Chapter VIII

At lunch time Clodagh sent word to Lady Diana Tuffnell that the long ride in the morning sun had given her a headache, and that she would be glad of a few hours' rest.

On receipt of the message, her hostess was much concerned, and came herself to Clodagh's bedroom door to inquire whether she could be of any use to the sufferer; but there, she was met by Simonetta, who conveyed the intelligence that her mistress was asleep.

But in reality Clodagh was not sleeping--was not even lying down; she was sitting in a low chair in the shadow of the drawn chintz curtains, striving to solve the question of her future conduct. Would she remain at Tuffnell and face the difficulties of her position? Would she turn coward--and run away?

She passed in review the incidents of the morning, until, by persistent contemplation of them, her humiliation kindled to anger. First, anger against herself; then, anger against the world at large; lastly, anger against Gore.

By the time afternoon tea was brought to her, the headache she had feigned had become a reality; and before dinner time arrived she had fallen into a state of miserable despondency. But scarcely had this black mood taken possession of her, than a new and more intolerable distress assailed her. She suddenly realised the gossip to which her abrupt retirement might give rise. What would the house party think of her disappearance? Would not Lady Frances Hope--if no one else--presume that she was suffering from wounded vanity? The thought was unendurable. No sooner did it present itself, than she sprang from her chair in a fever of apprehension, and rang hastily for Simonetta.

Ten minutes before the dinner hour, she emerged from her room and passed downstairs. Faint daylight was still filling the house, but everywhere the lamps had been lighted, and the mellow double illumination gave a curious softening effect to the old raftered ceilings and panelled walls.

In the hall she was met by Lady Frances Hope, who paused and looked at her scrutinisingly.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked, with unusual brusqueness. "You almost look as if you had a fever. Your eyes are glittering."

Clodagh laughed nervously, and put one hand to her cheek.

"Nothing is the matter."

Lady Frances's lip curled slightly.

"You should go to bed early."

"Yes. Early in the morning! I feel I could sit up all night."

"Playing bridge?"

Again Clodagh laughed, this time a little recklessly.

"Why not?" she asked. "Will you play to-night?"

"Not here. George is rather a stickler--where his relations are concerned."

"And his guests?"

Clodagh's question was quick and a little anxious.

"Oh, his guests can amuse themselves as they like, of course."

"Then I shall play to-night--if I can find any one to play with."

Lady Frances looked over her shoulder, attracted by the sound of voices.

"Well, here comes Rose!" she said. "Press her into your service! She won't refuse, if you give her Mr. Mansfeldt as a partner. The set she has made on that man the whole afternoon is perfectly disgraceful."

She turned with a smile to Mrs. Bathurst.

"Ah, Rose! How nice to see you! And you are just in time. We have been taking your name in vain."

Clodagh became the centre of a noisy party until dinner was announced. And during the meal itself, the same air of inconsequent gaiety was maintained in her regard, for she sat between Serracauld and his uncle.

A dozen topics were touched upon during the course of the meal--the latest sporting gossip, the latest social scandal, the latest Parisian play, all were discussed, and all laughed over the triviality of the world that has few prejudices, few responsibilities, fewer ideals.

From time to time, during the easy flow of this light talk, she found herself stealing surreptitious glances down the long table to where Gore was seated between Lady Diana Tuffnell and her sister; but not once did she surprise a glance from him. It seemed that he had very successfully banished her from his mind.

After dinner the whole party left the dining-room together, as was the custom at Tuffnell, some to play billiards, some to stroll in the gardens, others to find their way to the music-room, where Lady Diana usually gathered a little audience to listen to her singing. On this evening Clodagh was amongst the first to pass out of the dining-room; and moving into the centre of the hall, she paused and looked expectantly over her shoulder.

As she had anticipated, Deerehurst appeared almost at once, and came directly to her side.

"What is your pleasure?" he said. "Bridge?"

She looked up swiftly.

"Yes, bridge," she said quickly. "I feel I must have excitement to-night."

He looked at her immovably.

"As you wish," he said calmly. "I shall ask Rose Bathurst and Mansfeldt to play."

He turned away, and at the same moment Lady Diana came forward from a little group that included her husband and Gore. Coming close to Clodagh, she laid her hand kindly on her arm.

"Well, Mrs. Milbanke," she said pleasantly, "how shall we amuse you this evening?"

Clodagh turned swiftly. Her nerves felt so tense and strained that even her hostess's quiet voice set them tingling.

"Oh, I have chosen my amusement," she said. "I want a game of bridge, and Lord Deerehurst has gone to make up a four."

Lady Diana's expression changed, betraying a leaven of disappointment.

"Bridge?" she repeated. "Do you think you are quite wise? Remember your headache!"

Clodagh gave a short, excited laugh.

"Ah, you are not a bridge-player, Lady Diana! If you were, you would know that bridge is a cure for all the ills of humanity. Here comes Lord Deerehurst with two accomplices! Fancy, it is the first time I have met the rich Mr. Mansfeldt!"

Lady Diana was silent. She looked once more at Clodagh--a rapid, penetrating look that might have belonged to her sister. Then she compelled herself to smile.

"I hope your game will be a good one," she said graciously; and moving quietly away, she rejoined her husband.

Almost at the same moment Deerehurst approached, followed at some little distance by Mrs. Bathurst and Mansfeldt--a South African millionaire, who had recently found his way into society.

"Rose is making the running," he remarked in a maliciously amused whisper. "She asked me before dinner exactly what Mansfeldt is worth. Ah, here you are, Mansfeldt!" he added aloud. "Allow me to present you to Mrs. Milbanke! Mrs. Milbanke, will you show us the way to the card-room? I hear you are the spoiled child of the house!"

Clodagh bowed to Mansfeldt; and responding at once to Deerehurst's suggestion, led the way across the hall.

The card-room at Tuffnell was the only room in the big, rambling house that had not preserved an air of old-world repose; here alone, the artistic decorator had been allowed to encroach upon the handiwork of time; and the result, although comfortable and even luxurious, was modern and slightly bizarre. An Oriental carpet, a few divans and coffee stools, half a dozen chairs, and three or four baize-covered tables comprised the somewhat conventional furniture; while the walls were covered in fabric of bright scarlet and decorated with a peculiar and extravagant frieze representing the fifty-two cards of the pack. As Clodagh entered, an irrepressible recollection of London--of the clubs--the card-rooms--the smoking-rooms of London--where men and women idle away their lives and their money, rose to her mind, banishing the pictures of country peace that the last twelve hours had conjured.

Pausing by one of the tables, she looked back at her three companions.

"Let's cut for partners!" she cried quickly, picking up an unused pack of cards. "See! I've cut a ten!"

Mrs. Bathurst came languidly forward and raised a portion of the pack.

"A three!" she said. "Now Mr. Mansfeldt, and Lord Deerehurst!" She looked with graceful interest towards the men.

Deerehurst cut a four; then the millionaire followed with a two.

Her face flushed with pleasure.

"How strange!" she murmured. "Do you mind having a very stupid partner, Mr. Mansfeldt?" Her large brown eyes rested on the rich man's face, exactly as they had rested upon Deerehurst's in the days at Venice.

Observing and comprehending this, by the light of recent knowledge, Clodagh gave a sharp, amused laugh.

"I think every one is satisfied, Rose," she said. "Now, about points! Lord Deerehurst, what points?"

Deerehurst bowed complacently.

"What you like, partner! Our usual forty shillings a hundred?"

"Or twenty shillings a hundred?" suggested Mrs. Bathurst with a deprecating smile at Mansfeldt.

Again Clodagh laughed.

"You are getting very modest, Rose! Do you remember the last time we were opponents at bridge? But I won't tell tales out of school!"

Mrs. Bathurst looked annoyed.

"Would it be quite wise----?" she asked sharply.

But Deerehurst intervened.

"Well," he said, "shall we decide on forty-shilling points? Mr. Mansfeldt, do you agree?"

Mansfeldt, who was an intensely reserved and silent man, looked up unemotionally.

"I am in your hands," he said; and following the example already set by Clodagh and Mrs. Bathurst, he seated himself at the card-table.

"Very well! Forty-shilling points." Deerehurst also seated himself, and began to collect the scattered cards.

But with a swift gesture, Clodagh leant across the table and placed a detaining hand over his.

"Wait!" she said. "Let's make it eighty shillings a hundred!"

Deerehurst raised his eyebrows, and the millionaire glanced at her curiously; while Mrs. Bathurst made a little affected exclamation of dismay.

"Clodagh, I couldn't! I'm horribly hard up!"

Once again Clodagh laughed shortly.

"Then trust to luck! You're more lucky than I am." Her voice was high, and charged with excitement; her eyes looked hard and very bright.

Deerehurst's cold glance rested for a moment on her face.

"You really want excitement to-night?" he asked in a low voice.

She threw up her head with a reckless movement.

"Yes; I do want excitement. Rose, will you agree to eighty-shilling points?"

Mrs. Bathurst allowed her gaze to flutter prettily from one face to another, until it finally rested upon Mansfeldt's.

"Will you decide, partner!" she said in a confiding whisper.

Mansfeldt looked at her for an instant in slight embarrassment; then he appeared to regain his stolidity of bearing.

"You may play," he said decisively. And a faint, indescribable smile flitted across Mrs. Bathurst's lips, as she sank back into her chair.

It was nearly two hours before the steady progress of their play was interrupted by any remark not directly connected with the game; then, at the conclusion of the second rubber, Clodagh looked across at Deerehurst, as if obeying a sudden impulse.

"I bring you bad luck, partner!" she said quickly.

Mrs. Bathurst laughed.

"Unlucky at cards, lucky in love! He won't complain, Clodagh."

Deerehurst smiled calmly.

"Is it well to aver that?" he said. "Look at your own score!"

She laughed again--a laugh of complete satisfaction.

"Ah, but I owe that to my partner's play, not to luck! Shall we lower the points, Clodagh? You are a horrible loser."

Clodagh's hot cheeks flushed a deeper red.

"Lower the points! I would rather raise them. But aren't we losing time? Deal, Mr. Mansfeldt, please!" Her excitement was obvious. Her lips were obstinately set; and her fingers tapped the table in nervous impatience.

A third rubber was begun and finished; then a fourth, and a fifth; and very gradually, as the play continued, the sounds throughout the house became fainter and fewer. At first, the tones of Lady Diana's voice had floated up from the music-room, and the usual hum of applause had succeeded, to be followed in its own turn by more music. Song after song had been sung; then had come the sound of talk and laughter, as the party from the music-room had adjourned to the garden. But slowly these sounds had lessened. The laughter had ceased; and the entertainment out-of-doors had died down to the murmuring of two men's voices and the slow pacing of a couple of pairs of feet up and down the terrace beneath the card-room window. At last even this had ended with the heavy shutting of a door; and, save for the occasional distant sound of a closing window, silence reigned in the house.

The sixth rubber was drawing to its close, when the door of the card-room opened quietly and Lady Diana entered, looking slightly tired and pale.

She came forward to the table and stood looking at the players.

"Don't stir!" she said. "I only came to see that you are all right. Who has been lucky?"

Mrs. Bathurst looked up self-confidently.

"We have--enormously," she said. "Mrs. Milbanke was most daring, and doubled our ordinary stakes. The results have been wonderful--for us."

"Indeed!" Lady Diana's voice sounded unusually cold; and Clodagh was conscious that her observant eyes had turned upon her.

But she played on, without looking up.

At last the final trick was won, the score reckoned up, and the players rose.

Deerehurst pushed back his chair, and looked about him speculatively.

"It feels late!" he said. "What is the time, Lady Diana? My conscience begins to trouble me!"

Lady Diana smiled a little conventionally.

"I think it is about half-past two," she answered.

"Oh, Lady Diana, how wicked of us!" Mrs. Bathurst affected a charming penitence.

Mansfeldt looked genuinely uncomfortable and distressed.

"We owe you an apology!" he said. "We have kept you from your rest."

But Lady Diana graciously waived all apologies aside.

"It is nothing!--nothing!" she assured them. "We are not so rustic as all that. Lord Deerehurst, you and Mr. Mansfeldt will find George in the smoking-room." She gave the suggestion with her usual hospitable warmth; but the smile that accompanied the words was not the smile she had given to Clodagh the evening before--or that morning at breakfast.

And Clodagh, keenly sensitive to this altered bearing, stood silent, offering no apology. At last, as though the tension of the position compelled her to action, she held out her hand in a half-diffident, half-defiant gesture.

"Good-night, Lady Diana! Good-night, Rose! Good-night, Mr. Mansfeldt. Good-night!" Last of all, her fingers touched Deerehurst's, and as his cold hand closed over hers, he bent his head deferentially.

"Good-night, partner! Sleep well! We will be more fortunate in the future."

But Clodagh gave no sign that she had even heard. Almost ungraciously, she freed her hand; and, without glancing at any of the occupants of the room, moved quickly to the door, and passed out into the corridor.

Her brain seemed to burn, as she mounted the long flight of shallow stairs that led to the bedrooms; her head ached; her senses felt confused. She had lost money to a far greater extent than she could possibly afford; she had alienated the friend she had so ardently desired to make; she had acted wilfully--absurdly--wrongly.

She opened the door of her bedroom with hasty, unsteady fingers. The lamp on the writing-table was lighted, but the rest of the room was dim; through the open windows came a slight breeze that stirred the chintz curtains; in a chair by the dressing-table sat Simonetta in an attitude of weariness.

The sight of the woman's tired figure jarred on Clodagh's over-strained nerves.

"You can go, Simonetta!" she said sharply. "I'll put myself to bed."

Simonetta started up remorsefully.

"Pardon, signora----" she exclaimed.

But Clodagh cut her short.

"You can go!" she said. "Good-night!"

The woman looked at her for a moment in doubt and reluctance; then, instinctively realising that argument was useless, moved softly to the door.

"Good-night, signora!" she ventured; but as Clodagh made no response, she departed, silently closing the door.

Left alone, Clodagh moved aimlessly to the centre of the room, and stood there as if seeking some object which might distract her mind. Her glance passed vaguely over the dressing-table, laden with familiar personal objects; then strayed to a couch, on which lay an open book that she had made a fruitless attempt to read during the hot hours of the afternoon; at last, attracted by the light of the lamp, it turned to the writing-table, on which was placed the heavy leather writing-case that had belonged to her mother, and that had remained with her through all her wanderings since the time of her marriage. It lay unlocked, as she had left it the evening before, the contents protruding untidily from under the thick leather flap. Something intimate and friendly in the shabby object appealed to and attracted her. Without considering the action, she went slowly forward and laid her fingers hesitatingly upon it. All the small records that constituted memory lay side by side in this worn leather case: her cheque-books--her letters--the few souvenirs her life had provided.

She raised the flap lingeringly and lifted out the topmost papers. First to her hand, came a bundle of Laurence Asshlin's monthly reports from Orristown--boyish, spirited records of trivial doings, ill-constructed from a literary point of view, shrewdly humorous in their own peculiar way. These she tossed aside, as things of small account, and turned almost hurriedly to the papers that lay immediately beneath. They proved to be her sister's letters, dating from the time of their parting in London, when Nance had been sent to school. For a space she held them in her hand, while a curious expression, half antagonistic, half tender, touched her face; then, with a little sigh, she laid them down again, without having turned a page.

The next object that she drew forth was the faded telegram that, years ago, at the time of Denis Asshlin's accident, had brought the longed-for news that Milbanke was on his way to Orristown. She opened it, read it, then folded it and replaced it with something of uneasy haste; and again burying her hand in the recesses of the case, brought to light another link with the past--a large envelope into which were crushed a number of things, amongst them the first invitation from Lady Frances Hope in Venice; a ribbon that had tied a bouquet of flowers on the dinner-table at the "Abbati" Restaurant; a Venetian theatre programme; a couple of dry roses that she had worn on the night when Gore had taken her home from the Palazzo Ugochini. Very slowly she drew these trophies forth. Each breathed the romance of things gone by; yet each possessed the poison of present regret. As she lifted up the roses, her expression became suddenly pained and resentful, and with a fierce impulse she crushed the dry, brown leaves between her fingers, flung them from her across the room, and hurriedly lifted the next object from the writing-case. This last was a large bundle of papers, tied together with a black ribbon.

Lifting it into the light, she looked at it for a long time, without attempting to untie the string. It was the collection of her father's scanty correspondence and ill-assorted business letters, which she had bound together the night before her marriage--and had never since opened.

A curious feeling assailed her now, as she looked at these yellowing papers, eloquent of dead days; and at the mourning ribbon, significant of emotions keen and bitter in the living, but buried now under the weight of newer things. How strange, how distant and impersonal, the pages seemed! And yet the time had been when every written line had played its part in some human, personal endeavour! Each document had represented loss or gain to some individual; each letter had conveyed its fragment of earthly sentiment. Moved suddenly by the suggestions of the moment, she untied the string.

A faint, dry odour rose from the loosened papers--the intangible scent that indicates the past. It seemed that some world, distant and forgotten, had suddenly put forth a shadowy hand, pointing she knew not whither. Over her brain, fevered from the night's excitement, fell a stillness--an arresting calm; across her thoughts, distorted by mistaken struggles, glided a memory--a picture. She saw herself as she had been before her marriage, in the far-off isolated days when life had been a simple thing, when the world outside Orristown had been a golden realm lying beyond the sunset.

How young she had been then! How extraordinarily, indescribably young! How untrammelled in her actions and sweeping in her judgments! As the old existence pressed about her in a cloud of images, she opened the first letter. But so unsteadily, so agitatedly, that, in the opening, five or six of the pages slipped from the packet and fluttered to the writing-table, bringing with them a small unframed ivory miniature that had been wrapped within the sheets.

The thin, fragile picture dropped with a faint tinkling sound; Clodagh bent forward to recover it; then paused, leaning over the table in an attitude of attention. The miniature lay face upwards; and, in the strong light of the lamp, its outline and colours shone forth distinctly. It represented the head and shoulders of a man in a scarlet coat and hunting-stock--a man of thirty, with a handsome, defiant face, fine eyes, and an obstinate, unreliable mouth.

It lay, looking up into her face, while she stared back at it, as though a ghost had risen from the faded letters. On the night before her marriage she had come upon this miniature of Denis Asshlin; and in a frenzy of renewed grief had thrust it out of sight amongst the papers she had collected. Then, the picture had seemed pitifully sad in its presentment of the dead man in the days of his strength; now, as she looked upon it in the light of subsequent knowledge, it seemed a thing instinct with portent and dread.

Sharply and cruelly, the glamour cast by death receded from her memory. She saw Asshlin as she had seen him in life--selfish, obstinate, and yet weak. And, quick as the vision came, another followed. The vision of her-self--of her own attitude towards her existence and her responsibilities.

In silent, intent concentration she gazed upon the picture, until at last, seized by an ungovernable impulse, half-instinctive realisation, half-superstitious dread, she caught up the lamp and walked to the dressing-table. There, removing the coloured shade, she laid it upon the table; and, lifting the mirror, looked fixedly at her own reflection, intensified by the crude, strong light.

For several minutes she stood quite motionless, her questioning eyes searching the eyes in the glass, her pale face confronting its own reflection. And as she looked, expressions of doubt, of fear, of conviction chased each other across her features.

The image that confronted her was her father's image, softened by differences of age and sex, but fundamentally the same. The image of one who had wasted his life--ignored his duties--squandered the substance of those who were dependent upon him! One whom even his children had learned to despise!

With a sudden sensation of physical faintness she turned from the table. For every folly of Denis Asshlin's, there sprang to her mind some corresponding folly in her own more brilliant life. How inefficiently she had worked out her own destiny--she who long ago had been so rigid in her condemnation of him!

In sudden terror she moved unsteadily across the room, and stood leaning against the foot of the oak bedstead; then, all at once, she made a swift, passionate gesture, and dropped to her knees.

"O God!" she whispered wildly--"God, who made me!--I am afraid!"