The Trespasser, Complete - Gilbert Parker
"We are going early in the morning," he said. "We can get along all
right. Good-bye. When do you come to England?"
The reply was prompt. "In a few weeks."
He looked at both. The girl, seeing that he was going to speak further,
bowed and left the room.
His eyes followed her. After a moment, he said firmly
"Mr. Gasgoyne, I am going to face all."
"To live it down, Belward?"
"I am going to fight it down."
"Well, there's a difference. You have made a mess of things, and shocked
us all. I needn't say what more. It's done, and now you know what such
things mean to a good woman--and, I hope also, to the father of a good
woman."
The man's voice broke a little. He added:
"They used to come to swords or pistols on such points. We can't settle
it in that way. Anyhow, you have handicapped us to-day." Then, with a
burst of reproach, indignation, and trouble: "Great God, as if you hadn't
been the luckiest man on earth! Delia, the estate, the Commons--all for a
dompteuse!"
"Let us say nothing more," said Gaston, choking down wrath at the
reference to Andree, but sorrowful, and pitying Mr. Gasgoyne. Besides,
the man had a right to rail.
Soon after they parted courteously.
Gaston went to the chateau. As he came up the stone steps he met a
procession--it was the feast-day of the Virgin--of priests and people and
little children, filing up from the village and the sea, singing as they
came. He drew up to the wall, stood upon the stone seat, and took off his
hat while the procession passed. He had met the cure, first accidentally
on the shore, and afterwards in the cure's house, finding much in
common--he had known many priests in the North, known much good of them.
The cure glanced up at him now as they passed, and a half-sad smile
crossed his face. Gaston caught it as it passed. The cure read his case
truly enough and gently enough too. In some wise hour he would plead with
Gaston for the woman's soul and his own.
Gaston did not find Andree at the chateau. She had gone out alone towards
the sea, Annette said, by a route at the rear of the village. He went
also, but did not find her. As he came again to the quay he saw the
Kismet beating upon the rocks--the sailors had given up any idea of
saving her. He stood and watched the sea breaking over her, and the whole
scene flashed back on him. He thought how easily he could be sentimental
over the thing. But that was not his nature. He had made his bed, but he
would not lie in it--he would carry it on his back. They all said that he
had gone on the rocks. He laughed.
"I can turn that tide: I can make things come my way," he said. "All they
want is sensation, it isn't morals that concerns them. Well, IT give them
sensation. They expect me to hide, and drop out of the game. Never--so
help me Heaven! I'll play it so they'll forget this!"
He rolled and lighted a cigarette, and went again to the chateau. Dinner
was ready--had been ready for some time. He sat down, and presently
Andree came. There was a look in her face that he could not understand.
They ate their dinner quietly, not mentioning the events of the
afternoon.
Presently a telegram was brought to him. It read: "Come. My office,
Downing Street, Friday. Expect you." It was signed "Faramond." At the
same time came letters: from his grandfather, from Captain Maudsley. The
first was stern, imperious, reproachful.--Shame for those that took him
in and made him, a ruined reputation, a spoiled tradition: he had been
but a heathen after all! There was only left to bid him farewell, and to
enclose a cheque for two thousand pounds.
Captain Maudsley called him a fool, and asked him what he meant to
do--hoped he would give up the woman at once, and come back. He owed
something to his position as Master of the Hounds--a tradition that
oughtn't to be messed about.
There it all was: not a word about radical morality or immorality; but
the tradition of Family, the Commons, Master of the Hounds!
But there was another letter. He did not recognise the handwriting, and
the envelope had a black edge. He turned it over and over, forgetting
that Andree was watching him. Looking up, he caught her eyes, with their
strange, sad look. She guessed what was in these letters. She knew
English well enough to under stand them. He interpreted her look, and
pushed them over.
"You may read them, if you wish; but I wouldn't, if I were you."
She read the telegram first, and asked who "Faramond" was. Then she read
Sir William Belward's letter, and afterwards Captain Maudsley's.
"It has all come at once," she said: "the girl and these! What will you
do? Give 'the woman' up for the honour of the Master of the Hounds?"
The tone was bitter, exasperating. Gaston was patient.
"What do you think, Andree?"
"It has only begun," she said. "Wait, King of Ys. Read that other
letter."
Her eyes were fascinated by the black border. He opened it with a strange
slowness. It began without any form of address, it had the superscription
of a street in Manchester Square:
If you were not in deep trouble I would not write. But because I
know that more hard things than kind will be said by others, I want
to say what is in my heart, which is quick to feel for you. I know
that you have sinned, but I pray for you every day, and I cannot
believe that God will not answer. Oh! think of the wrong that you
have done: of the wrong to the girl, to her soul's good. Think of
that, and right the wrong in so far as you can. Oh, Gaston, my
brother, I need not explain why I write thus. My grandfather,
before he died, three weeks ago, told me that you know!--and I also
have known ever since the day you saved the boy. Ah, think of one
who would give years of her life to see you good and noble and
happy. . . .
Then followed a deep, sincere appeal to his manhood, and afterwards a
wish that their real relations should be made known to the world if he
needed her, or if disaster came; that she might share and comfort his
life, whatever it might be. Then again:
If you love her, and she loves you, and is sorry for what she has
done, marry her and save her from everlasting shame. I am staying
with my grandfather's cousin, the Dean of Dighbury, the father of
the boy you saved. He is very kind, and he knows all. May God
guide you aright, and may you believe that no one speaks more
truthfully to you than your sorrowful and affectionate sister,
ALICE WINGFIELD.
He put the letter down beside him, made a cigarette, and poured out some
coffee for them both. He was holding himself with a tight hand. This
letter had touched him as nothing in his life had done since his father's
death. It had nothing of noblesse oblige, but straight statement of
wrong, as she saw it. And a sister without an open right to the title:
the mere fidelity of blood! His father had brought this sorrowful life
into the world and he had made it more sorrowful--poor little thing--poor
girl!
"What are you going to do?" asked Andree. "Do you go back--with Delia?"
He winced. Yet why should he expect of her too great refinement? She had
not had a chance, she had not the stuff for it in her veins; she had
never been taught. But behind it all was her passion--her love--for him.
"You know that's altogether impossible!" he answered.
"She would not take you back."
"Probably not. She has pride."
"Pride-chat! She'd jump at the chance!"
"That sounds rude, Andree; and it is contradictory."
"Rude! Well, I'm only a gipsy and a dompteuse!"
"Is that all, my girl?"
"That's all, now." Then, with a sudden change and a quick sob: "But I may
be--Oh, I can't say it, Gaston!" She hid her face for a moment on his
shoulder. "My God!"
He got to his feet. He had not thought of that--of another besides
themselves. He had drifted. A hundred ideas ran back and forth. He went
to the window and stood looking out. Alice's letter was still in his
fingers.
She came and touched his shoulder.
"Are you going to leave me, Gaston? What does that letter say?"
He looked at her kindly, with a protective tenderness.
"Read the letter, Andree," he said.
She did so, at first slowly, then quickly, then over and over again. He
stood motionless in the window. She pushed the letter between his
fingers. He did not turn. "I cannot understand everything, but what she
says she means. Oh, Gaston, what a fool, what a fool you've been!"
After a moment, however, she threw her arms about him with animal-like
fierceness.
"But I can't give you up--I can't." Then, with another of those sudden
changes, she added, with a wild little laugh: "I can't, I can't, O Master
of the Hounds!"
There came a knock at the door. Annette entered with a letter. The
postman had not delivered it on his rounds, because the address was not
correct. It was for madame. Andree took it, started at the handwriting,
tore open the envelope, and read:
Zoug-Zoug congratulates you on the conquest of his nephew. Zoug--
Zoug's name is not George Maur, as you knew him. Allah's blessing,
with Zoug-Zoug's!
What fame you've got now--dompteuse, and the sweet scandal!
The journalist had found out Zoug-Zoug at last, and Ian Belward had
talked with the manager of the menagerie.
Andree shuddered and put the letter in her pocket. Now she understood why
she had shrunk from Gaston that first night and those first days in
Audierne: that strange sixth sense, divination--vague, helpless
prescience. And here, suddenly, she shrank again, but with a different
thought. She hurriedly left the room and went to her chamber.
In a few moments he came to her. She was sitting upright in a chair,
looking straight before her. Her lips were bloodless, her eyes were
burning. He came and took her hands.
"What is it, Andree?" he said. "That letter, what is it?"
She looked at him steadily. "You'll be sorry if you read it." But she
gave it to him. He lighted a candle, put it on a little table, sat down,
and read. The shock went deep; so deep that it made no violent sign on
the surface. He spread the letter out before him. The candle showed his
face gone grey and knotted with misery. He could bear all the rest:
fight, do all that was right to the coming mother of his child; but this
made him sick and dizzy. He felt as he did when he waked up in Labrador,
with his wife's dead lips pressed to his neck. It was strange too that
Andree was as quiet as he: no storm-misery had gone deep with her also.
"Do you care to tell me about it?" he asked.
She sat back in her chair, her hands over her eyes. Presently, still
sitting so, she spoke.
Ian Belward had painted them and their van in the hills of Auvergne, and
had persuaded her to sit for a picture. He had treated her courteously at
first. Her father was taken ill suddenly, and died. She was alone for a
few days afterwards. Ian Belward came to her. Of that miserable,
heart-rending, cruel time,--the life-sorrow of a defenceless
girl,--Gaston heard with a hard sort of coldness. The promised marriage
was a matter for the man's mirth a week later. They came across three
young artists from Paris--Bagshot, Fancourt, and another--who camped one
night beside them. It was then she fully realised the deep shame of her
position. The next night she ran away and joined a travelling menagerie.
The rest he knew. When she had ended there was silence for a time, broken
only by one quick gasping sob from Gaston. The girl sat still as death,
her eyes on him intently.
"Poor Andree! Poor girl!" he said at last. She sighed pitifully.
"What shall we do?" she asked. He scarcely spoke above a whisper:
"There must be time to think. I will go to London."
"You will come back?"
"Yes--in five days, if I live."
"I believe you," she said quietly. "You never lied to me. When you return
we will know what to do." Her manner was strangely quiet. "A little
trading schooner goes from Douarnenez to England to-morrow morning," she
went on. "There is a notice of it in the market-place. That would save
the journey to Paris.'"
"Yes, that will do very well. I will start for Douarnenez at once."
"Will Jacques go too?"
"No."
An hour later he passed Delia and her father on the road to Douarnenez.
He did not recognise them, but Delia, seeing him, shrank away in a corner
of the carriage, trembling.
Jacques had wished to go to London with Gaston, but had been denied. He
was to care for the horses. When he saw his master ride down over the
place, waving a hand back towards him, he came in and said to Andree:
"Madame, there is trouble--I do not know what. But I once said I would
never leave him, wherever he go or whatever he did. Well, I never will
leave him--or you, madame--no."
"That is right, that is right," she said earnestly; "you must never leave
him, Jacques. He is a good man."
When Jacques had gone she shut herself up in her room. She was gathering
all her life into the compass of an hour. She felt but one thing: the
ruin of her happiness and Gaston's.
"He is a good man," she said over and over to herself. And the other--Ian
Belward? All the barbarian in her was alive.
The next morning she started for Paris, saying to Jacques and Annette
that she would return in four days.
CHAPTER XVIII
"RETURN, O SHULAMITE!"
Almost the first person that Gaston recognised in London was Cluny Vosse.
He had been to Victoria Station to see a friend off by the train, and as
he was leaving, Gaston and he recognised each other. The lad's greeting
was a little shy until he saw that Gaston was cool and composed as
usual--in effect, nothing had happened. Cluny was delighted, and opened
his mind:
"They'd kicked up a deuce of a row in the papers, and there'd been no end
of talk; but he didn't see what all the babble was about, and he'd said
so again and again to Lady Dargan."
"And Lady Dargan, Cluny?" asked Gaston quietly. Cluny could not be
dishonest, though he would try hard not to say painful things.
"Well, she was a bit fierce at first--she's a woman, you know; but
afterwards she went like a baby; cried, and wouldn't stay at Cannes any
longer: so we're back in town. We're going down to the country, though,
to-morrow or next day."
"Do you think I had better call, Cluny?" Gaston ventured suggestively.
"Yes, yes, of course," Cluny replied, with great eagerness, as if to
justify the matter to himself. Gaston smiled, said that he might,--he was
only in town for a few days, and dropped Cluny in Pall Mall. Cluny came
running back.
"I say, Belward, things'll come around just as they were before, won't
they? You're going to cut in, and not let 'em walk on you?"
"Yes, I'm 'going to cut in,' Cluny boy." Cluny brightened.
"And of course it isn't all over with Delia, is it?" He blushed.
Gaston reached out and dropped a hand on Cluny's shoulder.
"I'm afraid it is all over, Cluny." Cluny spoke without thinking.
"I say, it's rough on her, isn't it?"
Then he was confused, hurriedly offered Gaston a cigarette, a hasty
good-bye was said, and they parted. Gaston went first to Lord Faramond.
He encountered inquisition, cynical humour, flashes of sympathy, with a
general flavour of reproach. The tradition of the Commons! Ah, one way
only: he must come back alone--alone--and live it down. Fortunately, it
wasn't an intrigue--no matter of divorce--a dompteuse, he believed. It
must end, of course, and he would see what could be done. Such a
chance--such a chance as he had had! Make it up with his grandfather, and
reverse the record--reverse the record: that was the only way. This
meeting must, of course, be strictly between themselves. But he was
really interested for him, for his people, and for the tradition of the
Commons.
"I am Master of the Hounds too," said Gaston dryly. Lord Faramond caught
the meaning, and smiled grimly.
Then came Gaston's decision--he would come back--not to live the thing
down, but to hold his place as long as he could: to fight.
Lord Faramond shrugged a shoulder. "Without her?"
"I cannot say that."
"With her, I can promise nothing--nothing. You cannot fight it so. No one
man is stronger than massed opinion. It is merely a matter of pressure.
No, no; I can promise nothing in that case."
The Premier's face had gone cold and disdainful. Why should a clever man
like Belward be so infatuated? He rose, Gaston thanked him for the
meeting, and was about to go, when the Prime Minister, tapping his
shoulder kindly, said:
"Mr. Belward, you are not playing to the rules of the game." He waved his
hand towards the Chamber of the House. "It is the greatest game in the
world. She must go! Do not reply. You will come back without
her--good-bye!"
Then came Ridley Court. He entered on Sir William and Lady Belward
without announcement. Sir William came to his feet, austere and pale.
Lady Belward's fingers trembled on the lace she held. They looked many
years older. Neither spoke his name, nor did they offer their hands.
Gaston did not wince, he had expected it. He owed these old people
something. They lived according to their lights, they had acted
righteously as by their code, they had used him well--well always.
"Will you hear the whole story?" he said. He felt that it would be best
to tell them all. "Can it do any good?" asked Sir William. He looked
towards his wife.
"Perhaps it is better to hear it," she murmured. She was clinging to a
vague hope.
Gaston told the story plainly, briefly, as he had told his earlier
history. Its concision and simplicity were poignant. From the day he
first saw Andree in the justice's room till the hour when she opened Ian
Belward's letter, his tale went. Then he paused.
"I remember very well," Sir William said, with painful meditation: "a
strange girl, with a remarkable face. You pleaded for her father then.
Ah, yes, an unhappy case!"
"There is more?" asked Lady Belward, leaning on her cane. She seemed
very frail.
Then with a terrible brevity Gaston told them of his uncle, of the letter
to Andree: all, except that Andree was his wife. He had no idea of
sparing Ian Belward now. A groan escaped Lady Belward.
"And now--now, what will you do?" asked the baronet.
"I do not know. I am going back first to Andree." Sir William's face was
ashy.
"Impossible!"
"I promised, and I will go back." Lady Belward's voice quivered:
"Stay, ah, stay, and redeem the past! You can, you can outlive it."
Always the same: live it down!
"It is no use," he answered; "I must return."
Then in a few words he thanked them for all, and bade them good-bye. He
did not offer his hand, nor did they. But at the door he heard Lady
Belward say in a pleading voice:
"Gaston!"
He returned. She held out her hand.
"You must not do as your father did," she said. "Give the woman up, and
come back to us. Am I nothing to you--nothing?"
"Is there no other way?" he asked, gravely, sorrowfully.
She did not reply. He turned to his grandfather. "There is no other way,"
said the old man, sternly. Then in a voice almost shrill with pain and
indignation, he cried out as he had never done in his life: "Nothing,
nothing, nothing but disgrace! My God in heaven! a lion-tamer--a gipsy!
An honourable name dragged through the mire! Go back," he said grandly;
"go back to the woman and her lions--savages, savages, savages!"
"Savages after the manner of our forefathers," Gaston answered quietly.
"The first Gaston showed us the way. His wife was a strolling player's
daughter. Good-bye, sir."
Lady Belward's face was in her hands. "Good-bye-grandmother," he said at
the door, and then he was gone.
At the outer door the old housekeeper stepped forward, her gloomy face
most agitated.
"Oh, sir, oh, sir, you will come back again? Oh, don't go like your
father!"
He suddenly threw an arm about her shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek.
"I'll come back--yes I'll come back here--if I can. Good-bye, Hovey."
In the library Sir William and Lady Belward sat silent for a time.
Presently Sir William rose, and walked up and down. He paused at last,
and said, in a strange, hesitating voice, his hands chafing each other:
"I forgot myself, my dear. I fear I was violent. I would like to ask his
pardon. Ah, yes, yes!"
Then he sat down and took her hand, and held it long in the silence.
"It all feels so empty--so empty," she said at last, as the tower-clock
struck hollow on the air.
The old man could not reply, but he drew her close to him, and Hovey,
from the door, saw his tears dropping on her white hair.
Gaston went to Manchester Square. He half dreaded a meeting with Alice,
and yet he wished it. He did not find her. She had gone to Paris with her
uncle, the servant said. He got their address. There was little left to
do but to avoid reporters, two of whom almost forced themselves in upon
him. He was to go back to Douarnenez by the little boat that brought him,
and at seven o'clock in the morning he watched the mists of England
recede.
He chanced to put his hand into a light overcoat which he had got at his
chambers before he started. He drew out a paper, the one discovered in
the solicitor's office in London. It was an ancient deed of entail of the
property, drawn by Sir Gaston Belward, which, through being lost, was
never put into force. He was not sure that it had value. If it had, all
chance of the estate was gone for him; it would be his uncle's. Well,
what did it matter? Yes, it did matter: Andree! For her? No, not for her.
He would play straight. He would take his future as it came: he would not
drop this paper into the water.
He smiled bitterly, got an envelope at a publichouse on the quay, wrote a
few words in pencil on the document, and in a few moments it was on its
way to Sir William Belward, who when he received it said:
"Worthless, quite worthless, but he has an honest mind--an honest mind!"
Meanwhile, Andree was in Paris. Leaving her bag at the Gare Montparnasse,
she had gone straight to Ian Belward's house. She had lived years in the
last few hours. She had had no sleep on the journey, and her mind had
been strained unbearably. It had, however, a fixed idea, which shuttled
in and out in a hundred shapes, but ever pointing to one end. She had
determined on a painful thing--the only way.
She reached the house, and was admitted. In answer to questions, she had
an appointment with monsieur. He was not within. Well, she would wait.
She was motioned into the studio. She was outwardly calm. The servant
presently recognised her. He had been to the menagerie, and he had seen
her with Gaston. His manner changed instantly. Could he do anything? No,
nothing. She was left alone. For a long time she sat motionless, then a
sudden restlessness seized her. Her brain seemed a burning atmosphere, in
which every thought, every thing showed with an unbearable intensity. The
terrible clearness of it all--how it made her eyes, her heart ache! Her
blood was beating hard against every pore. She felt that she would go mad
if he did not come. Once she took out the stiletto she had concealed in
the bosom of her cloak, and looked at it. She had always carried it when
among the beasts at the menagerie, but had never yet used it.
Time passed. She felt ill; she became blind with pain. Presently the
servant entered with a telegram. His master would not be back until the
next morning.
Very well, she would return in the morning. She gave him money. He was
not to say that she had called. In the Boulevard Montparnasse she took a
cab. To the menagerie, she said to the driver. How strange it all looked:
the Invalides, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la
Concorde! The innumerable lights were so near and yet so far: it was a
kink of the brain, but she seemed withdrawn from them, not they from her.
A woman passed with a baby in her arms. The light from a kiosk fell on it
as she passed. What a pretty, sweet face it had. Why did it not have a
pretty, delicate Breton cap? As she went on, that kept beating in her
brain--why did not the child wear a dainty Breton cap--a white Breton
cap? The face kept peeping from behind the lights--without the dainty
Breton cap.
The menagerie at last. She dismissed the cab, went to a little door at
the back of the building, and knocked. She was admitted. The care-taker
exclaimed with pleasure. She wished to visit the animals? He would go
with her; and he picked up a light. No, she would go alone. How were
Hector and Balzac, and Antoinette? She took the keys. How cool and
pleasant they were to the touch! The steel of the lantern too--how
exquisitely soothing! He must lie down again: she would wake him as she
came out. No, no, she would go alone.
She went to cage after cage. At last to that of the largest lions. There
was a deep answering purr to her soft call. As she entered, she saw a
heap moving in one corner--a lion lately bought. She spoke, and there was
an angry growl. She wheeled to leave the cage, but her cloak caught the
door, and it snapped shut.
Too late. A blow brought her to the ground. She had made no cry, and now
she lay so still!