Chapter XI

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

When I got back to my woodland hermitage--which I regained, as I had foreseen I should, without my absence from the house having excited any comment--I put up, in a little frenzy of mockery, an altar to the God of Luck. I drew a picture of a clergyman (Mr Pugsley it was meant for) christening a baby out of a pint pot, and turning to demand of a villainous old pew-opener (my imaginary presentment of Mother Carey), who stood beside, the infant’s proposed title. The question, within a scroll, issued from his lips, and the answer--“Richard Gaskett, godson of the publican of that name”--from hers. I had bought in Footover, on my way back, a bottle of gin and one of peppermint essence; and these I clasped round with a single label bearing the motto “In vino veritas,” and stood them on a little table underneath the drawing, which I nailed to the wall. No one but Miss Christmas--barring my stepfather on a rare occasion--had ever invaded, or was like to invade, my snuggery; and, if anyone did, I was reckless about consequences. Then I sat down to consider, over a pipe, my present position and gains.

These amounted to something at least. The discovery that my mother, and my mother’s mother (I could hardly bring myself to acknowledge the old bibulous harpy for my grandmother) had both been on the stage; the discovery that their name was Carey; the discovery that the elder had “come into money”--been pensioned off, belike, by Lord Skene--and that the younger had “found religion” at the hands of Mr Pugsley of the tin tabernacle--all these little enlightenments and confirmations made a certain definite “grounding,” on which I might hope to embroider that web which should catch Lady Skene’s feet tripping. True, the main object of my venture was not realised. Yet even there Luck was shaping me out a promise. An usher at the Grammar School!--that villain who had taken base advantage of a poor ingénue’s warmth over his reformation! It was as much in reason as anything else. That a pedagogue _could_ be something less than immaculate, quote Eugene Aram, not to speak of the Stockwell schoolmaster who chopped up his wife and put her in a box. But, whether it were a pedagogue or his pupil, a learned Theban or a scented puppy, I was confident that time, served by cunning and caution, would betray him to me soon or late. I had learned much already; and knowledge is always an investment which pays itself automatically at compound interest.

Nor were my discoveries the only profit I had brought back from my journey. A firmer confidence in myself; a more obdurate determination; a certain newly realised sense of humour--these were to be included in the gains. I felt a reinvigorated sense of mastery, a larger grasp of the world; I felt an insolent sense of security in Luck’s favouritism; I felt somehow like a weasel that watches a rickyard from cover. How I could make the rats squeal and run if once I elected to show myself in the open! I was in a very detestable humour, that is the truth.

On the morning after my return I took a long stroll round about the skirts of the estate, beginning with the “bare ruined choirs” of the woodlands, and coming round by Hags Lane, where the hawthorns had been stripped stark by the wrecking winds. Winter, with all its moan and mystery, shivered upon the air; the sheep on the pastures seemed to crop, with haunted ears pricked to it; there was a stiffness as of dread expectation over all the land.

To the many figures which danced and crowded into my mind throughout that lonely tramp, the figure of the girl whom I had hated and scorned would sometimes, my scorn despite, add itself. It even became, all at once, a persistent demon, thrusting itself forward, pleading for a monopoly of my attention. An impudent, outrageous claim. What was the creature to me, or I to her, in this play of “leading parts”? My concern was with the real actors and actresses--not with the skipping figurante, who came to fill the interludes of scene-shifting. This Ira, good Lord, of the Hebraic name! Was she a “watcher,” as her name implied? Perhaps she was; perhaps--all in an instant the thought struck me: what if she were Lady Skene’s spy--the agent of a guilty conscience, deputed to discover the reasons for my withdrawal from its control?

The thought was so sudden, so ineffable, that it made me gasp. She had been down to my lodge during my absence, that I knew. The signs of her woman’s handiwork there were unmistakable. I will even admit that my instant recognition of them had given me an odd little thrill, compound of triumph and something like pity. That she should have continued true to her principles of expiation, though I was not there to witness, had gone some little way towards forcing from me a grudging belief in her sincerity. But now!--if there was all the time a method in her humility!

On the thought, the memory of my altar came into my mind. Had I been already fool enough, in my boasted emancipation, to give my case away to a spy? I hurried, with all speed, back to my den--and there was the girl standing before the picture.

She had on a blue-sprigged apron with a tucker. A broom was in her hand, and her furs and jacket were thrown upon a chair. She turned round instantly upon hearing me, and her face flew pink with some sudden emotion.

“Richard!” she said, pointing to the caricature. “What on earth is the meaning of that?”

“Go on with your work,” I answered savagely. “I shouldn’t have come back if I’d known you were here.”

She bit her underlip, but obeyed at once. I sat down, watching her morosely from under my lids as she swept, and dusted, and laid the cloth for lunch--all silently. Then I called her to me.

“Come here.”

She left the table and stood before me.

“Kneel down.”

She knelt at my feet, looking up, and panting a little. I took her soft chin in my hand; and she did not move; and I kept her so, glaring into her young eyes.

“You are very loyal to Lady Skene, are you not?” I said. “You told me so, you know.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Were you instructed by her to take this means to come and spy on me?”

“No. How could you think it!”

“If you cry, I shall turn you out at once. You aren’t watching me, then, to find out what I’m up to?”

“No, indeed.”

“Why do you come here?”

“I’m so sorry for you.”

“Is that all?”

“And so anxious to earn your pardon.”

“You needn’t worry yourself about that. I don’t take the tricks of such midges as you into my philosophy.”

“But you haven’t forgiven me.”

“I don’t consider you at all. Are you offering to cry again?”

“No, I’m not--I’m not really.”

“Well, what did you make of that picture?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“Its a picture of my christening--the christening of Richard Gaskett. I got my name out of a pint pot. That old woman’s my grandmother. She’s fond of gin and peppermint; that’s why I put the bottles underneath. You know I’ve been away?”

“Yes.”

“Well, my journey was useful to me. I found out things. Would you like to go and tell Lady Skene about the picture, or do I come first in your loyalty?”

“You do.”

Her answer took me like a sting, sweet and piercing. I don’t know what madness, what revolt was in my blood; but I bent down suddenly and kissed her lips. And then, having done it, the instant revulsion came, and I thrust her rudely from me. She sank back, sitting on her heels, and hid her face in her hands.

“There, go!” I cried, jumping to my feet. “I took that, not for myself, but--damn it! don’t you know that Lord Skene disapproves of your coming here? I told him you came by your own will, not mine; and if your will isn’t his, he can just look after his own. But you take the risk of any consequences if you come. I warn you, I’m master here, and I kiss or ill treat whom I choose. Do you understand? You’re a ‘unique young party’ according to him, and you’ve been kissed by the grandson of that old pottle-pot yonder. How do you like the thought? You’ve bound yourself slave to something worse than you expected, haven’t you! But I’ll manumit you. Take your furs and go, before you find out how dangerous I can be! Do you hear? Go, while there’s time!”

I was half beside myself with rage and scorn for my act. I had never in all my life kissed woman before, and this first fierce contact smote me like a blasphemy against my clean youth. Nor had I had in my mind at the moment a thought of all that rage of justification for my deed which had afterwards suggested itself. It had been just the leap of a mad impulse, born of the girl’s soft and emotional submission. And, having torn that unresisting flower, I was ashamed.

I went and leaned against the mantelshelf and turned my eyes from her. She did not rise at once; but presently I heard her go and take her things from the chair. Then, somehow, I hoped that she would dwell just the little minute necessary for putting them on. I suppose the bully’s instinct is always to keep by him the thing he has just injured, perhaps in the sneaking hope that it will justify in some way his brutality to himself. He hates the frightened thing for trying to escape from him, silently and tremblingly after the deed.

But Miss Christmas did not linger that minute. She swept up her jacket and furs, as I knew by the sound, and ran with them out into the cold. A wild impulse to stride and stop her surged up in me. I even followed her footsteps into the passage; but there I checked myself, and flung to the open door with a resounding slam that must have caught her heart for a moment. Then I went back to my room, biting a savage curse between my teeth.

I was furious with myself; furious with the girl; furious with the means I had seized to misrepresent my feelings towards her. Why had she put herself in my way, just to awaken the beast in me? She had no proper pride of womanhood; and, if for that only, was beneath my notice. And yet I had kissed her--why? because I despised her; and all the time the fragrance of that contact hung on my lips like a sweet poison.

I could eat no lunch, I was so angry and disturbed. And all the afternoon I sat idly with a book, affecting to read, but seeing nothing on the page. Dusk came on, and with it sharp squalls of wind and sleet that brought the dead leaves whirling about my windows. My fire had gone out, and I sat and shivered, not finding the energy to relight it. It grew uncanny sitting there in the white gloom, not a living soul within a half mile of me, the deep and sodden woodland all around. The storm, with its loaded flakes, rushed upon the glass in swoops and charges; and, when it fell back, I always seemed to hear a small and urgent whisper rallying it. Sometimes, I felt tinglingly, it would burst in, and then--what would come with it! And at that very instant, glancing up, I saw a face pressed against the glass.

It had risen, swiftly and silently, like death in the night--a horrible sinister face, I thought it, in the first shock of discovery. The eyes were searchingly alive; the upper lip was lifted, showing the teeth; the mist of its breath shrank and dilated on the pane as the wind took it. I held my own, staring in a sort of awful trance. The eyes in the motionless head whipped to and fro, as if hurrying to penetrate and devour the substance of the room’s every shadow. Fortunately the one in which I sat was too dense for their resolving. I congratulated myself on my dead hearth, though, for whatever reason, I was shivering all through. But over and over again the eyes passed me by, and I knew that I was not yet discovered.

And then suddenly they were gone, and I heard stealthy steps coming round by the door; and I rose quietly, with a shamefaced oath for my cowardice, and waited to see what would happen. Reassurance as to the human nature of the apparition had broken all the spell; and now I feared nothing but to be balked of recognition in my turn.

The man tried the door, gently but unavailingly, for I had bolted it, and then in a moment I heard him going away through the woodland. At that I stole upstairs, and, peering warily from my bedroom window, made out his figure pressing up the path towards the “Baby’s Garden.” And even in that first glance I recognised him. It was the man Dalston, who had been of the company on the night of old Carnac’s seizure.

I stuck there a little, smitten with astonishment. What on earth was the fellow doing here, prying, and using the place as if it were his own? Then, too, I had not on that one occasion read into his face any such suggestion of evil--naked and incontinent--as it had seemed to convey to me through the window. On the contrary, it had appeared a fine and handsome face, bold, if bold at all, with the natural self-reliance of a favoured worldling. But, no doubt, my overwrought fancy was to account for the present impression.

It could not account, however, for his presence here--or could it? An idea, half whimsical, half stunning, seized me. I had heard of plausible rogues imposing themselves on quiet neighbourhoods, insinuating themselves into the leading society, and then, their plans having matured, disappearing with the plate and family jewels of Lord this or Sir thingummy that. Was it possible that Mr Dalston was such an impostor? His quiet arrival in the district; his renting of that remote uncanny farm; his strange silent wife--or accomplice; finally the vision of him here, stealing up through the woods--for what? All these things smote me with a double edge of suspicion. Possibly he was even now on his way to examine the house with a view to its burglarious entry. Whatever the extravagant thought was worth, it decided me. In another instant I was down and on his heels. The wind and the flying sleet, no less than my long experience of the way, served me well. He had no suspicion, I felt sure, of the shadow creeping in his wake, slipping from tree to tree, taking advantage of every shriller whine of the squall to decrease the distance between itself and its quarry.

He went up unhesitating towards the “Baby’s Garden,” though often having to battle his way with his head down; and having reached there, came to a halt, leaning against a tree. And in the same moment I had slipped undetected into my eyrie of espial in the withered ash.

He was then so close to me that I could hear him panting from his hard ascent. But even with our arrival the squall had passed, and the little close pleasance was full of nothing but cold dripping sounds. That was my Luck again. It had muffled me in wind and rain while I needed privacy, and withdrawn them only when I needed nothing but clear hearing and clear vision.

Now I had leisure to wonder how, if secret watching were his business, this Mr Dalston made no nearer approach to the house, which, indeed, stood nowhere within the range of this part of the garden. But he showed no intention of moving farther, and, for all the wet crust of snow under his feet, established himself serenely where he stood, flicking his boot with his cane, and breathing softly into the air a little sentimental ditty about moons and lagoons. And then, all of a sudden, the figure of a woman had appeared on the opposite side of the garden, and, after a moment’s hesitation, was coming hurrying towards him.

Now, at that, I was not, at the first, so shocked as amused, because, it seemed, I had been stalking for a burglary what appeared to be just a vulgar tryst. But what was my astonishment upon discovering, on its nearer approach, that the figure was that of Lady Skene.

The man did not move at all until she was close upon him; and then he only detached himself a step or two from his support, and laughed gently as he gave his boot a harder switch.

“Well answered, Georgie!” he said in his soft voice.

She shrank back from him, clutching her fingers into the shawl which she held over her face and bosom. I could see that she was deathly white.

“Not that--no!” she whispered, as if half choking. “What right have you?”

“I should really be the last to insist on it,” he said. “You know my easy good nature, I congratulate you on your position with all my heart; and should never think of crossing your legitimate title to it, unless----”

“Unless what?” she said with difficulty, seeing he prolonged the pause wickedly.

“Unless you oblige me to, that’s all,” he said.

Now though she had been, as I considered, an inhuman mother to me, to see her, so obviously and so amazingly, held at the mercy of this man, filled me with a rage of fury. Not he, nor anyone but myself, I thought, should have the right or the power to exact retribution of her. If I hated her, I already hated him with a tenfold violence. What title had he to come between me and my vengeance?

“Why,” she cried, with one little broken note of protest, which she instantly subdued, as if knowing its uselessness, “have you come into my life again?”

“I am really sorry,” he said. “It became necessary, that’s all. I wouldn’t otherwise for the world have disturbed this dream of evangelical and aristocratic peace in which your soul has so long found its security from troublesome memories. But the plain truth is I _had_ to look you up. It’s a vulgar confession; but I want money.”

“I thought--I heard--you married it.”

“My charmer, I did. But love, though a perpetual investment in itself, is far from guaranteeing the immaculateness of its brokers. From one of Mrs Dalston’s we suffered shattering losses. Nothing throughout our married life, in fact, has prospered with us. The heir I longed for has been persistently denied me” (a momentary emotion seemed to shake his voice; but he gripped and stilled it); “our house in London, heavily mortgaged as it is, refuses for some inexplicable reason to let; we have come down, down, down. Why this should be so, in the designs of a just but inscrutable Providence, I cannot pretend to explain. Our deserts have not been less than most men’s; our sins like others may be called the natural fruit of circumstance. At this moment, I am ashamed to say, I have not positively the wherewithal to meet a bill, which, dishonoured within the week, will ruin me. I speak most, of course, of the moral wreck which will result. To you, knowing you as I do, that will serve for my paramount appeal.”

“How much do you want?”

He seemed to ignore her question for the moment intentionally. It was his policy to specify at its fullest value his claim on her. That must amount inevitably, as I foresaw, to his possession of the very secret which I had made, as I thought, my own. He knew somehow that she had been no widow when she had married Lord Skene; and, indeed, his next words proved the justice of my surmise.

“Compare our positions,” said he. “Here am I--as I have described. Here are you--started from exactly similar premises--the mistress of all, or nearly all, that your heart could desire--a fortune, a title, an unsullied reputation; the respect of a noble husband, the love of a beautiful child--born in wedlock, too, that holy institution, and destined in the future to regard his mother as the pure fount of honour.”

She gave a sudden little cry.

“Why won’t you say? What do you want of me?”

But still he would drive the anguish home.

“And to think,” he went on steadily, “that one little word from me could shatter at a blow all this elaborate fabric of respectability! It must necessarily have a value, that word--a high value, if the truth must be spoken.”

“I have nothing of my own. You know it.”

“I know it, my dear girl, as surely as I know that you are wedded to a man who has always been as lavish a spouse as he promises to be an infatuated father. He would not question, I think, for his own and his heir’s sake, the morality of your keeping his eyes sealed.”

“You _will_ not speak it. We are not as rich as you think.”

“Well suggested, Georgie--I really beg your pardon. But we are quite remote here. That’s why I ventured to suggest the place for a rendezvous, after your husband, on the afternoon I called here, had shown me over his estate. A very pretty legend, and a very pretty setting for it--the ‘Baby’s Garden’! and very aptly named for our interview.”

She fell back a little, holding her hand to her forehead terribly; seeming to speak to herself.

“After all, it is only your word against mine.”

“Well, not quite,” he said--“not quite. Aren’t you forgetting Mother Carey?”

She stared at him, gulping once or twice.

“I never lose sight,” he said, “of possible witnesses to my interests. It’s not been to those to lay that dear old ghost of our past, though you would seem to have thought it to yours. A bad policy, child. Do you even know if she is living or dead? You should, if you were wise. But I can see you don’t. An undutiful daughter, to be sure. But she’s living, Georgie--I don’t even mind telling you where. She’s living down in Lambeth--in Old Paradise Street, bless her appropriate quarters--and always ready to testify, at _her_ reasonable price. She’s degenerated into something of a miser, too, I understand, and hoards her ill-gotten gains. How do I know? Why, through some lawyers, my dear, friends of mine, who happen to pay her one of her little quarterly stipends of hush-money. (You, I believe, compromised with her for a lump sum--again a poor policy.) O, you may take my word for it! and do what you like with the information. Lady Skene, I think, will hardly rush to establish her claim to that connection. And, even if she did, I’ve means of controlling Mother Carey. What if I say three hundred pounds?”

“You shall have it.”

“So I supposed. Then we’ll say five hundred.”

“Ruin me, if you will.”

“Hush, my dear! What an inference! To esteem me capable of such a blind villainy! You’re still a very beautiful woman, Georgie.”

“Will you leave me now?”

“It would be safer, perhaps. God bless you, Georgie!”

He was going, when she ran to him and touched him for the first time. I could see her little shoes, frail and delicate, sopped by the frozen slush.

“Your wife!” she said hoarsely. “Is she your accomplice?”

He started and turned round; and, on the instant, his face was like a devil’s.

“Leave her out of this,” he said low and fierce, “if you value your soul. She’s innocent--as innocent as heaven, I tell you. If----”

He broke off--seemed to make a menacing gesture, and again was going. And again she stopped him.

“Not that way!”

He was himself directly.

“Why not? It’s private. It’s the way I came.”

“The way!” she said, choking. “Do you know who lives down there?”

He laughed.

“I make it my business to know everything. Perhaps _you_ don’t know that he’s away for the moment--gone to take a trip on his own account. Boys will grow up. Rest satisfied, I made sure of his not being there as I came by the lodge.”

Then she stepped back, and I heard him going lightly down the path into the Caddle. And presently she turned, and, pulling her shawl about her face, moved towards the house, but suddenly stumbled and stood swaying.

My heart beat as if it would break. “Mother, mother!” I whispered in an agony, “why don’t you ask for me--trust me--love me!”

But in a moment she recovered herself, cold, self-willed spirit as she was, and went off quietly through the trees.