CHAPTER XVI

Sir Arthur came down the shallow oaken stairs, after his necessarily exiguous toilet, a prey to distinct dudgeon. He had been whirled away upon this expedition by the impetuosity of Lady Aspasia, somewhat against his will in the first place. That he, Sir Arthur Gerardine, should have to come in quest of his wife, instead of the latter obediently hieing her at his summons, was a breach of the world's decorum as he understood it personally. That his wife should have a headache and have partaken of phenacetin coincidently upon his arrival; that she should evidently (and by a thousand tokens the unwelcome fact was forced upon him) be still in her uncomfortable hyper?sthetic neurasthenic state of health was a want of consideration for his feelings of which no dutiful spouse should have been guilty; and, moreover, this condition of things was woefully destructive of all comfort in the connubial state. He positively dared not insist upon seeing her at once. Absurd as the situation was, he must await her pleasure; for, with Lady Aspasia present, the danger of fainting fits or hysterics could not be risked. Not that he wanted to blame Rosamond unduly, poor thing; but it really was not what he had a right to expect.

These natural feelings of displeasure were heightened by the trifling deprivations caused by his stranded condition. He could not feel his usual superb and superior self coming down to dinner in a serge suit, his feet in heavy outdoor shoes. Then, the poor surroundings, the very feeling of the noisy oak boards instead of a pile carpet under these same objectionable soles, offended him at every step. He was ashamed that Lady Aspasia should find such a "pokey" place. It was by no means a fit habitation for the wife of Sir Arthur Gerardine.

He had hurried down before the others, impelled by his restless spirit. The hall was empty. He took a bustling survey. How faded was the strip of Turkey carpet! God bless his soul, how worm-eaten were those square oak chests, presses, and cupboards, and how clumsy—only fit for a cottage! And that portrait, just under the lamp—poor English, he supposed? A regular daub, anyhow; why, he could see the brush marks! He wondered Rosamond could have it up.

He opened a door on the right and peeped in. All was dark within. He was assailed by an odour of tobacco smoke, and sniffed with increasing discontent. This visit of Bethune's, now, which had prevented Rosamond from hurrying to his side, was there not something irregular, not to say ... well, fishy about the situation? It was odd, now he came to think of it, that Rosamond should never have mentioned the identity of her guest in any of her numerous telegrams, in spite of his repeated questions. He himself, in the midst of his important social, he might almost say political engagements (since a member of the Cabinet had been included in the recent house-party at Melbury Towers), had not had leisure to examine into it more closely hitherto. But now he flushed to the roots of the silvering hair, that still curled luxuriantly round his handsome head, as he recalled Lady Aspasia Melbury's loud laugh and meaning cry when Baby had performed the necessary introduction upon their recent arrival: "So you're the excuse!" ... A mere Major of Guides! A fellow he had never really liked, after all!

Sir Arthur turned on his heel. In thought, he was already rapidly ascending the stairs, on a voyage of discovery to Rosamond's room. Nerves or no nerves, there are matters that require immediate attention. It was intolerable to think that Lady Gerardine, that his wife, should be guilty of the unpardonable lapse of placing herself—however unwittingly, of course—into a false position. It never even dawned upon him—to do him justice—to suspect her of any deeper offence.

As he paused, inflating his chest on the breath of his wrath, some one, with a quick, clean tread, came running along an outer passage, and flung open the swing door that led into the hall—flung it back with the shove of a broad shoulder.

Sir Arthur turned again, and had a moment of amazement before his fluttered wits remembered the existence of his own particular secretary.

Muhammed Saif-u-din stood filling up the doorway. His red turban nearly touching the lintel, a crusty bottle in either hand, he was staring at Sir Arthur, to the full as intently as Sir Arthur stared at him.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" then cried, testily, the mighty historian of the Northern Provinces. "What the devil is the man doing with the wine," thought he, flaming inwardly, "when he ought to be busy on—on my book?" In his mind's eye Sir Arthur never beheld Muhammed but toiling with pen and ink upon the great work. "Well," he went on aloud, "I hope you've got a lot to show me!"

"Excuse, your Excellency," said Muhammed. He drew himself together with a little effort, stepped across to the open dining-room door, and laid down his burden. Sir Arthur followed him, hot on the scent of the new grievance. Upon his word, everybody was off his head! Mohammed's manner, his secretary's manner, was downright cool—cool!

"I don't think I engaged you for this sort of business, Muhammed," said he.

Muhammed, with the point of a corkscrew just applied to the first bottle, paused and looked reflectively at the speaker. Then the points of his upturned moustaches quivered. He laid down bottle and corkscrew and made a profound salaam.

"Excuse, Excellency," he said again. His fine bronzed countenance was subtly afire with some spirit of mocking irony. "There was a fear that your Excellency should be ill served in this poor house!"

Well, well, this was laudable, of course! Yes, even the babu felt that here was no fit entertainment for a Lieutenant-Governor. But nevertheless, intangibly, Sir Arthur found something disquieting in that smile, in the dark eye that fixed him. Vaguely a sense as of something mysterious and relentless came upon him. "You never know where to have them," he thought to himself.

In the pomp of his own palace, surrounded by scores of servitors of his own magnificence, he had not given a thought, hitherto, to the possibility of treachery from the Indian subject. There he felt himself too great a man to be touched; but here, in this desolate house on the downs! ... A small cold trickle ran down his spine. It was queer that the creature should have been so eager to come to England! ... But the next instant the natural man asserted himself. Sir Arthur would certainly have been no coward even in actual danger; he was far too sure of himself to entertain idle fears.

"I shall see you to-morrow," he said imperiously, and left the room.

A whirlwind of silks upon the stairs heralded Aspasia. She caught her uncle by the arm and dragged him into the drawing-room.

"Pray, pray, my dear Aspasia; you are really too impetuous!" cried he, disengaging himself testily. The familiarity which in India had added a piquancy to his sense of importance was here a want of tact. "The country has not improved your manners, my dear," he went on, taking up his place on the hearthrug and sweeping the room with contemptuous gaze. "It's high time to get you out of this."

Miss Aspasia's ready lips had already parted upon a smart retort when the sound of Lady Aspasia's voice, uplifted from without, prevented the imminent skirmish. Her ladyship was evidently addressing Dr. Chatelard, for those strident tones were conveying, in highly British accents, words of what she supposed to be French:

"Dr?le petit trou, pensez-vous pas?"

"Ah, but extremely interesting," responded the globe trotteur, in his precise English. He always obstinately answered in English Lady Aspasia's less perfect but equally obstinate French.

The two entered together, she towering over him, as might a frigate over a sloop.

Lady Aspasia Melbury was a handsome woman of the "horsey" type. A favourite, even in royal circles, her praise ran in men's mouths expressively as "a real good sort." A woman kind to others, with the ease afforded her by splendid health, unlimited means, and an assured position. Modern to the very last minute, frank beyond the point of offence, she might be cited as one of those rare beings to whom life is almost an absolute success; the more safely, perhaps, because most of her ideals (if ideals they could be called) were of the most practical description. Yet life had failed Lady Aspasia upon one point—she had had one unsatisfied desire; her youth had held a brief romance, interrupted by a mariage de raison; and when her millionaire had left her free, she had looked, with the confidence of her nature, to the instant renewal of the broken idyll. But here it was that fate had played its single scurvy trick upon the woman.

Arthur Gerardine, the once handsome, penniless lad, the now still handsome, distinguished man, who had remained bachelor all these years (she had fondly hoped for her sake), had married—a year after her own widowhood—married, not the ready Lady Aspasia, but a poor unknown widow out in India. Lady Aspasia's solitary unrealised ideal, then, was Sir Arthur Gerardine. In what strange nests will not some ideals perch! And unattainable it seemed likely to remain.

As she now stood, her large, bold eyes roaming quizzically round the faded room—which seemed to hold her ultra-modern presence with amazement, to echo her loud laugh with a kind of protest, like a simple dame of olden times raising mittened hands of rebuke—no one would have guessed that she was inwardly eaten with impatience to behold her rival, to know at last the creature who had supplanted her.

"It is, indeed, a poor little place," said Sir Arthur, bustling forward to advance a chair. "I had no idea it was such a tumble-down old house. We must get rid of it as soon as possible."

"Ah, but pardon!" interposed Dr. Chatelard. "It is old if you will, Sir Gerardine, but thereby it is rich. Nowhere else have I so felt the unpurchasable riches of past time. I am charmed to have come here. After your gorgeous Melbury, the piquancy of this antique abode of gentility is to me delicious!"

"Ah, well," said Sir Arthur, magnificently, "I don't say it has not got a sort of picturesqueness and all that, but it's not what we are accustomed to in England, you know. Comfort, Chatelard, the land of comfort, we say. You don't know what it is in your country. But in the good old days—people did not understand it either, here, you see. Look at that chair, now. As hard as nails, eh, Lady Aspasia? I dare say a collector or somebody might like it. What do you say—Chippendale, eh? Elizabethan? Well, it's all the same thing. It's not my sort, anyhow. I shall sell it all, bag and baggage."

"Sell the Old Ancient House!" interrupted the younger Aspasia, hotly. The aggravation her uncle had ever the talent of awakening in her was now in full force. "I think you'll find there will have to be two words to that, dear Runkle. Aunt Rosamond's devoted to it."

Sir Arthur inflated his chest.

"My dear Raspasia!" ...

There was concentrated acrimony in his accents. The elder lady scented storm, and storm was not the atmosphere she liked.

"I declare, Arty," she said, "you made me jump. I thought those stern tones were directed to me. There are two Aspasias here—Docteur Chatelard—elle est ma—namesake—appellée après moi, ou comment vous dites! Come here, namesake, and let's have a look at you."

Aspasia fell on her knees beside the imposing tailor-made figure, and raised her pretty, pert face—pinker than usual, with a variety of emotions—for inspection. M. Chatelard put up his eyeglass to look down benevolently upon her. The English Miss had yet scarcely come under his microscope; but he quite saw that she would be a fascinating study. He now thought the contrast between the two Aspasias somewhat cruel. "Fra?che comme une rose, la petite. Ronde comme une caille, mutine comine la fauvette—Mais l'autre—oh lala, quelle carcasse!"

The fine lines of Lady Aspasia's anatomy—not inharmonious, but over-prominent, it must be owned, from the hardening effects of a too great devotion to sport—appealed not at all to the temperament of the French critic.

"I don't know what you think of your godparents," Miss Aspasia was remarking, with the gusto of a well-established grievance, "but I know what I think ought to be done to mine for giving me such an i-di-o-tic name."

She rolled her eyes meaningly towards Sir Arthur. Lady Aspasia pinched the tilted chin not unkindly, while her loud laugh rang out.

"And you won't ever be able to change it, either, that's the worst of it," she cried. "Thank your stars, anyhow, it can't brand you all your life, as it does me, like an ugly handle to a fine jug—aha! By the way, Arty, you'll have to do something to help this poor child to change the Cuningham, anyhow. She won't do it down here."

"I don't want to change that at all," cried Baby. Her quick ear had caught the sound of Bethune's tread on the threshold. She jerked her chin from Lady Aspasia's fingers and jumped to her feet. "I've never seen any one whose name I thought better worth having than Cuningham yet."

In her young pride she unconsciously flung an angry glance upon the newcomer for appearing at just the wrong moment—a glance which Lady Aspasia caught, and from which she immediately drew conclusions.

These conclusions tallied to a nicety with some others that Lady Aspasia, not without a certain satisfaction, had been forming of late regarding the Gerardine ménage.

Lady Gerardine had shown an unmistakable disinclination to join her husband after a long absence; she had suddenly ceased corresponding with him except by telegram; and in these telegrams the name of the visitor whose presence was offered as excuse had been unaccountably omitted.

"Poor child," cried the woman of fashion, with her crow of laughter and the brutal outspokenness of her circle; "she's about tired of playing chaperon here! Never mind, my dear, your time will come by-and-by. 'Nous avons changé tout cela,' as M. Chatelard would say; and a jolly good thing, too. We are only proper in our teens, and after that we can have a high old time till we are eighty. C'est ce que nous appellons un score, M. Chatelard."

"I think, Lady Melbury," said M. Chatelard, suavely, "that I should prefer to watch the high young time."

But, as he spoke, his eye was on Sir Arthur; and from thence it went with eager curiosity to Bethune. He was rubbing mental hands of glee. What stroke of superlative fortune had landed him in the very middle, in the great act, he felt sure, of that drama, the beginning of which he had noted with such interest in far-off India? The poor, good, trusting Sir Gerardine, who had ordered his wife to fall in with her lover's scheme, with such touching—such imbecile—confidence! Ah, but he was beginning to suspect; he had winced even now at the words of yonder impossible female. And that other? Why, it was clear that the Major had encompassed his design—but up to what point? That relentless, impenetrable mask was as hard to decipher as ever. It could not be said that he looked like the fortunate lover, but neither did he look like one who would spare or give way. "It is a nature of granite," thought the Frenchman, as he watched Bethune's deliberate movements about the room. "Successful or still plotting, the advent of the husband at this moment—what a situation! And yet, behold the lover; immovable, implacable. It will be tragic!"

"She's tired of acting chaperon." Sir Arthur let the words pass because they were spoken by Lady Aspasia. But they had pierced right through his armour of self-satisfaction and self-security. The new grievance became again unpleasantly active.

Rosamond had indubitably been incredibly, reprehensibly foolish. No one had a right so to neglect the ordinary conventions. He would have to speak to her very seriously, by-and-by.

"What can your aunt be about, my dear Aspasia?" cried he, impatiently. "I think I must really go up and bring her down, if you will just direct me to her room."

That he should have to ask to be directed to his wife's room; that, having been a couple of hours in the same house, they should not yet have met—it was preposterous, intolerable, it was most inconsiderate of Rosamond! It was an abuse of his chivalrous solicitude for her!

"Oh, I'll run up!" cried Baby, anxiously.

"Here is Lady Gerardine herself," said Major Bethune's calm voice. He stepped to the door and opened it.