at the head of a norwegian fjord, where the tents of a gay and aristocratic party of travellers had been pitched on the green sward for a merry month or two of fishing and shooting and canoeing, the postbags were brought up the valley on the back of a stout mountain pony one fine cold day at the end of the sporting season. sir henry bassenthwaite, leader and host of the expedition, was a newly-made baronet, a very rich brewer, one of those persons who bear with them a trail of electric light and a cloud of gold dust as they rush through unsophisticated lands which they annoy by their impertinence, and console by their expenditure.
sir henry took the letter-bags, untied them, unsealed them, and distributed their contents to his party.
“a round dozen for you, duchess!” he cried gaily, as he held them above his head.
the duchess of otterbourne, who was seated on the turf leaning against a boulder, grey with lichens, amongst the cloud-berry with her rod and kreel beside her, and a little court of men round her, received her letters with that quickening of the pulse under apprehension which was frequent with her since she had been taught to tremble by william massarene. the dread of a posthumous retaliation was always upon her: she never now saw a closed envelope without an inward shiver of apprehension.
instinctively she rose and walked to a little distance with her back to her companions, and stood still on the edge of the foaming, crystal-clear, noisy river into which a little while before she had been throwing her line.
she broke the seals with unsteady fingers. she hastily scanned assurances from whiteleaf that the children were well. then she took up the rest of the correspondence, and her heart stood still as she saw a large packet sealed with six large black seals and addressed to her in a handwriting which she knew at a glance to be katherine massarene’s.[426] there must be some message from the dead at last!
out of the linen-lined envelope there fell many letters in her own writing, and the counterfoils of many checks made out to her own name and signed “w. m.,” and many others marked, “drawn self, passed to lady k.”; there were also bills signed by cocky. then she understood.
the daughter of william massarene knew all, or at least knew much, and must guess what she did not know. she turned cold with fear; the whirling water made her giddy; she gasped for breath and clutched the stem of a young rowan-tree.
she, who had but scanty belief in generosity, wondered how many signatures of hers might not have been kept back by the sender?
of all these things of the past she had, herself, but the most confused recollection. in the early time, when billy had been as pactolus to her insatiable thirst, she had never kept any account of all she drew from him directly or indirectly.
but whether all which compromised her were restored or not, the main fact remained the same: his daughter must know.
and the signatures concerning the diamonds—where were they? katherine massarene might or might not have restored all the rest; but she had not sent her those.
where were they? those which mattered most of all? it was mere mockery of her fears to send her back all these others and withhold from her the proofs of the transaction with beaumont.
it was cruelty, odious, tantalizing, cat-like cruelty, playing with her only to humiliate and degrade her more!
“i always tried to be pleasant with her, and she never would respond,” she thought, with that sense of never being the least in fault herself, which so happily consoled and sustained her at all times.
she heard steps approaching and she tore with frantic haste in little bits all her own letters and receipts and massarene’s counterfoils, and flung them with the black-sealed envelope into the boiling stream, which eddying amongst its rocks swallowed them under spray and foam.[427] the trout leaped up alarmed from the upper water, the field-fares and redwings flew up frightened from the cloud-berry bushes. the camp-ponies tethered near whinnied nervously.
“what a destruction of correspondence!” said the voice of sir henry. “what have the writers done to you, duchess?”
with that marvellous power of self-command which the habit of the world teaches, she turned to him and laughed a little.
“all advertisements!—and six sheets from fraulein heyse about the children. such a disappointment, the envelope looked so imposing.”
“for a clever liar at a pinch commend me to cocky’s widow,” he thought.
when, a few days later, the whole party, warned by a snowstorm, rode down the mountains and through the meadows to bergen to rejoin sir henry’s schooner, which was in harbor there, she, who was the gayest and noisiest amongst them, thought of nothing but of those two missing signatures.
to have had the others returned was useless whilst these two were out of her hands and in the power of someone unknown. she felt anxious to get to england, though what to do when she should be there in this matter she could not tell: tell the truth for once, perhaps—that last refuge of the desperate—in an appeal to katherine massarene’s mercy.
when she went on board the bassenthwaite boat—a fine vessel which had gone all round the world—sir henry met her cheerfully; he had preceded the party by two hours.
“here’s a pleasant surprise, duchess,” he cried. “your brother’s yacht’s in the roads; she was signalled this morning.”
“the dianthus?” she asked, startled and dismayed.
“the dianthus—yes,” he replied. “you will have some message, no doubt, soon. it is a surprise, eh?”
“a very great surprise,” she answered. “i thought hurstmanceaux was in the irish channel.”
bassenthwaite was astonished at her evident vexation.[428] under the plea of fatigue she went to her cabin. she was alarmed beyond expression. that intuition which does duty for wisdom in many women told her that her brother had the missing signatures—that it was on their account that he had come into the north seas.
william massarene was dead: would the ghost from his grave never cease from pursuing her? she felt chilly and ill-used.
it was dinner-time: she was obliged to laugh and talk and look her best; the german emperor’s yacht was in the harbor; there were fireworks, illumination of the shipping, bands played; the bassenthwaite schooner was a blaze of light and fire; there was dancing on deck; the kaiser came on board and was very pleasant.
she had to appear to enjoy it all, while her heart grew sick as she gazed past the lights outward to the darkness of the offing to where they said that the dianthus was riding at anchor.
early next morning they announced to her that a message had come for her: one of her brother’s men had brought a note. it was extremely brief, and requested her to come to him by the boat he sent.
she wrote in answer: “the bassenthwaites hope you will come and lunch. we weigh anchor at three o’clock. i cannot come to you.”
when hurstmanceaux received this answer by his sailor’s hands, he was pacing his deck in great anger to see his boat returning without her.
he did not know the bassenthwaites; he did not wish to know them; and at this moment of all others he could not have endured to meet her before strangers.
he wrote again: “i desire you to come in my boat. i am here only to see you. i have your signature and beaumont’s”—and sent his sailors back to bassenthwaite’s schooner.
it was no more than she had expected, but she felt as if all the ice of the pole were drifting down and closing on her when she saw his men returning. she dare not disobey the summons. she went in the boat from the dianthus.
“i wonder what she’ll hear when she gets there,” said bassenthwaite to his wife.
[429]“nothing pleasant, i suspect. he is an odious man,” said his wife. “he thinks the courcys of faldon were made before adam.”
the despatch of the letters and receipts from katherine massarene had, in a measure, prepared her for worse to come. she had not for a moment attributed the sending of them to a movement of generosity. she had supposed that “billy’s daughter” took that form of vengeance as the simplest and the easiest, and she did not hope for an instant that the secrets contained in that packet would be respected. therefore she was the less surprised, though the more alarmed, when the curt command of hurstmanceaux was brought to her.
she immediately concluded that katherine massarene had been his informant against her.
she was not an instant alone after his message came to reflect on what course she should pursue, and could only trust to her usual good fortune to bear her through this crisis, as it had borne her through many another. but as the boat threaded its course through the craft in the roads, she felt a sharper terror than she had ever known, even in the presence of william massarene, as she saw across the water the well-known lines of the old yawl.
when she reached the yacht at the entrance of the roads, she found, to her surprise, that hurstmanceaux was not on deck to receive her.
“is my brother unwell?” she asked of his skipper.
“no, madam,” answered the old man. “i was to ask your grace to be so good as to go below.”
she went down the companionway. hurstmanceaux rose in silence, and closed the door on her of his cabin when she had entered. he had felt it impossible to force himself to meet her before his crew.
she endeavored to laugh.
“how very tragic you are!” she said, mastering the great fear which froze her blood; “and how extremely rude!”
“i have your signatures,” he said, as he stood before her in the plain little cabin of which the only ornaments were two large photographs of faldon and a sketch by watts of his mother.
[430]“i suppose, if you have them, you have thrown away a great deal of good money in getting them; and you might have spent it better,” she replied with airy nonchalance.
he was so astounded at her levity, indifference, and insolence, that for some moments he was mute.
“i don’t like being ordered about like this,” she continued. “it looks very odd to the bassenthwaites. why didn’t you come to luncheon? you could have talked to me afterwards on deck. when did you see the children?”
a great oath broke from his lips.
“have you no decency? no conscience? do you not understand? amongst his papers a letter of massarene’s was found to me; it contained your signature to him for twelve thousand pounds plus interest, and another signature to beaumont, the jeweler with whom you placed the otterbourne jewels in pawn.”
his words said all: he expected to see her overwhelmed by shame. but she preserved her equanimity.
“you might have sent them to me without coming out to bergen,” she said with impatience. she spoke with her usual tone, a little more impertinently than usual; but her lips were very pale.
“what did billy tell you?” she added between her teeth. she felt sick with fear.
“mr. massarene told me nothing. beaumont, whom i saw subsequently, told me everything.”
she breathed more freely. billy might have done worse than he had done. beaumont of course knew nothing, except the fact of this debt and its payment. she sat down in a low reclining chair and leaned back in it, and put her coat with its big gold buttons and wild-rose perfume on the cabin table.
“did you come out here only to say this?” she asked in a very bored tone; she wondered why she had so terrified and tortured herself: whatever ronald knew he would not say to others.
her attitude, her tone, her surpassing insolence and coolness broke the bonds of his patience, the storm of his wrath and of his scorn burst; he spoke as had never[431] thought to speak to any woman. all the pain and humiliation he had suffered through her, of which he had been able to say no word to any living soul, found outlet in a flood of furious reproach.
she listened, indifferent, taking a cigarette off the cabin table and lighting it from a fusee box which she carried in the breast-pocket of her serge jacket. the whole thing was odious to her in its recollection; but it was past and massarene was in his grave, and had taken her secrets with him except as regarded her debts. ronald might rave as he would; he would not kill her, and he would not expose her to other people. it was a wretched scene to have to go through, but after all scenes only take it out of one. one doesn’t die of them. so she sat still, swaying gently to and fro, and smoking, while the bitter shame and suffering, which her brother expressed, rolled like a tempest over her head and left her unmoved, unrepentant.
“to think that you come of my blood—that you had my name!” he said with hot tears scorching his eyes. “to think that you were once a little innocent child whom i carried about in my arms at faldon! you are a mass of lies, a tissue of infamy; your very breath is falsehood. you have not even such common shame and honesty as we may find in the poorest women of the streets. poor otterbourne said once to me that your influence was a moral phylloxera. how true, good god! how true! they tear up and burn the tainted vines. we ought to slay such women as you!”
she laughed a little, but her eyes flashed fire.
“a moral phylloxera! i never knew poor poodle say anything so clever. how long is this scene to last? i really see no good in it. it seems to relieve your feelings, but it offends my taste. you appear to forget that though you are my children’s guardian you are not mine.”
“i am the head of your family and your trustee.”
“i know; and you can annoy me in any way about money, as you always have done; but there your power ends. i should not have been obliged to have recourse to others if you had showed more feeling for my position. but you never showed me any sympathy. i saw in the[432] english papers that you had sold the petits maîtres. why did you not sell them before, and give the proceeds to me?”
he looked at her in silence.
“it was the same thing with the jewels,” she continued. “you could have induced the others to leave them with me until jack’s majority. but instead of that you talked high-flown stuff about the law and your duties, and you cared nothing at all what injury and difficulty you caused to me.”
he was still silent; she took another cigarette, lighted it, and again continued:
“you blame me for what i did. i did what i could. when the hare runs for her life she doesn’t look where she goes. the diamonds are none the worse for being with beaumont. they were quite safe with him. if my husband had lived, nobody would have known anything about the transaction. his death, immediately on his succession, was disastrous in every way.”
“do you mean that your husband was aware of this loan?”
“yes, certainly,” she said a moment later, without hesitation, for cocky could not contradict her. “it was his idea first of all.”
“it could not have been his idea to borrow of mr. massarene, for that transaction took place two months and a half after his death at staghurst.”
“he would have thought it a very good idea if he had been alive!” she said with her short, satirical little laugh: she was afraid of little now, for she saw that her brother knew nothing beyond the mere fact of the loan. “as for the reproduction of the jewels in paste, which you seem to think a crime, several women i know wear imitations of their jewels for safety in these days of ingenious thefts, and leave the originals in deposit at their bankers.”
hurstmanceaux looked at her in silence, wondering why a creature so fair should be born without a conscience. was she really without one, or was this indifference only a part of the attitude she assumed? was there something still worse which he did not know?
he felt that despair which overcomes a brave man before[433] the shamelessness of a woman. what could he do? he could not kill her. he could not disgrace her. to awaken any conscience in her was hopeless. if she did feel any humiliation she would not show it. for a moment a red mist swam before his eyes and a nervous tremor passed along his muscles; he longed to stamp the life out of her and bruise her accursed beauty into nothingness as a man of shoreditch, or montmartre, or the calle of venice might have done under such provocation as was his. the moment passed, of course. he could only realize his own powerlessness. there is nothing on earth so powerless as the impotence of a man of honor before the vileness of a woman who is dear to him.
he moved a step nearer to her and gazed down on her with a look which made her lower her sunny audacious eyes.
“you had more money than this from massarene?”
regaining her courage, and remembering that katherine massarene had probably sent her all her other signatures, she rose and faced him, throwing her fresh cigarette on the table.
“i do not admit that you have the smallest right to interrogate me. there is no one living who has. marry his daughter, and you and she can look over his old check-books together. you are my children’s keeper, but you are not mine, and i entirely refuse to answer your insults.”
it was clear, she reflected, that massarene had told him nothing except the facts concerning the diamonds. he might flounder about in a sea of conjecture, and make himself as wretched as ever he pleased; she was not so simple as to confess to him.
he stood above her, and his hands fell heavily on her shoulders and held her as in a vice.
“you had more money than this from massarene?”
she was silent.
he still held her motionless, and a thrill of intense physical fear passed through her.
“you gave yourself to that brute for lucre?”
she was silent.
“if i wrong you, look me in the face and say so.”
[434]he waited; still holding her motionless.
she tried to lift her eyes and look at him; she had never before quailed before any duplicity, never before been unequal to the demands which any necessity for falsehood put upon her. but now, for once, she dared not meet the eyes of this man whose lifelong affection she had abused, and whose family she had dishonored. for once she could not lie; for once her defiant audacity failed her; for once, for a brief passing moment, she saw herself as he would see her could he know all. standing before him, in his grasp, her head drooped, her whole form trembled, her eyelids closed; she dared not meet his gaze.
he understood.
he released and thrust her from him.
“would to god our mother had never borne you!”
he grew pale as ashes; for the moment he had difficulty to restrain himself from striking to the ground this woman who had dishonored his race.
she took her coat off the table and turned away.
“take me to the boat,” she said imperiously. “i scarcely suppose you want your crew to see that we have quarrelled?”
he opened the door of the cabin. “be so good as to accompany the duchess, mr. evans,” he said to his skipper; and he went back into the cabin and closed and bolted the door.
the faint, sweet scent of wild-rose essence was on the air and on the table where her coat had been lying. he dropped into the chair where she had sat, and, leaning his head on his hands, sobbed like a child.
she went back over the harbor-water talking pleasantly with evans. “my brother grows such a hermit,” she said to him. “it is a great pity that he avoids society. he is becoming quite morose.”
“morose? no, your grace,” said the old man, who adored his owner. “but it is certain his lordship leads a lonesome life. when we’re in any port, he don’t go ashore o’ nights to sup and play and lark as other gentlemen do. but there aren’t his equal for goodness and kindness, madam, anywhere; no, not in the ’varsal world.”
[435]“it is very nice of you to say so,” she replied, buttoning the big gold buttons of her coat; her spirits had risen; she was not afraid of her brother any longer; he had said his worst and she had made him feel his impotence. after all it did not really matter what he knew or guessed, he would not talk.
“my poor darling, has he worried you?” said lady bassenthwaite, full of sympathy, when she returned.
“worried me? i should think so!” she answered. “he insists on my shutting myself up at whiteleaf, and says boo is to have no more paris frocks. pray give me some tea, i am worn out with being lectured!”
lady bassenthwaite’s sympathy did not include credulity.
“he can’t have come out all the way from cowes to bergen only to talk about boo’s frocks,” she said later in the evening to her husband.
