‘No,’ said one of the voices, ‘not a bit of it; oh dear, no! Gladys has her good points; and, frankly, I am getting rather to like her. But she is impossible in her position. The whole thing was a fearful mistake, which poor old Alfred will live to repent.’
The voice was unmistakable; it was Granville’s.
‘But’ — and the other voice was that of Granville’s most intimate friend, whom he had introduced to Gladys during the course of the afternoon— ‘doesn’t he repent it already, think you?’
‘Upon my word, I’m not sure that he doesn’t,’ said Granville.
‘If you ask me,’ said his friend, ‘I should say there isn’t a doubt of it. I’ve been watching him pretty closely. Mark my words, he’s a miserable man!’
‘Well, I’m half inclined to agree with you,’ said Granville. ‘I didn’t think so two or three days since, but now I do. You see, there are camels’ backs and there are last straws (though I wish there were no proverbs); and there never was a heavier straw than yesterday’s— ‘gad! ’twas as heavy as the rest of the load! I mean the perfectly awful scene in the Park, which you know about, and the whole town knows about, and the low papers will publish, confound them! Yes, I believe you’re right; he can’t get over this.’
‘Poor chap!’ said Granville’s friend.
‘You may well say that. Alfred is no genius’ — Granville was, apparently— ‘but he has position; he has money — luckily for him; he means to settle down in the country somewhere, and, no doubt, he’d like to be somebody in the county. But how could he? Look at his wife!’
‘There ought to be a separation,’ said the friend, feelingly.
‘Well, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that,’ said Granville, wearing ship. ‘Anyway, there never will be one; you may trust her for that. And, I must own, I don’t think it’s all the main chance with her, either; they’re sufficiently spooney. Why, she will not even leave him for a week on a visit, though, as I understand, he’s doing his best to persuade her to.’
Gladys’s hands tightened upon the woodwork of the window-frame.
‘Can’t persuade her to?’ cried the friend. ‘What did I tell you? Why, Lord love you, he wants to get rid of her already!’
This was rather strong, even for an intimate friend, and even though the intimate friend had drunk a good deal of wine. Granville’s tone cooled suddenly.
‘We’ll drop the subject, I think. My cigar’s done, and you’ve smoked as much as is good for you. You can do as you like, but I’m going inside.’
Their footsteps sounded down the gravel-path; then the sound ceased; they had gone in by the drawing-room window.
Gladys had never once altered her position; she did not alter it now. The moon rose high in the purple sky, and touched her head with threads of silver. It was as though gray hairs had come upon her while she knelt. The sudden turning of the door-handle, and a quick step upon the threshold, aroused her. It was Alfred come for an easier coat. The people were gone.
‘What — Gladys!’ he cried. She rose stiffly to her feet, and confronted him with her back to the moonlight. ‘Up here — alone?’
‘You didn’t miss me, then?’ Her tone was low and hoarse — the words ran into one another in their hurried, eager utterance.
‘Why, no,’ cried Alfred; ‘to tell you the truth, I didn’t.’
He seemed to her in better spirits than he had been all day; his voice was full and cheery, and his manner brisk. Why? Evidently the evening had gone off very agreeably. Why? Was it because he had got rid of her for an hour? Was it, then, true that he was doing his best to get rid of her for a week — that he would be only too glad to get rid of her for ever? It was as though a poniard were being held to her breast. She paused, and nerved herself to speak calmly, before, as it were, baring her bosom to the steel.
‘Alfred,’ she said at length, with slow distinctness, but not with the manner of one who is consciously asking a question of life or death, ‘I have been thinking it over, about the Barringtons; and I think I should like to go to them on Saturday after all. May I go?’
‘May you?’ Alfred fairly shouted. ‘I am only too delighted, Gladdie! Of course you may.’
The poniard went in — to the hilt.
So delighted was Alfred that he caught her in his arms and kissed her. Her cheek was quite cold, her frame all limp. Though she reeled on her feet, she seemed to shrink instinctively from his support.
‘What’s the matter, Gladdie?’ he cried, in sudden alarm. ‘What’s wrong — are you ill? Stop, I’ll fetch — —’
She interrupted him in a whisper.
‘Fetch no one.’ She dropped one hand upon the dressing-table, leant her weight upon it, and motioned him back with the other. ‘I am not ill; I only was faint, just for a moment. I am all right now. There, that’s a long breath; I can speak quite properly again. You see, it was only a passing faintness. I must have fallen asleep by the window. I was enjoying the lovely night, and that must have done it. There, I am only tired now, and want — sleep!’
That acid had been applied, and not in drops. Its work was complete.
CHAPTER XV
THE FIRST PARTING
It was Saturday forenoon, and everything was ready for the departure of Gladys. Moreover, the moment had come. Garrod was at the door with the carriage; the phlegmatic stable-boy, having performed feats of unsuspected strength with the luggage, had retired into his own peculiar shell, and lurked in sullen humility at the far side of the horse; while Mr Dix figured imposingly in the hall. Alfred was here too, waiting for Gladys to come down. But Gladys was upstairs saying good-bye to Lady Bligh, and lingering over the parting somewhat strangely, for one who was going away for a week only.
‘If I hear any more such absurd talk,’ Lady Bligh said at last, and with some impatience, ‘about forgiveness and the like, I shall punish you by not allowing you to leave me at all.’
‘It is too late to do that,’ Gladys hastily put in. ‘But oh, Lady Bligh! if only you knew how happy you have made me — how happily I go away, having your forgiveness for everything, for everything — —’
‘Except for what you are saying now. How wildly you do talk, child! One would think you were going for ever.’
‘Who knows, Lady Bligh? There are accidents every day. That’s why I’m thankful to be leaving like this.’
Lady Bligh hated sentimentality. Only the intense earnestness of the girl’s voice and manner restrained her from laughing; sentimentality was only fit to be laughed at; but this was sentimentality of a puzzling kind.
A minute later, with passionate kisses and incoherent expressions, out of all proportion to the occasion, and fairly bewildering to poor Lady Bligh, Gladys was gone.
Alfred scanned her narrowly as they drove to the station. By the way she kept turning round to gaze backward, you would have thought her anxious to ‘see the last of’ things, as small boys are when the holidays are over, and bigger boys when they go finally out into the world. Alfred was going with her to Liverpool Street. She had refused to go at all if he took her (as he wanted to) all the way into Suffolk, to return himself by the next train.
‘Gladdie,’ he said, after watching her closely, ‘you look cut up; is it from saying good-bye to the mater?’
‘I suppose it must be — if I really look like that.’
‘There is still, perhaps, some soreness — —’
‘No, there is none now,’ said Gladys, quickly.
‘Then what is it?’
‘Only that it is so dreadful, saying good-bye!’
‘My darling! — by the way you talk you might be going for good and all. And it is only for a week.’
She did not answer, but pressed the hand that closed over her own.
During the half-hour’s run to Waterloo he continued to glance furtively, and not without apprehension, at her face. It was unusually pale; dark rings encircled the eyes, and the eyes were unusually brilliant.
They had a co
mpartment to themselves. He held her hand all the way, and she his, like a pair of moonstruck young lovers; and, for the most part, they were as silent.
‘You have not been yourself these last few days,’ he said at length; ‘I am glad you are going.’
‘And I am glad of that,’ she answered.
Her tone was odd.
‘But I shall be wretched while you are gone,’ he quickly added.
She made no reply to this; it seemed to her an afterthought. But, if it was, it grew upon him with swift and miserable effect as the minutes remaining to them gradually diminished. When they drove up to Liverpool Street he was in the depths of dejection.
It was their first parting.
She insisted on sending the necessary telegram to the Barringtons herself. His depression made him absent, and even remiss. He stood listlessly by while she filled in the form; at any other time he would have done this for her, or at least looked over her shoulder — humorously to check the spelling; but this afternoon he was less attentive in little things than she had ever known him, because she had never known him so depressed.
It was their first parting.
He had got her a compartment to herself, but only at her earnest insistence; he had spoken for a carriage full of people, or the one reserved for ladies — anything but solitary confinement. It was the Cambridge train; there were few stoppages and no changes.
Gladys was ensconced in her corner. For the moment, her husband sat facing her. Four minutes were left them.
‘You have a Don in the next carriage to you; an ancient and wonderfully amiable one, I should say,’ observed Alfred, with a sickly attempt at levity. ‘I wish you were under his wing, my dear!’
Gladys made a respondent effort, an infinitely harder one. ‘No, thanks,’ she said; ‘not me!’
‘Come, I say! Is it nervousness or vanity?’
‘It is neither.’
‘Yet you look nervous, Gladdie, joking apart — and, honestly, I never felt less like joking in my life. And you are pale, my darling; and your hand is so cold!’
She withdrew the hand.
But one more minute was left. ‘Better get out, sir,’ said the guard, ‘and I’ll lock the lady in.’
Gladys felt a shiver pass through her entire frame. With a supreme effort she controlled herself. They kissed and clasped hands. Then Alfred stepped down heavily on to the platform.
The minute was a long one; these minutes always are. It was an age in passing, a flash to look back upon. These minutes are among the strangest accomplishments of the sorcerer Time.
‘It is dreadful to let you go alone, darling, like this,’ he said, standing on the foot-board and leaning in. ‘At least you ought to have had Bunn with you. You might have given way in that, Gladdie.’
‘No,’ she whispered tremulously; ‘I — I like going alone.’
‘You must write at once, Gladdie.’
‘To-morrow; but you could only get it latish on Monday.’
The bell was ringing. You know the clangour of a station bell; of all sounds the last that it resembles is that of the funeral knell; yet this was its echo in the heart of Gladys.
‘Well, it’s only for a week, after all, isn’t it, Gladdie? It will be the weariest week of my life, I know. But I shan’t mind — after all, it’s my own doing — if only you come back with a better colour. You have been so pale, Gladdie, these last few days — pale and excitable. But it’s only a week, my darling, eh?’
She could not answer.
The guard blew his whistle. There was an end of the minute at last.
‘Stand back,’ she whispered: her voice was stifled with tears.
‘Back?’ — Alfred peered up into her face, and a sudden pallor spread upon his own— ‘with your dear eyes full of tears, where I never yet saw tears before? Back? — God forgive me for thinking of it, I’ll come with you yet!’
He made as though to dive headlong through the window; but, looking him full in the eyes through her tears, his girl-wife laid a strong hand on each of his shoulders and forced him back. He staggered as the platform came under his feet. The train was already moving. He stood and gazed.
Gladys was waving to him, and smiling through her tears. So she continued until she could see him no more. Then she fell back upon the cushions, and, for a time, consciousness left her.
It was their first parting.
CHAPTER XVI
TRACES
Alfred did not become unconscious, nor even feel faint: he was a man. But he did feel profoundly wretched. He tried to shake off this feeling, but failed. Later, on his way back through the City, he stopped somewhere to try and lunch it off, and with rather better success. He was a man: he proceeded to throw the blame upon the woman. It was Gladys who had supplied all the sentiment (and there had been an absurd amount of it) at their parting; it was the woman who had exaggerated this paltry week’s separation, until it had assumed, perhaps for them both — at the moment — abnormal dimensions; he, the man, was blameless. If his way had obtained, she should have gone away in highest spirits, instead of in tears — and all for one insignificant week! He should write her a serious, if not a severe, letter on the subject. So Alfred went down to Twickenham in quite a valiant mood to face his week of single-blessedness, and to affect a droll appreciation of it in the popular, sprightly manner of the long-married man.
But the miserable feeling returned — if, indeed, it had ever been chased fairly away; and it returned with such force that Alfred was obliged to own at last that it, too, was exaggerated and out of all proportion to the exciting cause. He, in his turn, was sentimentalising as though Gladys had gone for a term of years. He was conscious of this; but he could not help it. His thoughts seemed bound to the parting of this Saturday, powerless to fly forward to the reunion of the next. A vague, dim sense of finality was the restraining bond; but this sense was not long to remain dim or vague. Meanwhile, so far as Alfred was concerned, the Sunday that followed was wrapped in a gloom that not even the genial presence of the distinguished (but jocular) guest could in any way pierce or dissipate. Nevertheless, it contained the last tranquil moments that Alfred was to know at that period of his life; for it led him to the verge of an ordeal such as few men are called upon to undergo.
He was not a little surprised on the Monday morning to find among the letters by the first post one addressed to his wife. She had received scarcely any letters since her arrival in England — two or three from tradesmen, an invitation or so, nothing from Australia; but this letter was directed in a large, bold hand, with which Alfred fancied he was not wholly unfamiliar; and he suddenly remembered that he had seen it before in Miss Barrington’s note of invitation. Now, the post-mark bore the name of the town to which Gladys had booked from Liverpool Street, and the date of the day before; and how could Miss Barrington write to Gladys at Twickenham, when Gladys was staying with Miss Barrington in Suffolk?
He tore open the envelope, and his hand shook as he did so. When he had read to the end of the letter, which was very short, his face was gray and ghastly; his eyes were wild and staring; he sank helplessly into a chair. The note ran thus: —
‘Dearest Glad, — We are so disappointed, you can’t think. As for me, I’ve been in the sulks ever since your telegram came this afternoon. What ever can have prevented your coming, at the very last minute — for your wire from Liverpool Street? Do write at once, for I’m horribly anxious, to your loving
‘Ada.
‘PS. — And do come at once, if it’s nothing serious.
‘Saturday.’
Alfred read the letter a second time, and an extraordinary composure came over him.
He folded the letter, restored it to its envelope, and put the envelope in his pocket. Then he looked at the clock. It wanted a quarter to eight. The Judge was no doubt up and about somewhere; but none of the others were down. Alfred rang the bell, and left word that he had received a letter begging an early interview on important business, and that he
would breakfast in town.
Alfred was stunned; but he had formed a plan. This plan he proceeded to put into effect; or rather, once formed, the plan evolved itself into mechanical action without further thought. For some hours following he did not perfectly realise either what he was doing or why he was doing it. He never thoroughly pulled himself together, until a country conveyance, rattling him through country lanes, whisked into a wooded drive, and presently past a lawn where people were playing lawn-tennis, and so to the steps of a square, solid, country house. But he had all his wits about him, and those sharpened to the finest possible point, when he looked to see whether Gladys was, or was not, among the girls on the lawn. She was not. That was settled. He got out and rang the bell. He inquired for Mr Barrington; Mr Barrington was playing at lawn-tennis. In answer to a question from the butler, Bligh said that he would rather see Mr Barrington in the house than go to him on the tennis-court. He could wait until the set was finished. He had come from London expressly to speak for a few minutes with Mr Barrington. His name would keep until Mr Barrington came; but he was from Australia.
The last piece of information was calculated to fetch Mr Barrington at once; and it did. He came as he was, in his flannels, his thick hairy arms bare to the elbow: a bronzed, leonine man of fifty, with the hearty, hospitable manner of the Colonial ‘squatocracy.’ Alfred explained in a few words who he was, and why he had come. He had but one or two questions to ask, and he asked them with perfect self-possession. They elicited the assurance that nothing had been heard of Gladys in that quarter, beyond the brief message received on the Saturday. Mr Barrington found the telegram, and handed it to his visitor. It read: ‘Prevented coming at last moment. Am writing — Gladys.’ By the time of despatch, Bligh knew that it was the message she had written out in his presence.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 11
