_ PART III CHAPTER I. WAR
Two days before that on which Aunt Philippa had decided to take her departure Mordaunt went again to town. Noel, whose holidays were drawing to a close, accompanied him to the station in a state of high jubilation, albeit Holmes was in charge of the motor and there was not the faintest chance of his being allowed to take the wheel.
"I hope you're going to behave yourself," were Mordaunt's last words.
And the youngster's cheery grin and impudent "You bet, old chap!" ought to have warned him not to hope for behaviour too exemplary.
Noel, in fact, had been anticipating his brother-in-law's departure with considerable eagerness. Though he liked him thoroughly, he was an undoubted check upon his enjoyment. He kept him within bounds after a fashion which had at first amused but had of late begun somewhat to pall upon him; and Noel was only awaiting a suitable opportunity to kick over the traces and gallop free. On this occasion Mordaunt had decided to spend the night in town, so circumstances were propitious.
As for Mordaunt, he had dismissed Noel from his mind almost before the train was out of the station. But for her aunt's presence, he would have persuaded Chris to go with him, even though he knew that she had not the smallest wish to do so. He was growing very anxious with regard to her, and he was firmly determined that she should have a change of scene as soon as Noel's holidays and Aunt Philippa's protracted stay came to an end. It was not that she seemed ill, but she was very far from being herself, and there were times when he even fancied that she simulated gaiety for the deliberate purpose of deceiving him. He knew, too, that her sleep was often broken and troubled, but he never commented upon this; she was so plainly averse to any criticism from him or anyone. A shrewd suspicion had begun to take root in Mordaunt's mind to account for this unwonted reticence; and because of it he treated her with the utmost patience and consideration, asking no question, giving no sign that he so much as noticed the change in her. He invariably turned from any subject she seemed to find distasteful. If she seemed unusually nervous or unreasonable, he passed it over, bearing with her with a tenderness that sometimes moved her in secret to passionate tears the while she asked herself what she had ever done that he should love her so.
For if she had ever doubted the quality of his love, she could not do so now. It surrounded her whichever way she turned, asking nothing of her, never intruding upon her, content simply to shelter her. And though the very fact of it hurt her, it comforted her subtly as well, lulling her fear of him, giving her a certain measure of confidence.
Of Bertrand, in those days, she saw less and less. In the first shock of realization she had instinctively avoided him, possessed by a haunting dread that he might guess her secret. But upon this point she was very soon reassured. The consistent and unwavering friendliness of his attitude quieted her misgivings, and nerved her to treat him, if with less intimacy, at least without visible awkwardness. Whether he noticed her avoidance or not she did not know, but he certainly seemed to be withdrawing himself more and more out of her life. His work with her husband apparently occupied all his thoughts, and then there was Aunt Philippa also to keep him at a distance. How it would be when her aunt departed Chris had no notion, but she was looking forward to that event with an eagerness almost feverish. All her natural sweetness notwithstanding, there were occasions upon which she actively disliked this domineering relative of hers. Aunt Philippa, on her part, who had never taken so much trouble with her niece before, openly marvelled at her intractability, which even the fact that Chris was one of those headstrong Wyndhams did not, in her opinion, wholly justify. No open rupture had occurred, but a very decided animosity had begun to smoulder between them, which a very little provocation might at any moment fan into open hostility.
Chris was leaning against a pillar of the porch when her brother returned. There was very decided dejection in her attitude.
"Cheer up!" Noel exhorted her, as he sprang from the car. "I've got a ripping plan."
He came and twined his arm in hers, and Chris smiled with a hint of wistfulness. She felt as if she had left Noel and his boyish pleasures very far behind of late.
"What do you want to do?" she said.
"Come into the gun-room and I'll tell you." Noel was all eagerness. "Coast clear?" he questioned. "Where's Aunt Phil?"
"Waiting for me to go and help her find fault with the gardeners." Chris was still smiling a little, but there was not much humour in her voice.
"Oh, rats! Don't go!" said Noel. "Come along into the gun-room, and help me make some fireworks. It will be much more fun."
A spark of the old ardour kindled in Chris's eyes. "Oh, are you going to make fireworks?" she said. "Have you got the ingredients?"
He nodded. "Nearly all. Come and see. What we haven't got we must manufacture. I know where there are plenty of cartridges."
Chris yielded to the eager pulling of his arm. "I suppose Trevor wouldn't mind for once," she said. She had grown unaccountably scrupulous in this respect.
But Noel jeered at the notion. "Who cares? It'll be all over long before he comes home to-morrow. We will have a regular jollification to-night. You and I will run the show, and Aunt Phil and Bertrand can look on and admire. I say, Chris, I've got a ripping receipt for Catherine wheels--not the big ones, those little things you hold and buzz round. You know!"
His enthusiasm was infectious. It drew her almost in spite of herself. Besides, it meant a temporary respite from the continual burden that weighed her down, and brief though it must be, she could not bring herself to refuse it. She went with him, therefore, with the feeling of one who has signed a truce with the enemy, and in a couple of minutes they were securely closeted in the gun-room, with the door locked against all intruders, and all thoughts of Aunt Philippa and any other troublous problems as resolutely excluded from their minds.
The hours of the morning literally flew. Luncheon-time found them absorbed in a most critical process.
"Bust lunch!" said Noel. "We can't possibly leave this now."
But Chris's sense of duty proved too strong for her inclination at this juncture, and she sallied forth from their retreat to rescue Bertrand from a _tete-a-tete_ meal with her aunt.
There was a sparkle of merriment in her eyes when she entered the dining-room. The engrossing work of the morning had done her good. She was fully five minutes late, and Bertrand, who had presented himself sharp on the hour with military punctuality, was waiting by the window.
He came swiftly to meet her. She had not seen him before that day.
"You are looking well this morning," he said, in his quick, friendly way. "You have been busy, yes?"
His soft eyes interrogated her, as for an instant he held her hand. Never once had she found those eyes impossible to meet. They held the fidelity of unswerving friendship.
"Oh yes," she said, "busy in a fashion--a very childish fashion, Bertie. Noel and I are making fireworks!"
"Fireworks!" he echoed.
"Yes, we are going to have a grand display tonight. Will you come and look on?"
He smiled. "But yes," he said. "I think that I will come and take care of you."
She nodded. "Do! But they are not dangerous, not very. Where is Aunt Philippa?"
He spread out his hands whimsically. "She has not given me her confidence."
Chris laughed. Actually she was feeling almost lighthearted. Till that moment she had had a morbid dread of being alone with him, and now behold her dread vanishing in mirth! Surely she had been very foolish, like a child frightened at shadows!
"I wonder where she is," she said. "I am afraid I have been playing truant this morning. I shall have to apologize, though it was all Noel's fault. Do see if you can find Mrs. Forest," she added to a servant just entering. "Ask her if she is ready for luncheon."
"Mrs. Forest is out in the motor, and has not yet returned," was the information this elicited.
"How odd!" said Chris. "What had we better do?"
Bertrand shrugged his shoulders, still looking quizzical. "We must not lunch without her, _bien sur_. Let us go into the garden."
They went into the garden, and walked for a space in the September sunshine.
They talked at first upon commonplace topics, and Chris was wholly at her ease. But presently Bertrand turned the conversation with an abrupt question.
"Christine, tell me, you have never seen that scoundrel Rodolphe again?"
She started a little, and was conscious that she changed colour, but she answered him instantly. "No, never. But--why do you ask?"
Very gravely he made reply. "I have feared lately that there was something that troubled you. I was wrong, yes?"
He looked at her anxiously.
She did not answer him, she could not.
"_Eh bien_," he said gently, after a moment. "It was not that. You have heard that he has been recalled to France--that there is a rumour that there have been revelations that may lead to a court-martial?"
"No!" said Chris in amazement. "Do you mean--"
He bent his head. "It is possible."
"That you may be vindicated?" she questioned eagerly. "Oh, Bertie!"
"It is possible," he repeated. "Yet I will not permit myself to hope. It is no more than a rumour. It is also possible that it may not even touch the old _affaire_, since he made no appearance at my trial."
"But if it did!" said Chris.
He gave her an odd look. "If it did, Christine?" he questioned.
"You would go back with flying colours," she said. "You would be reinstated surely!"
He shook his head. "I do not think it."
"You mean you wouldn't go?" she asked.
He turned his face up to the sun with a peculiar gesture. "Who can say?" he said, with closed eyes. "Me, I think that the good God has other plans for me. I may be justified--I do not know. But I shall wear the uniform of the French Army--never again."
He spoke perfectly calmly, with absolute conviction; but there was that in his face that startled her, something she had never seen before.
She put out a hesitating hand, and touched his sleeve. "Bertie!"
Instantly he looked at her, saw the scared expression in her eyes, and, smiling, pressed her hand.
"_Mais_, Christine, these things--what are they? Ambition, success, honour--loss, failure, shame; they seem so great in this little life of mortality. But, after all, they are no more than the tools with which the good God shapes us to His destiny. He uses them, and when His work is done He throws them aside. We leave them behind us; we pass on to that which is greater." He paused a moment, and his eyes kindled as though he were on the verge of something further; then suddenly they went beyond her, and he relinquished her hand. "Madame has returned," he said. "Let us go!"
Looking up, Chris saw Aunt Philippa upon the terrace above them.
The expression on her relative's face was one of severe and undisguised disapproval, as her gaze rested upon the two in the garden. Chris, as she moved to meet her, felt a sudden flame of indignation at her heart. How dared Aunt Philippa look at them so?
"We have been waiting for you," she said, speaking in some haste to conceal her resentment. "Has anything happened?"
Aunt Philippa replied in the measured accents habitual to her. "Nothing has happened. I have been to Sandacre Court, at Mrs. Pouncefort's invitation, to see the gardens. I waited for you, Chris, for nearly an hour this morning, but you did not see fit either to come to me or to send any word of explanation to account for your absence. Therefore I started late. Hence my late return."
Chris coloured. "I am sorry, Aunt Philippa. Noel wanted me. I am afraid I forgot you were waiting."
"It seems to me," said Aunt Philippa, with cutting emphasis, "that you are apt to forget every obligation when in Mr. Bertrand's society."
"Aunt Philippa!"
Furious indignation rang in Chris's voice. In a second--in less--it would have been open war, but swift as an arrow Bertrand intervened.
"Ah! but pardon me," he said, in his soft voice. "I am not responsible for Mrs. Mordaunt's negligence. She has been occupied with her affairs, and I with mine. Had she been in my society"--he smiled with a flash of the teeth--"she would not have forgotten her duties so easily. I am an excellent monitor, madame. Acquit me, I beg, of being accessory to the crime, and accept my sympathies the most sincere."
Aunt Philippa ignored them in icy silence, but he had accomplished his end. The evil moment was averted. Whatever Chris might have to endure later, at least she would be spared the added mortification of his presence during the infliction. Airily he turned the subject. He could overlook a snub more adroitly than Aunt Philippa could administer one.
They went into the house, and during the meal that followed Bertrand made himself gracefully agreeable to both ladies. So delicate were his attentions that Chris found herself more than once on the verge of hysterical laughter.
But when he left them at length, with many apologies, to resume his interrupted labours, her sense of humour ceased to vibrate. Never before had she desired her husband's presence as she desired it then.
Her hope that Aunt Philippa might retire to her room to rest was a very slender one, and destined almost from the outset to disappointment. Aunt Philippa was on the war trail, and she would not rest until she had tracked down her quarry.
She began at once to speak of her morning's visit to Mrs. Pouncefort, whom she knew as a London hostess. Personally, she disapproved of her, but she could not afford to pass her over, since her status in society was by no means inconsiderable, being, in fact, almost capable of rivalling her own.
"I should have remained to luncheon," she said, "but for the fact that you were here quite unchaperoned. Had you accompanied me, as I had hoped you would, I should not have had to hasten back in the heat."
"But I wasn't invited," said Chris, "and I know every inch of those gardens. I knew them long ago, before the Pounceforts came."
"The invitation," said Aunt Philippa, not to be diverted from her purpose, "was quite casual. You could quite well have accompanied me. In fact, I think Mrs. Pouncefort was surprised not to see you. However, we need not discuss that further. Doubtless you had your own reasons for desiring to remain at home, and I shall not ask you what those reasons were. What I do ask, and what I think I have a right to know, is whether you have had the proper feeling to tell your husband that the Captain Rodolphe you met at Pouncefort Court a little while ago is the man with whom you were so deplorably intimate at Valpre in your girlhood, or whether you have had the audacity to pretend that he was a total stranger to you."
Chris almost gasped at this unexpected attack, but its directness compelled an instant reply without pausing to consider the position.
"I was never intimate with Captain Rodolphe," she said quickly. "I never spoke to him before the other day."
And there she stopped suddenly short, arrested by the look of open incredulity with which her aunt received her hasty statement.
There was a moment's silence. Then, "Really!" said Aunt Philippa. "He gave Mrs. Pouncefort to understand otherwise."
Chris felt the blood rush to her face. This was intolerable. "What did he give Mrs. Pouncefort to understand?" she demanded.
"Merely that you were old friends," said Aunt Philippa, with the calm superiority of one not to be shaken in her belief.
"Then he lied!" said Chris fiercely.
Aunt Philippa said "Indeed!" with raised eyebrows.
Chris's hands clenched unconsciously. "He lied!" she repeated. "We are not friends! We never could be! I--I hate the man!"
"Then you know him well enough for that?" said Aunt Philippa.
Chris sprang to her feet with hot cheeks and blazing eyes. "Aunt Philippa, you have no right--you and Mrs. Pouncefort--to--to talk me over and discuss my acquaintances!"
"My dear child," said Aunt Philippa, "all that passed between us was a remark made by Mrs. Pouncefort to the effect that one of her guests, Captain Rodolphe--an old friend of yours whom she believed you had originally met at Valpre--had just returned to Paris. What led to the remark I do not remember. But naturally the name recalled certain regrettable circumstances to my mind, and I felt it my duty to ask if you had been quite candid with Trevor upon the subject. I am sincerely grieved to know that my suspicion in this respect was but too well founded."
"He was not the man I knew at Valpre" burst forth Chris, with passionate vehemence. "You may believe it or not; it is the truth!"
"Then, my dear," said Aunt Philippa, with the calmness of unalterable conviction, "there must have been two men who enjoyed that privilege."
Chris broke into a wild laugh--a laugh that had been struggling for utterance for the past hour.
"Two! Why, there were a dozen at least, some soldiers, some fishermen! Ask Trevor! He can tell you all about them--if he thinks it worth while!"
"And yet you have not mentioned Captain Rodolphe to him?" said Aunt Philippa. Her eyes were fixed unsparingly upon the girl's face, and she saw the colour dying away as swiftly as it had risen. "That is strange," she remarked, with emphasis.
"It is not strange!" flashed back Chris. The laugh had gone from her lips, leaving them white, but she faced her adversary unflinchingly. It was open war now--a fierce and bitter struggle for the mastery, for which she knew herself to be ill-equipped, but in which she must fight to the last. She knew that Aunt Philippa had always regarded her with cold dislike, and it dawned upon her in that moment that now--now that her position was assured, now that she was rich and popular and the wife of a man who was universally honoured in that great world of society in which her aunt had always striven for a leading place--the dislike had turned to a cruel jealousy that demanded her downfall. And she was horribly at her mercy; deep in her heart she knew that also, but she would not own it, even to herself. Aunt Philippa had not yet unmasked the truth. Until she succeeded in doing so, all was not lost.
"It is not strange," she repeated, and this time she spoke quietly, summoning all her strength to the unequal contest. "Captain Rodolphe was not of sufficient importance to mention to Trevor. Besides--"
"Although you hate him so bitterly!" Aunt Philippa reminded her.
Chris pressed on, ignoring the thrust. "Besides, Trevor does not need, does not so much as wish to be told of every little incident that ever happened in my life. He prefers to trust me."
"And have you never abused his confidence?" asked Aunt Philippa.
It was inevitable. She flinched ever so slightly, but she covered it with instant defiance. "What do you mean, Aunt Philippa?"
Aunt Philippa made no direct reply. She knew the value of insinuation in such a battle as this. "Ask yourself that question," she said impressively.
It might have provided a way of escape, at least temporarily, but Chris was too far goaded to see it. "Tell me what you mean," she said.
Aunt Philippa's thin lips smiled ironically. "My dear, are you really so blind, or is deceit the very air you breathe? Can you look me in the face and assure me that nothing has ever passed between you and your husband's secretary of which you would not wish him to know?"
That went home, straight to her quivering heart. For a moment the pain of it held her dumb. Then, with a gasp, she turned from the pitiless eyes that watched her.
"Oh, how dare you, Aunt Philippa! How dare you!" she cried in impotence.
"I trust that I am not afraid to do my duty," said Aunt Philippa, very gravely.
But Chris had already turned, completely routed, and fled from the scene of her defeat; nor did she pause until she had reached her haven at the top of the house, where, like a wounded bird, she crouched down in solitude and so remained for a long, long time.
Not till the afternoon was far advanced did any measure of comfort come to her stricken soul, and then at last she remembered that, after all, she was comparatively safe. Her husband's trust was still hers, implicit and unwavering, and she knew that he would not so much as notice a single hint from Aunt Philippa, however adroitly offered. That was her one and only safeguard, and as she realized it the bitterness of her heart gave place to a sudden burst of anguished shame. What had she ever done to deserve the generous, unquestioning trust he thus reposed in her? Nothing--less than nothing! _