Miss Travers saw this, and followed the direction of the dark, eager eyes, and thought she understood. But suddenly there came a quick gleam into the Bride’s eyes which Miss Travers did not understand. A horsewoman was crossing their span of vision in the Row at a brisk canter. The Bride became strangely agitated. Her face was transfigured with surprise and delight and incredulity. Her lips came apart, but no breath escaped them. Her flashing eyes followed the cantering horsewoman, who, in figure and in colouring, if not in feature, was just such another as Gladys herself, and who sat her horse to perfection. But she was cantering past; she would not turn her head, she would not look; a moment more and the shrubs would hide her from Gladys—perhaps for ever.
Before that moment passed, Gladys stood up in the carriage, trembling with excitement. Careless of the place—forgetful of Lady Bligh, of all that had passed, of the good understanding so hardly gained—attracting the attention of Royalty by conspicuously turning her back upon them as they passed for the fourth time—the Bride encircled her lips with her two gloved palms, and uttered a cry that few of the few hundreds who heard it ever forgot:—
‘Coo-ee!’
That was the startling cry as nearly as it can be written. But no letters can convey the sustained shrillness of the long, penetrating note represented by the first syllable, nor the weird, die-away wail of the second. It is the well-known Bush call, the ‘jodel’ of the black-fellow; but it has seldom been heard from a white throat as Gladys Bligh let it out that afternoon in Hyde Park, in the presence of Royalty.
To say that there was a sensation in the vicinity of the Blighs’ carriage—to say that its occupants were for the moment practically paralysed—is to understate matters, rather. But, before they could recover themselves, the Bride had jumped from the carriage, pressed through the posts, rushed across to the opposite railings, and seized in both hands the hand of the other dark and strapping young woman, who had reined in her horse at once upon the utterance of the ‘Coo-ee!’
And there was a nice little observation, audible to many, which Gladys had let fall in flying:—
‘Good Lord deliver us—it’s her!’
Chapter XII
Past Pardon
Patience and sweetness of disposition may not only be driven beyond endurance; they may be knocked outside in, knocked into their own antitheses. And one need not go to crime or even to sin to find offences which no amount of abstract angelicalness could readily forgive or ever forget. It is a sufficiently bad offence, if not an actual iniquity, to bring well-to-do people into public derision through an act of flagrant thoughtlessness and unparalleled social barbarity. But if the people are not only well-to-do, but well and honourably known, and relatives by your marriage, who have been more than kind to you, you could scarcely expect a facile pardon.
Sincerity apart, they would be more than mortal if they so much as pretended to forgive you out of hand, and little less than divine if they did not tell you at once what they thought of you, and thereafter ignore you until time healed their wounds.
Woman of infinite sweetness though she was, Lady Bligh was mortal, not divine; and she showed her clay by speaking very plainly indeed, as the carriage swept out of the Park, and by speaking no more (to Gladys) that day. A good deal of cant is current about people whose anger is violent (‘while it lasts’), but short-lived (‘he gets over it in a moment’); but it is difficult to believe in those people. If there be just cause for wrath, with or without violence, it is not in reason that you can be in a rollicking good humour the next minute. That is theatrical anger, the anger of the heavy father. Lady Bligh, with all her virtues, could nurse the genuine passion—an infant that thrives at the breast. Indeed, it is probable that before the end of the silent drive to Twickenham (Alfred never opened his clenched teeth all the way) this thoroughly good woman positively detested the daughter whom she had just learnt to love. For it is a fallacy to suppose that the pepper-and-salt emotion of love and hatred in equal parts is the prerogative of lovers; you will find it oftener in the family.
What penitence Gladys had expressed had been lame—crippled by an excuse. Moreover, her tone had lacked complete contrition. Indeed, if not actually defiant, her manner was at least repellent. She had been spoken to hotly; some of the heat was reflected; it was a hot moment.
As for her excuse, it, of course, was ridiculous—qua excuse.
She had seen her oldest—indeed, her only—girl friend, Ada Barrington. Ada (Gladys pronounced it ‘Ida’) was another squatter’s daughter; their fathers had been neighbours, more or less, for many years; but Ada’s father owned more stations than one, was a wealthy man—in fact, a ‘woollen king.’ Gladys had known they were in Europe, but that was all. And she had seen Ada cantering past, but Ada had not seen her. So she had ‘coo-ee’d.’ What else was there to be done? Gladys did not exactly ask this question, but she implied it plainly. As it happened, if she had not ‘coo-ee’d,’ she never would have seen Ada again, to a certainty; for the Barringtons had taken a place in Suffolk, and were going down there the very next day. That was all. Perhaps it was too much.
Silence ensued, and outlasted the long drive. What afterwards passed between the young husband and wife did not, of course, transpire. There was no further expression of regret than the very equivocal and diluted apology comprehended in the Bride’s excuses; indeed, Lady Bligh and her daughter-in-law never spoke that night; nor did Alfred attempt to mediate between them. As a matter of fact, his wife had told him—with a recklessness that cut him to the heart—that, this time, she neither expected nor deserved, nor so much as desired, any one’s forgiveness; that now she knew what she had feared before, that she was hopeless; that—but the rest was wild talk.
Next morning, however, Alfred went to Lady Bligh with a letter, one that Gladys had received by the early post. It was an invitation from the Barringtons, the wording of which was sufficiently impulsive and ill-considered. Ada besought her darling Gladys to go stay with them in Suffolk immediately, on the following Saturday, and for as many days as she could and would; and the invitation included the darling’s husband in a postscript.
‘An extraordinary kind of invitation!’ observed Lady Bligh, handing back the letter.
‘Ignorance,’ said Alfred laconically.
‘Did you meet the people out there?’
‘Only this girl’s brother; the others had been in Europe some time. I thought him a very pleasant fellow, I remember, though his contempt for me and for all “home” birds was magnificent.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Bligh, ‘it is hardly the kind of invitation that Gladys can accept. Is it?’
‘She refuses to think of it,’ Alfred answered, with a frown that rather puzzled Lady Bligh. ‘But I hope she will change her mind. I wish her to go.’
His mother was silent for more than a minute. ‘Does the letter say Saturday?’ she then inquired.
‘Yes’ Alfred gazed steadily in his mother’s face as though he would search her inmost thoughts. ‘Yes, it says Saturday. And it is on Saturday that the Lord Chief is coming down to stay over Sunday, is it not? I thought so. I very much wish I could induce her to go.’
‘Not on that account, my boy, I hope?’ Lady Bligh seemed slightly embarrassed.
‘Partly,’ said Alfred, speaking firmly and distinctly, but not without an effort; ‘partly on that account, but by no means altogether.’
‘She could not go without you,’ remarked Lady Bligh; ‘and they do not ask you civilly, to say the least of it.’
‘She could go without me,’ returned Alfred emphatically. ‘What’s more, I want her to. It’s she that won’t hear of it. These are quite old and intimate friends of Gladys and her father. She might easily spend a week with them alone, without me. Mother—I think she would like it so, if only she would go! They are probably free-and-easy, roughish folks, and it would do her good, a week with them. There would be no restraints—nay, she has observed none here, God knows!—but there there might be n
one to observe. She could do and say what she liked. She would hurt no one’s feelings. She would scandalise no one. And—do you know what, mother?—I have got it into my head that when she came back she would see the difference, and appreciate your ways here more than she ever might otherwise. I have got it into my head that one week of that kind, just now, would open her eyes for good and all. And I think—there might be no more relapses! Yes, I thought that before; but I was wrong, you see—after yesterday! Besides, this week would bring us within a few weeks of Scotland; and, after Scotland, we shall have our own little place to go to—I have almost settled upon one. But if I went with her, restraint would go with her too.’
His voice had broken more than once with emotion. He commanded it with difficulty, and it became hard and unnatural. In this tone he added:—
‘Besides—it would be more comfortable for every one if she were not here with the Lord Chief Justice.’
‘Do not say that—do not think that!’ said Lady Bligh; but faintly, because her heart echoed his sentiment.
‘Oh, there’s no disguising it—my wife’s dynamite!’ said Alfred, with a short, harsh laugh. ‘Only an explosion is worse at one time than at another.’ He went hastily from the room, neither of them having referred more directly to the scandalous scene in the Park.
He went straight to his wife, to try once more to coax her into accepting the Barringtons’ invitation. But it was of no use. She would not listen to him. She would go nowhere without her husband; she should write that to Ada plainly.
Later in the morning, Lady Bligh, of her own deliberate design, came in contact with her daughter-in-law. Gladys attempted escape. Lady Bligh caught her by the hand.
‘You are angry, Gladys!’
Gladys said nothing.
‘I don’t think you are the one to be angry,’ Lady Bligh said, nettled by the other’s sullen manner.
Gladys raised her eyes swiftly from the ground; they were filled with bitterness. ‘Haven’t I a right to be what I like with myself?’ she cried. ‘I am angry with no one else. But I shall never forgive myself—no, nor I won’t be forgiven either; I am hopeless! I feared it before; now I know it. Let me go, Lady Bligh!’
She broke away, and found a quiet spot, by-and-by, among the trees by the river.
‘If only I were in there!’ cried Gladys, out of the tumult of shame and rebellion within her. ‘In there—or else back in the Bush! And one is possible and easy; and the other is neither!’
By a single grotesque act she had brought her happiness, and not hers alone, to wreck and ruin!
Chapter XIII
A Social Infliction
Happily for all concerned, there was something else to be thought about that day: it was the day of Lady Bligh’s garden-party.
The British garden-party is possibly unique among the social gatherings of the world. It might be a revelation to most intelligent foreigners. It is held, of course, in the fresh air; the weather, very likely, is all that can be desired. The lawn is soft and smooth and perfectly shaven; sweeping shadows fall athwart it from the fine old trees. The flower-beds are splendidly equipped; their blended odours hover in the air. The leaves whisper and the birds sing. The scene is agreeably English. But let in the actors. They are English too. The hostess on the lawn receiving the people, and slipping them through her busy fingers into solitude and desolation—anywhere, anywhere, out of her way; the stout people in the flimsy chairs, in horrid jeopardy which they alone do not realise; the burly, miserable male supers, in frock-coats and silk hats, standing at ease (but only in a technical sense) around the path, ashamed to eat the ices that the footman proffers them, ashamed of having nobody to talk to but their sisters or wives—who are worse than no one: it is so feeble to be seen speaking only to them. This is the British garden-party in the small garden, in the suburbs. In the large garden, in the country, you may lose yourself among the fruit-trees without being either missed or observed; but this is not a point in favour of the institution. Even in suburban districts there are bold spirits that aspire to make their garden-parties different from everybody else’s, and not dull; who write ‘Lawn Tennis’ in the corner of their invitation-cards before ascertaining the respective measurements of a regulation court and of their own back gardens. But beware of these ambitious souls; they add yet another terror to the British garden-party. To go in flannels and find everybody else in broadcloth; to be received as a champion player in consequence, and asked whether you have ‘entered at Wimbledon’; to be made to play in every set (because you are the only man in flannels), with terrible partners, against adversaries more terrible still—with the toes of the onlookers on the side lines of the court, and the dining-room windows in peril should you but swing back your racket for your usual smashing service, once in a way, to show them how it is done: all this amounts to spending your afternoon in purgatory, in the section reserved for impious lawn-tennis players. Yet nothing is more common. The lawn must be utilised, either for lawn-tennis or for bowls (played with curates), or by the erection of a tent for refreshments. By Granville’s intervention, the Blighs had the refreshment-tent.
Lady Bligh would not have given garden-parties at all, could she have been ‘at home’ in any other way; but as her set was largely composed of people living actually in town, who would not readily come ten miles out for a dinner-party, still less for an afterdinner party, she had really no choice in the matter. Still, Lady Bligh’s garden-parties were not such very dull affairs after all. They were immensely above the suburban average. To the young and the curious they held out attractions infinitely greater than garden-party lawn-tennis, though these could not be advertised on the cards of invitation. For instance, you were sure of seeing a celebrity or two, if not even the highest dignitaries, with some of the dignity in their pockets. And it is inexpressible how delightful it was to come across a group of Her Majesty’s Judges gorging strawberry ices unblushingly in a quiet corner of the marquee. On the present occasion, when the stoutest and most pompous Q.C. at the Bar—Mr Merivale—sat down on the slenderest chair in the garden, and thence, suddenly, upon the grass, the situation was full of charm for Granville and some of his friends, who vied with one another in a right and proper eagerness to help the great man to his feet. Even Gladys (who was so very far from being in a laughing mood) laughed at this; though she was not aware that the stout gentleman was a Q.C., nor of the significance of those initials, had any one told her so.
But this was all the entertainment that Gladys extracted from the long afternoon. She was amused, at the moment, in spite of herself; she was not amused a second time. She kept ingeniously in the background. Alfred was attentive to her, of course, but not foolishly attentive, this afternoon. And Granville introduced to her one of his clean-shaven friends, whom Gladys conversed with for perhaps a minute. She was also presented by the Judge—in his recent genial, fatherly manner—to one or two of his colleagues. Plainly, the disgraceful scene in Hyde Park had not yet reached Sir James’s ears. But that scandal was being discreetly discussed by not a few of the guests. Gladys suspected as much, though she did not know it. She imagined herself to be a not unlikely subject of conversation in any case, but quite a tempting one in the light of her last escapade. But this idea did not worry her. In some moods it is possible to be acutely self-conscious without being the least sensitive; Gladys’s present mood was one. More often than at the people, she gazed at the window of her own room, and longed to be up there, alone. She neither took any interest in what was going on around her, nor cared what the people were whispering concerning her. No doubt they were whispering, but what did it matter? Misery is impervious to scorn and ridicule and contempt. These things wound the vanity; misery deadens it. Gladys was miserable.
Among the later arrivals was Miss Travers. Her father could not come: he was doing the fair thing by the Party and his constituents: it was his first term. Miss Travers came alone, and intended to go back alone, the later the better. Whitechapel had made her fea
rless and independent. She rather hoped to be asked to stop to dinner: some people were certain to stay, for the Blighs were uncommonly hospitable, and in many things quite unconventional; and Miss Travers intended to be one of those people, if she got the opportunity. She also intended to cultivate the most original specimen of her sex that she had ever yet met with; and for this she tried to make the opportunity.
But the most original of her sex was also one of the most slippery, when she liked; she dodged Miss Travers most cleverly, until the pursuer was herself pursued, and captured. Her captor was a rising solicitor, a desirable gentleman and an open admirer; but he did not improve his chances by that interview. Miss Travers was disappointed, almost annoyed. The unlucky lawyer sought to make her smile with a story: the story of the ‘coo-ee!’ as he had heard it. He knew Miss Travers intimately; her appreciation of humour was vast, for a woman; he felt sure she would be tickled. But, unfortunately, the version he had heard was already fearfully exaggerated, and, as Miss Travers drew him on gently, yet without smiling as he wished her to, the good fellow improvised circumstances still more aggravating and scandalous; and then—sweet Miss Travers annihilated him in a breath.
‘I was in their carriage at the time, myself; but—you will excuse my saying so—I shouldn’t have recognised the incident from your description!’
It was a staggerer; but Miss Travers did not follow up the blow. She reproved him, it is true, but so kindly, and with such evident solicitude for his moral state, that the wretch was in ecstasies in two minutes.
‘At all events,’ he said, with enthusiasm, ‘she has you for her champion! I won’t hear another word about her; I’ll champion her too!’
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