The Ancient Law Part 45

"Let's be humbly grateful that we've got her back," he said, smiling, "while we prepare her bed."

CHAPTER IV

THE POWER OF THE BLOOD

When he came out into the hall the next morning, Lydia met him, in her dressing-gown, on her way from Alice's room.

"How is she?" he asked eagerly. "Did she sleep?"

"No, she was very restless, so I stayed with her. She went home a quarter of an hour ago."

"Went home? Do you mean she's gone back to that brute?"

A servant's step sounded upon the staircase, and with her unfailing instinct for propriety, she drew back into his room and lowered her voice.

"She said that she was too uncomfortable without her clothes and her maid, but I think she had definitely made up her mind to return to him."

"But when did she change? You heard her say last night that she would rather kill herself."

"Oh, you know Alice," she responded a little wearily; and for the first time it occurred to him that the exact knowledge of Alice might belong, after all, not to himself, but to her.

"You think, then," he asked, "that she meant none of her violent protestations of last night?"

"I am sure that she meant them while she uttered them--not a minute afterward. She can't help being dramatic any more than she can help being beautiful."

"Are you positive that you said nothing to bring about her decision? Did you influence her in any way?"

"I did nothing more than tell her that she must make her choice once for all--that she must either go back to Geoffrey Heath and keep up some kind of appearances, or publicly separate herself from him. I let her see quite plainly that a state of continual quarrels was impossible and indecent."

Her point of view was so entirely sensible that he found himself hopelessly overpowered by its una.s.sailable logic.

"So she has decided to stick to him for better or for worse, then?"

"For the present at all events. She realised fully, I think, how much she would be obliged to sacrifice by returning home?"

"Sacrifice? Good G.o.d, what?" he demanded.

"Oh, well, you see, Geoffrey lives in a fashion that is rather grand for Botetourt. He travels a great deal, and he makes her gorgeous presents when he is in a good humour. She seemed to feel that if we could only settle these bills for her, she would be able to bring about a satisfactory adjustment. I was surprised to find how quietly she took it all this morning. She had forgotten entirely, I believe, the scene she made downstairs last night."

This was his old Alice, he reflected in baffled silence, and apparently he would never attain to the critical judgment of her. Well, in any case, he was able to do justice to Lydia's admirable detachment.

"I suppose I may have a talk with Heath anyway?" he said at last.

"She particularly begs you not to, and I feel strongly that she is right."

"Does she expect me to sit quietly by and see it go on forever? Why, there were bruises on her arm that he had made with his fingers."

Lydia paled as she always did when one of the brutal facts of life was thrust on her notice.

"Oh, she doesn't think that will happen again. It appears that she had lost her temper and tried her best to infuriate him. He is still very much in love with her at times, and she hopes that by a little diplomacy she may be able to arrange matters between them."

"Diplomacy with that insufferable cad! Pshaw!"

Lydia sighed, not in exasperation, but with the martyr's forbearance.

"It is really a crisis in Alice's life," she said, "and we must treat it with seriousness."

"I was never more serious in my life. I'm melancholy. I'm abject."

"Last night she told me that Geoffrey threatened to go West and get a divorce, and this frightened her."

"But I thought it was the very thing she wanted," he urged in bewilderment. "Hadn't she left him last night for good and all?"

"She might leave him, but she could not give up his money. It is impossible, I suppose, for you to realise her complete dependence upon wealth--the absurdity of her ideas about the value of money. Why, her income of five thousand which Uncle Richard allows her would not last her a month."

"I realised a little of this when I glanced over those bills she gave me."

"Of course we shall pay those ourselves, but what is twenty thousand dollars to her, when Geoffrey seems to have paid out a hundred thousand already. He began, I can see, by being very generous, but she confessed to me this morning that other bills were still to come in which she would not dare to let him see. I told her that she must try to meet these out of her income, and that we would reduce our living expenses as much as possible in order to pay those she gave you."

"I shall ask Uncle Richard to advance this out of my personal property,"

he said.

"But he will not do it. You know how scrupulous he is about all such matters, and he told me the other day that your father's will had clearly stated that the money was not to be touched unless he should deem it for your interest to turn it over to you."

Her command of the business situation amazed him, until he remembered her long conversations with Richard Ordway, whose interests were confined within strictly professional limits. His fatal mistake in the past, he saw now, was that he had approached her, not as a fellow mortal, but as a divinity; for the farther he receded from the att.i.tude of worship, the more was he able to appreciate the quality of her practical virtues. In spite of her poetic exterior, it was in the rosy glow of romance that she showed now as barest of attractions. The bottle of cough syrup on his bureau still testified to her ability to sympathise in all cases where the imagination was not required to lend its healing insight.

"But surely it is to my interest to save Alice," he said after a pause.

"I think he will feel that it must be done by the family, by us all,"

she answered, "he has always had so keen a sense of honour in little things."

An hour later, when he broached the subject to Richard in his office, he found that Lydia was right, as usual, in her prediction; and with a flash of ironic humour, he pictured her as enthroned above his destiny, like a fourth fate who spun the unyielding thread of common sense.

"Of course the debt must be paid if it is a condition of Alice's reconciliation with her husband," said the old man, "but I shall certainly not sacrifice your securities in order to do it. Such an act would be directly against the terms of your father's will."

There was no further concession to be had from him, so Daniel turned to his work, half in disappointment, half in admiration of his uncle's loyalty to the written word.

When he went home to luncheon Lydia told him that she had seen Alice, who had appeared seriously disturbed, though she had shown her, with evident enjoyment, a number of exquisite Paris gowns. "She had a sable coat, also, in her closet, which could not have cost less, I should have supposed, than forty thousand dollars--the kind of coat that a Russian Grand d.u.c.h.ess might have worn--but when I spoke of it, she grew very much depressed and changed the subject. Did you talk to Uncle Richard? And was I right?"

"You're always right," he admitted despondently, "but do you think, then, that I'd better not see Alice to-day?"

"Perhaps it would be wiser to wait until to-morrow. Geoffrey is in a very difficult humour, she says, more brutally indifferent to her than he has been since her marriage."

"Isn't that all the more reason she ought to have her family about her?"