I
IT is a bad business, no doubt, when a statesman stoops to sentiment. Unluckily for the Duke, now that a brain cool and clear was needed in a critical hour, it had become miserably overclouded by a sense of chivalry. It was very inconvenient. Never in his life had he found a decision so hard to reach, and even when it had been arrived at he could not dismiss the girl from his mind. She had impressed him in such a remarkable way that it was impossible to forget her.
Beyond all things a man of the world, one fact stood out with exemplary clearness. If this girl could have been taken upon her merits she would have been an almost ideal mate for the heir to Bridport House. She had shown such a delicate regard for his welfare, so right had been her feeling in the whole affair, that, even apart from mere justice, it seemed wrong to exclude her from a circle she could not fail to grace. In the matter of Bridport House her instinct was so divinely right that no girl in the land was more naturally fitted to help a tiro through his novitiate.
A sad coil truly! And Jack had gone but a very few minutes, when the matter took another and wholly unexpected turn. The prelude to a historic incident was the appearance of Sarah on the scene.
The eldest flower, the light of battle in her gray eyes, was plainly bent on mischief. So much was clear as soon as she came into the room. She had not been able to forgive her father for revoking Mrs. Sanderson’s notice. It had been a wanton dashing of the cup from lips but little used to victory; and the act had served to embitter a situation which by now was almost unbearable.
Sarah had come of fell purpose, but before playing her great coup, she opened lightly in the manner of a skirmisher. Muriel, it seemed, was the topic that had brought her there; at any rate, it was the topic on which she began, masking with some astuteness the one so much more sinister that lay behind.
“Father, I suppose you know that Muriel has quite made up her mind to get married?”
“So I gather.” Detachment could hardly have been carried farther.
“Such a pity,” Sarah lightly pursued, “but I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done. She was always obstinate.”
“Always a fool,” muttered his Grace.
“I’ve been discussing the matter with Aunt Charlotte.”
The Duke nodded, but his portentous eyes asked Sarah not to claim one moment more of his time than the circumstances rendered absolutely necessary.
“Aunt Charlotte feels very strongly that it will be wise for you to give your consent.”
“Why?” The Duke yawned, but the look in his face was not of the kind that goes with mere boredom. “Any specific ground for the suggestion?” He scanned Sarah narrowly, with heavily-lidded eyes.
“On general grounds only, I believe.”
The Duke was more than a little relieved, but he was content to express the fact by transferring his gaze to the book-rest in front of him.
“She thinks it will be in the interests of everyone to make the best of a most tiresome and humiliating business. And, after all, he is certain to be Prime Minister within the next ten years.”
“Who tells you that?”
“Last night at dinner I met Harry Truscott, and that’s his prediction. He says Sir Dugald Maclean is the big serpent that swallows all the little serpents.”
“Uncommonly true!” His Grace made a wry mouth. “Still, that’s hardly a reason why we should receive the reptile here.”
“No, of course. I quite agree. But Aunt Charlotte thinks there is nothing to gain by standing out. Muriel has quite made up her foolish mind. So the dignified thing seems to be to make the best of a miserable business.”
“It may be,” said his Grace. “But personally I should be grateful if Charlotte would mind her own affairs.”
The tone implied quite definitely that he had no wish to pursue the topic; nay, it even invited Sarah to make an end of their talk and to go away as soon as possible. Clearly he was far from understanding that it was little more than a red herring across the trail of a sinister intention. But the fact was revealed to him by her next remarks.
“Oh, by the way, father,” she said casually, or at least with a lightness of tone that was misleading, “there’s one other matter. I’ve been thinking the situation out.”
“Situation!” groped his Grace.
“That has been created.” Sarah’s tone was almost infantile—“by your insisting that Mrs. Sanderson should stay on.”
“Well, what of it, what of it?”
“It simply makes the whole thing impossible.” Sarah had achieved the voice of the dove. “So long as this woman remains in the house one feels that one cannot stay here.”
“Why not?”
“Because”—Sarah fixed a deliberate eye on the face of her sire—“neither Aunt Charlotte nor I think that the present arrangement is quite seemly.”
II
The attack had been neatly launched, and she saw by the look on her father’s face that it had gone right home. She was a slow-witted, rather crass person, with a kind of heavy conceit of her own, but like all the other Dinneford ladies, at close quarters she was formidable. The button was off her foil. It was her intention to wound. And at the instant she struck, his Grace was unpleasantly aware of that fact.
“What d’ye mean?” It was his recoil from the stroke.
“I have talked over the matter with Aunt Charlotte. She agrees with me that the present arrangement is quite hopeless. And she thinks that as you are unwilling for Mrs. Sanderson to be sent away, the only course for Blanche, Marjorie, and myself is to leave the house.”
The face of her father grew a shade paler, but for the moment that was the only expression of the inward fury. He saw at once that the dull fool who dared to beard him was no more than a cat’s-paw of the arch-schemer. The mine was Charlotte’s, even if fired by a hand infinitely less cunning.
“Is this a threat?” The surge of his rage was hard to control.
“You leave us no alternative,” said Sarah doughtily. “Aunt Charlotte thinks in the circumstances we shall be fully justified in going to live with her. I think so, too; and I don’t doubt that Blanche and Marjorie will see the matter in the same light.”
“What do you think you will gain?” His voice shook with far more than vexation. “The proposal simply amounts to the washing of dirty linen in public.”
“There is such a thing as personal dignity, father,” said Sarah in her driest tone.
“No doubt; but how you are going to serve it by dancing to the piping of Charlotte I can’t for the life of me see.”
Sarah, however, could see something else. The blow had met already with some success. And she was fully determined to follow up a first advantage.
“Well, father”—her words were of warriorlike conciseness—“if you still insist on Mrs. Sanderson’s presence here, that is the course we intend to take.”
“Oh!” A futile monosyllable, yet at that moment full of meaning.
III
The ultimatum delivered, Sarah promptly retired. She took away from the interview a pleasing consciousness that the honors were with her. And this sense of nascent victory had not grown less by half-past one when she reached Hill Street in time to lunch with Aunt Charlotte.
It was a rather cheerless and ascetic meal, but both ladies were in such excellent fighting trim that the meagerness of the fare didn’t matter. Sarah was sure that she had scored heavily. A well-planted bomb had wrought visible confusion in the ranks of the foe. “He sees that it places him in a most awkward position,” was her summary for the grim ears of the arch-plotter.
“One knew it would.” There were times when Aunt Charlotte had a striking personal resemblance to Moltke; and just now, beyond a doubt, she bore an uncanny likeness to that successful Prussian.
“He hates the idea of what he calls washing dirty linen in public.”
“Lacks moral courage as usual.” The remark was made in an undertone to the coal-scuttle.
“I hope——.” But Sarah suddenly bit off the end of her sentence. After all, there are things one cannot discuss.
“You hope what?” The eye of Aunt Charlotte fixed her like a kite.
“No need to say what one hopes,” said Sarah dourly.
“I agree.” Aunt Charlotte took a sip of hot water and munched a peptonized biscuit with a kind of savage glee. “But we have to remember that the ice is very thin. One has always felt that—well, you know what one means. One has felt sometimes that your father....”
Sarah agreed. For more years than she cared to remember she....
“Quite so,” Aunt Charlotte took another biscuit. “And everybody must know.... However, the time has now come to make an end.”
“I am sure it has,” said Sarah.
“Still we are playing it up very high,” said the great tactician. “And we shall do well to remember....”
“I agree,” said Sarah cryptically.
Misgiving they might have, but just now the uppermost feeling was pride in their work and a secret satisfaction. There could be no doubt that the blow had gone home. At last they had taken the measure of his Grace, they had found his limit, the point had been reached beyond which he would not go.
“Au fond a coward,” Aunt Charlotte affirmed once more, for the benefit of the coal-scuttle. And then for the benefit of Sarah, with a ring of triumph, “Always sets too high a value on public opinion, my dear.”
Such being the case the conspirators had every right to congratulate themselves. And as if to confirm their victory, there came presently by telephone a most urgent message from Mount Street. Charlotte was to go round at once.
“There, what did I tell you!” said that lady. And she sublimely ordered her chariot.
IV
Enroute to Bridport House, the redoubtable Charlotte did not allow herself to question that the foe was at the point of hauling down the flag. His hurry to do so was a little absurd, but it was so like him to throw up the sponge at the mere threat of publicity. This indecent haste to come to terms deepened a contempt which had lent a grim enjoyment to a long hostility.
However, the reception in store for her ladyship in the smaller library did much to modify her views. She was received by her brother with an air of menace which almost verged upon truculence.
“Charlotte”—there was a boldness of attack for which she was by no means prepared—“the time has now come to make an end of this comedy.”
She fully agreed, yet the sixth sense given to woman found occasion to warn her that she didn’t know in the least to what she was agreeing.
“You would have it so, you know.”
He was asked succinctly to explain.
“Well, it’s a long story.” Already there was a note in the mordant voice which his sister heard for the first time. “A long, a strange, and if you will, a romantic story. And let me say that it is by no wish of my own that I tell it. However, Fate is stronger than we are in these little matters, and no doubt wiser.”
“No doubt,” said Charlotte drily. But somehow that note in his voice made her uneasy, and the look in his face seemed to hold her every nerve in a vise. “You are speaking in riddles, my friend,” she added with a little flutter of impatience.
“It may be so, but before I go on I want you clearly to understand that it is you, not I, who insist on bringing the roof down upon us.”
Charlotte’s only reply was to sit very upright, with her sarcastic mouth drawn in a rigid line. She could not understand in the least what her brother was driving at, but in his manner was a new, a strange intensity which somehow gave her a feeling of profound discomfort.
“You don’t realize what you are doing,” he said. “Still you are not to blame for that. But the time has come to pull aside the curtain, and to let you know what we all owe a woman who has been cruelly maligned.”
Charlotte stiffened perceptibly at these words. After all, the case was no more and no less than for more than twenty years she had known it to be. Still open confession was good for the soul! It was a sordid intrigue, an intrigue of a nature which simply made her loathe the man opposite. How dare he—and with a servant in his own house! If looks could have slain, his Grace would have been spared the necessity to continue a very irksome narrative.
“Make provision for her and send her away.” The sharp voice was like the crack of a gun.
The Duke raised himself slowly and painfully on his elbows. “Hold your tongue,” he said. And his eyes struck at her. “Be good enough to forgo all comment until you have heard the whole story.”
It was trying Charlotte highly, but she set herself determinedly to listen.
“Do you remember when she first came here, as second maid to poor Rachel, a fine, upstanding, gray-eyed Scots girl, one of the most beautiful creatures you ever saw? Do you remember her devotion? No, I see you have forgotten.” He closed his eyes for an instant, while the woman opposite kept hers fixed steadily upon him. “Well, I don’t excuse myself. But Rachel and I were never happy; the plain truth is we ought not to have married. It was a family arrangement and it recoiled upon us. The Paringtons are an effete lot and the same can be said of us Dinnefords. Nature asked for something else.”
Now that he had unlocked the doors of memory a growing emotion became too much for the Duke, and for a moment he could not go on. His sister, in the meantime, continued to hold him with pitiless eyes.
“One might say,” he went on, “that it was the call of the blood. I remember her first as the factor’s daughter, a long-legged creature in a red tam-o’-shanter, running about the woods of Ardnaleuchan. You haven’t forgotten Donald Sanderson, the father?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten him,” said Charlotte.
“That was a fine fellow. ‘Man Donald’ as our father used to call him, helped me to stalk my first stag. We ranged the woods together days on end. I sometimes think I owe more to that man than to any other human being.”
Again he was silent, but the eyes of his sister never left his face.
“Yes, it was the call of the blood.” He sighed as he passed his handkerchief over his face which was now gray and glistening. “As I say, Rachel and I ought not to have married; we didn’t suit each other. Our marriage was a family arrangement. It had almost ceased to be tolerable long before the end, but we kept our compact as well as we could, for we were determined that other people should not suffer. And then came Rachel’s long illness, and the girl’s wonderful devotion—do you remember how Rachel would rather have her with her than any of the nurses? And then she died, and of course that altered everything.”
Lady Wargrave sat as if carved out of stone, her eyes still upon the bleak face of the invalid. “Is that all?” she said.
“No, it is not. There’s more to tell.”
“Tell it then so that we may have done with it.” Charlotte’s voice quivered.
“Very well, since you insist.” The softness of the tone was surprising, yet to Charlotte it said nothing. “Rachel died and everything, as I say, was altered. ‘Man Donald’s’ daughter became the only woman who ever really meant anything to me. Somehow I felt I couldn’t do without her. And to make an end of a long and tedious story, finally I married her.”
“You married her!” Lady Wargrave sat as if she had swallowed a poker.
“Yes, but before doing so I made a condition. Things were to go on as they were, provided....”
“... provided!” Excitement fought curiosity in Charlotte’s angry voice.
“... she didn’t bring a boy into the world.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Charlotte’s voice cracked in the middle.
“It was quite a simple arrangement, and in the circumstances it seemed the best. So long as there was no man child to complicate the thing unduly, the world was to be kept out of our secret. At the time it seemed wise and right to do that. Otherwise it would have meant a fearful upset for everybody.”
“Is one to understand,” gasped Charlotte, “that when Rachel died you actually married this—this woman?”
The Duke nodded. “But I made the condition that our secret should be rigidly guarded—always assuming that Fate did not prove too much for us. She went to the little house on the river at Buntisford, where I used to go for the fishing and shooting. And she gave me ten years of happiness—the only happiness I have known. And then came my breakdown, since when she has nursed me with more than a wife’s devotion.” His voice failed suddenly and he lay back in his chair with closed eyes.
It was left to Charlotte to break the irksome silence that followed.
“How could you be so mad!” She spoke under her breath not intending her words to be heard, but a quick ear caught them.
“Nay,” he said in the tone that was so new to her, “it was the only thing to do. It was the call of the blood. And this was a devoted woman, a woman one could trust implicitly.”
“Madness, my friend, madness!”
He shook his head somberly. “All life is a madness, if you will a divine madness. It is a madness that damns the consequences. By taking too much thought for the morrow we entomb ourselves. When Rachel died life meant for me the woman of my choice. And, Charlotte, let me say this”—he raised himself in his chair and looked at his sister fixedly—“she is the best woman I have ever known.”
For a moment she sat a picture of bewilderment, and then in a voice torn with emotion she said, “Out of regard for the others things had better go on as they are. But perhaps you will tell me, are there any children of this marriage?”
“There is one child.”
Charlotte caught her breath sharply.
“A girl. And in accordance with our compact she has been brought up in complete ignorance of her paternity. It seemed wise that she should know nothing. Her mother had her reared among her own people, because it was her mother’s express wish that the children of the first marriage should suffer no prejudice; and at the present time neither the girl herself nor the world at large is any the wiser.”
Charlotte began to breathe a little more freely. “At all events,” she said, “that fact seems to confirm one’s opinion that things had better go on as they are.”
But her brother continued to gaze at her with somber eyes. “Charlotte,” he said very slowly, “you have forced me to tell a story I had hoped would never be told in my lifetime. I have had to suffer your suspicions, but now that you are in the secret, you must share its responsibilities.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Lady Wargrave bluntly.
“I will explain. A horrible injustice has been done this girl, the child of the second marriage. So much is clear to you, no doubt?”
Lady Wargrave’s only reply was to tighten her lips.
“You wish me to be still more explicit?”
She invited him to be so.
“Well, as far as I can I will be.” His air was simple matter of fact. “But I warn you that we are now at the point where we have to realize that Fate is so much stronger than ourselves.”
A momentary hesitation drew a harsh, “Go on, let me hear the worst.”
“Can’t you guess who this girl is?” he said abruptly.
“Pray, why should one?”
“She is the girl Jack wants to marry.”
A long silence followed this announcement. It would have been kind perhaps had he helped his sister to break it, but a clear perception of the first thought in her mind had raised a barrier. With a patience that was half-malicious he waited for a speech that he knew was bound to come.
“It was to have been expected,” she said at last with something perilously like a snarl of subdued anger.
“Why expected?” They were the words for which he had waited, and he seized them promptly.
“She has been too much for you, my friend.”
“Whom do you mean?”
“The mother, of course. She has planned this marriage so that she might be revenged upon us here.”
He was quite ready to do Charlotte the justice of allowing that it was the only view she was likely to hold. The pressure of mere facts was too heavy. Words of his would be powerless against them; and yet he was determined to use every means at his command to clear that suspicion from her mind.
“I hope you will believe me when I tell you she is entirely innocent,” he said in a voice of sudden emotion.
Charlotte slowly shook her head, but it was a gesture of defeat. She was beyond malice now.
“Charlotte, I give you my word that she had no part in it.”
His sister looked at him pityingly. “It is impossible to believe that,” she said without bitterness.
“So I see. But it is my duty to convince you.”
For a moment he fought a growing emotion, and then his mind suddenly made up, he pressed the button of the electric bell that was near his elbow.
V
The familiar summons was answered by Harriet herself. As she came into the room her rather scared eyes were caught at once by the profile of the dowager. But the reception in store for her was far from being of the kind she had reason to expect, for which she had had too little time to prepare.
To begin with Lady Wargrave rose to receive her. And that stately and considered act was supplemented by the simple words of the Duke.
“She knows everything,” he said from the depths of his invalid chair, without a suspicion of theatricality.
Harriet, all the color struck from her face, shrank back, a picture of horror and timidity.
“Sit down, my dear, and let us hold a little family council.” That note of intimacy and affection was so strange in Charlotte’s ear, that it hit her almost as hard as the previous words had hit the wife of his bosom. However, the two ladies sat, and the Duke with a nonchalance that hardly seemed credible, went on in a quietly domestic voice, as he turned to Harriet again. “We shall value your help and advice, if you feel inclined to give it, in this matter of Mary and the young man Dinneford.”
At this amazing speech Lady Wargrave stirred uneasily on her cushion of thorns. She breathed hard, her mordant mouth grew set, in her grim eyes were unutterable things.
“One moment, Johnnie,” she interposed. “Does Mrs.—er Sanderson quite understand what it means to us?”
“Perfectly,” he said, “no one better.” The depth of the tone expressed far more than those dry words. “It may help matters,” he added, turning to Harriet again, “if I say at once that we are going to ask you to make two decisions in the name of the people you have served so long and so faithfully. And the first is this: Since, as you will see I have been forced, much against my will, to let a third person into our secret, you have now the opportunity of taking your true position in the sight of the world.”
Lady Wargrave shivered. Somehow this was a turn of the game she had not been able to foresee.
“That is to say,” the Duke went on, “you have now, as far as I am concerned, full liberty to assume your true style and dignity as mistress here. For more than twenty years you have sacrificed yourself for others, but the time has now come when you need do so no longer. What do you say?”
Harriet did not speak. Lady Wargrave was silent also, but a kind of stony horror was freezing her. The whole situation had become so fantastic that she felt the inadequacy of her emotions.
“You shall have a perfectly free hand,” the Duke went on. “Assume your position now, and good care shall be taken that you are amply maintained in it. What do you say, my dear?” he added gently.
Tears were melting her now, and she was unable to speak.
“Well, think it over,” said his Grace. “And be assured that whichever course you take, it will be the right one. We owe you more than we can repay. However, that is only one issue, and there is another, which is hardly less important.”
Lady Wargrave stirred again on her cushion. For a moment there was not a sound to be heard in the room.
“You see,” the Duke went on, “I’ve been giving anxious thought to—to this girl of ours. And I really don’t see, having regard to all the circumstances, why justice should any longer be denied her. No matter who the man is, he is lucky to get her. And, as I understand, they are a very devoted couple.”
“Oh, yes, they are!” The words were Harriet’s and they were uttered in a tone broken by emotion.
“Well, you shall make the decision,” he said. “You know, of course, how the matter stands.” Harriet bowed her head in assent, and his Grace turned an eye bright with malice upon the Dowager. “You see, Charlotte, this girl of ours, brought up in a very humble way, and left to fight her own battle, under the providence of the good God, absolutely declines to come among us unless she has the full and free consent of the head of the clan. So far that consent has not been given, and if in the course of the next week it is not forthcoming, the young man Dinneford threatens to return to Canada.”
“I see.” The walls of Charlotte’s world had fallen in, her deepest feelings had been outraged, but she was still perfect mistress of herself. She turned her hard eyes upon Harriet, but in them now was a look very different from the one that had been wont to regard the housekeeper.
Much had happened in a very little time, but to the last a fine tactician, Charlotte had contrived to keep her head. She was in the presence of calamity, she had met a blow that would have broken a weaker person in pieces, but already a line of action was formed in her mind. One thing alone could save them, and that the continued goodwill of the woman they had so long misjudged and traduced.
“Mrs. Sanderson”—she used the old name unconsciously—“we owe you a great deal.” It was not easy to make the admission, even if common justice rather than policy called for it. “I hope now you will let us add to the debt.”
The Duke was forced to admire the dignity and the directness of the appeal. He knew how hard she had been hit. But that was not all. Marking his sister’s tone, intently watching her grim face, he saw how completely her attitude had changed. The other woman had conquered, but in spite of all he had suffered at the hands of Charlotte, it was difficult not to feel a certain respect as well as a certain pity for her in the hour of her defeat.
By this, Harriet, too, had become mistress of herself. She, also, had suffered much, but she had never played for victory, and she was very far from the thought of it now. “I have but one wish,” she said.
“And that is?” His tone was strangely gentle for her voice had failed suddenly.
“To do what is right.”
The simplicity of the words held them silent. Brother and sister looked at her with a kind of awe in their eyes. It was as if another world had opened to their rather bewildered gaze.
“I want to do right to those who have been so good to me, and to my father and my grandfather before me.”
Somehow that speech, gentleness itself, yet sharp as a sword, brought the blood to Lady Wargrave’s face. In a flash she saw and felt the justification of her brother’s amazing deed. This devoted woman in her selflessness held the master key to life and Fate; in a flash of insight she saw that groundlings and grovelers like themselves were powerless before it. Somehow those words, that bearing, solved the mystery. She could no longer blame her brother; he had been caught in the toils of an irresistible force.
“Mrs. Sanderson”—there was reverence now in the harsh voice—“you are the best judge of what is right. We are content to leave the matter to your discretion.” Even if the accomplished tactician was uppermost in Charlotte’s words, in the act of uttering them was a large rather noble simplicity.
The Duke nodded acquiescence.
“I should like the present arrangement to go on,” said Harriet. “Perhaps the truth will have to be known some time, but let it come out after we are dead, when it can hurt nobody.”
Lady Wargrave drew a long breath of relief and gratitude.
“You are very wise,” she said.
But the Duke took her up at once with a saturnine smile. “You seem to forget, Charlotte, that the existing arrangement can no longer go on.”
“Pray, why not?”
“You have just been kind enough to tell us,” he said bitingly, “that Sarah and the girls are going to live with you at Hill Street—except, of course, on one condition!”
Their eyes met. Suddenly they smiled frostily at each other.
“If you care to leave the matter to me,” said Charlotte, “I will see to that.”
“But that woman, Sarah,” he persisted. “She’s so obstinate that we may have to tell her.”
Charlotte shook her head doughtily. “I think I shall be able to manage her.”
“So be it.” He smiled grimly. “Anyhow we shall be very glad to leave that matter in your hands.”
“With perfect safety, I think you may do that.” And Charlotte, sore and embittered as she was, rounded off this comfortable assurance with a long sigh of relief.