‘So you brought your baby with you,’ Lady Uffcote said at last. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘I could not leave him behind.’
‘I had no baby to bring,’ said Lady Uffcote. ‘ If I had had one, I should not have wanted to come.’
‘I came because of mine,’ Alethea said, in spite of herself.
There was vibration in her tone. Lady Uffcote looked at her, and seemed for the first time to see her. It was as if Alethea had now become a figure in the invisible scene which she had always before her eyes. A strange flush spread over the emaciated face. Something stirred between the two women. Hitherto, their talk had been like the talk of people in a dream, but life had come into the room when Alethea spoke of her child.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ said Lady Uffcote, and her voice had become urgent. ‘I must know. You need not be afraid of me. I have been dead for so long.’
Alethea shook her head.
‘You are not a widow, are you?’
‘No,’ said Alethea.
‘But you have left your husband. Tell me about him. Whose son is he? I care very much. I knew them both in the old days—Bob and Henry. Are you married to the son of Bob Roxerby?’
‘His grandson,’ said Alethea. She saw Lady Uffcote suddenly anew. This then was the wreck of the beautiful girl who had broken the lives of those two young men. She now remembered that she had heard her grandfather say that Dulcibella Cheverell had married a Lord Uffcote. Yes: the old woman had spoken truly. She had indeed been dead for many years.
‘His grandson,’ Lady Uffcote repeated. ‘His grandson—he should have been mine.’
The full import of her words caught Alethea by the throat like a murderous hand. Yes: it was true. From this old woman had come the curse which had blighted her own marriage. But for Dulcibella Cheverell, there would have been no dwarf’s blood in the veins of the Roxerbys. Alethea could to-day have been happy with Nicholas, and Hans would have been like other children. Alethea felt that she was choking.
‘Why did you do it?’ she heard herself say, and her voice sounded miles away. ‘Why did you leave him? Why did you go away?’
‘Ah, why?’ said Lady Uffcote, and her voice was utterly miserable. ‘I went … because it was too difficult for me to stay. And you,’ she roused herself to ask, ‘why did you go away?’
Alethea faced her for a moment, and then she leant her head very wearily upon her hand.
‘For the same reason I suppose. I found it too difficult to stay.’
Lady Uffcote seemed to be nerving herself for a great effort. She clutched the arms of her chair with both hands, and Alethea thought that she was going to rise to her feet.
‘That was my mistake, my crime,’ she said, ‘ and if I can, I must save you from doing the same thing. It was difficult for me, but life was far more difficult afterwards. I made myself for ever unhappy, and I ruined two men’s lives.’
‘More than the lives of two men. It’s not over yet. You don’t know the harm you did.’
The words broke involuntarily from Alethea.
‘We never do,’ Lady Uffcote said. ‘But what we do know is as much as we can bear. More. Far more.’
‘It isn’t fair,’ Alethea was saying, heedless of the old woman’s words. ‘It is because you went long ago that I have had to go now.’
‘Go back, I pray you,’ Lady Uffcote said. ‘ I am so old that I have no time to ask you why this thing has happened. I can only see that it has been done. But for you, it is not too late. For me, it always was. I never knew what I had done till I had gone too far, till I had linked another life with mine—made another man miserable. I was no longer free. I could not go back.’
‘It is the same with me,’ said Alethea. ‘ I too must think of another life. I have to choose between Nicholas and Hans.’
‘Between Nicholas and Hans. Who are they?’
‘My husband and my son.’
Lady Uffcote was unprepared for this reply. For a moment it baffled her. Then she went on.
‘Listen to me, I beg. For years I have been out of the world, and I little thought I should again intervene in its affairs. But when I heard that Lady Roxerby was here, that she was a young woman, alone, unhappy, and without her husband, I thought that the knowledge of my failure might save unhappiness for you. I know the Roxerbys. I understand their natures now as I never did when I thought I knew them best. They are men who cannot change. What they are, they will be. Love lasts with them for a lifetime, and if it breaks, they are broken too. Even then, it is not the end. They live on, broken men with broken hearts.’
‘I can’t help it. I can’t do anything,’ Alethea sobbed. ‘What has parted us is something far beyond the control of our two selves.’
‘I don’t ask what has happened,’ Lady Uffcote said. ‘I can only speak of my own life. I have been very unhappy, and I have caused great, unhappiness. What I did cannot be cancelled. I left two men who loved me. They were both Roxerbys, and I broke their hearts. You tell me I do not know the extent of the harm I did. Then I can plead with you all the more. Do not do as I did. Whatever may be your difficulties, go back to your husband. It is your only hope, and his. When I speak of him, I think of his grandfather who loved me, and whom I loved.’
Lady Uffcote had risen from her chair, and was standing with her hands stretched out. As she said her last words, her ghastly face was flooded miraculously with youth. For a moment, Alethea saw what Dulcibella Cheverell must have been. It was a vision of exquisite charm. Then the old woman sank back into her chair, her eyes glazed and dead in their dark sockets.
Alethea leapt to her feet and ran out of the house.
Chapter Thirteen
COUNTESS FRIEDENBACH feared that her husband had after all been right (as husbands sometimes are) when he advised her not to insist upon Alethea’s going, against her will, to see Lady Uffcote. The effect of the visit seemed disastrous. Alethea came back in a completely hysterical state. She had certainly been roused from her state of torpor, but it was a change for the worse.
And then, the next morning, came the news that Lady Uffcote had died of heart failure the evening before. The Count did his best to convince his wife that this event need not be laid at her door, but she remained persuaded that it was Alethea’s visit which had killed the old lady. Still, it was not possible altogether to regret that Lady Uffcote’s long unhappy life had at last come to its end, and the living problem which faced Countess Friedenbach, was the problem of Alethea. She could not think how to deal with this, though she knew that she was responsible for its new phase.
The visit to Lady Uffcote had ended for Alethea her weeks of calm beatitude. As Countess Friedenbach had intended, it had brought back the past into her consciousness, and the result seemed to be fatal. She could not sleep: she ate nothing. There were no more of those long peaceful days in the meadows, when she had been content to lie on her back and watch Hans playing about, for now she could not be still. She moved restlessly from room to room, looking out of a window, turning over the pages of a book which lay on the table, picking up her knitting and throwing it down, or even merely twisting a piece of wool round and round her fingers. Countess Friedenbach watched her for a day or two, and then she decided that Alethea could never be at peace until she had faced, fairly and squarely, the trouble which she was trying to keep out of her mind. Tante Helena was not the woman to force a confidence. She knew how to respect the reticence of her friends, but she looked upon Alethea as an invalid, and she treated her accordingly. Stifling the natural sympathy which made her understand a desire to be left alone, she resolved to force Alethea to ease herself of her misery by talking about it.
She found her niece sitting in the verandah which ran round, the house, presumably watching Hans, who was playing in the garden; but actually engrossed in tying knots in a piece of string and then untying them.
Tante Helena sat down beside her, feeling very nervous. Hitherto she had had no inkling of the reasons which
had driven Alethea from England. Her only justification in forcing a confidence would be in her power to help, and she was aware that the problem might be beyond her. She took her courage in her two hands, and broke the silence with which Alethea had received her.
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I want you to trust me. When you first came, I think this place gave you a sense of peace: it was a place of sanctuary, a city of refuge for you. But now I see your trouble has come back, and I want you to make a sanctuary not of my house, but of myself. Tell me what is wrong. I see it is too much for you to face alone, and I must be allowed to share it with you, and to help you.’
‘No one can help,’ said Alethea.
‘I will never believe that. I know it is not true. Listen Alethea, I am very strong and I love you very much. Take my strength and my love to be yours. Use them as your own.’
Tante Helena’s voice did not betray her real trepidation. Inwardly she felt none of the confidence which she professed. Wise woman as she was, she knew that there are knots in human life which are beyond human wisdom to untie. She looked at Alethea’s finger nails, torn and jagged over their piece of string, and she wondered whether her own enterprise would end as badly.
Alethea put these fears into words.
‘Dear Tante Helena,’ she said, ‘if anyone could help me it would be you. When I came here, I showed you that I thought so, didn’t I? But now I know that all that you can do for me—all that anyone can do for me—is to give me an asylum.’
She laughed drearily.
‘What a name for my city of refuge!’ said Tante Helena, trying to respond to Alethea’s grim attempt at a joke.
Both women were silent. Alethea stared across the garden, to where Hans was sprawling about on the grass, kicking his legs, and revelling in the sunshine. Though she was looking at him, she evidently did not see him, for no reflection of his gaiety came into her face. Countess Friedenbach watched her, and felt hopeless.
‘I see, of course,’ she said at last, ‘that you came here because you wanted to be let alone to think. But hasn’t the time come when you have gone as far as your unaided thoughts will take you? Don’t you want to talk your conclusions over with a friend?’
‘I haven’t thought about it at all,’ said Alethea.
Tante Helena laughed.
‘I believe you my dear. So wise of you. You wanted a rest. But I see that what is troubling you now is the fact that some time you will have to think about it.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ was all Alethea said.
‘I shall tell you,’ Tante Helena went on. ‘In England you came up against some trouble which you and Nicholas could not agree to face together. You thought it best to part for a while, and each has tried to get round it alone. Has not the time come when you and he …’
‘No. It hasn’t,’ said Alethea quickly. ‘It never can.’
‘I have had two husbands,’ Tante Helena said calmly, ‘so I know twice as much of marriage as a woman who has only had one. I have learnt that when two lives are so intimately linked as they are by marriage, each becomes more complicated, more dangerous, and more fatal, than it was when alone. Not less so. But I have also learnt that in facing those risks together (and not always side by side—sometimes in opposition to each other) the true happiness of marriage is reached. Love is a more permanent thing than friction.’
‘I have only been married once,’ said Alethea, ‘so I can only agree to half of your argument.’
‘And which half?’
‘The first. Marriage is complicated, dangerous, and fatal.’
She tried, by another grim smile, to soften the cynicism of her answer.
‘You have only had one half as yet. Be patient, and you will see that the second is as true as the first.’
‘Patient!’ Alethea exclaimed, impatiently.
‘Yes, it sounds a dull word, and the end of romance. In truth it is the road from one romance to another.’
‘There is no romance in what has happened to us. It is a very deep sorrow. It is … connected with Hans.’
Alethea’s voice shook.
‘I guessed that might be possible. But need this be altogether a sorrow? Is he not the joy of your life?’
‘To me. Here. Yes. My only joy. But for Nicholas he is nothing but a curse. He hates him.’
Tears ran down her cheeks.
‘Poor Nicholas! How terribly miserable he must be. Can’t you go back to show him the happiness you have found in your darling little boy?’
‘I don’t want to go back. I can never go. Nicholas has made me hate him.’
‘Can you hate him enough to wish that his life shall be always unhappy? No, Alethea, you don’t want that.’
‘It is the sight of Hans that he hates. It’s that which makes him miserable. If we stay away he will forget that he has a son.’
‘But can he forget that he has a wife?’
An answer rang in Alethea’s ears, and it was Lady Uffcote’s voice that she heard.
‘The Roxerbys are men who cannot change … Love lasts with them for a lifetime, and if it breaks, they are broken too.… Then they live on, broken men with broken hearts.’
She fought against listening.
‘He has made me despise him.’
‘Don’t despise him because you have seen him suffer. Men are not so brave as women. Things are harder for them to bear. He trusted you when he betrayed his weakness to you.’
‘Trusted me?’ Alethea broke out, in a passion of bitterness. ‘He never trusted me at all. He was dishonourable, untrue, false.’
She burst into sobs.
‘Tell me all,’ said Tante Helena, in tones of great tenderness. But she could not help crying too. This unexplained agony tore her heart.
And then Alethea told her everything. Once she had begun to speak, she could not stop. The stream of words flowed on, sometimes quite incoherent, and sometimes poignantly simple and tragic. She told her story just as it had happened: how Nicholas had from the first treated the deformity of their child as something which must divide them; how mercilessly he had held her responsible for it; how unjust he had been to the Warrens. And when she came to her last day at Brokeyates, and told of the terrible scene with Mrs. Roxerby, every word of that fatal interview surged back into her mind. They came from her now, as she repeated them, like the harsh strokes of a hammer ringing upon iron.
‘And then I knew what he was,’ she said. ‘What he had been all along. He had concealed this from me, and had tortured me by telling me that I was the cause of my poor little darling’s misfortune. He punished those unhappy Warrens when they had absolutely nothing to do with it. And all the time he knew about his own mother. Dishonourable! Cruel! Unforgivable!’
Her piteous misery had changed to vibrating anger.
‘What could ever make it better?’ she exclaimed. ‘There’s no way out of it with such a man as that.’
For some minutes, Tante Helena was quite unable to speak, and she made no effort to check Alethea’s sobs. She was sobbing herself. When at last she spoke, she said:
‘And yet I see no other way.’
‘No other way than what?’
‘No other way than with that man, that terribly unhappy man.’
‘No, no, I can’t,’ said Alethea. The anger had gone out of her voice. It only sounded very wretched.
‘Yet he is your husband.’
‘He was. But now … I have given my life altogether to Hans.’
‘Darling Alethea, let us think it out together. What is the root of all this misery? It is not in Hans. Exquisite little thing, he can never be like other people, but it is not that which breaks your heart. No, it is the thought of Nicholas. You cannot mend your life until you can mend his.’
‘I cannot do it,’ said Alethea. ‘I couldn’t if I wanted to. And I don’t even want to.’
‘Yet it is far worse for him than for you.’
‘O, no.’
‘Indeed it is. You have your
child. He has … his mother.’
Alethea shuddered. ‘He hasn’t got her. She has gone away.’
‘She can never go away, unless you can banish her from his mind. Don’t you understand, Alethea, that it is she who has poisoned his life? He grew up, haunted by the thought of what she was. It ate into him, making him sceptical about happiness, and afraid of the world. Then he married you, and he thought his mother could pass out of his life. The sight of Hans showed him that she had followed him with a curse. And when he seized upon the idea that the Warren child might be at the root of it, I think it was himself whom he was trying to convince. He clutched at anything to make him believe that the thing wasn’t incurably in his blood. It was his own inheritance which tortured him, and it is torturing him to-day.’
‘He ought to have told me about it,’ said Alethea.
‘Pity him because he couldn’t. A normal person cannot enter into the distorted point of view of a mind so warped from the first. He has brooded upon his mother’s deformity till he has magnified it into something hideous and disgraceful.’
‘It is that, without any magnifying.’
‘Possibly. She sounds deformed in spirit as well as in body. And Nicholas is left with the thought of that, while you are here with Hans. Alethea, you must go and help him out of it.’
‘How can I?’
‘By your love for him.’
‘It is over.’
‘Then by the fact that you are his wife.’
‘I can’t change the fact of Hans being as he is, and that is the cause of our misery.’
‘No Alethea, that I will never believe, and you know that it isn’t true. Hans is not the trouble. Look at him now, what an angel he is! Nicholas is haunted by an evil spirit which makes him see Hans as only a reminder of a miserable past. That evil spirit is still with him at Brokeyates. It must be driven out. You are its only exorcist.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
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