What a Man Wills Part 26

Her husband pressed her hand, but did not answer. He knew well that his wife possessed a wonderful heart-vision which could pierce beneath the deceptions of surface appearance, down to the truth beneath; but this was a plane to which he could not follow; and in truth he could not trust himself to discuss it. This dearly loved wife had always been of an unusual exalted character, and with the decline of bodily health, she seemed to cast from her one by one the hindering frailties of the flesh, and to become ever more spiritual and crystalline. He reverenced, he worshipped, but--he feared! A spirit so fine seemed out of place on this gross earth.

But, thank G.o.d! the old gaiety was not dead, and her laugh rang clear as ever as a few minutes later he brought a writing-table to her side, and they embarked upon the work of tracing old friends under new conditions.

Mr Ingram would have been hard put to it to remember the names alone of all who had been present on the historic occasion, but his wife's diary supplied an account not only of these, but of manners and appearance, with a surprisingly verbatim record of what each person had said. She had the memory which records words, and now as she read over one p.r.o.nouncement after another, something of her own keenness entered into her husband's manner.

"By jove, you have a memory! It all comes back as I hear you reading-- the very words--the very expressions. I can see Claudia sitting in that chair, telling us about the rich cousin who sent her cast-off clothes, and looking so wonderfully pretty and sparkling. Ah, poor Claudia!

Well--one is bound to come up against tragedy, if one follows the happenings of nine lives for fifteen years. All things considered, I think we have less of it than might have been expected. Who comes next on the list? Norah Boyce, eh? We shan't have Norah, since that clever husband of hers has got this appointment in Canada; but we know at least that things go well with her. Nice little Norah! She deserved her good luck. And then comes Lilith Wastneys. No need to look up her address, eh? Care of the Rt. Hon. Hereward Lowther, would reach her the world over. And John Harely Malham! These friends of yours have developed into very great personages, dear! Do you think they will care to accept invitations from simple country dwellers like ourselves?"

"I shall send them invitations, and I think they will come," Mrs Ingram said quietly. People had a way of doing what she wished, which seemed the more extraordinary as she never argued nor persuaded. "Those two are our only notables; the others are leading quite ordinary lives, so ordinary that we shall have to resort to the directory to trace one or two. I have not heard of Francis Manning for years."

"Manning, Manning! Which was Manning? The man who was in such a d.i.c.kens of a hurry to get himself into trouble?"

"No, that was Val Lessing. Val is quite a prosperous City man now. He sends me a Christmas card every year. Francis Manning was the big, lazy creature who couldn't think of anything he wanted so much as to be let alone, to jog along in comfort. I have heard nothing of him since he wrote years ago to tell me of his marriage. I sent him a present."

"I'll bet you did!" commented her husband, laughing. "Oh, well, we can easily track Mr Manning. Then there comes Juliet! There's no difficulty about Juliet. Let me see! What was it that Juliet wished for?"

"Adventure!" Mrs Ingram said, and they both smiled.

"So Juliet wished for adventure, did she? Well! Well!" cried Mr Ingram nodding. "_How_ many inches should you say she measures round the waist at the present moment?"

But at this his wife protested strongly.

"Too bad! Too bad! Why should the mere fact of being stout make it seem ridiculous for a woman to have a share in romance or excitement?

I'm not going to allow you to laugh at Juliet. Wait at least until you have heard what she has to say. Now we come to the last on the list-- Rupert Dempster, Rupert who wished for love."

"I remember," said her husband shortly. Many things that had happened on that evening had faded from memory, but the shock occasioned by Rupert's unexpected confession had impressed it on his mind. In imagination he could see the firelight playing upon the tired face, and hear the strong, quiet tone speaking of his ideal love, the primal, overmastering affinity of mind for mind, soul for soul, body for body.

And it was this Rupert Dempster who had married a woman admittedly insane! Rumour said that she had to a great extent regained her reason, but still... Mr Ingram registered a hope that Dempster and his wife would not accept his wife's invitation for New Year's Eve!

It was New Year's Eve, and throughout the afternoon one batch of visitors after another drove up to the door of the Manor. Some had travelled by train, some by motor, and each guest in turn was received by the hostess, welcomed with her inimitable charm, and escorted to the rooms apportioned to them, where tea was served instead of in the hall downstairs, as was the usual custom in the household. It did not satisfy Mrs Ingram's dramatic sense that her guests should meet one by one; she preferred to postpone the moment until they met _en ma.s.se_ round the dinner table later on.

Six invitations had been sent out, and in due time six replies came back. Some were affectionate in tone, others politely formal, some implied a willingness to stay as long as they should be asked; others regretted that one day only could be spared; but so far as the anniversary itself was concerned, each of the six notes brought the acceptance which Mrs Ingram had so confidently expected. By six o'clock that evening six of the surviving members of the original party were once more gathered together beneath the roof of the Manor.

It was just eight o'clock when the sound of the gong pealed through the house, and Mr and Mrs Ingram took their stand in the great hall, to watch the procession of their guests down the stairway.

First of all came a tall man, muscular and healthy, a typical country squire, the sunburn of his skin showing in marked contrast to his white shirt and waistcoat. A handsome man, with an air of agreeable content, and beside him a stout matron, her large face wreathed in smiles, her dress a handsome creation of the year before last.

Behind her, creeping close to the wall, a plain, insignificant woman trailed a robe of magnificent gold brocade, while the glitter of diamonds on neck and head lent an additional wanness to the pinched face. This was the Lady Anne Malham, and by her side walked the husband whose success in life had made him a world-known figure. The large head, and hawk-like features had been so often represented in the Press that the public recognised him at a glance, but few of those who studied the weary face realised that this was a man who had not yet seen his forty-fifth year. There was no lingering trace of youth on the face of John Malham, millionaire!

Behind the Malhams came yet another couple: the woman's left hand rested lightly on the banister, while on the inner side of the stairway, her husband slipped his arm through hers, as though to afford a double security to her descent. Slim, ethereally transparent, her white shoulders rising above a dress of misty black, a carmine flush staining the soft oval of her cheeks, Eve Dempster appeared more like a beautiful wraith than a woman of flesh and blood. The years had brought to her none of the ordinary signs of age; as though loath to mar so exquisite a creature, they had pa.s.sed by, leaving behind nothing but an air of additional transparence and fragility to mark their course. Rupert, on the contrary, looked more than his age. His face was lined as by a ceaseless anxiety, but in his eyes there was a great content.

Eve Dempster's long, misty train floated so far behind as to necessitate a gap in the descent of the guests. The gap, and the isolated position which she occupied as the first of the guests to descend in single file, threw into greater prominence the stolid, ungainly figure of Mrs Francis Manning, clad in a satin gown of a violent shade of blue. Her light hair was elaborately waved and dressed in the latest eccentricity of the day; tight white kid gloves came to an end half-way up her reddened arms. She looked what she was, a middle-cla.s.s matron of the suburbs, divided between pride and embarra.s.sment in her present position. Her husband followed close behind, large, heavily built, with clean-shaven face, patient, saddened, strikingly controlled. Mrs Ingram, watching from the hall beneath, felt a smarting of the eyes as she looked at that face, and remembered the torpid complacence of the days that were gone!

The next couple were in appearance perhaps the most normal of any. A man too alert and supple to be yet cla.s.sed as middle-aged, a pretty, soft-eyed woman, with humorous lips, and a graceful head poised at an angle which suggested an agreeable touch of coquetry; a woman whose spirit remained young; a woman who retained the power to charm, though the dreaded forty hovered but a few years ahead.

And then, last of all, sweeping downwards with the indefinable air of those accustomed to high places, came the guests of honour, the Rt.

Hon. Hereward Lowther, and Lilith, his wife. The Minister was smiling, and the smile showed him at his best. A physiognomist would have read in his face a curious mingling of weakness and strength but the old shadow was replaced by a radiant complacence, and there was a touch of obvious though perfectly good-natured condescension in his bearing as he surveyed the group in the hall. He was ready to be all that was agreeable to his wife's old friends, but he expected that in their turn they would appreciate the honour paid by his presence.

As for Lilith herself, a murmur of incredulity arose from the watchers as she stepped into sight, so extraordinarily like the Lilith of old did she appear. The pale hair was twisted round the head in identically the same fashion as of yore, the white satin dress, with the swathing of tulle round the shoulders, followed the same natural lines. There was no glitter of gems, but Val Lessing noticed with a thrill of remembrance that round her throat there were ropes of pearls,--l.u.s.trous, shimmering pearls, for which a man might venture his life. In the shaded light of the lamps there were no lines to be seen on the quiet face. It seemed impossible to believe that fifteen long years had pa.s.sed by since that white-robed figure had last descended that staircase!

A few moments of merry greetings and laughter, of introductions by host and hostess, and then the house-party once more formed into pairs, filed into the dining-room, and took their places round the festive board.

It was a long and elaborate meal which followed, and in the drawing-room afterwards the guests found a delightful entertainment provided for their benefit. The days were over when dancing appealed as an ideal manner of pa.s.sing the time; to-night the guests sat still and were amused by others, and as the hour of twelve drew nigh, watched the performance of an exquisite little masque of the seasons, in which the old year and the new played the leading characters.

More than one person suspected the authorship of that masque, and recognised another instance of Mrs Ingram's generalship, in tuning the minds of the hearers to a desired note, before the moment of the conference arrived.

They stood together in the great hall, hand in hand, waiting for the striking of the hour from the church tower, men and women, where before had stood youths and maidens; together, as the last note died away, they turned back to the fire, and seated themselves in the circling chairs, but when they were all seated there were still two chairs which remained vacant. To the majority of the company the presence of these chairs appeared the most meaningless of incidents; two only of the number divined their significance,--Rupert Dempster and the Squire's stout, prosaic-looking wife. As usual it was the woman who put her thoughts into words:

"Ah, poor Claudia! poor Meriel!" she sighed softly. "How little we thought that they would be absent when we met again! And such tragic fates... That beautiful Claudia! Can you remember how she sat that night, making her naughty, audacious speeches, and looking so sweet and bewitching all the time that one could not believe that she meant half she said. But she _did_, or how could she have married that man?

Meriel was staying with her, at the time that she first--found out! She persuaded her to see the specialist. Claudia _dared_ not tell her husband. To the very last she braved it out. One would not have expected her to have such courage! And when he did know, he went straight away and never saw her again. She would see no one. She lived alone with her nurses until the end. Poor Claudia! She wished for great riches, and she got them, but--"

"Pound bitterness to her soul! Yes. That is the reward of seeking the worthless thing," Mrs Ingram said quietly. "Claudia had a few years given to her to taste the power of money, and a few years more to test its helplessness. She learned many lessons, poor child, in that hidden room. I sent for one of her nurses after she died. The woman cried bitterly when she spoke of her. She said she had never had a patient who was more thoughtful and considerate. I was thankful to know that the poor child had had someone with her who really loved and sympathised."

There was a tense silence. The pathos of Claudia's fate lay heavy upon those who remembered her in the flush of her youthful triumph, and with that other name, too, was the connection of tragedy.

"And Meriel! Meriel wished for happiness," Francis Manning said slowly.

"She was shipwrecked, wasn't she, when she was sailing to India with some friends?"

"With Geoffrey Sterne and his wife," Val Lessing told him. "My sister kept up a correspondence with her for some years, and I heard from her.

They had both been at school with Mrs Sterne. She appeared to lose her health after the marriage, but while Meriel was paying her first visit it was discovered that the real trouble was--drink! There's no harm speaking of it now, for later on it became public property, but at the time they hoped for a cure, and the great object was to let no one suspect. She was fond of Meriel and begged her to stay on, in the place of a hired nurse, and Meriel was a lonely creature. She told my sister that she was thankful to find someone who needed her. But she had a hard time. All the trouble, and isolation, and patience, and--_Hastiness_, for nothing! It was a hopeless case, and grew steadily worse and worse. Meriel left off writing during that time, but my sister said that even before that her letters had grown awfully sad... Then they sailed for India, I suppose to try what the change would do, and there was a collision. Some of the pa.s.sengers got away in boats and were saved--Meriel refused to leave. Some of the pa.s.sengers told how they had seen Sterne trying to persuade her; but she would not leave."

There was another silence. With one accord the guests looked at Mrs Ingram, and she recognised the meaning of that look, shook her head, and held out her hands with a gesture of helplessness.

"You are thinking that my theory has failed, and that Meriel found none of the happiness for which she longed. Yes! it sounds like it. Her youth spent in isolation, with a drunken woman as companion, and the result of it all--failure! I don't deny it, dear people. I don't argue. On the surface it's a pitiful tale, but we know only the surface. No one can read the secrets of Meriel's heart. She was happy in one thing, at least--that the time of her loneliness was short, and I think there are none among you who will deny that Meriel is happy _now_.

Whatever may be your creeds, you will agree that such brave, unselfish giving is a garnering of wealth for the life that is to come. We may be satisfied that Meriel has come into her kingdom!" She paused just for a moment, then with a challenging smile turned towards Val Lessing, who sat on her right. The conversation had taken a pensive turn, and with the generalship of a born hostess she was ready to switch it back into a livelier channel. Among all the couples who were present none looked more absolutely sane and satisfied than Val and his wife. Val could obviously be trusted to give a cheerful report.

"Well, Val, what have you to tell us? Was fate kind or unkind enough to lead you through any perilous seas before you reached your present very sunshiny haven?"

Val bent his head in acknowledgment of the compliment. There was a tinge of embarra.s.sment on his face; he glanced across the hearth at his wife, and as quickly averted his eyes.

"W-e-ll," he said slowly, "I think I may say that it _was_! I had an experience of er--what appeared at the time to be a very--er--acute danger. It lasted for some four or five weeks, and then was--er-- relieved in a somewhat remarkable manner. You will excuse the details.

I have only to confess that the experience taught me the most useful lesson of my life--to appreciate the blessings of safety! I don't deny that in the course of that experience there were moments of excitement which I intensely enjoyed, but on the whole I discovered that it is much more agreeable to live in peace." He paused for a moment, and into his eyes there leaped a delightful smile. "I may add," he said dryly, "that my wife has relieved me of one great dread. She is good enough to provide a spice of uncertainty, which makes it impossible that I shall ever have to complain of monotony in life!"

Everyone looked at Delia, and Delia flicked her long eyelashes, and stared into s.p.a.ce with an expression of angelic innocence. But a dimple dipped in her cheek. Delia at thirty-eight was still a minx. There was more than one man in the room who envied Lessing the possession of his delightful wife!

The general laugh subsided, and Mrs Ingram turned to the Squire's wife.

"So much for Danger!" she said smiling. "Now, Juliet, what have you to report of Adventure? Your friends will remember how impatiently you were straining at your bonds. Has the adventure really come along?"

More than one of the listeners felt it an effort at that moment to repress a smile, so exceedingly unadventurous was the appearance of the portly dame. Perhaps she felt the covert amus.e.m.e.nt, for there was a note of defiance in her voice as she took up the challenge.

"Yes, it _did_," she said emphatically. "It most certainly did, and I have to thank you, dear Mrs Ingram, for making me--er--_receptive_--so that when the opportunity arose, I was ready to take it. Before our talk here fifteen years ago, I had drifted into the belief that nothing adventurous or interesting could ever happen to me, and that I must just resign myself to be bored. After that I changed my way of thinking, and expected the chance to come. I am like Mr Lessing--I prefer not to give you any details, but I think I am quite safe in saying that no other woman ever met her husband in the extraordinary circ.u.mstances under which I met mine. It was very adventurous indeed, and we were engaged--oh, at once, and married in a month, and after my husband's service abroad we settled down in the dear old house where we are still living with our six children." She paused, and looked around with a warning air. "Please don't murmur sympathetically! Whenever I say 'six,' people always murmur sympathetically, and it's so misplaced.

It's just what we wanted--_lots_ of little heads round the table. Five st.u.r.dy boys, and one little girl."

"Well, at any rate, you can't have much adventure now!" It was Mrs Francis Manning who spoke, the faint c.o.c.kney tw.a.n.g of her voice sounding discordantly in contrast to the cultured tones of her companions.

"Children are such a tie. We have four, and I never seem to have a free hour. And to live in the country, too. It's a good thing you had some adventure when you were young, for there's no chance of it now."

"I deny it!" cried Juliet, hotly. "I deny it. Can anything in the world be more adventurous than to start a new home, and a new generation, to have six young lives entrusted to one to train for the world's service? Think what those six lives may mean, multiplying into fresh lives, spreading influence wherever they go! There are no such adventures in life, as marriage and parent-ship, if one can only see them in the right light, and keep on seeing..." She gave a little laugh, half shy, half apologetic, a trifle ashamed of her own intensity.

"Ah, well! it's adventurous enough to have a pack of boys who ate learning to ride, learning to shoot, trying to copy everything that their father can do to-day, hobbling home almost every day of the week with cuts and bruises, and breaks and sprains. I have all the adventure that I need, and,--what shall I say? Only this, that I enjoy it even more than I expected!"