MR. CARTERET’S ADVENTURE WITH A LOCKET
Mrs. Ascott-Smith knew that Mr. Carteret had been attentive to Miss Rivers, but she had never known how attentive. She never suspected that the affair had reached the point of an engagement, subsequently broken by Miss Rivers. If she had known the facts, she would not have invited Mr. Carteret to Chilliecote Abbey when Miss Rivers and Captain Wynford were there.
Yet the presence of Miss Rivers and Wynford was not the reason that Mr. Carteret gave himself for declining the invitation. He did not dread meeting Miss Rivers; she was nothing to him but a mistake and an old friend. Whether she married Wynford or some other man, it was the same to him. The affair was over. He even had it in mind to get married before very long, if only to prove it.
He was in such a mood as he walked down the passage to the smoking-room with Mrs. Ascott-Smith’s note crumpled in his hand. His eyes looked straight before him and saw nothing. Behind him there followed the soft, whispering tread of cushioned feet, and that he did not hear. Perhaps it was not because he was absorbed that he did not hear it, for it was always following him, and he had ceased to note it, as one ceases to note the clock ticking. But as he sat down, he felt the touch of a cold nose on his hand and one little lick. He glanced down, and looked into the sad, wistful eyes of the wire-haired fox terrier. With this, Penwiper dropped gravely upon the floor, gazing up adoring and mournful, yet content. Mr. Carteret was used to this idolatry, as he was used to the patter of the following footsteps, but on this occasion it provoked speculation. It occurred to him to wonder how in a just universe a devotion like Penwiper’s would be repaid. Then he wondered if, after all, it was a just universe. If so, why should Penwiper have that look chronically in his eyes?
Presently Mr. Carteret got up and took the newspapers. He was annoyed with himself and annoyed with Penwiper. It was the dog that called up these disquieting ideas. The dog was irrevocably associated with Miss Rivers. He had given her Penwiper as an engagement present, and when the affair ended, she had sent him back. He ought not to have taken him back. He felt that it had been a great mistake to become interested again in Penwiper, as it had been a great mistake to become interested at all in Miss Rivers. He continued to peruse the newspapers till he found that he was reading a paragraph for the third time. Then he got up and went out to the stables.
March was drawing to a close, and with it the hunting season, when there dawned one of those celestial mornings that are appropriate to May, but in England sometimes appear earlier. It brought to the meet five hundred English ladies and gentlemen, complaining that it was too hot to hunt. In this great assemblage Mr. Carteret found himself riding about, saying “good morning,” automatically inquiring of Lady Martingale about the chestnut mare’s leg, parrying Mrs. Cutcliffe’s willingness to let him a house, and avoiding Captain Coper’s anxiety to sell him a horse. He was not aware that he was restless or that he threaded his way through one group after another, acting as usually he did not act, until Major Hammerslea asked him if he was looking for his second horseman. Then he rode off by himself, and stood still. He had seen pretty much everybody that was out, yet he had come upon none of the Chilliecote party. However, as he asked himself twice, “What was that to him?”
A few minutes later they jogged on to covert and began to draw. A fox went away, the hounds followed him for two fields, then flashed over and checked. After that they could make nothing of it. The fox-hunting authorities said that there was no scent.
At two o’clock they were pottering about Tunbarton Wood, having had a disappointing morning. The second horsemen came up with sandwich-boxes, and, scattered in groups among the broad rides, people ate lunch, smoked, enjoyed the sunshine, and grumbled at the weather, which made sport impossible. And then the unexpected happened, as in fox-hunting it usually does. Hounds found in a far corner of the wood, and disappeared on a burning scent before any one could get to them. Instantly the world seemed to be filled with people galloping in all directions, inquiring where hounds had gone, and receiving no satisfactory answer. Experience had taught Mr. Carteret that under such conditions the most unfortunate thing to do is to follow others who know as little as one’s self. Accordingly he opened a hand gate, withdrew a few yards into a secluded lane, pulled up, and tried to think like a fox. This idea had been suggested by Mr. Kipling’s Gloucester fisherman who could think like a cod. While he was thinking, he saw a great many people gallop by in the highway in both directions. He noted Major Hammerslea, who was apt to be conspicuous when there was hard riding on the road, leading a detachment of people north. He noted Lady Martingale, who liked fences better than roads, leading a charge south. And following Lady Martingale he noted Captain Wynford. Apparently, then, the Abbey people were out, after all. “Perhaps Mrs. Ascott-Smith will turn up,” he said to himself, and he followed Wynford with his eyes until he was out of sight, but saw neither Mrs. Ascott-Smith nor any one else who might have been under his escort.
After a while there were no more people going by in either direction. Something like a sigh escaped him; then he lit a cigarette.
“If I were the hunted fox,” he said to himself, “I think I should have circled over Crumpelow Hill, and then bent south with the idea of getting to ground in Normanhurst Wood. I’ll take a try at it.”
He rode off down the lane to the eastward, riding slowly, for there was no hurry. If he was right, he would be ahead of the fox. If he was wrong, he was so far behind that it made no difference what he did. So he jogged on up and down hill, and smoked. He rode thus for about two miles when his hope began to wither. On every side stretched the winter-green, rolling country fenced into a patchwork of great pastures. In the distance, to the south, lay the brown-gray mass of Normanhurst Wood. The landscape was innocent of any gleam of scarlet coat or black figure of horseman on hilltop against the sky.
“I’m wrong,” he said half aloud. “I guess I could think better as a codfish than as a fox.”
A moment later he saw fresh hoof-prints crossing the lane in front of him, and it burst upon him that his theory was right, but that he was too late. A dozen people must have crossed. They had come into the lane through a hand gate, and had jumped out over some rails that mended a gap in the tall, bushy hedge. Beside the hoof-prints was the evidence of a rail that was freshly broken. He contemplated the situation judicially.
“How far behind I am,” he said to himself, “I do not know; whether these people are following hounds or Lady Martingale I do not know: but anything is better than going down this interminable lane.” So he put his horse at the place where the rail was broken. The next instant, the horse, which was overfed and under-exercised, jumped high over the low rail, and jammed his hat against an overhanging bough, and, on landing, ran away. When Mr. Carteret got him in hand, they were well out into the field, and he began to look along the farther fence for a place to jump out.
In doing this he noticed at the end of the long pasture a horse grazing, and it looked to him as if the horse were saddled. He glanced around, expecting to see an unhappy man stalking a lost mount, but there was no one in sight. So he rode toward the horse. As he came nearer he saw that the saddle was a woman’s. The horse made no attempt to run away, and Mr. Carteret caught it. One glance showed him that there was mud on its ears, mud on its rump, and that one of the pommels was broken. Immediately, although he had never seen horse or saddle before, a strange and unreasonable apprehension seized him. He felt that it was Miss Rivers’s horse; and yet his common sense told him that the idea was absurd. She was probably not out hunting, and if she were, the chances were a thousand to one against it being she. Nevertheless, he opened the sandwich-box strapped to the saddle and took out the silver case. It bore the inscription S. R. from C. C. If he could believe his eyes, the thousand-to-one chance had come off.
He looked about him dazed. There was no one in sight.
“It must have happened back a way,” he said half aloud, “and the horse followed the hunt.”
Mounting, he led it by its bridle-reins, and began to gallop toward the place where the fence had been broken. Approaching the broken rail, he began to pull up when his eye caught something dark upon the grass close to the hedge.
One look, and he saw that it was a woman and that it was Sally Rivers. She was lying on her back, motionless, her white face looking up, her arms at her side, almost as if she were asleep. The apprehensive intuition that had come to him at the sight of the broken saddle came again and told him that she was dead. It must be so. That afternoon they were in the grasp of one of those terrible pranks of fate that are told as strange “true stories.”
But she was not dead. He realized it when he bent over her and took her pulse. It was reasonably strong. The injury was obviously a concussion, for her hat lay beside her, crushed and torn off by the fall. Her breathing, though hardly normal, was not alarming, and it seemed to be growing deeper and more peaceful even as he watched. There were indications that she would come to presently. After all, it was only such an accident as claims its daily victim in the hunting countries. It was nothing to be alarmed about. As the strain relaxed, he became aware of its tensity. He was limp now, and shaking like a leaf, and then the question put itself to him, Was this because he had found a woman that he believed dead or because that woman was Sally Rivers? There was only one honest answer. He made it, and in his inner heart he was glad.
She was not dead. He realized it when he bent over her
Nevertheless, he still protested that it was absurd, that the affair was over. Even if there were no Wynford, he knew that she would never change her mind; and, then, there was Wynford. Even now he was sitting beside her only because her eyes were sightless, because she herself was away. When she came back, it would be trespass to remain. He was in another’s place. It was Wynford who ought to have found her.
If he could have stolen away he would have done so. But that being impossible, he fell to watching her as if she were not herself, but a room that she had once lived in—a room that he too had known, that was delightful with associations and fragrant with faint memory-stirring perfumes. And yet, though the tenant seemed to be away, was it not after all her very self that was before him? There was the treasure of her brown hair, with the gold light in it, tumbled in heaps about her head; there was the face that had been for him the loveliness of early morning in gardens, that had haunted him in the summer perfume of clover-fields and in the fragrance of night-wrapped lawns. There was the slim, rounded figure that once had brought the blood into his face as it brushed against him. There were the hands whose touch was so smooth and cool and strong. Presently he found himself wiping the mud from her cheek as if he were enacting a ritual over some holy thing. He looked around. No human being was in sight. The afternoon sun shone mildly. In the hedgerow some little birds twittered pleasantly, and sang their private little songs.
Suddenly she opened her eyes. She looked up at him, knew him, and smiled.
“Hello, Carty,” she said in her low, vibrant tones. A thrill ran through him. It was the way it used to be.
“You’ve had a bad fall,” he said. “How do you feel?”
A little laugh came into her eyes. “How do I look?” she murmured.
“You’re coming out all right,” he said; “but you mustn’t talk just yet.”
“If I want to,” she said slowly. Her eyes laughed again. “If I want to, I’ll talk.”
“No,” said Mr. Carteret.
“Hear him boss!” she murmured. She looked up at him for a moment, and then her eyes closed. But it was not the same. The lashes lay more lightly, and a tinge of color had come into her cheeks. He sat and watched her, his mind a confusion, a great gladness in his heart.
In a little while she opened her eyes as before. “Hello, Carty,” she began, but Mr. Carteret’s attention was attracted by the sound of wheels in the lane. He saw an old pha\EBton, driven by a farmer, coming toward them.
The man saw him, and stopped. “Is this the place where a lady was hurt?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mr. Carteret. “How did you know?”
“A boy told me,” said the farmer.
“I see,” said Mr. Carteret.
At first she was independent and persisted in walking to the trap by herself. But as they drove off, she began to sway, and caught herself on his arm. After a moment she looked at him helplessly; a little smile shone in her eyes and curved the corners of her mouth. At the next jolt her head settled peacefully upon his shoulder. Her eyes closed. She seemed to be asleep.
They drove on at a walk, the led horses following. The shadows lengthened, the gold light of the afternoon grew more golden. They passed through the ancient village of Tibberton and heard the rooks calling in the parsonage trees. They passed through Normanhurst Park, under oaks that may have sheltered Robin Hood, and the rooks were calling there. In the silent stretches of the road they heard the first thrushes and the evening singing of the warblers. And every living thing, bird, tree, and grass, bore witness that it was spring.
For two hours Mr. Carteret hardly breathed. He was riding in the silver bubble of a dream; a breath, and it might be gone. At the Abbey, perforce, there was an end of it. He roused her quietly, and she responded. She was able to walk up the steps on his arm, and stood till the bell was answered. When he left her in the confusion inside she gave him her hand. It had the same cool, smooth touch as of old, but its strength was gone. It lay in his hand passive till he released it. “Good night,” he said, and hurrying out, he mounted his horse and rode away. He passed some people coming back from hunting, and they seemed vague and unreal. He seemed unreal himself. He almost doubted if the whole thing were not illusion; but on the shoulder of his scarlet coat clung a thread that glistened as the evening sun fell upon it, and a fragrance that went into his blood like some celestial essence.
When he got home, the afterglow was dying in the west. The rooks were hushed, the night was already falling, and the lamps were lit. As he passed through his hallway, there came the touch of a cold nose and the one little lick upon his hand. “Get down, Penwiper,” he said unthinkingly, and went on.
That week, before they let her see people, Mr. Carteret lived in a world that had only its outward circumstances in the world where others lived. He made no attempt to explain it or to justify it or yet to leave it. Several of his friends noticed the change in him, and ascribed it to the vague abstraction of biliousness.
It was a raw Sunday afternoon and he was standing before the fire in the Abbey library, when Miss Rivers came noiselessly, unexpectedly, in. Mrs. Ascott-Smith, who was playing piquet with the Major, started up in surprise. Miss Rivers had been ordered not to leave her room till the next day.
“But I’m perfectly well,” said the girl; “I couldn’t stand it any longer. They wouldn’t so much as tell me the day of the month.” Then for the first time she saw Mr. Carteret. “Why, Carty!” she exclaimed. “How nice it is to see you!”
“Thank you,” he answered. Their eyes met, and he felt his heart beating. As for Miss Rivers, she flushed, dropped her eyes, and turned to Mrs. Ascott-Smith.
“My dear young lady,” said the Major, impressively, as he glanced through his cards, “it is highly imprudent of you to disobey the doctor. Always obey the doctor. I once knew a charming young lady—”
“I hope I’m not rude,” she interrupted, “but I might as well die of concussion as die of being bored.”
“But you had such a very bad toss, my dear,” said Mrs. Ascott-Smith.
“What one doesn’t remember, doesn’t trouble one,” observed the girl. “In a sense it hasn’t happened.” She paused and then went on with a carelessness that was a little overdone: “What did happen, anyway? The usual things, I fancy? I suppose somebody picked me up and brought me home.”
Mr. Carteret’s face was a mask.
“But you remember that!” exclaimed Mrs. Ascott-Smith.
“I don’t remember anything,” said Miss Rivers, “until one evening I woke up in bed and heard the rooks calling in the park.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Ascott-Smith, “you said good-by to him in the hallway, and thanked him, and then you walked up-stairs with a footman at your elbow.”
“That is very strange,” said Miss Rivers. “I don’t remember. Who was it that I said good-by to? Whom did I thank?”
Mr. Carteret walked toward the window as if he were watching the pheasant that was strutting across the lawn.
Mrs. Ascott-Smith folded her cards in her hand and looked at the girl in amazement. “Mr. Carteret found you in a field,” she said, “not far from Crumpelow Hill and brought you home. You said good-by to him.”
At the mention of Mr. Carteret’s name the girl’s hand felt for the back of a chair, as if to steady herself. Then, as the color rushed into her face, aware of it, she stepped back into the shadow. Mrs. Ascott-Smith continued to gaze. Presently Miss Rivers turned to Mr. Carteret. “This is a surprise to me,” she said in a voice like ice. “How much I am in your debt, you better than any one can understand.”
He turned as if a blow had struck him, and looked at her. Her eyes met his unflinchingly, colder than her words, withering with resentment and contempt. Mrs. Ascott-Smith opened her cards again and began to count: “Tierce to the king and a point of five,” she muttered vaguely. Her mind and the side glance of her eyes were upon the girl and the young man. What did it mean? “A point of five,” she repeated.
Mr. Carteret hesitated a moment; he feared to trust his voice. Then he gathered himself and bowed to Mrs. Ascott-Smith. “I have people coming to tea; I must be off. Good night.” His impulse was to pass the girl with the formality of a bow, but he checked it. With an effort he stopped. “Good night,” he said and put out his hand. Her eyes met his without a glimmer of expression. She was looking through him into nothing. His hand dropped to his side. His face grew white. He went on and out. As the door closed behind him he heard Mrs. Ascott-Smith counting for the third time, “Tierce to the king, and a point of five.”
He reached his house. In his own hallway he was giving orders that he was not at home when he felt the cold nose and the one little lick, and looking down, he saw the sad eyes fixed upon his. He went down the passageway to the smoking-room, and the patter of following feet was at his heels. He closed the door, dropped into a chair, gave a nod of assent, and Penwiper jumped into his arms.
When he could think, he constructed many explanations for the mystery of her behavior, and dismissed them successively because they did not explain. Why she should resent so bitterly his having brought her home was inexplicable on any other ground than that she was still out of her head. He would insist upon an explanation, but, after all, what difference could it make? Whatever reason there might be, the important fact was that she had acted as she had. That was the only fact which mattered. Her greeting of him when she first opened her eyes, the drive home, the parting in the hallway, were all things that had never happened for her. For him they were only dreams. He must force them out into the dim region of forgotten things.
On the next Tuesday he saw her at the meet—came upon her squarely, so that there was no escaping. She was pale and sick-looking, and was driving herself in a pony trap. He lifted his hat, but she turned away. After he had ridden by, he turned back and, stopping just behind her, slipped off his horse. “Sally,” he said, “I want to speak to you.”
She looked around with a start. “I should prefer not,” she answered.
“You must,” he said. “I have a right—”
“Do you talk to me about your right?” she said. Her gray eyes flashed.
He met her anger steadily. “I do,” he replied. “You can’t treat me in this way.”
“How else do you deserve to be treated?” she demanded fiercely.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“You know what I mean,” she retorted. “You know what you did.”
“What I did!” he exclaimed. “What have I done?”
“Why do you act this way, Carty?” she said wearily. “Why do you make matters worse?”
He looked at her in perplexity. “Don’t you believe me,” he said, “when I tell you that I don’t know what you mean?”
“How can I believe you,” she answered, “when I have the proof that you do?”
“The proof?” he echoed. “What proof?”
His blank surprise shook her confidence for an instant. “You know well enough,” she said. “You forgot to put back the violet.”
“The violet?” he repeated. “In Heaven’s name what are you talking about?”
She studied his face. Again her conviction was shaken, and she trembled in spite of herself. But she saw no other way. “I can’t believe you,” she said sadly.
He made no answer, but a change came over his face. His patience had gone. His anger was kindling. It began to frighten her. She summoned her will and made an effort to hold her ground. “Will you swear,” she said—“will you swear you didn’t open the locket?”
Still he made no reply.
“Nor shut it?” she went on. She was pleading now.
“Sally,” he said in a strange voice, “I neither opened nor closed nor saw a locket. What has a locket to do with this?”
She looked at him blankly in terror, for suddenly she knew that he was speaking the truth. “Then what has happened?” she murmured.
“You must tell that,” he said.
“I only know this,” she began: “I wore a locket the day of the accident. There was a pressed flower in it.” The color began to rise in her cheeks again. “When I came to, the flower was gone, so I knew the locket had been opened.”
For a moment he was speechless. “And you treat me as you have,” he cried, “on the suspicion of my opening this locket!”
She made no answer.
He laughed harshly. “You think of me as a man who would open your locket!”
Still she made no answer.
His voice dropped to a whisper. “O Sally! Sally!” he exclaimed.
“There are things on my side!” she said protestingly at last. “You can’t understand because you don’t know what was in the locket.”
“I could guess,” he said.
She went on, ignoring his remark: “And you have no explanation as to how it was opened and closed again. What am I to think?”
“Sally,” he said more gently, “isn’t it possible that the locket was shaken open when you fell and that the people who put you to bed closed it?”
“My maid put me to bed,” said the girl; “she says the locket when she saw it was closed.”
“Then perhaps the flower was lost before, and you had forgotten,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “No,” she answered, “the maid found the flower when she undressed me. She gave it to me when I came to. That is how my attention was called to it.”
“Then strange as it seems,” he said calmly, “the thing must have jarred open, the flower dropped out, and the locket shut again of itself. There is no other way.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Perhaps!” he repeated. “What other way could there have been?”
“There couldn’t have been any other way,” she assented, “if you say you didn’t see it when you loosened my habit.”
He looked at her in amazement. “Loosened your habit?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said; “you loosened my habit when I was hurt.”
“No,” he answered.
“Do you mean to say,” she demanded, “that you didn’t loosen and cut things?”
“Most certainly not,” he replied.
“But, Carty,” she exclaimed, “some one did! Who was it?”
Just then Lady Martingale rode up to inquire how Miss Rivers was recovering, and Mr. Carteret mounted and rode away. The hounds were starting off to draw Brinkwater gorse, but he rode in the opposite direction toward Crumpelow Hill. There he found the farmer who had brought them home. Through him he found the boy who had summoned the farmer, and from the boy, as he had hoped, he discovered a clew. And then he fell to wondering why he was so bent upon clearing the matter up. At most it could only put him where he was before the day of the accident. It could not make that drive home real or make what she had said that afternoon her utterance. She would acquit him of prying into her affairs, but beyond that there was nothing to hope. Everything that he had recently learned strengthened his conviction that she was going to marry Wynford. It was a certainty. Nevertheless, from Crumpelow Hill he rode toward the Abbey.
It was nearly four o’clock when Miss Rivers came in. He rose and bowed with a playful, exaggerated ceremony. “I have come,” he began, in a studiedly light key, “because I have solved the mystery.”
“I am glad you have come,” she said.
“It is simple,” he went on. “Another man picked you up, and put you where I found you. Your breathing must have been bad, and he loosened your clothes. Probably the locket had flown open and he shut it. Then he went after a trap. Why he did not come back, I don’t know.”
“But I do,” said Miss Rivers.
He looked at her warily, suspecting a trap for the man’s name. He preferred not to mention that.
“I know,” she went on, “because he has told me. He did come back part way—till he saw that you were with me.”
Mr. Carteret looked at her in surprise.
“More than that,” she went on, “the locket had jarred open and he saw what was in it and closed it. Perhaps that was why he went away. Anyway, after thinking about it, he decided that it was best to tell me. If he had only done so before!”
“I see,” said Mr. Carteret. He did not see at all, but it was a matter about which he felt that he could not ask questions.
“You know,” she said, after a pause, “that the man was Captain Wynford.”
“Yes,” he answered shortly. His tone changed. “Wynford is a good man—a good man,” he said awkwardly. “I can congratulate you both honestly.” He paused. “Well, I must go,” he went on. “I’m glad things are right again all round. Good-by.” He crossed to the door, and she stood watching him. She had grown very pale.
“Carty,” she said suddenly, in a dry voice, “I’m not acting well.”
He looked back perplexed, but in a moment he understood. She evidently felt that she ought to tell him outright that she was going to marry Wynford.
“In treating you as I did,” she finished, “in judging you—”
“You were hasty,” he said, “but I can understand.”
She shook her head. “You can’t understand if you think that there was only a flower in the locket.”
“Perhaps I have guessed already that there was a picture,” he said—“a picture that was not for my eyes.”
She looked at him gravely. “No,” she said, “you haven’t guessed. I don’t think you’ve guessed; and when I think how I misjudged you, how harsh I was, I want you to see it. It is almost your right to see it.” Her hand went to her throat, but he shook his head.
“It pleases me,” he said, “to be made a confidant, but I take the will for the deed. If there is anything more you might wish that I should say, imagine that I have said it—congratulations, good wishes, and that sort of thing; you understand.”
He had reached the door, but again she called him back. She paused, with her hand on the piano, and struggled for her words. “Carty,” she said, “once I told you that it was all off, that I never could marry you—that I should never marry any one. You’re glad now, aren’t you? You see it is best?”
“Would it make you happier if I said so?” he replied.
“I want to know the truth,” she said.
“I am afraid the truth would only hurt you,” he answered.
“I want the truth,” she said again.
“It is soon told,” he said; “there is nothing new to tell.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
“Isn’t it clear?” he answered. “Do you want to bring up the past?”
“You love me?” she asked. He could hardly hear, her voice trembled so.
He made no answer, but bowed his head.
When she saw, she turned, and, throwing her arms along the piano, hid her face, and in a moment he heard her crying softly.
He paused uncertainly, then he went to her. “Sally,” he said.
She lifted her head. She was crying still, but with a great light of happiness in her face. “There is no Captain Wynford,” she sobbed. “If you had looked in the locket—” A laugh flashed in her eyes.
And then he understood.
They were standing close together in the mullioned window where three hundred years before a man standing on the lawn outside had scrawled with a diamond on one of the little panes:
If woman seen thro’ crystal did appere
One half so loving as her face is fair
And a woman standing inside had written the answering lines:
Were woman seen thro’, as the crystal pane,
Then some might ask, nor long time ask in ——
The rhyme word was indicated by a dash, but neither the tracings of those dead hands, nor the ancient lawns, nor the oaks that had been witness, did these two see. When many things had been said, she opened the locket.
“You must look now.”
“I will,” he said. As he looked, his eyes grew misty. “Both of us?” he whispered.
“Both of you!” she answered. And it was so, for in the corner of the picture was Penwiper.
