Upon a day on which the trees and hedges were again frocked in spring finery in honour of approaching summer, Mrs Devitt was sitting with her sister in the drawing-room of Melkbridge House. Mrs Devitt was trying to fix her mind on an article in one of the monthly reviews dealing with the voluntary limitation of families on the part of married folk. Mrs Devitt could not give her usual stolid attention to her reading, because, now and again, her thoughts wandered to an interview between her husband and Lowther which was taking place in the library downstairs. This private talk between father and son was on the subject of certain snares which beset the feet of moneyed youth when in London, and in which the unhappy Lowther had been caught. Mrs Devitt was sufficiently vexed at the prospect of her husband having to fork out some hundreds of pounds, without the further promise of revelations in which light-hearted, lighter living young women were concerned. Debts were forgivable, perhaps excusable, in a young gentleman of Lowther's standing, but immorality, in Mrs Devitt's eyes, was a horse of quite another colour; anything of this nature acted upon Mrs Devitt's susceptibilities much in the same way as seeing red afreets an angry bull.
Miss Spraggs, whom the last eighteen months had aged in appearance, looked up from the rough draft of a letter she was composing.
"Did you hear anything?" she asked, as she listened intently.
"Hear what?"
"The door open downstairs. Lowther's been in such a time with Montague."
"I suppose Lowther is confessing everything," sighed Mrs Devitt.
"Nothing of the sort," remarked Miss Spraggs.
"What do you mean?"
"No one ever does confess everything: something is always kept back."
"Don't you think, Eva, you look at things from a very material point of view?"
Eva shrugged her narrow shoulders. Mrs Devitt continued:
"Now and again, you seem to ignore the good which is implanted in us all."
"Perhaps because it's buried so deep down that it's difficult to see."
Half an hour afterwards, it occurred to Mrs Devitt that she might have retorted, "What one saw depended on the power of one's perceptions," but just now, all she could think of to say was:
"Quite so; but there's so much good in the world, I wonder you don't see more of it."
"What are you reading?" asked Miss Spraggs, as she revised the draft of her letter.
The scribbling virgin often made a point of talking while writing, in order to show how little mental concentration was required for her literary efforts.
"An article on voluntary limitations of family. It's by the Bishop of Westmoreland. He censures such practices: I agree with him."
Mrs Devitt spoke from her heart. The daughter of a commercial house, which owed its prosperity to an abundant supply of cheap labour, she realised (although she never acknowledged it to herself) that the practices the worthy bishop condemned, if widely exercised, must, in course of time, reduce the number of hands eager to work for a pittance, and, therefore, the fat profits of their employers.
"So do I," declared Miss Spraggs, who only wished she had the ghost of a chance of contributing (legitimately) to the sum of the population.
"There's an admirable article about Carlyle in the same number of the National Review," said Miss Spraggs presently.
"I never read anything about Carlyle," declared Mrs Devitt.
Miss Spraggs raised her straight eyebrows.
"He didn't get on with his wife," said Mrs Devitt, in a manner suggesting that this fact effectually disposed in advance of any arguments Miss Spraggs might offer.
Soon after, Montague Devitt came into the room, to be received with inquiring glances by the two women. He walked to the fireplace, where he stood in moody silence.
"Well?" said his wife presently.
"Well!" replied Devitt.
"What has Lowther confessed?"
"The usual."
"Money?"
"And other things."
"Ah! What were the other things?"
"We'll talk it over presently," replied Montague, as he glanced at Miss Spraggs.
"Am I so very young and innocent that I shouldn't learn what has happened?" asked Miss Spraggs, who, in her heart of hearts, enjoyed revelations of masculine profligacy.
"I'd rather speak later," urged Montague gloomily, to add, "It never rains but it pours."
"Why do you say that?" asked his wife quickly.
"I'd a letter from Charlie Perigal this mornin'."
"Where from?"
"The same Earl's Court private hotel. He wants somethin' to do."
"Something to do!" cried the two sisters together.
"His father hasn't done for him what he led me to believe he would," explained Devitt gloomily.
"You can find him something?" suggested Miss Spraggs.
"And, till you do, I'd better ask them to stay down here," said his wife.
"That part of it's all right," remarked Devitt. "But somehow I don't think Charlie—-"
"What?" interrupted Mrs Devitt.
"Is much of a hand at work," replied her husband.
No one said anything for a few minutes.
Mrs Devitt spoke next.
"I'm scarcely surprised at Major Perigal's refusal to do anything for Charles," she remarked.
"Why?" asked her husband.
"Can you ask?"
"You mean all that business with poor Mavis Keeves?"
"I mean all that business, as you call it, with that abandoned creature whom we were so misguided as to assist."
Devitt said nothing; he was well used to his wife's emphatic views on the subject—views which were endorsed by her sister.
"The whole thing was too distressing for words," she continued. "I'd have broken off the marriage, even at the last moment, for Charles's share in it, but for the terrible scandal which would have been caused."
"Well, well; it's all over and done with now," sighed Devitt.
"I'm not so sure; one never knows what an abandoned girl, as Miss Keeves has proved herself to be, is capable of!"
"True!" remarked Miss Spraggs.
"Come! come!" said Devitt. "The poor girl was at the point of death for weeks after her baby died."
"What of that?" asked his wife.
"Girls who suffer like that aren't so very bad."
"You take her part, as you've always done. She's hopelessly bad, and I'm as convinced as I'm sitting here that it was she who led poor Charlie astray."
"It's all very unfortunate," said Devitt moodily.
"And we all but had her in the house," urged Mrs Devitt, much irritated at her husband's tacit support of the girl.
"Anyway, she's far away from us now," said Devitt.
"Where has she gone?" asked Miss Spraggs.
"Somewhere in Dorsetshire," Devitt informed her.
"If she hadn't gone, I should have made it my duty to urge her to leave Melkbridge," remarked Mrs Devitt.
"She's not so bad as all that," declared Devitt.
"I can't understand why men stand up for loose women," said his wife.
"She's not a loose woman: far from it. If she were, Windebank would not be so interested in her."
Devitt could not have said anything more calculated to anger the two women.
Miss Spraggs threw down her pen, whilst Mrs Devitt became white.
"She must be bad to have fascinated Sir Archibald as she has done," she declared.
"Windebank is no fool," urged her husband.
"I suppose the next thing we shall hear is that she's living under his protection," cried Mrs Devitt.
"In St John's Wood," added Miss Spraggs, whose information on such matters was thirty years behind the times.
"More likely he'll marry her," remarked Devitt.
"What!" cried the two women.
"I believe he'd give his eyes to get her," the man continued.
"He's only to ask," snapped Miss Spraggs.
"Anyway, we shall see," said Devitt.
"Should that happen, I trust you will never wish me to invite her to the house," said Mrs Devitt, rising to her full height.
"It's all very sad," remarked Devitt gloomily.
"It is: that you should take her part in the way you do, Montague," retorted his wife.
"I'm sorry if you're upset," her husband replied. "But I knew Miss Keeves as a little girl, when she was always laughin' and happy. It's all very, very sad."
Mrs Devitt moved to a window, where she stood staring out at the foliage which, just now, was looking self-conscious in its new finery.
"Who heard from Harold last?" asked Devitt presently.
"I did," replied Miss Spraggs. "It was on Tuesday he wrote."
"How did he write?"
"Quite light-heartedly. He has now for some weeks: such a change for him."
"H'm!"
"Why do you ask?" said Mrs Devitt.
"I saw Pritchett when I was in town yesterday."
"Harold's doctor?" queried Miss Spraggs.
"He told me he'd seen Harold last week."
"At Swanage?"
"Harold had wired for him. I wondered if anythin' was up."
"What should be 'up,' as you call it, beyond his being either better or worse?"
"That's what I want to know."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, that it was more from Pritchett's manner than from anything else that I gathered somethin' had happened."
"So long as he's well, there's nothing to worry about," said Mrs Devitt reassuringly.
The late afternoon post brought a letter for Montague from his son Harold. This told his father that a supreme happiness had come in his life; that, by great good fortune, he had met and quietly married Mavis Keeves; that, by her wish, the marriage had been kept a secret for three weeks; it ended by saying how he hoped to bring his wife to his father's house early in the following week. Montague Devitt stared stupidly at the paper on which this information was conveyed; then he leaned against the mantelpiece for support. He looked as if he had been struck brutally and unexpectedly between the eyes. "Montague! Montague!" cried his wife, as she noticed his distress.
The letter fell from his hands.
"Read!" he said faintly.
"Harold's writing!" exclaimed Mrs Devitt, as she caught up the letter.
Devitt watched her as she read; he saw her face grow hard; then her jaw dropped; her eyes stared fixedly before her. When Miss Spraggs read the letter, as she very soon did, she went into hysterics; she had a great affection for Harold. The hand of fate had struck the Devitts remorselessly; they were stunned by the blow for quite a long while. For her part, Mrs Devitt could not believe that Providence would allow her to suffer such a terrible affliction as was provided by the fact of her stepson's marriage to Mavis; again and again she looked at the letter, as if she found it impossible to believe the evidence of her eyes.
"What's—what's to be done?" gasped Mrs Devitt, when she was presently able to speak.
"Don't ask me!" replied her husband.
"Can't you do anything?" asked Miss Spraggs, during a pause in her hysterical weeping.
"Do what?"
"Something: anything. You're a man."
"I haven't grasped it yet. I must think it out," he said, as he began to walk up and down the room so far as the crowded furniture would permit.
"We must try and think it's God's will," said his wife, making an effort to get her thoughts under control.
"What!" cried Devitt, stopping short in his walk to look at his wife with absent eyes.
"God has singled us out for this bitter punishment," snuffled Mrs Devitt, as her eyes glanced at the heavily gilded chandelier.
With a gesture of impatience, Devitt resumed his walk, while Miss Spraggs quickly went to windows and door, which she threw open to their utmost capacity for admitting air.
"One thing must be done," declared Devitt.
"Yes?" asked his wife eagerly.
"That Hunter girl who split on Mavis Keeves havin' been at Polperro with Perigal."
"She knows everything; we shall be disgraced," wailed Mrs Devitt.
"Not at all. I'll see to that," replied her husband grimly.
"What will you do?"
"Give her a good job in some place as far from here as possible, and tell her that, if her tongue wags on a certain subject, she'll get the sack."
"What!" asked his wife, surprised at her husband's decision and the way in which he expressed himself.
"Suggest somethin' better."
"I was wondering if it were right."
"Right be blowed! We're fightin' for our own hand."
With this view of the matter, Mrs Devitt was fain to be content.
It was a dismal and forlorn family party which sat down to dinner that evening under the eye of the fat butler. Husband, wife, and Miss Spraggs looked grey and old in the light of the table lamps. By this time Lowther had been told of the trouble which had descended so suddenly upon the family. His comment on hearing of it was characteristic.
"Good God! But she hasn't a penny!" he said. He realised that the prospects of his father assisting him out of his many scrapes had declined since news had arrived of Harold's unlooked-for marriage. When the scarcely tasted meal was over, Montague sent Lowther upstairs "to give the ladies company," while he smoked an admirable cigar and drank the best part of a bottle of old port wine. The tobacco and the wine brought a philosophical calm to his unquiet mind; he was enabled to look on the marriage from its least unfavourable aspects. He had always liked Mavis and would have done much more for her than he had already accomplished, if his womenfolk had permitted him to follow the leanings of his heart; he knew her well enough to know that she was not the girl to bestow herself lightly upon Charlie Perigal. He had not liked Perigal's share in the matter at all, and the whole business was still much of a mystery. Although grieved beyond measure that the girl had married his dearly loved boy, he realised that with Harold's ignorance of women he might have done infinitely worse.
"What are you going to do?" asked Mrs Devitt of her husband in the seclusion of their bedroom.
"Try and make the best of it. After all, she's a lady."
"What! You're not going to try and have the marriage annulled?"
It was her husband's turn to express astonishment.
"Surely you'll do something?" she urged.
"What can I do?"
"As you know, it can't be a marriage in—in the worldly sense; when it's like that something can surely be done," said Mrs Devitt, annoyed at having to make distant allusions to a subject hateful to her heart.
"What about Harold's feelin's?"
"But—"
"He probably loves her dearly. What of his feelin's if he knew—all that we know?"
"I did not think of that. Oh dear! oh dear! it gets more and more complicated. What can be done?"
"Wait."
"What for?"
"Till we see them. Then we can learn the why and the wherefore of it all and judge accordin'ly."
With this advice Mrs Devitt had to be content, but for all the comfort it may have contained it was a long time before husband or wife fell asleep that night.
But even the short period of twenty-four hours is enough to accustom people to trouble sufficiently to make it tolerable. When this time had passed, Mrs Devitt's mind was well used to the news which yesterday afternoon's post had brought. Her mind harked back to Christian martyrs; she wondered if the fortitude with which they met their sufferings was at all comparable to the resolution she displayed in the face of affliction. The morning's post had brought a letter from Victoria, to whom her brother had written to much the same effect as he had communicated with his father. In this she expressed herself as admirably as was her wont; she also treated the matter with a sympathetic tact which, under the circumstances, did her credit. She trusted that anything that had happened would not influence the love and duty she owed her husband. Harold's marriage to Miss Keeves was in the nature of a great surprise, but if it brought her brother happiness she would be the last to regret it; she hoped that, despite past events, she would be able to welcome her brother's wife as a sister; she would not fail to come in time to greet her sister-in-law, but she would leave her husband in town, as he had important business to transact.
Some half hour before the time by which Harold and his wife could arrive at Melkbridge House, the Devitt family were assembled in the library; in this room, because it was on the ground floor, and, therefore, more convenient for Harold's use, he having to be carried up and down stairs if going to other floors of the house.
Devitt was frankly ill at ease. His wife did her best to bear herself in the manner of the noblest traditions (as she conceived them) of British matronhood. Miss Spraggs talked in whispers to her sister of "that scheming adventuress," as she called Mavis. Victoria chastened agitated expectation with resignation; while Lowther sat with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. At last a ring was heard at the front door bell, at which Devitt and Lowther went out to welcome bride and bridegroom. Those left in the room waited while Harold was lifted out of the motor and put into the hand-propelled carriage which he used in the house. The Devitt women nerved themselves to meet with becoming resolution the adventuress's triumph.
Through the open door they could hear that Mavis had been received in all but silence; only Harold's voice sounded cheerily. The men made way for Mavis to enter the library. It was by no means the triumphant, richly garbed Mavis whom the women had expected who came into the room. It was a subdued, carelessly frocked Mavis, who, after accepting their chastened greetings, kept her eyes on her husband. When the door was closed, Harold was the first to speak.
"Mother, if I may call you that! father! all of you! I want you to hear what I have to say," he began, in his deep, soothing voice. "You know what my accident has made me; you know how I can never be other than I am. For all that, this winsome, wonderful girl, out of the pity and goodness of her loving heart, has been moved to throw in her lot with mine—even now I can hardly realise my immense good fortune" (here Mavis dropped her eyes), "but there it is, and if I did what was right, I should thank God for her every moment of my life. Now you know what she is to me; how with her youth and glorious looks she has blessed my life, I hope that you, all of you, will take her to your hearts."
A silence that could almost be heard succeeded his words; but Harold did not notice this; he had eyes only for his wife.
Tea was brought in, when, to relieve the tension, Victoria went over to Mavis and sat by her side; but to her remarks Harold's wife replied in monosyllables; she had only eyes for her husband. The Devitts could make nothing of her; her behaviour was so utterly alien to the scarcely suppressed triumph which they had expected. But just now they did not give very much attention to her; they were chiefly concerned for Harold, whose manner betrayed an extra-ordinary elation quite foreign to the depression which had troubled him before his departure for Swanage. Now a joyous gladness possessed him; from the frequent tender glances he cast in his wife's direction, there was little doubt of its cause. Harold's love for his wife commenced by much impressing his family, but ended by frightening them; they feared the effect on his mind when he discovered, as he undoubtedly must, when his wife had thrown off the mask, that he had wedded a heartless adventuress, who had married him for his money. At the same time, the Devitts were forced to admit that Mavis's conduct was unlike that of the scheming woman of their fancies; they wondered at the reason of her humility, but did not learn the cause till the family, other than Harold, were assembled upstairs in the drawing-room waiting for dinner to be announced. When Mavis had come into the room, the others had been struck by the contrast between the blackness of her frock and the milky whiteness of her skin; they were little prepared for what was to follow.
"Now we are alone, I have something to say to you," she began. The frigid silence which met her words made her task the harder; the atmosphere of the room was eloquent of antagonism. With an effort she continued: "I don't know what you all think of me—I haven't tried to think—but I'm worse—oh! ever so much worse than you believe."
The others wondered what revelations were toward. Devitt's mind went back to the night when Mavis had last stood in the drawing-room. Mavis went on:
"When I was away my heart was filled with hate: I hated you all and longed to be revenged."
Mavis's audience were uncomfortable; it was an axiom of their existence to shy at any expression of emotion.
The Devitts longed for the appearance of the fat butler, who would announce that dinner was served. But to-night his coming was delayed till Mavis had spoken.
"Chance threw Harold in my way," she went on. "He loved me at once, and I took advantage of his love, thinking to be revenged on you for all I believed—yes, I must tell you everything—for all I believed you had done against me."
Here Mrs Devitt lifted up her hands, as if filled with righteous anger at this statement.
Mavis took no notice, but continued:
"That is why I married him. That was then. Now I am punished, as the wicked always are, punished over and over again. Why did I do it? Why? Why?"
Here a look of terror came into her eyes; these looked helplessly about the room, as if nothing could save her from the torment that pursued her.
"He is ill; very ill. His doctor told me. How long do you think he will live?"
"Pritchett?" asked Devitt.
"Yes, when he came down to Swanage. What he told me only makes it worse."
"Makes what worse?" asked Devitt, who was eager to end this painful scene.
"My punishment. He thinks me good—everything I ought to be. I love him! I love him! I love him! He's all goodness and love. He believes in me as he believes in God. I love him! How long do you think he'll live? I love him! I love him! I love him!"
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