CHAPTER XIX

Lady Aspasia and M. Chatelard were seated one on each side of the fireplace, fairly monopolising the benefits of the situation. Although the thought of Sir Arthur, upstairs with his young wife—no doubt coaxing the insolent beauty into a better temper—was no very agreeable one to her, Lady Aspasia, with the good-humoured, material philosophy of her kind, made the best of what fate left her. She toasted her well-formed, well-shod foot at the blaze; found that the old-fashioned winged armchair (with the help of a cushion) was as comfortable as any modern copy if not more so, and that M. Chatelard was undoubtedly an entertaining companion. He had seen curious things on his travels, and he could tell of them with a French spice. By a series of jerks the two drew ever closer together; finally blocking the hearth. Their voices were lowered by imperceptible degrees; their heads inclined towards each other. Lady Aspasia's laugh rang loud and often; and presently, by a tacit agreement in which the conversation gained enormously, each relapsed into the native tongue.

"Upon my word," said Lady Aspasia to herself; "I'll send in his name for my royal party."

M. Chatelard, pouring forth a whispered flow of language, with a pause on the delicate point, and a quiet chuckle after the ready listener had had time to seize it and ring her hearty, unreserved tribute of appreciation, was privately making little notes for future publication, with all the traveller's joy of discovery. "Et il y en a encore qui croient que les Anglaises sont guindées! Un esprit tout Rabelaisien—cette dame! Allons, l'age Victorien est bien mort et enterré!"

Miss Aspasia, who some time back had been told, with a flap of Lady Aspasia's hand, "not to listen, little girl," sat, highly disapproving, at the further end of the room. Bethune, whose existence the great lady now elected to ignore, had taken a chair at a little distance from the girl. A monosyllabic conversation began between them and dropped. He asked her for some music, and she tartly refused with a reproachful look. She wondered at him. Did he not know her aunt's head was bad? He didn't know? Well, he might have seen that she was ill! To this he made no answer, and thereafter they spoke no more. The man had a talent for taciturnity, but the effort of Baby's silence seemed to bristle. She sat very erect. Her mouth pursed, her nostrils dilated, her eyes widely opened, her arched eyebrows more arched than ever. The tittering, the whispering, the laughter, the meaning wriggles of the two backs as they leant towards each other before the hearth, irritated her beyond endurance.

"M. Chatelard," she suddenly cried, in fluent French, with her enfant terrible directness, "do tell me—I don't want to be rude; but why do you cut your hair so close to your head? Isn't it very cold this weather?"

"Alas, Mademoiselle," said he, turning round; his alertness of courtesy was ingrain; "I do not dare to show to the world that my head is quite white."

"You think it looks better pink?" said Baby, innocently.

"Pink!" said M. Chatelard, a little disconcerted, passing his hand over his cropped pate. "Is it possible?" Then, sparkling: "Pink? I had no idea that Lady Melbury had so made me blush!"

"Oh, blush!" cried Lady Aspasia, her momentary displeasure with the pert schoolgirl lost in a yell of delight at M. Chatelard's readiness; "It's well that my blushing days are over!"

"Oh, Milady!" And they put their heads together again.

Young Aspasia pinched in her rosy lips so tight that they made the most absurd button of a mouth ever seen. Bethune, who had listened with immovable gravity to this sally, betraying indeed no sign of having heard it, save for the rolling of an icy eye towards M. Chatelard, now let his glance rest upon her. The hard muscles of his face began to soften.

He had been slowly making up his mind during the whole of the evening, and now he had decided. He would leave the manor-house on the morrow, and cut himself once and for ever apart from its inmates. But, the devil was in it that, in the midst of the most intolerable mental trouble he had ever endured, he should have once and again this absurd unreasonable feeling that if he were to carry away with him this pretty Aspasia, this fluffy, pouting, pert, bird-like thing, it would be sweet! Something like the blessedness of a peep of blue in a sky of lurid clouds, a ray of sunshine across a barren moor, a snowdrop in bleak winter. The feeling had no sense in it. He was a prey to as strong a passion as ever possessed a man; and he not only despised himself, hated himself for his passion, but was conscious that by the object of it he was held a thing of scorn. More than this, she, who thus in spite of reason filled his thoughts, was suffering, and he could not lift a finger to help her. The whole source of her suffering was only vaguely understood by him; but he knew that her husband's presence had nearly driven her to desperation. It was acute torture to him now to think of Sir Arthur in his wife's room; and yet ... haunted by these unworthy degrading thoughts of one who should have been twice sacred to him, he found himself longing to take Aspasia to his breast—bright-eyed Aspasia, pecking, twittering, fluttering like an angry dove, withal so soft, so warm, so true! His inconsequent heart seemed to cry out for the comfort of her.

Sir Arthur opened the door and looked in.

"Pray, pray," said he, inserting an arm, after his head, to wave back the confidential couple who with a great scraping of chairs had risen to their feet, "do not let me disturb any one. I am only looking for Aspasia."

"Oh Lord!" said Aspasia, under her voice, alarm springing to her eyes. "I'm here, Runkle."

"Can you spare me a few minutes' private conversation, my dear Aspasia?"

His tone was very solemn. He was conscious of the hush that had fallen upon the room, conscious of the perturbed looks that were fixed upon him, conscious of his own countenance of trouble. But it was not without a gloomy self-approval that, given circumstances the most woeful that could perhaps be imagined, he realised there were few who could negotiate them like himself.

Aspasia went reluctantly to her uncle's summons. Her heart was heavy with anxiety concerning Rosamond. In her constitutional distrust of whatever course of action Sir Arthur might take it into his head to adopt, she had an oppressive sensation that most of the responsibility of affairs rested upon her own young shoulders.

"Lord," thought the girl to herself, as her lagging feet took her across the drawing-room; "if one could only just shut up Runkle in a box for six months, there might be some hope of things settling down."

Sir Arthur beckoned her towards the little study, where, through the half-opened door, a ruddy light showed that the room had now been made ready for the smokers. His air of portentous gloom so exasperated Baby that she had to relieve her feelings by childish kicks at the mats in the hall as she passed.

"I presume that we shall be undisturbed here for the present," said Sir Arthur. He pushed open the door and started back with an irritated exclamation: "Confound that fellow, he's like a night moth!"

Between the fire and the lamplight, Muhammed Saif-u-din stood facing them. It seemed as if he had been pacing the little space, and had wheeled round at the sound of their approach. Baby's heart gave a wild throb, and then stood still. The Indian had certainly been very restless all the evening. Sir Arthur Gerardine's arrival seemed to have excited him in a singular manner, and there could be no mistaking now the straight, vindictive look that the secretary fixed upon his master. She was minded of a splendid black panther she had seen at an Indian village fair, not so very long ago.—The beast had been padding the narrow limits of its cage backwards and forwards until she had drawn close to admire it, when it had stopped and fixed her with its eyes—just such a gaze (she told herself, shivering) as that which Muhammed fixed on Sir Arthur; a gaze as concentrated as unfathomably savage. "Him very bad beast," had said the showman, grinning at her.—"Him dreaming of drinking Missie Sahib's blood."

*      *      *      *      *

Sir Arthur's grating voice rang out angrily in a brief phrase of Hindustani. The Pathan unfolded his arms, made a gesture with one hand, and left the room without speaking. In that gesture Baby nervously read the meaning: I can bide my time.

"Runkle," she cried, catching her breath, "how could you bring that dreadful man over from India? I'm sure it's not safe. Even Major Bethune—and he's lived all his life among them, you know—thinks he's mysterious. Oh, do, do be careful!"

"Aspasia," said Sir Arthur, severely, "I am surprised at you. I have other matters, matters of far other moment on my mind, I can tell you. What nonsense is this? The fellow there doesn't know his place, I grant you. I've just told him so. You saw how he quailed. He's devoured with curiosity, that's all. And, indeed," Sir Arthur sighed, "there are strange things taking place in this house. He may well be curious."

"Oh, Runkle, I don't think it's that; he's not the ordinary type of Indian, I'm convinced. He's got some purpose here."

"Pooh, nonsense, my dear Aspasia! Purpose? Ridiculous! I should hope I know how to deal with the creatures by this time. Don't you begin this sort of nerve business, too—I shall begin to think," said poor Sir Arthur, running a distracted hand through his grey curls, "that there's something about this pestilent place that's driving everybody crazy." Again he caught himself up with a deep sigh on the last word. "I shall give Master Muhammed his lesson to-morrow. I don't require to be taught how to manage the cattle—under the heel, my dear, under the heel! To-night——" He paused. "Aspasia," he lowered his voice: "I am addressing you in the utmost confidence, relying upon your good sense and judgment. Listen to me calmly and answer me with truth absolute. Have you ever noticed any symptom in your poor aunt...?"

He had leant forward to drop these words mysteriously into her ear; now he straightened himself, shook his head, and tapped his forehead.

"Uncle Arthur...!" gasped the girl, her pretty round face suddenly pinched and small, her eyes abnormally large. What, indeed, were such trivial speculations as a Pathan's possible yearning for Sir Arthur's blood to so hideous a suggestion as this? Here was her own hidden terror of all these weeks voiced calmly, judicially; in acknowledgment of, almost in resignation to, an accomplished fact.

"You can't mean——" she stammered.

"My dear," said Sir Arthur, with melancholy triumph, "I am in very serious anxiety. Your aunt's manner to-night, the things she has said to me just now, her actions, her looks—I can only explain them, heartrending as it is to me to have to admit it, in one way."

"Poor Aunt has got neurasthenia," faltered the unhappy Baby.

"My dear Aspasia," said Sir Arthur; "may it be only that! I pray it may be only that. But the affair is too serious. I shall have the best professional advice to-morrow, the first mental specialist in England."

"What!" screamed Aspasia, suddenly scarlet to the roots of her hair; "you're never going to get a horrid mad doctor for poor darling Aunt Rosamond?"

"My dear Aspasia!" ejaculated he, beating down the sound of her crude words with his hands. "It is my duty, Aspasia, to get the best advice, the best treatment, at the earliest possible opportunity. And it is your duty," he said, fixing his eyes sternly upon her, "to tell me everything that can conduce to a better knowledge of her state."

Rivulets of cold water ran down Aspasia's back. She felt a sudden, awful premonition of relentless fate closing about her; of the cruelty of human beings to each other; something of the terror of the ignorant patient in the surgical ward.

"What would they want to do with Aunt Rosamond?" she faltered.

Sir Arthur shook his head again.

"Sometimes the only chance is a temporary retreat—temporary, we must hope and trust."

"You mean," she shrieked, and advanced on him with her small fists clenched; "shut up Aunt Rosamond, shut her up—— Never! You wicked, horrible old fool! What should you shut her up for? She's not mad. She's no more mad than I am. Why should you call her mad, just because she turned sick at the sight of you all guzzling dinner?"

"Hush, hush!" he cried.

"I don't care who hears me," she retorted, in the same high tones of sobbing indignation. "You were guzzling. Your nasty old Lady Aspasia positively gobbled, and so did that disgusting Frenchman with the pink head. I suppose she's mad because she told you the truth for once, upstairs? I'm glad. If some one had told you the truth before, it would have been better for everybody."

Upon which cryptic utterance she flung herself from the room, but popped in her head again for a last shot:

"Of course, if the doctor asks me why poor Aunt ever married you, I shan't quite know what to say—it's the only queer symptom she's ever shown, to my knowledge."

Sir Arthur sank into the armchair, speechless. Presently he sought for his handkerchief, and, with an exhausted hand, passed it across his beaded forehead. The ring of Lady Aspasia's laugh floated across the hall through the door which the girl had left ajar. The sound of that cheery, heart-whole mirth, the thought of that comfortable, healthy, everyday, high-born woman heightened the sense of his own utter dejection. Had he not made an irremediable mistake after all?

Meanwhile Aspasia, with an unreasoning sense that she could not too soon be at Rosamond's side to protect her, took the oak stairs at a canter, pausing merely at the first landing to choke down the sobs with which her breast was bursting.

"I only hope and trust Muhammed will be quick about it, and stick Runkle to-night," she said to herself, mopping her eyes fiercely, her pocket-handkerchief tightly rolled into a ball.

At her aunt's door she met Jani, who checked the headlong approach with brown finger on lip and long-drawn: "Hush!"

*      *      *      *      *

In the drawing-room Raymond Bethune, a bad third, heard the ring of Aspasia's voice and the hammer of her flying heels on the stairs, and realised, with keen disappointment, that she was not coming back. He had been longing for the instant of her return for a twofold reason—his devouring anxiety concerning Lady Gerardine, and the desire to exchange a few last quiet parting words with the girl herself, since he intended to walk out of the Old Ancient House, unobtrusively, with the coming day.

As the patter of little feet died away, however, he rose stiffly from his neglected corner, and, approaching the jocular pair by the fireside, looked down at them with a sort of dignified awkwardness until they would vouchsafe some consciousness of his approach.

The Frenchman, after struggling for a minute between his courtesy to the lady, who went on pouring a country-house story into his ear, and what was due to the patiently waiting gentleman, at last laid a warning finger on Lady Aspasia's wrist.

"Je crois que Monsieur désire nous parler," he said engagingly.

"Oh," cried the mistress of Melbury Towers, and gave an insolent half-turn of her smooth head, a half-twist of her handsome eyes in the direction of Bethune, as an indication that he might say his say and have done with it.

"I thought I'd bid you good night," said the man, stolidly.

"Comment, mon cher major," cried the polite Chatelard, springing to his feet, "already?"

"I'm going in the morning," went on Bethune, in the same level tones; "I've got to pack." His words and glance were fixed on the indifferent lady. "I think you were kind enough to say something about my coming to Melbury Towers for Christmas. I am sorry I can't accept."

Lady Aspasia's eyebrows were raised a fraction of a line.

"So sorry," she said cheerfully. "I'm sure Sir Arthur would have liked to see more of you."

She did not offer him her hand, or turn her glance upon him. He bowed in the direction of her pronounced profile, and turned to find himself effusively seized by the globe-trotter.

"Comment, cher major," cried the latter in tones of unaffected disappointment; "you leave to-morrow? And I who had so much pleasure in the renewing of our acquaintance. It is not possible we part thus."

"Que diable," the psychologist was saying to himself, "c'est comme ?a que l'on arrange ces petites affaires-là en Angleterre? Le mari arrive, vous trouve en tête-à-tête, et l'amant part. Voilà tout. C'est inou?! Je m'attendais, je l'avoue, à un dénouement plus palpitant. Mais malgré tout..." Bethune had gone, without a word. The door was closed. M. Chatelard was resuming his seat: "N'y-a-t'il pas, quand même, quelque chose de fort intéressant dans cette simple solution?—oui, un caractère exclusivement Britannique dans cette simplicité; comme qui dirait un vestige, au milieu du désordre même, de la vertu puritaine qui tenait si fort aux apparences, de cette horreur du shocking si profondément enracinée dans l'Anglo-Saxon?"

As he raised his musing eye, he found Lady Aspasia's bright grey orb fixed upon him with a world of meaning.