“Oh, you wouldn’t understand.... But what I’ve actually come for is to ask you to let me have five hundred pounds.”
There, it was out—about as lightly as if she had hurled a rock at him through one of the tall windows! He frowned and looked down, picking up an emblazoned paper-cutter to examine it.
“Five hundred pounds?” he repeated slowly.
“Yes.”
“Do I understand that you are asking me for that sum?”
“Yes.”
There was another heavy silence, during which she strained her eyes to detect any change in his guarded face. There was none.
“Five hundred pounds?”
“Oh, please, Ushant—yes!”
“Now—at once?”
“At once,” she faltered, feeling that each syllable of his slow interrogatory was draining away a drop of her courage.
The Duke again attempted a smile. “It’s a large sum—a very large sum. Has your dress-maker led you on rather farther than your means would justify?”
Nan reddened. Her dress-maker! She wondered if Ushant had ever noticed her clothes? But might he not be offering her the very pretext she needed? She hated having to use one, but since she could think of no other way of getting what she wanted, she resolved to surmount her scruples.
“Well, you see, I’ve never known exactly what my means were ... but I do want this money....”
“Never known what your means were? Surely it’s all clearly enough written down in your marriage contract.”
“Yes; but sometimes one is tempted to spend a trifle more....”
“You must have been taught very little about the value of money to call five hundred pounds a trifle.”
Annabel broke into a laugh. “You’re teaching me a lot about it now.”
The Duke’s temples grew red under his straw-coloured hair, and she saw that her stroke had gone home.
“It’s my duty to do so,” he remarked drily. Then his tone altered, and he said on a conciliatory note: “I hope you’ll bear the lesson in mind; but, of course, if you’ve incurred this debt it must be paid.”
“Oh, Ushant—”
He raised his hand to check her gratitude. “Naturally ... If you’ll please tell these people to send me their bill.” He rose stiffly, with another glance at his watch. “I said a quarter of an hour—and I’m afraid it’s nearly up.”
Nan stood crestfallen between her husband and the door. “But you don’t understand....” (She wondered whether it was not a mistake to say that to him so often?) “I mean,” she hurriedly corrected herself, “it’s really no use your bothering.... If you’ll just make out the cheque to me, I’ll ...”
The Duke stopped short. “Ah—” he said slowly. “Then it’s not to pay your dress-maker that you want it?”
Nan’s quick colour flew to her forehead. “Well, no—it’s not. I—I want it for ... my private charities....”
“Your private charities? Is your allowance not paid regularly? All your private expenditures are supposed to be included in it. My mother was always satisfied with that arrangement.”
“Yes; but did your mother never have unexpected calls—? Sometimes one has to help in an emergency....”
The two faced each other in a difficult silence. At length the Duke straightened himself, and said with an attempt at ease: “I’m willing to admit that emergencies may arise; but if you ask me to advance five hundred pounds at a moment’s notice, it’s only fair that I should be told why you need it.”
Their eyes met, and a flame of resistance leapt into Nan’s. “I’ve told you it’s for a private charity.”
“My dear, there should be nothing private between husband and wife.”
She laughed impatiently. “Are you trying to say you won’t give me the money?”
“I’m saying quite the contrary. I’m ready to give it if you’ll tell me what you want it for.”
“Ushant—it’s a long time since I’ve asked you a favour, and you can’t go on forever ordering me about like a child.”
The Duke took a few steps across the room; then he turned back. His complexion had faded to its usual sandy pallor, and his lips twitched a little. “Perhaps, my dear, you forget how long it is since I have asked for a favour. I’m afraid you must make your choice. If I’m not, as you call it, to order you about like a child, you may force me to order you about as a wife.” The words came out slowly, haltingly, as if they had cost him a struggle. Nan had noticed before now that anger was too big a garment for him; it always hung on him in uneasy folds. “And now my time is up. I can’t keep the guns waiting any longer,” he concluded abruptly, turning toward the door.
Annabel stood silent; she could find nothing else to say. She had failed, as she had foreseen she would, for lack of the arts by which cleverer women gain their ends. “You can’t force me.... No one can force me...” she cried out suddenly, hardly knowing what she said; but her husband had already crossed the threshold, and she wondered whether the closing of the door had not drowned her words.
The big house was full of the rumour of the departing sportsmen. Gradually the sounds died out, and the hush of boredom and inactivity fell from the carved and gilded walls. Annabel stood where the Duke had left her. Now she went out into the long vaulted passage on which the study opened. The passage was empty, and so was the great domed and pillared hall beyond. Under such lowering skies the ladies would remain grouped about the fire in the east drawing-room, trying to cheat the empty hours with gossip and embroidery and letter-writing. It was not a day for them to join the sportsmen, even had their host encouraged this new-fangled habit; but it was well known that the Duke, who had no great taste for sport, and practised it only as one of the duties of his station, did not find the task lightened by feminine companionship.
In the lobby of one of the side entrances, Annabel found an old garden hat and cloak. She put them on and went out. It would have been impossible for her, just then, to join the bored but placid group in the east drawing-room. The great house had become like a sepulchre to her; under its ponderous cornices and cupolas she felt herself reduced to a corpse-like immobility. It was only in the open that she became herself again—a stormy self, reckless and rebellious. “Perhaps,” she thought, “if Ushant had ever lived in smaller houses he would have understood me better.” Was it because all the great people secretly felt as Ushant did—oppressed, weighed down under a dead burden of pomp and precedent—that they built these gigantic palaces to give themselves the illusion of being giants?
Now, out of doors, under the lowering skies, she could breathe and even begin to think. But, for the moment, all her straining thoughts were arrested by the same insurmountable barrier: she was the Duchess of Tintagel, and knew no way of becoming anyone else....
She walked across the gardens opening out from the west wing, and slowly mounted the wooded hillside beyond. It was beginning to rain, and she must find a refuge somewhere—a solitude in which she could fight out this battle between herself and her fate. The slope she was climbing was somewhat derisively crowned by an octagonal temple of Love, with rain-streaked walls of peeling stucco. On the summit of the dome the neglected god spanned his bow unheeded, and underneath it a door swinging loose on broken hinges gave admittance to a room stored with the remnants of derelict croquet-sets and disabled shuttlecocks and grace-rings. It was evidently many a day since the lords of Longlands had visited the divinity who is supposed to rule the world.
Nan, certain of being undisturbed in this retreat, often came there with a book or writing-materials; but she had not intruded on its mouldy solitude since the beginning of winter.
As she entered, a chill fell on her; but she sat down at the stone table in the centre of the dilapidated mosaic floor, and rested her chin on her arms. “I must think it all out,” she said aloud, and, closing her eyes, she tried to lose herself in an inner world of self-examination.
But think out what? Does a life-prisoner behind iron bars take the t
rouble to think out his future? What a waste of time, what a cruel expenditure of hope ... Once more she felt herself sinking into the depths of childish despair—one of those old benumbing despairs without past or future which used to blot out the skies when her father scolded her or Miss Testvalley looked disapproving. Her face dropped into her hands, and she broke into sobs of misery.
The sobs murmured themselves out; but for a long time she continued to sit motionless, her face hidden, with a child’s reluctance to look out again on a world which has wounded it. Her back was turned to the door, and she was so sunk in her distress that she was unconscious of not being alone until she felt a touch on her shoulder, and heard a man’s voice: “Duchess—are you ill? What’s happened?”
She turned, and saw Guy Thwarte bending over her. “What is it—what has made you cry?” he continued in the compassionate tone of a grown person speaking to a frightened child.
Nan jumped up, her wet handkerchief crumpled against her eyes. She felt a sudden anger at this intrusion. “Where did you come from? Why aren’t you out with the guns?” she stammered.
“I was to have been, but a message came from Lowdon to say that Sir Hercules is worse, and Ushant has asked me to prepare some notes in case the election comes on sooner than we expected. So I wandered up the hill to clear my ideas a little.”
Nan stood looking at him with a growing sense of resentment. Hitherto his presence had roused only friendly emotions; his nearness had even seemed a vague protection against the unknown and the inimical. But in her present mood that nearness seemed a deliberate intrusion—as though he had forced himself upon her out of some unworthy curiosity, had seized the chance to come upon her unawares.
“Won’t you tell me why you are crying?” he insisted gently.
Her childish anger flamed. “I’m not crying,” she retorted, hurriedly pushing her handkerchief into her pocket. “And I don’t know why you should follow me here. You must see that I want to be alone.”
The young man drew back, surprised. He too, since the distant day of their first talk at Honourslove, had felt between them the existence of a mysterious understanding which every subsequent meeting had renewed, though in actual words so little had passed between them. He had imagined that Annabel was glad he should feel this; and her sudden rebuff was like a blow. But her distress was so evident that he did not feel obliged to take her words literally.
“I had no idea of following you,” he answered. “I didn’t even know you were here; but since I find you in such distress, how can I help asking if there’s nothing I can do?”
“No, no, there’s nothing!” she cried, humiliated that this man of all others should surprise her in her childish wretchedness. “Well, yes, I am crying ... now.... You can see I am, I suppose?” She groped for the handkerchief. “But if anybody could do anything for me, do you suppose I’d be sitting here and just bearing it? It’s because there’s nothing ... nothing... anyone can do, that I’ve come here to get away from people, to get away from everything.... Can’t you understand that?” she ended passionately.
“I can understand your feeling so—yes. I’ve often thought you must.” She gave him a startled look, and her face crimsoned. “But can’t you see,” he pursued, “that it’s hard on a friend—a man who’s ventured to think himself your friend—to be told, when he sees you in trouble, that he’s not wanted, that he can be of no use, that even his sympathy’s unwelcome?”
Annabel continued to look at him with resentful eyes. But already the mere sound of his voice was lessening the weight of her loneliness, and she answered more gently: “You’re very kind—”
“Oh, kind!” he echoed impatiently.
“You’ve always been kind to me. I wish you hadn’t been away for so long. I used to think that if only I could have asked you about things...”
“But—but if you’ve really thought that, why do you want to drive me away now that I am here?” He went up to her with outstretched hands; but she shook her head.
“Because I’m not the Annabel you used to know. I’m a strange woman, strange even to myself, who goes by my name. I suppose in time I’ll get to know her, and learn how to live with her.”
The angry child had been replaced by a sad but self-controlled woman, who appeared to Guy infinitely farther away and more inaccessible than the other. He had wanted to take the child in his arms and comfort her with kisses; but this newcomer seemed to warn him to be circumspect, and after a pause he rejoined, with a smile: “And can’t I be of any use, even to the strange woman?”
Her voice softened. “Well, yes; you can. You are of use.... Thinking of you as a friend does help me.... It often has....” She went up to him and put her hand in his. “Please believe that. But don’t ask me anything more; don’t even say anything more now, if you really want to help me.”
He held her hand without attempting to disregard either her look or her words. Through the loud beat of his blood a whisper warned him that the delicate balance of their friendship hung on his obedience.
“I want it above all things, but I’ll wait,” he said, and lifted the hand to his lips.
XXVII.
Like Annabel, the Dowager had known restless hours since their conversation on Boxing Day; but reflection had persuaded her that her daughter-in-law’s undisciplined, seditious talk was not to be taken seriously. The absurdity of the idea that any woman, let alone a little American parvenue, could envisage leaving a ducal marriage proved that Annabel had only wanted to annoy. She was doubtless ashamed of herself by now. The best course would be to treat her as if their talk had not taken place. As for reporting it to Ushant ... that would be undesirable, for the present at least. Having settled this to her satisfaction, the Dowager felt entitled to a little personal pleasure.
As long as she ruled at Longlands, she had found her chief relaxation from ducal drudgery in visiting the immense collection of rare and costly exotic plants in the Duke’s famous conservatories. But when she retired to the dower-house, and the sole command of the one small glass-house attached to her new dwelling, she realized the insipidity of inspecting plants in the company of a severe and suspicious head gardener compared with the joys of planting, transplanting, pruning, fertilizing, writing out labels, pressing down the earth about outspread roots, and compelling an obedient underling to do in her own way what she could not manage alone. The Dowager, to whom life had always presented itself in terms of duty, to whom even the closest human relations had come draped in that pale garb, had found her only liberation in gardening, and since amateur horticulture was beginning to be regarded in the highest circles not only as an elegant distraction but almost as one of a great lady’s tasks, she had immersed herself in it with a guilty fervour, still doubting if anything so delightful could be quite blameless.
Her son, aware of this passion, which equalled his own for dismembering clocks, was in the habit of going straight to the conservatory when he visited her; and there he found her on the morning after his strange conversation with his wife.
The Dowager was always gratified by his visits, which were necessarily rare during the shooting-parties; but it would have pleased her better had he not come at the exact moment when, gauntleted and aproned, she was transferring some new gloxinia seedlings from one pan to another.
She laid down her implements, scratched a few words in a notebook at her elbow, and dusted the soil from her big gloves.
“Ah, Ushant—” She broke off, struck by his unusual pallor, and the state of his hair. “My dear, you don’t look well. Is anything wrong?” she asked in the tone of one long accustomed to being told every morning of some new wrongness in the course of things.
The Duke stood looking down at the long shelf, the heaps of upturned soil and the scattered labels. It occurred to him that, for ladies, horticulture might prove a safe and agreeable pastime.
“Have you ever tried to interest Annabel in this kind of thing?” he asked abruptly. “I’m afraid I’m too ignorant to d
o it myself—but I sometimes think she would be happier if she had some innocent amusement like gardening. Needle-work doesn’t seem to appeal to her.”
The Dowager’s upper lip lengthened. “I’ve not had much chance of discussing her tastes with her; but of course, if you wish me to ... Do you think, for instance, she might learn to care for grafting?”
It was inconceivable to the Duke that anyone should care for grafting; but, not wishing to betray his complete ignorance of the subject, he effected a diversion by proposing a change of scene. “Perhaps we could talk more comfortably in the drawing-room,” he suggested.
His mother laid down her tools. She was used to interruptions, and did not dare to confess how trying it was to be asked to abandon her seedlings at that critical stage. She also weakly regretted having to leave the pleasant temperature of the conservatory for an icy drawing-room in which the fire was never lit till the lamps were brought. Such economies were necessary to a dowager with several daughters but whose meagre allowances were always having to be supplemented; but the Duchess, who was almost as hardened to cold as her son, led the way to the drawing-room without apology.
“I’m sorry,” she said, as she seated herself near the lifeless hearth, “that you think dear Annabel lacks amusements.”
The Duke stood before the chimney, his hands thrust despondently in his pockets. “Oh—I don’t say that. But I suppose she’s been used to other kinds of amusement in the States: skating, you know, and dancing—they seem to do a lot of dancing over there; and even in England I suppose young ladies expect more variety and excitement nowadays than they had in your time.”
The Dowager, who had taken up her alms-house knitting, dropped a sigh into its harsh folds.
“Certainly in my time they didn’t expect much—luckily, for they wouldn’t have got it.”
The Duke made no reply, but moved uneasily back and forth across the room, as his way was when his mind was troubled.
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