Chapter VI: Part 6

His mind travelled back to the early days of their acquaintance, to the pretence at a "friendship" which on his side had so soon become overwhelming passion. Then had come his formal offer of marriage, and for a long time she had played with him, saying neither yes nor no. Then for a while he had flung everything to the winds in order to be with her--on any terms. He remembered with a pang of pain the trifling reasons which at last made her quite suddenly consent to become his wife. A quarrel with the manager of the concert company to which she then belonged, followed by a bad notice in the local paper of the town to which he, David Banfield, undeterred by more than one half-laughing refusal, had come to make what he intended should be a final offer--these, it seemed, had brought Rosaleen to the point of decision.

Even now, Banfield never heard the name of that little Sussex town without a leap of the heart, for it was there that had taken place their marriage, the quietest and least adorned of weddings, celebrated in a small, bare Roman Catholic chapel, the incumbent of which, a wise old man, had spoken to Banfield very seriously, asking him to give the young Irishwoman more time for thought, and impressing upon him the gravity of the promises which he, a Protestant, had consented to make concerning their future married life.

With regard to the latter, Banfield had been scrupulously honourable, going, indeed, out of his way to remind Rosaleen of her religious obligations, and at the time of the divorce acting, in the matter of their child's future education, according to the spirit rather than the letter of his promise....

With bent head and eyes fixed on the white road, David Banfield insensibly slackened his steps while his mind concerned itself with the five years he and Rosaleen had spent together at Market Dalling. They had been years of secret drama, on his part of almost wordless struggle for some kind of response to the passion which her mysterious aloofness--to so many men the greater part of a woman's attraction--evoked and kept alive in him.

He now remembered how during these years there had been minor causes of disagreement, trifling matters--or so he had considered them--to which Rosaleen attached far more importance than he had done.

The constant criticism and interference of his half-sister, the dislike and jealousy of those town folk who regarded themselves as having a right to the close friendship and intimacy of David Banfield's young wife, these were the things--forming such unimportant asides to the course of that hidden struggle--which Rosaleen had brought forward when begging her husband, with passionate energy, to allow her to go back to her profession.

But to-night, the grey fear with which he now regarded his own future life at Market Dalling brought to David Banfield a sudden understanding of what Rosaleen had felt, caged, as he had caged her, in the little town to which he was now reluctantly turning his laggard steps, and which had been, till so few years ago, the centre of his universe.

He told himself that had he had the courage, had he been possessed of the necessary imagination, to make another life for himself and for her, none of this need have happened.

But why torture himself uselessly? He and Rosaleen had now drifted as far apart as a man and a woman can drift. What he had done to-night was in its way as irrevocable as what she on her side had done--nay more, the very fact that he had Matilda Wellow so completely at his mercy made Banfield feel, as a less simple-hearted, generous-minded man would never have felt, how impossible it was for him to draw back....

While returning to what had now become his place of bondage, David Banfield made a determined effort to dam the mental floodgates through which had run so strange a stream of violent revolt and emotion, and he was so far rewarded that almost at once something occurred which had the effect of bracing him up, of hardening him in his determination to do what he believed to be right.

As he walked down the silent, shuttered High Street at the end of which stood the Brew House, he saw that his hall light had not been extinguished; and as he opened the front door, he was confronted with the spare form and the gaunt, though not ill-visaged countenance of Mary Scanlan, the elderly Irishwoman who had for so long waged triumphant battle with her master's sister, Mrs. Rigby. Utterly different as the two women were, they yet, as Banfield sometimes secretly told himself, not without a certain sore amusement, had strong points of resemblance the one with the other.

Impelled by some obscure instinct that thus was he certain to be strengthened in the course of action to which he had just pledged himself, Banfield invited the woman into the dining-room, which had been, since his first wife's departure, used by him as living and eating room in one.

Very deliberately he lit the gas, and then turned and faced his housekeeper. "I think it right that you should be among the first to know," he said, "that I am going to be married again--to Miss Wellow."

There was a moment's pause. Banfield expected either a word of sullen acquiescence or an outburst of anger; he had known Mary Scanlan in both moods, but now she surprised him by assuming a very disconcerting attitude.

"If that's the case," she said slowly, twisting and untwisting a corner of the black apron that she was wearing, "I will be getting ready little Rosy's clothes, for you will be sending her to the convent rather sooner, I reckon, than you meant to do. I make no doubt the nuns will let me stay there for a week or two till the child gets accustomed to the place--that is, if you have no objection, Mr. Banfield?"

Banfield looked at the woman in some perplexity.

"But I've no thought of sending Rosy to school yet!" he exclaimed--then added: "Of course, I mean to keep my promise to her mother, but--but the child's a little thing yet--too young to go to school."

Mary Scanlan was the only woman to whom Banfield ever spoke of his wife, and Mrs. Rigby would have been amazed indeed had she known how often these allusions and semi-allusions were made, for to Kate, much as he trusted and respected his sister, Banfield had never till that day bared his heart.

"I am going to ask you," he went on, "to stay in my service, simply to look after the child. I know well, Mary, how devoted you are to my little girl, and how good you've been to her. When Miss Wellow has become--" he hesitated awkwardly, and then with a certain effort, uttered the words "my wife--she will, of course, take charge of the house, and I suppose she will bring her own servants with her. I shall no longer have any need for a housekeeper--but I know she will be only too glad if you will stay on with Rosy."

"I don't think I can do that, sir."

Banfield moved uneasily. Mary Scanlan almost invariably called him "Mr. Banfield"; it was one of the woman's many Irish idiosyncrasies which irritated his sister.

"I don't think I can stay on here, sir," repeated Mary Scanlan in a low, hesitating voice. "I don't hold with a man, a gentleman I mean, having two wives. I can't say a word of excuse for my poor Miss Rosaleen--I beg your pardon, sir, I mean Mrs. Banfield. I know she behaved very wickedly and strangely, but still you see, Mr. Banfield, to my thinking and according to my holy religion, she's the woman who owns you, sir, and no one else can ever take her place."

"I know, I know," he said hastily. "But Mary, why don't you consult your priest? If you explain the circumstances to him, he may take a different view of the matter to what you do."

"No, that he wouldn't!" exclaimed Mary Scanlan, with a touch of her old passionate temper, "and if he did, I shouldn't be said by him!"

She hesitated, and then in a low tone asked the strange question, made the amazing suggestion, "I suppose you wouldn't be after seeing Miss Rosaleen, Mr. Banfield? Not if I gave you her address?"

Banfield made a nervous movement of recoil.

"Mary," he said sternly, "you forget yourself!" and turning, left her in possession of the room.

* * * * *

How describe the days that followed?--short days full of intense joy and looking forward to Matilda Wellow, long days filled with perplexed misgiving and self-reproach to David Banfield.

Men and women of British birth generally prefer to conduct their courtships in the way that best suits themselves, but those whom Mrs. Rigby collectively dubbed as "foreigners" have long ago realised the advantage of having so important an episode of human life as that of betrothal "stage-managed" by someone more experienced in such matters than the two most interested.

Mrs. Rigby had no kind of sympathy with foreign fashion, and in theory thoroughly disapproved of the way in which the French, for instance, arrange their matrimonial affairs. But this engagement of her brother David Banfield and of Matilda Wellow was one of the supreme exceptions which prove a rule, and so she stage-managed every entrance, every exit, and, to pursue the analogy to its bitter end, every bit of "business" connected with the affair.

Her stern eyes, her rough tongue, kept the bride-elect in order, but her watchful fear lest Matilda should get on David's nerves before she became securely bound to him for ever had one curious effect; it made Banfield sorry for his betrothed, and caused him to feel more kindly to her than he would otherwise have done.

Then he was touched and surprised by Matilda's great loyalty to himself; he soon discovered that, far from discussing him with his sister, she often irritated the latter by her assumption that already she, Matilda, and he, David, had a joint life in which Kate Rigby played no part. This angered Mrs. Rigby keenly, and it is a pathetic fact that the only tears Matilda Wellow shed during the course of her engagement were caused by the woman who was her oldest friend, and to whom she was dimly aware that she owed her good-fortune.

Blinded by that most blinding of master passions, jealousy, Mrs. Rigby actually came to believe that her brother was now attached, in a far truer sense than he had been to Rosaleen, to the fond, foolish woman who was so soon to become his wife.

"He's getting quite silly about her," she observed angrily to her husband; "he goes up there every evening, however busy he may be, or however much I may want to have him here. And now he says he won't go to that good London tailor for his wedding clothes! It's clear he doesn't want to leave Tiddy--even for three days!"

But Mr. Rigby, as was his prudent wont when he disagreed with his wife, only looked at her, and thoughtfully wagged his head.

"Why don't you say something?" she asked crossly.

"Why should David go to London?" observed Mr. Rigby mildly. "He's a personable fellow; any tailor could fit David. If I were you, Kate, I'd let him be." But Kate, to her lasting sorrow, did not let David be.

Both her husband and even Matilda Wellow herself could have told Mrs. Rigby that it was in London that her brother had spent his honeymoon with his wife; but though she had been made vividly aware of the circumstance--for it was from there that the news of his hasty marriage had reached her--that fact would not have seemed to her any reason why David should not now do the right and proper thing by his second bride.

Thus it was owing to Mrs. Rigby that Matilda was at last roused to a sense of what was due to herself. Banfield, with some discomfiture, discovered that Miss Wellow would take it ill of him not to pay her the compliment of going to the London tailor for his wedding clothes--"and then," had observed his sister briskly, "you'll be able to bring Tiddy back something handsome in the way of jewellery; for that's a thing you owe not only to her, David, but also to yourself."

II

David Banfield, just arrived in London, stood in an hotel bedroom overlooking the trees in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Staring out at the leafy screen, which seemed to him so lacking in country freshness, there came to his mind poignant memories of a very different room and a very different outlook not half a mile away from where he stood, for he and Rosaleen had spent the first days of their married life in one of those vast hotels which, overlooking the Embankment and the river, are filled with light and air, as well as instinct with a certain material luxury which had pleased his young wife's taste more than his own.

With a quick movement he pushed up the old-fashioned guillotine window as far as it would go, and leaned out dangerously far; then he drew back sharply, feeling, as he now often felt when he was alone, that he was living through an unreal, a nightmare stage of his life, one which was bound to come sooner or later to an abrupt end, but which now must be lived through....

With unseeing eyes and unthinking mind he walked across to the shadowed corner where had been placed his portmanteau. Slowly, indifferently, he turned the key in the lock and raised the lid,--then quickened into alert, painful attention.

Lying on the top of its neatly folded contents was an envelope so placed that it could not but attract his attention, and on it was written--in the sprawling, unformed handwriting which was, perhaps, the only marked betrayal of Mary Scanlan's early lack of education--the one word "Important."

At once there leapt into Banfield's mind the certain knowledge of what the envelope contained. If he opened it, there most surely would he find his wife Rosaleen's address. It was this, then, that the Irishwoman had in her thoughts when she had asked him the unseemly question to which he had given so short and stern an answer.

But Mary Scanlan had not understood the type of man with whom she had to deal.

As he stood there, longing with a terrible longing to verify his belief, telling himself, with a leap of the heart, that, if he were not mistaken, then Rosaleen must be living alone, for if this had not been so the old servant would never have thought of trying to bring them together again--the claims of others, especially those of the woman from whom he had only parted that morning, became paramount. He told himself that, from the point of view of those who loved him, and whom he respected, it was his duty to destroy unopened the envelope lying before him.

Banfield turned away, and once more walked across to the window; and then his agitation suddenly became puerile in his eyes.

What the Irishwoman had regarded as important when packing his bag might well be a trifling matter, something wanted, maybe, for the child. The uncertainty seemed to steady his conscience; _he felt that he must know_.

Bending down, he took up the envelope; the flap was open, and out of it there slipped into his hand a shabby little card on which was printed:

MISS ROSALEEN TARA (The Colleen Bawn),
18, Abbey Street,
Westminster, S. W.

There followed for David Banfield three days of agonising struggle and temptation. All the feelings and instincts he had battened down, put determinedly from him for so long, sprang into life. Now that he knew where to find her, he became possessed by a deep, unreasoning longing to see Rosaleen once more--even if a meeting could only result in pain for him, in shame for her.

On the second day of his stay in London, he offered conscience a salve in the form of a fine ruby ring, which was despatched to Miss Wellow in lieu of the letter which he knew only too well she must be anxiously awaiting.

Had Banfield been a stronger man he would have left London. But that, or so he told himself, there was no need to do; and as the hours dragged on, bringing him closer to the moment which must see his return to Market Dalling--to Matilda Wellow--the fact that he and Rosaleen were in a material sense so near to one another began to affect his imagination in strangest and most poignant fashion.

Walking aimlessly along the hot airless streets of London in July, he found himself ever furtively seeking her.... Such chance meetings are not impossible; they happen every day. Why should such a thing not come to him as well as to another?

And so in the summer twilight, not once but many times, some woman's form--slender, graceful, light-footed as was Rosaleen's--would create for a moment the illusion that she was there, close to him, would bring the wild hope that in a moment his hungry heart would be satisfied, his conscience cheated. And then the woman in whom he had seen for a moment his poor lost love, would turn her head--and Banfield, cast down but undismayed, would again pursue his eager, aimless search.

On the last evening of his stay in London, this obsession became so intense that Banfield saw Rosaleen in every woman's shape that passed him by. He grew afraid; and after an hour spent in the peopled streets, he told himself that that way madness lay.

With eyes fixed on the dusty pavements, he made his way back to his hotel, and sitting down he wrote a letter--a kind, cheerful letter--to Matilda Wellow, telling her that he would be with her the next afternoon at five o'clock. And then, for the first time since he had known that Rosaleen was in London, his sleep was restful and unbroken. But in the early morning he dreamed a curious dream; Rosaleen, the beloved, the longed-for woman, was again with him,--elusive, mysterious, teasing as she had ever been,--and Banfield, waking in the early dawn, felt tears of joy standing on his face.

When he got up in the morning, and faced the day which was to see him go back to Market Dalling, he felt as must feel a man who sees stretching before him a lifelong period of servitude; but with that feeling came the gloomy belief that he had conquered the temptation that had so beset him, and this being so, he argued that he had at least a right to see the place where Rosaleen now lived.

Having come to this specious understanding with himself, Banfield felt his heart lighten. He told himself that he would wait till he was within some two hours of the time when he knew he must leave London, and, having so decided, he checked his impatience by various devices, packing his portmanteau, paying his bill, doing first one thing and then another, till the moment came for him to start walking along the Embankment to Westminster.

When at last he reached the broad, wind-swept space out of which he had been told turned Abbey Street, quietest and most sequestered of urban backwaters, he lingered for awhile, suddenly filled with an obscure fear of that for which he had so longed--a chance meeting with his wife.

After a few moments of indecision, he started walking slowly down the middle of the street, his footfalls echoing on the cobblestones.

Banfield looked about him curiously. To the right stretched the rough grey wall of London's oldest garden, framing a green oasis opposite the row of small eighteenth-century houses which stood on the other side of the street. They were quaint, shabby little dwellings, and against more than one fanlight was displayed a card bearing the word "Lodgings."

When Banfield came opposite No. 18, he stopped and looked up at the windows with beating heart and the colour rushed into his face, flooding it under the sunburn; following a sudden, an irresistible impulse, he stepped up on to the pavement, and with a nervous movement pulled the bell.

Then followed what seemed to him a long wait on the doorstep, but at last a thin, fretful woman came to the door and enquired his business.

"Does Miss Rosaleen Tara live here? Can I see her?"

"Yes, she lives 'ere right enough,"--the woman spoke with weary indifference,--"come this way."

Banfield paused; he had never thought the access to Rosaleen would be so simple, and he was bewildered by the ease with which this, to him so momentous a step, had been compassed.

He followed the woman up the narrow, wainscoted staircase to a tiny landing. "Stop," he said almost inaudibly, "I must tell you what to say--you must not show me straight in to her, like this."

But even as he spoke, there was another tinkle of the bell, and the woman began running heavily down the little staircase, leaving him standing in front of the door.

He knocked, but there came no answer, and at last he turned the handle, and walked into the room. It was empty of human presence, and yet his wife had stamped something of herself on the shabbily furnished sitting-room. Certain dainty trifles which he had known as hers were there, and before him, on the piano, was a music-case which he himself had given her.

The sight of this, his own gift, affected Banfield oddly, giving him a feeling that he had a right to be there. After a moment's hesitation, he walked over to the window, and looked out into the old Abbey garden. There he would wait patiently--for hours if need be--till Rosaleen came in.

Then, quite suddenly, there fell on his ear the voice which he had so often heard in dreams, and which he had of late so passionately longed to hear. He turned sharply round, and noticed for the first time that the door of the inner room was ajar. It was from thence that the light, indifferent tones floated impalpably towards him.

"Ah! but it's kind of you, doctor, to come so soon after Miss Lonsdale asked you to see me! I've only just come in, but I won't be a moment--I didn't expect you yet. Miss Lonsdale will be in long before you leave, I hope; she's almost as anxious about my voice as I am--and the faith she has in you, why, it's something wonderful!"

To Banfield, the words recalled, not Rosaleen his wife, but Rosaleen the girl, the dear bewitching stranger he had first known and wooed, though never won. Unconsciously he visualised the speaker; he seemed to see the quick, bird-like movements with which she was taking off her hat and smoothing her hair before the glass. He even saw her smiling--smiling as she used to smile at him in the very early days of their acquaintance.

He knew that he ought to cry out--tell her that it was he, her husband, David Banfield, who was there, and not the stranger whom she had apparently been expecting; but though he opened his lips, no word would come.

At last the door swung open quickly, and for a moment Banfield saw her face, lit up by that touch of wholly innocent coquetry of which your pretty Irishwoman seems to have the secret.

Then, as suddenly she realised the identity of the tall man standing between her and the window, a peculiar--to Banfield a very terrible--change of expression stiffened Rosaleen's face into watchful fear and attention.

"What is it?" she asked. "Tell me quickly, David! Is Rosy ill, or--or dead?"

"Rosy?" he stammered. "She's all right. I heard this morning----"

"--And I yesterday," she breathed quickly. Then she sat down, and Banfield let his eyes rest on her with a painful, yearning scrutiny.

He had thought to find her altered, coarsened by the experience he believed her to have gone through, but she had the same look of delicate, rather frigid refinement, which had first attracted him. He noted the perfection of her delicate profile, the determined, well-shaped mouth,--then saw with a pang that there were a few threads of white in the dark curly hair which, with her bright blue eyes, had always been Rosaleen's principal beauties; and yet she looked scarcely older than on the day he had last seen her--that on which he had accompanied her with a heavy heart to the station at Market Dalling to see her off to London.

Now, looking at her, it stabbed him to remember how even then she had shown an almost childish joy in leaving him. She had put her arms round his neck and kissed him in sign of gratitude. "It's kind of you to let me go, Dave!" she had whispered. He had often thought of those last words, the last he had heard her speak. Now he again remembered them. Alas! alas! why had he let her go?

She sat, looking away from him, her eyes fixed on the empty grate.

"You frightened me," she said plaintively. "Why did you come here, David, and frighten me like this? Why have you come here at all after--after what you did to me?"

"What I did to you?" he stammered confusedly, and there came over him the shamed fear that she had already heard of his coming marriage with Matilda Wellow.

"Yes, what you did to me--the documents you sent me--divorce papers they're called----" He felt, rather than saw, that his wife's eyes were filling, brimming over with indignant tears. "We don't have those things at home--in Ireland, I mean. And then reading out my letter--the mad letter I sent you--before a lot of men!"

Rosaleen had always possessed the wifely art of being able to make David Banfield feel himself in the wrong, and now, on hearing her last words, the man before her told himself with a pang that he had indeed acted in an unkind, even an unmanly, fashion to the fragile-looking woman who sat with her face averted from him.

"I thought--of course I thought"--he plucked up courage as he spoke--"that you wanted to be free. You said you hoped I should forget you."

"--And so I did," she said quickly, "I did wish to be free--not so much from you, as from the miserable, the stiflingly dull life you made me lead at Market Dalling. That's why I wrote that foolish--that wicked letter. I thought it would make you leave me alone. But, David," she made a restless movement, "I didn't understand. However, I've been well punished."

There was a short, strained silence. Then Rosaleen got up.

"I'm afraid I can't ask you to stay on much longer," she began nervously, "for I'm expecting a doctor who was very kind to me once when I was ill before. He's a friend of Carrie Lonsdale--you remember her, David? The truth is, my voice has given out, and I've been trying to give lessons, but Carrie thinks he will be able to make it come back again soon."

"And what will you do," asked Banfield in a very low voice, "if he fails?"

She turned and looked up at him, her eyes meeting his in direct challenge.

"Whatever I do," she said proudly, "you need not fear that I shall come to you for any help."

And then David Banfield felt shaken, overwhelmed by a fierce spasm of violent, primitive jealousy. The name of the other man had never been forthcoming; Rosaleen's letter had sufficed to win the undefended suit.

"I suppose," he said brutally, "that you can always depend on getting help from your lover?"

Rosaleen's eyes dropped, her face flushed darkly as she saw the change which came over her husband's face and as there came into his voice accents she had never heard there.

She sprang up. "How dare you insult me? You have no right to say such a thing to me! I am free to do exactly what I like and to go to whom I choose--you yourself made me free!"

But a very different man from the man she had believed David Banfield to be now stood before her.

Of the words she had said, the last alone remained with him. Free? Nay, nay, Rosaleen was in no sense free; his whole nature rose up and protested against such a statement. There could be no question of choice, for she belonged to him, only to him, solely to him, and that even if she had in a moment of aberration, of madness--his mind refused to follow the thought to its logical conclusion--not even in the most secret recess of his imagination had Banfield ever consented to dwell on what he believed had been. Not till the last few moments had he seen the torturing vision which almost always haunts the man who has been betrayed by a beloved woman.

He came yet closer, and put his hand on her shoulder.

"Rosaleen," he said hoarsely, "you don't understand. You want to know why I came here to-day? Well, I came to say that I am thinking of leaving Market Dalling. I came to ask you if you are willing to come back to me--to make a fresh start. You said just now that it was Market Dalling and our life there that you hated--not me. I've had a very good offer to go to South Africa, to Durban, and settle there. There's even a house waiting for us, and a convent school for Rosy. But whether I go or not depends on you, Rosaleen. If you are willing to come with us, we'll all go together--if not, I mean to stay at Market Dalling."

Rosaleen remained quite still. She made no effort to move away from his touch.

"Did you really come to ask me to do that, David, and that although you think so ill of me?" There was a wondering doubt, a softer, kindlier note, than Banfield had ever heard in his wife's voice.

He set his teeth and lied.

"Yes," he said, "that is why I came. Mary Scanlan gave me your address."

"Poor old Mary!" she exclaimed. "I suppose everyone at Market Dalling thinks I'm a bad woman? Your sister, of course, always hoped that I was a bad woman?"

She looked at him as if half expecting him to make some kind of denial. But he remained silent. What answer, what denial could he make? Of course, everyone at Market Dalling thought Rosaleen a bad woman. For the matter of that, none of them had ever thought well of her, not even his own people, not even his sister and her husband had made any attempt to understand her.

Rosaleen's imprudent question made yet another matter, one which Banfield had succeeded for a few moments in completely forgetting, become once more very present to him. With a feeling of terrible self-reproach there rose before him the helpless figure of Matilda Wellow.

"It's not only you," he said slowly, "but I myself who need to make a fresh start. I haven't so much right to blame you as you, Rosaleen, perhaps think--for I myself did a very wrong, a wicked thing----"

She slipped away from under his hand and got up, facing him.

"It's absurd for you to say that," she exclaimed petulantly, "why, you couldn't do anything wicked, David, if you tried! For the matter of that, I never could see--I never have seen--why people are--why people make----" she seemed to be seeking for a word, a phrase; and it was in a whisper that she added the words, "beasts of themselves."

Banfield stared at her, not understanding; for the moment he was too absorbed in his own feelings, in his own remorse, to take much heed of what she was saying.

"Well?" he asked, "well, Rosaleen, shall we both forgive each other--and make a fresh beginning?"

"Yes," she whispered, hanging her head as might have done a naughty child. With a gesture of surrender, she held out her hands. "I'm ashamed of what I did, David--and I'll try to be a better wife to you than I've been up to now."

Poor Banfield! As he took her in his arms his heart beat with suffocating joy; almost any other man would have felt her words, her implied prayer for forgiveness, curiously inadequate.

She looked at him with a peculiar, earnest look, as if trying to make up her mind to a certain course, and then, with a quick movement, she shook herself free and disappeared into the back room.

He heard the sound of a drawer opening, the fumbling of a key. A moment later she came back and thrust a small packet into his hand.

"There," she said, "open that, read what's inside, and then we'll burn it. Thank God, Rosy will never know now the shame you put on her mother. I've often thought how you would feel reading it, if I--died--before--you did!" and each word was punctuated by an angry sob.

The little packet which Rosaleen had placed in Banfield's hand was tied with blue ribbon, and on it was written: "In case of my death, to be forwarded to Mr. Banfield, The Brew House, Market Dalling."

It was Rosaleen's fingers which untied the knotted ribbon and which showed him, laid amid her little store of jewellery,--he had noticed that she still wore her wedding ring,--a sheet of notepaper on which was an attestation, sworn before a Commissioner of Oaths, that the letter which she had written to him, the confession which had sufficed to procure him his divorce, had been--false.

"But why?" he stammered. "Rosaleen--why?"

"Because I hated the life you made me lead at Market Dalling! I hate Market Dalling and the hateful people who live there! You wouldn't even let me play or sing on Sunday. And then, your sister Kate! She never gave me a kind word or look! D'you think that was pleasant?" she asked fiercely,--then more gently she added, "But I'm ashamed, I've always been ashamed of that letter, and I'd no idea, Dave, that it would make you do what it did."

The door behind them opened. Rosaleen turned around; she brushed the angry tears from her cheeks; there came over her tremulous mouth a charming, rather shy smile.

"Doctor," she said quietly, "you've just come in time to see my husband. David, this is Dr. Bendall, who was so kind to me when I was ill."

Banfield held out his hand....

III

It was the late afternoon of the same day, and Mrs. Rigby was sitting as she had sat on her silver wedding day, close to the window of her sitting-room, her busy hands engaged now, as then, in mending house-linen. Now, as then also, she was expecting her brother and Matilda Wellow to dinner, for before Banfield left for London it had been arranged that he and his betrothed should spend that evening with the Rigbys.

Mrs. Rigby allowed the work she was holding to fall on her lap. She looked into her garden with a preoccupied air. The month which had elapsed since her silver wedding day had brought with it great changes in her life, and what she saw before her seemed, in a sense, symbolic of those changes, for in spite of her careful watering and constant attention, the flower-beds, and above all the beautiful herbaceous borders of which she was so proud, were beginning to look parched and withered.

To-night more than ever Mrs. Rigby realised that the marriage of David and Matilda would alter her own life, and that not for the better. Why, in old days David would of course have come in to see his sister on his way from the station, and that even in the now forgotten time when Rosaleen was mistress of the Brew House. To-day her brother had evidently gone straight to Matilda Wellow....

But Mrs. Rigby reminded herself that, taken as a whole, her garden was incomparably fresher and greener than were those of her neighbours on either side; and as to David and Tiddy, she now told herself, almost speaking the words aloud in her anxiety to make them true, that she was pleased--very pleased--with the way everything was going on.

Thus she was glad that the rather absurd secrecy, so insisted on by her brother, would come to an end to-morrow. Of course a few old friends had been told in confidence of the engagement--but considering that this was so, the secret had been very well kept. It was not as if David were a real widower; Mrs. Rigby could not help hoping that he would be spared some of the silly remarks, the foolish congratulations, which fall to the ordinary engaged man. It must be bad enough for him, so the sister told herself, to put up with Tiddy's sentimental raptures. Still, it was a comfort to know that Matilda Wellow was well aware that she was in luck's way! How Tiddy studied David in everything--any other man would have been spoilt!

For the first time, a smile, not a very kind smile, came over Mrs. Rigby's shrewd, rather hard face.

During the last month, Matilda had actually given up eating potatoes and butter, because some fool had told her that in that way she might hope to regain the youthful slenderness of her figure! As for David, his betrothed's little attentions evidently touched him, and no one could say that he was not an attentive lover. Think of the ring he had sent Tiddy, the ruby ring which had arrived yesterday morning, and which must have cost--so Matt, who was learned in such things, declared--not a penny less than £50!

The exact date of the wedding would probably be fixed to-night, for it had been arranged that the marriage was to follow very soon after the announcement of the engagement. There was no reason for delay. Mrs. Rigby had herself chosen the 3rd of August as the best date, and she had little doubt that she would be able to persuade Dave and Tiddy that no other day would suit them so well.

Suddenly her quick ears caught the sound of footsteps treading down the path to the left, a path hidden from the place where she was now sitting, and a slight frown came over her face. Mrs. Rigby liked her husband to come straight in to her from the office; but lately, he had taken to the tiresome habit of going out by the back way, into the garden, and then suddenly popping round on her.

She looked out expectantly, but the sound of footsteps died away. It must have been one of the maids going down to the extreme end of the garden in search of some kitchen stuff.

Mrs. Rigby again took up her work and began sewing diligently. Yes, the marriage should take place quite quietly on the 3rd of August. Everything was ready--in fact, there was nothing left to wait for. Even Tiddy's wedding gown and headgear had come home.

David had showed himself oddly interested in this wholly feminine question of his bride's attire.

He had actually been to the trouble of choosing the material of which Tiddy's wedding gown was to be made; a white and grey stripe, a thin, gauzy stuff not nearly substantial enough--or so Mrs. Rigby had thought--for the purpose to which it was destined. And then he had persuaded Matilda to go to a new dressmaker, a Frenchwoman who had been lady's maid to one of his grand county acquaintances, and who had just set up for herself in Market Dalling. More wonderful still, David had made a rough drawing from some old picture that had taken his fancy of the hat he desired Matilda to wear on her wedding day! It was a white hat trimmed with long grey feathers, quite unlike Tiddy's usual style....

Suddenly looking up, Mrs. Rigby felt a thrill of something like superstitious fear, for there, making her way round the corner from the summer-house, came, walking very slowly, a woman at once like and unlike Matilda Wellow, clad in a silvery-looking gown and wearing a white hat trimmed with long grey feathers.

As the figure advanced down the path, it took unmistakable shape and substance; here, without a doubt, was Matilda wearing what were to be her wedding garments, and, as Mrs. Rigby suddenly became aware, a Matilda quite unlike her usual homely self!

Who would have thought that simply leaving off potatoes and butter for a month would have made such a change! Or was that change due to the art of the French dressmaker? The silvery-flounced skirt fell in graceful, billowy folds to the ground, for Miss Wellow was not even holding up her gown, as a more sensible woman would have done. The muslin kerchief edged with real lace, outlined the wearer's still pretty shoulders, and the hat--well, the hat was certainly becoming, especially now that Tiddy's cheeks were flushed--as well they might be, considering what a fool the woman was making of herself!

Mrs. Rigby felt rather cross at having been so startled; she got up, and walked out to meet her guest, determined not to be drawn into any praise of the becoming hat and gown.

"I hope David won't keep us waiting long," she said tartly. "I suppose he thought that he must put on his dress suit," and her expression showed clearly that in the matter of overdressing there was not much to choose between her brother and the woman who was to become his wife.

"David will not be here to-night, Kate. He came, but he has gone away again--back to London."

Miss Wellow spoke in a low, collected voice, and certain little irritating mannerisms with which she usually punctuated her words were absent. Perhaps it was the quiet, expressionless way in which she made her surprising statement that caused Mrs. Rigby, as she afterwards averred to her husband, at once to feel that something was wrong.

"Gone back to London?" the sister repeated. "Why, whatever has he done that for? What business took him back to London, to-day?" and she looked searchingly at the other's flushed face.

"Kate," said Miss Wellow, again speaking in the soft, emotionless voice which was so unlike her own, "I have got to tell you something which I fear will upset you--and make you very angry with poor David. Kate--he has gone back to Rosaleen."

Mrs. Rigby withdrew her eyes quickly from Matilda Wellow's face. She did not then realise that the words which had just been spoken would for ever spoil to her this fragrant, familiar corner of her garden. All she felt now was a fierce, instinctive wish to get under shelter,--to hear whatever shameful thing had to be heard within four walls,--and so she put out her right hand and pushed her visitor before her into the sitting-room.

Then, keeping her back to the window, she forced Miss Wellow to turn round.

"Now tell me the truth," she commanded, "and Tiddy--above all, don't let yourself be upset, and don't get hysterical! I know what it is--you and David have had some silly quarrel. I saw from the first that you were making yourself too cheap! He can't go back to Rosaleen; he divorced her--and she's with another man. Besides, David is my brother! He wouldn't dare do such a wicked thing! You have no right, Tiddy, to accuse him of such shameful behaviour!" She spoke with quick, savage decision.

But Miss Wellow faced her with a strange, untoward courage--"I won't have you speak so of him--of David, I mean!" she exclaimed passionately, "you're his sister and ought to take his part!"

Then her voice broke, and with a touch of her old feebleness she added, "If you had heard him telling me about it, even you, Kate, who are so hard, would maybe have understood and felt sorry for him. _I_ felt very sorry for him----"

"_You!_"--said Mrs. Rigby, with what appeared to the other withering contempt, "_you!_----"

"He put it very beautifully," continued Miss Wellow; her voice was now almost inaudible, but Mrs. Rigby caught the word and repeated it with terrible irony:

"Beautifully!" she said,--"beautifully!"

Matilda shrank back as though she feared the other was about to strike her, but Mrs. Rigby did not see the gesture.

"And did he tell you when he proposes to bring----" she made a scarcely perceptible pause and then shot out the words--"his bride home. If it's to-morrow, I'll make Matt take me away to-night!"

"He's not going to bring her home," said Matilda, quietly. "He's never coming back himself; they are going right away--out of England."

"A good thing too!" said Mrs. Rigby.

"He says that will be more respectful to me; he has considered my feelings, Kate--he has indeed."

"Has he? Why----" she suddenly held up a warning finger, for there was a sound of footsteps in the passage; the sound stopped outside the door, and both women instinctively held their breath, united by a common fear of servants' gossip.

There was a long pause, and then the handle of the door was slowly turned, and Mr. Rigby came into the room, his ruddy colour gone, or rather lying in curious streaks across his face, a nervous smile hovering over his lips.

He shut the door behind him and looked, with a world of interrogation and anxiety in his eyes, at his wife.

"You needn't smile," she said sharply; "this is no smiling matter!"

His eyes fell; instinctively he turned to the other, the weaker vessel. But the reproof which Mrs. Rigby had just addressed to her husband penetrated Miss Wellow's brain.

"I'm afraid I do look rather silly!" she said nervously, "wearing this dress, I mean. But, you see, knowing that now I shall never wear it, I thought I would put it on to-night."

The odd collocation of her words passed unnoticed; indeed, Mr. Rigby, even had he wished to answer her, was not given time to do so, for his wife had turned on him and was avenging in his person the heaped-up wrongs of her sex.

"It's all your fault, Matt! You were always against David going to London from the first, and you ought to have prevented his doing so! But no--you stood aside and did nothing! I suppose you guessed he might meet that--that----" her lips snapped together she would not soil them by uttering the word which to her mind alone described Rosaleen.

As her husband did not answer, suspicion grew into certainty.

"Did you know that she was there? Did you think he would see her?" she demanded.

Mr. Rigby looked mildly at his Kate. "I didn't know anything, but I did just think it possible," he said.

But his triumph, if triumph it was, was short-lived.

"Why didn't you tell me then? A decent woman would never have thought of such a thing, but men have such disgusting minds!" cried his wife sharply. She added suspiciously, "But how did you learn what's happened? Did David write to you?"

"He came into the office on his way back to the station," said Mr. Rigby, briefly. "And, Kate--I've promised to see to things for him. Rosy will join them"--he gave a little cough--"the day after to-morrow, and they will all sail for South Africa as soon as matters can be settled up. It's better so, my dear."

Suddenly Miss Wellow bent down. Her hand fumbled blindly among the soft, voluminous flounces of her skirt.

"I've got something here," she said in a muffled voice, "that I want you to give Rosy, Matt. But though I know it's there, I can't find the pocket; you know I had one put in because David once said that he didn't like a woman without a pocket in her dress. I've found it--here it is!"--she took a step forward, and standing close to her old friend, thrust into his unresisting hand a small hard substance. He looked down and saw it was the ruby ring. "You can give this to the child," she said breathlessly, "I don't want to see her again--with love from Auntie Tiddy."

But this was more than Mrs. Rigby could stand.

"Well, it's a good thing," she exclaimed to her husband, "that Tiddy takes it like that! No man would ever have dared to treat me so! But as long as she doesn't care--still, she needn't take David's part against his own sister, who has the right----"

But what right David's sister had was never explained, for Miss Wellow suddenly swayed forward; she would have fallen to the ground had not Mr. Rigby caught her.

"Why, she's fainted!" he said pitifully; "she does care--more than you think, Kate. But she will come round soon--too soon," he muttered to himself.

* * * * *

It was the same night, or rather the next morning, for the dawn was beginning to make its grey way into the bed-chamber of Mr. and Mrs. Rigby; it threw into dim relief the large, almost square four-poster, under the chintz-covered canopy of which the husband and wife lay, rigid as if carved in stone.

"Kate," said Matt, "are you awake?"

He could just see her head lying on the other pillow beside him. Her still abundant hair was loosened and gave her a look of youth. Tears had made a furrow down her cheeks.

"Yes," said Mrs. Rigby, "I am awake, Matt. What is it you want?"

"I'm afraid, my dear, that you are very much upset." There were understanding, sympathy, ay, and tenderness expressed in the way Mr. Rigby uttered the homely word.

His wife, for the first time in their twenty-five years of married life, felt a responsive thrill. For the first time she was unfaithful to Nat Bower.

"It's of you I'm thinking," she whispered. "I've been trying all night to forget David,--my poor little David,--but it's terrible to me to think that you, Matt, married into a family that could be guilty of such shameful behaviour!"

VI

THE DECREE MADE ABSOLUTE

James Tapster was eating his solitary, well-cooked dinner in his comfortable and handsome house, a house situated in one of the half-moon terraces which line and frame the more aristocratic side of Regent's Park, and which may indeed be said to have private grounds of their own, for each resident enjoys the use of a key to a portion of the Park entitled locally "The Enclosure."

Very early in his life Mr. Tapster had made up his mind that he would like to live in Cumberland Crescent and now he was living there; very early in his life he had decided that no one could order a plain yet palatable meal as well as he could himself, and now for some months past Mr. Tapster had given his own orders, each morning, to the cook.

To-night Mr. Tapster had already eaten his fried sole, and he was about to cut himself off a generous portion of the grilled under-cut before him, when he heard the postman's steps hurrying round the Crescent. He rose with a certain quick deliberateness, and going out into the hall, opened the front door just in time to avoid the rat-tat-tat. Then, the one letter he had expected duly in his hand, he waited till he had sat down again in front of his still empty plate before he broke the seal and glanced over the typewritten sheet of notepaper.

SHORTERS COURT, THROGMORTON ST.,

_November 4th, 190--_.

DEAR JAMES,

In reply to your letter of yesterday's date, I have been to Bedford
Row and seen Greenfield, and he thinks it probable that the decree
will be made absolute to-day; in that case you will have received a
wire before this letter reaches you.

Your affect. Brother,

WM. A. TAPSTER.

In the same handwriting as the signature were added two holograph lines: "Glad you have the children home again. Maud will be round to see them soon."

Mr. Tapster read over once again the body of the letter, and there came upon him an instinctive feeling of intense relief; then, with a not less instinctive feeling of impatience, his eyes travelled down again to the postscript--"Maud will be round to see them soon."

Well, he would see about that! But he did not exclaim, even mentally, as most men feeling as he then felt would have done, "I'll be damned if she will!" knowing the while that Maud certainly would.

His brother's letter, though most satisfactory as regarded its main point, put Mr. Tapster out of conceit with the rest of his dinner; so he rang twice and had the table cleared, frowning at the parlour-maid as she hurried through her duties, and yet not daring to rebuke her for having neglected to answer the bell the first time he rang.

After a pause, he rose and turned towards the door--but, no, he could not face the large, cheerless drawing-room upstairs; instead, he sat down by the fire, and set himself to consider his future, and, in a more hazy sense, that of his now motherless children.