CHAPTER XV

Three times since that first fruitless summons to lunch had Aspasia come to the door of the attic. Twice, with the engaging practicality of her nature, she had carried up a little tray. She would fain minister to a mind diseased, with soup or with tea, knowing no better medicine. Each time, however, her gentle knocking, her coaxing representations through the keyhole, had produced not the least response. But the girl's ear had caught the rustling of papers within; and, satisfied that there was nothing worse than one of her aunt's moods to account for the persistently closed door and the silence, she had withdrawn with her offering, more irritated, perhaps, than anxious.

Now, however, as she knocked and rattled at the handle and implored admittance, there was a double pressure of anxiety upon her; the demands of unexpected events without, and a new, deathlike stillness within.

"Oh, dear," cried Baby, "what shall I do, what shall I do!"

She thought of summoning Major Bethune to her aid; but shrank, with the repugnance of some unformed womanly reticence.

"I must get in," she said to herself, desperately; and flung all her young vigour against the door. To her joy, the socket of the bolt yielded with unexpected ease. She fell almost headlong into the room, and then stood aghast. There lay Lady Gerardine, prone on the floor, among the strewn papers, the flickering candle by her side.

For a second the girl's heart stopped beating. The next moment she could have cried aloud with joy. Rosamond had not even fainted; but, as she raised herself and Baby saw the face that was turned to her, the girl realised that here was hardly an occasion for thanksgiving; and her own lips, trembling upon a tremendous announcement, were struck silent.

"Oh, my poor darling!" cried she, catching the stricken woman in her arms, "what is it?"

With a moan, as of physical pain, Rosamond's head dropped on her niece's shoulder.

"You're cold, you're worn out," said the girl. "Those dreadful letters, and this place like an ice-house! Aunt Rosamond, darling——" She chafed the cold hands vigorously as she spoke. "You must be starved, too. Oh, and I don't know how to tell you! Let me bring you down to your own room—there's tea waiting for you, and such a fire! Aunt Rosamond, you must rouse yourself. Here, I'll put these papers by."

The one thing that could stir Rosamond from her torpor of misery was this.

"Don't touch them," she said. Her toneless voice seemed to come from depths far distant. She laid her wasted hands over the scattered sheets, drawing them together to her bosom; and then, on her knees, fell again into the former state of oblivion of all but her absorbing pain.

Frenzied with impatience and the urgency for action, Baby now blurted out the news which the sight of Lady Gerardine's drawn countenance caused her to withhold:

"Runkle's come!"

The woman kneeling half turned her head. A change passed over her rigid countenance.

"Yes; Runkle's here," went on Baby, ruthlessly, raising her voice as if speaking to the deaf. "Uncle Arthur is here; he has come over in a motor—a party of them. Aunt Rosamond, your husband is here."

A long shudder shook the kneeling figure. It was as if life returned to its work; and, returning, trembled in nausea from the task before it. A deep sullen colour began to creep into Lady Gerardine's white cheek. She bent over the gaping box and dropped into it her armful of papers. Then she looked over her shoulder at Aspasia, and drew down the lid.

"My husband! ... My husband is dead," she said.

The girl's blood ran cold. Had the hidden terror taken shape at last? The words were mad enough; yet it was the fierce light in Rosamond's eyes that seemed most to signal danger.

But Aspasia was not timid, and she was not imaginative. And Lady Gerardine's next action, the cry which escaped her lips, at once pierced to every tender helpful instinct of the girl's heart, and banished the paralysing fear.

"Oh, Baby," cried she, springing to her feet and stretching out her arms in hopeless appeal, "what have I done? What is to become of me?"

Once more Baby's arms were about her. Baby, great in the emergency, was pouring forth consolation, expostulation, counsel.

"Look here, Aunt Rosamond; it's really only for a little while; you'll have to show, you know, but they can't stay. Their blessed motor broke down, or something, and they ought to have been here hours ago. Now they can only stop for a cup of tea, if they are to get back to-night. You must just pull yourself together for half an hour—just half an hour, Aunt Rosamond! Leave me to manage. All you've got to do is to smile a bit, and let Runkle do the talking. They want us all to go to Melbury Towers to-morrow, Major Bethune and everybody. That's what they've come over for."

Lady Gerardine put the girl from her roughly.

"I'm not going there," she said.

"Of course not," said wise Baby, soothing. "But we must put him off somehow. To-morrow you can be ill or something. Do, Aunt Rosamond, darling, be sensible. Don't make things harder. For Heaven's sake don't let us have a row—that would be worse than anything! I know you're not well enough to stand poor old Runkle just now; it's your dear nerves. But just for half an hour—for the sake of being free of him. Oh, Aunt, you used to be so patient! Come, they'll be in upon us in one minute. Luckily they've all been busy over that machine, pulling its inside to pieces. Come to your room, now, and have your tea and tidy a bit. And I'll keep them at bay, till you are ready."

She half dragged, half led Lady Gerardine to the warm shelter of her own room. She stood over her till the prescribed tea had been taken; then, hearing the Old Ancient House echo to the footsteps of its unexpected visitors, she announced her intention of running to look after them.

"I've told Runkle already that you've a beastly headache," she cried, with her cheerful mendacity. "I won't let him up here, never fear; but I'll come and fetch you down, when I've started them on Mary's scones. If you just do your hair a bit—Lord, there goes six o'clock, they can't stay long, that's one blessing!"

Left to herself, with the stimulating comfort of the tea doing its work upon her weary frame, Lady Gerardine viewed her position with some return to calmness. This odious burden that she had laid upon herself, she must lift it awhile once more; and it should be for the last time. She who for years had played the hypocrite placidly would play it now again though the tempest raged within her. For the future she must have time. Before she could act, she must think. For this present sordid moment—the child was right—there must be no scandal; above all not here, in this sacred house of his, where even she, unworthy, had recognised the presence of the dead.

She sat down before the mirror and shook her long hair loose.

The sound of voices, of laughter, rose confusedly from the drawing-room below. She set her teeth as the well-known note of Sir Arthur's insistent bass distinguished itself from the others. How had she endured it for five years?

Doors were slammed, and then, the light thud of Baby's footsteps scurrying hither and thither like a rabbit; her calls in the passage brought a vague smile to Lady Gerardine's lips.

Up to a certain point only is the human organisation capable of pain. After that comes the respite of numbness. Rosamond was numbed now. Mind and heart alike refused to face the point of agony; only the most trivial thoughts could occupy her brain. Idly she pulled the comb through the warm gold of her hair; idly she weighed which would be the least effort to her weary limbs, that of twisting up those tresses herself or rising to ring the bell for Jani.

Presently her eyes wandered to the portrait that hung just over her dressing-table. She shifted both candlesticks to one side to throw their light full upon it.

Baby came in as upon the wings of a gust of wind.

"The most dreadful thing," she panted, in a flurried whisper; arrested herself in her canter across the room, and plunged back to shut the open door; "my poor, poor darling: they're going to stay the night!"

Lady Gerardine flung apart the girl's arms as if the embrace strangled her. Their eyes met in the mirror. Then the woman shot a glauce round the room, a glance so desperate that the other, child as she was, could not but understand.

"Oh, you're safe—safe for the moment anyhow," she blurted out; "I've been lying like Old Nick. I said you'd just taken a phenacetin, and that if you were disturbed now you wouldn't be fit to lift your head all the evening. But you'll have to come down to dinner; you can get bad again afterwards, can't you? Runkle's quite injured already. He's been having such a jolly time lately; he thinks it harder than ever on him that you should still be ill. And Lady Aspasia——"

"Lady Aspasia," repeated the other, mechanically.

"Yes, that abominable woman with the ridiculous name, she's there! And Dr. Chatelard; you remember, the pudgy Frenchman? We've got to house them all somewhere, and to feed them. It's desperate——"

Aspasia checked her speech; for Lady Gerardine had risen from her chair with an abrupt movement and stood staring blankly into the mirror.

Poor Aspasia had had sufficient experience already of her aunt's moods, but this singular attitude affected the girl in so unpleasant a fashion that she felt as if she ought to shake the staring woman, pinch her, shout at her, do anything to call her out of this deadly torpor!

"Aunt Rosamond," she cried, raising her voice sharply in the hope of catching the wandering attention, "I've told Sarah about the rooms, and ordered fires to be lit; and I've seen Mary about the dinner. The poor Old Ancient House, Runkle's crabbing it already like anything! But we'll show them it can be hospitable, won't we?"

"Yes," said Rosamond, "yes." The hectic colour deepened on her cheek. The widened unseeing pupil contracted with a flash of answering light. "Baby, you're a good child. It shall give the right hospitality—his house."

Aspasia drew a deep sigh of relief.

"Mary thinks she can have dinner in an hour," she said. "Oh Lord, what a piece of business! And—and you'll come down, won't you?"

She rubbed her coaxing cheek against her aunt's shoulder.

"Yes. I'll come down."

"I'll dress you," said Baby, her light heart rising buoyantly under what seemed such clearing skies. She nodded. "Oh, dear, I've such a desperate lot of things to do! There's the wine." She slapped her forehead. "I'd forgotten the wine." And the door closed violently behind her tempestuous petticoat. As a companion to a neurasthenic patient Miss Cuningham no doubt had her weak points.

*      *      *      *      *

Rosamond sank slowly back in her chair; her hand fell inertly before her.

When the girl returned after an hour's exceeding activity the elder woman's attitude had not altered by a fraction. But the exigency of time and social requirements left Aspasia no leisure now to linger over doubts and fears. Her own cheeks were pink from rapid ablutions; her crisp hair stood out more vigorously than ever after determined manipulation. She pealed a bell for Jani, and fell herself upon the golden mass covering Lady Gerardine's shoulders, her chattering tongue in full swing:

"Of course, the poor wretches are in their motor garments. (You never saw anything like Runkle in a pony skin and goggles. He's more motist than the chauffeur.) So I've only just stuck on a blouse, you see. But I've determined you shall be beautiful in a tea-gown. Lord, I'd no idea Lady Aspasia was so tremendous! I want you simply to be beautiful!"

Deft hands twisted and coiled.

"It was Runkle, you know, who broke the motor: he insisted on driving and jammed them sideways in a gate. He's awfully pleased with himself. It's Lady Aspasia's motor. She calls Runkle, Arty: what do you think of that? Ah, here's Jani. Which shall it be—the white and gold? I love the white and gold, Aunt Rosamond."

"Black—black," said Rosamond.