Barnaby Part 23

She stopped to listen.

"I am not," she said, "a universal mender. If people I don't particularly care about are jumping out of frying-pans, I don't preach at them eternal fire. But this fool of a woman had chosen to bolt under my very nose. Providence had cast her upon my doorstep. So I took the hint. Not being a heathen I really had to."

The confidential maid was ascending with someone strange to the place, who stumbled and chattered in halting French.

"I poked my head farther out," said the d.u.c.h.ess, "and shouted--'Is that you, Lady c.u.mmerbatch? Have you had a breakdown?' and it was worth it to see her jump. I don't in the least know what she answered; it sounded hysterical. 'Well,' I said, 'leave your husband to tinker up the machine; it will probably take him hours. I can put you up.'"

"Her husband?" said Susan, puzzled.

"Tact, my child, tact! I sent Fifine down to fetch her, and kept my eye on him. She followed Fifine into the house like a lamb."

She wrapped her dressing-gown closer round her, and prepared to depart.

"I couldn't keep her in my room," she said; "I've two girls camping on the floor. Besides, she would begin confessing everything, and I am certain that I should smack her. Pretend that you are asleep. If she cries, don't notice. Good night, my child."

She patted Susan on the head, looking as if she would have kissed her, but not being accustomed to caresses, did not quite know how.

Then she wheeled round to receive the late visitor, holding up her finger, and crying--"Hus.h.!.+" very loud.

Susan lay with her face turned from the light and her eyes shut, as she had been bidden. She heard Fifine, after some careful whispering, close the door and make her way down; she heard a smothered sobbing from the improvised bed that almost blocked the chamber;--and then she heard a stealthy noise in the room, and opened her eyes. On the wall she could see the shadow of a person struggling into her clothes, and evidently about to fly. Some instinct made the girl spring up and fling herself against the door.

"Oh! Oh!" said the strange woman, tottering. "Let me out!"

Susan looked her in the face.

"If you want to go," she said, "I will call the d.u.c.h.ess."

The stranger began to cry. She was thin and fair, with a faded skin and unhappy eyes, outstared by a blaze of jewels. Susan remembered seeing her at the ball. Kilgour had called her the Shop Window.

"He's waiting for me. I must go with him," she cried, worked up to a pitch of agitation that deprived her of self-control.

"You shall not," the girl said.

They both heard an engine vibrating far down below. The woman flew to the window. And then the d.u.c.h.ess's strident voice struck into the night from her own window underneath.

"So glad the motor is working. Don't trouble about your wife, Sir Richard. She's safely tucked up in bed."

Then a furious backing and grinding, as the car started and rushed away into the darkness, baulked of a pa.s.senger.

Susan retired sedately into bed, since it was no longer necessary to guard the door. The woman began to strip off her jewels, that she had put on again, anyhow,--flinging them in a heap on the table.

"Absurd, isn't it?" she said, in a high, unnatural key, "wearing all these.... but I wasn't going to leave them behind."

The girl said nothing; she was embarra.s.sed.

"The d.u.c.h.ess took him for d.i.c.ky," the prisoner rambled on. Perhaps she was afraid of silence. "_You_ guessed the truth. I saw you at the ball to-night. They were all talking about you, and I liked your diamonds. Did _your_ husband marry you for your money?"

Susan drew a sharp breath. Ah, this woman was more to be pitied than she, who had brought sorrow upon herself.

"Oh, you poor thing!" she said softly, sitting up in bed and clasping her hands round her knees.

Lady c.u.mmerbatch was one of those lucky women who find solace in lamentation. They are the fortunate ones, whose bitterness of heart can be dissipated in bitter speech.

"I've heard," she went on, too distracted about her own plight to be conscious of the rank impertinence of which she was being guilty.

"I've heard all about your husband. He's the wild Barnaby Hill who was jilted by an Irishwoman and disappeared and married abroad to vex her, and then turned up after his people thought him dead. You're an American too, though you are not my kind. They seem fond of you here; they all take your part;--but what difference does it make? Aren't we two miserable women?"

She began to weep noisily, and then to s.h.i.+ver. Getting into bed, she pulled her fur cloak over her shoulders, and sat hunched up, staring at the light.

"Do you mind my not putting out the candle?" she said. "I can't bear to lie worrying in the dark. If that auto hadn't stuck, and the d.u.c.h.ess hadn't jumped me when I got out to see what was the matter, I'd have been out of my misery.... I said to Sir Richard once--'You married me for my money,' and he laughed in my face and said--'My good young woman, you had an equivalent--you married me for my t.i.tle.' And then I just screamed, 'I married you for your t.i.tle! Oh, yes, I married you for your t.i.tle!' till he banged himself out of the house."

"But if that was not true----" said Susan.

"True? It was all true," she sobbed. "The pity was it didn't keep true. When I married that man I couldn't have told you if his eyes were grey or green. But there--! It wears off with them and it wears on with us."

In her lamentation she continued to identify herself with her compatriot; their common misfortune, as she conceived it, was mixed up in her bewailing.

"Why don't you try it, like me?" she said. "Why don't you run away from him? If you cry and stamp and bl.u.s.ter it makes them vain, but when they've lost you outright they miss you.... Oh, it's awful to live with a man and watch him getting impatient because you are in his way and he's tied to you;--to see him looking hard at you, thinking how could he have paid the price! He tried to be civil at first, but his face soon taught me.... I wonder how long were you deceived?"

"I was never deceived," said Susan, hardly knowing she had uttered that sigh aloud. Her arms were round the other woman now; a poor wretch who had once been happy. Ah, with what pain would she not have gladly purchased some mirage of happiness, some illusion that she was his ...

and beloved ... for half an hour!

The haggard b.u.t.terfly who had been cursed with riches dropped her voice from its wailing tune to a whisper.

"I'm going to France to-morrow," she said. "He won't like that. It will be the same as striking him in the face. He to turn from me to other women who had no money to give him--! When a man sees that what he has tossed in the gutter is precious to another man, when he sees how the other man picks it up,--he feels cheated. It hits him harder than if you had killed yourself. I thought of _that_ first. But don't you do it! I knew just how he'd say--'Mad! quite mad!' and bury me and forget me. He'll never lose sight of it if I go away like this--" and her voice rose high--"_that_ will let him know how I hate him!"

But when her confidences had tired her out, and she loosed her clasp of Susan, pulling up the quilt and sinking into a wearied slumber,--when the girl lay gazing alone at a light that was burning dim;--there was a cry in the silence.

"I've come back, d.i.c.ky! d.i.c.ky, let me in--! I've come back."

It was the woman who hated her husband, calling to him in her sleep.

Susan awakened in the morning with music in her ears. Dreaming, she danced with Barnaby, and his arm was round her, his breath quick on her cheek, his face not ... kind.

And as the wild illumination of a dream sometimes teaches what a stumbling consciousness dare not know, so the girl awoke trembling.

But that dream of all dreams was madness.

Into her waking mind came the thought of Rackham, the man who had said he loved her. Had she not always been ill at ease with him, and what was that but a warning instinct, divining, shrinking from the peril in a man's admiration? But Barnaby and she had been such good comrades....

Quaint incidents crowded on her, scenes in the hunting field, Sunday afternoons at the stables,--the day he had cut his finger and she had run to him to bind it up;--the day he had told her the brim of her riding hat was too narrow, and made her try on another that satisfied his inspection.... Oh, they had honourably tried not to haunt each other, but all the same.... Dear and safe memories; they blotted out last night.

She raised herself on her elbow and looked across the room at the runaway.

So a woman could sleep whom the casual kindness of an acquaintance had saved from s.h.i.+pwreck; so a woman could sleep who had poured out her soul to a stranger.

Someone was tapping at the door. It was late. Ten, eleven, ah, quite that; and Monsieur had come for Madame and brought her clothes. And Miladi said Madame was to dress in her room, as one was so cramped up here.