CHAPTER XXIII
MRS. ADAIR MAKES HER APOLOGY
Within the drawing-room at The Pool, Durrance said good-bye to Ethne. Hehad so arranged it that there should be little time for thatleave-taking, and already the carriage stood at the steps of Guessens,with his luggage strapped upon the roof and his servant waiting at thedoor.
Ethne came out with him on to the terrace, where Mrs. Adair stood at thetop of the flight of steps. Durrance held out his hand to her, but sheturned to Ethne and said:--
"I want to speak to Colonel Durrance before he goes."
"Very well," said Ethne. "Then we will say good-bye here," she added toDurrance. "You will write from Wiesbaden? Soon, please!"
"The moment I arrive," answered Durrance. He descended the steps withMrs. Adair, and left Ethne standing upon the terrace. The last scene ofpretence had been acted out, the months of tension and surveillance hadcome to an end, and both were thankful for their release. Durranceshowed that he was glad even in the briskness of his walk, as he crossedthe lawn at Mrs. Adair's side. She, however, lagged, and when she spokeit was in a despondent voice.
"So you are going," she said. "In two days' time you will be atWiesbaden and Ethne at Glenalla. We shall all be scattered. It will belonely here."
She had had her way; she had separated Ethne and Durrance for a time atall events; she was no longer to be tortured by the sight of them andthe sound of their voices; but somehow her interference had brought herlittle satisfaction. "The house will seem very empty after you are allgone," she said; and she turned at Durrance's side and walked down withhim into the garden.
"We shall come back, no doubt," said Durrance, reassuringly.
Mrs. Adair looked about her garden. The flowers were gone, and thesunlight; clouds stretched across the sky overhead, the green of thegrass underfoot was dull, the stream ran grey in the gap between thetrees, and the leaves from the branches were blown russet and yellowabout the lawns.
"How long shall you stay at Wiesbaden?" she asked.
"I can hardly tell. But as long as it's advisable," he answered.
"That tells me nothing at all. I suppose it was meant not to tell meanything."
Durrance did not answer her, and she resented his silence. She knewnothing whatever of his plans; she was unaware whether he meant to breakhis engagement with Ethne or to hold her to it, and curiosity consumedher. It might be a very long time before she saw him again, and all thatlong time she must remain tortured with doubts.
"You distrust me?" she said defiantly, and with a note of anger in hervoice.
Durrance answered her quite gently:--
"Have I no reason to distrust you? Why did you tell me of CaptainWilloughby's coming? Why did you interfere?"
"I thought you ought to know."
"But Ethne wished the secret kept. I am glad to know, very glad. But,after all, you told me, and you were Ethne's friend."
"Yours, too, I hope," Mrs. Adair answered, and she exclaimed: "How couldI go on keeping silence? Don't you understand?"
"No."
Durrance might have understood, but he had never given much thought toMrs. Adair, and she knew it. The knowledge rankled within her, and hissimple "no" stung her beyond bearing.
"I spoke brutally, didn't I?" she said. "I told you the truth asbrutally as I could. Doesn't that help you to understand?"
Again Durrance said "No," and the monosyllable exasperated her out ofall prudence, and all at once she found herself speaking incoherentlythe things which she had thought. And once she had begun, she could notstop. She stood, as it were, outside of herself, and saw that her speechwas madness; yet she went on with it.
"I told you the truth brutally on purpose. I was so stung because youwould not see what was so visible had you only the mind to see. I wantedto hurt you. I am a bad, bad woman, I suppose. There were you and she inthe room talking together in the darkness; there was I alone upon theterrace. It was the same again to-day. You and Ethne in the room, Ialone upon the terrace. I wonder whether it will always be so. But youwill not say--you will not say." She struck her hands together with agesture of despair, but Durrance had no words for her. He walkedsilently along the garden path towards the stile, and he quickened hispace a little, so that Mrs. Adair had to walk fast to keep up with him.That quickening of the pace was a sort of answer, but Mrs. Adair was notdeterred by it. Her madness had taken hold of her.
"I do not think I would have minded so much," she continued, "if Ethnehad really cared for you; but she never cared more than as a friendcares, just a mere friend. And what's friendship worth?" she askedscornfully.
"Something, surely," said Durrance.
"It does not prevent Ethne from shrinking from her friend," cried Mrs.Adair. "She shrinks from you. Shall I tell you why? Because you areblind. She is afraid. While I--I will tell you the truth--I am glad.When the news first came from Wadi Halfa that you were blind, I wasglad; when I saw you in Hill Street, I was glad; ever since, I have beenglad--quite glad. Because I saw that she shrank. From the beginning sheshrank, thinking how her life would be hampered and fettered," and thescorn of Mrs. Adair's voice increased, though her voice itself was sunkto a whisper. "I am not afraid," she said, and she repeated the wordspassionately again and again. "I am not afraid. I am not afraid."
To Durrance it seemed that in all his experience nothing so horrible hadever occurred as this outburst by the woman who was Ethne's friend,nothing so unforeseen.
"Ethne wrote to you at Wadi Halfa out of pity," she went on, "that wasall. She wrote out of pity; and, having written, she was afraid of whatshe had done; and being afraid, she had not courage to tell you she wasafraid. You would not have blamed her, if she had frankly admitted it;you would have remained her friend. But she had not the courage."
Durrance knew that there was another explanation of Ethne's hesitationsand timidities. He knew, too, that the other explanation was the trueone. But to-morrow he himself would be gone from the Salcombe estuary,and Ethne would be on her way to the Irish Channel and Donegal. It wasnot worth while to argue against Mrs. Adair's slanders. Besides, he wasclose upon the stile which separated the garden of The Pool from thefields. Once across that stile, he would be free of Mrs. Adair. Hecontented himself with saying quietly:--
"You are not just to Ethne."
At that simple utterance the madness of Mrs. Adair went from her. Sherecognised the futility of all that she had said, of her boastings ofcourage, of her detractions of Ethne. Her words might be true or not,they could achieve nothing. Durrance was always in the room with Ethne,never upon the terrace with Mrs. Adair. She became conscious of herdegradation, and she fell to excuses.
"I am a bad woman, I suppose. But after all, I have not had the happiestof lives. Perhaps there is something to be said for me." It soundedpitiful and weak, even in her ears; but they had reached the stile, andDurrance had turned towards her. She saw that his face lost something ofits sternness. He was standing quietly, prepared now to listen to whatshe might wish to say. He remembered that in the old days when he couldsee, he had always associated her with a dignity of carriage and areticence of speech. It seemed hardly possible that it was the samewoman who spoke to him now, and the violence of the contrast made himready to believe that there must be perhaps something to be said on herbehalf.
"Will you tell me?" he said gently.
"I was married almost straight from school. I was the merest girl. Iknew nothing, and I was married to a man of whom I knew nothing. It wasmy mother's doing, and no doubt she thought that she was acting for thevery best. She was securing for me a position of a kind, and comfort andrelease from any danger of poverty. I accepted what she said blindly,ignorantly. I could hardly have refused, indeed, for my mother was animperious woman, and I was accustomed to obedience. I did as she told meand married dutifully the man whom she chose. The case is common enough,no doubt, but its frequency does not make it easier of endurance."
"But Mr. Adair?" said Durrance. "After all, I knew him. He w
as older, nodoubt, than you, but he was kind. I think, too, he cared for you."
"Yes. He was kindness itself, and he cared for me. Both things are true.The knowledge that he did care for me was the one link, if youunderstand. At the beginning I was contented, I suppose. I had a housein town and another here. But it was dull," and she stretched out herarms. "Oh, how dull it was! Do you know the little back streets in amanufacturing town? Rows of small houses, side by side, with nothing torelieve them of their ugly regularity, each with the self-same windows,the self-same door, the self-same door-step. Overhead a drift of smoke,and every little green thing down to the plants in the window dirty andblack. The sort of street whence any crazy religious charlatan who canpromise a little colour to their grey lives can get as many votaries ashe wants. Well, when I thought over my life, one of those little streetsalways came into my mind. There are women, heaps of them, no doubt, towhom the management of a big house, the season in London, the ordinaryround of visits, are sufficient. I, worse luck, was not one of them.Dull! You, with your hundred thousand things to do, cannot conceive howoppressively dull my life was. And that was not all!" She hesitated, butshe could not stop midway, and it was far too late for her to recoverher ground. She went on to the end.
"I married, as I say, knowing nothing of the important things. Ibelieved at the first that mine was just the allotted life of all women.But I began soon to have my doubts. I got to know that there wassomething more to be won out of existence than mere dulness; at least,that there was something more for others, though not for me. One couldnot help learning that. One passed a man and a woman riding together,and one chanced to look into the woman's face as one passed; or one saw,perhaps, the woman alone and talked with her for a little while, andfrom the happiness of her looks and voice one knew with absolutecertainty that there was ever so much more. Only the chance of thatever so much more my mother had denied to me."
All the sternness had now gone from Durrance's face, and Mrs. Adair wasspeaking with a great simplicity. Of the violence which she had usedbefore there was no longer any trace. She did not appeal for pity, shewas not even excusing herself; she was just telling her story quietlyand gently.
"And then you came," she continued. "I met you, and met you again. Youwent away upon your duties and you returned; and I learnt now, not thatthere was ever so much more, but just what that ever so much more was.But it was still, of course, denied to me. However, in spite of that Ifelt happier. I thought that I should be quite content to have you for afriend, to watch your progress, and to feel pride in it. But yousee--Ethne came, too, and you turned to her. At once--oh, at once! Ifyou had only been a little less quick to turn to her! In a very shortwhile I was sad and sorry that you had ever come into my life."
"I knew nothing of this," said Durrance. "I never suspected. I amsorry."
"I took care you should not suspect," said Mrs. Adair. "But I tried tokeep you; with all my wits I tried. No match-maker in the world everworked so hard to bring two people together as I did to bring togetherEthne and Mr. Feversham, and I succeeded."
The statement came upon Durrance with a shock. He leaned back againstthe stile and could have laughed. Here was the origin of the whole sadbusiness. From what small beginnings it had grown! It is a tritereflection, but the personal application of it is apt to take away thebreath. It was so with Durrance as he thought himself backwards intothose days when he had walked on his own path, heedless of the peoplewith whom he came in touch, never dreaming that they were at that momentinfluencing his life right up to his dying day. Feversham's disgrace andruin, Ethne's years of unhappiness, the wearying pretences of the lastfew months, all had their origin years ago when Mrs. Adair, to keepDurrance to herself, threw Feversham and Ethne into each other'scompany.
"I succeeded," continued Mrs. Adair. "You told me that I had succeededone morning in the Row. How glad I was! You did not notice it, I amsure. The next moment you took all my gladness from me by telling me youwere starting for the Soudan. You were away three years. They were nothappy years for me. You came back. My husband was dead, but Ethne wasfree. Ethne refused you, but you went blind and she claimed you. You cansee what ups and downs have fallen to me. But these months here havebeen the worst."
"I am very sorry," said Durrance. Mrs. Adair was quite right, hethought. There was indeed something to be said on her behalf. The worldhad gone rather hardly with her. He was able to realise what she hadsuffered, since he was suffering in much the same way himself. It wasquite intelligible to him why she had betrayed Ethne's secret that nightupon the terrace, and he could not but be gentle with her.
"I am very sorry, Mrs. Adair," he repeated lamely. There was nothingmore which he could find to say, and he held out his hand to her.
"Good-bye," she said, and Durrance climbed over the stile and crossedthe fields to his house.
Mrs. Adair stood by that stile for a long while after he had gone. Shehad shot her bolt and hit no one but herself and the man for whom shecared.
She realised that distinctly. She looked forward a little, too, and sheunderstood that if Durrance did not, after all, keep Ethne to herpromise and marry her and go with her to her country, he would come backto Guessens. That reflection showed Mrs. Adair yet more clearly thefolly of her outcry. If she had only kept silence, she would have had avery true and constant friend for her neighbour, and that would havebeen something. It would have been a good deal. But, since she hadspoken, they could never meet without embarrassment, and, practisecordiality as they might, there would always remain in their minds therecollection of what she had said and he had listened to on theafternoon when he left for Wiesbaden.