The House of Defence. Volume 1

Rudolf Villars, in this long interval of twelve years between his abrupt departure and his return to England, had done everything except marry, and in all that he did Fortune had declared herself to be his parent. His really brilliant gifts had reaped their reward before he was too old to care about success, relations neither near nor dear had died, and he was now next in succession to the estates of Villars – with only a decrepit old great-uncle between him and them – and Ambassador to the English Court. To the world at large this situation, which just now was being rather largely discussed, had elements of interest. It was known that Catherine Thurso and her husband were not romantically attached to each other; it was conjectured that, since Rudolf Villars had remained single, he was still romantically attached to her, and it was impossible to help wondering whether at last she would show signs of being attached to anybody. To the world she was, in spite of her beauty, her charm, her brilliance, a somewhat irritating enigma. All the glory of her belonged to nobody. She did not care for her husband, which was a pity, but what made it worse was that she did not care for anybody else. And so many men had been wildly devoted to her, and of them all not one had met with a single particle of success, or, to do her justice, of encouragement, for she had nothing in common with the flirt. She was not in the least shocked, either, at their protestations. If she had been, her attitude would, at any rate, have been a moral and an intelligible one. But she merely laughed at them, and told them not to be absurd. If they persisted, she yawned. She forgot all about it, too, a week afterwards, even if she had been made to yawn very much, asked them to the house as usual, and was specially friendly.

Catherine Thurso, as will have been gathered, did her duty with exemplary fullness in the state of life to which her mother, in the main, had called her. As soon as she married she grasped the idea of life that her position entailed, if she was to fill it adequately and with any credit to herself; welcomed the prospect almost with rapture; and, with all the splendid energies of her mind and body, lived up to a really high ideal of it. Her time, her talents, and her money were always at the service of any scheme which she believed to be one that merited support, and she brought to her task not the sense of duty only, but a most warm-hearted kindliness. An unsupported sense of duty alone is a barren road to tread, but her genuine kindliness, her real interest in those who were in need, made it break out for her into flowers. She truly cared for the causes at which she so slaved; she wanted everybody to enjoy himself. But this warmth, this amiability, which pervaded her nature was both the strongest and the highest motive she knew. She did everything warmly, but nothing passionately, because it seemed as if passion had been left out of her nature. Yet sometimes, as on this afternoon, when the factors for years long past were coming up above the horizon again, she wondered whether that was quite strictly the case. It was years, certainly, since any hint or suggestion of it had come near her, but she remembered now that unquiet and perplexity, half bliss, half unhappiness, which she had known in those few weeks, and which had culminated in her half promise (it had not been more than that) to marry Rudolf Villars. Whatever that feeling was, it had been a bud only, something unopened, and had never expanded into a flower, for swift maternal hands had, without any figure of speech, nipped it off. She had been called a sentimental schoolgirl with such extraordinary assurance and acidity that she had felt that it must be the case.

But to-day, when she knew that this evening the man who had roused in her the sentimentality at any rate of a schoolgirl would, after this long lapse of years, come to her house again, she wondered (though this was useless emotional baggage) if she would feel anything that would show her that he had once been different to all others. She had not seen him since. Probably he was rather bald, rather stout, rather of the diplomatist type, which seemed to her often to be slightly tinged with pomposity. Very likely, when his name was announced, she would see a total stranger, shake hands with a stranger. She almost hoped that this would prove to be so.

Yes; she did not want to feel again anything which resembled the memory of that bewildering unrest, which, considering how long ago it all was, was so strangely vivid still. Her life was very full, she enjoyed it enormously; she was happy, she was nearly content, and she did not, as far as she knew herself, wish to risk agitation and upheaval in order to experience a new emotion. She had seen love, at the most, like distant lightning winking on the horizon; she did not want the thunderstorm to come any nearer. She wished it would go away.

Yet, yet … even now, in the midsummer and zenith of her life, she sometimes asked herself, “Is this all?” And then, if she allowed herself to think further, it seemed to her a sorry comedy never to feel more acutely than she felt, never to be more absorbed, more eager, than this. Frankly, she did not believe in God, in any huge central force that was utterly good; and, that being denied her, she felt sometimes that it would have been something to believe in the devil. But she had never seen any reason to believe in him either. She had never been tempted to be wicked, as those moralists would say who believed in the devil. She was a woman healthy both in mind and body, with countless opportunities for doing good, of which she availed herself nobly, not because she believed in God, but because she was of a most kindly nature; and she was not what is called wicked, because she did not care sufficiently. Morality, perhaps it would be right to say, had no existence for her, and she was absolutely moral in thought and action because she had no real temptation to be otherwise. To her, as a married woman, it seemed also rather bad form to have a lover; it was not dignified. You had to play a mean part. But she realised that if only she had ever really cared for any of those men who certainly had “cared” for her, no moral code would have stood in her way for a moment. Simply she did not want, and she wondered whether the failure to want was strength or weakness.

The Industrial Sale went off with the success that always attended any scheme that she took up, and an hour after she had opened it most of the stalls were nearly empty, though the prices charged and paid for the objects sold were of the most fancy order. She herself had sold stockings, nothing but stockings, and all male London, it appeared, had been in dire want of stockings. They had been frightfully expensive, but the sense of her own cheapness in charging so much was counteracted by the knowledge of the good cause. Irish peasants had made them, and she willingly lent her place and position in order that Irish peasants might reap the benefits of what was adventitiously hers. She was sorry for people who had to live like that; she willingly gave her time, her energy, even her sense of “cheapness,” to help them.

But even before her stall was empty she had seen somebody in the crowd whom, though she had not seen him for so long, she recognised instantaneously. He was neither bald nor stout, nor did he look pompous. He was as she remembered him. And, again, though it had not come any nearer yet, the distant lightning flickered on the horizon.

Apparently, though he had only arrived in England two or three days ago, he had still more than two or three friends here, and for half an hour after she had seen him first he was occupied with hand-shakes and recognitions. Then, after her stall, which had been so besieged by purchasers, was bare, he passed and caught her eye.

“Ah, Lady Thurso,” he said, in that accurate foreign accent which she found now that she remembered so well, “a thousand greetings! I tried to get near your stall, but it was impossible. And I never waste time over the impossible. But now you have nothing that I can buy, so I, as a purchaser, am impossible too.”

“Yes, I have sold everything,” she said. “You are too late.”

She, who was generally so apt of speech, so quick to take up a point, or drop it for another, felt suddenly tongue-tied. She could think of nothing more to say, though, indeed, as she thought impatiently to herself, it was his turn. She had spoken last. For, as she stood there looking at him, finding him so utterly unchanged, in one moment twelve years had been softly sponged off her life, and some thrill, some nameless bitter-sweet agitation, flickered through her. She was no stranger to that feeling; she had felt it before. But for the moment, infinitesimal in duration, it tied her tongue. It was like some tune that we have heard in childhood, and suddenly hear again, so that we must pause and say to ourselves, “What is that?”

Then she partly recovered herself. If he would not speak, she must.

“Being late is almost a crime in a diplomatist,” she said. “You should always be a little earlier than other people.”

Then she pulled herself together, determining on her attitude towards him, and smiled.

“And your Excellency is going to honour my little dance this evening, are you not?” she said.

A faint smile answered hers, quivering for a moment on his clean-shaven mouth and being reflected in his dark eyes. “Your Excellency” was a delicious phrase, considering the last phrase before to-day that he had heard from that mouth. She – a woman’s privilege – had made a map, so to speak, of their future relations, colouring its boundaries as suited her. It amused him to pretend that he recognised the validity of them.

“I have already accepted your ladyship’s very kind invitation,” he said.

CHAPTER V

THE epidemic of typhoid up at Achnaleesh, which had begun so suddenly and violently, had ceased with the same suddenness, and from the first day that no fresh case was reported no fresh case occurred at all. There was every reason to be satisfied with this vanishing trick of the germ, though the manner of its vanishing was as inexplicable as its appearance. Typhoid, in other words, had appeared without the source of infection being traced, and had disappeared again with the same mysteriousness. It had gone like one of Thurso’s headaches, as if the tap had been turned off, and after the ball he had shown no sign that he thought he ought to go back North again. This quite fell in with his wife’s wishes, which she had not thought good to express to him, for she desired for many reasons that he should be here in London with her for awhile, and the principal of these had been that she was aware that people were “wondering” about herself and Villars. Though there was nothing to wonder about, she still preferred that people should not do so, and Thurso’s presence would act as a sort of extinguisher to these guttering flames. The memory of the world, she knew, was in general very short. The events of one week are quite sufficient to put out of its head anything that may or may not have occurred the week before; but when it does happen really to have got tight hold of something, whether true or imaginary, its memory has the tiresome tenaciousness of a child’s. You may change the subject, point out of the window, rattle with toys, or expose bright objects to view, but the world, like a child, though it may give a distracted attention to these lures for a moment or two, soon gets a glassy eye again, and repeats, “But what about – ” The world was doing just that now, and she felt that Thurso’s presence gave a better chance of solid distraction than any bright objects that she could dangle before it.

The ball, for instance, had been an object positively dazzling in its brightness, and though it differed in kind even from other functions which the outside observer might think to be similar, she wanted more than that, though the hugeness of its success could not fail to gratify even one who was so accustomed to succeed. Other functions might have all London assembled in no less beautiful a house, dancing to the identical band, with everybody in tiaras and garters; but it was quite obvious to those who knew that Lady Thurso had hit the very top note that time, the note that is only struck once in a season. What the top note was it was impossible to say, just as it is impossible to say why the same ingredients can make two perfectly different puddings, except that in both cases it depends on the cook. The same people probably had been to twenty other balls, and danced to the same music, and said the same things, but inscrutably, though certainly, it was the ball of the year, and competition was futile. That new feature – the staircase of wild-flowers – might have had something infinitesimal to do with it; that glorious dining-room, not turned upside down and smothered in flowers, might have helped, for the chic of not decorating a room at all, but letting it remain as it appeared when nothing was going on, so that apparently you could have this kind of entertainment without fuss or preparation of any kind, was undeniable. Yet, again, nobody could turn her staircase into a country lane without thought. So the upshot was that Lady Thurso alone knew exactly how to do it: what to keep unadorned, as if she was going to dine alone; what to decorate, and how to decorate it; what to say, how to look, what to wear. She looked, it may be remarked, magnificent, and wore no jewels at all. Nobody hitherto had thought of that. All her guests outshone her, and she outshone them all. That, perhaps, was a vibration in the top note, which in any case was as clear as a musical glass.

But much as the ball was talked about, she knew that Rudolf Villars and she were talked about more. Wherever people met together during the subsequent week – and just at this time of the year there was nowhere that they did not meet – the ball had to be mentioned, but like a corollary came the question, “Is he still devoted to her?” And the number of comments on that, the interpretations, the conjectures, the inferences, would have made any of those myriad women whose ideal is to be talked about in that kind of way satisfied to live or die happily ever afterwards. Unfortunately, Catherine Thurso did not claim kinship with such. It gave her not the smallest pleasure to know that a situation (or want of it) that concerned her should be the one thing that everybody else discussed as if it concerned them. Had she, when she met Villars again at the bazaar, only felt, “Can it be he? I should never have known him,” she would not have troubled her head about what anybody else might be saying. But she had not enjoyed that dispassionate attitude. Instead, something within her, independent of her own control, had said “Rudolf,” just as she had said it twelve years ago. Twelve years ago the volume of her emotional chronicles had been closed with a snap. Now that ambiguous book was reopened again on the very page at which it had been cut short. The vague girlish excitement, trouble and joy was presented to her notice again; but now it was presented, not in that dim light, but in the blaze and illumination of her womanhood. Passion had not been awake in her then, the potential fire still smouldered under the damped coals of immaturity; but now those had passed away, a fire was ready to spring up, a fire of retarded dawn, with the splendour of noonday waiting on it. Was it really so? Already she feared to ask herself that question, for fear of the answer to it.

The pretence of playing at being strangers, when at the bazaar she had called him “Your Excellency,” had broken down with singular completeness. That very night at her house he had established a footing of old friendship, to which, in bare justice, he was perfectly entitled. She could not defend herself against that, she could not resent it, even if she had wished to do so. Years ago he had loved her, and had asked her to marry him, and if that does not entitle a man to take the attitude of an old friend, when next relations of any sort are resumed, there is nothing in the world that does. Also – and this was no minor point – she had half accepted him, and then thrown him over. Neither by look nor word did he appear to cast that up against her now, and she could not, in response to his generosity, deny him the standing of a friend.

Yet though he had but claimed, tacitly, but by a right that she could not dispute, the privilege of friendship, she knew that he implied much more. She knew quite well that he still loved her. There was no question about it in her mind, and it disquieted her. But the love of other men had not disturbed the serenity of her own insouciance, and the fact that this man did told her that he was not as others.

It was characteristic of her and of the worldly wisdom with which she always ordered her life that she crammed into the week that followed her ball engagements which would ordinarily have taken even her ten days to get through. She had seen at once that a question of some importance would some time have to be answered, and having made up her mind what her answer would be, she also made it impossible for herself, as far as was in her power, to leave herself leisure for reconsidering it. She had, as has been said, no real moral code to refer it to. She had been born, as we must suppose many people are, without a moral sense, and her upbringing and environment had not generated it. She did not, for instance, refrain from stealing owing to the wickedness of so doing, but merely because it was mean and nasty, like going about with dirty gloves. And as regards other points, no sense of morality dictated her decision now. To put it baldly and blankly, as she did to herself, here was a man who had loved her twelve years ago, and, she felt certain, still loved her; while she, on her side, was stirred again as she was stirred twelve years ago. Only now she was Thurso’s wife.

Worldly wisdom, however, said much more than this to her. Her first impulse to treat him with formality was clearly mistaken. If she did not treat him with the friendliness that was so undoubtedly his due, the world would certainly say that she was cold to him in public only to be warm in private; and from the point of view of the world, the conclusion, though actually false, would surely be accredited. Obviously, the proper attitude, since he desired to be treated as a friend, was to do so. It was here that Thurso’s presence in London was desirable. The whole affair was delicate, and if he was somewhere in Caithness, where there might be typhoid or there might not, it gave the gossips far more excuse for raging furiously together. There was no doubt that she would see a good deal of Rudolf Villars during this month or two of London; her husband should, therefore, see a good deal of him too.

She had a charming place on the Thames, just below Maidenhead, left her by her mother, a low, rambling, creeper-covered house, with one foot in the river, one in the garden. Here she often entertained from Saturday till Monday, not with any mistaken notion that it was a rest, after the bustle and fatigue of London, to get into the tranquillity of Thames-side, but in order to bustle more than ever. London, it was true, was sufficiently busy, but in London one was not in evidence, anyhow, until eleven or so in the morning; and while in London, also, even if there were people in the house, they looked after themselves, and need only be given their beds and their food. But at Bray the bustle began earlier, since, as this was the country, everyone thought it necessary to play a round of golf, or row wildly on the Thames, before the day began at all; while nobody ever went to bed till nearly morning, since in the country nobody need get up. Thurso and Maud were going to motor down with her on Saturday afternoon, but as Maud had not appeared at the time appointed, it was to be taken for granted that she was doing other things, and would find her way down on her own account. Catherine, on the other hand, like most busy people, was punctual to the minute.

“Well, she’s not here,” she said, as she stepped into the car, “and, really, we can’t wait, Thurso. Unless we start now, people will get there before we do, and that is never considered quite polite.”

“No, it’s as well to be in one’s house if one has asked people to stay in it,” he remarked, “though they probably get on beautifully without one.”

He got in after her, but stood for a moment with his hand on the door, as if wanting to give Maud another minute. Her eye happened to fall on it, and she saw it was trembling. The next moment he sat down, caught her eye, and looked away again, flushing a little. There was something aimlessly furtive about all this which was unlike him. But all this week she had been a little uneasy about him; he had seemed nervous, easily startled, uncertain of himself. And as they started, though caresses were not frequent between them, she laid her ungloved hand on his.

“Thurso, old boy,” she said, “are you well? There is nothing the matter with you?”

He started at her touch, and withdrew his hand.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but your rings are so cold. Yes, I am perfectly well. I don’t know why you ask.”

“Because you don’t look very well,” she said. “Maud told me you had had several very bad headaches up in the North.”

“I had; but this is rather ancient history, is it not? It has not occurred to you to inquire about them during the last ten days.”

“Maud only told me this morning,” she said.

“I have had no return of them since I came to town.”

The footman had got up by the chauffeur, and the big Napier car bubbled and whirred to itself a moment, and then slid noiselessly off, with rapid but smooth acceleration of its pace, over the dry street. It was checked for a moment at the corner into Piccadilly, poised like a hovering hawk, and then glided into the street. The road-way was very full, but, dancing elastically on its springs, it flicked in and out of the congested traffic with the precision of a fish steering its way between clumps of waving water-weed. It seemed, indeed, more like a sentient animal, a fine-mouthed horse, or some trained setter, than a machine, or as if intelligence and discernment, a brain that thought and calculated and obeyed, lived in that long painted bonnet, rather than merely pistons and cylinders and all the crack-named apparatus of its mechanism. It slackened its speed before one would have thought that any block in the traffic ahead was discernible, as if scenting the need from far off; it cut in and out of moving cabs and omnibuses, as if possessed of occult knowledge with regard to the pace they were going, and what lay invisible ahead of them; it foresaw impediments to its free movement that seemed as if they could not be foreseen, and conjectured openings that appeared inconjecturable. But all down Piccadilly, all down Knightsbridge, Thurso seemed unaccountably nervous. He could hardly sit still, but kept shifting and fidgeting in his seat, frowning and starting and grasping the side of the car, and once even calling out to the chauffeur, who, in fact, was one in a thousand for combined carefulness and speed, bidding him go more quietly through the jostle of traffic. This, again, was quite unlike him, though like what he had been for the last ten days, and his wife, seeming not to watch, watched him narrowly, but without comment. But when it came to his calling a warning to the inimitable Marcel, who would sooner have flayed all the skin off his own hands than let another vehicle scrape one grain of paint off the splash-board of his beloved car, she could not help protesting. Besides, it looked so silly to jump about like that.

“Dear Thurso,” she said, “what is the matter? He is driving perfectly carefully.”

Thurso frowned, still looking anxiously at the road in front, and spoke with unveiled irritation.

“He is driving recklessly, it seems to me,” he said. “As if it mattered whether we saved five minutes on the road. But women are never content till they’ve had some smash. That was simply the result of wanting to get in front of a cab now, instead of waiting two seconds.”

This, again, was quite unlike him. His tone and his words distinctly lacked courtesy, and “Hamlet” without the Prince was not less like the play than was Thurso when he forgot his manners like her husband. She was always ready to account for any failing, whether of omission or commission, by physical causes, and Thurso’s rudeness she unhesitatingly put down to his not feeling well. But in that case it would surely be better both for him and her if he did not continue a mode of progression that made him jumpy.