The Mistress of Shenstone Part 2

"But that was not the only reason I left town," continued Lady Ingleby, with evident effort. Then she flung out both hands towards him. "Oh, doctor! I wonder if I might tell you a thing which has been a burden on my heart and life for years!"

There followed a tense moment of silence; but the doctor was used to such moments, and could usually determine during the silence, whether the confidence should be allowed or avoided. He turned and looked steadily at the lovely wistful face.

It was the face of an exceedingly beautiful woman, nearing thirty. But the lovely eyes still held the clear candour of the eyes of a little child, the sweet lips quivered with quickly felt emotion, the low brow showed no trace of shame or sin. The doctor knew he was in the presence of one of the most popular hostesses, one of the most admired women, in the kingdom. Yet his keen professional insight revealed to him an arrested development; possibilities unfulfilled; a problem of inadequacy and consequent disappointment, to which he had not the key. But those outstretched hands eagerly held it towards him. Could he bring help, if he accepted a knowledge of the solution; or--did help come too late?

"Dear Lady Ingleby," he said, quietly; "tell me anything you like; that is to say, anything which you feel a.s.sured Lord Ingleby would allow discussed with a third person."

Myra leaned back among the cus.h.i.+ons and laughed--a gay little laugh, half of amus.e.m.e.nt, half of relief.

"Oh, Michael would not mind!" she said. "Anything Michael would mind, I have always told straight to himself; and they were silly little things; such as foolish people trying to make love to me; or a foreign prince, with moustaches like the German Emperor's, offering to shoot Michael, if I would promise to marry him when his period of consequent imprisonment was over. I cut the idiots who had presumed to make love to me, ever after; and a.s.sured the foreign prince, I should undoubtedly kill him myself, if he hurt a hair of Michael's head! No, dear doctor. My life is clear of all that sort of complication. My trouble is a harder one, involving one's whole life-problem. And that problem is incompetence and inadequacy--not towards the world, I should not care a rap for that; but towards the one to whom I owe most: towards Michael,--my husband."

The doctor moved uneasily in his chair, and glanced at the clock.

"Oh, hus.h.!.+" he said. "Do not----"

"No!" cried Myra. "You must not stop me. Let me at last have the relief of speech! My friend, I am twenty-eight; I have had ten years of married life; yet I do not believe I have ever really grown up! In heart and brain I am an undeveloped child, and I know it; and, worse still, Michael knows it, and--_Michael does not mind_. Listen! It dates back to years ago. Mamma never allowed any of her daughters to grow up. We were permitted no individuality of our own, no opinions, no independence. All that was required of us, was to 'do her behests, and follow in her train.' Forgive the misquotation. We were always children in mamma's eyes. We grew tall; we grew good-looking; but we never grew up. We remained children, to be snubbed, domineered over, and bullied. My sisters, who were good children, had plenty of jam and cake; and, eventually, husbands after mamma's own heart were found for them. Perhaps you know how those marriages have turned out?"

Lady Ingleby paused, and the doctor made an almost imperceptible sign of a.s.sent. One of the ladies in question, a most unhappy woman, was under treatment in his Mental Sanatorium at that very moment; but he doubted whether Lady Ingleby knew it.

"I was the black sheep," continued Myra, finding no remark forthcoming.

"Nothing I did was ever right; everything I did was always wrong. When Michael met me I was nearly eighteen, the height I am now, but in the nursery, as regards mental development or knowledge of the world; and, as regards character, a most unhappy, utterly reckless, little child.

Michael's love, when at last I realised it, was wonderful to me.

Tenderness, appreciation, consideration, were experiences so novel that they would have turned my head, had not the elation they produced been counterbalanced by a grat.i.tude which was overwhelming; and a terror of being handed back to mamma, which would have made me agree to anything.

Years later, Michael told me that what first attracted him to me was a look in my eyes just like the look in those of a favourite spaniel of his, who was always in trouble with everyone else, and had just been accidentally shot, by a keeper. Michael told me this himself; and really thought I should be pleased! Somehow it gave me the key to my standing with him--just that of a very tenderly-loved pet dog. No words can say how good he has always been to me. If I lost him, I should lose my all--everything which makes home, home; and life a safe, and certain, thing. But if _he_ lost little Peter, it would be a more real loss to him than if he lost me; because Peter is more intelligent for his size, and really more of an actual companion to Michael, than I am. Many a time, when he has pa.s.sed through my room on the way to his, with Peter tucked securely under his arm; and saying, 'Good-night, my dear,' to me, has gone in and shut the door, I have felt I could slay little Peter, because he had the better place, and because he looked at me through his curls, as he was carried away, as if to say: '_You_ are out of it!' Yet I knew I had all I deserved; and Michael's kindness and goodness and patience were beyond words. Only--only--ah, _can_ you understand? I would sooner he had found fault and scolded; I would sooner have been shaken and called a fool, than smiled at, and left alone. I was in the nursery when he married me; I have been in the school-room ever since, trying to learn life's lessons, alone, without a teacher. Nothing has helped me to grow up. Michael has always told me I am perfect, and everything I do is perfect, and he does not want me different. But I have never really shared his life and interests. If I make idiotic mistakes he does not correct me. I have to find them out, when I repeat them before others.

When I made that silly blunder about the brazen serpent, you so kindly put me right. Michael would have smiled and let it pa.s.s as not worth correcting; then I should have repeated it before a roomful of people, and wondered why they looked amused! Ah, but what do I care for people, or the world! It is my true place beside Michael I want to win. I want to 'grow up unto him in all things.' Yes, I know that is a text. I am famous for misquotations, or rather, misapplications. But it expresses my meaning--as the d.u.c.h.ess remarks, when _she_ has said something mild under provocation, and her parrot swears!--And now tell me, dear wise kind doctor; you, who have been the lifelong friend of that grand creature, Jane Dalmain; you, who have done so much for dozens of women I know; tell me how I can cease to be inadequate towards my husband."

The pa.s.sionate flow of words ceased suddenly. Lady Ingleby leaned back against the cus.h.i.+ons.

Peter sighed in his sleep.

A clock in the hall chimed the quarter after six.

The doctor looked steadily into the fire. He seemed to find speech difficult.

At last he said, in a voice which shook slightly: "Dear Lady Ingleby, he did not--he does not--think you so."

"No, no!" she cried, sitting forward again. "He thinks of me nothing but what is kind and right. But he never expected me to be more than a nice, affectionate, good-looking dog; and I--I have not known how to be better than his expectations. But, although he is so patient, he sometimes grows unutterably tired of being with me. All other pet creatures are dumb; but I love talking, and I constantly say silly things, which do not _sound_ silly, until I have said them. He goes off to Norway, fis.h.i.+ng; to the Engadine, mountain-climbing; to this horrid war, risking his precious life. Anywhere to get away alone; anywhere to----"

"Hush," said the doctor, and laid a firm brown hand, for a moment, on the white fluttering fingers. "You are overwrought by the suspense of these past weeks. You know perfectly well that Lord Ingleby volunteered for this border war because he was so keen on experimenting with his new explosives, and on trying these ideas for using electricity in modern warfare, at which he has worked so long."

"Oh, yes, I know," said Myra, smiling wistfully. "Tiresome things, which keep him hours in his laboratory. And he has some very clever plan for long distance signalling from fort to fort--hieroglyphics in the sky, isn't it? you know what I mean. But the fact that he volunteered into all this danger, merely to do experimenting, makes it harder to bear than if he had been at the head of his old regiment, and gone at the imperative call of duty. However--nothing matters so long as he comes home safely.

And now you--you, Sir Deryck--must help me to become a real helpmeet to Michael. Tell me how you helped--oh, very well, we will not mention names. But give me wise advice. Give me hope; give me courage. Make me strong."

The doctor looked at the clock; and, even as he looked, the chimes in the hall rang out the half-hour.

"You have not yet told me," he said, speaking very slowly, as if listening for some other sound; "you have not yet told me, your second reason for leaving town."

"Ah," said Lady Ingleby, and her voice held a deeper, older, tone--a note bordering on tragedy. "Ah! I left town, Sir Deryck, because other people were teaching me love-lessons, and I did not want to learn them apart from Michael. I stayed with Jane Dalmain and her blind husband, before they went back to Gleneesh. You remember? They were in town for the production of his symphony. I saw that ideal wedded life, and I realised something of what a perfect mating of souls could mean. And then--well, there were others; people who did not understand how wholly I am Michael's; nothing actually wrong; but not so fresh and youthful as Billy's innocent adoration; and I feared I should accidentally learn what only Michael must teach. Therefore I fled away! Oh, doctor; if I ever learned from another man, that which I have failed to learn from my own husband, I should lie at Michael's feet and implore him to kill me!"

The doctor looked up at the portrait over the mantelpiece. The calm pa.s.sionless face smiled blandly at the tiny dog. One sensitive hand, white and delicate as a woman's, was raised, forefinger uplifted, gently holding the attention of the little animal's eager eyes. The magic skill of the artist supplied the doctor with the key to the problem. A _woman_--as mate, as wife, as part of himself, was not a necessity in the life of this thinker, inventor, scholar, saint. He could appreciate dumb devotion; he was capable of unlimited kindness, leniency, patience, toleration. But woman and dog alike, remained outside the citadel of his inner self. Had not her eyes resembled those of a favourite spaniel, he would very probably not have wedded the lovely woman who, now, during ten years had borne his name; and even then he might not have done so, had not the tyranny of her mother, awakening his instinct of protection towards the weak and oppressed, aroused in him a determination to withstand that tyranny, and to carry her off triumphantly to freedom.

The longer the doctor looked, the more persistently the picture said; "We two; and where does _she_ come in?"--Righteous wrath arose in the heart of Deryck Brand; for his ideal as to man's wors.h.i.+p of woman was a high one. As he thought of the closed door; of the lonely wife, humbly jealous of a toy-poodle, yet blaming herself only, for her loneliness, his jaw set, and his brow darkened. And all the while he listened for a sound from the outer world which must soon come.

Lady Ingleby noticed his intent gaze, and, leaning forward, also looked up at the picture. The firelight shone on her lovely face, and on the gleaming softness of her hair. Her lips parted in a tender smile; a pure radiance shone from her eyes.

"Ah, he _is_ so good!" she said. "In all the years, he has never once spoken harshly to me. And see how lovingly he looks at Peter, who really is a most unattractive little dog. Did you ever hear the d.u.c.h.ess's _bon mot_ about Michael? He and I once stayed together at Overdene; but she did not ask us again until he was abroad, fis.h.i.+ng in Norway; so of course I went by myself. The d.u.c.h.ess always does those things frankly, and explains them. Therefore on this occasion she said: 'My dear, I enjoy a visit from you; but you must only come, when you can come alone. I will never undertake again, to live up to your good Michael. It really was a case of St. Michael and All Angels. _He_ was St. Michael, and _we_ had to be all angels!' Wasn't it like the d.u.c.h.ess; and a beautiful testimony to Michael's consistent goodness? Oh, I wish you knew him better. And, for the matter of that, I wish I knew him better! But after all I _am_ his wife. Nothing can rob me of that. And don't you think--when Michael comes home this time--somehow, all will be different; better than ever before?"

The hall clock chimed three-quarters after the hour.

The clang of a bell resounded through the silent house.

Peter sat up, and barked once, sharply.

The doctor rose and stood with his back to the fire, facing the door.

Myra's question remained unanswered.

Hurried steps approached.

A footman entered, with a telegram for Lady Ingleby.

She took it with calm fingers, and without the usual sinking of the heart from sudden apprehension. Her mind was full of the conversation of the moment, and the doctor's presence made her feel so strong and safe; so sure of no approach of evil tidings.

She did not hear Sir Deryck's quiet voice say to the man: "You need not wait."

As the door closed, the doctor turned away, and stood looking into the fire.

The room was very still.

Lady Ingleby opened her telegram, unfolded it slowly, and read it through twice.

Afterwards she sat on, in such absolute silence that, at length, the doctor turned and looked at her.

She met his eyes, quietly.

"Sir Deryck," she said, "it is from the War Office. They tell me Michael has been killed. Do you think it is true?"

She handed him the telegram. Taking it from her, he read it in silence.

Then: "Dear Lady Ingleby," he said, very gently, "I fear there is no doubt. He has given his life for his country. You will be as brave in giving him, as he would wish his wife to be."

Myra smiled; but the doctor saw her face slowly whiten.

"Yes," she said; "oh, yes! I will not fail him. I will be adequate--at last." Then, as if a sudden thought had struck her: "Did you know of this? Is it why you came?"

"Yes," said the doctor, slowly. "The d.u.c.h.ess sent me. She was at the War Office this morning when the news came in, inquiring for Ronald Ingram, who has been wounded, and is down with fever. She telephoned for me, and insisted on the telegram being kept back until six o'clock this evening, in order to give me time to get here, and to break the news to you first, if it seemed well."

Myra gazed at him, wide-eyed. "And you let me say all that, about Michael and myself?"