I hunted for her high and low for three months--advertised, turned on detectives, I had even dared her friends' eyes and their cold shoulders--couldn't hear anything ... I was walking in hell for three months....

“Then, one day, I met her--in Chancery Lane. Of all squalid places on earth--there....”

“I'd been to my lawyer's, in Lincoln's Inn. I'd settled money on her--in case anything happened to me while I was abroad. I was going to travel, because I'd given it up. And then I met her. Chancery Lane!

“I was passing some school or another--Commercial Academy--book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting--that sort of place; a lot of ogling, giggling girls, and boys after 'em, came tumbling down the steps--all sun-bonnets and fluffy hair; and down the steps she came, too--Sanchia came--like a princess. She was in white, my dear man--as fresh and dainty as a rose, I remember. Daisies round a broad-brimmed straw: some books under her arm. The sun was on her, lit the gold in her hair. She looked neither right nor left, spoke to no one, had no one with her, or after her. She was never showy. You had to know her well to see how lovely she was. She never showed off well, and was always silent in company. Oh, but what a girl!

“When she saw me she flushed all over, and stood. She stood on the last step, and looked at me. Looked at me straight, as if she waited. I went directly to her, and took her hand. She let me. I couldn't speak sense. I said, 'You!' and she said, 'I knew I should see you like this.' It sounded all right. I never questioned it.” ... He stared, then broke out. “Good God, Bill! To think of her then--and to see her now! She won't look at me! I don't exist.” He plunged his face between his hands, and rocked himself about. Chevenix watched him without a word. Suddenly he lifted his pinched face, and complained bitterly.

“I can't understand it--I don't know what's changed her. Why, it's awful to make a chap suffer like this!” He stared about him. “Why, Bill,” he said, hushing down his voice, “is she going to drop me, d'you think--let me go to the devil?”

Chevenix rose and stood with his back to the fire. “I'll trouble you not to whine, Nevile; I've got something to say to all this tale of yours. I've got to ask you a thing or two. When you found her, now; and when you knew all that she'd gone through--a child like that! You brought her up here--hey?”

Without shifting his head to face his cross-examination, Ingram answered between his hands--“No, I didn't. She wouldn't budge from her school till she'd finished her course. I courted her for a month. It took me all that to make her listen to reason.”

“Reason!” Chevenix rated him. “You call it reason!”

“It was what _she_ called it--not I,” said Ingram from between his fists. Then he looked up. “She refused the idea of going abroad. Said she wasn't at all afraid of people talking. Said she wanted to work for me. Must be doing something, she said. I tell you, it was her idea from the beginning. And I do say, myself, that it was reasonable.” He searched for agreement in his friend's face, but got none. “It suited better,” he said presently, with indifference. “It suited better--in every way. I had to be here.”

“Why had you to be here, man?” Chevenix raised his voice. “What the devil did it matter to you, having her, where you were?”

“It mattered a lot. I like this place. It's mine. I've got duties up here. I'm a magistrate and all that.”

Chevenix was now very hot. “Magistrate be damned. Do you mean to tell me that you profess to love a woman, and turn her into a servant because you want to try poachers? And you talk about the sun in her hair! And then--upon my soul, Ingram, you sicken me.”

“You fool,” said Ingram. “I tell you it was her own idea. She loves the place. She loves it a lot more than she does me. It's been a continual joy to her. Why, where would she have been while I was in India--all that year--if she hadn't had all this in her hands? You don't know what you're talking about.”

His voice rang down his scorn. Chevenix began to stammer.

“You're hopeless, Nevile, utterly hopeless. Every word you say gives up your case. What's it to do with you whether she likes it or not? I'm not talking of her, but of you. You silly ass, don't you see where you are? You fall in love with a woman and make her your head housemaid. Then you say, Oh, but she likes it. It's not what she likes we're talking about; it's what you can bring yourself to do with her. Wait a bit now. There's more to it. You play about here, there, and all over the shop. Off you go for three months at a time, sky-larking, shooting antelope, pigeon-shooting, polo, and whatever. She sits here and minds the gardeners--she whom you saw with the sun in her hair! Year in, year out it goes on. Now here you are back from India. Good. You leave her for a year, and write to her twice--then you say, Why, where would she have been if she hadn't had something to do? The sun in her hair, hey? Love, my good chap! You don't know how to spell the word. You ought not to touch her shoe-string. You're not fit. By Gad, sir, and now I remember something! And it's the truth, it's the bitter, naked, grinning truth.” He did remember something. He saw her curled-back lip--he saw her fierce resentful eyes. He heard her say it: “I think he is like a beast. He wants to ravage me--like a beast.” “You've been judged, Nevile,” he said. “You've done for yourself. And now I'll go to bed.”

Ingram's face was very cloudy. He looked for a moment like quarrelling. “Do you mean to leave me like this?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Chevenix, “I do. I don't want to stop and hear you protest that you intend to marry her. Marry her! Why, man, if you'd meant to marry her, you'd have posted home express from Marseilles the moment you heard that you could do it. But no! You've got her there--in cap and apron--she'll keep. You know she's here--you have your fling. And you stop three days in Paris, and drop it to her casually, when you please, that you're a free man. Yes, by George, I do mean to leave you like this. You're best alone, by George. Good-night to you.”

He went smartly away; but he had worked himself into a shaking fit, could not have slept to save his life. A cigar at the open window was inevitable.

He leaned far into the night. It was densely dark, and had been raining. Soft scud drifted over his face; clouds in loose solution drenched the earth. He smoked fiercely, inhaling great draughts and driving them out into the fog. Being no thinker, his sensations took no body, but he broke out now and again with pishes and pshaws, or scornfully--“Old Nevile--hungry devil, what? Stalking about like a beast. Oh, she was right, she was right. Pish! And there's an end of it.”

He was aware of softly moving feet below--a measured tread. He listened and heard them beyond dispute. “Nevile!” he said, “like a beast, padding about his place.” He listened on, grimly amused. Let him pad and rage.

But he was to be startled. A voice hailed him, not Ingram's. “Beg your pardon, sir.”

“Hulloa!” he cried. “Who are you, my man?”

“Glyde, sir. Is all well?”

“What do you mean, Glyde? What are you doing?”

“I was passing, sir, to my houses. I heard voices, and I wondered--”

“Oh!” he laughed. “You thought there was a scrap, did you? It's all right, Glyde. I and the master were having a talk. Nothing for you to worry about. I shared his lonely meal. Don't you be disturbed.”

“No, no, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Chevenix called to him when he was at some distance. “I say, Glyde.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You can go to bed. It's all right.”

“Thank you, sir. Good-night.”

He chuckled as he undressed. “Rum fish, Glyde. Watch and ward, what? Watching his shield. Bless her, she's got friends, then.” He considered for a while, flicking the glowing end of his cigar. “That chap--Senhouse--Jack Senhouse. I wonder what's become of him.”

VIII

The discrepancies of an unfortunate party caused no disturbance to the staff of Wanless Hall. Sanchia, whatever her private cares--and they seemed less than those of other people on her account--suffered nothing to interfere with her housekeeping. Ingram might rage for her in vain, Chevenix agonise, or quarrel with his host and friend, Mrs. Devereux disapprove to the point of keeping her room; but Sanchia, with front serene, moved from office-table to kitchen, to the garden, to the home-farm, interviewed Mrs. Benson, consulted with the stockman, pored--her head close to Clyde's--over seed-pans and melon borders, was keenly interested, judicial, reflective, pleading, coaxing by turns--seemed, in fact, not to have a perplexity in her fair head. Her health was superb, she never had an ache nor failed of an appetite. To see her sitting in the stable-yard on a sunny morning, her lap full of nozzling fox-hound pups, was to have a vision of Artemis Eileithyia. So, it seemed, the grave mother-hound, erect on haunches, with wise ears, and sidelong eyes showing the white, knew her certainly to be. Beside and over her stood Frodsham of the stables, and his underlings, firmly her friends.

She looked up, beaming. “Oh, Frodsham; aren't they sweet? One of them tries to suck my finger. What are you going to call them? I do hope you mean to keep them all.”

“I doubt they're too many for the old bitch, Miss Percival. She'll not feed the lot of them. We'll be wise to duck the latest cast.”

“Oh, no,--please. I'll feed it--I will, really. I couldn't let you drown it. Now, what are their names to be?”

“There's Melpomeen, Miss Percival, and Melody, and Melchior, and Melchizedek. That's for the bitches.”

She quizzed him. “No, Frodsham, really that won't do. I'm not quite sure about Melchizedek; but Melchior was a man--he was a king--a king of the East. And I believe Melchizedek was an angel.”

Frodsham rubbed his chin. “May be you are right, Miss Percival. An angel, was he now? Wings to him? 'Tis a name for a bird, then. If we kept the hawks the old Squire used to love--there's a name for a peregrine! Melchizedek--a fair mouthful.”

“A Priest for ever,” mused Jacobs, a wizened elder, the kennel man, who yet bowed to the coachman in his own yard. “We may put him among the dogs, I believe. We've Proteus, and Prophet; but no Priest.”

Frodsham looked to Sanchia for direction, ignoring Jacobs. She flashed him a name. “Melisande, Frodsham. Call her Melisande, and save her life; and she shall be mine. I'll look after her. Please do.” He owned to the spell of her eyes, of the sun upon her hair. “Melisande she shall be, Miss Percival, and your own,” he said. “The Missus shall rear her if the old bitch won't. She's had six of her own, and knows what it is.”

Regretfully, one by one, she put the striving blind things down; then rose and went her way into the gardens about the house. Slowly through the kitchen gardens she passed. Glyde, thinning walled peach-trees, saw her, felt her go. She shed her benediction upon him--“Good morning, Struan,”--and went on. He watched her for a while, then turned fiercely to his affair. Through dense shrubberies, over drenched lawns her way was; it led her to the lily-pond, which lay hidden within rhododendron walls, with a narrow cincture of grass path all about it. Dark-brown, still and translucent like an onyx it lay before her. It was her haunt of election when she was troubled, as now she was, when she gave herself time to remember it.

She stood, her hands clasped before her, close to the water's brim, and looked over the shining surface. She had never yet squarely faced her difficulties. Her sceptre was slipping from her; her realm, usurped at first, hers by sufferance first, but then by love of them she ruled, could hold her but a little while more. The shadow of coming eclipse made her eyes grow sombre. Doubt of the unknown made lax her lips.

If Nevile's wife, with all her sins clotted on her, was dead, what was she herself going to do, or allow to be done? She had yielded to love--her first love and her last; but that had been long ago. Love, the fire, the trembling and the music in her heart; pride, the trust, the loyalty, the bliss of service; the wonder, the swooning, the glory like a sun upon her--all gone, burned out, or worked out. Why, how long had it lasted her? Her lips stretched to a bleak smile to think of it. Three months joy in herself, three months joy of him; then work, incessant and absorbing; and then the growth of a new pride, the pride of mind (for she found that she had a brain), and of a new love--for she found that she loved the creatures more than man. Education indeed! To draw from a child caught unawares the force and the brooding love of an Earth-Goddess.

In the beginning, she could have told herself (but never did), she was to be pitied, not blamed. Reticent among her free-speaking sisters, shy, what the maids call “a deep one,” rarely a talker, keeping always her own counsel, she had first been moved to utter herself by the extreme carelessness of Ingram whether she did so or not. The blame--if it is to be laid--must be upon her mother when she, knowing Ingram's story of miserable marriage and separation, allowed the man to continue a friend of the house, be much with her girl, and unfold himself under her clear young eyes. What she was about--that masterful, self-absorbed woman--there's no saying. It was always supposed that, with five beautiful daughters to market, she had pushed Welbore Percival--Thomas Welbore Percival, East India merchant of The Poultry--into lavish entertainment of his friends and acquaintance. Ingram, a squire and son of squires, was perhaps a shade above her degree; she may have required him to give a tone. This, considering that wretched marriage of his--a month's engagement in defiance of head-shaking, a blazing Hanover Square wedding, a year's bickering, one month's acrimony (done by letter) and Ingram's unquenchable hatred of the woman--this, I say, you may well doubt. But I can give no other explanation. He came, he talked in his high-voiced, querulous, bitter-humoured way, he saw and sought the grave young Sanchia, and he won her pitying heart directly he had engrossed her watching eyes.

She was a girl intensely interested in a hundred dawning things, to whom love had come late. Until she was near twenty you would have thought her sexless. Senhouse, her poetical friend and teacher--her only friend, her only confidant--had dubbed her Artemis; and it may well have been his adoring service of her pure flame which first turned it inwards, to scorch her heart. All that she had learned of this scholar gypsy she poured out as balm over the stricken Ingram, who swallowed it and her together. Then the truth about him was blared upon her suddenly, and she found that he was to be pitied. Guileless victim of a hateful woman as she believed him then, she found that she held a store of balm. She pitied him deeply, she opened, she poured out her treasure. Enthusiasm for the saving work captained her thereafter; nothing would turn her from her purpose. Ingram was to be saved by love: she gave him all.

To do him justice, a young man born to possess and command, he did his best to repair what was beyond repair. He told her the truth unasked by her; he confessed that he loved her, and owned that he had no business to do it. Nearness, circumstance, brooding on that which was true of both of them and must not be uttered by either, did the rest. Upon that evening in the drawing-room when they found themselves alone, each trembling under the god, they simply drifted together, and without effort to resist, mingled their natures through the lips. Discovery, earthquake and eclipse, her mother's chill rage, her father's tears, her sisters' dismay; all this and more she endured. She passioned like a young martyr. She admitted the facts without comment, and accepted the consequences without a falter. They might have whelmed a greater heart than hers; turned on to the town as she was to all intent, at two-and-twenty, a girl with the face and figure of a goddess, with fifty pounds between her and the devil. They might have sent her, at the least, weeping and trembling into Ingram's arms. But they did not. She was of finer clay. She took a lodging in Pimlico, and, to fit herself for employment, went to school. The commercial course which she chose was the shortest possible, but all that she felt she could afford. “My dear young lady, we can only promise you a smattering--really no more for the money.” “It must start me,” said Sanchia, and began. There was a month more to run when Ingram found her, and, glad as she was of him, doting and doted upon, in the first flood of youth and love, she persisted in it, finished it out, and got her diploma for what it was worth, before, as he put it, she would listen to reason.

It sounded extremely reasonable to him what he then proposed; and also to her, though Chevenix scorned its propounder. As Ingram put it to her, it attracted her newborn pride of knowledge. She was to flesh her steel, so to speak, in reality: in plainer words, she, with her smattering of accounts, was to manage a great house, an army of servants, possibly an estate. Excessively in love as she was, with all the music of it in her untried ears, she knew already in herself that her mind must have other food than her heart's rapture. I think, indeed, that she would have declined him altogether if he had proposed nothing more tangible to her than perpetual honeymoon. That was what Senhouse would certainly have proposed to her--she saw that in every look of his, and read it in every line he sent her; but that had never attracted her. She had given Senhouse her confidence, but not her heart. Ingram's proposals, therefore, pleased her. She had not a sweet enough tooth, nor the taste for flattery which the other involved. She was entirely without vanity. Therefore, however little honourable and however much a lover of his ease Ingram may have shown himself in making them, his reasonable proposals were gratefully received. It was he who suggested, but she who took the lead. She began immediately to plan her new career--was perfectly business-like. Ingram was to leave London at once, and go to Wanless--to his duties of the bench, his delights of the field, cares of the farm. He was to announce to his househould his intention of “settling down”; and he was to announce the advent of a housekeeper. In this very outset of his bliss he must needs do as she bade him. He went, and made her ways as smooth as they could be made. Her rooms were assigned to her; her duties mapped out, the exact range of her authority. Her wages were fixed, to be paid quarterly. She would take nothing else from him--no jewellery (she wore nothing but simple things, which had been given her by her parents or sisters--amber, a string of cowries, an agate heart, a bangle or two), no frocks. She was to have two hundred a year, and throughout her time to this present she had no more, and kept herself exquisitely upon it, with a sense of what was due to him, to herself, and to her position, which was admirable, unhesitating, and never at fault. In due time she arrived and entered upon her career. That which was unlawful seemed now justified; the secret intimacy, the wedded amity, the giving, which was the dearest gain she had. Discretion, on her side unsleeping, on his the more effective because he never seemed to have any, secured them. There was no open scandal among the neighbours; whatever the household may have suspected, very little was said. Within a year her servants were her slaves. The Rector, it is true, reproached her for not going to church. She deprecated his indignation, but didn't go.

Up to the day when we first met with her, her garden-hat in her hand, reading her telegram by the garden window, she had been eight years governor of Wanless--and for nearly two of those years alone. For the first two or three of them Ingram, revelling in his snug ease, with little to do but devise things--alterations, extensions, ventures into farming, and the like, which it was her delight to execute--never left the county, hardly cared to leave the estate. He entertained very sparingly: Chevenix came once or twice, his own brother, Maxwell Ingram; there were some other dinner-parties to the countryside, hunt-breakfasts, once a hunt-ball, at none of which ceremonies did she appear. He endured these wearinesses, shrugging them away as soon as he could, to hasten from a dinner of dry toast and knives and forks to his room--the Master's room--where supper, Sanchia, sweet intimacy awaited him. He spent thus by far the cleanliest and most sane years of his wayward life. She soothed, amused, stimulated him at once. He taught her all he knew of country-lore, gave her, as they say, “the hang” of landed estate; he learned by teaching, and might have become a wholesome gentleman.

But domestic business called him to London presently. He went, and was away three months, with lawyers, fierce threatenings from Claire, intermediaries, friends of both parties, and the rest of them. He was worried, flurried, put into a rage; exploded, put himself a thousand times in the wrong; finally, he came back to Wanless embittered and restless. He came back to find himself welcome, but not excessively so. At least he thought not. His extensions, suggested in that first wonderful time--a range of glass-houses, new heating apparatus, acetylene gas installations, were well advanced. Sanchia's brows were often knit over estimates, specifications, and bills. He had to pay for novelties from which the salt had evaporated; he was never very fond of paying, and now, it seemed, he wasn't very fond of what he had to pay for. Sanchia was kind to him, but there was a difference. She was as happy as the day was long, always at work, outdoors or in, had not a moment for him (business apart) until the very end of the day, when (at eleven or so) she dressed with care and went to him at his supper. Sanchia was perfectly happy; but he was not.

He stayed six months that year--from April to September; but then went to Scotland, deer-stalking, shooting pheasants. He was back for Christmas and brought a houseful of guests--all men. Again she welcomed him, again she was kind. He was now a little blunted to the fine shades of love, took his happiness as it happened to come, and could rub his hands over the household blessing she was. By-and-by, at the end of her fourth year, she took over the gardens as well as the house, was accepted by Mr. Menzies as his liege-lady and by young Clyde as much more than that. The estate-management, home-farm, woods, tenancies, were given up to her at the end of the fifth year, just before Ingram sailed for West Africa on a shooting expedition. By that time he had grown to depend upon her entirely for everything. She was become the faithful well-tried wife of standing, which in a man of Ingram's bone means that nothing remained of love but entire confidence and occasional gratification. After this, he left her for long periods together; for the whole of the eighth year he was abroad, “idiotically happy,” as he had told her.

During all this time no intercourse with her family--except those furtive letters from her adoring old father, which were pitiful to her, because they could not be answered as he would have had them; and nothing from her friend of the Open, who had at last got himself a mate. It seemed that she had made a clean break, and that nothing of what had made her dawning life sweet and sane was to mingle with the sweetness and sanity which she had brought into Wanless. And then--after eight years--she caught herself looking back. And now--here was an end of the dream.

If you are to ask me what had changed her regard for Ingram during that solitary year, so that she received him at the end of it as she did, I don't know that I can tell you. Slowly discovery--of herself, of him--came to her, slowly combustible stuff was heaped within her; it slowly kindled, and smouldered long. No doubt he himself blew it into clear flame by his let-drop news of Claire's death. She had not known that: she never read the newspaper, having neither time for the world's affairs nor interest in them. Suddenly, by that, she was offended; suddenly saw him as he really was, always had been, and always must be. Suddenly, also, she saw herself, as brimming with life, energy to live and to make live, at the end of her music-time. The folds fell from her eyes, she could see Ingram as a man, squalid. Nay, more: she could now see him as a beast, ravening. Thereupon he gave her horror, so that she dared not look back upon her hours of blindness.

Perhaps he had offended her by his silence--his two letters, which she had neither invited nor answered. That can hardly account for it, since she had not written to him of her own initiative. Their parting certainly had been discrepant: the clinging and wistfulness had been hers, though she had uttered nothing of complaint or misgiving. But perhaps he had been too gay and nonchalant, a little too much the husband secure. For a week she had shivered at her loneliness; then she had plunged anew into the flood of affairs, and had come out, as from a cold bath, braced and tingling. Round went the wheels of Wanless. The house was new-papered, painted, carpeted; every month brought new wonders to the garden. Under Glyde's tuition, seeing with his eyes, watching with his tensity of vision, she had come closely into Nature's arms. Perhaps she was unwise with the young man: the fact is she never stopped to consider him. She liked him and his queer, secret, passionate ways. She took a royal line of her own. She required much of him, and if he made much of it, she didn't know it. She dreamed no harm to him or to herself. Her absorption in the business of the moment, or the needs, was so manifest that not even the maids, who saw her frequently with the youth, could have thought harm for a second. It was just Miss Percival all over--as “keen as mustard.” Perhaps it was as much under Glyde's fostering as any other nurture that she came, during that year alone, to love the earth so well that she could appraise the worth of human love. I don't know. It was a critical year for her.

As she was anything but a fool, there's no doubt that she came, before the end of that year, to know what was the matter with Glyde. She had had experience--of herself and another--and he was utterly incapable of concealing his feelings. Of course she knew what was the matter with him, and was tenderly and quietly amused. She approached him gradually, let herself play elder sister, and let him play what he chose, within severe limits, never overstepped by him, never unwatched by herself. He was a passionate, sensitive, inarticulate creature, narrow-faced, sharp-eyed, scowling and thin. He always looked cold, mostly angry, and never seemed contented, even when his plants flowered themselves to death to please him.

A woman, any woman, knowing that a man covets her possession, stores her knowledge, exults in it in secret. It is a fund, a store against lean years or wry ones. You can see it throned sedately in her eyes, when she is with him, however much she may feel his absurdity or presumption. So it was with Sanchia. She was fully conscious of Struan's preposterous state, strictly the elder sister, never the patroness, for were they not bond-slaves both? She patronised nobody at Wanless, yet, with a steady eye for distances, kept a perfect length, varying with each oncomer. With Mr. Menzies, lord of the gardens, so far on she came; with Frodsham, master of horse and hound, so far; with the engineer so far; with Minnie nearer; nearest of all with Mrs. Benson: her attitude to the stout woman was that of favourite pupil to a family governess of immemorial service. She could wheedle Mrs. Benson, and often did. The elder sister attitude was kept for young Glyde; she admonished, scolded, preached to him high doctrine of duty and honour; there was something benignant, a sort of pitying care shed from above. To him she may have been like Cynthia, stooping to the dreamer on Latmos. Whether she knew that, she must have known a good deal. She knew, for instance, that he kept vigil; for she had met him at night, as you have been told. She knew where to find him. Nothing had ever passed between them, of course, of her relations with the Master. I don't think that she was aware of his sentry-go under the windows--first under Ingram's, then under hers. I am sure she was not, or he would have heard of it in plain terms, have seen her eyes grow hard, and her mouth stretch to bleakness. She was capable of royal, cold rage when she was offended. But that he hated Ingram must have been plain to her.

And now, as she stood at gaze, lonely and pensive by the black pond, she saw that it was over, her busy life. She was at the end of her tether, must lose her power and the sense of it. She was to begin the world again, starting with her fifty pounds, and without that which had made it a pride before. With a little shiver of self-pity, a half-sigh and a tightening of the lips, she accepted her fate. That was her way.

She regretted nothing, asked neither for mercy nor allowance. What she had done, she had done; if it was to be done with, she could not help that; she must go her way. Never for an instant did it enter her head that she could marry Ingram. Nothing that he had urged, or Chevenix counselled, made the smallest difference to her. She did not love Nevile any more; he was horrible to her: enough of that. Whatever her fate was to be, she would accept it: she chose it so. Without reasoning it out, that was final for her. She had always had _sic volo_ for her final cause. _Stet pro ratione voluntas._ Marriage, even nominal marriage, with Nevile was the accursed thing: none of it. And why? Because she chose it so.

This was very sublime. I sing, or Mr. Senhouse sings, a Goddess in her own Right. That is to be observed, or we fail. Persons have existed, and do yet exist, who are law unto themselves, deliberate choosers of their fate, deliberate allies of Atropos with the shears, who go what seems to us, shivering on the brink of things, a bright and bloodstained way, and furrow deeply into life, because it must be so, because so they will have it. Great ones of time, a Caesar or so, a Catherine, a Buonaparte, come handily to mind, who, wreaking countless woes, wrought evenly their own. And since greatness is a relative term, and time an abstraction of the mind, in their company, says Mr. Senhouse, was Sanchia Percival, and in her blue-clouded eyes was to be discerned seated, like a captain, foreknowledge of her own fate, and will to choose it. But, as for Mr. Senhouse himself, at this time of envisaging of ways I don't believe that he entered her head. Small blame to her, either, seeing that the man, having renounced her, or failed of her, as you please, had taken up with his Mrs. Germain, and found her to be a Fact, as I have related.

But to do wrong or right, the prerogative of choice: she arrogated that. So, I think, if the sister of the Far-Darter had ever stepped aside from the path of her lonely delight--as some have it she did on Latmos--she would have done it without shame. It would have been her pleasure and her choice; she would never change countenance or have to breast the flood of colour. It must be hers to take up or discard an empire, or a Nevile Ingram of Wanless Hall. So, in her degree, did Sanchia Percival--of the stuff of goddesses.

IX

Mrs. Devereux having departed as impressively as might be expected of a lady with a sense of injury, there was little for Chevenix to do but to follow her; for whereas Mrs. Devereux considered herself badly treated by both parties in the house, the young man had to own that he had quarrelled with his host. “I laid for Nevile,” he told Sanchia, “and he don't let me forget it, either. He don't like commentators on his text--never did. So he's making Wanless too hot to hold me.”

Sanchia, with rueful eyes, feared that this was her fault. “I'm very sorry,” she said. “On all accounts I'm very sorry. I shall miss you. It was nice to see you again.”

“See me again,” cried Chevenix, “as soon as you please; but not here--unless you feel you can make up your mind to settle down, as we call it.”

She shook her head. “I don't think I can. I think it might be wicked--as things are.”

Chevenix raised his eyebrows. “That's you all over, my dear. Other people's Right is your Wrong. Why question the decrees of the police? They tell you that you may do what you please when you're married, but not before. But you won't have that. Of course, if you can't swallow Nevile, you can't--and there's an end of it. Only,” he added, “there _must_ be an end of it. You're in a false position--now.”

“According to you I always was,” said the candid young lady, and made him change countenance. She shirked nothing.

“I did think so once; we all did, you know. Even your bare-footed friend, What's-his-name--”

“Mr. Senhouse.”

“Beg your pardon. Mr. Senhouse, of course. Well, he didn't take it sitting down, so to speak. Did he now?”

She considered. Her eyes grew gentle over the remembrances which this name always called up. “He knew that I was right. Oh, yes. I'm sure of that. But he was frightened. He lost his nerve because--”

“Because it was you, my dear,” said Chevenix briskly. She owned soberly to that.

“I shall see your people when I get to town,” he told her. “I shall make a point of seeing Vicky and your governor. And if I could drop in upon Senhouse, by George, I'd risk it. You don't know where he is just now, I suppose?”

“He was in the Black Forest when I last heard from him,” she said, “and was going to the Caucasus--to collect plants. That was a long time ago. Three years, I should think. He doesn't write now. He's married, you know.”

“Married?” he repeated, with open eyes. “I never knew that.”

“He married a Mrs. Germain--a widow.”

Chevenix stared, then slapped his leg. “Then that accounts for it! Didn't I tell you I met him when I went out to Brindisi to see Nevile off--met him on a steamer, with a pretty woman? That was Mrs. G.--_his_ pretty woman. Good Lord, how rum!” He laughed, staring. Then, “What on earth did he do that for? She's not his sort. And I gave myself away--confoundedly--to each of 'em in turn. You'll never believe it, but I told _him_ that she'd always been in love with Tristram Duplessis, and then I gave _her_ to understand what had been the matter with old Senhouse.” He exploded, then grew mighty serious. “That's rather a bore. I was counting on him, you know. I thought you might want him.”

Sanchia made no reply. About the corners of her mouth there lurked the hint of a smile, which her wistful eyes belied. Chevenix watched her, but could make nothing of it.

“He was a rum 'un,” he continued. “The first time I saw him after you came up here, was when I ran against him by chance in Norfolk somewhere. Spread abroad he was--in flannels--all his things strewn about. He had a little fire going, and a little pot on it. Doing a job of tinkering, he said, to oblige a lady. There was the lady, too, if you please, sitting on a bank, smoking a clay. She had a beard, and an old wide-awake on her head. Senhouse introduced me, I remember. He told me he was on his way North--Wastwater, I think. A planting job up there--or something. Rum chap that! Oh, one of the very rummest! He asked me a lot about you. I didn't know how much he knew, so I went very pussy. The chap was as sharp as a needle. Spotted me. He said, 'My dear sir, I don't ask you what she is doing or where she is. I ask you if she is well.' Then I told him a lot--about you, and Nevile, and all this business. I let out, I tell you. I was fairly deep in the thing--you know that I felt pretty badly, because it was my fault that you ever knew Nevile at all. Don't you suppose I've ever forgiven myself that, Sancie; never you suppose it. No, no.”

He was much moved. She, by a sudden impulse, put out her hand to him. He wrung it, and said, “Thanks, Sancie; thanks, my dear.”

After a wrestling bout, he went on: “Do you know what that fellow said to me? I should like you to know it. Mind you, he was yours, body and soul, then--whatever he may be now. I think he's yours still, for that matter--but _then!_ He never concealed it--so far as I know--from anybody. Now, listen to me.” He heard me out, never said anything till I'd done. Then he looked out over the marshes into the weather, and he said, “No harm ever came to a good woman. I shall see her again, crowned. Now, what do you say to that? Queer, isn't it?”

Sanchia blushed deeply and bent her head. Chevenix marked her confusion, and varied his tone to suit the case. He became practical. “Now, what'll he say about this new state of affairs, do you suppose?”

She lifted her head. “He will think me in the right.”

Chevenix shrugged. “There's going to be trouble,” he believed. “There's bound to be, just on that account. Nevile can be a brute when he's in the wrong, and knows it.”

Sanchia squared her jaw for trouble.

“He wants you back, you know, awfully--because you won't come. And the more he wants you the less he'll say so. That's the pride of the cobbler's dog. If he's uncomfortable, he'll scratch until he's comfortable again. And he says, 'If you can't get the best take the next best'; and runs about with Mrs. Wilmot at his heels, and is bored all the time. That's Nevile all over.” His eyes grew rounder. “You'll have to go, you know.”

She admitted that. “Yes, I must.” Then she sighed. “I don't want to go. There's such a lot to be done here.”

“Yes, yes, my dear,” said Chevenix with some irritation. “No doubt there is. But you can't afford it.”

He stammered out his next. “I should like to say, Sancie, that there's nobody on earth I respect--for whom I have more respect than for you. I don't understand your point of view--don't pretend to. But I know a fine thing when I see it. I'm not much of a chap, I know--no brains, and all that--simple, rotten chap, I know; but if we're not going to be friends I shall be unhappy.”

“We are, I hope,” she said, smiling kindly at him. She gave him her hand.

“Right, Sancie. Look here,” he said sternly. “I'll punch Nevile's head for you, if you like.”

“I shouldn't like it at all,” she assured him.

“We're old acquaintance, you know. He'd take it from me better than from anyone else--like Senhouse.”

“Mr. Senhouse would never touch him,” she was sure. He dropped in Chevenix's estimation immediately.

“Quaker, eh? I didn't know that.”