Rest Harrow: A Comedy of Resolution Part 14

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

Perhaps he had offended her by his silence--his two letters, which she had neither invited nor answered. That can hardly account for it, since she had not written to him of her own initiative. Their parting certainly had been discrepant: the clinging and wistfulness had been hers, though she had uttered nothing of complaint or misgiving. But perhaps he had been too gay and nonchalant, a little too much the husband secure. For a week she had shivered at her loneliness; then she had plunged anew into the flood of affairs, and had come out, as from a cold bath, braced and tingling.

Round went the wheels of Wanless. The house was new-papered, painted, carpeted; every month brought new wonders to the garden. Under Glyde's tuition, seeing with his eyes, watching with his tensity of vision, she had come closely into Nature's arms. Perhaps she was unwise with the young man: the fact is she never stopped to consider him. She liked him and his queer, secret, pa.s.sionate ways. She took a royal line of her own. She required much of him, and if he made much of it, she didn't know it. She dreamed no harm to him or to herself. Her absorption in the business of the moment, or the needs, was so manifest that not even the maids, who saw her frequently with the youth, could have thought harm for a second. It was just Miss Percival all over--as "keen as mustard." Perhaps it was as much under Glyde's fostering as any other nurture that she came, during that year alone, to love the earth so well that she could appraise the worth of human love. I don't know. It was a critical year for her.

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

A woman, any woman, knowing that a man covets her possession, stores her knowledge, exults in it in secret. It is a fund, a store against lean years or wry ones. You can see it throned sedately in her eyes, when she is with him, however much she may feel his absurdity or presumption. So it was with Sanchia. She was fully conscious of Struan's preposterous state, strictly the elder sister, never the patroness, for were they not bond- slaves both? She patronised n.o.body at Wanless, yet, with a steady eye for distances, kept a perfect length, varying with each oncomer. With Mr.

Menzies, lord of the gardens, so far on she came; with Frodsham, master of horse and hound, so far; with the engineer so far; with Minnie nearer; nearest of all with Mrs. Benson: her att.i.tude to the stout woman was that of favourite pupil to a family governess of immemorial service. She could wheedle Mrs. Benson, and often did. The elder sister att.i.tude was kept for young Glyde; she admonished, scolded, preached to him high doctrine of duty and honour; there was something benignant, a sort of pitying care shed from above. To him she may have been like Cynthia, stooping to the dreamer on Latmos. Whether she knew that, she must have known a good deal.

She knew, for instance, that he kept vigil; for she had met him at night, as you have been told. She knew where to find him. Nothing had ever pa.s.sed between them, of course, of her relations with the Master. I don't think that she was aware of his sentry-go under the windows--first under Ingram's, then under hers. I am sure she was not, or he would have heard of it in plain terms, have seen her eyes grow hard, and her mouth stretch to bleakness. She was capable of royal, cold rage when she was offended.

But that he hated Ingram must have been plain to her.

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

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

This was very sublime. I sing, or Mr. Senhouse sings, a G.o.ddess in her own Right. That is to be observed, or we fail. Persons have existed, and do yet exist, who are law unto themselves, deliberate choosers of their fate, deliberate allies of Atropos with the shears, who go what seems to us, shivering on the brink of things, a bright and bloodstained way, and furrow deeply into life, because it must be so, because so they will have it. Great ones of time, a Caesar or so, a Catherine, a Buonaparte, come handily to mind, who, wreaking countless woes, wrought evenly their own.

And since greatness is a relative term, and time an abstraction of the mind, in their company, says Mr. Senhouse, was Sanchia Percival, and in her blue-clouded eyes was to be discerned seated, like a captain, foreknowledge of her own fate, and will to choose it. But, as for Mr.

Senhouse himself, at this time of envisaging of ways I don't believe that he entered her head. Small blame to her, either, seeing that the man, having renounced her, or failed of her, as you please, had taken up with his Mrs. Germain, and found her to be a Fact, as I have related.

But to do wrong or right, the prerogative of choice: she arrogated that.

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

IX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mr. Senhouse."

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

She considered. Her eyes grew gentle over the remembrances which this name always called up. "He knew that I was right. Oh, yes. I'm sure of that.

But he was frightened. He lost his nerve because--"

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

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

"He was in the Black Forest when I last heard from him," she said, "and was going to the Caucasus--to collect plants. That was a long time ago.

Three years, I should think. He doesn't write now. He's married, you know."

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

"He married a Mrs. Germain--a widow."

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

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

"He was a rum 'un," he continued. "The first time I saw him after you came up here, was when I ran against him by chance in Norfolk somewhere. Spread abroad he was--in flannels--all his things strewn about. He had a little fire going, and a little pot on it. Doing a job of tinkering, he said, to oblige a lady. There was the lady, too, if you please, sitting on a bank, smoking a clay. She had a beard, and an old wide-awake on her head.

Senhouse introduced me, I remember. He told me he was on his way North-- Wast.w.a.ter, I think. A planting job up there--or something. Rum chap that!

Oh, one of the very rummest! He asked me a lot about you. I didn't know how much he knew, so I went very p.u.s.s.y. The chap was as sharp as a needle.

Spotted me. He said, 'My dear sir, I don't ask you what she is doing or where she is. I ask you if she is well.' Then I told him a lot--about you, and Nevile, and all this business. I let out, I tell you. I was fairly deep in the thing--you know that I felt pretty badly, because it was my fault that you ever knew Nevile at all. Don't you suppose I've ever forgiven myself that, Sancie; never you suppose it. No, no."

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

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

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

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

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

Sanchia squared her jaw for trouble.

"He wants you back, you know, awfully--because you won't come. And the more he wants you the less he'll say so. That's the pride of the cobbler's dog. If he's uncomfortable, he'll scratch until he's comfortable again.

And he says, "If you can't get the best take the next best"; and runs about with Mrs. Wilmot at his heels, and is bored all the time. That's Nevile all over." His eyes grew rounder. "You'll have to go, you know."

She admitted that. "Yes, I must." Then she sighed. "I don't want to go.

There's such a lot to be done here."

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

He stammered out his next. "I should like to say, Sancie, that there's n.o.body on earth I respect--for whom I have more respect than for you. I don't understand your point of view--don't pretend to. But I know a fine thing when I see it. I'm not much of a chap, I know--no brains, and all that--simple, rotten chap, I know; but if we're not going to be friends I shall be unhappy."

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

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

"I shouldn't like it at all," she a.s.sured him.

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