Demos

CHAPTER XXV

Adela and her husband did not return from Belwick till eight o’clock in the evening. In the first place Mr. Yottle had to be sent for from a friend’s house in the country, where he was spending Sunday; then there was long waiting for a train back to Agworth. The Rodmans, much puzzled to account for the disorder, postponed dinner. Adela, however, dined alone, and but slightly, though she had not eaten since breakfast. Then fatigue overcame her. She slept an unbroken sleep till sunrise.

On going down next morning she found ‘Arry alone in the dining-room; he was standing at the window with hands in pocket, and, after a glance round, averted his face again, a low growl his only answer to her morning salutation. Mr. Rodman was the next to appear. He shook hands as usual. In his ‘I hope you are well?’ there was an accent of respectful sympathy. Personally, he seemed in his ordinary spirits. He proceeded to talk of trifles, but in such a tone as he might have used had there been grave sickness in the house. And presently, with yet lower voice and a smile of good-humoured resignation, he said—

‘Our journey, I fear, must be postponed.’

Adela smiled, not quite in the same way, and briefly assented.

‘Alice is not very well,’ Rodman then remarked. ‘I advised her to have breakfast upstairs. I trust you excuse her?’

Mutimer made his appearance. He just nodded round, and asked, as he seated himself at table—

‘Who’s been letting Freeman loose? He’s running about the garden.’

The dog furnished a topic for a few minutes’ conversation, then there was all but unbroken silence to the end of the meal. Richard’s face expressed nothing in particular, unless it were a bad night. Rodman kept up his smile, and, eating little himself, devoted himself to polite waiting upon Adela. When he rose from the table, Richard said to his brother—

‘You’ll go down as usual. I shall be at the office in half-an-hour.’

Adela presently went to the drawing-room. She was surprised to find Alice sitting there. Mrs. Rodman had clearly not enjoyed the unbroken rest which gave Adela her appearance of freshness and calm; her eyes were swollen and red, her lips hung like those of a fretful child that has tired itself with sobbing, her hair was carelessly rolled up, her attire slatternly. She sat in sullen disorder. Seeing Adela, she dropped her eyes, and her lips drew themselves together. Adela hesitated to approach her, but was moved to do so by sheer pity.

‘I’m afraid you’ve had a bad night,’ she said kindly.

‘Yes, I suppose I have,’ was the ungracious reply.

Adela stood before her for a moment, but could find nothing else to say. She was turning when Alice looked up, her red eyes almost glaring, her breast shaken with uncontrollable passion.

‘I think you might have had some consideration,’ she exclaimed. ‘If you didn’t care to speak a word for yourself, you might have thought about others. What are we to do, I. should like to know?’

Adela was struck with consternation. She had been prepared for petulant bewailing, but a vehement outburst of this kind was the last thing she could have foreseen, above all to have it directed against herself.

‘What do you mean, Alice?’ she said with pained surprise.

‘Why, it’s all your doing, I suppose,’ the other pursued, in the same voice. ‘What right had you to let him go off in that way without saying a word to us? If the truth was known, I expect you were at the bottom of it; he wouldn’t have been such a fool, whatever he says. What right had you, I’d like to know?’

Adela calmed herself as she listened. Her surprise at the attack was modified and turned into another channel by Alice’s words.

‘Has Richard told you what passed between us?’ she inquired. It cost her nothing to speak with unmoved utterance; the difficulty was not to seem too indifferent.

‘He’s told us as much as he thought fit. His duty! I like that! As if you couldn’t have stopped him, if you’d chosen! You might have thought of other people.’

‘Did he tell you that I tried to stop him?’ Adela asked, with the same quietness of interrogation.

‘Why, did you?’ cried Alice, looking up scornfully.

‘No.’

‘Of course not! Talk about duty! I should think that was plain enough duty. I only wish he’d come to me with his talk about duty. It’s a duty to rob people, I suppose? Oh, I understand him well enough. It’s an easy way of getting out of his difficulties; as well lose his money this way as any other. He always thinks of himself first, trust him! He’ll go down to New Wanley and make a speech, no doubt, and show off—with his duty and all the rest of it! What’s going to become of me? You’d no right to let him go before telling us.’

‘You would have advised him to say nothing about the will?’

‘Advised him!’ she laughed angrily. ‘I’d have seen if I couldn’t do something more than advise.’

‘I fear you wouldn’t have succeeded in making your brother act dishonourably,’ Adela replied.

It was the first sarcasm that had ever passed her lips, and as soon as it was spoken she turned to leave the room, fearful lest she might say things which would afterwards degrade her in her own eyes. Her body quivered. As she reached the door Rodman opened it and entered. He bowed to let her pass, searching her face the while.

When she was gone he approached to Alice, whom he had at once observed:

‘What have you been up to?’ he asked sternly.

Her head was bent before him, and she gave no answer.

‘Can’t you speak? What’s made her look like that? Have you been quarrelling with her?’

‘Quarrelling?’

‘You know what I mean well enough. Just tell me what you said. I thought I told you to stay upstairs? What’s been going on?’

‘I told her she ought to have let us know,’ replied Alice, timorous, but affecting the look and voice of a spoilt child.

‘Then you’ve made a fool of yourself!’ he exclaimed with subdued violence. ‘You’ve got to learn that when I tell you to do a thing you do it—or I’ll know the reason why! You’d no business to come out of your room. Now you’ll just find her and apologise. You understand? You’ll go and beg her pardon at once.’

Alice raised her eyes in wretched bewilderment.

‘Beg her pardon?’ she faltered. ‘Oh, how can I? Why, what harm have I done, Willis? I’m sure I shan’t beg her pardon.’

‘You won’t? If you talk to me in that way you shall go down on your knees before her. You won’t?’

His voice had such concentrated savagery in its suppression that Alice shrank back in terror.

‘Willis! How can you speak so! What have I done?’

‘You’ve made a confounded fool of yourself, and most likely spoilt the last chance you had, if you want to know. In future, when I say a thing understand that I mean it; I don’t give orders for nothing. Go and find her and beg her pardon. I’ll wait here till you’ve done it.’

‘But I can’t! Willis, you won’t force me to do that? I’d rather die than humble myself to her.’

‘Do you hear me?’

She stood up, almost driven to bay. Her eyes were wet, her poor, crumpled prettiness made a deplorable spectacle.

‘I can’t, I can’t! Why are you so unkind to me? I have only said what any one would. I hate her! My lips won’t speak the words. You’ve no right to ask me to do such a thing.’

Her wrist was caught in a clutch that seemed to crush the muscles, and she was flung back on to the chair. Terror would not let the scream pass her lips: she lay with open mouth and staring eyes.

Rodman looked at her for an instant, then seemed to master his fury and laughed.

‘That doesn’t improve your beauty. Now, no crying out before you’re hurt. There’s no harm done. Only you’ve to learn that I mean what I say, that’s all. Now I haven’t hurt you, so don’t pretend.’

‘Oh, you have hurt me!’ she sobbed wretchedly, with her fingers round her injured wrist. ‘I never thought you could be so cruel. Oh, my hand! What harm have I done? And you used to say you’d never be unkind to me, never! Oh, how miserable I am! Is this how you’re going to treat me? As if I could help it! Willis, you won’t begin to be cruel? Oh, my hand!’

‘Let me look at it. Pooh, what’s amiss?’ He spoke all at once in his usual good-natured voice. ‘Now go and find Adela, whilst I wait here.’

‘You’re going to force me to do that?’

‘You’re going to do it. Now don’t make me angry again.’

She rose, frightened again by his look. She took a step or two, then turned back to him.

‘If I do this, will you be kind to me, the same as before?’

‘Of course I will. You don’t take me for a brute?’

She held her bruised wrist to him.

‘Will you—will you kiss it well again?’

The way in which she said it was as nearly pathetic as anything from poor Alice could be. Her misery was so profound, and this childish forgiveness of an outrage was so true a demonstration of womanly tenderness which her character would not allow to be noble. Her husband laughed rather uneasily, and did her bidding with an ill grace. But yet she could not go.

‘You’ll promise never to speak—’

‘Yes, yes, of course I promise. Come back to me. Mind, shall know how you did it.’

‘But why? What is she to us?’

‘I’ll tell you afterwards.’

There was a dawning of jealousy in her eyes.

‘I don’t think you ought to make your wife lower herself—’

His brow darkened.

‘Will you do as I tell you?’

She moved towards the door, stopped to dry her wet cheeks, half looked round. What she saw sped her on her way.

Adela was just descending the stairs, dressed to go out. Alice let her go past without speaking, but followed her through the hall and into the garden. Adela turned, saying gently—

‘Do you wish to speak to me?’

‘I’m sorry I said those things. I didn’t mean it. I don’t think it was your fault.’

The other smiled; then in that voice which Stella had spoken of as full of forgiveness—

‘No, it is not my fault, Alice. It couldn’t be otherwise.’

‘Don’t think of it another moment.’

Alice would gladly have retreated, but durst not omit what seemed to her the essential because the bitterest words.

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘No, no!’ exclaimed Adela quickly. ‘Go and lie down a little; you look so tired. Try not to be unhappy, your husband will not let harm come to you.’

Alice returned to the house, hating her sister-in-law with a perfect hatred.

The hated one took her way into Wanley. She had no pleasant mission—that of letting her mother and Letty know what had happened. The latter she found in the garden behind the house dancing her baby-boy up and down in the sunlight. Letty did not look very matronly, it must be confessed; but what she lacked in mature dignity was made up in blue-eyed and warm-checked happiness. At the sight of Adela she gave a cry of joy.

‘Why, mother’s just getting ready to go and say good-bye to you. As soon as she comes down and takes this little rogue I shall just slip my own things on. We didn’t think you’d come here.’

‘We’re not going to-day,’ Adela replied, playing with the baby’s face.

‘Not going?’

‘Business prevents Richard.’

‘How you frightened us by leaving church yesterday! I was on my way to ask about you, but Mr. Wyvern met me and said there was nothing the matter. And you went to Agworth, didn’t you?’

‘To Belwick. We had to see Mr. Yottle, the solicitor.’

Mrs. Waltham issued from the house, and explanations were again demanded.

‘Could you give baby to the nurse for a few minutes?’ Adela asked Letty. ‘I should like to speak to you and mother quietly.’

The arrangement was effected and all three went into the sitting-room. There Adela explained in simple words all that had come to pass; emotionless herself, but the cause of utter dismay in her hearers. When she ceased there was blank silence.

Mrs. Waltham was the first to find her voice.

‘But surely Mr. Eldon won’t take everything from you? I don’t think he has the power to—it wouldn’t be just; there must be surely some kind of provision in the law for such a thing. What did Mr. Yottle say?’

‘Only that Mr. Eldon could recover the whole estate.’

‘The estate!’ exclaimed Mrs. Waltham eagerly. ‘But not the money?’

Adela smiled.

‘The estate includes the money, mother. It means everything.’

‘Oh, Adela!’ sighed Letty, who sat with her hands on her lap, bewildered.

‘But surely not Mrs. Rodman’s settlement?’ cried the elder lady, who was rapidly surveying the whole situation.

‘Everything,’ affirmed Adela.

‘But what an extraordinary, what an unheard-of thing! Such injustice I never knew! Oh, but Mr. Eldon is a gentleman—he can never exact his legal rights to the full extent. He has too much delicacy of feeling for that.’ Adela glanced at her mother with a curious openness of look—the expression which by apparent negation of feeling reveals feeling of special significance. Mrs. Waltham caught the glance and checked her flow of speech.

‘Oh, he could never do that!’ she murmured the next moment, in a lower key, clasping her hands together upon her knees. ‘I am sure he wouldn’t.’

‘You must remember, mother,’ remarked Adela with reserve, ‘that Mr. Eldon’s disposition cannot affect us.’

‘My dear child, what I meant was this: it is impossible for him to go to law with your husband to recover the uttermost farthing. How are you to restore money that is long since spent? and it isn’t as if it had been spent in the ordinary way—it has been devoted to public purposes. Mr. Eldon will of course take all these things into consideration. And really one must say that it is very strange for a wealthy man to leave his property entirely to strangers.’

‘Not entirely,’ put in Adela rather absently.

‘A hundred and seven pounds a year!’ exclaimed her mother protestingly. ‘My dear love, what can be done with such a paltry sum as that!’

‘We must do a good deal with it, dear mother. It will be all we have to depend upon until Richard finds—finds some position.’

‘But you are not going to leave the Manor at once?’

‘As soon as ever we can. I don’t know what arrangement my husband is making. We shall see Mr. Yottle again to-morrow.’

‘Adela, this is positively shocking! It seems incredible I never thought such things could happen. No wonder you looked white when you went out of church. How little I imagined! But you know you can come here at any moment. You can sleep with me, or we’ll have another bed put up in the room. Oh, dear; oh, dear! It will take me a long time to understand it. Your husband could not possibly object to your living here till he found you a suitable home. What will Alfred say? Oh, you must certainly come here. I shan’t have a moment’s’ rest if you go away somewhere whilst things are in this dreadful state.’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ Adela replied with a reassuring smile. ‘It might very well have happened that we had nothing at all, not even the hundred pounds; but a wife can’t run away for reasons of that kind—can she, Letty?’

Letty gazed with her eyes of loving pity, and sighed, ‘I suppose not, dear.’

Adela sat with them for only a few minutes more. She did not feel able to chat at length on a crisis such as this, and the tone of her mother’s sympathy was not soothing to her. Mrs. Waltham had begun to put a handkerchief to her eyes.

‘You mustn’t take it to heart,’ Adela said as she bent and kissed her cheek. ‘You can’t think how little it troubles me—on my own account. Letty, I look to you to keep mother cheerful. Only think what numbers of poor creatures would dance for joy if they had a hundred a year left them! We must be philosophers, you see. I couldn’t shed a tear if I tried ever so hard. Good-bye, dear mother!’

Mrs. Waltham did not rise, but Letty followed her friend into the hall. She had been very silent and undemonstrative; now she embraced Adela tenderly. There was still something of the old diffidence in her manner, but the effect of her motherhood was discernible. Adela was childless—a circumstance in itself provocative of a gentle sense of protection in Letty’s heart.

‘You’ll let us see you every day, darling?’

‘As often as I can, Letty. Don’t let mother get low-spirited. There’s nothing to grieve about.’

Letty returned to the sitting-room; Mrs. Waltham was still pressing the handkerchief on this cheek and that alternately.

‘How wonderful she is!’ Letty exclaimed. ‘I feel as if I could never again fret over little troubles.’

‘Adela has a strong character,’ assented the mother with mournful pride.

Letty, unable to sit long without her baby, fetched it from the nurse’s arms. The infant’s luncheon-hour had arrived, and the nourishment was still of Letty’s own providing. It was strange to see on her face the slow triumph of this ineffable bliss over the grief occasioned by the recent conversation. Mrs. Waltham had floated into a stream of talk.

‘Now, what a strange thing it is!’ she observed, after many other reflections, and when the sound of her own voice had had time to soothe. ‘On the very morning of the wedding I had the most singular misgiving, a feeling I couldn’t explain. One would almost think I had foreseen this very thing. And you know very well, my dear, that the marriage troubled me in many ways. It was not the match for Adela, but then—. Adela, as you say, has a strong character; she is not very easy to reason with. I tried to make both sides of the question clear to her. But then her prejudice against Mr. Eldon was very strong, and how naturally, poor child! Young people don’t like to trust to time; they think everything must be done quickly. If she had been one to marry for reasons of interest it might look like a punishment; but then it was so far otherwise. How much better it would have been to wait a few years! One really never knows what is going to happen. Young people really ought to trust others’ experience.’

Letty was only lending half an ear. The general character of her mother-in-law’s monologues did not encourage much attention. She was conscious of a little surprise, even now and then of a mild indignation; but the baby sucking at her breast lulled her into a sweet maternal apathy. She could only sigh from time to time and wonder whether it was a good thing or the contrary that Adela had no baby in her trials.