  On the same afternoon which saw the last meeting of the Commission of Inquiry at Markborough, the windows of Miss Puttenham's cottage in Upcote Minor were open to the garden, and the sun stealing into the half darkened drawing-room touched all the many signs it contained of a woman's refinement and woman's tastes. The room was a little austere. Not many books, but those clearly the friends and not the passing acquaintance of its mistress; not many pictures, and those rather slight suggestions on the dim blue walls than finished performances; a few "notes" in colour, or black and white, chosen from one or other of those moderns who can in a sensitive line or two convey the beauty or the harshness of nature. Over the mantelpiece there was a pencil drawing by Domenichino, of the Madonna and Child; a certain ecstatic languor in the Madonna, and, in all the lines of form and drapery, an exquisite flow and roundness. The little maidservant brought in the afternoon letters and with them a folded newspaper—the Markborough Post. A close observer might have detected that it had been already opened, and hurriedly refolded in the old folds. There was much interest felt in Upcote Minor in the inquest held on John Broad's mother; and the kitchen had taken toll before the paper reached the drawing-room. As though the maid's movement downstairs had been immediately perceived by a listening ear overhead, there was a quick sound of footsteps. Miss Puttenham ran downstairs, took the letters and the newspaper from the hands of the girl, and closed the door behind her. She opened the paper with eagerness, and read the account it gave of the Coroner's inquiry held at the Cowroast a week before. The newspaper dropped to the ground. She stood a moment, leaning against the mantelpiece, every feature in her face expressing the concentration of thought which held her; then she dropped into a chair, and raising her two hands to her eyes, she pressed the shut lids close, lifting her face as though to some unseen misery, while a little sound—infinitely piteous—escaped her. She saw a bedroom in a foreign inn—a vague form in the bed—a woman moving about in nurse's dress, the same woman who had just died in John Broad's cottage—and her sister Edith sitting by the fire. The door leading to the passage is ajar, and she is watching…. Or is it the figure in the bed that is watching?—a figure marred by illness and pain? Through the door comes hastily a form—a man. With his entrance, movement and life, like a rush of mountain air, come into the ugly shaded room. He is tall, with a long face, refined and yet violent, instinct with the character and the pride of an old hectoring race. He comes to the bed, kneels down, and the figure there throws itself on his breast. There is a sound of bitter sobbing, of low words— Alice Puttenham's hands dropped from her face—and lay outstretched upon her knee. She sat, staring before her, unconscious of the garden outside, or of the passage of time. In some ways she was possessed of more beauty at thirty-seven than she had been at twenty. And yet from childhood her face had been a winning one—with its childish upper lip and its thin oval, its delicate brunette colour, and the lovely clearness of its brown eyes. In youth its timid sweetness had been constantly touched with laughter. Now it shrank from you and appealed to you in one. But the departure of youth had but emphasized a certain distinction, a certain quality. Laughter was gone, but grace and character remained, imprinted also on the fragile body, the beautiful arms and hands. The only marring of the general impression came from an effect of restlessness and constraint. To live with Alice Puttenham was to conceive her as a creature subtly ill at ease, doing her best with a life which was, in some hidden way, injured at the core. * * * * * She thought herself quite alone this quiet afternoon, and likely to remain so. Hester, who had been lunching with her, had gone shopping into Markborough with the schoolroom maid, and was afterward to meet Sarah and Lulu at a garden party in the Cathedral Close. Lady Fox-Wilton had just left her sister's house after a long, querulous, excited visit, the latest of many during the past week. How could it be her—Alice's—fault, that Judith Sabin had come home in this sudden, mysterious way? Yet the event had reopened all the old wounds in Edith's mind, revived all the old grievances and terrors. Strange that a woman should be capable of one supreme act of help and devotion, and should then spend her whole after life in resenting it! "It was you and your story—that shocking thing we had to do for you—that have spoilt my life—and my husband's. Tom never got over it— and I never shall. And it will all come out—some day—and then what'll be the good of all we've suffered!" That was Edith's attitude—the attitude of a small, vindictive soul. It never varied year by year; it showed itself both in trifles and on great occasions; it hindered all sisterly affection; and it was the explanation of her conduct toward Hester—it had indeed made Hester what she was. Again the same low sound of helpless pain broke from Alice Puttenham's lips. The sense of her unloved, solitary state, of all that she had borne and must still bear, roused in her anew a flame of memory. Torch-like it ran through the past, till she was shaken with anguish and revolt. She had been loved once! It had brought her to what the world calls shame. She only knew, at moments of strong reaction or self-assertion like the present, that she had once had a man at her feet who had been the desired and adored of his day; that she had breathed her heart out in the passion of youth on his breast; that although he had wronged her, he had suffered because of her, had broken his heart for her, and had probably died because circumstances denied him the power to save and restore her, and he was not of the kind that bears patiently either thwarting from without or reproach from within. For his selfish passion, his weakness and his suffering, and her own woman's power to make him suffer; for his death, no less selfish indeed than his passion, for it had taken from her the community of the same air, and the same earth with him, the sense that somewhere in the world his warm life beat with hers, though they might be separated in bodily presence forever—for each and all of these things she had loved him. And there were still times when, in spite of the years that had passed away, and of other and perhaps profounder feelings that had supervened, she felt within her again the wild call of her early love, responding to it like an unhappy child, in vain appeal against her solitude, her sister's unkindness, and the pressure of irrevocable and unforgotten facts. Suddenly, she turned toward a tall and narrow chest of drawers that stood at her left hand. She chose a key from her watch-chain, a small gold key that in their childhood had been generally mistaken by her nieces and nephews for one of the bunch of charms they were allowed to play with on "Aunt Alsie's" lap. With it she unlocked a drawer within her reach. Her hand slipped in; she threw a hasty look round her, at the window, the garden. Not a sound of anything but the evening wind, which had just risen, and was making a smart rustling among the shrubs just outside. Her hand, a white, furtive thing, withdrew itself, and in it lay a packet, wrapped in some faded, green velvet. Hurriedly—with yet more pauses to listen and to look—the wrapping was undone; the case within fell open. It contained a miniature portrait of a man—French work, by an excellent pupil of Meissonier. The detail of it was marvellous; so, in Alice Puttenham's view, was the likeness. She remembered when and how it had been commissioned—the artist, and his bare studio in a street on the island, near Notre Dame; the chestnuts in the Luxembourg garden as they walked home; the dust of the falling blossoms, and the children playing in the alleys. And through it all, what passionate, guilty happiness—what dull sense of things irreparable!—what deliberate shutting out of the future! It was as good a likeness as the Abbey picture, only more literal, less "arranged." The Abbey picture, also by a French artist of another school, was younger, and had a fine, romantic, RenÉ-like charm. "RenÉ" had been her laughing name for him—her handsome, melancholy, eloquent poseur! Like many of his family, he was proud of his French culture, his French accent, and his knowledge of French books. The tradition that came originally from a French marriage had been kept up from father to son. They were not a learned or an industrious race, but their tongue soon caught the accent of the boulevards—of the Paris they loved and frequented. Her hand lifted the miniature the better to catch the slanting light. As she did so she was freshly struck with a resemblance she had long ceased to be conscious of. Familiarity with a living face, as so often happens, had destroyed for her its likeness—likeness in difference—to a face of the dead. But to-night she saw it—was indeed arrested by it. "And yet Richard was never one tenth as good-looking!" The portrait was set in pearls, and at the foot was an inscription in blue enamel— "A ma mie!" But before she could see it she must with her cold, quick fingers remove the fragment of stained paper that lay upon it like a veil. The half of a page of MoliÈre—turned down—like that famous page of Shelley's "Sophocles"—and stained with sea water, as that was stained. She raised the picture to her lips and kissed it—not with passion—but clingingly, as though it represented her only wealth, amid so much poverty. Then her hand, holding it, dropped to her knee again; the other hand came to close over it; and her eyes shut. Tears came slowly through the lashes. Amazing!—that that woman should have come back—and died—within a few hundred yards, and she, Alice, know nothing! In spite of all Richard's persuasions she tortured herself anew with the thought of the interview between Judith and Mr. Barron. What could they have talked about—so long? Judith was always an excitable, hot-tempered creature. Her silence had been heavily and efficiently bought for fifteen years. Then steps had been taken—insisted upon—by Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton. His wife and his sister-in-law had opposed him in vain. And Ralph had after all triumphed in Judith's apparent acquiescence. Supposing she had now come home, perhaps on a sudden impulse, with a view to further blackmail, would not her wisest move be to risk some indiscretion, some partial disclosure, so that her renewed silence afterward might have the higher price? An hour's tete-a-tete with that shrewd, hard-souled man, Henry Barron! Alice Puttenham guessed that her own long-established dislike of him as acquaintance and neighbour was probably returned with interest; that he classed her now as one of "Meynell's lot," and would be only too glad to find himself possessed of any secret information that might, through her, annoy and harass Richard Meynell, her friend and counsellor. Was it conceivable that nothing should have been said in that lengthy interview as to the causes for Judith's coming home?—or of the reasons for her original departure? What else could have accounted for so prolonged a conversation between two persons, so different in social grade, and absolute strangers to each other? Richard had told her, indeed, and she saw from the Post, that at the inquest Barron had apparently accounted for the conversation. "She gave me a curious history of her life in the States. I was interested by her strange personality—and touched by her physical condition." Richard was convinced that there was no reasonable cause for alarm. But And then, for the second time, the rush of feeling rose, welling up, not from the springs of the past, but from the deepest sources of the present. Richard! That little villa on the Cap Martin—the steep pathway to it—and Richard mounting it, with that pale look, those tattered, sea-stained leaves in his hand—and the tragedy that had to be told, in his eyes, and on his lips. Could any other human being have upheld her as he did through that first year—through the years after? Was it not to him that she owed everything that had been recovered from the wreck; the independence and freedom of her daily life; protection from her hard brother-in-law, and from her sister's reproaches; occupation—hope—the gradual healing of intolerable wounds—the gradual awakening of a spiritual being? Thus—after passion—she had known friendship; its tenderness, its disinterested affection and care. Tenderness? Her hand dashed away some more impetuous tears, then locked itself in the other, the tension of the muscles answering to the inward effort for self-control. Thank God, she had never asked him for more; had often seemed indeed to ask him for much less; had made herself irresponsive, difficult, remote. At least she had never lost her dignity in his eyes—(ah! in whose eyes but his had she ever possessed it?)—she had never forfeited—never risked even—her sacred place in his life, as the soul he had helped through dark places, true servant as he was of the Master of Pity. The alarms of the week died away, as this emotion gained upon her. She bethought her of certain central and critical years, when, after long dependence on him as comrade and friend, suddenly, she knew not how, her own pulse had quickened, and the sharpest struggle of her life had come upon her. It was the crisis of the mature woman, as compared with that of the innocent and ignorant girl; and in the silent mastering of it she seemed to have parted with her youth. But she had never parted with self-control and self-respect. She had never persuaded herself that the false was true. She had kept her counsel, and her sanity, and the wage of it had not been denied her. She had emerged more worthy of his friendship, more capable of rewarding it. Yes, but with a clear and sad perception of the necessities laid upon her—of the sacrifices involved. He believed her—she knew it—indifferent to the great cause of religious change and reform which he had at heart. In these matters, indeed, she had quietly, unwaveringly held aloof. There are efforts and endurances that can only be maintained—up to a point. Beyond that point resistance breaks. The life that is fighting emotion must not run too many risks of emotion. At the root of half the religious movements of the world lies the appeal of the preacher and the prophet—to women. Because women are the creatures and channels of feeling; and feeling is to religion as air to life. But she—must starve feeling—not feed and cherish it. Richard's voice was too powerful with her already. To hear it dealing with the most intimate and touching things of the soul would have tested the resistance of her will too sorely. Courage and honour alike told her that she would be defeated and undone did she attempt to meet and follow him—openly—in the paths of religion. Entbehren sollst du—sollst entbehren! So, long before this date, she had chosen her line of action. She took no part in the movement, and she rarely set foot in the village church, which was close to her gates. Meynell sadly believed her unshakeable—one of the natural agnostics or pessimists of the world who cannot be comforted through religion. And meanwhile secretly, ardently, she tracked all the footsteps of his thoughts, reading what he read, thinking as far as possible what he thought, and revealing nothing. Except that, lately, she had been indiscreet sometimes in talk with Mary Elsmere. Mary had divined her—had expressed her astonishment that her friend should declare herself and her sympathies so little; and Alice had set up some sort of halting explanation. But in this nascent friendship it was not Mary alone who had made discoveries…. * * * * * Alice Puttenham sat very still, in the quiet shadowy room, her eyes closed, her hands crossed over the miniature, the Markborough paper lying on the floor beside her. As the first activity of memory, stirred and goaded by an untoward event, lost its poignancy; as she tried in obedience to Meynell to put away her terrors, with regard to the past, her thoughts converged ever more intensely on the present—on herself— and Mary…. There was in the world, indeed, another personality rarely or never absent from Alice Puttenham's consciousness. One face, one problem, more or less acutely realized, haunted her life continuously. But this afternoon they had, for the moment, receded into the background. Hester had been, surely, more reasonable, more affectionate lately. Philip Meryon had now left Sandford; a statement to that effect had appeared in the Post; and Hester had even shown some kindness to poor Stephen. She had at last declared her willingness to go to Paris, and the arrangements were all made. The crisis in her of angry revolt, provoked apparently by the refusal of her guardian to allow her engagement to Stephen, seemed to be over. So that for once Alice Puttenham was free to think and feel for her own life and what concerned it. From the events connected with Judith Sabin's death—through the long history of Meynell's goodness to her—the mind of this lonely woman travelled on, to be filled and arrested by the great new fact of the present. She had made a new friend. And at the same moment she had found in her—at last—the rival with whom her own knowledge of life had threatened her these many years. A rival so sweet—so unwitting! Alice had read her. She had scarcely yet read herself. Alice opened her eyes—to the quiet room, and the windy sky outside. She was very pale, but there were no tears. "It is not renouncing"—she whispered to herself—"for I never possessed. It is accepting—loving—giving—all one has to give." And vaguely there ran through her mind immortal words—"good measure—pressed down, and running over." A smile trembled on her lip. She closed her eyes again, lost in one of those spiritual passions accessible only to those who know the play and heat of the spiritual war. The wind was blowing briskly outside, and from the wood-shed in the back garden came a sound of sawing. Miss Puttenham did not hear a footstep approaching on the grass outside. * * * * * Hester paused at the window—smiling. There was wildness—triumph—in her look, as though for her this quiet afternoon had seen some undisclosed adventure. Her cheek was hotly flushed, her loosened hair made a glory in the evening sun. Youth, selfishly pitiless—youth, the supplanter and destroyer—stood embodied in the beautiful creature looking down upon Alice Puttenham, on the still intensity of the plaintive face, the closed eyes, the hands holding the miniature. Mischievously the girl came closer. She took the stillness before her for sleep. "Auntie! Aunt Alsie!" With a start, Alice Puttenham sprang up. The miniature dropped from her hands to the floor, opening as it fell. Hester looked at it astonished—and her hand stooped for it before Miss Puttenham had perceived her loss. "Were you asleep, Aunt Alsie?" she asked, wondering. "I got tired of that stupid party—and I—well, I just slipped away"—the clear high voice had grown conscious—"and I looked in here, because I left a book behind me—Auntie, who is it?" She bent eagerly over the miniature, trying to see it in the dim light. Miss Puttenham's face had faded to a gray-white. "Give it to me, Hester!" She held out her hand imperiously. "Mayn't I know even who it is?" asked Hester, as she unwillingly returned it. In the act she caught the inscription and her face kindled. Impetuously throwing herself down beside Miss Puttenham, the girl looked up at her with an expression half mockery, half sweetness, while Alice, with unsteady fingers, replaced the case and locked the drawer. "What an awfully handsome fellow!" said Hester in a low voice, "though you wouldn't let me see it properly. I say, Auntie, won't you tell me—?" "Tell you what?" "Who he was—and why I never saw it before? I thought I knew all your things by heart—and now you've been keeping something from me!" The girl's tone had changed to one of curious resentment. "You know how you scold me when you think I've got a secret." "That is quite different, Hester." Miss Puttenham tried to rise, but Hester, who was leaning against her knee, prevented it. "Why is it different?" she said, audaciously. "You always say you—you—want to be everything to me—and then you hide things from me—and I—" She raised herself, sitting upright on the floor, her hands round her knees, and spoke with extraordinary animation and sparkling eyes. "Why, I should have loved you twice as much, Aunt Alice—and you know I do love you!—if you'd told me more about yourself. The people I care about are the people who live—and feel—and do things! There's verse in one of your books"—she pointed to a little bookshelf of poets on a table near—"I always think of it when mamma reads the 'Christian Year' to us on Sunday evenings— Out of dangers, dreams, disasters We arise, to be your masters!" "We—the people who want to know, and feel, and fight! We who loathe all the humdrum bourgeois talk—'don't do this—don't do that!' Aunt Alsie, there's a German line, too, you know it—' Was uns alle bÄndigt, das Gemeine'—don't you hate it too—das Gemeine?" the word came with vehemence through the white teeth. "And how can we escape it—we women—except through freedom—through asserting ourselves—through love, of course? It all comes to love!—love that mamma says one ought not to talk about. I wouldn't talk about it, if it only meant what it means to Sarah and Lulu—I'd scorn to!" She stopped—and looked with her blazing and wonderful eyes at her companion—her lips parted. Then she suddenly stooped and kissed the cold hand trying to withdraw itself from hers. "Who was he, dear?"—she laid the hand caressingly against her cheek—"I'm good at secrets!" Alice Puttenham wrenched herself free, and rose tottering to her feet. "He is dead, Hester—and you mustn't speak of it to me—or any one—again." She leant against the mantelpiece trying to recover herself—but in vain. "I'm rather faint," she said at last, putting out a groping hand. "No, don't come!—I'm all right—I'll go upstairs and rest. I got overtired this morning." And she went feebly toward the door. Hester looked after her, panting and wounded. Aunt Alsie repel—refuse her!—Aunt Alsie!—who had always been her special possession and chattel. It had been taken for granted in the family, year after year, that if no one else was devoted to Hester, Aunt Alsie's devotion, at least, never failed. Hester's clothes were Miss Puttenham's special care; it was for Hester that she stitched and embroidered. Hester was to inherit her jewels and her money. In all Hester's scrapes it was Aunt Alice who stood by her, who had often carried her off bodily out of reach of the family anger, to the Lakes, to the sea—once even, to Italy. And from her childhood Hester had coolly taken it all for granted, had never been specially grateful, or much more amenable to counsels from Aunt Alice than from anybody else. The slender, graceful woman, so gentle, plaintive and reserved, so easily tyrannized over, had never seemed to mean much to her. Yet now, as she stood looking at the door through which Miss Puttenham had disappeared, the girl was conscious of a profound and passionate sense of grievance, and of something deeper, beneath it. The sensation that held her was new and unbearable. |
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