MRS. LESTER, TOO, WOULD LIKE IT TO BE THE TWENTY-SEVENTH BUT MARADICK IS AFRAID OF THE DEVIL
 
On Monday the 24th the weather broke. Cold winds swept up from the sea, mists twisted and turned about the hotel, the rain beat in torrents against the panes. In all the rooms there were fires, and it seemed impossible that, only the day before, there should have been a burning, dazzling sun.
It was after lunch, and Lady Gale and Tony were sitting over the fire in the drawing-room. Tony had been obviously not himself during these last few days, and his mother felt that her silence could last a very little time longer. However, matters were at length approaching a crisis. Things must decide themselves one way or the other in a day or two, for Sir Richard had, at lunch, announced his intention of departing on Saturday the 29th; that is, they had the inside of a week, and then Treliss, thank Heaven, would be left behind. Surely nothing very much could happen in a week.
Her earlier feeling, that above all she did not want Tony to miss this girl if she were the right one for him, had yielded now to a kind of panic. All that she could think of now was to get him away. There was a look in his eyes that she had never seen in his face before. It was a look that aged him, that robbed him altogether of that delightful youth and vitality that had been his surprising, his charming gift! But there was more than a look of weariness and distress, there was positive fright there!
She watched him when he was in the room with her, and she had seen him suddenly start and tremble, fling back his head as though he expected to find some one behind him. He, her boy Tony, who had never been afraid of anyone or anything. And then, too, she had seen a new look of determination in his mouth and eyes during these last days. His mind was made up to something, but to what she was too afraid to think!
She must get him away, and she had heard her husband’s decision about Saturday with tremendous relief. She had watched Tony’s face at the announcement. But it had not changed at all; only, for a moment he had looked quickly across at Maradick; it had apparently not startled him.
His indifference frightened her. If he was taking it so calmly then he must have decided on something that this date could not affect, on something probably before the date? But what could he do before Saturday? She seemed to miss altogether the obvious thing that he could do.
But it had been seldom enough that she had had him to herself during these last weeks, and now she snatched eagerly at her opportunity. She sat on one side of the fire, one hand up to shield her face, her rings glittering in the firelight; her brown dress stood out against the white tiles of the fireplace and her beautiful snow-white hair crowned her head gloriously.
Tony sat at her feet, one hand in hers. He stared straight before him into the fire. She had noticed during these last three days a delightful tenderness towards her. His attitude to her had always been charming, courteous, affectionate and yet companionable; but now he seemed to want to do everything that he could to show her that he loved her. And yet though she valued and treasured this it also frightened her. It was a little as though he were preparing for some departure, at any rate some change, that might hurt her.
Well, they were going at the end of the week, only a few more days.
He took her fingers and stroked them. His hand stopped at the wedding ring and he passed his thumb across it.
“I say, mother,” he looked up in her face with a little laugh, “I suppose you’d say that you’d rather lose anything in the world than that.”
“Yes, dear, it’s very precious;” but she sighed.
“I suppose it is. It must be ripping having something that is just yours and nobody else’s, that you simply don’t share with anyone. It must be ripping having somebody that belongs to you and that you belong to; just you two.”
“Yes, But that ring means more to me than that. It means you and Rupert as well as your father. It means all those hours when you screamed and kicked, and the day when you began to talk, and the first adventurous hours when you tried to cross the nursery floor. And yes, a thousand things besides.”
“Dear old mater,” he said softly. “It’s been just ripping having you. You’ve always understood so splendidly. Some chaps’ mothers I’ve seen, and they don’t know their sons in the very least. They do all the things that are most likely to drive them wild, and they never seem to be able to give them a bit what they want.”
“Yes, but it works both ways,” she answered. “A son’s got to try and understand his mother too. It’s no use their leaving it all to her, you know.”
“No, of course not.” Then he turned his body round and looked her in the face. “But you do understand so splendidly. You always have understood. You see, you trust a fellow.” Then he added quickly, “You’re trusting me now, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she answered, looking at him steadily, “perfectly. Only, just these last few days, perhaps I’ve been a little tiny bit worried. You haven’t been looking happy, and then I’m always worried; it’s so seldom that you’re not all right.”
“But you’d rather not know—what’s going on, I mean. It’s all right, perfectly right, and if it wasn’t—if it wasn’t right for you, I mean, as well as for me—I wouldn’t go on with it for a moment. Only it’s dreadfully important.”
“Yes, dear, I know. And if Mr. Maradick knows about it——”
“He’s a brick, isn’t he?” Tony interrupted eagerly. “You know, so few middle-aged men can understand the point of view of a chap who’s only about twenty-five. They are either fatherly and patronising or schoolmasterly and bossing, or kind of wise and beneficent; but Maradick’s most awfully young really, and yet he’s wise too. He’s a ripper.”
He stopped. They neither of them spoke for some minutes. “It will be quite all right, mother,” he said, “very soon. Just now things are a little difficult, but we’ll pull through.”
He got up and stood looking down at her. “You are a brick to trust me and not to ask,” he said. “It would make things so awfully difficult if you asked.” He bent down and kissed her. “It’s a bit of luck having you,” he said.
But as soon as he had left the room his face was serious again. He passed Mrs. Lester on the stairs and smiled and hurried on. It was all very well; she was there, of course, real enough and all that sort of thing, but she simply didn’t count for him at that moment, she didn’t exist, really, any more than the hotel or the garden did. Nothing existed except that house in the town with Janet somewhere in it waiting for him to set her free.
That was the one point on which his eyes were now fixed. In his earlier days it had, perhaps, been one of his failings—that he had run rather too eagerly after too many interests, finding in everything so immediate an excitement that he forgot the purpose of yesterday in the purpose of to-day. It had always been the matter with him that he had too many irons in the fire. Life was so full and such fun!—that had been the excuse. Now it was deadly earnest.
But it was the first time that the world had so resolved into one single point for him. He was already years older; these last days had made him that, the uncertainties, the indecisions, the fluctuating enthusiasms, the passing from wonder to wonder. All these had solidified into one thing, and one thing only—Janet, how to get her out, how to marry her, how to have her for always; the rest of the world was in shadow.
To-day was Monday; Tuesday, Wednesday, and then Thursday, Thursday the 27th. That was the day on which everything must be done. He was thinking it all out, they had got that one chance. If they missed it Morelli would be back, and for ever. They must not miss it.
But he was perfectly calm about it. His agitation seemed curiously to have left him. He was cold and stern and absolutely collected. He and Maradick were going to pull it through.
He could not find Maradick. He searched for him in the dining-room, the passages, the billiard-room.
No. The servants hadn’t seen him. Mrs. Maradick was with Mrs. Lawrence in one of the drawing-rooms; no, they hadn’t see him, he had disappeared after lunch.
Mrs. Maradick smiled. “Find Mrs. Lester” was the advice that she would have given him. She went back to her novel with tightly closed mouth and refused to talk to Mrs. Lawrence.
And then Tony suddenly remembered. Of course, he would be up in that old room where he so often went, the room with the gallery. Tony found him there.
The rain was beating furiously against the panes, and there was a very dismal light that struggled across the floor and lost itself hopelessly in the dark corners under the gallery. Maradick was sitting close up against the window, reading in the rather feeble light. He looked up when he saw Tony and put his book down.
“Ah, Tony, I was coming down to find you; Sir Richard’s decision at lunch pretty well settles things, doesn’t it? We must move at once.”
He looked up at the boy and saw the age in his face.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re going to pull it through all right.”
“Oh, I’m not worrying,” Tony answered shortly. “It’s too damned serious, and besides, there’s no time.” He paused as though he were collecting his thoughts, and then he went on. “Look here, I’ve thought it all out. I’ve been able to write to Janet and have had several letters from her. She’s plucky, my word, you can’t think! Anyhow, that beast’s all right for the moment, it seems, only he keeps looking at her as though he was meaning to do something, and she’s terribly frightened, poor little girl. But he’s going on Thursday all right, and that’s when we’ve got to do the trick.”
“Yes,” said Maradick. “I’m absolutely at your service.” Their positions had changed. Tony was taking the lead.
“Yes,” said Tony, very solemnly and speaking rather quickly. “It’s all got to be Thursday. I want you to go off this afternoon, if you don’t very much mind, to that parson I was telling you of—the parson at Tremnan. He knows me and he’s a real sportsman. He must do the trick. You can tell him, 1.30 Thursday. Then there’s the licence to be got. I’ll see to that. I’ve been here three weeks now, so that’s all right. Then it only remains to think about that, I’m going to get ’em—the family, I mean—to go for an expedition on Thursday. Mother will understand if I ask her, and that will get them out of the way. Then we just take a cab, you and I and Janet and Miss Minns.”
“Miss Minns?” broke in Maradick.
“Yes,” said Tony, still very seriously. “The poor woman’s frightened out of her life, and Janet’s taken her into her confidence. We’re going to take her away with us. She’s going to live with us. That’ll be all right. She’s got more sense than you think. Well, we four drive out to the church and there the thing’s done. Then we get back and catch the three o’clock up to town. Then off to Paris that same night; and there you are!”
He stopped and looked at Maradick for a moment.
“The only thing,” he said, “is about you.”
“About me?” Maradick looked up, smiling.
“Yes. What are we going to do about you? Of course you can come off with us, too, if you like, but then there’s your wife and the girls. You couldn’t do that very well, I suppose?”
“No,” said Maradick, “I couldn’t.”
“Well, but, you know, if you’re left, why then, everybody’s got you, so to speak—Morelli, my people, everybody. There’s only you to turn on; you’ll have a pretty rotten time. It isn’t fair. And even now, you know, if you’d rather get out of it I expect I’ll manage.”
Maradick said nothing.
“I hadn’t really seen how damned selfish it all was until just now. I asked you to come and didn’t see it really a bit, what it would all lead to, I mean, and especially for you.”
Maradick looked up, laughing.
“My dear boy, do you suppose I, at any rate, haven’t seen? Why, from the beginning, from that first night of all when we talked about it, I was responsible; responsible to your mother at any rate, and she’s the only person who really matters. As to Morelli, he can do nothing. When I see a girl look as Janet looked the other night, why, then it was time some steps were taken by somebody to get her away.”
He put his hand on Tony’s arm. “And besides, whatever happened to me, do you suppose that I could ever cease to be grateful for all that you’ve done for me, your being with me, your showing me a new kind of life altogether? I’d be a bit of a cur if I wasn’t ready to help you after that. Nothing that I can do can quite repay you.”
“That’s all right, then,” said Tony. He was a little impatient, just then, of Maradick’s approach to sentiment. It was off the mark; it hadn’t anything at all to do with Janet, and besides, it was all rot, anyway, to talk about all that he’d done. He’d done nothing. But he didn’t, in the least, want to be ungracious. “But that’s most awfully good of you, really, and I don’t suppose, as a matter of fact, they’ll do very much. They can’t, anyhow. I’m over age, and I shan’t have to go to the governor for money. Besides, it will be all right in a week or two. The governor’s like that; I know him, and once the thing’s over he’ll get over it, because he loathes things being uncomfortable; besides, mother will manage him. Anyhow, are you sure you don’t mind going off to the parson? I’d come, too, but I think it would be safer for me on the whole to hang round here this afternoon.”
No, Maradick didn’t mind. Maradick would like to go; Maradick would do anything. And, as a matter of fact, he wanted to get out and away—away from the house and the people in it, where he could think undisturbed.
He left Tony and started down to the town. His brain was still on fire with his meeting with Mrs. Lester on the evening before. During these last three days they had had very few opportunities of meeting, but the affair had nevertheless advanced with extraordinary rapidity. Then, last night, he had been alone with her, after dinner, in the garden. It had been terribly hot and oppressive, a prelude to the storm that came a few hours later.
There was not a breath of wind; the world might have been of carved stone, so motionless was it. He had had her in his arms; her hands had crept round his neck and had pulled his head down until it rested on her breast. He had been on fire—the world had been on fire—and he had poured into her ear, in fierce hurried words, passion such as it seemed to him no man had ever known before. He had told her the old, old arguments; things that seemed to him absolutely new and fresh. Their marriages had been, both of them, absurd. They had been joined, each of them, to persons who did not understand them, people who did not even care to understand them. After all, what were marriage vows? A few words spoken hurriedly when they could not possibly tell whether there was even a chance of their being able to keep them.
They were not meant to keep them. They had made their mistake, and now they must pay for it; but it was better to break with those bonds now, to have done with them once and for all, than to go on for ever in hypercritical mockery, pretending what they could not feel, acting a lie before God and man.
But now, if they could escape now, away from this stupid country with its stupid conventions, away to some place where they would be happy together for ever until death . . . and so on, and so on; and the leaves and the paths and the dark sky were held together, motionless, by the iron hand of God.
And then some one had in a moment interrupted them; some fool from the hotel. Maradick’s fingers itched to be about his throat. “What a close night! Yes, a storm must be coming up. They’d heard very distant thunder; how solemn the sea sounded . . .” and so they had gone into the hotel.
The rain had ceased. The streets stretched in dreary wet lines before him, the skies were leaden grey; from some room the discordant jingle of a piano came down to him, a cart bumped past him through the mud and dirt.
And then suddenly the tower in the market-place sprung upon him. It was literally that, a definite springing out from all the depths of greyness and squalor behind it to meet him. On shining days, when the sky was very blue and the new smart hotel opposite glitter............