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Tragic Bride

<h2 id="id00269" style="margin-top: 4em">XIII</h2> Gabrielle fulfilled her promise. All through the first term, while autumn hardened into winter, at Lapton a season of sad sunlight, she kept Mrs. Payne posted in the chronicle of Arthur's progress, and these dutiful letters comforted his mother in her unusual loneliness at Overton. They were not particularly interesting letters, and they never brought to her any announcement of the long-awaited miracle, but they gave her the assurance that some other woman had her eye on him, and this, for some strange reason that may have been explained by Arthur's dependence on her through her long widowhood, comforted her. In the beginning Gabrielle interested herself in Arthur simply for the sake of Mrs. Payne; she had been touched by the mother's anxiety and found her, perhaps, a little pathetic; but in a little time she began to be interested in Arthur for himself. In the ordinary way she did not see a great deal of her husband's pupils. Nominally, of course, she was the female head of the household, but Considine, aware of her limited domestic experience, and her ignorance of English customs, had secured a housekeeper from his own home in Wiltshire, a Mrs. Bemerton, who also filled the office of matron. As might be expected in a woman of Considine's choice, Mrs. Bemerton was capable and, as luck would have it, she was also kindly. All the domestic arrangements at Lapton ran smoothly under her direction. She was reasonably popular with the boys and mothered them. She even found time to mother Gabrielle—respectfully, for she had come from a county that is staunchly feudal, and was aware of her mistress's august connections. It was fortunate for Gabrielle in her relations with the boys that she had so little to do with their domestic management. The fact that she only saw them in their moments of recreation saved her from being regarded as an ogress, her only suspicious circumstance being the fact that she was married to Considine. Before the winter came she had played games with them, and since she had so much of the tomboy in her, had made herself acceptable as a sportswoman and a good sort. By the time that Arthur Payne arrived the days were drawing in, and she saw very little of them, except in the evenings, after dinner, when she and Considine would join them in a game of snooker in the billiard-room, or take a hand of whist, old-fashioned whist, in the library. It was here that she first became personally aware of Arthur's disability. For several weeks she had been getting used to him as a normal being, attractive because he was so undeniably handsome and well-developed, more than usually attractive to her, perhaps, because she was dark and he was fair. She had noticed his eyes, so like the beautiful eyes of Mrs. Payne, his splendid teeth, and the charming ingenuousness of his manner. Subtly influenced by these physical features, and taking him for granted, she had almost forgotten the curious history that Mrs. Payne had confided to her, and it came as a shock to her playing cards against him one evening, to realise suddenly that he was cheating. Her first impulse was one of indignation; but as she was not quite sure of herself she said nothing, waiting to see if she could possibly have been mistaken. In a few moments he cheated again, this time beyond any possible doubt. She flushed with vexation. It seemed to her an enormous thing. She was just on the point of throwing down her cards when Mrs. Payne's story came back to her. Instead of dislike she felt a sudden wave of pity and wonder. She had wanted, on the spur of the moment, to give him away; but she realised that this would only discredit him with the other boys and probably lay him open to a sort of persecution. If he wasn't really responsible, that would be a pity; and so she held her tongue. All the same she couldn't go on playing cards with him. She knew that if she did she would be bound to continue on the look-out, and be shocked by a series of these ugly incidents. She asked Considine if he would read to them, and he consented readily. He liked reading aloud, partly because he was, not unreasonably, vain of his speaking voice and partly because the practice was part of his theory of education. At that time he was reading Stevenson, an author who was supposed to combine a flawless literary style with the soundest moral precepts and an attitude towards life that encouraged the manly virtues peculiar to Englishmen. Gabrielle enjoyed his reading thoroughly, for she had so much of the boy in herself, and was quite unacquainted with any Victorian literature. He read Catriona slowly, and with gusto. Gabrielle from her corner watched Arthur Payne, sprawling on a sofa at the edge of the lamp-light. He was really a remarkably handsome young animal with his fair hair tangled and his hands clasped on his knees. She could see his eyes in the gloom. They seemed to burn with eagerness while he listened, as though his imagination were on fire within. She forgot that Considine was reading and went on watching the boy. It seemed to her incredible that it was he whom she had detected in such a deliberate dishonour half an hour before. It was melancholy. She felt most awfully sorry for him. She wished, above all things, that she could help him. People said that he was beyond help. In the end he became conscious of her scrutiny and smiled across at her. And this broke the spell of reflection. She heard Considine's voice: 'I will take up the defence of your reputation,' she said. 'You may leave it in my hands.' And with that she withdrew out of the library. "That's the end of chapter nineteen." He closed the book, putting a marker in it methodically, as was his wont. Gabrielle thanked him. She smiled to herself, for it seemed to her that the words of Miss Grant with which he had recalled her from her abstraction had a curious and prophetic meaning for herself. She was thankful, for a moment, that she hadn't thoughtlessly given Arthur's reputation away to his comrades. She felt herself thrilled by a new and curious interest. She determined, as a part of her duty to his mother, to speak to Arthur himself about what she had observed. She caught him in the passage just as the boys were going to bed, and drew him aside into the drawing-room. The room was quite dark. "Arthur, I want to speak to you," she said. He laughed. "What's the matter?" "When we were playing cards to-night you cheated." For a moment there was silence. Then he laughed again—not an uneasy, shameful laugh, but one of sheer amusement. It shocked her. At last he said: "Did you see it? Then why didn't you make a fuss about it?" She was thankful, at any rate, that he had not lied to her. That was what she had fearfully expected. "I didn't want to give you away to the others." "Why not? It wouldn't have been any news to them. They know that I cheat already. That's why they're up against me. But that doesn't worry me." "I don't understand you. It seemed to me a horrible thing to do. Can't you see that?" "No, I can't. Perhaps I'm different. When I play I play to win." "But that's the whole point. If you don't stick to the rules of the game there's no credit in winning, is there?" He was silent for a moment. Then, with an effort of the most courageous honesty, he said: "Well, it feels the same to me. I like winning—anyhow." She hesitated for a moment. "It makes it so that—so that we can't respect you," she said. "Now I suppose you'll go and tell Dr. Considine. Just my luck." "Indeed, and I shan't do anything of the sort. It's between us two," she replied. He was silent. "Well, it does no good talking about it," he said mournfully. "I'm made differently, that's all. Do you want anything else?" She didn't, and he left her in the dark. This small incident and the conversation that followed opened her eyes to the reality of the problem. She didn't indeed tell Considine what had happened, but she did talk to him once or twice about the history of Arthur Payne. He did not tell her much, for it was part of his plan that his wife should not be mixed up in the business of the school. These things, in his opinion, lay entirely outside a woman's province. Her place was in the drawing-room and her position that of a hostess or, providentially, that of a mother. For the present there were no signs of her fulfilling the latter. In spite of Considine's discouragement her interest in Arthur was now fully aroused, and more eagerly for the very reason of the limits which her husband had set to her activities. Life at Lapton Manor to a person of Gabrielle's essential vitality was dull. The nature of the surrounding country with its near horizons and lack of physical breadth or freedom imprisoned her spirit. Even Roscarna in its decay had been more vital than this sad, smug Georgian manor-house set in its circle of low hills. Over there, in winter, there had been rough Atlantic weather, and a breath of ice from the snowy summits of Slieveannilaun or the mountains of Maamturk. Here, even in their more frequent sunshine, the air lay dead, ebbing like a sluggish river, from Dartmoor to the sea. In winter the county families went to sleep like dormice, so that no strange-calling conveyances passed the lodge-gates at Lapton, and the life of Gabrielle was like that of those sad roses that lingered on the south wall beneath her bedroom window in a state that was neither life nor death. If she had shared Considine's interest in his profession things might have been different. No doubt she would have thrown herself into it with enthusiasm; but her enthusiasm was of a very different nature from the steady flame that burned in Considine. No doubt he knew this, and felt that her sharing would be disturbing by its violence. In the ordinary course of events I suppose he expected that she would have another child, but as this interest was denied her, she was thrown more and more upon her own resources. Her promise to Mrs. Payne gave her a reasonable excuse for her growing interest in Arthur. She had never returned to the card-playing incident; but as time went on a number of others equally distressing presented themselves. Having constituted herself his special protectress and the saviour of his reputation she tackled each of them with courage. In every case she found herself baffled by the fact that arguments which seemed to her unanswerable made no appeal to him, not because he wasn't anxious to see things with her eyes, but because they came within the area of a kind of blind-spot in his brain. She soon found that she couldn't appeal on moral grounds to an a-moral intelligence. She would have appealed on grounds material, but it seemed to be ironically decreed that material and moral grounds should be rarely at one. Sweet persuasion was equally useless. And indeed, how could she expect to succeed by her influence where maternal love had failed so signally? Even so, she would not own herself beaten. It was tantalising; for the more she saw of Arthur the better she liked him, and in these days she was seeing a good deal of him. The opportunity arose from Arthur's trouble. He had told her the truth when he said his fellow-pupils at Lapton were already aware of his lack of honour in games. Nothing is less easily forgiven by boys, and when the others discovered that he cheated and lied, not so much by accident as on principle, they began to treat him as an outcast from their decent society. The Traceys went so far as to report his failing to Considine. An unpleasant contretemps, but one that Considine had expected. He explained to them that Payne was not entirely to blame, and that his constitution was not normal. He advised them to take the weakness for granted. Even when he did this he knew that such distinctions were unlikely to be acceptable to a boyish code of honour. On the other hand the special fees that Mrs. Payne was paying him were essential to the development of his plans. As a compromise he decided to keep Arthur apart from the others in their amusements in the most natural way he could devise. Practically for want of a better solution he handed him over to the care of Gabrielle. Arthur resented this. He was fond of games and of sport. He liked winning and he liked killing; he thought it humiliating to his manly dignity to be relegated to Gabrielle's society. He wrote bitterly to his mother about it, using the contemptuous nickname that the boys had invented for Mrs. Considine. "I think old Considine," he wrote, "must be thinking of turning me into a nursemaid. I'm always being told off to help Gaby in the garden or take her for drives in the pony-cart. Not much fun taking a woman shopping!" But Gabrielle was glad of it. The new plan supplied her with the first prolonged companionship of a person of her own age—there were less than three years between them—that she had known. Little by little Arthur accepted it, and they became great friends. It was a curious relation, for though it must have been simple on his side, on hers it was full of complication. To begin with his society was a great relief from her loneliness. Again, she had already, for want of another enthusiasm, conceived an acute interest in his curious temperament, and her eagerness to get to the bottom of it, and, if possible, to find a cure, was now fanned by something that resembled a maternal passion. They spent the greater part of his spare time together, and often, at hours when he would normally have been working with Considine, she would ask for him to take her driving into Totnes or Dartmouth, their two market towns. In the evenings they would walk out together in search of air along the lip of the basin in which Lapton Manor lay. On one of these evening walks a strange thing happened. They had climbed the hills and had sat for a few minutes on the summit watching the sun go down behind the level ridges that lead inward from the Start. While they were sitting there in silence, Arthur suddenly slipped away over the brim of a little hollow full of bracken on the edge of the wood. A moment later Gabrielle heard him laughing, and walked over quietly to see what he was doing. She saw him crouched, quite unconscious of her presence, among the ferns at the bottom of the hollow. He had caught a baby rabbit, and now he was torturing the small terrified creature, its beady eyes set with fear, just as a cat plays with a mouse. He was watching it intently: letting it escape to the verge of freedom and then catching it and throwing it violently back. For a second it would lie motionless with terror and then make another feeble attempt at escape. She watched this display of animal cruelty with horror, and yet she could not speak, for she wanted to see what he would do next. At last the rabbit refused to keep up the heartless game any longer. It simply lay and trembled. Arthur prodded it with his foot, but it would not move. This appeared to incense him. He took a flying kick at the poor beast and killed it. It lay for a moment twitching, its muzzle covered in blood. A little thing no bigger than a kitten two months old—— Gabrielle ran to him flaming with anger. She picked up the mutilated rabbit and hugged it to her breast. "Why did you do that? You beast, you devil!" she cried. She could have flown at him in her anger. Arthur only laughed. He stood there laughing, staring straight at her with his wide honest eyes. "It's dead. It's all right," he said. Her fingers were all dabbled with the blood of the rabbit that twitched no longer. She could do nothing. She dropped the carcase with a pitiful gesture of despair and burst into bitter tears. She sat sobbing on the edge of the hollow. She could not see him, but presently she heard his voice, curiously shaken with emotion, at her side. "I say, Mrs. Considine," he said. "Don't—please don't—I simply can't stand it." "Oh, get away—leave me alone," she sobbed. "I can't bear you to be near me. It was so little. So happy——" He wouldn't go. He spoke again, and his voice was quite changed—she had never heard a note of feeling in it before. "I can't bear it. You—I can't bear that you should suffer. I swear I won't do a thing like that again—not if it hurts you. On my honour I won't." "Yes, you will. I suppose you can't help it. It's awful. You haven't a soul. You aren't human." His voice choked as he replied. "I swear it—I do really. I could do anything for you, Mrs. Considine. I feel that I could. For God's sake try me!" She compelled herself, still sobbing, to look at him. She saw that his face was tortured, and his eyes full of tears. But she could say no more, and they walked home in silence. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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