Part 23

And Eliza did not. She was much impressed by Brentham's appeal. The interview with John's father even ended in a kind of reconciliation. He heard from Brentham for the first time the whole story, so far as it was known, of the circumstances which led up to the attack on the station, John's death, and Lucy's journey to the coast; of how her baby had died and how ill she had been; of the Stotts, and of Ann Jamblin's obstinacy. Roger purposely prolonged the interview. It was doing the miserable father good, and was keeping Mrs. Baines a prisoner in her bedroom just when she wanted to be busy at house-work.

Maud on her return from visiting the Joslings tightened her lips and "went for" her father as he had never been truth-told before; so Mrs. Baines, if she did harm to Lucy's good name and gave her nervous system a nasty shock, also provoked good in other directions. A disturbance of the kind seldom fails to clear the air and create a fresher atmosphere. Maud reproached her father bitterly with his incivility to his eldest son's wife; with his general indifference to the well-being of his children, his selfish absorption in his archaeological work, his unfairness to them in lavishing on it funds which should have been their patrimony. She even issued a sort of ultimatum: the subsidies to the Silchester Excavation fund must cease; the curate at Farleigh must be given his conge and the Vicar—still able-bodied—carry out his own Church duties: or she would go away and earn her own living as a secretary or something or other. And she was at once, and on his authority, to ask Lucy to stay—with Roger, of course—for at least a month. He gave in. Maud had deeper plans hidden under this surface wrath. Roger was in difficulties with the Foreign Office, she guessed. He had resigned from the Indian Army. He might at any time have to forge a new career for himself and would want a little capital to start with. She reckoned that her father having originally been a well-to-do man and her mother having come to him with a substantial dowry, there ought to be a least twelve thousand pounds to be divided between the four of them. If that left her father almost entirely dependent on his income—about five hundred a year—from the twin benefices of Farleigh and Cliddesden, that would serve him right. He had no business to squander his children's money—as it really was—on a work of excavation which the County or the Nation should finance.

A little repentant and more than a little rheumatic—(besides, Roman Silchester was turning out so distressingly Christian and so little Pompeian and Pagan)—he agreed at any rate to look into the matter. The letter was sent to Lucy, and she came, now quite restored to health. She found in Maud the selfless friend and good adviser she had long needed. All she begged and prayed of Roger was that he might leave her at Farleigh for a time and not frighten her and upset her nerves by requiring of her the going out into smart Society, where she was ever on the twitter for fear of being questioned as to her birth and bringing-up and the circumstances of her life in Africa.

Roger rather ruefully consented. Maud would gradually cure her of her nerves and her rusticity. Meantime he would now tackle Sibyl. Sibyl had taken no notice of his card and call; but about three weeks afterwards had written to Maud, picturing herself as having now emerged from a swoon of grief and being ready to see Roger for a few minutes if he would promise to move gently and speak in a level voice, as the least thing upset her. Pressed to be more definite, she consented to see him—and him only—at Engledene on a certain Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock.

He found her in a little boudoir, which was draped with pleated lavender-mauve cashmere and shaded to a dim light. She was dressed in black, not having as yet the hardihood to discard widows' weeds, still less some diaphanous, filmy coiffe, some ghost of a widow's cap. Queen Victoria was still a great power in Society and kept Peeresses in order. If you were too daring you might be banned at Court and then where would your social and political influence be?

"Wheel up, or better still lift up—I can't bear the slightest jar, just now—that small armchair, Roger—the purple velvet one—and put it near enough for me to hear and speak without effort; but not too near, because I notice you have a very powerful aura. I've only just learnt about auras, and I realize now what a difference they make!..."

"All right," said Roger, obeying these instructions, "but what's an aura? Is it the smell of my Harris tweeds, or do you doubt my having had a bath this morning?"

"Don't be so perfectly horrid ... and coarse.... You never used to be coarse, whatever you were—I suppose it comes from marrying a farmer's daughter; but for the matter of that, what am I? My poor dear dad is trying hard to be a farmer after spending his best years in the Army. I didn't mean anything much about your 'aura,' except, I suppose, that as I'm only recently widowed all my relations with men-visitors should be a little frigid. But I'm simply talking nonsense to gain time, to remember what I wanted to say to you." (A pause.) ... "Roger! Your dreadful letter from that Gouging place, coming just on top of poor Francis's death, knocked me over. The doctors put it all down to Francis, of course ... I don't deny that his death did upset me.... But I'd been expecting that any time within the last six months.... The doctors told me definitely last winter his heart was very unsound and that he must not over-exert himself in any way or be contraried or argued with.... That was why I gave up the orange-velvet curtains and general redecoration of the dining-room at 6A, Carlton House Terrace—which is dingy beyond belief. I shall do it now.... It's too early for tea ... won't you smoke?" (Roger: "Thank you.") "Well, there's everything on that little table.... No. Not those ones; they've got the wee-est flavour of opium.... Obliged to do something for my nerves.... Well, now, about your Gouging letter.... I mean about your marriage.... My dear Roger! What a gaffe! I mean, how could you?"

"Could I what?"

"Ruin your hopes and mine?"

"Well, I did hope to marry Lucy ... for at least six months before the knot was tied.... Ever since her husband's death. So my hopes were fulfilled. And as to you, I never prevented you from marrying Lord S. So where the ruin comes in, I can't see."

"Oh," wailed Sibyl, "why beat about the bush? You must have known that I always hoped if anything happened to poor Francis—and anything might well have done so—after all, you or I might be in a railway accident or break our necks out hunting. In such case you must have known I counted on you ... I mean, on our being happy at last.... Don't interrupt! ... And just think! Francis loved me awfully. I really was perfectly sweet to him and did my duty to him in every way. His gratitude for that boy ... for a direct heir! ... Well, after Clithy was born he made his will! ... Don't be silly ... and don't joke about things I regard almost as sacred.... I mean Francis re-made his will; and left me sole guardian of the boy and sole trustee, sole everything; and mistress for my life of Engledene, and of 6A, till Clithy came of age ... and a jointure of L10,000 a year to keep them up. Clithy has also the Silchester house which is let and which I intend to keep let till he comes of age, the moors in Scotland and the shooting lodge. Of course he has the reversionary rights of everything after my death. And equally of course he has fifteen thousand a year, which I control till he is twenty-one or until he marries....

"Just think what I could have done for you, out of all this—if you'd waited! If only you'd waited!..." (buries her face in the mauve silk cushions and cries a little or pretends to). (Roger fidgets on his chair. An exquisite little purple Sevres clock on the white mantelpiece ticks ... ticks ... ticks.)

Roger: "Look here, Sibyl. You're altogether on the wrong tack, believe me. You might have married me in '86. I was quite ready then and fancied myself in love with you. But if you had we mightn't have got on. My seven hundred a year would have been nowhere to give you surroundings like this...." (And he looks round the boudoir "done" in white, lavender, mauve and purple, with its exquisite bits of furniture, its velvet-covered armchair and Charles II day-bed, and pillow covers of mauve silk; and looked also at the sinuous figure of the woman coiled on the day-bed in her filmy black dress, with her face half buried in the silk cushions, and one disconsolate arm lying listlessly along her side, and at the magnificent rings of emeralds and diamonds on the pink fingers.) "You were quite right: you could never have stood the strain of Africa. I'll tell you by and bye some of the things Lucy and I went through." (At this hint of comradeship with Lucy, the little black velvet shoes gave angry thumps on the frame of the day-bed.) "I know," continues Roger, "you used to throw out mysterious hints after you were married that I might wait till some far-off date when you were free; I mean after Lord Silchester was dead. But what decent man would have taken you at your word? Why, Silchester might well be alive now. He did not die of old age...."

Sibyl (in a muffled voice): "N-no; he ... he ... didn't. He—overrated his strength. He—he—oh, how can I tell you? He was so anxious to play a great part in public affairs ... but he had lost all his energy...." (Sitting up with flushed cheeks—damnably good-looking, Roger feels.) "Well! What can I do for you? You've failed me. But I suppose you've come here to ask me to help you in some way. Men don't generally waste their time on afternoon calls without a motive. What is it? I've got no influence anywhere since Francis died" (a sob). "So it's no good asking me to write to Lord Wiltshire or to Spavins. I hear you are out of favour at the F.O. It's not my fault, is it? It's all due to your gallivanting after missionaries' wives...." (Roger looks sullen.) ... "Heigh ho! I expect with all this crying and tousling among cushions, to hide I was crying from your cynical eyes, I'd better go into my room and bathe my face before the butler brings in the tea.... There! you can pull up two of the blinds—when I am gone—my eyes are so red—and you can look at some of my new books till I come in to make the tea. You mustn't dream of going before we've had tea and finished our talk."

"I suppose," said Sibyl a quarter of an hour later when they were discussing tea and tea-cake and pate-de-foie sandwiches and assorted cakelets, "what you really came to ask was would I present this Lucy-pucy of yours at Court. But, my dear, I shall be in mourning for a year, and the Queen—"

"Lord no! Such a thing never entered my head. It would scare Lucy into fits. I hope before next season comes round I shall be back in Africa—or somewhere. So far as I connected Lucy with this visit I might have intended to ask you to let me bring her here one day, and for you to be kind to her ... not frighten her, as you very well could do, pretending all the time to be her best friend...."

Sibyl: "Well: I'll tell you what you shall do. You must remember I'm in mourning, of course.... We always have to think of what the servants will say.... And—ah! Did I tell you? Aunt Christabel is here. I sent her out the longest drive I could think of, so that we might have our afternoon alone; still, she's staying here till I emerge from the deepest of my mourning.... By the bye she's horrified at your marriage, just as she used to be horrified at the idea of your marrying me.... Well, bring your Lucy over one day at the end of July and I'll just have a look at her. And then, in the autumn—say October—you and she, and of course if you like to have them, Maurice and Geoffrey too, could come here for the shooting. Of course I shan't have a regular party; but somebody must come and shoot the pheasants. The Queen couldn't object to that. I've asked a man—I did before Francis's death—to come. You might like to meet him: a Sir Willowby Patterne.... Dare say you've heard of him?"

Roger: "I've heard no good of him...."

"Oh, what tittle-tattlers and scandal-mongers you men are! I think he's so amusing, and every one says he's a splendid shot.... However, we will make up just a tiny party and you and Lucy shall entertain for me. I shall purposely be very little seen and shall give out my cousins have come over to help me with my guests.... And, Roger! If I am to help you you must help me. The doctor says I positively must take up my riding again unless I am to drift into being an invalid. Couldn't you—sometimes—whilst you're down in this part of the world—come over and ride with me? I can 'mount' you. You could ride poor Francis's cob ... not showy but very steady."

"I will, when I come back from town," said Roger, and took his departure, not at all dissatisfied with his afternoon.

Two days afterwards he thought it might be prudent to see how things were going at the Foreign Office. So he went up to town, changed into town togs at Hankey's (where their flat was becoming a white elephant, owing to Lucy's dislike to London, so he arranged to give it up), and betook himself to Downing Street, and asked to see Mr. Bennet Molyneux. "Mr. Bennet Molyneux," he was presently told, "is very sorry, sir, but he is much engaged this morning; would you go into the Department and see one of the young gentlemen there?"

The Department was a large, long room with a cubby-hole at its further end for the accommodation of the senior clerk, a sort of school prefect who had to keep order among the high-spirited juniors and therefore required to work a little apart from them. When Brentham entered the main room, announced by the office messenger, he recognized two friends of yore and several new, ingenuous faces. There also emerged from the cubby hole a man whom he had known as a junior three years previously: an agreeable gentleman of agricultural and sporting tastes, who, because of his occasional remonstrances and enforcement of discipline, was known as "Snarley Yow or the Dog Fiend." Then there were "Rosie" Walrond and Ted Parsons. (The others do not matter in this narrative: they merely served as chorus and acclaimers of the witticisms of the elder boys. They were all nice to look at, all well-mannered and all well-dressed.) "Rosie" Walrond was a young man—older than he looked—with wavy flaxen hair and mocking grey eyes, and an extremely cynical manner overlying an exceedingly kind heart.

Walrond: "Hullo! Here's Brentham, the rescuer of beleaguered Gospellers. We've got a grudge against you. You came here months ago and were closeted with Spavins and never gave us a look-in. And we were dying to hear all about the elopement and its sequel. We were prepared to subscribe to a wedding present for a teller of good stories...."

Then he added: "D'you admire my grotto?"

Brentham, after the necessary greetings and introductions, strode up to "Rosie's" desk. Its ledges and escarpments were piled with rock specimens on which tattered, brown, and half-decipherable labels had been pasted.

"My mineral specimens ... from" (he checked himself) ... "from East Africa! Then you never sent them on?"

"My dear chap! Where was I to send them to? The Consular Mail bags—two of them—arrived here all right, addressed to me, but nary a letter with them or any directions. Also two skulls which, as you see, decorate our mantelpiece, and which I am proposing to have mounted in silver at Snarley's expense for our Departmental Dinner. Meantime, I have arranged my desk as a grotto, in spite of the office cleaner's objections...."

Brentham: "I suppose the letter of directions went astray. I asked you to send the rocks to the School of Mines and the skulls to the Natural History Museum. However, I'll take them all away presently in a cab."

"But not the skulls, I beg, just as we were being initiated into Devil worship by Snarley, who has learnt the Black Mass...."

"Yes, the skulls, too. They're most important—"

"But so are we," said Parsons.

Then followed half an hour of chaff, out of which Roger gleaned no grain of information as to his own probable fate and was too diffident to ask outright if any decision as to his return had been arrived at. He accepted an invitation to dine with the Department at the Cheshire Cheese and meet Arthur Broadmead; then drove to the School of Mines in Jermyn Street, handed in his rocks and asked the Curator for a report on them, at his leisure. After that, Professor Flower and the skulls; which were those of two men of that Hamitic race colonizing the Happy Valley. He had found them lying about on the outskirts of a village and had received the careless permission of the villagers to take them away. They might serve to determine the relationships of this incongruous type.

CHAPTER XVI

SIBYL AS SIREN

In August, 1889, Lucy conveyed to Roger her belief that she was going to have a child.

"But that is no reason you should not come down with me to Sibyl's place in Scotland. You can't be going to have a baby till—till well on in the winter, and meantime a stay in the Highlands will brace you up. Of course as Sibyl is in mourning she can only have a very small house party—just two or three men like myself to shoot the grouse, rabbits and stags. I don't suppose there will be any women there except her aunt and you." Lucy acquiesced unwillingly.

She was living once more with her parents, while Roger's plans were so unsettled. The rooms at Hankey's had been given up, and on his frequent journeys to London—mainly on Sibyl's business—he slept at Aunt Pardew's Hotel in Great Ormond Street, where they made him very comfortable. He had taken Lucy over to Engledene twice in July—once he had left her there a whole afternoon, tete-a-tete with the still languid young widow. On that occasion he had purposely ridden over to Tilehurst to see Mr. Baines with more news—sent on by Callaway from Unguja—about Ann Anderson and the restoration of Hangodi station, and what the Mission proposed to do in regard to a memorial grave-stone. It tickled his sense of humour that he should improve his acquaintance with John's father and thus allay any local feeling against Lucy: his visits there not only cheered the Aerated Waters' manufacturer, but they enraged Mrs. Baines.

She was obliged all the time to keep locked up in her bedroom, and this caused Eliza to get out of hand.

But so far, the hope of a friendship growing up between his wife and his one-time sweetheart had little encouragement from either. Sibyl, not wishing to fall out with Roger, declared she tried to like Lucy. Yet when other people were present she somehow brought out her rusticity and simplicity, or she adopted towards her a patronizing manner which was evident even to the not very acute senses of Roger's wife.

The visit to Glen Sporran Lodge did not improve their relations. Lucy in matters of dress was by no means without taste or discernment, but she was quite ignorant of the modernest modes. She had no idea that a stay in the Highlands—even in 1889—involved a special wardrobe: short, kilted skirts and high-buttoned leggings, boots, or spats for the day's adventures—going, to meet the guns, tramping over the moors, picnics when the wet weather permitted, and all the shifts for facing a good deal of rain without looking forlorn or ridiculous. Trailing skirts and wet weather were irreconcilable; so were yachting and a silk dress. Perpetual sitting indoors in a town dress, over a turf fire, and reading novels provoked sarcasms not only from Sibyl but from the tart tongue of Aunt Christabel; who wasn't at all inclined to spare Lucy.